tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33696103449118584662024-03-14T01:47:47.190+00:00Breakfast In The RuinsFar Out isn't Far Enough.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.comBlogger865125truetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-90789024401337104242024-02-18T19:15:00.003+00:002024-02-18T23:18:43.029+00:00New Movies Round Up # 2:Horror.<div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Sea Fever </span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">(Neasa Hardiman, 2019)</span><b><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></b></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCdK9HQmyeticyoPre2BAWikMx7dQyEZEi8KZAtykm0SPZAnKlMtjjCaQfLly7xfJvP0EVO0tb2Ucnhnnio7k06N9R0tvfMUnPP1n593ile3KaCgPk6KyV7DffCjmtC4cnN4RgjN1x-bxj1gj1S14dbR0n1JH4eTJTCMaokRzIJXfak7GVpIRUBW1faW4/s800/Sea%20Fever%20poster.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="600" height="525" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCdK9HQmyeticyoPre2BAWikMx7dQyEZEi8KZAtykm0SPZAnKlMtjjCaQfLly7xfJvP0EVO0tb2Ucnhnnio7k06N9R0tvfMUnPP1n593ile3KaCgPk6KyV7DffCjmtC4cnN4RgjN1x-bxj1gj1S14dbR0n1JH4eTJTCMaokRzIJXfak7GVpIRUBW1faW4/w480-h640/Sea%20Fever%20poster.jpg" width="394" /></a></div>As far as niche sub-genres go, sea-bound eco/survival horror is generally a good bet, and this modest, primarily Irish indie production takes a pretty convincing shot at it. It’s a rather less exciting prospect to try to write about, truth be told, but I feel like telling you about it nonetheless, so buckle up, and we’ll get through this whole ‘review’ thing together. <p></p>
<p>So, synopsis time! A painfully introverted PhD student specialising in behavioural patterns of marine life, Siobhán (Hermione Corfield) is reluctantly persuaded by her supervisor to undertake a bit of fieldwork - namely, signing up for a research excursion on rust-bucket fishing trawler the Niamh Cinn Oir, wherein she makes the acquaintance of the unfeasibly diverse crew with whom she (and we) will spend the next 90-odd minutes. </p>
<p>In contrast to the wall-to-wall rough bastards you’d reasonably expect to find manning an Atlantic trawler, we’re instead introduced to hard-bitten yet well-meaning husband and wife skipper team Gerard and Freya (Dougray Scott & Connie Neilson), their sturdy and ever-cheerful son Johnny (Jack Hickey), and the family’s superstitious, and indeed suspicious, grandma Ciarra (Olwen Fouéré). Below stairs meanwhile, we’ve got Syrian refugee and unrecognised engineering genius Omid (Ardalan Esmaili) and another young man of middle eastern descent, Sudi (Elie Bouakaze), whose girlfriend is expecting a baby back home, and who regales us with his plans for a happy future, so -- I’m sorry mate, but you realise we’re in a who’s-going-to-die-first horror movie here, so might as well just get you measured up for that body bag right now, eh? </p>
<p>Speaking of which, exposition of the film’s supernatural plotline is wisely kept paper-thin, but long story short: after Skipper Gerard plots a course through a maritime ‘exclusion zone’ in search of a better catch, the trawler finds itself colliding with what transpires to be an unprecedentedly huge, translucent squid-like creature, whose suckers soon cause little patches of alarming, corrosive goo to begin seeping through the hull. </p>
<p>Sadly, the conspiratorial angle implicit in the fact that this massive, unknown creature is simply flopping around happily in an area from which the powers-that-be have pointedly prohibited civilian shipping is never investigated by Hardiman’s script, but no matter, as there’s plenty else going on to keep our characters busy once their vessel breaks away from the squid’s grasp. Not least, an unknown infection of spreading through the crew causing a variety of unpredictable, scary symptoms, furiously multiplying parasites in the water supply, a sabotaged engine, no means of contacting the outside world, and… well, you get the picture. </p>
<p>During ‘Sea Fever’s first half, the film’s gloomy tone, overcast, seaweed n’ barnacle-drenched ambience and plausible-seeming scientific chat all rather put me in mind of early ‘70s UK TV staple <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomwatch ">Doomwatch</a>, establishing an atmosphere of drab realism which nicely enhances the impact once the full-on SF/horror elements are let out the bag and given a run around later on. </p><p>In particular, the low key atmos which prevails aboard ship contrasts nicely with the notes of Lovecraftian awe conjured up by the effects-heavy underwater sequences wherein we encounter the mysterious life forms first-hand, in footage whose eerie, CG-enhanced beauty proves surprisingly effective. </p>
<p>By far the film’s strongest suit though turns out to be its ensemble performances, with the cast having clearly been given a free hand to treat the whole thing as a long-form chamber piece/collaborative exercise, as all concerned do great work in transcending the potentially clichéd roles assigned to them by the script, effectively capturing our sympathies/attention in the process. </p>
<p>Though it can make few claim toward originality (see below), writer/director Neasa Hardiman’s screenplay is nonetheless peppered with curious bits of detail which also help add a bit of depth to proceedings, whether through random folkloric digressions (such as grandma Ciarra explaining the significance of the trawler’s name, or the crew reacting with consternation to the discovery that they’ve inadvertently set sail with a redhead aboard ship), or the assorted cool, DIY schemes Siobhán and Omid come up with to try to fight back against the alien incursion (using a hacked smartphone to generate UV light for instance); schemes which, refreshingly, totally fail to work in most instances. </p>
<p>There are, it must be said, a few glaring absurdities which stretch credulity along the way - most notably the vexed issue of the radio, which apparently falls apart after the boat bumps into the squid, causing the skipper to immediately declare that they’re now out-of-contact with the mainland, despite not even bothering to ask the two highly proficient tech bods on-board to try to fix it. (And what, no back-up radio? GPS tracking? Distress signals? FLARES, fergodsake? I mean, I’ll cop that it’s a been a few years since I spent any time on a boat, but I’d imagine it must take more than a few loose wires on the ol’ CB for a 21st century fishing trawler to declare itself lost without hope…?)</p>
<p>But, the crew must of course be entirely isolated in a confined space - <i>that’s</i> the point, for such is a prerequisite of the formula which inevitably takes ‘Alien’ as it’s foundational ur-text. In addition to which, it must be acknowledged that Hardiman draws <i>heavily</i> on the blue-print provided by John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’ here, hitting most of the same basic plot beats to one extent or another, and repurposing a number of that film’s key set-pieces in a manner which I scarcely need to unpack here, so bleedin’ obvious will it be to the vast majority of the viewing public. </p>
<p>But, if you’re going to steal, steal from the best etc, and within the limited gene pool of ‘Alien’/‘The Thing’-type movies, ‘Sea Fever’ makes optimum use of its modest resources, rarely putting a foot wrong. Not exactly a mindblower or shredder of preconceptions then, but, the next time you find yourself in search of something to fill that particular salty sweet spot in your viewing schedule - look no further folks, this one’s solid.</p><p> </p><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Destroy All Neighbours </b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">(Josh Forbes, 2024)
</span></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL6UjtY1emawOEmLj32yrC_sD-jj-p2bkzMqwZMwX5OnhGto6RLLGBPD0ZHRIFfZTvrJPA9ltUZE3g9jv_iGIxM59VD4fhlRe1x2lWvuU5CvQLy1503jErzhaVd08ZWhElFwMOtSKMspLoeV8F24CKsV6qwRAKcSReoypdDfiOytctLGfsidI9eZKZF8E/s947/Destroy%20all%20Neighbours%20poster.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="947" data-original-width="640" height="589" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL6UjtY1emawOEmLj32yrC_sD-jj-p2bkzMqwZMwX5OnhGto6RLLGBPD0ZHRIFfZTvrJPA9ltUZE3g9jv_iGIxM59VD4fhlRe1x2lWvuU5CvQLy1503jErzhaVd08ZWhElFwMOtSKMspLoeV8F24CKsV6qwRAKcSReoypdDfiOytctLGfsidI9eZKZF8E/w432-h640/Destroy%20all%20Neighbours%20poster.jpg" width="397" /></a></div>Watching the <a href="https://www.shudder.com/play/2222a4f2027021e0">trailer</a> for this one when it popped up on Shudder early in January prompted a bit of an “ok, clear the viewing calendar, Friday night is covered” moment on my part, momentarily making that £5 monthly subscription fee feel a bit easier to justify. <p></p>
<p>Later on said night though, spirits were subdued (and low level spending priorities reassessed), as it was agreed that Josh Forbes’ gonzo horror-comedy just didn’t quite hit the spot. </p>
<p>It’s difficult for me to put my finger on quite <i>why </i>that is though, given that all the necessary elements for a good time do indeed seen to be present and correct in this saga of an anxious prog-rock obsessive William Brown (Jonah Ray) battling to complete his home-recorded magnum opus in the face of overwhelming disruption from his bestial new neighbour (Alex Winter of ‘Bill & Ted’ fame, unrecognisable under a mass of prosthetics). </p>
<p>Indeed, there are a lot of individual bits and pieces here which I liked a lot - not least copious amounts of muso/record nerd humour, partially arising from the amusing mythos surrounding the film’s fictional prog titans Dawn Dimension, and a ton of wild and oft-impressive practical gore effects sure to warm the heart of any ‘80s horror fan. </p>
<p>Ray does great twitchy, whining, self-pitying work in the lead role, whilst still managing to make his character at least <i>somewhat </i>sympathetic, and there are numerous scenes and individual gags along the way which are genuinely very funny, but… I dunno, man. Somehow the overall structure and tone of the whole thing just felt <i>off</i> - its story and characters presented in an indigestible, sometimes frankly just plain obnoxious, fashion which I didn’t really care for. </p>
<p>The problems begin, I feel, with Winter’s characterisation of Vlad, the nightmare neighbour. Buried under such heavy, orc-like make-up that we initially wonder whether he’s even supposed to be human, Winter seems to be going for a kind of broad, Eastern European macho stereotype here, dropping weird, garbled dialogue which frequently proved difficult to decipher. He’s certainly an unnerving presence, that’s for sure, but… I think he’s also supposed to be <i>funny</i>, and on that level, well… I just don’t get it, I guess? </p>
<p>Likewise, several of the film’s other OTT comic characters (the coke-addled, Crosby-esque singer-songwriter who makes William’s day-job at a recording studio a misery, the hobo who hassles him for croissants on his way to his car, etc) represent an aggressively emphatic brand of low-brow / one-joke character comedy which soon becomes both tedious and exhausting. </p>
<p>This is especially regrettable, given that the bits of the film which actually <i>are</i> funny (such as William’s attempt to bribe the security guard outside a blast furnace with a rare demo tape, or his interactions with his long-suffering girlfriend (Kiran Deol)) tend to be those which adopt a more low-key / down-to-earth kind approach, letting the surrealism of William’s increasing disconnection from the world outside his head sink in more effectively than all the putty-faced gurning / shouty stuff utilised elsewhere. </p>
<p>Although it was presumably Forbes’ intention for us to feel thoroughly disorientated by the descent into hallucinatory psychosis which accelerates after <i>[not-really-spoiler-alert]</i> William kills Vlad and dismembers/disposes of his body, the film soon begins to feel confused and rudderless at this point, in a manner which I don’t think was entirely intentional (an effect not exactly helped by a number of exceptionally unlikely plot twists). </p>
<p>By the time we reach the grand excelsis of the movie’s conclusion, which sees William finally finishing his album aided by a band of re-animated monster corpses in a hi-jacked studio utilising phantasmagorical, lightning-blasting equipment, we can certainly enjoy all the triumphant audio-visual, effects-driven absurdity of the situation, but at the same time, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the essential point of the exercise had been rather lost in transit (a feeling perhaps not inappropriate to the film’s unabashed celebration of bombastic prog excess). </p>
<p>Is this, essentially, a parable about the dangers of shutting the people around you out of your creative life? If so, I fear it doesn’t really come across terribly well. And, I realise that being cynical and un-PC and so on is cool in this cultural context, but should the film <i>really</i> be taking William’s ghastly crimes quite so lightly? Are we supposed to continue to identify with his personal/creative struggles as he alternates between whining self-pity and delusional slaughter? Because doing so is tough-going, frankly, but as we’re never allowed to leave his increasingly suffocating subjective POV, we’re never offered an alternative. </p>
<p>Whereas the presumed prime influences on Forbes’ film (Frank Henenlotter, early Peter Jackson) managed to skate across such questions in their work with charm, grace and a certain degree of humanity, ‘Destroy All Neighbours’ instead ultimately collapses in on itself, leaving behind a nasty residue of white boy smarm and mild nausea. </p>
<p>Perhaps that old chestnut about the perils of deliberately setting out to make a ‘cult movie’ may be applicable here? Or, pure speculation on my part, but perhaps the film’s problems simply stem from the contributions of its three credited screenwriters being insufficiently integrated into a coherent whole? Whatever the case though, sadly ‘Destroy All Neighbours’ many virtues as a piece of crazy-ass, low budget genre cinema find themselves scattered unevenly amidst a flood of nasty, unpalatable goo which just won’t wash out.</p><p> </p><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>X </b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">(Ti West, 2022)
</span></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3zcBaQajiCiu8qvx6ir_Tklt3yGUbOglFvrABZjS-yz7luLELayCJZQxC3EmpL6PMxl9B_fpdBe2KmLFbERGP9_pr_IlsWu-47t-WPrmApnDdQnUc_4N3pvOTYm8zLjWRdT67542_sPsgdtYvyniCEGXwOD_Uv04BROW8uBTpFkYS3taW43i20VCcqVk/s2000/X%20poster.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="1413" height="563" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3zcBaQajiCiu8qvx6ir_Tklt3yGUbOglFvrABZjS-yz7luLELayCJZQxC3EmpL6PMxl9B_fpdBe2KmLFbERGP9_pr_IlsWu-47t-WPrmApnDdQnUc_4N3pvOTYm8zLjWRdT67542_sPsgdtYvyniCEGXwOD_Uv04BROW8uBTpFkYS3taW43i20VCcqVk/w452-h640/X%20poster.jpg" width="398" /></a></div>A few Halloweens ago, I found myself impulsively re-visiting Ti West’s ‘House of the Devil’ from 2009, and discovered that, not only had it aged very well, but that I actually enjoyed it even more than I did at the time of it release. <p></p>
<p>Naturally, this set me to wonderin’ what became of the film’s director, who looked to be the Great White Hope of US horror cinema for a few minutes back there. To be honest, I lost track of his career following 2011’s underwhelming ‘The Innkeepers’, so, it’s a great feeling therefore to catch up with his triumphant return to the world of mid-budget horror all these years later, and to discover that it builds upon many of the qualities which impressed me so much in ‘House..’. </p>
<p>So, once again, ‘X’ gives us a beautifully detailed period setting (late ‘70s rather than early ‘80s in this case), and again includes an extremely lengthy (but almost hypnotically captivating) ‘slow burn’ build up before anything happens to 100% confirm that we’re definitely watching a horror movie. But, when those things do finally begin to happen, they do so in a way which proves <i>extremely satisfying</i>.</p>
<p>Before we get to all that though, ‘X’s initial set up - in which a threadbare cast and crew set off for a remote Texas farmstead to shoot a zero budget porno movie - proves interesting, fun and (like every aspect of the film) reflective of a writer/director with an innate understanding of (and love for) the aesthetics of vintage genre filmmaking. </p>
<p>It’s easy to imagine for instance that any number of the ultra-scuzzy regional ‘70s porn flicks which survive today as anonymous, public domain scans of heavily damaged prints could well have been the one these guys are setting out to make here, whilst the character dynamic which plays out between the opportunistic strip club-owner producer and his seasoned sex industry ‘stars’ on the one hand, and the high-minded film student cameraman and his girlfriend/assistant on the other, seems modelled to some extent on that documented in Joel DeMott’s legendary <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206681/ ">Demon Lover Diary</a> from 1980. </p><p>Which is to say that, as in any good slasher film, there is <i>plenty </i>going on here to keep us busy until the vaguely defined threat lurking somewhere out in the darkness finally takes shape and makes its presence felt - and, needless to say, plenty of opportunity to fill the opening act with sex, and arguments, and people running around at night without (m)any clothes on, without seeming too forced or far fetched. </p>
<p>And, make no mistake - this is an extremely good slasher film. No more, no less. (Well, perhaps just a little bit more? See below.) </p>
<p>Without resorting to Tarantino-style fanboy blather, West dutifully doffs his cap to all the requisite precursors in this particular backwoods corner of the genre (not only ‘Psycho’ and ‘Texas Chainsaw..’, both directly referenced in the text, but also ‘Eaten Alive’, ‘Tourist Trap’, etc), and proceeds to do right by them. </p>
<p>And, once ‘X’ locks into a familiar stalk n’ slash pattern during its second half, the director plays a very nice little game with genre expectations which I’ve rarely seen any other contemporary filmmaker achieve too successfully. Namely, giving us <i>exactly what we expect to happen</i> - but still making it work. </p>
<p>When discussing music after a few drinks, I’m sometimes inclined to grandly declare that the art of great rock n’ roll lays in <i>doing the simple stuff well</i>, and, in both ‘X’ and ‘House of the Devil’, West seems determined to prove that the same formula can also be applied to horror filmmaking. </p>
<p>Based on these two examples at least, notions of surprise and unpredictability (usually so key to horror/thriller storytelling) play very little role in his cinema. Anyone with the slightest familiarity with genre conventions should be able to grok the entire premise of ‘X’ right from the outset, and in each of the film’s ‘kill scenes’ in turn, exactly what we think is going to happen happens. </p>
<p>But, in West’s hands, it happens <i>really fucking well</i>. Like a chef who has spent his life carefully refining the same menu night after night, he gives it to us but good. </p>
