ingrid go west, god bless america. world’s greatest dad. cheap thrills.

Hello let’s talk about black comedy. i think it is comedy that doesn’t tell the audience it’s comedy. Friendship started me off on something, i mean the film Friendship. i was trying ti find a way of describing, it’s very realistic in the way it’s filmed. a drama in the cold light of day. yes the lighting in teh film reminded me of daylight. looked up a list of the top black comedy films, and have watched a few – my apparent words can’t do them justice…

Luc Besson’s Dracula – 2025

good old Caleb Laundry Jones…this is an inevitable role for such an actor, the man with the frightening face, the creepy aspect. but the film is good not great. it doesn’t bother having a character called Van Helsing for some reason. Christoph Waltz plays the VH role under a diffrent name. A lot of the story is teh usual stuff taken from Stoker’s book, – Harker survives, which i can t recall seeing before. There’s also a nunnery full of nuns who get slaughtered and drunk by the big D – what is it about a nunnery? this episode also occurred in the BBC/Netflix version yet does not appear in Bram’s book. There is an interesting prologue which i guess is trying to capture the bloody history of Vlad the Impaler…though i think the story of Vlad the Impala would have been more entertaining

Caught Stealing (director aronofsky)

great film, but i thought it was going to lose me towards the middle, as the main protagonist loses his gfriend in a horrible murder, but he seems to get over the shock quickly – which would not really happen in real life (or would it, if u r desperate?). What i really liked was the extent to which the villains – and there are a lot of them – go in their punishments. also, the characters u expect to survive suddenly get taken out, which made it an unpredictable watch. the two hasidic jewish thugs are brought into focus in the last third of the movie, and it’s only then you see the actors playing them – liv schreiber and d’onoforio…what a great pair they make, charming yet deadly. Carol Kane – she of the last detail – pops up also as the twos thugs’ sister…a homely family, yet the two brothers have a ruthless side. what a roller coaster ride

Good Boy

it ‘s an amazing performance by the dog, – not hugely scary, but still an original horror film

Friendship and Good Boy

Cherry2000

ah i had to stop watchin this, as i was watching it in the company of Billy and Yolanda, maybe because of that added ‘pressure’ i saw the film as slow, dull, plodding, with a terrible performance by Melanie Griffiths as the bounty hunter. I’d read about this film in my book Millenium Movies, about films set post-apocalypse. Perhaps, had i been by myself i could have got through this, but sometimes it seems Griffiths can’t act at all, can’t express any tension. compared to say, Giulletta Masina, she is like an amateur…which brings me to:

Nights of Cabiria (1957, dir by Fellini)

Masina’s acting is great, with a character who is obstinate, head strong and irresponsible of her own situation. Like the previous La Strada the ending is tragic (though not as tragic as the previous film). in beautiful black and white.

The End

a film directed by Burt Reynolds, and it’s defo his funniest film. some cool comedy, dark humour. burt’s dead pan performance wins the day

12 chairs (1970ish)

an obscure mel brooks movie, but it’s great, though they remove and change the black ending of the book. made sense i guess

Memory (1922)

some nice shots – the but where liam neeson gets out of his car and walks up to the window of a gym, and the guy who’s shot just watches his assassin as he runs on the treadmill…excellent. but a bit of a jerky film, no humour, dialogue a bit stern. The ironic casting of Guy Pearce was just fine baby – after all he also wrote reminders on his arms when he did Momento…

The Last Command (von Sternberg – 1928)

with whatisname….a silent film. if someone isn’t very intelligent it’s impossible for them to ever find that out…Emil Jannings shines again, after making the Blue Angel with the same director. Shame the poor guy later became a mephisto character, made a faustian pact with the nazis

Frankenstein (directed by Del Torro)

yet another clunky, cumbersome gothic epic from Del Torro. he’s never attained the heights of Pan’s Labyrinth since making it. Shape of Water was alright, crimson peak was total shit. I watched the first half hour of Frankenstein and thought more of the same. the script is banal, with 2 dimensional exchanges and stereotypes characters. why bother with any of that stuff about Victor’s childhood? always with the glossy elaborate sweeping pan shots of period settings. But leads nowhere…of course i’m gonna watch it all. ……a day later, and i have watched it all, and i have to admit it does get better, especially as the monster is given an opportunity to tell it from his pov. which is actually faithful to the book. though there are odd things which do not appear in book, like the strong willed elizabeth character – she is not Vicotr’s wife, but the wife of his brother and they don not have a relationship beyond friendship. I won’t spoil it for you…. the look of the monster is cool, and i think inspired by the book. Oscar Isaac’s victor is an egoistic dandy 9or is he a beano?). the challenge with any version of F is to somehow equal or surpass the boris karloff 1931 version, i mean when it comes to portraying the monster. This new one does a valiant effort, being original and different from the 1931 version, with not one bolt or electrode in sight

Saint Maud

aww why is making a film so difficult? saint maud unexpectedly has the welsh language in it, only a little, towards the end, but it’s used tastefully, although one could argue that it is the religious stereotype that makes it work. this film is pretty good character study. when i say stereotype i mean i aught to be happy that welsh is heard in the film, i’m always on about it (well, not always)…but what does the presence of welsh mean in it ? it is through the welsh language that the voice of God is heard. but what does that signify? probably, or maybe, that the central character – who is a loner and clearly fucked up – was brainwashed as a child in a welsh backwater, brainwashed by welsh religiosity, through her parents or somebody else….or not.

Money Boys

Brokeback mountain for chinese people. excellent film, and ,like Joyland and ‘And then we Danced’, below, this is a film which doesn’t just focus on one set of characters, though it does on one main one. the length of the film allows it to pause, and drift, and bring in the least expected characters…simple village boy goes to the city…with dire consequences. the music is excellent.

The Foreigner

Jackie Chan underplays beautifully his role as a father seeking revenge. Pierce Brosnan is on form too as a former IRA man now politician. This is a pretty good thriller, with some unexpected twists.

Underworld – 1927, directed by Joseph von Sternberg.

a ground breaking silent film that spawned the gangster genre of the 30’s onwards. It is what it is. got some nice camerawork. available on Youtube – ooh what treasures lurk there. well i watched this having read Von Sternberg’s autobiography, which is an excellent guide book as to how to make films, and a sad indictment of the old Hollywood system…maybe things haven’t changed that much since the 30s, people always interfering with what the director intends.

One Battle after Another -2025 PT Anderson

saw this in the cinema. i heard it was action packed and it is. very watchable film. but there’s a bit at the end i didn’t get, why did the native american hitman give his own life for the girl?

Dark of the Sun -1968 – directed by Jack Cardiff

I happened too catch an interview with the actor Rod Taylor on youtube, and he talked about his film, being one of his best. It is ! I used to get Rod mixed up with Robert Taylor, but now i can see, when it came to beefcake, there wasn’t many who could beat Rod, the australian. He did a handful of great films, well a couple: the Time Machine and The Birds. But this film is also pretty good, tightly scripted, well paced war film, with the brilliant cameraman director Cardiff. so it looks great. The violence for the time is nasty, but then it is set during the Congan crisis where ghastly things happened for real. Jim Brown is also excellent. and has an amazing stoic quality. The fight with the chain saws is one highlight, as is the soundtrack – a very cool jazz orchestrated.

And then we danced (2019) directed by Levan Akin

like joyland this is a film that starts in one direction but goes another. both films have as the central tragedy the restriction of sexual freedom. though not completely unrestricted. in this film the main character, who is a dancer, does make love to his mate, but has to be super careful,,,after all it is illegal in georgia. but at the start you think he’s hetero and the film is going to b about the dance and its politics. the end credits featured one that said thanks to a dance teacher who had to remain anonymous.

The In-Laws (1987)

not as good as i hoped it would be, but there are some funny moments. there’s also a brilliant stunt which you could swear blind was performed by alan arkin himself, but if you look again you see it’s done so clever, in one take, the actor runs into a wooden corridor and out the other end comes the stunt man who then hurls himself onto the top of a moving car. directed by the veteran arthur hiller.

Joyland (2022) – directed by Saim Sadiq

Oh i say it’s a barrier breaker, a ball breaker indeed. a pakistani film featuring a trans character, and a closet homosexual. beautiful poetry within the images, the lighting and colours being meditative, trancelike. the real drama moves from one character to the next. you expect it to be all aboutt he trans character but then it moves onto the husband and his wife.

Hit The Road (2021) directed by panah panahi.

the kid in this film is brilliant, not since shane have i seen such a magical innocent mischievous pre-pubescent thespian. the story is slow and features amazing landscapes of Iran. the father is a bit miserable. but but but….

Tuesday (2023) directed by Daina Oniunas-Pusic

a croatian director, and perhaps brought with her from croatia the folk tale mindset. it’s a surreal film, completely unexpected in its imagery and story. ond yly dwy ddim am ddeud mwy, rhaid i chi weld e. it’s a film that could so easily mess up and sink into silliness. but the acting keeps it going. it’s not a full on horror film, it is like i say a folk tale on film, updated to modern day London.

Dying (2024) directed by Mathias Glasner (and written by him)

billed as a comedy drama, but i couldn’t see the comedy. perhaps because it’s german they saw humour in places where my welsh sensibility couldn’t. i liked it though. it really does go on about death, in all it’s different forms (well, in a domestic situation), and the way it affects family. but it’s about people in it. and art, and passion, the passion that drives you to death.

basically, any film that comes up on Virgin on Demand. that’s not true – i also watched The Best of Everything, which i recorded, from 1964, with alan bates and denholm eliott…i was reading about the film version of the Bonfire of the Vanities, well actually, not reading but listening to alan arkin talking on youtube about his life. he said he was offered small part in BOV but they pulled him in order to make the film more black friendly. he said that the director de palma just didn’t know how to do black comedy.(excuse the pun) the the the the tha that that that that that that that that that the the….must practise these annoying one syllable burps. The film version of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, (1968) while i recall it as being a sad film, turns out is not half as good as the book, the black characters are treated simplistically, though i could see they were trying to make them more up to date. the book is not sentimental and not sacharine whereas the film is jsut that in places. the deaf mute’s best mate – who’s also deaf mute – is like a grotesque, a pantomime figure

Out of Sight 1998

i have never fancied this film for some reason, it has always felt limp, the bits i saw. but the other night i decided to give it a go. and i was at first pleasantly when well i never – the director is steve sodeburgh, i love that soddy bugger, well most of his films i do. and furthermore the script is based on an elmore leonard book…but, sadly, it didn’t matter, the film was limp and weak, and i really tr3eid to watch it but then -Horror! George Clooney drags a fully clothed Jennifer Lopez into the bath for sex. Nooo! I’m not watching anymore – that shit is pure Hollywood drivel. Maybe soderburgh misfired on this one, or maybe he was still learning… at one point clooney and lopez reference in conversation a couple of robert redford films, including 3 days of the condor, and like why did dunaway have to make love to him?? good point.

The Activated Man (2025)

seeing this out of completeness. not that i’m familiar with much of Tony Todd’s films, but this was his last one so i watched it. IMDB give it positive reviews, but i didn’t think that much of it, it had some interesting bits. The disparity in height between the lead and Todd was noticeable – Todd was 6’5″, so the lead actor must have been 5 foot! this film was like a kind of Boogy Man/Babadook. also a bit of Drag me to Hell…but the logic seemed to break down, and the plot went all over the place, leading to a false climax…in fact i couldn’t quite make it to the end. also, it could have done with a bit of humour in the script, this is so common in horror (and other genres), that the solemnity of these films make them a bit too worthy. lighten it up man! Tony Todd’s but in the last Final Destination was better than his role here – apparently in that film the director let him improvise, as the knew he was in reality dying of cancer, so his speech is about the temporality of life.

Late Shift (2025)

watched this on On Demand tv. haven’t seen many Swiss films, it was great, almost like a fly on the wall doc about a working hospital. the main nurse was excellent in her role. the really weird thing about this film was it was – or seemed to be – set entirely in real time, yet, by the end of the film – which was around an hour and 40 minutes in length – you had just watched an entire 8 hour shift. i have never seen that illusion pulled off so well. I guess, even though the camera focussed all the time on the main nurse there were opportunities to compress the film time by cutting. So journeys in lifts and walks along the coridor would have been quite a bit longer in reality than what we actually saw. i guess.

weapons. (2025)

fantastic horror film. saw it yesterday in cardiff, got caught in the rain with Bunny Bodkins. This film is unprecitable, has a great ensemble cast. Julia Garner seems of late to be in every new horror film, but she has the best part of them all in this one. Well, compared to Wolf Man anyway, where she didn’t have a lot to do except act worried. The scares in this were , when they came, genuine. no silly dashers, but plenty of sillhouettes in the dark.

Blink Twice (2024/25)

don’t blink twice it’s alright. more than alright, this is a really good film, with horrific implication, so yes it is a ‘horror’ film, but no supernatural stuff – in fact it’s cleverer than that, as the twist does involve a kind of magic leap. the acting and script work well. the realism of the characters works – Lenny Kravitz’ daughter directs with aplomb, and she wrote it – please write more.

The Seven Percent Solution. directed by Herbert Ross 1977

great cast, and a potentially fascinating tale what with Freud being mixed up with Sherlock Holmes. But how disappointing. the director also made California Suite, admittedly a totally different kind of film, and one which turned out a notch above this one. This film can easily blind you with its erudite dialogue, its period setting, just the presence of the great detective is enough to twist the arm of your sensory receptors. But wait, look at it, really look at the film, and you will wonder what kind of beast it is – a comedy? not really. a thriller? well kind of. A swashbuckling adventure? – it has elements of that. a surreal spectacle – nonsensical more like, especially the daft scene with the ‘attacking’ white horses.

After a while of listening to Holmes talk i realised he was just too deep for me, i couldn’t really keep up with his dissection. But then the film goes into long stretches of mundanity, wasted set pieces on the rooves of trains, and in tennis courts – physical scenes somehow out of place alongside the more sophisticated scenes, just too long, and not fun to watch. An english actor plays a stereotype Prussian, he would always play the same character.

The brilliant Robert Duval is not brilliant as Watson, indeed he only has a few monosyllabic outbursts, and done with no energy, no character. duvall i don’t think could do british accents, and i wonder why he was even picked for this. The incredible Alan Arkin is probably the best thing in the movie – i mean Nichol Williamson is great to watch, but overall he’s like a teenager, a juvenile getting over his cocaine addiction. and talks too complicated, as i say . But Arkin is also wasted in the film, he spends long parts of it observing Holmes from the side lines. Facially, and vocally, he conveys the urgency of Freud.

and then you also see just how badly some of the action shots are. For example the stream train driver is clearly an extra who can genuinely drive the train, he’s in the background, not an actor, but sticks out like a sore thumb. The scenes with the bloodhound are terrible, for surely the dog has to be the main focus if we are to believe that it is really on the scent. not enough attention paid to details like this.

