Eight films to watch before you see The Neon Demon

Nico­las Wind­ing Refn’s love of trashy exploita­tion cin­e­ma com­bined with art-house aes­thet­ics finds the per­fect syn­the­sis in his lat­est, The Neon Demon, a tale of mod­els who’ll go to dia­bol­i­cal lengths to make it Los Ange­les. A daz­zling, dis­turb­ing delight that bor­rows lib­er­al­ly from Hol­ly­wood genre cin­e­ma, Ital­ian gial­lo, Paul Schrader’s Cat Peo­ple, and straight up hor­ror (includ­ing the appro­pri­a­tion of the word ​‘demon’, up until now more read­i­ly asso­ci­at­ed with B‑movie chillers), it is also nas­ti­ly unique – a beau­ti­ful night­mare that will wrong-foot you right to the end. Here are eight films you might want to watch ahead of it.

This peer­less grind­house clas­sic pos­es the ques­tion: ​‘How far is it from beau­ty, to ter­ror?’ Andrew Prine plays a ser­i­al killer who plans to close the gap, stalk­ing beau­ti­ful young women in Los Ange­les who have posed nude in Bach­e­lor mag­a­zine. A moral­is­tic psy­chopath who tells his vic­tims ​“dis­play­ing your body is filth”, he dress­es in black, lives in an all-white bed­room and has a shoe fetish. Weird­ly styl­ish, at the same time as being grot­ty and gaudy, the film fea­tures an insane cli­max set against a Boschi­an land­scape of burned tree trunks, which the final shots of The Neon Demon appears to echo.

The demon here is less neon, more cheap plas­tic – with glow­ing red eyes peer­ing through a shroud of dry ice and mak­ing a weird fart noise when­ev­er it appears. Direct­ed by Don­ald G Jack­son and Jer­ry Younk­ins (part­ly fund­ed by the latter’s $6000 com­pen­sa­tion from an indus­tri­al acci­dent) the film is ama­teur­ish, tacky and com­plete­ly beguil­ing. Var­i­ous­ly known as Coven, Demon Mas­ter, Demon Tow­er, Mas­ter of Evil and The Dev­il Mas­ter, this dri­ve-in clas­sic is a must see for those who want to find out, as the poster promised ​‘the truth about demons’.

As glo­ri­ous­ly crude as it is exces­sive and insane, this is unashamed­ly sleazy hor­ror, beau­ti­ful­ly mount­ed as Euro art-house. Paul Morrissey’s bonkers take on the Mary Shel­ley sto­ry has Udo Kier as a libidi­nous, dement­ed sci­en­tist attempt­ing to build two beau­ti­ful young peo­ple culled from the body parts of who­ev­er hap­pens to be strolling past his cas­tle. Orig­i­nal­ly released in 3D, the film con­tains such gory sights as fleshy inter­nal organs dan­gling from a spiked staff, and Franken­stein com­mit­ting atro­cious acts on var­i­ous cadav­ers. Eagle-eyed view­ers will spot a direct ref­er­ence to the lat­ter in The Neon Demon’s already infa­mous morgue scene.

Direc­tor Andy Milligan’s cult art-house curio about a young girl going to pieces in the big city is a fable about young flesh turn­ing ran­cid. New York­er Mil­li­gan churned out numer­ous almost zero bud­get hor­ror films for the grind­house cir­cuit in the ​’60s and ​’70s, occa­sion­al­ly sneak­ing in an arty melo­dra­ma. Refn’s own print of Night­birds, from his per­son­al col­lec­tion of films by the nut­ty auteur, was used for the recent reis­sue on Blu-ray.

There might be no bet­ter por­trait of the pit­falls of greed and fame in Tin­sel­town than Bil­ly Wilder’s bril­liant­ly bleak sto­ry of a washed up screen­writer and fad­ed screen siren clutch­ing to their rem­nants of their careers in a dilap­i­dat­ed man­sion. It’s no spoil­er to reveal the film is nar­rat­ed by a dead man – it opens with the beau­ti­ful­ly strik­ing image of William Hold­en, face down in a swim­ming pool. ​“He always want­ed a pool. Well, in the end, he got him­self a pool – only the price turned out to be a lit­tle high.” Creepy old manse in The Neon Demon? Tick. Swim­ming pool? Dou­ble tick.

Recall­ing Polanski’s Repul­sion and David Lynch’s Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, Kevin Kolsch and Den­nis Widmeyer’s hor­ror dra­ma is the sto­ry of a strug­gling actress in LA, Alex Essoe, who falls in with a sin­is­ter cult that, ini­tial­ly at least, promise to send her career sky­wards. Before it dete­ri­o­rates into bloody, stab­by slash­er insan­i­ty, the film is a tight­ly wound dis­sec­tion of the crude cur­ren­cy of young flesh. The scene where Essoe is forced into a hair-pulling melt­down dur­ing the audi­tion from hell should be required view­ing for any would be actor. Hooray for Hol­ly­wood, anyone?

The open­ing scenes of Dario Argento’s dia­bol­i­cal­ly lurid chiller – show­ing Jes­si­ca Harp­er arriv­ing in Italy and being trans­port­ed to a rain­swept bal­let acad­e­my – are so fever­ish and hys­ter­i­cal that your nerves are set on edge from the out­set. Sub­se­quent mur­ders by bro­ken glass and razor wire, a relent­less, pul­sat­ing score, and fleet­ing glimpses of an asth­mat­ic hag behind a cur­tain, do lit­tle to set­tle them. In The Neon Demon, Refn art­ful­ly bor­rows sev­er­al shots – not to men­tion the wall­pa­per – from Sus­piria, all while pro­vid­ing a grue­some nod to Argento’s ocu­lar obsession.

Jacque­line Susann’s nov­el about three star­lets cor­rupt­ed by show busi­ness is one of the best sell­ing books of all time. It was lat­er turned into a smash hit film and TV minis­eries: evi­dent­ly the schaden­freude in see­ing pret­ty young things dete­ri­o­rate in a haze of pills and mad­ness appeals to mass audi­ences. Neon Demon com­pos­er Cliff Mar­tinez has described Refn’s film as a cross between Val­ley of the Dolls and The Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre. Now who in their right mind would not want to see a film like that?