<p> (In fact, West’s dedication to perfecting the predictable even goes so far as orchestrating the best needle-drop of ‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’ in movie history, right at the pivotal moment bridging the film’s “slow burn” and “horror” sections. Again, original it ain’t - but awesome it surely is.) </p>
<p>Meanwhile, another similarity which unites ‘X’ and ‘House of the Devil’ (and indeed ‘The Innkeepers’, insofar as I recall) is the idea of the old preying upon the young, drawing explicitly upon the implicit fear of the elderly or infirm which lurks just beneath the surface of so many teen-centric ‘70s/’80s horror films. </p>
<p>Which brings us neatly to is what is ostensibly ‘X’s main talking point (though it is not something I found terribly interesting whilst in the process of actually watching it) - namely its status as quite possibly the first film in history to feature characters aged in their 20s and their 80s played by same actress (rising star Mia Goth, who delivers one hell of a performance in both roles, just for the record). </p>
<p>Surprisingly unaddressed in the writing I’ve seen about this film is the fact that, whichever way you cut it, the concept of getting young actors to don heavy aging make-up to play elderly characters seems <i>pretty damned offensive</i>, even in cases where those characters <i>aren’t </i>portrayed as psychotic killers. (As a comparison, just consider how far you’d get these days trying to make a film in which the same methodology was applied to race, or to disability, and you’ll see my point.) </p>
<p>At best, this could usually be considered fairly distasteful practice, inherently disrespectful to the older actors who may potentially have appreciated the chance to play these roles; but, in this case, as so often in the best horror movies, I think we can make an exception. </p>
<p>By which I mean, in addition to the practical difficulty of finding elderly performers willing / able to pull off the kind of physical extremity required of ‘X’s Pearl and Howard, I think we can also place ‘X’ within a lineage of horror cinema going all the way back to Tod Browning and Benjamin Christensen, in which filmmakers have purposefully stepped beyond the bounds of ‘good taste’, courting offense or disgust in order to confront viewers with taboo imagery and uncomfortable ideas, viscerally challenging conventional screen representations of ‘difference’, and hopefully provoking some thought in the process. </p>
<p>By casting heavily made up young actors as his damaged and homicidal geriatrics, West seems intent, not just on forcing us to question our own discomfort at the idea that aging/unattractive bodies may still harbour physical desire and the yawning gulf between flesh and spirit implicit in this, but also in drawing our attention to how thoroughly such unexamined fears permeate many of the 20th century horror films we all love so much. </p>
<p>Heavy stuff to unpack, you'd have to admit, but, like all truly great pulp/genre art, ‘X’ evokes these ideas merely as a by-product of simply being a <i>fun watch</i> - a perfectly-crafted, fantastically enjoyable exemplar of its sub-genre, whose side order of taboo-breaking thematic discomfort never spoils the deep sense of basic, popcorn-munching comfort this implies. </p>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-71070909740619376752024-02-03T22:57:00.110+00:002024-02-03T22:57:00.142+00:00New Movies Round-up # 1: Big Movies.<p><span style="font-family: courier;">Looking back, it seems I began 2023 with <a href=" https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2023/01/new-movies-round-up.html ">a rare round-up of ‘new’ movies</a> I’d seen recently, and… things seem to be going that way for 2024 too, so why don’t we make a Jan/Feb tradition of it? The first of two planned posts, this one will be looking at a few recent releases your friends, co-habitants and co-workers might actually have heard of, including the latest iterations of two of Japan’s (and my own) favourite cinematic franchises.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: courier;"> <br /></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Godzilla Minus One </span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">(Takashi Yamazaki, 2023)
</span></b></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkhRWWTX7hGbqaYwXY8CFHAfmi5kd1MB-IYAcPFiEEBAwE6jbNobjG7BBHuJChoN1zIweGNY-vu9jO-MfFCo3hPi0RGOv_EO0KoV0qWJ_xxlw5SbehmdTo9QvyMh65TU4ti9pau_XJQYlZg1hOkiQ3ZDdbYzFXJzPpcequn1B5UTIdYN7-8BhTOQLW6Fg/s958/Godzilla%20Minus%20One%20quad%20poster.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="684" data-original-width="958" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkhRWWTX7hGbqaYwXY8CFHAfmi5kd1MB-IYAcPFiEEBAwE6jbNobjG7BBHuJChoN1zIweGNY-vu9jO-MfFCo3hPi0RGOv_EO0KoV0qWJ_xxlw5SbehmdTo9QvyMh65TU4ti9pau_XJQYlZg1hOkiQ3ZDdbYzFXJzPpcequn1B5UTIdYN7-8BhTOQLW6Fg/w400-h285/Godzilla%20Minus%20One%20quad%20poster.png" width="400" /></a></div>Just before Christmas, my wife & I took an afternoon off work to go and watch Toho’s attempt to expand upon the domestic success of 2016’s ‘Shin Godzilla’, at an ‘old folks’ screening at our nearest cinema. (I’d question how many - cough - ‘old folks’ really want to see a subtitled CGI monster movie, but hey, we’re all getting there, right?) <p></p>
<p>Truth be told, I didn’t emerge with particularly strong feelings either way, but I enjoyed it - which in blockbuster terms, seems about as good a definition of ‘success’ as any. </p>
<p>Rowing waa-aa-aa-ay back from the sophisticated political satire of ‘Shin Godzilla’ (which often felt more like being dropped into a Japanese equivalent of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thick_of_It ">The Thick Of It</a> than watching a monster movie), Yamazaki’s film is a far more conventional/commercial proposition, mixing state-of-the-art kaiju chops with a hefty dose of tear-jerking melodrama, a sheen of the kind of progressive/pacifist we’re-all-in-this-together patriotism that 21st century Japan (to its credit) does so well… and I suspect, more than half an eye on the overseas market, which has been richly rewarded by the movie’s success in the USA. </p><p>Leaving all that aside for a minute, it must first be acknowledged that the monster stuff here is all really good. Though perhaps not quite up to the level of that seen in the 2017 American Godzilla, the quality of the CG work has improved immeasurably since ‘Shin Godzilla’ (which I personally found conspicuously lacking in this regard). </p>
<p>The Big G’s appearances here are always dramatic and cool, he is sufficiently huge, weighty and terrifying to invoke comparisons to the gold standard of Honda’s ’54 original. Both his destruction of a battleship and his obligatory rampage through a painstakingly assembled facsimile of post-war Ginza prove to be incredibly effective set-pieces, giving us punters what we paid for in no uncertain terms, whilst reconfiguring his bursts of heat ray breath as individual nuclear detonations proves an especially frightening and powerful touch. </p>
<p>Unfortunately however, the accompanying human storyline (which comprises a somewhat higher percentage of the overall run time than it really should) proves ridiculously melodramatic, heartstring-tugging stuff, weighed down with coincidences and unlikelihoods which border on total absurdity in places. Even as a <i>gaijin</i>, I feel like I’ve seen these familiar historical narratives (survivor’s guilt experienced by a former kamikaze pilot, new family units being reconstituted out of the ruins of war, the desperation and gradual reconstruction of post-war Tokyo) done so much better, with so much more nuance and honesty, so many times in Japanese cinema and literature, that Yamazaki’s latest attempt to rinse my emotions just didn’t wash. </p>
<p>It’s always watchable mind you (much in the same way that we in the UK could probably spend the rest of eternity watching tales of dashing spitfire pilots romancing pretty young code-breakers on sepia-tinted bicycle rides to the NAAFI), but despite some strong performances from the supporting cast, both my wife and I basically found ourselves sniggering and whispering sarcy comments to each other whilst the the film was clearly trying to get us to weep and beat our chests. So… less of a success on that score, I reckon. </p>
<p>Somehow, based on advance publicity, I’d gotten the mistaken impression that ‘Godzilla Minus One’ was going to look at the events of the original '54 Godzilla, as experienced from the POV of ordinary folks on the street - an approach which, personally, I would have found that a lot more interesting than yet another tale in which our central characters get to enjoy multiple up-close-and-personal encounters with the Big G, before their sense of individual exceptionalism drives them to single-handedly save Japan and resolve their respective existential life crises at the same time. Oh well. </p>
<p>Beneath the Big Themes of national togetherness and reconstruction, there are a few bits of political sub-text bubbling away somewhere in the background which I found interesting, although they never really add up to much. As per ‘Shin Godzilla’, I liked the way that the occupying American forces are basically like, “eh, no - sort it out yourself please” once the kaiju threat emerges, leaving war-ravaged Japan to try to pull together a solution to the Godzilla problem using a few old fishing boats and bits of wire. </p>
<p>And, I also found it note-worthy that the coalition of ex-military/scientific expertise which eventually comes together to defeat Godzilla is a privately funded enterprise, operating independently of the (assumed to be useless) state apparatus - certainly a very different approach from anything seen back in the old days, and one whose implications quite possibly feel even more sinister than that of the big, quasi-utopian global super-organisations who used to call the shots in so many of Ishiro Honda’s SF movies. </p><p> </p><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Saltburn </b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">(Emerald Fennell, 2023)
</span></b></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEichZnTZs-v_ZUAPBlc2sP16k93rJRstvKmi1dKckDyiOUcYYq32Y4ViDi9P5aJOaDmOHmLfbC-TPjP-3cRUE7ZmyTJrf67bKIHMWzjwS8K1HEfdwE4eOSZBkZNoKkl00mrYjLYosUReCzxJfkXt-Bb3j9xh8e5jxd_W-taCQAWUAIrZ38tqAELv_o6-i4/s1600/Saltburn%20poster.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1079" height="582" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEichZnTZs-v_ZUAPBlc2sP16k93rJRstvKmi1dKckDyiOUcYYq32Y4ViDi9P5aJOaDmOHmLfbC-TPjP-3cRUE7ZmyTJrf67bKIHMWzjwS8K1HEfdwE4eOSZBkZNoKkl00mrYjLYosUReCzxJfkXt-Bb3j9xh8e5jxd_W-taCQAWUAIrZ38tqAELv_o6-i4/w432-h640/Saltburn%20poster.jpg" width="393" /></a></div>An odd choice for a New Years Eve movie, but hey - I didn't make it. <p></p>
<p>Still, I’d rather see in the new year whilst watching a contemporary ‘cuckoo in the nest’ type takedown of the moribund British class system than I would catching a throat infection whilst queuing endlessly for drinks in a catastrophically over-crammed pub, listening to somebody’s idea of ‘party music’ blaring from a shit-fi PA, so - result. </p>
<p>But anyway! The problem with getting old as a fan of movies/culture in general is - you’ve see it all before. </p>
<p>This, for instance, is a perfectly well-made, compelling film, and had I watched it when I was within the same age group as the central characters, I may have found it all terribly thought-provoking and subversive and so on. </p>
<p>As it is though, by the halfway mark I already had this tale of a proletarian scholarship boy at Oxford (Barry Keoghan) inveigling himself into the stately home-based family life of disgustingly posh classmate Jacob Elordi pegged as 50% ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’, 40% ‘The Servant’, and 10% some random TV drama about the lives of the rich and privileged which I didn’t bother to watch - and thus simply spent the remaining run-time contemplating the potential of re-watching / re-reading the first two of those again instead. (Actually, I think there’s a fair bit of Ken Russell’s adaption of ‘Women in Love’ in here too… but this is only meant to be a short review, so I shouldn’t get carried away.) </p>
<p>As per Fennell’s previous film as writer/director (2020’s ‘Promising Young Woman’, which I liked quite a lot, for the record), innovation here largely stems from the unconventional and kind of knowingly ‘unfair’ games played with the audience’s sympathies, and the deliberate holding back of certain key pieces of narrative information - a technique which holds up well here, but feels pretty precarious also. I’d be wary about the prospect of Fennell pushing it further in film # 3, but let’s see, eh? </p>
<p>There are a few nods to classic gothic imagery here - most notably, a startling scene of sexualised vampirism which put me in mind of Theodore Sturgeon’s novel ‘Some of Your Blood’ (you see what I mean about getting old?) </p>
<p>For the most part though, realism predominates in spite of the dream-like grandeur of the setting, and the particular ‘vibe’ of a landed, upper class household adapting to the more open and inclusive norms of late 20th century life - studiedly casual, lethargic and welcoming on the surface, yet still hidebound by a bottomless cauldron of prejudices, petty cruelties and labyrinthine rules of conduct bubbling just beneath - is both beautifully captured and entirely convincing. </p>
<p>Sadly for good ol’ Richard E. Grant - perfectly, if obviously, cast as the clan’s pained patriarch - however, the whole affair also feels aggressively <i>contemporary</i>, in the sense that there's lots of pervy, uncomfortable sex stuff going on, but nobody actually enjoys any of it, and the characters all swear and say nasty things about each other incessantly. </p>
<p>All the malignancy and kink which Joseph Losey and Patricia Highsmith were obliged to deal with through allusion and smoke signals in their earlier iterations of this tale are dragged up to the surface of the murky bathwater and beaten black n’ blue here by Fennell… which is not necessarily a criticism, merely an indication that I can sometimes feel the generation gap yawning wide when I watch stuff like this. (Although, mercifully, it’s at least set in 2006, so they’re not all banging on about each others ‘socials’ and covertly videoing everything all the time once the inter-personal skulduggery gets underway.) </p>
<p>Barry Keoghan is certainly a very striking central presence - an old man’s face on young man’s body, with a weirdly disconcerting muscular torso, he’s like the genetically engineered mutant grandson of Dirk Bogarde’s character from 'The Servant' or something. Difficult to say whether the recognition he will inevitably gain from this role will totally make his career, or whether he'll be forever cursed by Anthony Perkins-esque type-casting, but either way - he definitely makes an impression. </p>
<p>As mentioned above in fact, the main thing which allows ‘Saltburn’ to live on in the memory is an uneasy ambiguity over the extent to which we’re invited to feel implicit in / sympathetic toward his character’s machinations. </p>
<p>As much as ‘The Servant’ may have caused controversy back in 1963, watched today, what seems most remarkable is that, despite his socialist convictions, Losey declined to re-tool Robin Maugham’s source novel as a take of class revolt. Instead, for all its many qualities, his film primarily still just reads as a warning to louche aristos that perhaps their Northern-accented man-servants should not be trusted. </p>
<p>Much as we might wish we could side with him, Bogarde’s character is unambiguously presented as an evil, depraved man (his implied Jewishness and homosexuality making this characterisation feel even more questionable to modern eyes), whilst James Fox remains his hapless victim, and Sarah Miles the rival predator whose position he usurps (a role assigned to Archie Madekwe’s Farleigh in ‘Saltburn’s expanded cast list). </p>
<p>It is unsurprisingly therefore that, six decades later, ‘Saltburn’ takes a rather more ambivalent position. Going in, Keoghan is our identity figure, front and centre; we feel sorry for him, and accept what we learn about his inner life at face value. An uncomfortable sense of disjuncture thus occurs when we subsequently become distanced from him, as he begins doing things which do not square with the character whose thoughts we felt we were privy to, and as the film is forced to adopt a colder, more objective perspective as a result. </p>
<p>But, nonetheless, the notion of an (admittedly sociopathic) member of the lower orders using the illusion of an ‘open’ society to gain the foothold be needs to bloodily claw back the privilege and luxury traditionally denied him will still be read by most 21st century viewers as a necessary corrective to historical injustice, rather than as the horrifying upending of the natural order envisaged by Maugham. </p><p>At the same time though, few of us are likely to applaud the character’s conduct on a personal level - thus creating an interesting ethical tension which is likely to go back-and-forth across the nation’s (world’s?) dinner tables and office spaces for months to come, like nothing this side of Bong Joon Ho’s ‘Parasite’ (yet another noteworthy precursor, now that I think about it).</p><p> </p><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>The Boy and The Heron </b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>[‘Kimitachi Wa Dô Ikiru Ka’] </b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">(Hayao Miyazaki, 2023)
</span></b></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDUc3E9AEqL-HwzeOk0x-QFu35pmfFGnW4P3Vv8iioKfIxjcoiA5WD0jy0_BdyJEeqp8SyojDxX6MwN62ewNkKWyyZYzqb6h0AfdHNehijoMWig4eYB6QRJ7g57DZp6MWEmQpUdU7o5kSoIq_paCcYBzZUqUu83njN2jWOhizioRHEBe-8eVEvo0zkk1g/s917/Boy%20and%20The%20Heron%20quad%20poster.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="682" data-original-width="917" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDUc3E9AEqL-HwzeOk0x-QFu35pmfFGnW4P3Vv8iioKfIxjcoiA5WD0jy0_BdyJEeqp8SyojDxX6MwN62ewNkKWyyZYzqb6h0AfdHNehijoMWig4eYB6QRJ7g57DZp6MWEmQpUdU7o5kSoIq_paCcYBzZUqUu83njN2jWOhizioRHEBe-8eVEvo0zkk1g/w400-h297/Boy%20and%20The%20Heron%20quad%20poster.png" width="400" /></a></div>Just over twelve hours later, and we began 2024 the right way, by going to see this at a lunch time screening <i>[the Japanese language release, of course]</i>. <p></p>
<p>And what can I say? It’s bloody magnificent. </p>
<p>It’s probably a redundant observation to make about a Miyazaki film by this point, but this is <i>such </i>an aesthetically beautiful film - the mere act of looking at it feels like bearing witness to a expertly curated exhibition of natural/cultural wonders. The attention to detail evident in the background of nearly every frame speaks to a lifetime of dedicated craftsmanship and visual research, whilst the compositions and the gentle, gliding pace of the cel animation are - of course - relentlessly exquisite. </p>