The sword fight on the train top happens, and is believable but takes the film out of the Holmes psyche and into swashbuckler/Flashman territory.

This is no They Might Be Giants, nor Without A Clue. But i guess it’s better than Cook and Moore’s Hound of the Baskervilles…just.

Wolf Man (2025)

oh dear dear- what the fuck happened to this? the same dir as the Invisible man, which was excellent- but this is so disappointing. just goes to show it’s not just the directing that makes a film good, it’s the script. but the provenance of the back story deserved better, i’m talking about the universal studio monster legacy. the 2010 wolfman wasn’t great, changing as it did various aspects of the 1941 original , but this new version doesn’t just change things, it throws out the essentials, leaving an insipid piece of crap. The old Talbot family is nowhere to be seen in this version.

At the end of the day it’s dreadful. just not scary, not really a wolf, just a man exhibiting strange symptoms. None of the usual Werwolf mythology is even mentioned: full moon, silver etc. The female in it gets to do not much except be a useless impotent onlooking wife. shame as she is a good actor. Makes you wonder why there aren’t more female Werwolves, after all Ginger Snaps was great. and why do these recent werwolf films always have 2 creatures?? (see the also crap Wolf with jack nicholson as well as 2010 Universal film) one is enough FFS. Two does not add too the horror, in fact it turns the film into an action movie as the inevitable fight sequence unfurls. silly

The Master Gardener

Paul Schrader is back with a film that i watched for the second time, without being sure if i’d seen it already. but at the same time i knew i had seen it already. i suppose it was strong enough to hold my attention again. the best thing in it is Sigourney Weaver. There are some parallels with taxi driver. But it’s a bit messy towards the end, the violent climax is muddled by bad editing. The overall gardening theme somehow i found a bit of a red herring. basically it was a revenge thriller, with a ‘Shane type’ at the heart of it – you think he’s renounced violence but we all know it’s just creeping under the surface. The narration involving a gardening diary wasn’t convincing enough for me, maybe because i find gardening boring. Just let the fuckin plants grow.

Die Brucke (The Bridge) – 1959

another anti-war film, like the previous, also black and white. This time in german which makes it more poignant i guess. it’s about teenagers being conscripted at the last dying minutes of WWII by the Nazis. watch it, it’s heart wrenching. the closing scenes, the editing, the sound, the horror etc – better than Saving Private Ryan.

the Victors (1963)

written, directed and produced by Carl Foreman. this obscure (amazingly) war film is absolutely brilliant. it’s subtle, more about the aftermath, the psychology, of war, the tragic and comic scenarios that arise out of being in war. Carl is most famous for scripting High Noon, and he was unofficially blacklisted in the 50s by the Mccarthyists. still he came back strong, not only did this but earlier won an oscar for Bridge on the River Kwai, which is also a film portraying the human effect of war./// I discovered Victors through my fondness for George Peppard performances, and he does not disappoint in this. the rest of the cast is stellar, with eli wallach, george hamilton, peter fonda, mervyn johns, and 5 or 6 european female stars including melina mercouri, elke sommer, romy scheider and whas her name…..no seriously , this i reckon is the best film about war, can’t believe it’s so overlooked. it’s up there with Paths of Glory. It’s shocking at times, but Peppard, who i dont think regarded himself as much of a success as a film star, aught to be proud of this in his canon.

I like talking about films but i wouldn’t call what i do film criticism – i hate all that crap.

Salo – or 120 days of Sodom (1973)

directed by Paolo Pasolini. i watched this at Gareth’s. It’s full of shocking scenes: young men and women confined, being tortured. Lots of sexual stuff, shit eating. But i was actually bored half way through. i mean it’s not a sexy film, it’s not meant to be. but also i couldn’t see nay story. maybe some kind of allegory of italian fascism is what it was. one commentator called it ‘decadent’ – yes, that’s probably an understatement. But i found it awkward. i mean if you’re going to have sexual acts depicted they have to be done realistically. the shit scenes were nauseating, as they were meant to be i guess, but it was not hard to guess that the shit portrayed is probably chocolate in reality – we saw man, one of the fascists, lay a turd, but only the before and after – it would have been far better, and more shocking and powerful, had we seen the actual turd come out of his arse. i mean, you laugh, but in a film which depicts so many disgusting acts i don’t understand why they didn’t go further…

not a satisfying watch, but the last 20 minutes, with the voyeuristic scenes, made that section, well, more interesting from a visual pov. The director, Paosolini, was murdered/killed in a mysterious manner shortly after he completed this film…..were the two things linked ? no one is sure. Maybe the Italians are more passionate and therefore more sensitive about such imagery in their films. I mean, i think a lot of british people would fins it shocking but also a crap film, because it is in parts boring. being boring, as Sam Raimi says, is the worst thing a film maker can do.

Apartment 7G (2025)

a prequel to Rosemary’s baby. it’s kind of on the same level as the original with slow burn horror, a lot of the unpleasantness emanating from the weird people who are tenants in the horrible Dakota style building. Dianne Wiest is Ruth Gordon, while not as repugnant as Gordon she still manages to unsettle with her knowing looks and glances. Jim Sturgess was cool as the theatre producer, but when he was killed there didn t seem to be much fuss made as there would be in real life, no ambulances or police. But anyway i liked it, i liked the ending especially, it tied in beautifully with the original. But some of the script was underwritten or just there to move the plot along, i’m thinking mainly of the nun in the church – the exchange with the heroine was not realistic at all, just put there to tell the viewer all about the ‘previous’ victim, the poor girl who’d been the cult’s target before this one. made me wanna write the word the a hundred times….the the the the etc

i suppose the horror genre owes a lot to Rosemary’s Baby…instead of frights and dashers, there’s that unpleasantness in the room…which is what the recent Evil Dead Rise excelled in

Arizona Dream (1993)

I am on a Faye Dunaway kick. This film from the later part of her career is a stand out. She made quite a few clinkers at this stage but also managed to produce two or three great ones. And i have been meaning to see this for a long time but never thought it would be that good. Boy was i wrong…it is excellent. a dream like film with a very loose story, it has loads of spontaneity and humour. The cast is one of the best ensembles i have ever seen in a film: Johnny Depp, Dunaway, Jerry Lewis, Vincent Gallo, Lili Taylor (where is she now ?), plus some great character actors ,as well as one of the best performances by a dog i have ever seen in a movie. The fact that the dog gets so much air time is testament, in my view, to the ‘life is magical’ approach of the film. Life is what you make it, life is up in he air – quite literally in this depiction of a flying machine mad woman, and surreal clips of people levitating. But the surrealism is never pretentious tempered as it is by the comedy – Jerry Lewis, like Faye, never many great films, especially as he got older, but to be fair his performance in this is absolutely brilliant, he can really act, and him and depp are a cool double act. I have always liked Vincent Gallo – as a director he has done some challenging stuff like Brown Bunny – but, despite his sometimes threatening countenance he can be so funny and lovable and his bits in this movie are the funniest. His impression of Cary Grant being attacked by a crop spraying place in NbNW is laugh it loud stuff. His banter with Depp clearly produces unpredictable results, especially when the dog starts shagging his leg. and miss Dunaway has Dunitagain – what a performance, portraying the insecurity and passions of an older woman who is loved by a young man.

The script is so original it blew me away, it is totally inspiring , and if i ever write a film this script would defo be a role model.

Barfly (1987)

been meaning to see this for ages. it’s not really the film that is suggested by its poster. it’s not really a star vehicle for mickey rourke and faye dunaway. by that i mean it is not a hollywood, glossy movie. while they are both brilliant in it the film is more like a european style take on the life, the life, the everyday going ons of drunks, of drinkers, and of the main protagonist, who is basically the author Charles Bukowski. I mean there’s not much that happens in terms of action, or actually there is but it passes by easy like, and slow. The other bukowski based film Factotum has similar fly on the wall, existential vibes. But the characters in this one are dirtier. i wanted to see Miss Dunaway especially and she does not disappoint. while fonda was making a genre piece Jagged Edge Dunaway was making a non commercial drama like this, a sad tale of pathetic people. Funny things happen due to the absent mindedness of alcoholics, and t is a witty script, but subtly so. Rourke is a great actor, his performance here borders on caricature, but i guess, as he actually met bukowski, he knew what he was doing. Sometimes real people are like the caricatures they inspire. He’s dirty, his pants are dirty, his room is filthy, his girlfriend is dirty, but he asserts more than once that he is not a bum. he is a writer, a poet.

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

watched this again recently. having seen it as a kid. it’s got some nifty fight scenes, and excellent spy shenanigans. But not sure what faye dunaway’s character is all about, – is she even essential to the film?? basically she is a romantic love interest to Redford’s character in the middle of the movie, even though she plays a character who is abducted at gunpoint by him. I mean, depending how you interpret it, it could be she is raped, or….worse. i don’t know if feminists protested about this film at the time, but then robert redford is so heavenly looking, the eye candy for women blurs the meaning. I suppose i was disappointed that she didn’t have more to do, as she is one of my favorite all time actresses. My friend who watched it with me thought it funny. i mean, it’s odd how it feels dated but at the same time the idea of covert operations and conspiracy is still pertinent, very pertinent, impertinent. THe scene where redford (who is the ‘condor’ – code named so) breaks into a telephone exchange in order to track a telephone number is both amazingly clever, and yet poignant as today the number he wants would come up on his mobile, without any of that palava. It was full of condor moments like that. Like an alalogue version of Enemy of the State.

Book of Mormon

my friend ema bought some tickets for this at Cardiff Millenium centre. it was a surprise treat and a great show, though it’s such a huge venue, coupled with the fact that we were sat up in the l enfant terrible – made understanding some of the words difficult. i mean, in a witty musical of this kind you need to hear the words in order to get the joke. A musical is a musical, and while this was original in terms of story, comedy and daring language, it was still, musically, full of the usual shitty tropes, crappy little ballads, a tap sequence, damn yankees etc….in it. No, what,….it’s probably the future of musicals, i mean they can’t keep making squeaky clean ones can they, it’s so boring. This was the first one i’ve seen in decades. i think avenue Q was the last one i saw, and that’s going back 20 years. I liked the psychoanalysis of the Mormon missionaries. But no wonder the church of latter day saints protested about it – it makes them out to be latent homosexuals, repressed and of course wrong.

the Horsemen

…yet another example of a masterly piece of film making totally forgotten and obscure. Where has this film been hiding? on the the internet that’s where. Frankenheimer directed this,- how many brilliant films can one man direct? Seconds, Ronin, French Connection II, The Train, etc many of them now forgotten – The atmosphere in this film is brilliant, you can smell the steppes, you can taste the afghan air. The story is basically about a massive ego trip, a man with a chip on his shoulder (and a gammy leg), feeling as if he something to prove, takes his horse and servant (Sais!) and does things the hard way. This man played by the stoic Omar Sharif decides to go home via the most difficult route…His hard nosed attitude is so good it’s coming out of the screen.

The film is spectacular, and a fascinating look at the horsemen in this part of the word, Afghanistan, as they would be hundred of years ago and yet it is set in the late 20th century, with a few jeeps and the odd crane, and occasional vapour trail in the sky, to be seen. Nothing much has changed here in all that time. A proper adventure ala Papillion. Like the most depressing road movie ever (apart perhaps from Wages of Fear), with no great story, just a trial of errors, and the reason for his journey is not fully explained until the end. And what an ending, with equestrian displays of the highest order.

Also features a great performance by Jack Palance (plays Omar’s father , though the two actors must be close in age). The horse races are spectacular, and i imagine lots of things in this film would not be allowed today, in terms of animal treatment: for the people depicted love to watch and bet on animal fights. be it between sheep, birds, horses…until the death. This was made around 1971, and while all characters speak english there is a degree of authenticity to the way the culture and people are portrayed – islamic phrases, snatches of the afghan language, Sharif has that air of – ok he’s egyptian, BUT if you compare this film to The Long Duel from 1968, which is set in somewhere like Pakistan, then HM outshines it. The Long Duel is also a romp, an adventure set in the hills, but in it you see lots of white actors blacked up as asian, and you see a bit of back projection, while HM’s incredible scenery and mountain scapes is all real, or maybe not the bit where a horse falls through ice – that looksl ike it could be a studio shot but is nonetheless an amazing shot of an amzing stunt. Leigh Taylor-Young, who i thought could only play cute hippies, is actually white but playing the brown skinned heroine. So yeah it’s still not caught up with the 2000s in that respect, but if you don’t know the actress, which most people wouldn’t, (she was mostly known for playing sexy west coast hippies) you’d swear she was afghan/asian. Whereas in The Long Duel (dir by Ken Annakin) you’ve got Andrew Keir playing a pakistani tribesman – i mean how incongruent! the most famous Professor Quatermass, everyone knows him. playing a brown skinned gent. (I’m sure i spotted the asian bloke from Mind Your Language next to him).

Into the Furnace

like american woman a contemporary look at how the white trash live in USA…pretty violent at times. but there’ a nice analogy in the film: hunting a deer and chasing down a villain with that same hunting rifle. The Deer Hunter has a lot to answer for. as usual Casey Affleck is great but sometimes hard to understand. Woody Harrelson – who;s parents couldn’t spell Harrison – is totally evil. Christian Bales is merciless in pursuit of revenge. the final scene is great, with Bale’s face telling us, quietly, that he knows he did the right thing when he shot that bastard through the heart

Tomorrow

a fantastic film, but so sad, and beautiful. filmed almost like an old silent by DwGriffith, it’s quaint story is basically like a filmed play, but that play was originally inspired by a short story by Faulkner. black and white. Robert DuVall is superb, and i think he is one of my fav actors, having recently watched the Outfit which is also an A plus. But this film Tomorrow is totally different, DuVall’s simple caretaker/cotton farmer must have inspired Billy Bob Thornton for sling blade…

American Woman

Sienna Miller wasn’t even nominated for her role in this, but what a stand out performance. Like eeer white trash, working class….and it’s a beautiful film to look at. there’s one amazing edit, only it’s not really an edit but a visual effect: a car with a newly wedded couple drives away from the camera, meanwhile another car comes in the opposite direction, towards the camera – the second car contains the same couple only a few years later

Hard Truths (dir Mike Leigh)

what a film, what dialogue, what acting. Leigh ‘s films make me wanna live a quiet suburban life in a semi detached in Pinner. His films seem to tap in on something alive, on something brutal from the unconscious. and this one excels in that dept. just the performance of baptiste alone grabs you the by the balls. there are classic mike leigh tropes in this one: the loners, the fat, the strange, the quiet ones. slowly the truth, denied for so long, comes out in to the open, and with it tragic sadness. Existensial…so many of films focus on the moment to moment, the day to day. how to get through it.

