Who would have guessed that Gore Verbinski was such a big Pialat fan? The good folks at The Seventh Art dug up Maurice Pialat’s first film from 1952, entitled Isabelle Aux Dombes. With its disjointed imagery — carcases, body parts, flea-covered horses — this silent short calls to mind the brooding sequences of The Ring, except that it’s, you know, better. The experimental horror show is rather far removed from Pialat’s feature work, which tends to derive terror from the household setting. Nevertheless, I’d be curious to hear it with a musical accompaniment.