<p>I confess I’ve found many post-‘Spirited Away’ Studio Ghibli projects a bit too frenetic and whimsical for my tastes, and my attention to their output has lapsed as a result - but the more sombre, more reflective tone adopted here suited me perfectly. </p>
<p>The film’s fantasy aspects are mysterious and intriguing, carrying a persistent undertow of physical menace and flat-out scariness which prevents them from veering too far toward the twee, and, as in all of Miyazaki’s best films, the accompanying human drama takes a potentially sentimental subject, but steadfastly refuses to dumb it down for a ‘family’ audience or to engage in manipulative heart-string tugging, meaning that (whilst not exactly an original concept within either cinema or fantasy literature), the core tale of a boy processing trauma and grief through a retreat into imagination remains incredibly moving, in a way that almost defies verbal explanation. </p>
<p>Likewise, during the film’s ‘real world’ segment, Miyazaki’s eerily surreal image of factory workers laying out the insect-like glass carapaces of fighter planes amid the beatific environs of a provincial shinto shrine said more to me about the effect of war upon Japan than two whole hours of ‘Godzilla Minus One’s sepia-tinted historical bombast. A small moment in a long and densely-packed film, but one which will stick with me. </p>
<p>Admittedly, the film does lose focus at times - I fear the opening act may prove too slow for a mainstream audience to latch onto (although I liked it just fine), and later on, once we’re embroiled in the calamitous fate of the trans-dimensional fantasy kingdoms through which our young protagonist has travelled, sense does get a bit lost for a while in an endless cavalcade of stuff exploding and collapsing, brightly coloured creatures flying/flapping around and the weird details of the script’s fantasy-land logic etc, etc. </p>
<p>Perhaps a tighter edit might have helped mitigate this a bit, but - a minor criticism, in the face of great wealth of things within this film which feel good, and right, and true. There is so much good here in fact, so much spirit and compassion and visual/conceptual inspiration, it almost makes me feel that, so long as the human race can knock out something like this once in a while to pass on to future generations/civilisations, all the shit and pain that comprises life on earth will have been worth it. </p>
<p>I’m unsure how things stand with Miyazaki at present (I thought he had retired, until this one popped up as a new release), but if ‘The Boy and the Heron’ does turn out to be his final film, he’ll be going out on a high. For my money, it stands as one of his finest achievements… and in fact, as one of the finest pieces of human artistry I’ve seen from this sorry century for quite a while, to be perfectly honest.<br /></p>
<p>3:00pm on 1st January, but if I see a better film than this during 2024, I’ll be surprised. </p>
<p></p>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-68491185746919292272024-01-23T22:18:00.002+00:002024-01-23T22:23:31.031+00:00TOP TEN DISCOVERIES: 2023 (Part # 2 of 2)<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: courier;">With apologies for the delay…</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>
5. Je t’aime moi non plus </b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>(Serge Gainsbourg, 1976)
</b></span>
</div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrm_R2BLDLD6HIfAorFdLb89k9t5FfKFFNn6YE_XGvMeMN_0STY0oA9SxGtFIT6y9A50G-JrIPzpGDJQYR_EwYJqjE143_Ug6conUsd49rVmxlBwjumiBWH5-nyRlXlIN-EbnXNkMe25c4QFeUlEq_U6VwQhRsHuGkbvqAAj60PsE-QE77HFPstHEHrug/s1220/Je%20t%E2%80%99aime%20moi%20non%20plus.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="686" data-original-width="1220" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrm_R2BLDLD6HIfAorFdLb89k9t5FfKFFNn6YE_XGvMeMN_0STY0oA9SxGtFIT6y9A50G-JrIPzpGDJQYR_EwYJqjE143_Ug6conUsd49rVmxlBwjumiBWH5-nyRlXlIN-EbnXNkMe25c4QFeUlEq_U6VwQhRsHuGkbvqAAj60PsE-QE77HFPstHEHrug/w400-h225/Je%20t%E2%80%99aime%20moi%20non%20plus.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Venturing out to a cinema screening of this one, in honour of the late Jane Birkin, mid-way through 2023, my first reaction to the opening scenes was simply to marvel at what a confident, technically accomplished and beautifully composed movie this is, given that it was Gainsbourg’s debut as director. <p></p>
<p>A world away from the pop-art outrages and wacky satires in which he participated as an actor/composer through the ‘60s, ‘Je T’aime..’ feels closer to the aesthetic of the ‘New German Cinema’ of the ‘70s - specifically, the romantic/minimalist style which Wim Wenders would introduce to America in the ‘80s, and the emotionally wrought, outré subject matter of Fassbinder - as Gainsbourg painstakingly delineates a self-contained, somewhat unreal desert world which is not quite France, but never quite the American West either, in which taciturn, musclebound queer characters bestride heaps of mouldering garbage, their minds seemingly attuned to higher things than the brutish squalor which surrounds them. </p>
<p>With Serge at the controls though, story-telling remains direct and concise, and the film never veers into pretention, its somewhat meditative tone interwoven with fart jokes, overweight strippers, slabs of bloody horse meat, a mountain of abandoned toilets and a central narrative concern with the best way to undertake anal sex without upsetting neighbours/co-habitants, exhibiting a mixture of earnest, doomed romanticism and grotesque vulgarity which is frankly exactly what we’d hope for from a Gainsbourg joint. </p>
<p>As our leads in this strange and tragic love story, Jane Birkin and Joe Dallesandro are… well, I don’t know if there’s a way to put the effect of their screen presence into words without resorting to cliché, but both are simply stunning, let’s leave it at that; every moment they’re together on screen feels charged with an enervating, dangerous power. </p>
<p>It’s certainly by far the best, least wooden work I’ve ever seen from Dallesandro, whilst Hugues Quester (best known around these parts as the uncooperative male lead in Jean Rollin’s ‘La Rose de Fer’) also makes a strong impression as his cuckolded partner. Star of the show though is definitely Birkin, who - again, a million miles away from her usual, glamourous public persona - delivers one of those performances for which critics tend to use “fully committed” as a euphemism for frequently naked, cold, brutalised and involved in intensely awkward/uncomfortable situations, all whilst remaining fully in control of her character, and of the almost Zulawski-level intensity she manages to dish out to co-stars and audience alike. An incredible portrayal of a kind of lonely, displaced feminine anger which has never quite been given a name. </p>
<p>In its matter-of-fact portrayal of the relationship between a straight woman and a gay man, the film’s fluid and non-judgemental approach to sexuality feels startlingly ahead of its time. Unfairly overlooked and dogged by censorship upon its release, I think it’s fair to assume that ‘Je T’aime..’ would probably have swept the board at every festival across the globe had it been made in the 2020s, and justifiably so. </p>
<p>Certainly, viewed today, as the famous title song finally rises on the soundtrack during the pivotal scene in which an act of sodomy in the back of a garbage truck becomes a transcendent moment of divine love, it feels like the apotheosis of everything Gainsbourg was trying to communicate through his art across the decades; the sacred and profane singing in filthy unison. </p><p> </p><div style="text-align: left;"><b>
<span style="font-size: large;">4. RRR </span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">(S.S. Rajamouli, 2022)
</span></b></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8hlIliUg2hmRSHxtc3pM8tHOXeX5mL3NDMKKdb8OL_mUvIcpfIKcOxpaf2qC0I3gzV_yrb1B0BZVexKNdXYHIlPJcyL1-_Vrj92BVehW3_o6Jx0diRxmr5OdoEHDzsrdOeW_ZEmQNH82f6t_g6t2WqxUKiCZYTFSPHTRMRZV7YM9ZnvDPmfBB0MQ1g58/s1600/RRR.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8hlIliUg2hmRSHxtc3pM8tHOXeX5mL3NDMKKdb8OL_mUvIcpfIKcOxpaf2qC0I3gzV_yrb1B0BZVexKNdXYHIlPJcyL1-_Vrj92BVehW3_o6Jx0diRxmr5OdoEHDzsrdOeW_ZEmQNH82f6t_g6t2WqxUKiCZYTFSPHTRMRZV7YM9ZnvDPmfBB0MQ1g58/w400-h225/RRR.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>So, a year or two late, I finally got to see this one whilst staying at a Netflix-equipped b’n’b in early 2023, and, I mean, what can I say? It’s pretty incredible, right? <p></p>
<p>Of course there’s very little I can find to say about it which has not been better expressed elsewhere, but, given the frequency with which I champion an ideal of “pop(ular) cinema” on this blog, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge such an exhaustively epic expression of that ideal, existing on a plain which feels much closer to the exuberant, two-fisted spectacles of 60s/70s global genre movies than to the cynical, middle-brow self-awareness which suffocates most contemporary Hollywood product. </p>
<p>Naturally there are a few oddities here which feel rather uncomfortable when encountered in a mainstream/blockbuster context (such as the 20+ minute public torture sequence, and the excessive outburst of literal flag-waving nationalism at the end), but these are the kind of things I’ve learned to roll with during my limited forays into the realm of vintage Indian cinema, so they didn’t put me off unduly. </p>
<p>In fact, despite it being a long-time bugbear of mine re: Hollywood output, I even found myself coping ok with the super-human level of historically questionable individual exceptionalism around which much of the film’s action resolves, simply because, well… I dunno - N.T. Rama Rao and Ram Charan are just so darn loveable, I’ll allow those guys a bit of individual exceptionalism. I mean, talk about ‘star power’, jeez. Just the smiles on their faces in that big dance sequence, I can’t even…</p>
<p>ANYWAY. A few other quick notes; </p>
<p>1. Given that I’m the kind of viewer who tends to spit and leave the room when presented with a CG car chase, and finds all that Marvel crap unwatchable, how was I able to both embrace and enjoy the ludicrous, gravity-defying digitally rendered mayhem which comprises at least 50% of ‘RRR’s 3+ hour run-time, you ask? </p>
<p>The answer is - I really don’t know, but I can only assume that, when watching both this film and director S.S. Rajamouli’s previous works, I can latch on to the excitement of a filmmaker totally abandoning any pretence of ‘realism’ and just going hog-wild with the insane new possibilities of his multi-billion rupee digital playpen. </p>
<p>Since time immemorial for instance, filmmakers have clearly needed to be careful and considerate in their use of animals on-screen. But NO MORE, a film like ‘RRR’ tells us. Here in India in the 2020s, we can launch antelopes through the air, we can punch tigers in the face, fire them out of catapults or swing elephants around by their goddamn trunks, and <i>no one</i> in the audience is going to be stupid enough to believe that a real animal was anywhere near the film set, let alone being mistreated. Such freedom! <i>[NB: I don't think any elephants were actually swung around by their trunks in ‘RRR’, I just put that in because I thought it would be funny.] </i></p>
<p>It’s the same kind of spirit you can see in the ‘70s/’80s Indonesian and Taiwanese fantasy films I love so much, in which imaginative ambitio proudly tramples any thought of realistic execution, yanked forward four decades and ripped through vast quantities of investment and processing power. </p>
<p>2. Doing for the enforcers of British colonial rule what ‘Raider of the Lost Ark’ did for Nazis? Yes please! Speaking as a suitably contrite British person, I’ve got to say, I was down with that, and that it’s <i>about bloody time</i>. An effective and long overdue bit of script-flipping for those of us who were somehow still allowed to grow up spending our Sunday afternoons watching heroic pith-helmeted Victorians strut around foreign climes in one televisual context or another, and props to the late Ray Stevenson for stepping up to portray one of the best moustache-twirling villains since Tod Slaughter trod the boards. </p><p> </p><div style="text-align: left;"><b>
<span style="font-size: large;">3. The Iceman Cometh </span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">(Clarence Fok, 1989)
</span></b></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN6U28ntFZspqqh0m13OlT7tOWpG5KlWf4bsLSVRWo7wEB39MNGOdjP4F5rEpTkrjVBgiEOn5cwPBd68rYHGws6qvV-Tb8xDOarQAyOCtAdpJe3cYRIfEUCK01-2VziS4gHhmEgjpb5E_lS2_ud0mU4Hjf8B3nwOQ8zmWxnwggKm8nJyKqWxQ2QSz2b0Y/s1872/Iceman%20Cometh.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1872" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN6U28ntFZspqqh0m13OlT7tOWpG5KlWf4bsLSVRWo7wEB39MNGOdjP4F5rEpTkrjVBgiEOn5cwPBd68rYHGws6qvV-Tb8xDOarQAyOCtAdpJe3cYRIfEUCK01-2VziS4gHhmEgjpb5E_lS2_ud0mU4Hjf8B3nwOQ8zmWxnwggKm8nJyKqWxQ2QSz2b0Y/w400-h231/Iceman%20Cometh.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Liberally borrowing from Nicholas Meyer’s 1979 time travel comedy ‘Time After Time’ (and with no connection whatsoever to the Eugene O’Neill stage play, obvs), the high concept plot underpinning this ‘imperial phase’ Hong Kong belter finds morally upstanding Ming Dynasty-era swordsman Yuen Biao rudely awakened in ‘80s Hong Kong after he plunges into the depths of an icy ravine whilst engaged in a life-or-death struggle with maniacal rapist-murderer Yuen Wah - who, of course, also finds himself defrosted in the 20th century, ready to begin his rampage anew. <p></p>
<p>I went into this one cold (no pun intended), having never really encountered much enthusiasm for it amongst old school Hong Kong film fans/commentators, but, I needn’t have worried. Rather than the over-blown, headache-inducing farrago I was half expecting, ‘Iceman..’ is a blast in the best possible way, easily crashing straight into my hypothetical top five ‘80s HK action movies. </p>
<p>As per the template laid down by Meyer’s film, the psychotic Wah takes to the chaotic, over-stimulated environment of the modern day metropolis like a duck to water, installing himself as the machine gun-toting supremo of a violent criminal syndicate and wreaking shocking, Category III-worthy sadism upon anyone who crosses his path, whilst the chivalrous Biao meanwhile bumbles around in a state of fish-out-of-water confusion, eventually finding himself ‘adopted’ as a live-in man-servant / human curio by high end sex worker Maggie Cheung. </p>
<p>It would probably be an exaggeration to claim that ‘hilarity ensues’, but, this is still one of those rare HK action-comedies in which the comedic elements do frequently hit the right notes for me - largely thanks to the fact that all three leads are so relentlessly, almost preternaturally, charismatic. </p>
<p>Cheung in particular is a veritable human dynamo here, giving every impression of having a whale of a time with character whose wardrobe and behaviour seems cvlosely modelled on Madonna circa ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’, whilst the details of her perilous and hap-hazard lifestyle as a prostitute/hustler are depicted in an interesting and unconventional fashion, even before the complication of a defrosted medieval swordsman gets thrown into the mix. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, those who recall Yuen Wah for his scene-stealing bad guy roles in films like ‘Eastern Condors’ and ‘Dragons Forever’ will be fully aware of how much ass this guy can kick, and in ‘Iceman..’ he turns it up to 11, transforming himself into one of the most gleefully terrifying villains in movie history - a lithe, hyper-athletic engine of omni-directional destruction who still somehow manages to look like the coolest motherfucker in SE Asia, resembling some kind of insane, Shaolin master version of Warren Oates in ‘..Alfredo Garcia’. </p>
<p>And, completing the central trio, good ol’ Yeun Biao just kind of does what he always does, which is to say - being absolutely fucking brilliant. </p>
<p>Amidst all the carnage, ‘Iceman..’ is also a beautifully directed film, shot with a rich, dark colour palette, slickly edited and betraying none of the ad-hoc choppiness which sometimes afflicts HK movies. One of the things I loved most about it though is the way director Clarence Fok manages to maintain a frantic, light-hearted action/comedy tone without downplaying the darker elements of the movie’s subject matter. </p>
<p>Although Maggie’s antics in the worlds of crime and prostitution are on one level presented as being pretty, uh... kooky?, her character is still constantly faced with threats of violence or abuse, maintaining a rough edge of realism and danger, especially when, inevitably, she crosses paths with Wah - who, as mentioned above, reinforces his full spectrum evilness by indulging in some jaw-dropping excesses of perverse brutality. </p>
<p>By rights, this should all feel completely out of place in a movie that’s liable to have you chuckling over some screwball shenanigans five minutes later… yet somehow, with typically mad HK movie magic, it all comes together just so. </p>
<p>Which is all well and good, but what about the <i>action</i>, right? Well, ok, I mean… oh man, it is <i>so good</i>. A central chase/fight set piece here involving a horse, a jeep and a shipping container swinging perilously from a dockside crane is absolutely one of the most astounding / unbelievable stunt sequences in HK cinema (which is saying something), and the extended final showdown between Biao and Wah - involving swords, gunplay, blasts of hair-frazzling electricity and (of course) a ‘power powder’-suffused hand-to-hand throw down of nigh-on superhuman agility - is as intense and imaginative as any fight fan could hope for. </p>
<p>In one moment during the climax, we see a long shot of Biao and Wah facing off in profile, ‘Street Fighter’-style, on a rooftop, as immediately behind them, a jumbo jet glides in to land at Hong Kong’s notoriously perilous urban airport… at which point, I felt like pausing the movie, falling to my knees, and simply giving thanks to the gods for the particular time and place in culture which brought us insane masterpieces like this one -- just a few decades behind us, one day’s flight away, but somehow feeling like an outburst of joyful mania from a completely different universe. </p><p> </p><div style="text-align: left;">
<b><span style="font-size: large;">2. Miami Blues </span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">(George Armitage, 1990)