The Brutalist (2024)

Man what a film – it’s certainly epic. But i don’t think i liked it. There’s an under lying Zionist message to it i.e. ‘Israel is the home of the Jews’. Which surprised me considering the events in the world currently. that was only a small part of the film. The main character endures all kinds of setbacks and trial with a level of positivity and an arm full of heroin. He goes through hell and back, but when he gets fucked anally by his boss i don’t know, it stretched my credulity,(ooh matron) the way it was done. Why would anyone even want to fuck the wirey, ugly, skanky heroin addict played by Brodie??? Not exactly a catch is he, and it’s not as if the rapist couldn’t afford the prettiest male escorts in the area (they were in Italy at the time). The film at no point explained to the viewer the meaning of Brutalism i.e. in terms of architecture. so we are meant to derive multiple meanings from it ? and it certainly was a brutal film with brutal characters and brutal incidents. an epic , sweeping story, but also…i don’t know, a bit lost. unsatisfying. apparently a lot of proper architects hated the film. the Main character was a composite of real life architects. I liked the first half better.

Heckler

A film presented and devised by the actor who was in Mask Two. This is a series of clips, of people talking to camera, mainly comedians, about their experiences with hecklers and critics, there are also face to face chats with some of those reviewers. Quite a good film for comedians to watch. but then, everyone’s a critic

The Night of the Twelfth

a serious, bit worthy, French thriller. revolves around the death of a young woman, she is hideously burnt to death. I couldn’t stop smiling when i heard one of the policemen in the station named Fred. I mean, this film is in french, and it’s trying to capture that day to day camaraderie of blokes at work, locker room stuff, but at the same time i’m so used to seeing quasi philosophical dialogue in french language films that i get slightly confused when a different side of the coin is presented. Intense ? yes i guess, but also a bit vacuous at times. I mean i think the lead cop needs a good shit. But then, everyone’s a critic.

The Outfit (1973)

at last i found this film available on an internet site, free to watch. Fuckin amazing crime caper. Robert Duvall is superb in it, as are Karen Black, one of my favs, and Joe Don Baker. A nice swan song performance as well by Robert Ryan. I read one reviewer – or it could have been the director speaking – describe this film as ‘flat’. i think i see what he means: there’s no bit of sentiment in it, not really any emotion other than those that help propel the story. When Black ‘s character is tragically shot in a drive by there is hardly anytime spent on mourning – it’s underplayed. The cast had some incredible names, i mean well known character actors and stars from the past. but only in it for literally 2 or 3 minutes e.g. Elijah Wood and Marie Windsor.

year of the dragon (1985)

a michael cimino film, with mickey rourke. he’s a hell of an actor. very good thriller. crime. detective. with real chinese characters portraying the tri ad gang lords. has an epic sweep. apparently this got a lot of stick at the time from the Chinese American population. But i mean it portrays them as real people, not stereotypes, It also allows them to speak their own language for long segments of the film – strangely, without subtitles, but that still works. The history of the chines in USA is also aired, a sad history of people being treated worse than slaves. so, i don’t get why have a downer on the film, I mean there’s an inter-racial love scene as well, done tastefully, though raunchily. Mickey Rourke’s character is a bit of a bastard to women, ok. Some slick action scenes, nasty house invasion….

i saw a good film about a serial killer,but forgot the name. jeez, i watch so many of them the names become a blur

Django(1966)

some of these spaghetti westerns are hard to take seriously. i know some of you will say yeah but’s the point. no, i mean, the plot , the story etc. not saying i could do better…i mean there were great elements in this, especially in the first half. But there’s other parts which defy common sense, and the climax was a let down. I get often surprised at Tarantino’s choice of inspirational films, of which this is one. OK the scene where the bloke gets his ear cut off was done well, but why did he then have to get shot?

The Last Showgirl

Pamela Anderson bares her soul rather than just her body. Jamie Lee Curtis is also in this, and is a revelation. number 9 number 9 number 9. A pleasant diversion for 90 minutes. music is cool. a mildly sad pic but not quite tragic. worth watching if only for jamie lee-curtis’ exotic dance, and her character behind it. Miss Anderson should have done more like this. maybe she never got the chance. but she’s lucked out here. she won’t win an oscar, but there’s great drama in that face.

Boss Level

Frank Grillo, like his surname suggests, is a grill like man. i mean, i associate him with some not great b movies. but to be fair he has put in a few memorable performances. Physically he is like tarzan, i mean this bloke’s chest and six pack are the best i have seen, better than bronson, eastwood, even old arnie don’t look as good as Grill man. In this film Boss Man he definitely takes the opportunity to flaunt what he’s got. and his acting and delivery is totally spot on as well as his physicality in fights etc. To be fair – again – Boss Level i found to be a brilliant film, a totally absorbing, funny, perfectly paced adventure fantasy, with dark undertones as well as comedy. From beginning to end it astounds. The genre of Groundhog Day, of which there are a few now, -Edge of Tomorrow comes to mind- this one i would say edges it as the best. Mel Gibson is an ace baddie with a great speech about a python, an animal that kills only to protect its young. and so nice to see Naomi Watts back in the frame…quaint like a musty but fine wine.

The Laughing Policeman (1973)

Walter Mathau on fine form, in his serious persona, as a police detective. It’s an interesting, gritty film, but some of the dialogue was lost on me and therefore plot details.

Nosferatu (2024)

pile of shit. well that’s hugely unfair, it’s visually striking. it has some feeling, some poetry. but something annoying in it. it’s staged like i don’t know what, maybe it’s the colouring of the film or the composition. The gothic element is definitely there. it’s just that it don’t come across as a great horror film. and yet it is scary in places and does have some stunning visuals, there a feel more befitting a silent era film.

but the framing of a sign on the wall, in german, given onscreen english subtitles, betrays a kind of phoniness. as did some of the dialogue. I don’t think Skaarsgaaaaaard is that scary, i mean he is good, but i reckon there’s better actors out there for the part. Like, i saw The Brutalist. and thought hmm Adrian Brodie, now he would have made an amazing Nosferatu – probably wouldn’t have needed so much make-up either!

So soorry, i had the year of this film, noted after the title above, as 1924, for ages, which is wrong of course – just adjusted it. to be honest i wasn’t blown away by the 1920s version, but i’d say it’s far superior to this new one.

Anore

i read a negative review of this. but it was actually very good, and as far i can see easily as good as most of the crap that wins oscars. (the review read ‘it didn’t deserve any of the oscars it won). I loved the characters, but you gotta get over the sexually charged beginning, and then the next section, and then bam you hit the drama and the comedy and the tragedy. it’s acting and choreography is excellent.

The Oscar awards are like the word woke. you can think of them in two ways, and most people do. Some people think only great films deserve an therefore are given an oscar. But if you look at the recipients, up til now, then one can conclude that that is not true. oscars have been up til now (since the 50s if not before) given to, if not the worst, if not even a bad, but to the not best of the bunch.

King and Country (1964 dir Joseph Losey)

I say old chap no need to be peaky…a quiet simple film, juxtaposing the filth and degradation of WWI with the officers’ need for discipline, morale and execution of perceived cowards. a classic role for tom courtney as the deserter – fresh out of Loneliness of the long distance runner, as the anti-establishment runner – here he plays an ordinary bloke, with nothing on his side but hope. black and white, with dissolve shots of old photos of corpses, dead horses and other trench paraphernalia. Kept cutting to the group of soldiers in between the Courtney/Bogarde dialogue (dirk playing the defence counsel), and they became like a greek chorus…it’s all greek to me.

Zola (dir Janicsa Bravo)

a great film, based on a series of tweets! i guess you can base a film on the instructions on a cereal box if you wanted. Really captures the ‘Karen’ culture, the white trash, and the black trash, of america. Terrific performances, presenting the duality of man (and woman).

Dead Presidents (dir albert and allen hughes)

got some terrific edits, and unpredictable story. The shot of the man running over garden fences to escape police cuts into the man as a soldier running in Vietnam – hell of a cut, similar though to a cut in Meaning of Life (dir Terry Jones), where the bit on a muddy rugby field puts his hands across his face, close up, then camera pulls out to find him in the muddy trenches of WWI.

a lot of films these days are made for the mutated teenybopper market

Not Okay

the lead actress – Zoey Deutch – is a dead ringer for a teenage Julianne Moore. It would be easy to write this off as a film for teeny boppers, that is, on seeing the poster. But, in fact, this is a mature story , a powerful tale, excellently done. The woman Isaacs, who does spoken word, is brilliant at the end. T is a film about lying on the social media, and its consequences. T is a film about public shaming, and crowd behaviour. I loved it, and the fact that the lead character was likeable despite doing unlikeable things. I liked it when the father still hugged his daughter even though he, and the mother, had both found out she had done this massive lie. A lie about being in a place where there happened to be a terrorist attack…people died.

Rumpole of the Bailey

not a film but a tv series. been watching the old recordings. excellently written stories from the law courts. The main character is played great by Leo McKern. he is a comedian and tragedian both. John Mortimer wrote the first script back in the early 70s. One can imagine a counterpart/equivalent to Rumpole on teh comedy circuit. Not a judge obviously, but a bitter comedian who;s been around teh block several times.

The Contestant

crazy documentary account of a japanese bloke put it a room for months on end, being filmed, with nothing to eat, nothing to wear. He has to fill in competitions on the side of food boxes in the hope of getting food from it to sustain himself. Question: why didn’t he just leave?

Birth (2004)

amazingly this is available online, and without adverts. what an interesting watch. Danny Houston is great, but is he related to John? cos he sounds and looks like him at times. the ‘controversial’ scene involving Nicole Kidman in the bath with a 10 yr old boy wasn’t that controversial after all. all done in good taste/

Yellowbeard (1983)

as someone one wrote of Laurel & Hardy’s last film Atoll K ‘it’s a mess, sometimes it’s a fun mess’…Yellowbeard is kinda like that. John Cleese is in it and is quoted somewhere as saying it was the worst script ever but he had ‘hwyl’ doing it. Thing is it’s not that bad, it’s probably better than the last Cook and Moore film (the one about sherlock holmes) and much better than say Carry On Columbus, but i would put it as somewhere up with the Carry Ons, the better Carry Ons. It does have a couple of surreal bits which are nice e.g. when peter cook opens a chest to find Marty Feldman’s head gazing up at him with a playful expression on his big bug eyes. Then there is the bizarre scene of the 75 yr old James Mason lying semi naked astride a nubile young sailor, in his 20s, who is in fact a beautiful young woman. On Mason’s face is a look of curiosity and distraction.

the most interesting thing, the thing that stands out about YB, is the sheer wealth of comedy talent in the cast. There are so many comedians in it that a bloke decided to make a documentary about it, saying that not since It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World has a film featured so many comic actors/funny people. all men i’m afraid, but that is typical of anything with a python connection – Graham Chapman is lead actor and main writer – and in fact there are quite a few unashamed sexist jokes in it. But actually there is a wide variety of types of joke in this film, and at the same time it manages to keep up the traditional sea faring adventure yarn, with some nice visuals, sea scapes and islands, plus sword fights aplenty. Get a load of this cast : Cheech and Chong, eric idle, cleese, chapman, spike milligan, feldman, michael hordern, mason, susannah york, nigel planer, Peter Boyle, Madeline Kahn….i’m probably missing somebody oh yes Peter Cook (minus Moore). From what i’ve heard everyone had a bloody good time making the film, despite it not ending up a success. Feldman was good in it but sadly passed away during his last scenes from a heart attack. In his final death scene, in the movie, a body double is cleverly switched for the real MF.

graham chapman gives it his all as the mad bad pirate yellowbeard.

Strange Darling = a good movie. with a great twist. Better than the Menu. More on that piece of crap later.

Heretic – a clever, thriller come horror film. Saw it in the pictures. Craggy faced Hugh Grant being his hypnotic self. The script was great and above average intelligence. the ending was clever, it could have suggested the existence of a god/afterlife or not

I Know where I’m Going – watched it on Youtube in Slaley, in my room . I’d seen a doc on it and Scorcesse is a big fan of this british Powel/Pressburger production. So i watched it and yes it’s good. The scenes with the whirlpool are terrific. but may as well have been done with miniatures, as they were at a distance. As usual , with british films of that era – the hero and heroine were from well bred public school orientated backgrounds, which makes me gag. But the film did also feature some gaelic. The film’s story has the best elements of romance, a little magic, a little inspiration from the paranormal….all coming together at the end. and stirring music…Good god Roger Livesy was born in Barry!

i had a revelation…and it involved satan. No seriously, i realised last night that the 1972 spanish/english horror film Horror Express is basically a version the Thing. Or the novella on which it’s based, who goes there ?…. I have put off watching it for ages – though i saw it as a kid, but the kid’s enjoyment of a film doesn’t always translate into an adult’s appreciation. You know, it ‘s probably going to be one of those cheap hammer rip=offs, with corny dialogue and story. But in fact this film is definitely a notch above the usual fare. it’s got some scary, well done set pieces, it’s got some amazing twists. and the thing element is great, an ‘essence’ which transfers itself mentally from one human body to another. In the film cushing and lee come across as the classic laurel and hardy of horror films, always smooth on the eye, always ready with a quip, or constructive input.

the relocation of the Who Goes There scenario from an artic wasteland to a train in Siberia is most effective. the claustrophobia is heightened. The train and the train miniatures are excellent. telly Savalas’ turn as a cossack is another injection of colour. The priest is a terrific character…a total sell out, and at the same time he is obviously a Rasputin pastiche. The period setting, early 20th century Russia is totally convincing – once you accept that everyone speaks english.

Immanence, and other devil films

Found this, or should i say salvaged it, from youtube. Watched it with no previous knowledge of it. Save that it is a horror film. Reminded me in a way of Coherence, another indie horror flick. But only in the sense that there’ a group cast, there’s a double effect half way through, and plus the dark visuals. But they are vastly different in story.

Immanence has garnered absolutely appalling reviews on IMDB. but for why i’m not sure. i could tell early on in my viewing of it that the script, and how it is presented, had some thought put into it. It is a movie accused by many of being a Bible bashing God film. Not a fair criticism in my view. yes it has a lot of references to god and the devil, and quotes from the good book. But it’s all done intelligently. The omen, which is a classic, also referenced such things. and the Exorcist – well basically in order to believe in the devil you have to believe in God. There is one character in Immanence who is a believer, and has a back story, but he doesn’t ram it down the throats of the other characters nor of the viewers. He wants proof of what he believes, and sees a definite similarity between UFOs and the science around them to the existance of a God. Perfectly reasonable in some ways. The science in the movie is also taken seriously.

Though are many interesting scenes, the one that really got me comes around the two thirds mark. a man, who we’ve not seen up to this point, just walks into the bridge of the boat, in the dark, while the other characters are huddled in there, frightened by all the reality defying events that have gone down. This ‘guy’ is seen initially only in profile, a regular bloke, with a slight build, but tall with a little pot belly. something so ordinary. he proceeds to strangle two characters, kill them ruthlessly with his bare hands. Then he sits down and starts talking. we see he has one red eye and one blue. He is the devil. The entrance scene reminded me of Darth Vader’s entrance on to the space craft in Rogue One. the silence of it was spooky.

Dracula is a character i guess could be equated to the devil. Over the years there have been two – or possibly three – kinds of filmic portrayals of the vampire king : the Bela Lugosi type, with the slick clothes, hair and cape; the Nosferatu type, bald, with grotesque features, large ears and two front fangs, ala Salem’s Lot. then sometimes you get the older Dracula, but he is usually rejuvenated on drinking blood back into type one (see Christopher Lee’s Spanish production of Dracula).

In the same way there seems to be three kinds of filmic portrayals for the devil also. The most stagnant and boring, despite the visual make up, is the old goat who sits menacingly in the background – see for example the Devil Rides Out – who allows his minions the actors to carry out his evil deeds. He is mostly static, and loves to sit around while others kiss his arse.

The second type is more active : the charmer, the raconteur who is intelligent and witty, and very persuasive – see Peter Cook’s devil in Bedazzled or some of the Old Hollywood black and whites e.g. Laird Cregor’s devil in Heaven Can Wait. This devil is someone you’d be happy to hang out with as he points out the hypocrisy of every day life and people, and has a sense of humour. But of course you have to be wary as he tries to get you to give your soul away.

Number three – not often, but, like this ‘guy’ in Immanence where – the devil is in the form of a bloke, usually male, an ordinary, maybe working class, pleb. There’s something uncompromising in his actions, something threatening beneath. even though he doesn’t work out or is not particularly large you can see he could throttle you, snap you if he wanted to. You can see he has no qualms about doing it if that’s what he feels like doing. He is humourless. I can think of a couple of serial killer movies that have this central character quality: Zodiac, the guy in that who is believed to be the killer, and more especially the killer as portrayed by Michael Rooker in Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer. The killers wear jeans, T shirts, regular not-going-out clothes. It is the inhibition they display when it comes to killing a fellow human being which to me conjures up what the real devil would be like. They don’t care about the consequences of their actions.

Having said all that one of the most imaginative appearances by the devil was in Scorcesse’s The Last Temptation of Christ, where he – or it – is seen as a small flame, circling in the sand. This is a one off.

Dracula 3 D

i can’t say i’m a big fan of Dario Sargento’s stuff. most of it is watchable, but i guess the effect of dubbing puts me off a bit. (as well the daft campness) …But in this retelling of Bram’s story the actors mostly seem to be mouthing the actual english words we hear. Thomas gretchmann is very good as the count, pretty scary and mean. Rurger hauer is also dependable as Van Helsing, the only time a dutch actor has ever played the dutch character in a film version, apparently. The video quality of the film, the lifeless sets of the village, the shiny CGI, make it into some kind of existensial version of Dracula. I watched it on youtube so couldn’t appreciate the 3 D effects. But nevertheless it had me gripped. So much crap on Youtube i think i’ve watched all the good stuff…glad i gave argento a shot here, not one of his typical films, a bit more strait-laced than what he’d usually do,

Vice Versa

this black and white form 1948 is the original version of the soul swapping comedy. Anthony newley, who is about ten yrs old in it, is absolutely brilliant as the kid who suddenly has his father’s personality. Roger Livesey is one of them clipped english actors, but he is also very good as the grown man with the soul of a kid. A friend mentioned this film to me when i went kayaking on sunday – had no idea it existed let alone that the 1988 version was a remake…

Scream Blacula Scream

fuck me this was surpisingly good. Though he’s technically not dracula the lead vampire is effectively a ringer, a black ringer, for old Vlad. and he is played brilliantly by William Marshall….like a paul robeson of blood sucking. but then he has a second face, jekyll and Hyde esque, quite clever really. when he’s about to attack there’s hairs growing on his cheeks, and he looks meeeean….

Casino Royale (1967)

this film has an all star cast, and included in it are three top echelon film directors: John Huston, Orson Welles and Woody Allen all act in this epic mess. (I think there were three actual directors on the film as well).

Peter sellers is kind of cool but somehow not quite funny enough. apparently he went very eccentric during the making of this film. It is overlong and the whole film lacks cohesion, but still has some nice imagery, and eeerrr lots of far out sixties stuff maan.

could have been a brilliant comedy. i mean woody allen is great, but i suppose he’s adding his own ideas to the dialogue. Niven is ever so reliable.

Woody Allen’s mere appearance, at this early stage in his career, is a breath of fresh air. But then this is back when he made the ‘ earlier, funny films’.

A Night to Remember

well, i felt i had to watch it, what with my recent Titanic immersive theatre experience (a joke which by the way got into Private Eye magazine courtesy of someone seeing the banner for show outside Buxton Pavillion), plus i was told it is the best film version of the disaster. well it is definitely a fair and accurate account of the night’s events…but i can’t say it glued me to the screen. it’s obviously a blockbuster of its time, and a british one at that…the effects are impressive. a lot of people showing dignity in the face of death. some people getting scared. Roy Baker directed – i hear u ask not the Roy Baker as in Hammer Horror film director Roy Ward Baker?? why yes indeed – and put me off seafood chowder for life. At least there weren’t no love stories to muddy the waters.

Chuck Norris in a horror film ?

Well it’s more of a sci fi/action movie. Silent Rage. Been meaning to see it for ages, i mean catch it on Talking Pictures. Finally got to see it the other night. great opening scenes, but then it went a bit downhill. The murderer was quite scary but there never was any reason given for why he was incessantly chasing the girl. what a waste of a life….i mean his. i mean he could have chasing after someone who’d pissed him of.

Sorry to Bother You

this was a slow starter but turned into a fantastic feast of nightmare imagination. an almost plausible (and pausible) vision of the future, but also an allegory of society as it is today.

Lists

Whenever i read a list of top ten or top twenty scariest films online i am invariably disappointed at the choices made, especially by the Guardian-esque, or newspaper critics. Recently, at the top of one list, was Don’t Look Now. Really?? Scary? I mean ok it’s definitely got a certain atmosphere, but there’s no real threat, yes there’s a dwarf posing as a child, but i find the film to be a bit all over the place.

Meanwhile The Thing wasn’t even on the top ten. Ridiculous. Critics are always changing their estimations anyway – apparently the Shining was panned by critics when it first came out and quite right in my opinion, being an over-rated, boring, humourless horror film – The Omen has a much better kid-on-a-tricycle scene which predates the kid-on-a-cart scene in the Shining (for which apparently a special camera was invented). Some of the so called great directors are just too clever sometimes, Kubrick and Welles stand out as such. But anyway, now, today, the Shining is seen as ‘great’, a classic.

Then you also notice the omissions these critics make in their selection e.g. for me an obvious scary film to put on any list would be the Last Broadcast. Now i’m not saying it’s a brilliant or even a great film. BUT it’s one of the few films that had me looking over my shoulder when i watched it, and i watched it as an adult, looking over my shoulder because i was scared. It’s NOT that obscure, it came out around the same time as Blair Witch and is a comparable viewing experience (in terms of its story and style), and therefore i would expect a newspaper film critic to at least name check it – but they never do. Do these people actually like films?? Do they go out of their way to find great viewing experiences? I don’t think so.

The other annoying thing about film critique and indeed art critique generally is that the ordinary punter is sometimes not allowed to express a different view to the accepted – dare i say academic – norm. E.g. Citizen Kane is often sited as the greatest film ever. I think it’s common knowledge now that the reason -or the main reason- why this film gets such plaudits is down mainly to the technical invention, some tricks which had never been done before, or, as Orson put it, he was ‘ like a kid with a new train set’. I love Orson, i love him. But with CK it was workers within the film industry itself that recognised the cleverness of CK, it was far advanced for its time, at least technically. That’s not to say it isn’t also a grand sweeping epic story, a script that has depth and pathos. It is a great film…..but it gets boring in parts. that’s my view though and who cares about that. I guess the same happens in theatre – Oh the Bard! the Bard! the bard is the greatest playwright ever!…is he ?? Well, maybe if schools and the establishment stopped shoving him down my throat i might get a chance to judge him for myself. He should be barred…at least for a while.

The other day i saw a reference to the Third Man as a perfect viewing experience…how could it be with Joseph Cotton’s performance? he talks too bleedin’ fast. Oh yes of course there’s the music and there’s Orson’s beautiful cameo – and he’s being so clever again, talking about cuckoo clocks.

The fact that the Shining was initially panned on release is interesting to me, and surely a dilemma for all those sticklers of orthodoxy who insist that what the critics say goes…you see, with the Shining, i can safely say i agree with the early critics, with their initial opinions in 1980, and i chose to stick to those cards rather than draw. For is the critical consensus written in stone? Must i as an individual go along with it and if i don’t do i deserve a hard time ? I accept what the general consensus is but if my opinion is informed and based on the honest truth then also the consensual opinion can go take a hike! what i mean is yes i know we’re all allowed our personal taste, but i do think that society, or some members of society would rather we keep that to ourselves… i mean what the general consensus is is just a code, not a rule book.

I don’t think Tarantino accepts what the critical consensus is, he often seems to single out obscure films as the greatest ever made, and BECAUSE he’s a somebody within the film industry people listen to him. But then he also distinguishes between what he calls ‘movies’ and ‘films’. I think what he’s trying to say is that films that entertain are movies, and those are the ones he prefers. But come on now, i say no! In terms of ranking films – because i refer to all of them as the F word – surely you can’t put a film above another or hem them into two different categories just because one has a philosophical point to make while the other has action sequences…can you?? Both have aesthetic qualities. Both provide a unique viewing experience…so can’t we compare which one is better? I mean there’s effort gone into the making of all films. An understanding of film technique goes into all films, all good films anyway…..otherwise the implication of QT’s system is quite sad really. I mean, Bergman’s The Seventh Seal is associated with art house, and i am guessing Tarantino would call it a ‘film’ as opposed to a ‘movie’…but really it’s not that intellectual, it’s a period piece with elements of horror – Corman’s Masque of the Red Death with Vincent Price was heavily influence by it – sure it’s wordy, and it’s very Swedish, but it has got entertaining elements. What i’m trying to say is yes to me the words f/m are interchangeable, i mean for a start they’re all filmed on ‘film’, or were up until the 21st century.

Karen Black is one of my favourite actresses, if only because of her horror films, but also her eclectic range of films – see e.g. Day of the Locust, Easy Rider etc. So, here’s another forgotten classic which i stumbled across the other day: The Pyx. Check it out in Youtube, a Canadian psychological horror. with Chris Plummer in the cast as well. Though Karen is the star! One of the few films which caused me to have a dream that night after viewing, a dream featuring Black herself. In the film sang and i believe composed some of the haunting songs in the film. She didn’t sing in my dream unfortunately, she jsut looked out at me, but still it was a magic moment – a bit too magical if you ask me (shouldn’t have dropped those mushrooms). Columbo style this movie starts from a position of the crime having been committed right at the beginning, indeed it happens as the opening credits roll…though we don’t get to see the culprit. It’s a film whose ideas hit you after viewing, ideas on the nature of good and evil. Really it was a powerful, magnetic viewing, but yet again a film ignored by critics, never on the top ten or top twenty lists. Not even is it found in the book ‘ Definitive Guide to Horror Movies’, and that is not a bad book, containing a lot of lot of obscure stuff, from the 20s onwards, like ‘Deranged’ from the 1970s as well as some dross that i wouldn’t even class as horror. The Pyx is class, and one of the best films about the vulnerability of women, of the nature of goodness, of life itself. Certainly it deserves more attention.

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Harriet Craig. only Joan Crawford can do that thing, the never being pleased or satisfied thing. and when she’s got a good script her doing it is very watchable. Olivia de havilland on the other hand, i don’t know why but she goes over my head. maybe i haven’t seen the right film with her in yet.

 To find a good horror film on the web one has to wade through some much shit, but then when you do find something interesting, something original, it really is a thrill, like coming across treasure on a walk in the fields. I urge you to find and watch ‘The Witch who came from the Sea’….it took me completely by surprise. maybe they thought they were making an exploitation film in 1976, but the passing of time has, in my opinion made it great. Sexual abuse is so hard to dramatise.

seen some amazing films since august: The Last Run, the Bedford Incident, Ulzanna’s Raid, I Start Counting. Quentin Dupieux films are great and a real inspiration as he doesn’t seem to follow any rules of logic, and yet his films make sense: smoking causes coughing, Rubber, Reality, and more. Fear City, an early Abel Ferrara thriller was good as was Charles Bronson vehicle Ten to Midnight (though no idea why it was called that ). Watched the Heist again, with brilliant dialogue as you’d expect from Mamet. Tailor made for gene hackman. also saw an obscure british horror film from the early 80s, the appointment with Edward Woodward – slow but original.

after watching an older burt lancaster in Ulzanna’s raid and midnightman (the latter being one of only 2 films that burt directed) i went on youtube in order to go back to his early career; Brute Force is a pretty amazing prison drama with a proper denounment. what both films – 1947’s brute force and 1972’s Ulzanna’s Raid – had in common was that the scripts did not spell things out to the viewer; there was some subtlety where the viewer was left to deduce, and conclude things just from the implied use of imagery. Love that, and how annoying it is when films don’t employ that intelligent technique. Ohhhhhh how scrummy

‘the horror…..the horror..’

what is horror? or rather what is the genre horror in film? as a kid it seemed straight forward. i used to read about the Universal studio monsters from the 30s(like Drac and FRank and Mummy) – and 40s (wolf man) and 50s (creature from Black lagoon) – and they were the epitome of ‘horror’. But like most titles it’s a bit simplistic to apply it to a whole range of scary shit.

the sophistication of scripts, the loosening of censorship, as well society itself changing through the years, has brought massive change and expansion in what we call a horror film today.

First off, and obviously, horror is not just caused by a lone monstrous figure played by a Chaney, a Karloff or Lugosi. There’s ghosts, poltergeists, supernatural terror. In Danse Macabre – a long, analytical essay on the genre – by Stephen King he elucidates the four elements, loosely represented by 1) Frankenstein 2) Dracula 3) Jekyll and Hyde 4) Ghost Story.

he sites Turn of the Screw as the definitive Ghost story, and includes the werwolf within Jekyll and Hyde.