</span></b></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRZCpPAOzwHokf3n9DiboC1f9nH3RxT5BEH59iWHwM1vyd3P2FLHfajhgv3ne6glcIB5xiVL0b54IM9w-bdg3BGXe76Q9XVy_D9vHgoxds2O5Pjr0sI2JVxpOp2bONuGwVluyz3TydHBbaIsLTT7t9I8TDQZ_nOnFjOUG10Vt1nozIw4V81X5u_4D6VDA/s1920/Miami%20Blues.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRZCpPAOzwHokf3n9DiboC1f9nH3RxT5BEH59iWHwM1vyd3P2FLHfajhgv3ne6glcIB5xiVL0b54IM9w-bdg3BGXe76Q9XVy_D9vHgoxds2O5Pjr0sI2JVxpOp2bONuGwVluyz3TydHBbaIsLTT7t9I8TDQZ_nOnFjOUG10Vt1nozIw4V81X5u_4D6VDA/w400-h225/Miami%20Blues.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Probably one of the best entries in the cycle of late ‘80s/early ‘90s American neo-noirs I’ve seen to date - and hands down the funniest - this adaptation of Charles Willeford’s 1984 book begins as Junior (Alec Baldwin), an impulsive, sociopathic criminal, touches down in Miami, casually bends back the fingers of an intrusive Hare Krishna on his way through the exit lounge, and promptly finds himself falling into a why-the-hell-not romantic relationship with naïve local prostitute Suzi (Jennifer Jason Leigh), in the midst of the non-stop crime spree which comprises his regular day-to-day. <p></p>
<p>Unfortunately for the newly inseparable couple however, that Hare Krishna guy ended up defying medical science by inexplicably dying of shock following the finger-bending incident, meaning that grizzled and toothless homicide detective Hoke Mosely (Fred Ward) is now on Junior’s trail, instigating a ramshackle cat-and-mouse between the two men which can’t possibly end well, least of all for Suzi. </p>
<p>Attempting to make a whimsical film noir takes some balls, but that’s exactly what Armitage and producer Jonathan Demme seem to have been going for here, and against the odds, they succeeded brilliantly, creating a world in which toe-curling brutality, systemic corruption and random, meaningless death exist side-by-side with impromptu pork chop dinners, misplaced dentures and recipes for ‘vinegar pie’ (whatever that is). </p>
<p>It helps that Armitage proves adept in staging long, intense inter-character scenes which seem capable of turning on a dime between good-natured bonhomie and psychotic violence, and Willeford’s complex and morally ambivalent characters are lent an additional spark by career-best level performances from Baldwin, Leigh and Ward. </p>
<p>As with ‘The Iceman Cometh’ discussed above, this is one of these films in which all three leads are basically right up in our face, all the time - but it doesn’t matter, because they’re all such captivating, horribly loveable human disaster areas, we could happily watch their antics for weeks, and still never really know what’s coming next. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, DP Tak Fujimoto coolly resists the temptation to riff on the visual style of a certain other Miami-based ‘80s crime franchise, instead turning the city into a candy-coloured pastel wonderland which actually looks like it might be quite a nice place to live, aside from all the blood. </p>
<p>Inspired use is made of Norman Greenbaum’s ‘Spirit in the Sky’ during the opening and closing credits (a perfect musical shrug-of-the-shoulders to sign off a nihilistic crime movie, now that I think about it, and you’ve got to love the irony of “..gonna go to the place that’s the best” playing over an aerial shot of the smog-choked city), and the always welcome appearance of faces like Charles Napier and Martine Beswick in the supporting cast feels like a thinly veiled high five to the cult film fans who have followed Armitage and Demme from their days on the grindhouse/exploitation circuit. </p>
<p>I confess, I’m not familiar with Willeford’s series of Hoke Mosely novels, but on the expectation that they might nail something akin to the uniquely schizophrenic tone of this wonderful movie, I’m clearing space on my bookshelves as we speak. </p><p> </p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>
1. Light Sleeper </b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">(Paul Schrader, 1992)
</span></b></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifY8RnTvVXpuNvPYLu3-1skAWWgFczjiUysScr95R8ijxG4Nj7XL80zBpQuKhepSKnQetSdd-8qlZSjywijXyViX2aNIWGfvRTJhoTc0f3dXjGoEJF_EpuhQ4nZSUEnObkl32fHQGmmRqyhNzeRYbvJTCh76eoIs2JzK_RTGpzG-xhqp5gcmNFWi38mXI/s686/Light%20Sleeper.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="386" data-original-width="686" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifY8RnTvVXpuNvPYLu3-1skAWWgFczjiUysScr95R8ijxG4Nj7XL80zBpQuKhepSKnQetSdd-8qlZSjywijXyViX2aNIWGfvRTJhoTc0f3dXjGoEJF_EpuhQ4nZSUEnObkl32fHQGmmRqyhNzeRYbvJTCh76eoIs2JzK_RTGpzG-xhqp5gcmNFWi38mXI/w400-h225/Light%20Sleeper.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Another year, another reclaimed masterpiece dredged up from the vast and treacherous back catalogue of Paul Schrader - and of all of his films, this is possibly the one that has hit me hardest, although I’d have difficult trying to tell you precisely why that is. <p></p>
<p>At the time of its release, ‘Light Sleeper’ often seems to have been dismissed as a middle-aged rehash of ‘Taxi Driver’, and on one level it is easy to see why. But, if you can manage to approach it without reference to the structure and plot beats it shares with its more famous predecessor, this tale of former addict John LeTour (William Defoe) attempting to break out of his emotionally neutered existence as a bagman/delivery boy for high class coke dealer Ann (Susan Sarandon) carries a singular power which transcends its time, place and subject matter. </p>
<p>Shot very much as it would have been a few years earlier, at the very apex of high gloss, ‘80s cinematic style, Defoe’s slow glide through the reflecting, desaturated surfaces of nocturnal Manhattan conveys an icy, uncanny emptiness which barely even needs to be elaborated upon by Schrader’s script. For all the surface level composure required by his trade though, LeTour’s faltering attempts to rekindle his relationship with ex-girlfriend Dana Delaney emerge just as desperate and cack-handed as Travis Bickle’s attempts to make human contact, in spite of two whole extra decades of hard-won life experience. </p>
<p>Denied permission to use the Bob Dylan songs he had written the script around, Schrader - in a brilliant example of makin’ lemonade - hired Christian rock singer Michael Been to record original music for ‘Light Sleeper’ instead, and, whilst the moody vistas of overwrought, sub-Springsteenian pomp which resulted might well have been unbearable on record, in the context of the film, the songs work superbly, their tides of smouldering passion effectively acting as LeTour’s inner voice, providing a soaring, white-hot emotional contrast to the cold, clean surroundings and transactional relationships of his material existence. </p>
<p>Schrader is on record as saying that he regrets turning the latter half of the film into a thriller, complete with an all-too-familiar violent bloodbath at the finale. Presumably he sees this as a concession to commercialism which detracted from the more existential core themes he was trying to address here. For my own purposes though, the plunge into genre proved very welcome, adding a vicious (neo)noir hook to the guts of a story which might otherwise have floundered into aimless introspection, reeling us in via a spiral of loss and collapse which could only reasonably conclude with an explosion of violent self-definition / self-immolation. </p>
<p>More than anything, I love the <i>pace </i>of this film - the slow glide, almost menacing simply in its constancy. Even when the characters are static, the camera prowls, like time creeping away at a consistent, doom metal tempo, taking us on a journey which has got to end <i>somewhere</i>, irrespective of the director’s more nebulous Sartre-via-Antonioni type intentions. And, when it does finally arrive at its destination - fragmented, hand-held footage documenting the blood-splattered walls of a modern art-bedecked penthouse hotel suite - the film achieves a moment of transcendence whose weird, spiritual power speaks to the religious angst and search for grace at the core of all of Schrader’s work more effectively than anything he’s ever managed to get across on paper. </p>
<p>As I say, it’s difficult for me to explain why ‘Light Sleeper’ had such an impact on me. I suppose that, like LeTour, I’m mid-way through my adult life at this point, dealing with the choices I’ve made. But - thankfully - the similarities end there, so there’s very little direct character identification going on here. </p>
<p>Could it be that, in the final analysis, this is simply an excellent movie, and that, by their very nature, the best movies become more than the sum of their parts - more than their creators intended or understood, even? And, they do not always give up their secrets so easily.</p>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-22757975369673214552024-01-04T17:09:00.002+00:002024-01-05T09:52:50.335+00:00TOP TEN DISCOVERIES: 2023 (Part # 1 of 2)<p>Well, cards on the table - 2023 was not exactly a great year, on either a personal level, a global level, or I daresay on many of the myriad levels found somewhere in-between. </p>
<p>But, mustn’t grumble, right? Even as my (our?) quality of life takes a (personal / collective?) battering, we’re all (mostly?) still here, still reading things and watching movies, and still (occasionally) updating blogs. </p>
<p>In fact, I’ve found myself thinking recently about exactly why watching movies has become my primary form of recreation in recent years, and, in the end, I think what it comes down to is cinemas ability to transport me to a different time and place, and to do so more efficiently and immediately than most other entertainment media. </p>
<p>This doesn’t always even need to involve ‘escapism’ as such (although that’s nice too), but (at the risk of descending into utter pretention, given that I largely gravitate toward movies concerned with the travails of lesbian vampires, psychotic killers, girl gangs or flesh-eating monsters of one kind or another), even the most absurd and poorly realised examples of global genre cinema can offer instant, full strength access to different perspectives, different cultures, different problems and different solutions - no supporting reading or conceptual re-adjustment required (tho this can always follow later). </p>
<p>Case in point: unexpectedly, two of the films on last year’s ‘top ten’ list below concern the experiences of indigenous peoples in Canada. This is not a subject I had previously paid much attention to, or taken an active interest in, to be perfectly honest - but now it’s very much on my radar. Thanks, movies! </p>
<p>As per last year, the following is definitely <i>not</i> a list of the best films I saw in 2023, or even necessarily a ljst of the best films I saw for <i>the first time</i> in 2023. Rather, it’s just a list of movies that surprised me, or made an impression on me, or that I just feel like telling people about and encouraging them to watch, for whatever reason. If you take my advice on any of ‘em, I hope you enjoy the experience.</p><p> </p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>
10. Slash / Back </b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>(Nyla Innuksuk, 2022)
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</div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixnXz_3JtuPHo1MdlraITFlxYu9fiIeFRq1iRGjvlW9l3R9hq6F3qeZFvFo2Cwtckfpq0oNsk2ye0XOBuX48hlxGaps3yuWXZTpKsEJheHZLh-TNhu4fLg7cH7zr3K-g2ndxAOtnn7KBsW4u-Yr0JKHkTstcx2NaO_V2YixLeMIv35WYNj5LM8WLQ_4uc/s1712/Slash-Back.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="962" data-original-width="1712" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixnXz_3JtuPHo1MdlraITFlxYu9fiIeFRq1iRGjvlW9l3R9hq6F3qeZFvFo2Cwtckfpq0oNsk2ye0XOBuX48hlxGaps3yuWXZTpKsEJheHZLh-TNhu4fLg7cH7zr3K-g2ndxAOtnn7KBsW4u-Yr0JKHkTstcx2NaO_V2YixLeMIv35WYNj5LM8WLQ_4uc/w400-h225/Slash-Back.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Though it may be weak tea as a horror movie, Nyla Innuksuk’s debut feature (which I wrote about <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2023/01/new-movies-round-up.html ">here</a> back in January 2023) absolutely smashes it as a character drama, as an insight into a remote and culturally unique community, and as a “girls on the scene” survival-through-teamwork movie in the lineage of ‘The Thing From Another World’.<p></p>
<p>It has a modest, gutsy DIY spirit which I absolutely loved, and a rare sense of inter-generational appeal. If you’ve got kids, try watching it with ‘em - see what happens.</p><p> </p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>9. The Day of the Dolphin </b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>(Mike Nichols, 1973)
</b></span></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvs7tu8ZqQKV2e04_fSgSuekFK7t63Mhwf9wuaw5tukBiUXtWCy8UbkuVgwJhN1RfRfq4kLyf3UB3NOH7PyTkAb1COzCz-TCYssqHBNiAGfmuazff2pkVBCW55h9YT51Y__y-2g8jGplYPUcr5epK7QkJ4Fzs8ssbzrwwpbvBSkU4ip7t-pUHEatd6_po/s1920/Day%20of%20the%20Dolphin.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvs7tu8ZqQKV2e04_fSgSuekFK7t63Mhwf9wuaw5tukBiUXtWCy8UbkuVgwJhN1RfRfq4kLyf3UB3NOH7PyTkAb1COzCz-TCYssqHBNiAGfmuazff2pkVBCW55h9YT51Y__y-2g8jGplYPUcr5epK7QkJ4Fzs8ssbzrwwpbvBSkU4ip7t-pUHEatd6_po/w400-h225/Day%20of%20the%20Dolphin.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Long story short: this one is pretty weak as a political thriller, but if want to see George C. Scott developing a father/son relationship with a talking dolphin (and who wouldn't?) - essential viewing. <p></p>
<p>The tone is totally all over the place, to the extent that we’re never quite sure whether we’re watching a serious, Watergate-era thriller or a heart-warming talking animal movie (a confusion of genres perhaps unique in the history of cinema), initially leading me to assume the film must have been subject to a long and torturous back story of behind-the-scenes monkey business. </p>
<p>But no - aside from a few expected grumbles about Scott being difficult on-set, the version of ‘Day of the Dolphin’ which ended up on screen was written by one guy (Buck Henry, no less), directed by one guy, and released by AVCO Embassy, no questions asked. And yet, it still turned out like this? Mind-boggling. </p>
<p>Apparently the script has very little in common with the more sensational source novel, with hearsay suggesting that the filmmakers instead took inspiration from the real life work of Dr John Lilly. But, aside from featuring a research scientist working with dolphins who has a contentious relationship with government intelligence agencies, the story has very little in common with anything he did either, so, what are we watching here, exactly? </p>
<p>Well, whatever it is, the narrative is under-developed in several key areas and the vibe of meditative earnestness which Nichols seems to be going for is undercut by a cheesy, Lassie-defeats-the-bad-guys resolution which feels like a total joke… but for all its faults, ‘Day of the Dolphin’ remains weirdly fascinating, beautifully shot (the dolphin footage alone is stunning), and packs a massive emotional punch, becoming more affecting than it really has any right to be during its startlingly bleak final minutes. </p>
<p>Sitting comfortably next to ‘Silent Running’ in the limited canon of first wave / post-hippie environmental tearjerkers, Nichols and Henry hit those “man is the only real monster” buttons more effectively than much of what followed once these kind of themes began to filter into the mainstream during the 80s and 90s. A uniquely weird, “only in the ‘70s” proposition which I’m very glad I made time for last year.</p><p> </p><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>8. Un Témoin dans la Ville </b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>[Witness in the City] </b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>(Édouard Molinaro, 1959)
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</b></span></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcSj6ni75mWLRyUIPcZMI2pigS7dKF3GHluNLkHC3iwE5NU1lBW7jI1jXPOMQ_zFgpV3SDSICK5aBbIg1GfbD3v4cmQ27mEARMG2jFR35UzGBEb5KNZjfdxT0YPRdGyhUA25rzjoHRPqiWor1SyQ_PQpNUxDaPpUWBIMw3GTgSGjApUTyHhpPuLPS5gEs/s780/Un%20Temoin%20dans%20le%20Ville%2001.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="439" data-original-width="780" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcSj6ni75mWLRyUIPcZMI2pigS7dKF3GHluNLkHC3iwE5NU1lBW7jI1jXPOMQ_zFgpV3SDSICK5aBbIg1GfbD3v4cmQ27mEARMG2jFR35UzGBEb5KNZjfdxT0YPRdGyhUA25rzjoHRPqiWor1SyQ_PQpNUxDaPpUWBIMw3GTgSGjApUTyHhpPuLPS5gEs/w400-h225/Un%20Temoin%20dans%20le%20Ville%2001.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Of all the movies I watched during 2023 which fall within the broad category of ‘film noir’ (and there were quite a few), I think this one - which I wrote about at length <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2023/05/noir-diary-witness-in-city-un-temoin.html ">here</a> - made the biggest impression on me.
<p></p><p>Despite clear nods to Lang, Hitchcock and goodness knows who else, it still feels like a highly original entry in the genre, replete with dense, shadow-haunted photography, a great sense of visual storytelling, sickening suspense and an unsettling mixture of humanism and bleakest nihilism, all anchored by a desperate, almost monstrously menacing, performance from Lino Ventura.
</p><p>Now available on blu-ray on both sides of the Atlantic (thanks respectively to <a href="https://kinolorber.com/product/french-noir-collection-speaking-of-murder-back-to-the-wall-witness-in-the-city-aka-le-rouge-est-mis-le-dos-au-mur-un-temoin-dans-la-ville-blu-ray">Kino Lorber’s French Film Noir collection</a> and <a href="https://www.radiancefilms.co.uk/products/world-noir-vol-1-le">Radiance’s World Noir set</a>), it would be great to see this overlooked minor classic picking up a bit more of a following in the English-speaking world.</p><p> </p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>7. The Swimmer </b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>(Frank Perry, 1968)
</b></span></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR5OZWri9Xdtudd4TdgPTUzHxXIwKyHXR14VXT53TfgwWOHKA_DeCcdKuso2Qfohdbvtof2cffLTSZzGGFQGpwOIrpEdBudkEYRjgRggLh9Qme5tgeKuKeDIYYPhmYkAmz2ABxXe-s2-3Zv8YM95CcAGkNVzbJCxljZafRr7FysoJOUdJsU6ePCdsb0OY/s773/The%20Swimmer.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="416" data-original-width="773" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR5OZWri9Xdtudd4TdgPTUzHxXIwKyHXR14VXT53TfgwWOHKA_DeCcdKuso2Qfohdbvtof2cffLTSZzGGFQGpwOIrpEdBudkEYRjgRggLh9Qme5tgeKuKeDIYYPhmYkAmz2ABxXe-s2-3Zv8YM95CcAGkNVzbJCxljZafRr7FysoJOUdJsU6ePCdsb0OY/w400-h215/The%20Swimmer.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>If ever there were a film which proves difficult to discuss with / sell to those who have not yet seen it, Frank and Eleanor Perry’s uniquely troubling (and troubled) studio-financed cult oddity is it.
<p></p><p>For the first half hour of your first viewing, you’ll be apt to wonder quite why you’re watching this seemingly aimless drift through a garishly-lit world of conceited mid-century WASP contentment and dreary socialite gossip, watching struggling alpha male Ned Merrill (Burt Lancaster) attempt to find his way home by traversing the swimming pools of his privileged neighbours in up-market Connecticut on a balmy summer day.
</p><p>But, as Merrill’s quest continues, becoming increasingly fraught and uncertain, things will gradually begin to make more sense. Then, suitably crushed by its conclusion, you will be drawn to watch the film again - at which point it will REALLY start to make sense.