Yet it wasn’t until the 60s that Turn of the Screw got adapted as a film. – the definitive version directed by Jack Clayton – perhaps because of the sexual content, or dare i say the alluded to taboo subject of pedophilia.

with changing tastes, as well as the factors mentioned above, genres and sub genres began to merge. From Turn of the Screw it’s a short journey to the mixing of sex and fear, thus the 70s produced Legend of Hell House, Demon Seed etc . It’s then a sideways jump to the slasher genre, which often don’t even contain any supernatural element nor a monster.

That said, the scariest slasher from the 70s, or the classiest, must be Halloween, directed and written by the master John Carpenter (co written by Debra Hill). In his film , ostensibly a slasher – perhaps the one that started the trend – he does indeed imbue Michael Myers, the killer, with supernatural qualities. his main one being he can never die….which is very handy if you’re after a sequel.

But of course scary films about human killers were produced well before the 70s. in the 1920s you had The Lodger, in the 1940s Hangover Square. Both films about Jack the Ripper . Which suggests that certain historical figures – although flesh and blood – become somehow bigger than real life, like Dracula they go on and on, at least in the imagination.

I recently watched three films, two very recent, one from the 70s.

The latter was The Offence with Sean Connery plus a a brilliant supporting cast, directed by Sidney Lumet.

The two new films were a historical adventure in 19th century Tasmania, The Nightingale.

also The Lodge – which sells itself as full blown horror film.

these days the words ‘horror film’ conjures up evil forces more than vampires or man-made creatures….evil demons, malevolent ghosts, secret lurkers in the dark, all represented visually by the dasher, the fast moving dark figure in the background. a lot of modern horror films, usually the crap ones, utilise the latter device, and so one can see that a scenario is thought up, a suitable setting, in which as many scary gimics as possible can be inserted. The Lodge is a perfect example.

and yet there is more to a horror film. perhaps there always has been. Films that you think will scare you actually make you feel unsettled or uncomfortable. e.g. the Mothman Prophecies, almost in a subtle way, without full blown monsters or ghosts. Some films, like the Last Broadcast do both, they make you feel unsettled and terrified at the same time. Some films are horrifying because they depict violence so well, so graphically – see Talk to Me, which tries to do all three: unsettle, scare, and shove the shock of violence in your face.

i mentioned the word ‘subtle’ in an odd context above. but , you see, in order to unsettle a viewer i believe the film maker has to be more skilled than someone who’s only out to scare (or shock). a ghost train scares you because it’s one gimic after another shoved in the rider’s face…..but it’s game of diminishing returns: once the rider is older and has experienced the ride enough times the ride is no longer scary. instead, as the rider becomes acquainted, the ride becomes quaint in horror terms, like grand guignol, and the horror actor is seen to be a melodramatist, like Vincent Price or the even more archaic – and british – Tod Slaughter. similarly scripts, admittedly not great ones, imitially seen as valid horror become twee, or patronising.

i would say that some of the tools used to engender this unsettling feeling include music, special effects, camera work…and a host of other nuanced nusances e.g. when i watch Snow Piercer (sci fi rather than horror) i am unsettled when the actor Tilda SWinton allows her teeth(clearly falsies) to come loose in one scene – but what makes it unsettling as opposed to comic is the fact that no one refers to it, it’s just done.

actually there’s nothing worse in horror films, if you want to kill a good scare, than referring back to it, explaining it etc. well, depending from which point of view i suppose. in that sense scares are the flip side of jokes – both lose their power if analysed.

Music…..undoubtedly a very powerful weapon in the arsenal of the horror film maker. Look at – again – Legend of Hell House. using electronic music its score is amazingly appropriate to the dead atmosphere of Hell House’s interiors and exteriors.

This is where i jump: when i watched the Offence i could see it was a police drama. yet the music, the claustrophobic sets, – possibly a film of a play – the general bleakness of the of it all seemed to echo elements of a well crafted horror film. the greyness of it. Yes there were horrific events depicted within it, but, if it were as simple as saying that murder and death make horror then Saving Private Ryan would be a horror film, as would all war films. Indeed Apocalypse Now, with it’s ‘the horror the horror’ quote at the end seems to want to be recognised as a horror film. For the horror that man(and woman) creates on this earth, in the real world, is the worst, and, out of all this man made horror, arguably, THE worst must be the atomic bomb. such a thing affects us all, it’s in our psyche, the knowledge that we are just a button push away from armageddon. But the horrific event in the Offence was nothing on that scale : a policeman, a brutish over zelaous cop, beats to death a suspected paedo during a one on one interrogation. the suspect, a weak, vulnerable man never stood a chance. This strikes a chord 50 years after the film’s release: the anger that people feel when it comes to pedophilia, the revenge taken…even when there’s no evidence.

SO maybe the genre title ‘horror film’ is wrong, and certainly inaccurate a lot of the time.

The Nightingale is another example of a film which mainly because of the events depicted in it , and the way in which they are filmed, is certainly shocking. Like Apocalypse Now it features a journey through a wild jungle. But i think its the depravity of the 19th century characters depicted in it which fills me the viewer with….with what? – it actually keeps me glued to the screen. A good film makes want to keep watching it. Yet, in this case, i’ve just watched a poor defenceless father being shot dead, then his baby battered against a wall while the mother is raped. it’s the way it’s shot, the bleakness ‘ the bleakness’ , not a Hollywood gloss. AGAin though, on the surface, it does not fit the trad. category of (what I used to think was) horror. Perhaps it’s because the portrayal of this past is so honest, including the racism shown to native tasmanians, is one reason why it’s horror. It’s a reversal of how historical films about colonsiation used to be…..the pioneering adventurers who respected woman, and only killed nasty natives becasue they deserved it. just look at 99 percent of all westerns.

Horror comes from truth.

and it seems to me that the stink of an oppressive atmosphere, when captured on film, lends itself beautifully to horror. The Nightingale being a perfect example: the squalor, the poverty, the slavery,

Best horror film of 2023 ? i would say Evil Dead Rise. in that amazing movie even before any deadite has appeared the film horrifies you with it’s bleak oppression. the oppressive, claustrophobic life of the characters is a portent of the doom to come.

The Lodge i mention at the top. it’s the only film out of the three i name that calls itself a horror film. and boy does it try, using all the tropes, all the gimics. and yet it’s a mess. the randomness, like a melting pot of cliches. it has obvious parallels with the Innocents, a woman trapped in a country cabin with two youngsters. It certainly implies terrifying things. but it cheats the viewer with its mixture of dreams and hallucinations. i am left wondering what is real and what is not. Certainly the brutal uncompromising beginning and ending would you think appeal to me, but it’s the events in between that make the film unsatisfying. logic seems to go out the window, with the plot/story.

so, out of the three films i named : the offence, The nightingale, the Lodge,…the first two were better horror films despite being a police drama and period adventure respectively. the third was full blown horror…

YOUTUBE

it’s amazin what u can find on u tube. Primal Rage and Stranded. two recent horror and sci fi fims respectfully. one quick glance at the type of film they are and you might dismiss them as amateurish crap. but look again.

Stranded stars the always watchable christian slater. but, unluckily, this film seems to wears its low budget on its sleeve, a lot of imdb reviewers calling this an awful film as a result. They go on about the script but i think really it’s that they take one glance at a film with dark sets, with murky miniatures, with office equipment that recycles as space age equipment, and they instantly dismiss it. but hey, give it a chance – maybe in the future that’s what things will look like – and maybe, one day, they – or you or me – will have to make a feature film on a shoestring. The story is solid, the 4 members of a planetary space station – or is it set on the moon? – have to act fast after their hq has been damaged by a meteor shower. (bathrooms are just not dependable these days). Oh yes i remember it IS set on the moon, because of the very striking last scene, which probably used up half the budget. a man called roger christian directed, who it turns outs was a very good production designer, worked on alien and star wars, and directed a film from 1982, a british psychological thriller called The Sender – which i must see.

Primal Rage is probably the best Bigfoot film i’ve seen. Though there is another movie, like a found footage one, which is pretty cool. But this one, PR, had a very original take on the Bigfoot as a hunter, as a humanoid. there’s another film from the 80s with teh same name. but then that might be true of most films as it’s very difficulty to come up with a totally original title.

L’avventura

I say, i’m in the mood for a classic. so the much lauded L’Avventura by the much lauded Michaelangelo Antonioni…e! alora ! It’s on youtube, so i have watched it in two nights. Ok, so scorcesse once said that this film shocked him when it came out. Having watched it i’m not quite sure why. OH yes there’s the disposal of the plot, the existential angst, the openess about sex (to some extent) and adultery etc. But really? by today’s standards both morally and artistically i didn’t find it unique in any way. that’s not to say there aren’t good things in it. there are. I mean it’s gripping for the first half, compelling, but at the same time it’s a meandering film, and the meandering keeps getting more and more meanderish. it seems to have something to say about love.

Lawn Mower Man 2

got eleri to record this for me, then watched it and realised quickly it’s a mess….but i kind a like Patrick Bergin, one of those actors who, while seeming as good as other leading men of his generation, for some reason faded into B movies. Anyway this film is all over the place, but it’s got a good guy and a bad guy so that’s alright. I also watched the first Lawn Mower man in a hotel in Blackpool. i’d seen it first when it came out, in the pictures…it had some interesting qualities, like John Fahey (?) who plays the LM man himself, he ‘s effective in giving him a childlike turning threatening quality. The film is okay, not great, I thought that when i first saw it and still think it. There is some amazing – for the time – visual FX , and nice camerawork. (sorry i meant Jeff Fahey above…John Fahey was a famous musician).

The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins

talking about films that i saw once before…..i mean as a kid…here’s one i came across on the excellent Youtube channel Flickvault.

My eyes lit up – i’m sure – when i rediscovered this online. But how disappointing the viewing of it. Each sin has an episode devoted to it in the film, each one written by and starring different people. There’s three elements i recall from it when i saw it first : Bruce Forsyth is in it; there’s a section with Harry H.Corbett where he manages to convey how pathetic a man can feel when pursuing a woman; there’s a very memorable skit where two cars face up to each other in a narrow country road, both drivers refusing to back up.

I’m half way through my ‘re-viewing ‘ and i realise now that the writing and direction for this movie is poor as hell. What i didn’t realise until now was that it was directed (and produced) by the comic actor Graham Stark – a good friend of Spike Milligan’s. To be fair there are real heavy weight comedic talents involved with this, but, for some reason, they can’t save it, Or save the bits. Like i say there’s a bit for each sin. But a lot of the actors are just wasted. Forsyth had a great face for film, i just wish he’d been given more in that medium. (In my memory he was in the skit about the two cars, but i got that wrong; he is in fact a driver, but in the first opening skit, about avarice- the story is terrible and crappily written and performed. It reflects most of the rest of the film in that it’s stagey, awkward, with real bad sexist Carry On style humour). The sexist Cooh nice ones Missus comedy seemed to be taking a new twist at this juncture in British comedy, we are talking early 70s, with the Confessions films just around the corner….forgettable.

I was amazed to see Harry Secombe in the second skit, Envy – i could not remember this fellow welsh man being in it at all. But his bit is, again, just terrible. the script asks you to believe ridiculous things about the characters. and the depth of the humour is not fit for a 4 year old. At one point he, in his continuing efforts to persuade the owner of a house he and his wife want for themselves to hand it over, ‘blacks up’ and puts on a Jamaican accent. Now, i’m not saying it’s offensive though i’m sure thousands would be offended by it. It’s of it’s time, but what is worse is how annoyingly unrealistic is the reaction of the house owner; i mean, basically, there’s Harry Secombe with a bit of shoe polish on his face standing in front of you, doing a terrible Jamaican accent, and the you’re believing it ! come on! what codswallop….

Now that i have watched the film (again) in its entirety i can see that from about half way through it gets a lot better. Starting with Lust, starring Corbett. It has to be said his performance is absolutely amazing, and the dialogue great. The pathetic man with the fragile ego- i can t think who else could do it as effectively. Then the three remaining – or is it two – sins are almost as good. Pride, the one with the two cars facing off on a narrow country lane, written by the Steptoe and Son creators, a very witty send up of class…and ego again, specifically male ego. Spike Milligan’s sloth was good, with silent black & white surreal gags, but the effort required to chop a tree down because Marty Feldman couldn’t be bothered to walk around it seemed to negate the concept of sloth; the same for quite a few of of the sloth gags, they needed energy and effort, which was a contradiction. Wrath – written by Chapman and Cryer – also quite good, but again bringing in the male ego…

In fact the stories say as much about ego as the actual sins. especially harry corbett’s brilliant turn. Shame the first half of the movie wasn’t up to this standard, but what a cast, what a list of talents.

Horror Hospital

Now here’s one Robin Askwith which didn’t involve him showing his arse (Or did it? – i haven’t managed to get through it all yet). Yet another obscure british horror film form the early 70s. It’s got the formidable Michael Gough – he’s made a handful of classics over the years, including Cauldron of Terror aka The Corpse – which i have mentioned in a positive light on this blog, see below. Unfortunately this is not one of them. It’s like a simple roller coaster ride, the viewer is asked to follow a hippy like Askwith as he books a holiday in the country away from the rigours of his stressful job in a rock group. But, you know, like a lot of low budget horror it has that cobbled together feel to it. At some points i’m thinking it could be like a Pete Walker House of Whipchord – will tell you more.

House of Whipcord.

Pete Walker…surely if a good british film maker comes along he should be recognised as such, i think , over the years, british critics are keen to focus on the arty and the worthy, and that’s because, often they wouldn’t know a good film if it hit them in the face. Especially when the most successful fare is horror and comedy, the two genres critics so love to look down upon, and award ceremonies love to ignore. By the time the seventies rolled up both categories had taken a seedier turn, so yes it is harder to spot the pearls when there’s so much mud for the swine to play in. Okay, so HOW is not a classic like John Hough’s Legend of Hell House, (or should that read John HOW?) and it’s not got supernatural elements so it’s horror doesn’t come from beyond the grave or form monster, but there’s something about it which is believable enough. The evil of the people is what makes the horror, those who would set up a ‘correction centre’ which is outside the grid, people on the moral high ground who make their own strict laws and punishments – these people are portrayed chillingly by the actors as well as by the gloomy surrounds and settings. Amongst whom Sheila Keith is a stand out – she appeared in two more Walker films – what a face she has.

Talk about British classics, i have only just learnt about Overlord, not the disappointing American horror film from a couple of years ago but a war/anti-war film from the mid-seventies, a british film by a british director: Stuart Cooper. (Strangely, both films were set during WWII). (Oh what a fool- Overlord was the code name for the D-Day landings, Doh!) This forgotten classic (it’s a bit late now) is also available to watch on Youtube….i will be reporting soon, Sir!

Knives Out – Glass Onion.

well, i had high expectations, as the first one was really good, with funny stuff, and dynamic script and acting. i love a good ensemble piece. Eleri loves a smooth detective story. well, having watched it, the best thing about it was the song Glass Onion – the actual Beatles version – appearing on the end credits. – the no of times a beatles song appears on a film -apart from their own – is few and far between. The film had some cool stuff, but, like a lot of films that hover between suspense and comedy, the last section seemed to leave behind the more realistic first half.

a similar slackening on the grip of reality happened in the tv film The Wimbledon Poisoner. In fact i have borrowed the book on which the film was based from the library , just to check if they based the silly ending on the original. (actually i think they did, but still they could have tightened it).

I thought i’d lost the comments i wrote – below – about daft things in films. but i ain’t ….appearing within the essay ‘Martin Landau’s frightener’, also known as….

the Ghost of Sierra de Cobre

a black and white tv film from the early 60s starring martin landau.-i love that guy, his parts got more impressive as he got older; who can forget Crimes & Misdemeanours, the canadian gem ‘Remember’, and of course his role as Lugosi in Ed Wood?? – while i didn t expect much from this B movie it turned out to be genuinely spooky in parts. The ghost effect- though a bit Doctor Whoish pre Russel T- was scary. But, and what i really wanted to say was, the thing that made a big impression on me – for this is the only film i can recall that does this – during the storm sequence there’s actually a gap between the flash of lightning and the follow up sound of thunder.

I have a number of pet hates in films; cliches they are, things that one often sees, again and again, coming up in various types of films; unrealistic things, but nauseating because the film maker is clearly trying to portray them as plausible….

1) during a lightning storm the lightning and the thunder always happen simultaneously. why ?? are audiences too thick to accept the reality of the gap between the flash and its sound?

2) when a character with hand missing appears he – or she- will often have a replacement prosthetic hand in its place, which is clearly too long. the effect is that one arm is longer than the other. thankfully, with the advent of CGI, this problem seems to have been expunged.

3) especially of films of the late 50s, the 60s and 70s: a character puts on a record, and plays some groovy contemporary music. the music is meant to be something from the pop charts of that time, but what we usually here is some bizarre instrumental, a film composer’s synthetic mish mash version, sounding like a cross between bad jazz and a tv theme tune.

more of these soooon

National Lampoons’ Animal House.

so, it’s meant to be a classic of the gross out comedy genre. but i’d never seen it. Now i have. it’s surprisingly tame and nice. A mixture of humour with some satire, lots of sexual innuendo, and non-innuendo, a dash of surrealism, and only a modicum of gross outness (mainly from John Belushi). It’s a good movie, but i didn’t really get what all the fuss is about. I think maybe in america is where it made it’s massive profit (earning about 50 times it’s budget back), also in the states is where certain lines from the film have become classics e.g. ‘Toga Party!’….

DEvil Doll

Another obscure british film form the early 60s….this time about a ventriloquist, an evil one, and his ‘possessed’ dummy. A contemporary review described it as rip off of Dead of Night which i think is totally unfair. I mean, just because it has a dummy and a vent act – those two elements in themselves don’t make it the same story. There was some nice creepy effects, and scenes which took me by surprise. also the acting not just of the villain, but of the hero (played by william sylvester , who has seen the dummy walk and talk, He doesn’t try to rationalise it- which virtually all films of this period would do (Oh you’re imagining things! you need a good night’s sleep!) – he knows what he saw and has to follow it up.

PUlse (1988)

Caroline ‘phwor’ Munro ‘s Cellar Club on Talking Pictures TV just keeps getting better and better. Pulse is an extremely well crafted, brilliantly acted horror film from the states. It has elements of domestic drama, sci fi, suspense. The concept is scary, that electrical machines in the house carry a pulse , a pulse which wants to kill humans, and does so in all sorts of gruesome ways. Only the kid knows the truth to start with – an amazing performance from Joey Lawrence – but boy does he have a hard time convincing his parents. There’s a mad guy in the neighbourhood who also knows the truth – mesmerising performance there by character actor Charles Tyner. The thing about these character actors is …they are often just brilliant actors full stop, and when you really look at their faces as they do their thing you get sucked in and blown away.

THIS is not a test

again on youtube, and again from around 1960. this american lo-budget B movie is very interesting. You can gather from the title that the threat of teh bomb is never far away.

The Mutations – 1974

another forgotten british horror film (or should i say frogotten). i was put off it after about 10 minutes because of the ridiculous chase in the park. a woman being chased by two little people. the latter can only go slow, waddling as opposed to running – the woman is running away from them fast, but she still gets caught.

But there’s lot mor to this film, so i stuck with it. Tom Baker as an elephant man style villain, and a whole bunch of circus freaks – they have an entire tableau segment in the film. The science is dodgy, and the ambition of the mad scientist – played by Donald Pleasance – completely potty. Nevertheless the end products are quite vile and horrific, despite the crude 70s effects. A cross between a giant venus fly trap and a human turns up at the ned (end? – ned ‘s a good a word as neddy)….eventually landing on its creator, and sucks the flesh off Donald…mmm nice. the concept is terrifying, and with a rob bottin (ie the Thing FX wizard) and a bit more money the creatures would have been incredible. as it is you had to use your imagination. i guess something happened half way thru the 70s, and suddenly creature effects went up a notch – too late for this film unfortunately.

Jeepers Creepers

So i’m in my mate Windsor’s house in Copthorne, Sussex. and i’m waiting on the sofa, for him to get back from his gig. i switch tv on – that in itself is a challenge in an unfamiliar house – and the only thing i could find to watch is Jeepers Creepers. Now i love this film, and i love Jeepers Creepers II even more. but like i’ve seen it already a couple of times. never mind, i watch it – it’s amazing. I didn’t have the volume up very high as people sleeping upstairs, but the visual as are enough. Especially the climax in the police station – it is staged brilliantly. I mean, i don’t know who did the lighting but it rocks. everything about the climactic face off between the kids, the cops and the monster is a tour de force. and the monster must be one of the best horror villains ever….when he smashes his way into the police cell he is fuckin scary, reminiscent of the ‘THing’ in the 50’s film of that name. when he has what he wants in his grasp, the unreality of what he is comes forth. Little tentacles pop out of his face, and between them a kind of webbing flaps while all the while the music thunders. The monster stares the cops’ torch light down, and roars like some hybrid reptile/man. that’s one of the beauties of this creature – we don’t know what it is or where it comes from, but is remarkable humanoid i.e. many aspects of its life are that of a local redneck: drives pick up truck, wears a hat and coat, sports a mullet, – but then there’s this unearthly thing hiding underneath all that. maybe it is earthly though, an earthly thing that went horrendously wrong…well worth watching again. I mean that climax in the police station rivals anything in Carpenter’s Thing

PIN.

more about this excellent horror film soon – watch it if you can…

Dead of Night – no not the original.

this one’s from circa 1982 , and nowt to do with the British classic from the 40s. BUT it is written by the master Richard Matheson – there can only be one – and the three tales are well staged, directed, and have a good look to them. The first tale is a whimsical time travel thing, with a very clever twist, the next two get progressively scarier. I mean, the last one , well, if i was a ten year old i wouldn’t watch it on my own.

also i came across a TV anthology, Stephen King’s Dreams and Landscapes. only watched one episode, but it was good. It had William Hurt in a non speaking role (ala Ray Milland in Thief), and was written by the master’s son, Richard Christian Matheson. In brief the story involves revenge acted out through some toy soldiers. and, brilliantly, there is a homage – if you are quick enough to spot it – to Matheson Sr as well as to the other famous story involving the revenge of an inanimate figure. The devil Doll (is that the name?) from early 70s film Trilogy of Terror. The doll is sat, as an ornament, in a glass display case within hurt’s apartment. Love it!

Night Flier

the late nights on the sofa are not doing me any good at all. at least i can find the odd gem on youtube, to keep me entertained. Like this one: Stephen King’s Night Flier. what a great horror film, with the magnificently pissed off Miguel Ferrer a the news reporter obsessed with cracking the case of the murderous vampire. don’t know why this one’s not better known – it has all the elements of a classic in the tradition of Mario Bava, Corman and Hammer….

what was i saying over on my other page? Oh yes, about the magic of Youtube. It’s strange to think that when i was a kid you couldn’t just watch any old film e.e. a classic horror, until it came on television; and sometimes it never came- so i’d only read about certain films and film makers in books e.g. Michael Reeve’s The Sorcerers. Photos of these illusive works would make me salivate in anticipation. When i went into Swansea there was a photography shop and sometimes they’d have a cine reel of a 30s movie in the window, for sale. we didn t have a projector – neither did i have a cine camera, which i kind of regret now. But with Youtube it’s like you died and went to heaven. you wake up to all these films available for free, and now that there’s a Youtube channel they’re effectively on tv whenever you want them. Maybe it’s the child in me – he’s delighted. Of course there’s so much crap as well, you have to wade through that in order to get to the good ones. I usually give a film ten minutes, which might sound unfair, i mean yes there probably are great films with a duff opening ten minutes. But i go by the imdb reviews also. Life’s too short. Ha – what an ironic statement from a lazy git who spends his nights lying on the sofa ! anyway, i mentioned that there’s quite a few Lovecraft adaptations online – a couple of interesting ones: The Curse, and The Colour out of Space – the latter being a German production, and the fact that it’s mainly black and white heightens the ‘colour’ when it finally comes. I never read much Lovecraft, or maybe i did but forgot…

And i also forget how many films exist. A couple of other gems which are freely available: Dark Places (circa 1973), and The Corpse aka Cauldron of Terror (circa 1969) – both British, both fairly low budget, but very effective in their own way. The Corpse is a kind of remake of Diabolique, and features Michael Gough, who is so great when he’s allowed to be charming as well as creepy. The film is intelligent, and harbors a feminist cry from the stifled heart. It’s not a film that contains supernatural elements being entirely psychological. Michael Gough’s own son plays his son-in-law. The acting of all the middle class characters is ‘mannered’ – perhaps because they live in a manor – and claustrophobic. when released on the american circuit they retitled it Cauldron of Terror, which is a pretty crap soubriquet. Money people!! Dark Places has a stellar cast: Lee, Lom, Joan Collins, Robert Hardy and -of all people- Jane Birkin. Though there’s some psychological terror suggested there is actually a clear supernatural power at work, and it’s shown early on, the Robert Hardy character seeing it as a direct challenge. as you’d expect it slowly wears him – along with his mental faculties – down. A nicely paced film with strange flashbacks, brought on by the haunting power of a haunted house. Yes it’s really a haunted house film, but done in the beautiful english countryside as opposed to the dark rainly welsh hills…

Escape from Pretoria

a neat australian production of a south african prison break…ok so it’s not Papillion, but still it’s put together really well.

Hitler the last ten days

When i was ten or eleven my father came back from visiting my brother in London. He brought with him a gift for me, – it was quite heavy and bulky and wrapped up. as he gave it it to me he said ‘chocolates’, and i reacted in oh so negative a fashion that he then got a bit sarcy with me, as if i was acting spoilt. anyway, i don t know why he said chocolates, the present was in fact a large book called The Talkies. It was literally page after page of black and white photos, from all the significant world movies – well i say ‘world’, i mean there were a few foreign language films in there as well as american and british – from 1929 up to 1979. It was laid out chronologically,and while some of the films were given a few photos most of them had only one. Each page being a collage of different poses.

One of the photos i always recalled was of an enigmatic looking Alec Guiness as Hitler, in a still from the film Hitler: the last ten days. It was one of those films completely out of reach in the 80s. and i suppose i forgot about it, but lo and behold, and Achtung! i finally caught up with it on telly the other night, the TCM Action Movie channel to be exact. It was worth waiting for too. Today a relatively obscure film but, up until Der Untergang, surely it must rank as the best and most accurate portrayal of events in Hitler’s dying days. Like ‘Downfall’ (German title : Der Untergang) the script is taken from witness accounts, and for the whole hour and a half it does not veer away from this plain truthful account, neither in the acting, nor the words. (Having said all this i’ve not see The Bunker with Anthony Hopkins). Guiness is superb as Hitler, a real head to head performance with Bruno Ganz’s later masterwork.

The added documentary filler of the outside world in between the dramatic scenes give an actual picture to the tragedy Germany was going through at the time, and so adds depth.

also, a couple of interesting observations. firstly, although all characters are german the actors play them with straight british or ‘neutral’ accents. which is always refreshing.

I think i mention the film Gucci below, an english language film set in Italy, in which all characters speak with the sing song Italian accent. Why?? I mean the characters are communicating in the english language, which means we are pretending they are living in a world where the Italian language is English, that is, just for the sake of the story. So FFS make the accent english or neutral as well.

In contrast ‘Hitler’ is full of classic character actors – not all of them British, but most of them – who deliver real lines – or translations of them – that real people actually said once upon a time in a neutral way; i.e. none of this changing the w to v, none of this vot do you vont, vee haf vays of making you talk etc. I found the whole thing fascinating. Characters calmly going about their daily duties even as the world above them is literally collapsing. Apparently Guiness regarded this performance as his most satisfying, and i’m not surprised. I mean he even looked like the evil dictator – as do a lot of the surrounding actors look like their chosen roles e.g. Goebbels, Bormann. (by the way, nice bit of ironic casting was Simon Young Winston Ward as a prominent nazi).

There were obvious similarities with Downfall e.g. the classic tantrum scene when Hitler instructs all but four of his closest advisors to leave the room in order to ball them out. That scene actually appears in this film as well, with the camerawork a little less fluid – the body cams of the 90s having not been fully developed yet. But it demonstrates that both films must have relied on witness accounts.

I don’t know if this film was appreciated in 1973, when it came out, but this is what the notable film critic Roger Ebert says about it at the time:

“Always beware if the producer starts telling you how accurate his facts are. Accuracy is almost always a cop-out in these matters; It means the director and the writers have failed to find an artistically satisfying point of view toward their material. Facts mean nothing compared to truth. And truth, as always, is as elusive as artistry.”

In other words – and i think he says this somewhere else – the film maker has artistic license and should use it to make the overall piece a better more ‘truthful’ work by changing historical facts if necessary. This is an opinion i completely disagree with, and i think he misses the point. i mean it’s sad what he says – that the actual historical events and the actual words spoken were not good enough 😦 Ludicrous! when the achievement is that Guinness and the other actors as well as the director, DOP, script writers/adapters, and entire crew could take these actual events of history and make a film out of them. The editing and other intangibles of course also make the film what it is. I mean, what’s Ebert saying? ‘let’s have Eva Braun survive her suicide at the end thus we can, 50 years later, have a parallel with Epstein and Maxwell ???’ It’s true that Tarantino kills off Hitler in Basterds, but that was so obviously a blast of comedy, and the Hitler a so over the top one, that it worked. that faux pas also worked because everyone knows that Hitler died in the way he actually did. Or nearly everyone. It’s a joke to suggest otherwise.