</p><p>Taken out of the Perrys’ hands prior to editing, additional / replacement scenes shot at the behest of producer Sam Spiegel initially feel mystifying and out of place, but eventually add a queasy, proto-psychedelic beauty to proceedings which makes the ground beneath our feet feel even more uncertain, lending the film an even more fascinating sense of outside-the-box strangeness.
</p><p>You’re always guaranteed the real deal from a Lancaster perfromance however, and he holds together one of the most formally challenging films ever to have emerged from the Hollywood system with what I can only describe as a sense of tormented, masculine ease, confidently navigating a role which I’m sure no other male lead of his generation would have touched with a barge pole, driving us ever onward toward a harrowing, almost Poe-like gothic conclusion which feels like a tombstone raised above the aspirations of the USA’s entire post-war culture.
</p><p>So, I mean, no wonder it didn’t really go over big at the box office, right? But, now that we’re less personally caught up in those generational aspirations and can give the film the attention (and repeat viewing) it deserves in the comfort of our own homes, it’s really quite the thing. </p><p> </p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>6. Clearcut </b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>(Ryszard Bugajski, 1991)
</b></span></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvRHzUnvFkR5ZsWJc-E2CFFWqa4g7fcjzVE-FTnjUQntjLR5FOpHMuYfLCNTHD_CvJZNpI6GyxorZvmj6v7Tf1AC9aZUFT1HKr5LHJntRqvlMWrWaA5Rtnipk8EVzezkHIn_KQmKoRX26JRrEw6vFRIgLyyYfGDbPOkhfUqIt0khvk8Z1PQta2LVbBG_Q/s2500/clearcut.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1025" data-original-width="2500" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvRHzUnvFkR5ZsWJc-E2CFFWqa4g7fcjzVE-FTnjUQntjLR5FOpHMuYfLCNTHD_CvJZNpI6GyxorZvmj6v7Tf1AC9aZUFT1HKr5LHJntRqvlMWrWaA5Rtnipk8EVzezkHIn_KQmKoRX26JRrEw6vFRIgLyyYfGDbPOkhfUqIt0khvk8Z1PQta2LVbBG_Q/w400-h164/clearcut.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>An enraged, uncompromising attempt to probe the limits of a liberal pacifist mind-set and posit the necessity of more radical alternatives, this adaptation of a novel by Canadian author M.T. Kelly from Polish ex-pat director Bugajski seems on one level to address a highly specific regional concern (the disenfranchisement and loss of land suffered by indigenous communities in North Western Ontario), yet still feels frighteningly relevant to the precarious assumptions underpinning all of our lives in the 21st century. Indeed, it was difficult to view it in close proximity to the clusterfuck of events taking place in the Middle East during the last quarter of 2023 without drawing some very uncomfortable parallels. <p></p>
<p>But, before we get too dour, I should clarify that ‘Clearcut’ (its title referring to the process of intensive logging which leaves areas of land looking like “the dark side of the moon”) also stands tall as an engrossing and violent quasi-supernatural / metaphysical thriller, shot through with a welcome vein of pitch black humour, largely emerging from a brilliantly mannered, scene stealing performance from Oneida actor Graham Greene. </p>
<p>Long story short then: Ron Lea plays activist-lawyer Peter Maguire, who has just lost a case, attempting to defend indigenous lands from exploitation by a logging conglomerate. Despite ineffectual protests and civil unrest, tribal elders (as represented by Floyd ‘Red Crow’ Westerman) seem resigned to their fate, but, as Maguire plans his return to Toronto to mount an appeal, he notices a new “Indian” with a fierce intellect and unnerving, passive-aggressive attitude on the scene - Arthur, played by Greene. </p>
<p>Before long, both Maguire and belligerent mill owner Bud Ricketts (Michael Hogan) have been taken hostage by Arthur, and, with the tacit approval of Westerman’s tribe, transported to the unmapped depths of the river valley threatened by Ricketts’ logging operations, where, we must assume, the two white men are about to be subjected to some seriously harrowing rites of passage. </p>
<p>Due to its intense concentration on indigenous mythology and ritual, its occasional moments of savage violence, and its eventual blurring of consensus reality, ‘Clearcut’ has recently found itself re-evaluated (primarily by critic Kier-La Janisse in her documentary <a href=" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13938338 ">Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched</a> and its accompanying blu-ray box set) as an exemplar of ‘folk-horror’. And, given the crucial ambiguity which is maintained re: the story’s interpretation, I think that this dubious prescription more or less holds up.</p><p>What, after all, <i>is</i> Arthur, in the end? A violent native rights activist? An externalised personification of Maguire’s unrealised anger? Or, simply a spirit of the violated land, summoned to extract vengeance? Naturally, Bugajski’s film is far too canny to give the nod to either a material, psychological or spiritual interpretation of events, and is all the stronger for it. </p>
<p>And likewise, though ‘Clearcut’s occasional pigeonholing as “the Canadian ‘Deliverance’” initially seems trite, the comparison persists, not as a reflection of any shared setting or story elements, but simply because both films eventually concern ‘civilised’ men encountering something atavistic and nameless within the landscape, and finding themselves forever changed by it. </p>
<p>Like both Boorman’s film and the best entries in Janisse’s beloved sub-genre, ‘Clearcut’ carries a power which is impossible to fully explain, impossible to reduce to its constituent parts, and impossible to forget. It is recommended to appropriately brave viewers in the strongest possible terms. </p><p>
-- </p><p><span style="font-family: courier;">To be continued…
</span></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-23103409213246148912023-12-04T16:37:00.000+00:002023-12-04T16:37:55.597+00:00Lovecraft on Film Appendum: The Evil Clergyman (Charles Band, 1987 / 2012)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtV6IayP9NPO_mYjv2vS5XVII10tghF6B5VQpqndj_X2Iw-s227cSzTtFmT0TEGWyuCJD9x9JQo7xh6rIiwhspcld2knCJA2Sg4SDYOEWESv-SFpI37ovuPU1M-GxysfYgRy98pTUIn1Ar-PqtXNev9J4SOUq_Vk975eCzwp6lfsi4YDah7uMFcMYhgTQ/s778/01%20EvilClergyman00015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="778" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtV6IayP9NPO_mYjv2vS5XVII10tghF6B5VQpqndj_X2Iw-s227cSzTtFmT0TEGWyuCJD9x9JQo7xh6rIiwhspcld2knCJA2Sg4SDYOEWESv-SFpI37ovuPU1M-GxysfYgRy98pTUIn1Ar-PqtXNev9J4SOUq_Vk975eCzwp6lfsi4YDah7uMFcMYhgTQ/w400-h296/01%20EvilClergyman00015.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ71Aljr9nq-7POA1dyXvZrW2kW-4hhzegpwsTpQ3n1VO0QQnVCqrW-Yw6FwBaAuhn2U6byVrfYlWbI5PJax_2lqjJN71RGrqgQPXbzK9G0BdRtdw1md3k8g5MBhAXs2pC6Gh0ErkUNqyKGNaYoM_VPL3Mlqo6_V2DkIIttM2jge6cO2qZ02SixjWDzWo/s778/02%20EvilClergyman00010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="778" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ71Aljr9nq-7POA1dyXvZrW2kW-4hhzegpwsTpQ3n1VO0QQnVCqrW-Yw6FwBaAuhn2U6byVrfYlWbI5PJax_2lqjJN71RGrqgQPXbzK9G0BdRtdw1md3k8g5MBhAXs2pC6Gh0ErkUNqyKGNaYoM_VPL3Mlqo6_V2DkIIttM2jge6cO2qZ02SixjWDzWo/w400-h296/02%20EvilClergyman00010.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcLPlSKWpLpZQB6G7fsiPssMKz9KDED1IYGec33bykFrDEi75v3RKInXEO3qrenCA63N6ym2K6ZBLKJ9_llLZ2TEG0rZJj1wHKA2n5u58iGQiDBcsSJiF5IuUX5sAHO1r1zK67tBkm2LIvJC75ad46ykYIVeTKxWbux_3ZiyA1h_NtEBfANOosRgI8jqU/s778/03%20EvilClergyman00006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="778" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcLPlSKWpLpZQB6G7fsiPssMKz9KDED1IYGec33bykFrDEi75v3RKInXEO3qrenCA63N6ym2K6ZBLKJ9_llLZ2TEG0rZJj1wHKA2n5u58iGQiDBcsSJiF5IuUX5sAHO1r1zK67tBkm2LIvJC75ad46ykYIVeTKxWbux_3ZiyA1h_NtEBfANOosRgI8jqU/w400-h296/03%20EvilClergyman00006.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJj5PqHkhe9Co1aJVW94_xBM-9lAwqqGuAjqj3Y2A1bLced3B5Vc7lrZjKBFd9z6rlzkcMY9f8lGaPdHer3_d5TfouM5FBLKx-Vj_DrUtN0Lqq7tv56u5bcX7A7dgWGUfABhyphenhyphenfE_xKTACaN83LbxjyRvgC_dnsGnwTPUTlo-JP6x6soEUyM_bmPEypZQE/s778/04%20EvilClergyman00011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="778" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJj5PqHkhe9Co1aJVW94_xBM-9lAwqqGuAjqj3Y2A1bLced3B5Vc7lrZjKBFd9z6rlzkcMY9f8lGaPdHer3_d5TfouM5FBLKx-Vj_DrUtN0Lqq7tv56u5bcX7A7dgWGUfABhyphenhyphenfE_xKTACaN83LbxjyRvgC_dnsGnwTPUTlo-JP6x6soEUyM_bmPEypZQE/w400-h296/04%20EvilClergyman00011.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIZfQcpEafx_RsXLqtLwNon9dIdayRo5EFlzRE5UxpFfCJoaUw73SYTms7cgZRS1VFywHfcpeQiHduTbFB_M5uM0l71b6vSslMeVwi1WjdMCbZb3mSibuH2nJqnO61W6veKe6SDlp-vJPFUNP18AO8llxUKIYksKyG-WH0zzHPDntM6Tfyhl5A57u365k/s778/05%20EvilClergyman00012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="778" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIZfQcpEafx_RsXLqtLwNon9dIdayRo5EFlzRE5UxpFfCJoaUw73SYTms7cgZRS1VFywHfcpeQiHduTbFB_M5uM0l71b6vSslMeVwi1WjdMCbZb3mSibuH2nJqnO61W6veKe6SDlp-vJPFUNP18AO8llxUKIYksKyG-WH0zzHPDntM6Tfyhl5A57u365k/w400-h296/05%20EvilClergyman00012.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieBp6N0B7XMHQKxoXoOcuMOn8Ses56eZsane81tOZxzpzeJmBJm4lbTps_9cUvpEAHKosrF2lyqiS53yC-oIa13dmL1ucUIrQ3RNZ-T4gu9lhismvD96QKGNfUa-thVKmtkN8XSfwpKKmtQZaLxYVvcwfgAot1ai-WVcWSxxetQ1d5Uv-uTlsqJmZCt4U/s778/06%20EvilClergyman00014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="778" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieBp6N0B7XMHQKxoXoOcuMOn8Ses56eZsane81tOZxzpzeJmBJm4lbTps_9cUvpEAHKosrF2lyqiS53yC-oIa13dmL1ucUIrQ3RNZ-T4gu9lhismvD96QKGNfUa-thVKmtkN8XSfwpKKmtQZaLxYVvcwfgAot1ai-WVcWSxxetQ1d5Uv-uTlsqJmZCt4U/w400-h296/06%20EvilClergyman00014.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>As anyone familiar with his work will be aware, H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Evil Clergyman’ is a brief, half-formed fragment, obviously written in haste, perhaps extrapolated from a bad dream, and presumably never intended for publication in its extant form. Nonetheless, it saw print several years after Lovecraft’s death, in the April 1939 edition of ‘Weird Tales’, and - rather irksomely - it has formed part of his accepted canon ever since, seemingly more by accident than design. <p></p>
<p>As such, it seems appropriate that the story’s movie adaptation should take the form of an orphaned, 28 minute short, originally intended for inclusion in a 1988 Empire Pictures anthology flick named ‘Pulse Pounders’ which never saw the light of a projector at the time, remaining unreleased due to (it says here) circumstances arising from the company’s bankruptcy. </p>
<p>Furthermore, it appears that the original film elements for ‘The Evil Clergyman’ were subsequently misplaced or destroyed, leaving the footage presumed lost until, a quarter century later, Charlie Band found a VHS work print knocking about in his attic and smelled a quick buck to be made. </p>
<p>A bit of a clean up, a new credits sequence and a newly commissioned score from brother Richard later, and ‘The Evil Clergyman’ finally premiered, streaming on Band’s <a href=" https://www.fullmoonfeatures.com/videos/the-evil-clergyman ">Full Moon Features website</a>, in 2012.</p><p>I’m unfamiliar with the back story re: how exactly those film elements ended up disappearing, but I can only assume it must have been the result of some terrible and unprecedented freak accident, as any other explanation would frankly beggar belief given the breadth of talent involved in creating this segment, and the relatively lavish budget obviously invested in this thing. </p>
<p>With the exception of an AWOL Stuart Gordon in fact, ‘..Clergyman’ is effectively a ‘Reanimator’ reunion, with Dennis Paoli providing the script, photography by Mac Ahlberg, effects by John Carl Buechler, and a cast comprising Barbara Crampton, Jeffrey Combs and David Gale, with the ever wonderful David Warner (R.I.P.) thrown in for good measure. </p>
<p>In the grand tradition of Poe/Lovecraft adaptations through the ages, the film’s narrative has pretty much nothing in common with the supposed source story whatsoever. Instead, Paoli’s script sees Crampton taking centre stage, playing a woman returning to the attic chamber of a medieval castle which she had previously shared with her lover (Combs), a lapsed priest and alleged black magician who has recently taken his own life, prompting her to flee and leave the room vacant. </p>
<p>This ill-stared chamber is apparently still up for rent from the castle’s acid-tongued landlady (Una Brandon-Jones) however, and, once ensconced within it (ostensibly to “collect her things,” although the room looks bare), Crampton begins to experience a series of increasingly hair-raising manifestations related to her deceased partner, and reflective of the unholy depredations the pair apparently got up to prior to Combs’ decision to sling a noose slung over the high beams, and depart this mortal coil… temporarily, at least. </p>
<p>Along the way, Warner pops up as the revenant spirit of another dead priest, who pops up to warn Crampton of the error of her ways, whilst Gale is in full effect as Combs’ familiar, a chittering, man-faced rat-thing straight out of ‘Dreams in the Witch House’. </p>
<p>And... it actually all works really well. Paoli’s story is weird, memorable and unnerving, leaving plenty to the imagination, whilst the production design and performances are excellent. </p>
<p>Though she’s not really called upon to do much more than act terrified, confused and distraught here, Crampton achieves this quite brilliantly. Always a good few rungs up the ladder from yr average ‘80s ‘scream queen’, the sheer intensity scruff of the neck and drags us through this compressed ghost train ride of a viewing experience very effectively. </p>
<p>By contrast, we get a relatively low-key turn from Combs, but there is still a hell of a lot to enjoy in his sleazily sinister presence. His introductory “hi” at the moment his character first takes on corporeal form is a delight in itself, and the spectral love scenes he shares with Crampton take on an appropriately fevered quality, drawing us further into the odd story being told here. </p>
<p>Warner meanwhile seems a bit surplus to requirements here in terms of the narrative, but it’s great to have him along for the ride, and he’s clearly having a fine time regardless. In the midst of a seemingly endless series of rent-a-villain / mad scientist roles at this point in his career, the old boy knows exactly how to pitch a high-handed spectral priest, managing to deliver lines like “I’m a bishop, from Canterbury, sent to expel your lover from our church” entirely straight, without eliciting laughs from the peanut gallery. </p>
<p>As for the long-suffering David Gale meanwhile, one shudders to imagine the indignities he must have been subjected to in the process of realising Buechler’s man-faced rat effects - an inspired mixture of puppetry and facial prosthetics which is actually extremely effective, allowing Gale’s face and voice remain present, even when seemingly attached to a repulsive, ankle-high critter capering about on the castle floor. </p>
<p>Essentially functioning as a foul-mouthed, perpetually enraged manifestation of the Combs character’s id, Gale manages to deliver a memorable performance under what we might reasonably assuming were challenging circumstances; his spittle-flecked delivery of words like “WHORE” and “SLUT” in particular are imbued with an old world, puritan gusto which I very much enjoyed. </p>
<p>Shot, inevitably, amid the imposing environs of the swanky Italian castle which Charles Band inexplicably ended up owning in the late ‘80s (also see: ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ (1991), ‘Castle Freak’ (1995)), ‘..Clergyman’ benefits greatly from the location’s in-built atmosphere, adopting an almost abstract / fairy tale-like vibe which slips further into delirium as Crampton’s visions take told, and the world outside her lofty chamber effectively ceases to exist. </p>
<p>Moodily lit by Ahlberg in a none-more-80s manner, with deep shadows and shocks of blue-tinged moon light drifting in across the ancient brick-work, this is certainly one of the more accomplished efforts I’ve seen bearing Charles Band’s name as director. As is often the case, it’s perhaps questionable to what extent creative decisions here were actually taken by Band, but for what it’s worth, everything here is very solidly done. (I particularly liked the striking use of vertiginous high and low angles, reflecting the constant presence of both the swinging noose above, and the skittering rat-thing below.) </p>