But what was that film before covid? a period piece set in the 1600s: ‘Mary queen of Scots’ with Soiree – unpronouncable – Ronan starring in the titular role. It is a film about Elizabeth I and her ‘sister’ Mary queen of Scots…..two historical figures who never met. yet in this film there a scene inserted of them meeting (actually the same is true of the Glenda Jackson Vanessa Redgrave version from early 70s). The director of Mary explained that bla bla bla, something about conveying the story better with this scene, yes, but it never happened, yet now future generations – who saw that film – will believe they did in fact meet. Great, you’ve used your artistic license to brainwash people, – why it’s positively Orwellian. If the truth of facts do not in themselves make a good film then change the facts but don’t call it history. Revisonism that’s what Ebert is suggesting. The dictatorship of criticism !

(The other thing i really hate is when film makers invent a character who you find out later is a ‘composite’ of real living ones…ok it can work, i mean King Arthur is probably a composite…but when done badly it again leads to misrepresentation of historical events).

Hitler the Last Ten days is great. and at the end of the film, when Inky and Binky kill themselves, everyone left in the bunker react…how? by lighting up cigarettes and cigars, cos smoking was one of Hitler’s pet hates and had banned it from his underground lair – how apt, i mean you’d have to lighten up wouldn’t you, if a mass murdering tyrant has just kicked the bucket ?!

MEN

yesterday i was in Minhead …because there’s a Butlin’s camp there see…and i stayed the night. Found a neat little cinema. the only fim i could have chosen was this one Men – (I mean, Top Gun Maverick? fuck off!!! i saw the first one when i was in college and it was a pile shit. My room mate took me to see it – he was studying aeronautical engineering and wanted to see it for the planes).

anyway, Men was kind of what i expected it to be. which is a weird thing to say in one way, as it is basically outside any genre. It’s closest to being a horror film, but a very arty one. Alex Garland’s directorial efforts always have blinding visuals and camerawork…. and the music is amazing… and then there’s that little layer of pretensiousness. but reading me say that now makes me feel mean. i mean i don’t think i could make a better film/ it’s just that nothing is explained. ok, maybe an explanation is not needed. but then

(Rory Kinnear is astonishing in it)

By the way, Minehead is an anagram of ‘I had Men’

______________

Kingpin is one of my favourite comedy films. it’s truly brilliant.

One of the funniest things in it is the pastiche of Mrs Robinson; in it Lin Shaye plays the landlady who accepts sex instead of rent money. it is such a memorable performance – despite its brevity – that i cannot watch this actress in anything else without recalling it. That means all the Insidious films for me are ruined which is a shame as i appreciate a good horror film. Talk about unfortunate casting…please do, as i’ve nowt else to say abowt it – Eeee I’ve not started….

I was writing some shit about those feel good british films on facebook recently. in particular the recent spate of ‘inspirational’ stories set in wales. i stay away from them if i can, i.e. i don’t go to the cinema and waste money on them, but then there’s always that nagging feeling that maybe you missed something worthwhile. Incredible then that today i found out that one of my friends actually created the story and first draft of one of the most recent of that sub genre welshy in it. i’m not going to name the film film here as there’s all sorts of masonic militants keeping their eyes on the free liberal press…and i get depressed when people have a go at me. but anyway she confirmed a lot of what i had already guessed regarding this film. (and this crappy ‘genre’ generally) ultimately it is the money people who dictate what the content will be, what the imagery will project, what stereotypes need to be upheld….the money people, not the writer, not the director…the creative people are all expendable. just get that commodity churned out. let’s face it well over 50 percent of all films are just shit, bile. unlike other arts like dance, music, comedy, books, films can be full of shit right in front of the public’s nose, yet they watch it anyway , transfixed. there’s something wrong with this dynamic…i don’t know what. it’s like we should all demand better, boycott this vapid trite, but we don’t. it’ like we can’t take film seriously.

It’s plain to see, if you read the biographies of the great writers, the ones who wrote for films, they basically say you’re lucky if they leave a tenth of your script untouched in the filming process. terry southern ,one of the greats, certainly tells us that much. so it’s as if we already know en masse what a brainwash the idea of filmic entertainment is.

and if it’s not the money people who enjoy ruining the sublime then it’s the censors. Censors sometimes cut things just to be mean it seems. or somebody cuts things, and the end effect is truly sad. Twice in my life i have seen the film House of Long Shadows. not a great, but okay old dark house horror tale, famous for being the only film to star the four titans Price Cushing Lee and Carradine. i have read that, at the end of the film the great cast added a special credits scene where they walk present themselves one by one walking up to the screen as if taking a bow for a theatre crowd. sounds like it could even be the best thing in the film. twice i’ve seen the movie and twice that scene has been missing…WHY?? i mean, what’s gained by its excision? the shaving off of a minute ?? AN example of the killjoy censor.

Then you get the scene cut out which is only brief, but its absence lessens the quality of the film by a mile, in an intrinsic way. The best example i know of this kind comes from the classic british horror film The Queen of Spades…which i was lucky enough to see ( i didn’t realise i was lucky at the time) at the BFI in London around 2000. it’s a great atmospheric film, and there’s a very clever special effect, very brief, showing the eye of the queen on the queen of spades card winking. this is a call back to the earlier scene where the dead princess (played by Edith Evans) (who has been murdered by Anton Walbrook) winks at her murderer from her open coffin. was it a twitch? a dead cat bounce ?

The wink of the card comes towards the end, and is probably an effect created through animation.

Just last year i watched this film again on the Talking Pictures tv channel. again its black and white gothic gloom hit me, and yet it had no spine. it was jelly at the centre, it had lost something, lost its impact. It hit me straight away after the final scene what the problem was; they’d cut out both scenes with the winking eye. I was gobsmacked. why the omission? there was no rhyme or reason, i mean it’s not as a winking eye is obscene, or offensive to children. Whoever was responsible for this has no concept of the aesthetic he was destroying. mindless destruction of a film’s impact is what it was. Very odd, and very sad. i’d love to know the story behind the cut. again it couldn’t have been for time consideration as we are talking about a couple of seconds.

The thing that links both the examples above is: i happened to have seen or read about the original version. i had the awareness of the original in my mind. Now, had i not known of these beforehand who knows what i would have thought? I’m guessing i would have watched the films, enjoyed them, and not thought anything amiss. But i also like to think you can sense something rotten behind the light; often given away by awkward edits and jarring cuts. IN the case of the Queen of Spades i can quite categorically say that the version with the winks was ten times scarier. it wasn’t just the image itself, but the context of the two winks, the implication, the horror, the revenge from beyond the grave. The wink gave meaning to it. Keep it in FFS!

El Dorado. Must be one of the wittiest films. you wouldn’t have thought that a 1967 John Wayne cowboy movie would be thus, but i tell you it’s a comedy! Robert Mitchum even does a Laurel & Hardy style pratfall after being hit on the head with a spitoon. (or is it a bed pan?). Arthur Hunnicut plays the ‘cripple’, and i prefer him to Walter Brennan’s equivalent role in Rio Grande. this is kinda a buddy movie, but it’s seen as a sequel come remake of 1959’s Rio Bravo. Both movies focus on a small disparate group of men defending the town jail against the baddies. the earlier film was apparently a response to High Noon and the cowardliness – as perceived by Duke – of the townsfolk in that film. John Wayne is immensely watchable, more so with a good script, it seems a shame that in real life he had that ‘all american anti-red thing’ going on.

Duuuwwww i watched a ton of slasher films down at Gareth’s house. I never realised that the late 70s/early 80s are seen as the golden era of the genre. But like all ‘genres’ it is a mixed bag when it comes to quality.

Student Bodies was alright, liked some of the humour, a sort of a Kentucky Fried Movie for sickos. Gareth told me that Scary Movie was influenced by this one.

NEW YEAR’S EVIL. i personally thought this one pretty shit, with a bizarre inert performance by the lead actress.

MOTHER’S DAY. – this was a very average mess. fun in parts but no way a classic. watched the special features where Eli Roth proclaims his love for this one. As a lonely kid he got all his mates around during his barmtizva to watch it. EVen today he loves it. and you can tell by the way he gushed on about every aspect of the film that he really really loves it. OK I think it’s nice when a film director talks about a film he rates, but at the same time i think he’s let his child self over rate the film. I MEAN, at one point he goes on about how it’s political film, a film about consumerism, – really?? Just cos there’s a few TVs in the house, playing adverts?? I could not see that aspect of the film at all, mainly because the crappiness of the film distracts from any thematic nuance. And when i say ‘crappiness’, for example, the whole opening segments following the three female leads setting up camp in the woods. iT WAS done in such an unrealistic way, nothing about them was convincing as campers.

Last House on the Left aka Krud and Company.

picked this double DVD set up in a charity shop….maybe i should have paid for it, but fuck it- charity’s about giving right.

anyway, when i got him home the first fuckin disc was missing. so i had to watch the second one instead. well, as it turned out, that was okay: The film on this disc was the same as the one in the title above, only it was called Krug and Company. this was the name before they changed it to the more commercial sounding LHOTL.

so this film, released in 1972, was Wes Craven’s directorial debut. Apparently an infamous film, prompting bannings and censorships; volatile criticism and hate. and i could see why. There was something about the voyeuristic almost documentary style of it that would have appalled audiences of the time, who, though used to crime films, would not have expected such a loose structure, with contradictory nastiness coming in without warning.

It’s a really seedy film with seedy looking criminals ,who stay in grimy hotel rooms, that is, when they’re not in jail, where they get hooked – and get their children hooked – to heroin.

It exudes seediness; there’s even porn actors in the cast. It’s like a dirty, rotten, cheap version of A Clockwork Orange, released a year after that panageyric to violence, and strange thing i noticed: one of the characters in LHOTL, the moll, sings a short snippet of Singin in the Rain – this happens as they are luring the two innocent young women to their torture. Could this seemingly improvised few seconds be coincidence or a homage to the Kubrick film?

It’s cinema verite for serial killers, but holds together, and is after all a Wes Craven film – his first, so i guess it will always hold some mystique. Though it is definitely not a horror film per se. The producer is a bloke called Sean Cunningham who apparently also became a big knob in the same genre, going on to create Friday the Thirteenth (I was never a fan).

The music is great and crazy – unexpected rock songs and folk music coming in as sadism kicks in.

For me Craven’s best film, and monster, was Nightmare on Elm Street with Freddy Kruger…

This was early beginnings

Escape from LA.

I’d forgotten how camp this was. Kurt Russell in an eye patch and tight leather trousers giving it his all as the apocalyptic anti hero Snake Pliskin, he of the husky voice. But the film’s not half as good as the its prequel – escape from New York – being a melange of funky set pieces that flow awkwardly, like the CGI wave that flings Snake onto the back of a red convertible cadillac. The first film ran smoother, with cool supporting roles from the likes of Ernest Borgnine, Adrienne Barbeau and Lee Van Cleef,

what you gonna do? you just got to sit and watch it til the end..

Bizarre action like machine gunners flying in on hang gliders; a tidal wave carrying a surfboard mounted Snake Pliskin; an underwater mini-sub plunging through the depths of a submerged Universal Studios. The latter features the best – and most surreal – joke of the entire film: a giant shark is seen lunging and just missing the mini sub. Thinking about it that might be the only joke. How i wish there’d been more.

I think that’s what it sorely lacked, this film, was humour. Even though Steve Buscemi – this film’s Borgnine – is clearly a wise arse taxi driving loudmouth….i just think his – and all the other characters’ – script could have been cleverer, and wittier.

The final moment in the film is dark – literally – and a good way to go out.

Oh yes Bruce Campbell pops up in the middle – hard to recognise because he’s plastered in make up- as a nihilistic futuristic plastic surgeon placating the vanity whims of his rich clientele – the demand for face jobs has gone mad. Bruce’s bit is short but memorable.

Yeah i thought the first half was pretty good …just that the action sequences needed better effects to make less silly looking.

I guess this is early 90s so early use of CGI type effects

Sling Blade

1996 – written, directed, and starring Billy Bob Thornton.

a heartbreaking film. But brilliant with it – the great american film. Made 2 years after Forrest Gump, with some parallels to it, mainly in that the hero of both is the alienated strange one.

But, unlike Gump, Sling Blade is blunt in what it portrays about the cruelty of life. it also has some magic to it in the way it resurrects hope, in the way that symbols and poetry are used to convey the human heart…whatever that is. Carl, the anti hero, tells us the heart is an awfully big place….as is the world outside his safe home the mental hospital.

There are so many great scenes, brilliantly written. some made me cry.

The young boy, companion to Carl is an incredible font of good, of humility, of pure potential. He takes some flowers to a girl. she takes the flowers but flatly refuses to go out with him . it’s not that she’s horrible, – she isn’t she’s perfectly polite – but she informs the ‘boy’ unequivocally that she’s not interested in him that she has a boyfriend. who knows what the reasons really are for such a callous rejection. maybe the boy had it coming, maybe they come from different sides of the track, never the twain shall meet and all that…but when the door closes in his face the shock of the refusal, of the rejection, is somehow palatable, a part of life, and that perhaps because Carl is present when it happens.

I was never blown away by Forrest Gump – i think it has some dubious moral messages. whereas Sling Blade’s message is simple and powerful . Religious teachings are used in part to convey it along with the theological symbolism of heaven and hell.

Mindwarp. – around 1991.

I bought it mainly because i’m a fan of Bruce Cambell – Campbell? – but it was a little disappointing.

I mean, there is something absorbing about the premise….and who can trespass on those premises: dreams, brain washing, thought control – a society that is happy to sleep and allow a synthetic made up reality to live their lives for them. well, either they are happy to allow it to happen or they are forced to do it by a sneaky all powerful upper echelon. (for the former see’ Surrogates’, for the latter see’ Matrix’).

there’s a long drawn out middle section where the action is directed in a not very exciting way, there’s campness, and bikinis. When Bruce appears he’s wearing a mask, but no matter- you know it’s him by his head movements (maybe it’s the chin).

But i liked it, until the ending came and spoilt it. To me, the groovy thing about ‘dream within dreams’ scenarios is the potential to unhinge the viewer’s perception; you invariably expect and get twists in the fabric of the story reality (usually at the end); ‘how are they gonna resolve this one?’ the voice in the head asks excitedly as the movie rolls to its climax. You can guess it’s going to involve the unexpected surprise of the reality we thought we were watching being not a reality after all but one of the many reality-like dream states. Sci Fi films specialise in this, especially mind control sci fis e.g. The Matrix. Minority Report the short story also plays a neat twist on this by not fighting the dream – though the Spielburg directed film version, while having some brilliant stuff in it, completely sells out on the ending.- My own favourite in this genre comes from a fairly low budget film called Virtual Nightmare, which has a double reveal: one half way through and one at the end of the film.

But for a twist like this to work it’s got be done just right. And there are so many ways to cock it up.

I won’t reveal how Mindwarp, in my opinion, cocks it up, but i was let down by it. It frustrated me no end because i couldn’t follow the logic of what i’d just seen…i think they took it a dream too far. I was left not just confused but angry with the film makers because the illogical ending effectively negated more than half of what i’d just watched ! …And relax…

The Wild Bunch.

Oh my god…sifting through the brain in order to construct a decent film review is like wading through treacle sometimes. Maybe because even though i initially set up this part of the website out of love for film…it can also feel like a duty. Duty makes me idle….it’s like being in the army, it fills me with inertia. But also it’s hard to write an appreciation of a film that actually communicates something with the reader.

I’m no Mark Kermode, more of a Commode Mark, – is what i write shit… ?

Anyway, Sam Peckinpah, 1969…a long winding film, one of many Western epics that Peckinpah directed.

I recall seeing it as a kid, and being a bit bored – though the opening credit sequence of kids tormenting and torturing a scorpion always stayed with me –

But i ‘d say it is a film that’s best appreciated by adults. There’s a bit of a joke with Peckinpah when it comes to violence and slow motion shoot ’em up. Monty Python did a famous pastiche called Sam Peckinpah’s Salad Days…

But there’s a lot more than just violence to this film. Wisdom. Ageing. Mortality. A sense of belonging.

The Mexican characters are portrayed with respect, not just one dimensioanl cliched expendables as was so often the case in westerns. They all speak Spanish, and not a subtitle in sight – brilliant!

William Holden, who is an actor i’ve never really appreciated, is just right as the maturing leader of the outlaws. He’s like John Wayne, but a John Wayne who’s not so concerned about his family image…

Coming at the end of the 60s this film shares what seems a common element of that time: an end to an age is portrayed with the death of folk heroes being the ultimate symbol of that end. The Wild Bunch, Butch and Sundance, Bonnie and Clyde, – to name but three movies – all share the idea that there is no way out for those who live outside the law, outside the system, despite the fact that they are the ‘goodies’. They are anti heroes for sure. their exploits and adventures exude heroic acts, but the one member pf the bunch who survives – played gruffly by Robert Ryan (great) – is actually the one member who has left the gang even before the story starts. he has embraced conformity, the law, the pay packet of a detective.

Unlike films of previous decades the goodies depicted here do not live in fantasy but in a harsh reality where bullets maim and kill, and where the old cowboy sees the new age ushered in by the motor car and the ‘bicycle’.

In the classic of the previous decade Shane – released 1953 – the outlaw also knows his days are numbered, and he says as much to the villain…but the ending there is ambiguous as to whether he lives or dies.

In The Wild Bunch there is no ambiguity, just a tragic fate, one that is set up for the bunch right at the beginning of the film. Right from the start the odds are against them, just as the scorpion is overwhelmed by ants…

but ultimately it is their sense of loyalty to their Mexican friend that draws them back into the trap…there’s no way they can escape their loyalty, their sense of honour.

Switching Channels (1989)

a fast paced, fun film, the most recent version of The Front Page which started out in the ’20s as Broadway stage play. It’s been made into a film about 4 times. It’s a newspaper office set comedy, but this late ’80s take sets it in the news dept of american TV. I thought it worked, and was funnier than the Billy Wilder version (with Mathau, Lemon and Sarandon). But if you look at Google you will see how badly Switching Channels fared at the box office, and also at the hands of critics.

But, maybe the quality of a well put togther comedy film is something so rare today that to me – in comparison -this film shone. It’s a good story, with some very witty lines, and excellent ensemble acting. that works. Burt Reynolds, Kathleen Turner and Christopher Reeves starred, but as i say the entire cast had their moments.

The film is packed from start to end with screw ball twists, slapstick, physical as well as verbal humour. e.g. there’s a slap from Turner that Burt Reynolds ducks by a milimetre, which is a master calss in timing. The camera work also shares in this clockwork timing; there is a one long scene that drifts from one newscaster to another, maybe six in total, and ends in stretcher coming into shot.

It’s a shame that satire, when it appears, is not appreciated more. Oh well, maybe people at the end of the 80s were spoilt for choice when it came to comedies- Eddie Murphy was doing a lot for example. But his best comedies were mid eighties: 48 hours, Trading Places, Beverley Hills Cop.

Comedy is a hard thing to do, and it seems to be the reviews are constantly wrong, as is the box office. I mean, Ghostbusters – the original – was a big hit comedy…really? a funny film ? It ‘s a long commercial, effects driven piece of crap…and yet it was a giant hit; i too bought my ticket, I went to the pictures to see it because hype is a wondrous thing.

Talking about wit, i think there were a lot more films embracing it back in the 60s, 50s and 40s than there are today…or were there? We are led to believe that. Billy Wilder churned out a lot; Lubitsh; Born Yesterday is seen as a classic; The Lady Eve and in fact most anything by Preston Sturges.

I watched the Lady Eve the other day. On Goggle it says it’s a film that has about the wittiest dialogue of any film. So i watched it and yes there’s some good lines in it. But the story line mucks up any logic; there’s a completely unbelieveable story twist where Henry Fonda thinks – well i won’t spoil it for you. And then Fonda’s character is so limp – i mean he’s meant to be an explorer who hunts snakes in the Amazon FFS ! But his lack of perception , his inability to heed his bodyguard’s advise, makes him into a stupid bore..no not the classic i hoped for.

To me , a witty play or film is elevated if the story has a realism, a logic that reflects what could happen in real life. The actors and script, if godd, help that illusion along.

Switching Channels did and it didn’t…There were outrageous stunts, and farcical evets, but they were carried off well by the performers.

Saint Jack (from 1979)

I had the DVD for this lying around the bedroom. i couldn’t play it for ages because i never had the right player ( it’s an american region disc).

Also, i just couldn’t be bothered to get around to watching it. But I’m glad i did. Me and eleri lying on the bed of an afternoon. we watched it together.

I loved the film.

Peter Bogdanovich directed , and plays a big role in the film also. The entire cast is superb, Ben Gazara really shows how sweet an actor he was, and could be, and his relationship with Denholm Eliot in the film is great.

A few unexpected names in the cast, amongst them Rodney Bewes and George Lazenby.

It’s a really smooth watch, with no fast editing, not much violence, but great portrait of a man in a situation.

I’m glad i sought this out.

Anotehr film i may soon seek is the Lady Eve, a screw ball comedy from the 40s, directed by Preston Struges. It’s meant to be one of the wittiest films ever….that’s what the hype says.

Gwaed Ar Y Ser (Means ‘Blood on the stars’)

welsh language horror/comedy from around 1981 – pre S4C.

A grand romp with great jokes and dialogue. It also features a naked Dafydd Iwan lying naked, painted green, in the countryside – a rare sight indeed ! This movie has the amazing Wynford Elis Owen as a detective on the track of a sick murderer of celebs.

The Pretender (1947)

Did you know Billy Wilder had a brother who also wrote and directed films ? Well i didn’t. He ‘s not as famous as his brother, probably cos his films are inferior.

But William Lee Wilder tried , and was prolific, his canon included many sci fi B movies in the 50’s.

The titular – which does not mean it had tits – film was what is now known as ‘noir’. It was great and free to access on Youtube. Albert Decker played the lead, and it was good to see him in a decent film, as the only thing i can recall seeing him in before was Dr Cyclops. Which i didn’t think was a very good movie even though it’s got a classic horror theme, and even though i am generally a fan of that era (early 40)’s horror.

Anyway, The Pretender has a really clever story which sets up a mistake identity, which could lead to an assassination. The result is that Dekker’s character gets more and more paranoid – is there poison in his food ? will he get knocke down by a car if he goes out? etc.

Dial M for Murder (not the famous one)

As i did with the Holbrook movie (below) I stumbled across another film who’s lead actor has recently left us – and i don’t mean he’s gone to the toilet!

A TV version of the famous Hitchcock effort Dial M for Murder….both films based on the original play. this time with the late Christopher Plummer in the Ray Milland role.

For some reason it’s set in 1963. so it’s set later than the Milland film, and yet not contemporary to the year of making which was around 1981. I assume this is hds something to do with the fact that the storyline involves the death penalty as well as being set in Britain. Angie Dickinson’s wife gets sentenced to hang for a murder which in reality clever Christopher has staged. (The death penalty was abolished in UK by the mid 60s). It would have been more satisfying i think to bring the period right up to the present day – i don’t think the wife dying is an essential plot detail though, having said that, her will comes into it i.e. what she leaves to her husband after her passing.

Ron Moody played the stooge set up to commit the murder of the wife – nice to see him in anything outside Oliver! – this act goes horribly wrong.

Plummer is suave, sophisticated, charming and cold. His brilliantly quick planning reflects the cleverness of the plot. You the murder he planned – to be carried out by Moody – backfires. Instead Moody is killed by his intended victim (played blandly but ably by Dickinson). The resulting improvisation on teh part of Plummer’s character shows what a dashing criminal mind is all about…but his ultimate dowfall comes from a fiendishly subtle plot device involving a latch key (not the double locking night variety that they stock in Pobl Y Cwm). Is that what’s known as a McGuffin? If so i’ll have mine large with fries and extra cheese please.

Some people online reckon this film too talky, but whattheheck it’s based on a play……and so its theatre filmed. Filmed very well i thought. Directed by Boris Sagal – he of The Omega Man fame – who i once read met his end at the touch of a helicopter blade. Dial M was one of the last things he worked on.

nothing but death to look forward to – i guess that’s why people leave all these films to posterity….they can never die. Talking about death…Ron Moody’s character’s death by scissors is far superior here than in the 1952 version. In the latter the stooge gets stabbed in the back by Grace Kelly with a pair of scissors. But i always find it unsatisfactory to watch, because a couple of inches of blade in your back would not i think kill you outright. But in the newer film there’s a slight adjustment to this scene when the stabbed man falls to ground after being stabbed and we watch – and i think hear – the body land on the scissors and can sense it going all the way in….indeed a few minutes later and Chris Plummer , who’s returned from the club to check things out, calmly declares that the blade’s been ‘driven in’. Yes ! where was that in the original? was it in the paly and cut out of the film for being too crude i wonder? or is it not in the play but added later courtey of Sagal et al…?

Plummer seemed to get busier and more successful the older he got. Even though he played the husband in Sound of Music, one of the most popular films ever made, to me his face didn’t become recognisable until well into the 70s. Often picked to play icy villainous types, i think he was a more than competent lead, as well as character actor.

Look out for ‘Remember‘ a Canadian production from about 8 years ago….it’s got the excellent Martin LAndau as well as Plummer . This film has a breathtaking last minute twist which my friend Glyn told me I’d never guess…..but i think becasue he told me that i worked extra hard i nmy mind to guess what the twist would be. Once the story and the charcters are set see if you can guess the ending? Or better still don’t….instead just sit back and enjoy….i know i didn’t and as result my enjoyment of the otehrwise brilliant movie was completely fucked…

The Creeper aka Rituals

This was a film that surprised me. One night i was lying on the sofa perusing youtube for some horror films. And i saw this Trash TV drive in double bill – that’s what they’re called. The first one on this particular bill was Funeral Parlour, it was ok but was slow, and i was able to skip parts in order to get to the irresistable denoument : PSYCHO in reverse.

The second film completely blew me away – and that inspite of the crap picture quality from this inferior copy on there. Hal Holbrook played one of a group of doctors , middle calss susccessful, on holiday out in the boondocs (somewhere like Canada or the Rockies). His role emerged to be the main one by the end, though the way there was unpredictable to say the least.

Five – or is it six ? – men go on a trip and are gradually picked off one by one by a creeping hunter , who watched their every move through the woods….Think Deliverance, but with less glamour. The characters dialogue, interaction and relationship are make this film what it is. the ensemble, all male, are convincing hikers, and the gradual decay in their communications and atrophying mentals states while conducting exhausting physical feats elevates this movie into the top realm. I’d say it is a ‘horror’ film, and yet there is no supernatural element to it….but the way it plays out the feeling of it, it so well shot, and paced, that the unknown aspect of what’s ‘out there’ becomes a monster….

and I guess part of that monster is the environment, nature.

It’s criminal that Rituals/Crepper is not well known – i’d never heard of it and i’m gonna lock up the people responsible for that! And how timely that i should stumble across this only a few weeks after the passing of Hal Holbrook. You may remember him as Father Malone in The Fog – but here he is a multi faceted hero, and puts in a performance worthy of any Oscar winner.

The Iceman Cometh

I saw a film called The Iceman Cometh. it ‘s from 1973, and is a filmed play, the play of the same written by Eugene O’Neill. I’d read about it somewhere and ordered it on a whim, well i’ve been reading a lot of plays of late – and the internet is such an easy place to get candy. Wasn’t sure if i could actually face watching it as it’s 4 hours long. but i ‘m not fussed if it’s done in one than more sitting….

I’m glad i did I watch it in sessions. Now, i used to have a friend who would never do that; he’d insist on watching all his movies in one go, it had to be free of advert breaks, with nothing to break up the film’s continuous completeness. I once went with him to the cinema and he walked out as soon as he realised that he’d missed the opening few seconds of the film…which i thought was a little unreasonable. I mean ok neither of us had actually paid for a ticket but still i was looking forward to Blue Jasmine with or without the opening seconds !

I don’t mind watching a bit at a time; stopping, then watching some more. I don’t find it mars my enjoyment of the film, though of course it depends on what the film is.

Anyway, this film Iceman is incredible. Even though it is just a film of a play, it is done very professionally. When i say filmed play i mean it has been adapted to teh screen, but the words, the words are all the same as what the play is.

What stands out is the cast. an awesome generation spanning cast:

Robert Ryan, Frederic March, Jeff Bridges , Lee Marvin (who gets top billing), Bradford Dillman, Clifton James, Moses Gunn and others. Turns out it is the last ever film that Ryan and March did, and what a swan song for the both.

This film is deep…..and the direction is simple but fluid. John Frankenheimer, an amazing director who could turn his hand to almost anything, here holds the shots for long periods to ensure that the performances are captured properly. Robert Ryan, who i think of when i think of film noir and violent B movies, proves to everyone what an amazing actor he was. His stoic resignation belies a sickness, a sickness that many if not all the characters share. They just want to get drunk so that they can forget their problems. Drink seems to be the biggest star of all in this story which is set in the one location: Harry’s Bar. The potential claustrophobia of the set is avoided somehow, or maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s present but lends itself to the power of the play. This film would not be for everyone, the dialogue is dense and coming from the mouths many different characters…but if you enjoy a challenge this movie is worth it. It’s pessimistic as hell, but asks a lot about what is life? what is ambition? What is the point?