<p>Even Richard Band’s retrospectively recorded orchestral score goes over gangbusters, really classing up this murky VHS-sourced work-print, much like his similarly bombastic/melodic work on Gordon’s ‘80s films, hovering just on the precipice of Elfman-esque parody, but never quite taking the plunge, or overpowering the action on-screen. </p>
<p>Given how strong this short is overall, it’s easy to see why a few elements ended up being recycled in other productions during the years in which the material shot for ‘Pulse Pounders’ remained unreleased. </p>
<p>Most notably, the effects used to create the human-faced rat creature were repurposed pretty much in their entirety for the creation of Brown Jenkin in Gordon’s 2005 TV adaptation of Lovecraft’s ‘Dreams in the Witch House’, whilst the “erotically charged predatory haunting” conceit of Paoli’s script also strongly reminded me of another Gordon-adjacent film, Danny Draven’s 2002 ‘Deathbed’ (not to be confused with the late George Barry’s <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2013/03/death-bed-bed-that-eats-george-barry.html ">outsider masterpiece</a> of the same name), an interesting obscurity, also shot by Ahlberg and executive produced by Band, which saw release on DVD under the rather niche banner of “Stuart Gordon presents…”. (Were there any other entries in that series, I wonder? I don’t recall ever seeing any...) </p><p>In summary then, ‘The Evil Clergyman’ stands as something of an unexpected minor miracle for fans of the Empire/Full Moon/Stuart Gordon milieu. Alongside this year’s <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2023/11/lovecraft-on-film-suitable-flesh-joe.html ">Suitable Flesh</a>, it offers encouraging proof that the spirit of Gordon’s Lovecraft movies could live on and flourish, even in circumstances in which the man himself was unable to call the shots. Well worth making a small amount of time for if (as is understandable) it passed you by upon its belated release in 2012. </p>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-32787606027655465892023-11-17T21:00:00.001+00:002023-11-19T11:47:58.152+00:00Lovecraft on Film: Suitable Flesh (Joe Lynch, 2023)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Oi2BwB4jX03zadsO9zmgqV342bFIRpNp53dy8iB2RErwn5FnviSoFJEahjG6aGyvg42UyqRMcySw7FLK_95W7z96zAd_acOwJdQTne2-emSH1cpqCC3MM696FMF2W7Wh6oj9XlBDJUfLAhq6NAD_te1lMuaiDZPwOrMmicLI6cY1wkR8fyldu6onVp8/s1480/Suitable%20Flesh%20poster.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1480" data-original-width="1000" height="582" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1Oi2BwB4jX03zadsO9zmgqV342bFIRpNp53dy8iB2RErwn5FnviSoFJEahjG6aGyvg42UyqRMcySw7FLK_95W7z96zAd_acOwJdQTne2-emSH1cpqCC3MM696FMF2W7Wh6oj9XlBDJUfLAhq6NAD_te1lMuaiDZPwOrMmicLI6cY1wkR8fyldu6onVp8/w432-h640/Suitable%20Flesh%20poster.jpg" width="393" /></a></i></div><i>“..the place of utter blasphemy, the unholy pit where the black realm begins and the watcher guards the gate… I saw a shaggoth - it changed shape… I can’t stand it… I won’t stand it… I’ll kill her if she ever sends me there again…” </i><p></p><p>- H.P. Lovecraft, ‘The Thing On The Doorstep’</p>
<p>Though it was apparently drafted as early as 1933, ‘The Thing On The Doorstep’ was actually the last of H.P. Lovecraft’s story to see publication during the author’s lifetime, appearing two months before his death, in the January 1937 issue of ‘Weird Tales’. </p>
<p>Employing a relatively direct and unadorned prose style, ‘..Doorstep’ opens not with, say, a dense and baroque description of the stunted trees growing around some rarely used pike off the road in the depths of the Miskatonic valley, but instead with a concise sentence more deliberately designed to draw in the casual pulp magazine reader. (<i>“It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to show by this statement that I am not his murderer.”</i>) </p>
<p>This has led some to speculate that this tale, chronicling decadent writer Edward Pickman Derby’s enslavement and bodily possession by his sinister wife Asenath, may have been concocted with a greater degree of commercial consideration than was usually the case with HPL’s work - possibly reflecting the occasional necessity of actually earning a buck or two from the coffers of his long-suffering editors. Perhaps as a result, it is rarely cited as a favourite by Lovecraft’s more ardent devotees, and remains a bit of an outlier within his canon of core ‘Cthulhu Mythos’ tales. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, I’ve always found it surprising that ‘Thing on the Doorstep’ hasn’t more frequently drawn the attention of those seeking to adapt the Lovecraft’s work for the screen, given that it features the only significant female character in the entirety of his fiction (well, sort of), and that the essence its core body transference plot-line remains pretty cinema-friendly, requiring no on-screen realisation of unearthly locales or sanity-shaking monstrosities. </p>
<p>And verily, the drought of ‘..Doorstep’ adaptations has finally come to an end in grand style this year, as some familiar faces have teamed up with some less familiar ones to bring us ‘Suitable Flesh’ - an acknowledged tribute to / continuation of the legacy of Lovecraftian cinema created by the late <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2020/03/deathblog-stuart-gordon-1947-2020.html ">Stuart Gordon</a>, and a far from unworthy one, if I’m any judge. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoEAuyFKnNZyqKnBGrCWZqOt93NCSqZsE0I8RgBpY4wDzBvGzMYUkMDStCakde4d5voSN2_WO-JfpFgaNphbsQyz4vbBVeHBqdC0uU5KBQ38G801_fG7svEd9sizeHGiRHW6ez-M4Xpg2ord7wutSPZ9CV6AwqD45_bYs7Bubo8aInS_QRvZ1DoOC6JI0/s750/01%20Suitable%20Flesh%2004.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="750" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoEAuyFKnNZyqKnBGrCWZqOt93NCSqZsE0I8RgBpY4wDzBvGzMYUkMDStCakde4d5voSN2_WO-JfpFgaNphbsQyz4vbBVeHBqdC0uU5KBQ38G801_fG7svEd9sizeHGiRHW6ez-M4Xpg2ord7wutSPZ9CV6AwqD45_bYs7Bubo8aInS_QRvZ1DoOC6JI0/w400-h214/01%20Suitable%20Flesh%2004.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Birthed from a project which was apparently in the early stages of development when Gordon passed away in 2020, ‘..Flesh’ has subsequently been brought to fruition by producer/star Barbara Crampton and director Joe Lynch, and the resulting film benefits greatly from a classically well turned out script by Dennis Paoli (who, for the uninitiated amongst us, wrote all of Gordon’s Lovecraft adaptations).
<p>Dragging the core conceit of Lovecraft’s tale into the 21st century by means of gender-switching both the narrator and the best friend character who forms the subject of the narration, Paoli has succeeded in whittling the story down into a highly effective, tightly-plotted modern horror movie (just as he did with <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2020/03/lovecraft-on-film-reanimator-1985-and.html ">Reanimator</a> and <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2020/07/lovecraft-on-film-from-beyond-stuart.html ">From Beyond</a> all those years ago), adding additional interest to the narrative by considerably complicating the nature of Dr Elizabeth Derby’s relationship to the unlikely sexual partner who drags her into a hellish predicament of body-switching black magickal terror. </p>Played by Heather Graham, Dr Derby was formerly an Arkham-based psychoanalyst, but when we meet her here, she is a resident in the dingy padded cell which Miskatonic Medical School have conveniently kept upstairs since the days of Dean Halsey’s incarceration.
<p>Elizabeth’s friend and professional mentor, Dr Daniella Upton (Crampton), boldly steps through the bolted door, intent on subjecting her latest patient to a good ol’ “let’s go through it one more time” talking cure. And so, after Derby has obsessively reiterated her insistence that the corpse of one Asa Waite - a badly mutilated teenage boy currently residing downstairs in the morgue - be cremated immediately, we shift straight into Film Noir-approved flashback mode, taking us back to the day when awkward and inarticulate goth kid Asa (played by Judah Lewis) first burst unannounced through the door of Elizabeth’s private practice office, pleading for help, claiming he was being pursued and persecuted by his father, before suddenly undergoing a sudden, alarming shift in personality. </p>
<p>Patterned more after a thriller or noir than a gothic horror, Paoli’s script renders the assorted twists which follow with a precision that any ‘40s RKO or Columbia screenwriter would have been proud of, threading a wealth of verbal tics and visual motifs (a concentration on hands, the details of the various characters’ smoking habits, etc) through the narrative to help us glide through this potentially confusing yarn in smooth, exposition-free fashion, whilst allowing all the knotty inter-personal relationships to pay off just the way they should come the inevitable, bloody conclusion. </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZPqvTgFVAkTXqFK1z8qNZ9MU_BlzPpld8hTyb0exfUegk2pqtm_njR0hc3V1CCRXLrvtxOjJ9rVO8f2PsxvZ8rORzguCPYHAd2JpTU2mlsmEokfNa0LrLB5Gp6H7168-tuQmS-eLVD47nqiy5ku0HYxJXlVdKQzwStix-Mx0LdfENdLxl71ln4TmO1so/s500/02%20Suitable%20Flesh%2001.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="211" data-original-width="500" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZPqvTgFVAkTXqFK1z8qNZ9MU_BlzPpld8hTyb0exfUegk2pqtm_njR0hc3V1CCRXLrvtxOjJ9rVO8f2PsxvZ8rORzguCPYHAd2JpTU2mlsmEokfNa0LrLB5Gp6H7168-tuQmS-eLVD47nqiy5ku0HYxJXlVdKQzwStix-Mx0LdfENdLxl71ln4TmO1so/w400-h169/02%20Suitable%20Flesh%2001.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>For Lovecraft fans approaching a ‘..Doorstep’ adaptation, the natural fear is that the generous dose of yogsothothery HPL gifted us with on paper could easily be jettisoned, allowing the central body-swap gimmick to be presented as a more easily digestible (and cheaper) science fiction conceit.
<p>As such, I’m glad to report that ‘Suitable Flesh’ keeps at least a <i>bit</i> of Mythos mayhem in the mix, allowing Asa’s father (or at least, the malevolent entity inhabiting him) to remain a black magician and disciple of the Great Old Ones. In fact, his portrayal (by Bruce Davison, when in his ‘original’ body) as a foul-mouthed, narcissistic, lecherous old bastard proves one of the movie’s highlights - both surprising and genuinely menacing. </p>
<p> (Could Davison’s character perhaps be read as a reflection of the evil wrought upon contemporary American culture by certain other predatory, self-obsessed baby boomers… or is that maybe a stretch too far, do you think?) </p>
<p>That aside though, we’ve still inevitably lost a lot in the transition to the screen. With the constraints of low budget filmmaking being what they are, you’ll be unsurprised to hear that there are no unspeakable rites in unhallowed caverns beneath the Maine woods to be enjoyed here, no - ahem - “shaggoths”, no hints of nameless cults sniffing around the Derby/Waites’ doors, and - sadly - no remnant of the original story’s Innsmouth angle (which effectively makes it a sequel of sorts to ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’). </p>
<p>There are some remaining hints that ‘..Flesh’s script may at one point have retained this connection (eg, some references to Elizabeth’s husband (Jonathan Schaech) catching and cooking fish, and the couple’s use of ocean footage when they're making love), but, unlike the rest of Paoli’s script, these little winks to the Lovecraft-literate viewer never really pay off. </p>
<p>As a result, we lose probably the single nastiest idea from Lovecraft’s story (that of the elderly sorcerer Ephraim Waite fathering his “weak-willed, half-human girl child” purely in order to take possession of her body, leaving her spirit screaming mad in the attic in his mouldering carcass), along with that persistant sense of a wider occult conspiracy which permeates Lovecraft’s mythos tales. </p>
<p>Making up for these absences however, ‘Suitable Flesh’ does give us, well… a hell of a lot of sex, to not put too fine a point on it. </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrnrh_2HlWENMitVJBsKcAMju4ejN74DBWm_zqIvHMzHn30AfZhzG5Yy-fbVNS78on-yjuhwhK772hnYO3QAWg6M2ZldhbVCn6rN5qlgVu9PGhQTRoTIIIFipQi73UHuaZu7pMItONDGvXMPc57ki3ZosnlMZPIWewEIcLsFza1m0nrycj2wUQTFplBB0/s550/03%20Suitable%20Flesh%2005.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="550" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrnrh_2HlWENMitVJBsKcAMju4ejN74DBWm_zqIvHMzHn30AfZhzG5Yy-fbVNS78on-yjuhwhK772hnYO3QAWg6M2ZldhbVCn6rN5qlgVu9PGhQTRoTIIIFipQi73UHuaZu7pMItONDGvXMPc57ki3ZosnlMZPIWewEIcLsFza1m0nrycj2wUQTFplBB0/w400-h213/03%20Suitable%20Flesh%2005.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Crowbarring sex and perverse eroticism into Lovecraft’s universe was already of course a key element of all of Paoli and Gordon’s collaborations, but even in the BDSM-drenched ‘From Beyond’, the beast-with-two-backs was never previously foregrounded to quite the extent it is here, as the development of ‘Suitable Flesh’s plot is increasingly driven forward through the multifarious couplings of of the bodies of the four primary characters, together which whichever combinations of the four (or five?) primary intelligences are ‘inhabiting’ them at any given point, as the body-swappin’ ritual initiated by the entity possessing Ephraim Waite becomes wilder and more instantaneous as things progress.
<p>As some commentators have already noted, many of the sex scenes here have a bit of a ‘skinemax’ / cable TV vibe to them, and not necessarily in a good way, as tastefully shot, nudity-free kinky/vanilla encounters remain the order of the day, in spite of the outlandish circumstances surrounding them, making ‘Suitable Flesh’ perhaps the world’s first example of a fully-fledged Lovecraftian erotic thriller. (Fifty Shades of Great Old One, anyone? I’ll get my coat…) <b><span style="color: red; font-family: courier;">(1) </span></b></p>
<p>Moving away from such pastel-hued sweatiness however, the climactic body transfer / seduction scene between Heather Graham and Judah Lewis in the study of Waite house proves rather more disquieting - probably the closest ‘Suitable Flesh’ gets to the trademark moments of transgression which Gordon brought to nearly all his films, as the teenaged Asa - inhabited by the spirit formerly residing in his father - uses telepathic ooga-booga to force himself upon Elizabeth Derby, as the corpse of the old man - soon to be decapitated and flambéed - lays dead on the carpet behind them. </p>
<p>It’s a great, show-stopping scene all round, but, the curious disjuncture between ‘erotic thriller’ and ‘cosmic horror’ can still be felt here to some extent, in the sense that, whilst all this was going on, I kept finding myself wishing they’d give it a rest and check out those oh-so-tempting sorcerer’s bookshelves behind them instead. I mean, softcore sex films are ten a penny, but how often do you get a chance to have a good poke around in ‘Unaussprechlichen Kulten’, y’knowwhatImean? </p>
<p> (Admittedly, we <i>do</i> get a pretty good look at Waite’s ‘Necronomicon’ here, but sadly I fear the prop the design team came up with looks a bit naff. Bit of a niche gripe to put it mildly, but I do sometimes wish people could move past the look of the book as defined by ‘The Evil Dead’ and try a different approach…)</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMowMjX-KTPSCelZG6IMcQ6hqBbacey5FkiPlTXP3xzq9bzbLCPn-DfGU3NVY80InYMVO3yMDwoOcAmEK3OSW-5wJJ7eDt2cEVJ_KufxKWrU9H-bL71ngicrGIEDPVHBr1oxq-xRkWrPUnqNUS-q40JtfshTHxRvM59ndmW7yrIB0rC5UHtS3NLv1K9D4/s500/04%20Suitable%20Flesh%2003.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="281" data-original-width="500" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMowMjX-KTPSCelZG6IMcQ6hqBbacey5FkiPlTXP3xzq9bzbLCPn-DfGU3NVY80InYMVO3yMDwoOcAmEK3OSW-5wJJ7eDt2cEVJ_KufxKWrU9H-bL71ngicrGIEDPVHBr1oxq-xRkWrPUnqNUS-q40JtfshTHxRvM59ndmW7yrIB0rC5UHtS3NLv1K9D4/w400-h225/04%20Suitable%20Flesh%2003.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Anyway, ‘Suitable Flesh’s closing act, full of gory chaos in Miskatonic Medical School, functions as pure fan service for the ‘Reanimator’ / ‘From Beyond’ crowd... but I’m entirely fine with that, I must say. I especially enjoyed the little in-joke about the security guard sitting outside the morgue being the son of the guy who fulfilled the same function on ‘Reanimator’ , and as mentioned, I’m glad the hospital kept the padded cell upstairs, just for old time’s sake.
<p>As always, Crampton is cool as ice here, and the male members of the cast (Lewis, Davison, Schaech) are all excellent, but really - in acting terms, this movie <i>belongs</i> to Heather Graham. I mean, I must confess, I’ve not exactly been following her career much over the past few decades, but I don’t recall seeing her in a role this full-on, since... I dunno, ‘Boogie Nights’, perhaps? She delivers a totally fearless, multi-faceted and appropriately unhinged performance here anyway, chewing up and spitting out some challenging material with ease, so - respect is due. </p>
<p>Could this be the start of a new career trajectory for her I wonder, joining Nick Cage as a former A-lister battling it out every couple of months in the realm of crazy, mid-budget horror movies? Here’s hoping. </p>
<p>Moving on to Joe Lynch’s direction meanwhile, it would be all too easy to say, “Stuart Gordon could have done this better”, but that would be an unfair comparison. Gordon, after all, was a much-loved horror director with a consistently strong body of work behind him, whereas, at the point I sat down to watch ‘Suitable Flesh’, Lynch was just... some guy, as far as I was concerned. </p>
<p>If I were feeling critical, I could take issue with a few bits of sub-par production design, a few goofy transitions (one ‘ceiling fan wipe’ in particular raised a few unintentional laughs in the cinema), the aforementioned blandness afflicting some of the sex scenes, and a reliance on the kind of modern effects (pointless gliding camera moves, rumbling “woosh/BANG!” sound design timed to the cutting, etc) which one would imagine Gordon, as a filmmaker of an older generation, would possibly not have embraced. </p>
<p>But, these are minor criticisms, and thankfully the film built up such a weight of good feeling elsewhere that I certainly wasn’t feeling critical when I left the screening. Lynch stepped into some big shoes by taking this project on and making it happen, and by-and-large he’s done pretty damn well with it. Good for him. </p>
<p>If not exactly a mind-blowing, game-changing triumph by any stretch of the imagination, ‘Suitable Flesh’ is <i>solid</i>, whether viewed as a more-than-decent 21st century horror film, a really weird-ass erotic thriller, or a noteworthy new addition to the tangled canon of Lovecraftian cinema. Perhaps most importantly though, it’s also a worthy continuation of the cinematic world Stuart Gordon created across his lifetime, and proof positive that that spirit can be still be taken forward, even though he’s no longer with us. Well done everybody. Any chance of another one, do you think..? </p>
--
<p> <b><span style="color: red; font-family: courier;">(1)</span></b> <i>In view of this, it was no surprise to hear director Joe Lynch popping up on the always entertaining <a href=" https://moviesthatmademe.com/podcast/joe-lynch/">The Movies That Made Me</a> podcast last month, discussing his long-standing and unrepentant love for the erotic thriller genre.</i></p>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-30968390394539749552023-10-31T16:56:00.000+00:002023-10-31T16:56:13.790+00:00Happy Halloween!<iframe width="400" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/R4-RuB2485s?si=weA4lkj3d2Wi5HkU" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>I hope you’re all having a good one out there. </p>
<p>And so, yeah, sadly I didn’t manage to get as many posts up here this season as I’d hoped to - but I hope readers got something out of the ones which did make it to the finish-line nonetheless. </p>
<p>I do have a couple more good ‘uns in various states of completion however, so happily the Horror Express will be rattling on through November to some extent, and, perhaps more importantly, I’ve also managed to watch a lot of movies, and make a lot of notes, which will be fed into a bigger project or two just down the line, all being well. </p>
<p>For now though, let’s settle in for the evening, heed the words of Roky and let the spirits run free. </p>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-71716651161340798572023-10-26T18:42:00.002+01:002023-10-26T20:41:37.666+01:00Horror Express: The Vampire’s Ghost (Lesley Selander, 1945)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwc3Ue1PhQrL9ZzOnKtfI4S53Dvp1U6oBlipnYpfiyqPdar2HUnzZky8Byq8RG0XSxegLsptIu5MxtoTQ6F0lJ0juMcWtHrjvGwwx-y4mACysLHp3UXtiOooEaz7nY1dDZWRHgTn9d1VVNbLYUmnn62oVlldNhyaw4-iqY2srrzfgEzgM8DxRkLd47wc4/s2783/The%20Vampire's%20Ghost%20poster.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2783" data-original-width="1785" height="621" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwc3Ue1PhQrL9ZzOnKtfI4S53Dvp1U6oBlipnYpfiyqPdar2HUnzZky8Byq8RG0XSxegLsptIu5MxtoTQ6F0lJ0juMcWtHrjvGwwx-y4mACysLHp3UXtiOooEaz7nY1dDZWRHgTn9d1VVNbLYUmnn62oVlldNhyaw4-iqY2srrzfgEzgM8DxRkLd47wc4/w410-h640/The%20Vampire's%20Ghost%20poster.jpg" width="398" /></a></div>I had a lot of fun with Lesley Selander’s <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2023/10/horror-express-catman-of-paris-lesley.html ">The Catman of Paris </a>earlier this month, so thought I’d make some time (only 58 minutes required) to check in on the other b-horror he directed for Republic Pictures in the mid ‘40s.<br /><p></p><p>As with ‘Catman..’, the title is intriguingly silly, betraying an attempt to hang onto the coattails of Universal’s waning horror output (they’d released both ‘The Mummy’s Ghost’ and ‘The Ghost of Frankenstein’ in the proceeding years), but... mixed results here, I'd say. </p>
<p>From the outset, ‘The Vampire’s Ghost’ proves to be a rather inert and talky affair, set amid the confines of a pokey and generally uninspiring backlot version of darkest Africa, wherein a largely undistinguished cast of white colonial types trudge through their allotted paces with no great surfeit of enthusiasm. </p>
<p>On the plus side though, it sure has some interesting notions buried within it. </p>
<p>Though he’s certainly no ghost, our resident vampire here turns out to be a former member of Queen Elizabeth I’s court, who - perhaps uniquely in the annals of cinematic vampirism - now finds himself running a gin joint in a fictional central African state, fleecing sailors in dice games and ruing the weary burden of his immortal condition, like some cut-price, blood-drinking Rick Blaine. </p>
<p>An odd fit for the vampire role, John Abbott initially looks more like the kind of guy you’d cast as an accountant or an elevator operator. But, he has a deep, sonorous voice and Peter Lorre-worthy bug-eyes, and ultmately leans into his unusual characterisation very well. </p>
<p>There’s an absolutely sublime scene for instance where, after being wounded by a spear whilst out on ‘safari’, Abbott uses his powers of mental persuasion to command the film’s hero (Charles Gordon) to carry him to the summit of a nearby mountain, where he luxuriates in the healing light of the full moon, his head resting on the precious Elizabethan box containing the grave soil of his original resting place, presented to him by the Queen after the Armada. Great stuff. </p>
<p>At first, it seems as if the vampire is going to be characterised as a variation on the Wandering Jew/Wolfman archetype - condemned to walk the earth for all eternity whilst seeking an escape from his supernatural affliction, and trying to warn the other characters away from him, lest they fall victim to his curse. </p>
<p>Later on though, he seems to have lost this benevolent streak, and, having given fair warning, gets straight on with the business of dominating Gordon’s mind, reducing him to a brain-dead slave, whilst he claims the leading lady (Peggy Stewart) for himself, whisking her off to the remote, abandoned temple of a supposed “death cult”, where, inexplicably in view of the film’s geography, a four-armed Hindu idol awaits them. (I liked the way Abbott plays all this with “another day, another dollar” resignation, as though he’s been through it all a hundred times before.) </p>
<p>Many of these interesting and unconventional story elements can presumably be traced back to legendary screenwriter and SF pioneer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_Brackett ">Leigh Brackett</a>, who takes co-writer and original story credits here, the same year she worked for Howard Hawks on ‘The Big Sleep’. And, as I can’t locate any additional background on her involvement with this film... that’s about all I have to say about that.<br /></p><p>Stylistically meanwhile, the movie seems to draw heavily from Val Lewton’s then-recent series of b-horror successes at RKO, even directly mimicking ‘I Walked With A Zombie’ (1943) during scenes in which the white folks sit nervously in their bamboo-shaded bungalows, muttering darkly about the jungle drums affecting the productivity of the natives down at the ol’ plantation and so on, whilst the presentation of the vampire’s killings seems to echo both ‘The Leopard Man’ (1943) and ‘Cat People’ (1942) in places. </p>
<p>Unfortunately though, Selander proves unable to muster even a fraction of the atmosphere Jacques Tourneur brought to those projects - largely through no fault of his own, I’m assuming, as a “first take, best take” policy clearly seems to have been in operation, whilst even the film’s best ‘horror’ moment (the vampire’s murder of the bar's sultry dancing girl Adele Mara, in a shadowed bedroom with the incessant pounding of the drums as a backdrop) is subjected to a disappointing early fade. </p>
<p>As ever with movies like this, I’m also obliged to note that events play out in what is very much the boilerplate “white man’s Africa” of the era’s pulp magazines and Jungle Jim serials. So, even if it can’t quite summon up the energy to be overtly racist about it, if you’re looking for sympathetic portrayals of indigenous African characters or veiled commentary on the vampiric nature of colonialism or somesuch, well, I’m afraid you won’t find it here, partner. </p>
<p>As usual with these things, the sight of African-American actors forced to play benign, half-witted tribespeople gabbling away in pidgin English also rather grates, especially in view of the film’s failure to conjure any of the gravitas or sense of place which Tourneur, or even Victor Halperin (‘White Zombie’), brought to their respective entries in the sub-genre. So, if you’re the sort of sensible viewer who doesn’t feel the need to tolerate this kind of crap when watching old movies - be forewarned. </p>
<p>Indeed, whilst dedicated scholars of pulp horror, vampire lore or off-beat poverty row programmers are sure to find enough intriguing content in ‘The Vampire’s Ghost’ to keep them occupied long after the credits have rolled, purely in terms of the film’s entertainment value, I’m going to have to close by suggesting that more general horror fans might want to think twice and/or keep their expectations in check when approaching this one. </p>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-10775351240095950592023-10-24T17:39:00.000+01:002023-10-24T17:39:53.429+01:00Hammer House of Horror: Guardian of the Abyss (Don Sharp, 1980)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRoR8ADZHpD3VACNJkddwne9B-y9eLztP-8ay5ELMYIFyCOoM0c5WoqkW0lgaf7Nk83ycZKoA946RYXBFdDtsUbgc5hyPGALr6i38JV6pg8qQkowLbkfYosauLqI4Xtwh3ldTAQhN2fFCeTd8cJmIyHPVETBD5he5PD5NczYclQmn9-JlumEPy_8pifR4/s1200/01%20HHoH%20-%20GuardianotAbyss00002.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1200" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRoR8ADZHpD3VACNJkddwne9B-y9eLztP-8ay5ELMYIFyCOoM0c5WoqkW0lgaf7Nk83ycZKoA946RYXBFdDtsUbgc5hyPGALr6i38JV6pg8qQkowLbkfYosauLqI4Xtwh3ldTAQhN2fFCeTd8cJmIyHPVETBD5he5PD5NczYclQmn9-JlumEPy_8pifR4/w400-h240/01%20HHoH%20-%20GuardianotAbyss00002.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOoANfGPoQwHA1jgtPz54HttqAUmkWGMqCbtatpPKCxXu-WsH6RTz3xa5HOY8UzA2zgeQn8adqpTajDmwo6gfD9hvHWGFZmA1EsbPlwIP4Jdltsrq6fo0qlNzDjDhcnTICMxdGsl1EBpcB563_1QJEnBzf_rLnj4UTKLOoizIpWrLFcYu3qVHtUmE0WME/s1200/02%20HHoH%20-%20GuardianotAbyss00003.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1200" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOoANfGPoQwHA1jgtPz54HttqAUmkWGMqCbtatpPKCxXu-WsH6RTz3xa5HOY8UzA2zgeQn8adqpTajDmwo6gfD9hvHWGFZmA1EsbPlwIP4Jdltsrq6fo0qlNzDjDhcnTICMxdGsl1EBpcB563_1QJEnBzf_rLnj4UTKLOoizIpWrLFcYu3qVHtUmE0WME/w400-h240/02%20HHoH%20-%20GuardianotAbyss00003.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJUUSigDZa12aTX-KsB1UkImDxWrAWzEJJWW4axE-1cL9avQvJGVV_fRbbgaxH4egtgYPUHMZlctucREQx7mVCEc73hsEzmzrhyphenhyphenLsHGUDvX3Xdqhq8ckj1NzonsV70FIZQC4oBBLMuElMhpvMbUpFYbEOpj29aUuXcfWv0rkK7XAyk3qwwVv8EyYd8rsM/s1200/03%20HHoH%20-%20GuardianotAbyss00012.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1200" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJUUSigDZa12aTX-KsB1UkImDxWrAWzEJJWW4axE-1cL9avQvJGVV_fRbbgaxH4egtgYPUHMZlctucREQx7mVCEc73hsEzmzrhyphenhyphenLsHGUDvX3Xdqhq8ckj1NzonsV70FIZQC4oBBLMuElMhpvMbUpFYbEOpj29aUuXcfWv0rkK7XAyk3qwwVv8EyYd8rsM/w400-h240/03%20HHoH%20-%20GuardianotAbyss00012.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAYkKTpF28DbyUumzU6ry0X154WLuqLAxDuGPvf9PEC_0C_TeMFlkAWb3gHOWLBoya0NT7FUBfBlOblNNRF7sAZuDHVwLKjFKASyX_hOdDQ7fc1Jeb5pDJq3WJ2ofT1-Pkhyphenhyphen83vGmK-bFrl0m02_hYQumksLeO8VmCjsctjsm2apDpGom-0R9u8fmQD2A/s1200/04%20HHoH%20-%20GuardianotAbyss00007.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1200" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAYkKTpF28DbyUumzU6ry0X154WLuqLAxDuGPvf9PEC_0C_TeMFlkAWb3gHOWLBoya0NT7FUBfBlOblNNRF7sAZuDHVwLKjFKASyX_hOdDQ7fc1Jeb5pDJq3WJ2ofT1-Pkhyphenhyphen83vGmK-bFrl0m02_hYQumksLeO8VmCjsctjsm2apDpGom-0R9u8fmQD2A/w400-h240/04%20HHoH%20-%20GuardianotAbyss00007.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGgajIhwUFYPa8y-WAf3aXFy6xlIjJcJyMwPOOoTJwzLB4JLUU_4jN3eKGElkk7x-gbRUMcsNxWydBqWzOmAlYcGkI7RhMe4V2q1yxufR-hWNCXKVVKuNhnK8jNbp3RpZe3k5IWel9PGpFvoUClk35oSr591TwYPwB6g-F0HsNmZE5oiH8h_pid0L4bJ4/s1200/05%20HHoH%20-%20GuardianotAbyss00008.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1200" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGgajIhwUFYPa8y-WAf3aXFy6xlIjJcJyMwPOOoTJwzLB4JLUU_4jN3eKGElkk7x-gbRUMcsNxWydBqWzOmAlYcGkI7RhMe4V2q1yxufR-hWNCXKVVKuNhnK8jNbp3RpZe3k5IWel9PGpFvoUClk35oSr591TwYPwB6g-F0HsNmZE5oiH8h_pid0L4bJ4/w400-h240/05%20HHoH%20-%20GuardianotAbyss00008.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNnbmeTPODgDu-6NRN4k3RqBrYLKEXWOFjMWCjGYCmKyII73sXPL47a74DIxZrT3aB8VxleNKwbZrOBO3evLnrWX8q-oZejpKFd1khNmBKxN5dIDUwd0yQQ9FHH5d1jMoNazk1pLDOWNyJOHDJ0aU6wNtldc00LgzyGkXP0xmuY0Tzh9B5eGuYjAXgzgM/s1200/06%20HHoH%20-%20GuardianotAbyss00011.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1200" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNnbmeTPODgDu-6NRN4k3RqBrYLKEXWOFjMWCjGYCmKyII73sXPL47a74DIxZrT3aB8VxleNKwbZrOBO3evLnrWX8q-oZejpKFd1khNmBKxN5dIDUwd0yQQ9FHH5d1jMoNazk1pLDOWNyJOHDJ0aU6wNtldc00LgzyGkXP0xmuY0Tzh9B5eGuYjAXgzgM/w400-h240/06%20HHoH%20-%20GuardianotAbyss00011.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>The HHoH’s hot streak continues into episode # 10, as Don “Razor” Sharp (‘Kiss of the Vampire’, ‘Psychomania’) directs this positively ripping Wheatley-esque black magick yarn.
<p>Like <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2023/10/hammer-house-of-horror-children-of-full.html ">Children of the Full Moon</a>, it’s a bit of a “does exactly what it says on the tin” kind of episode, but what can I say? It’s bloody good tin, and I’m happy to see them getting some more use out of it. </p><p>So, we’re treated here to some rousing adventures in the home counties antiques trade, as Tina (Caroline Langrishe), a shop owner and astrologically-minded associate of tweedy man-about-town Mike Roberts (Ray Lonnen), inadvertently takes possession of Dr John Dee’s original scrying glass, bought as part of a cut price job lot at an auction. </p>
<p>Soon thereafter, the pair both find themselves in the sights of the malevolent Chronozon Society, after Mike narrowly avoids running down one of their fleeing sacrificial victims, as he roars past the grounds of their high priest's stately home in his Mercedes convertible. </p>
<p>Like any good Englishman, Mike greets the sight of a distressed and disorientated young woman standing in the middle of the road with a spirited “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”, before immediately inviting her back to his gaff for a brandy, thus allowing her the opportunity to make off with the cursed mirror (which he has borrowed from Tina on the pretext of getting its value professionally appraised), at which point the game is very much afoot. </p>
<p>It must be said, this episode is not exactly over-blessed with gothic atmosphere, and its supernatural elements do get a bit silly in places, especially vis-a-vis the Chronozon cultists’ rather hackneyed use of voodoo dolls to target their enemies, and the highly questionable make up used to represent the manifestations of their bull-faced deity. </p>
<p>But, for the most part, the ritual scenes still hit the required clichés dead-on (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigil_of_Baphomet ">Baphomet pentagrams</a>, deconsecrated church, hooded celebrants, inverted crucifixes, infernal chanting, and a nice, neat cupboard where they keep their roosters), and they are considerably elevated by a superbly imperious performance from John Carson (‘Captain Kronos’, ‘Taste the Blood of Dracula’) as the cult’s aristocratic high priest Charles Randolph. </p><p>Meanwhile, Sharp keeps things fast-paced and eventful, as the story rattles onward with a good, pulpy velocity. For his part, screenwriter David Fisher clearly spent an enjoyable afternoon or two boning up on the best occult lore his local library had to offer, meaning that his script is chock full of at-least-distantly-truthful exposition concerning Dee & Kelley, Aleister Crowley, the Thule Society and the exacting detail of the notorious <a href=" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choronzon ">Chronozon Working</a>, as historically attempted by at least some of those august gents - albeit, not exactly in the considerately TV friendly form depicted here, with the sacrificial victims given strips of anointed fabric to preserve their modesty.</p><p>Aside from the obvious Wheatley comparisons, ‘Guardian of the Abyss’ also reminded me of Ralph Comer’s absolutely fantastic 1969 occult novel <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2011/11/mirror-of-dionysos-by-ralph-comer.html ">The Mirror of Dionysus</a> - not only with regard to the use of the mirror / scrying glass as a plot point, but also the conscious attempt to drag the aesthetic of Wheatley’s black magic tales kicking and screaming into the more socially liberal 1970s, and the tendency of both stories to take an ‘info dump’ approach to communicating the fruits of the writers’ occult research. </p><p>Did you know for instance, that if you invite a black magician into your home, you must NEVER allow them access to wine, bread and salt? Well, you do now! </p>
<p>This handy life tip reaches us via an absolutely splendid reinterpretation of the memorable ‘Mocata comes to visit’ / attempted hypnotism sequence from Hammer’s ‘The Devil Rides Out’, which constitutes the highlight both of the episode as a whole, and of Carson’s commanding performance. Though perhaps not quite equalling Charles Gray's inimitable take on this particular character-type, he definitely puts his own unique stamp on it. </p>
<p>Elsewhere, the slightly Kate Bush-like Rosalyn Landor makes for a very striking presence as the aforementioned sacrificial victim / love interest / willowy femme fatale type character - which is convenient, as IMDB reminds me that she actually played the little girl in ‘The Devil Rides Out’ twelve years earlier, at the age of ten! So, rest assured, someone was clearly putting some thought into this stuff. </p>
<p>And, I even rather liked Lonnen’s hero character too. Though he would have been considered a mere oik within the refined, aristocratic universe of Wheatley’s novels, we’re at the dawn of the socially mobile 1980s here chaps, and Mike Roberts represents a distinctly English, none-more-middle-class pulp protagonist of the kind you just don’t see anymore. </p>
<p>A dashing, clear-headed fellow who’s just as comfortable assessing the value of military brasses and undertaking genealogical research as he is with car chases, proffering brandy to stray young ladies and the occasional bit of fisticuffs, he could easily have come straight from the pages of a Brian Lumley or Guy N. Smith book, and is all the better for it in my view. (It’s a shame he doesn’t smoke a pipe, but - you can’t have everything.) </p>
<p>Actually, I was lying about the car chases and fisticuffs - sadly, both are notably absent from ‘Guardian of the Abyss’, despite multiple opportunities for their inclusion (although, I’m confident Mike Roberts could still have proved himself pretty handy in both scenarios, given half a chance). </p>
<p>This absence is a real shame given Sharp’s proven track record as an action director, and lord knows, this tale could surely have benefitted from at least a few scenes of hooded cultists getting walloped and tripping over their cassocks and so on. But, I fear this lack of choreographed action probably speaks to a regrettable degree of haste and budgetary constraint in this episode’s production, which is also very much evident in its ending. </p>
<p>With the best will in the world (which I certainly had by this point), the conclusion of ‘Guardian of the Abyss’ still feels rushed, sloppy and confusing, leaving things on a rather unsatisfactory note. But, no matter - I had such a grand old time on the way to it, I'm happy to let things slide. </p>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-55335024902743572652023-10-20T18:26:00.003+01:002023-10-21T15:48:18.280+01:00Exploito All’Italiana: Black Magic Rites (Renato Polselli, 1973)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitcHJcgjOlKyDIjTCIC7j8Ze1miNSV4DDJETnJNcANZpF4mpmMGtmcVBG6H7QBQGDJwZDFb_J2ZhA-LOubUtwSdlLZ-3bveAuzCFptU97BNW-xzfGpwguWV-Bg_LSmG8-X_kgcQq-uvuXzsQSCUwsOENn4lV6xgkx8HiIxKILbYlOjqAMc9Jga6hlY5F4/s2000/Black%20Magic%20Rites%20poster.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="968" height="819" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitcHJcgjOlKyDIjTCIC7j8Ze1miNSV4DDJETnJNcANZpF4mpmMGtmcVBG6H7QBQGDJwZDFb_J2ZhA-LOubUtwSdlLZ-3bveAuzCFptU97BNW-xzfGpwguWV-Bg_LSmG8-X_kgcQq-uvuXzsQSCUwsOENn4lV6xgkx8HiIxKILbYlOjqAMc9Jga6hlY5F4/w310-h640/Black%20Magic%20Rites%20poster.jpg" width="397" /></a></div> So, having managed to maintain this blog for the better part of fifteen years, it feels remiss of me not have dedicated at least a few paragraphs to discussing the indescribable cinematic singularity which is Renato Polselli’s ‘Riti, Magie Nere e Segrete Orge nel Trecento’ <i>[‘Rites, Black Magic and Secret Orgies of the Fourteenth Century’]</i>, aka ‘The Reincarnation of Isobel’, allegedly aka ‘The Ghastly Orgies of Count Dracula’… but known to most of us (for the sake of brevity, if nothing else) simply as ‘Black Magic Rites’. <p></p>
<p>So, what with it being October, and having just spent some time luxuriating in the glow of Indicator’s never-thought-I’d-see-the-day <a href="https://www.powerhousefilms.co.uk/collections/limited-editions/products/black-magic-rites-4k-uhd-le">4k restoration</a>… now would seem to be the time to take a deep breath and get on with it. </p><p>It must be admitted from the outset that this is a very difficult movie to try to review in any conventional sense, as those who have seen it will surely appreciate. </p>
<p>It is not only the film’s almost total lack of narrative which causes difficulties for the potential critic, but the seeming lack of any unifying pattern or purpose whatsoever. Faced with the onslaught of audio-visual anarchy found herein, the idea of understanding what Polselli’s intentions were in creating this thing, or of positing any framework against which his success may be assessed, seems nigh on impossible. </p>
<p> ‘Black Magic Rites’ is, essentially, about as close as a piece of ostensibly commercial cinema has ever come to a state of utter, formless chaos, a celluloid equivalent of the mad piping of the servitors of Lovecraft’s blind idiot god crouching vacantly at the centre of the uncaring universe. </p>
<p>If you go in with enough determination, and pay close enough attention, you <i>can</i> identify discrete scenes and sections within the film, albeit generally interrupting and overlapping with each other to no clearly defined purpose. (This time around for instance, I was particularly taken by the whole funeral / premature burial sequence). </p>
<p>But, basically, this is a 100-minute hypnotic drone of a movie - no form, no progression. Most of the characters here are doing exactly the same thing at the end that they were doing at the start. The intermittent fragments of narrative which <i>do</i> creep in from time to time feel a bit like a heavy psychedelic rock band half-heartedly trying to add lyrics and song structure to their music, only for it to be totally drowned out by the roar of their amplifiers. </p>
<p>And what exactly, the uninitiated may ask, might that metaphorical roar consist of? </p>
<p>Well, you know - fire, screaming, gurning faces, crimson gore, kaleidoscopic psychedelic hoo-hah, awkwardly framed tableaux of female and male bodies squeezed into all kinds of outré costumes (both 14th and 20th century vintage), frantic time-and-space shredding jump cuts and cross-edits, lurid red and green disco lighting, erotic torture, breath-taking scenery and groovy castles, anonymous, drooling creeps lurking in shadows, more fire, more screaming faces, hypnotism, witch burnings, widescreen vistas of ritual depravity, pitchfork wielding mobs, chintzy birthday parties, frantic, awkward softcore sex, outbursts of alarming, screechy comic relief, and Count Dracula (apparently). </p><p>The usual, basically - just a whole lot more of it. An all-you-can-eat buffet of all purpose, fumetti-style gothic horror/sleaze. </p>
<p>Within the pantheon of Italian genre directors who have become admired and/or infamous amongst the fans who have painstakingly unearthed their work over the decades, Polselli stands out as the kind of figure who, if he didn’t exist, someone would have had to invent him. </p>
<p>I mean, he had to be out there somewhere on the margins, didn’t he? The guy whose films were more extreme, more hysterical, more chaotic and senseless than anyone else’s, and who was stricken by censorship, public indifference and critical bafflement to such an extent that many of his films were barely even released at all, languishing in unfathomable obscurity for decades, and in some cases remaining almost impossible to see to this day. </p>
<p>And yet, despite these catastrophic set-backs, he kept dusting himself off and coming back to make more of the damned things, driven on by who knows what unfathomable personal demons. Certainly, the few public comments he made during his lifetime shed little light on why he persisted in ploughing his long-suffering financiers’ money into such grotesque, bizarre and (crucially) unprofitable productions. Indeed, reading the sparse interviews conducted with Polselli whilst he was still with us, his attempts to explain himself seem alternately gnomic, cynical and entirely irrelevant to the work at hand.<br /></p>
<p>Suffice to say that, if you were putting together some ‘Berberian Sound Studio’-styled fiction based around the world of Italian cult cinema, you could scarcely hope to create such a fascinating, baffling and hilarious character - and yet, here he is, large as life, with ‘Black Magic Rites’ standing as his defining artistic statement. </p>
<p>Enthusiasts such as myself often tend to praise Euro-horror films for achieving passages of surrealistic delirium. In ‘Black Magic Rites’ though, Polselli <i>begins</i> in a state of surrealistic delirium and keeps his foot down hard on the accelerator right through to the closing ‘FINE’. </p>
<p>As a result, it stands as an example of a piece of pulpy, cynical exploitation assembled with such fevered intensity that it goes full circle on the artistic spectrum, swallowing its own tail and emerging as an experimental art piece; an overwhelming sensory experience that would probably sit better on a double bill next to ‘Flaming Creatures’ or ‘Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome’ than with a Paul Naschy or Sergio Martino movie. </p>
<p>To return to my earlier music metaphor, watching ‘Black Magic Rites’ for the first time as a fan of Euro-horror feels a bit like growing up listening to canonical ‘60s rock, loving the occasional moments of dissonance and feedback... then suddenly discovering <a href="https://youtu.be/uog1U_Kemlk?si=KJ9tPm3UIl7BU5P6">Les Rallizes Denudes</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm8xZRVXFgk ">Mainliner</a>. Whoa. <i>Too much, man. </i></p>Before we get <i>too</i> carried away though, it’s worth splashing our faces with cold water and remembering that, of the individual elements which make up the totality of ‘Black Magic Rites’, none are entirely unique within the Italio-cult context.
<p>The voluminous output of that nation’s cinema during the early ‘70s did, after all, include low budget horror films which, whether by accident or design, were almost entirely incoherent (Angelo Pannacciò’s ‘Sex of the Witch’), or formally and tonally inexplicable (Francesco Mazzei’s <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2023/02/exploito-allitaliana-weapon-hour-motive.html ">The Weapon, The Hour, The Motive</a>). </p><p>There were films which simply pushed WAY TOO FAR to ever see widespread, uncut distribution at the time of their production (Fernando Di Leo’s ‘Slaughter Hotel’ aka ‘Cold Blooded Beast’), and other entries in the “sexy gothic” sub-genre which knowingly plunged over the precipice into full-blown parody and deliberately disjointed, rambling nonsense (Luigi Batzella’s ‘Nude For Satan’) - all trends redolent of a pre-porno film culture which routinely allowed questionably committed filmmakers to essentially go out and shoot whatever the hell they felt like, so long the requisite nudity and softcore groping was delivered on time. </p><p> ‘Black Magic Rites’ though is the only film I’m aware of which managed to simultaneously cash in on ALL of these crazy possibilities, creating a maximalist overload of ‘70s witch-smut insanity which has never been equalled. </p>
<p>Trying to account for all this on a rational basis, I’m tempted to consider the suggestion floated by Stephen Thrower in his supplement to the Indicator release, that, perhaps, Polselli had intended to make a somewhat more structured, narrative film but (as per the Pannacciò film cited above) simply lost control of the production, discovering after the money had run out and the actors fled the set that he was missing whatever footage he needed to pull the whole thing together. </p>
<p>Hitting the editing room therefore, perhaps with only a few days to spare before delivering a rough cut, he simply panicked, resorting to the only tool available to a director of crazy horror movies in such circumstances - <i>Art!</i> Or, more specifically - jump cuts, and dreams-within-flashbacks-within-dreams, special / temporal disorientation, overlapping images and audio tracks and hypnotic repetition of footage - all cut to the beat of Franco Reverberi’s freaky, ritualistic score. Yeah! </p>
<p>In other circumstances, such an endeavour could have emerged as simply unwatchable (and many would no doubt claim ‘Black Magic Rites’ is just that), but, even for the less fanatical viewer, the film’s aesthetic pleasures and unexpected outbursts of beauty certainly help to sweeten the pill. </p>
<p>‘Black Magic Rites’ was shot in Italian weirdo horror’s home-from-home, the 15th century <a href="https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castello_Piccolomini_(Balsorano)">Castello Piccolomini </a>in Balsorano, previously home to everyone from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnzR6734XUs">The Crimson Executioner</a> to <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2018/07/gothic-originals-lady-frankenstein-mel.html ">Lady Frankenstein</a>, and it must be said, Polselli uses the castello’s potential quite brilliantly in places, especially when he breaks away from the suffocating, colour-saturated gloom of the interiors to stage scenes on the castle battlements, showcasing the astonishing vistas of snow-capped mountains which form the backdrop to the valley in which the castle stands. <b><span style="color: red; font-family: courier;">(1) </span></b></p>A necessary refresher amid all the madness going on down in the ballrooms and dungeons, you can almost smell the fresh air during these sequences, and a similar chill wind of melancholic atmos can also be felt during the funeral / burial sequence I mentioned above, which is really beautifully put together, acting both as a reference to the best scene in Polselli’s earlier <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2015/03/gothic-originals-vampire-ballerina.html">The Vampire and the Ballerina</a>, and indeed to its original inspiration, Carl Dreyer’s <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2017/04/some-notes-on-vampyr-1931-as-ur-text.html ">Vampyr</a>.
<p>Though I prefer to avoid going into ‘consumer guide’ mode in these reviews, it must be said that the new transfer of the film really helps to highlight the beauty of some of the individual images Polselli and his collaborators conjured up here amidst all the carnage and peek-a-boo nudity and cheap special effects, perhaps helping to lend the whole thing a bit more of a sense of artistry than was really evident in earlier editions. God knows the travails Director of Photography Ugo Brunelli probably had to go through whilst shooting all this stuff, but he certainly delivered the goods in technical terms. </p>
<p>His work, together with Reverberi’s appropriately wigged out yet infernally catchy score (heavy on hand percussion, primitive electronics and reversed/echoed vocal weirdness), work to ensure the film remains an aesthetically intoxicating experience, as well as a simply overpowering one - with this intention often succeeding in spite of Polselli’s feverish, ADHD-afflicted editing and obsession with rubbing our noses in the most unpleasant imagery he can conjure up at any given point. </p>
<p>By far the funniest thing about the new transfer though is that it retains the grandly ornate interval cards from the movie’s original Italian cinema screenings, which I don't recall seeing before. What a hoot! I mean, can you imagine the poor, unsuspecting audience, staggering out into the sunlight for a smoke after 45 minutes of this shit? (“Say pal, whatcha think's gonna happen next?”) </p><p>Simply amazing - as indeed is every aspect of this astounding, unrepeatable film’s genesis, existence and continued survival. </p>
<p>Check it out, please, before the thousand-faced messengers of Azathoth think better of letting it out in the wild, and pull remaining copies through some black trans-dimensional vortex, leaving no trace but a lingering, half-forgotten memory, ready to be shaken off with tomorrow morning’s much needed coffee.</p><p>
--- <br /></p><p><b><span style="color: red; font-family: courier;">(1) </span></b><i>As I believe I noted in my ‘Lady Frankenstein’ review a few years ago, I’m intrigued by the fact that, of the four noteworthy Italian horror film Mickey Hargitay appeared in, three were shot in the Castello Piccolomini! I mean, was this just a coincidence, or did he live nearby, or know the owners of the castle or something..? Sadly the man himself is no longer with us to provide an answer, but - any insight welcomed.
</i></p>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-34249712207744237342023-10-17T17:43:00.000+01:002023-10-17T17:43:42.542+01:00Horror Express: The Catman of Paris (Lesley Selander, 1946)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcNX3GyINAWl8X5gM-A5thg5pkaitzXmOScqsBDpUeRliTFqAy-RbXb1sCS88tqjHntTZa5Z2JwimCm164lGv-grGMm8zJhvt8I3DHDQEHNMmnZpjVtFSjqN6i-NTy-AIWhkE51pEiWwsE4e9Dwknl50eVYbiy48nfB3xhF3EG0VozwHxrc3n1_IoGWeg/s2744/The%20Catman%20of%20Paris%20poster.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2744" data-original-width="1777" height="614" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcNX3GyINAWl8X5gM-A5thg5pkaitzXmOScqsBDpUeRliTFqAy-RbXb1sCS88tqjHntTZa5Z2JwimCm164lGv-grGMm8zJhvt8I3DHDQEHNMmnZpjVtFSjqN6i-NTy-AIWhkE51pEiWwsE4e9Dwknl50eVYbiy48nfB3xhF3EG0VozwHxrc3n1_IoGWeg/w414-h640/The%20Catman%20of%20Paris%20poster.jpg" width="397" /></a></div>Forming one half of a rare horror double feature knocked out by western and serial specialists Republic Pictures in the mid 1940s, ‘The Catman of Paris’ was presumably born out of an attempt to capitalise on whatever pre-release publicity might have accompanied Universal’s woeful ‘She-Wolf of London’ (released one month later), cross-referenced with the widespread success enjoyed by Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur’s ‘Cat People’ just a few years earlier, and perhaps also a lingering memory of Guy Endore’s 1933 novel ‘Werewolf of Paris’. <p></p>
<p>Despite the attention-grabbing title and poster though, to be honest I was resigned to the fact that this would probably be pretty dull fare… so was pleasantly surprised when, for the first reel at least, it turned out to be absolutely bonkers. </p>
<p>For a start, the top hat and opera cape-clad ‘catman’ meows in the voice of a regular house cat, which is delightful, and, in his first (off-screen) appearance, he strikes in the form of a big, expressionist shadow with Nosferatu fingers, gliding across the walls of back lot 1890s Montmartre. Crikey! </p>
<p>The main character / chief catman suspect is a young author, Charles (played by Carl Esmond), who has just caused a sensation by publishing a novel entitled ‘Fraudulent Justice’, in which he recounts in accurate detail the proceedings at a scandalous closed trial, to which only a few select government ministers had been allowed access… yet he claims to know nothing of this, insisting that the whole thing came to him in a dream. </p>
<p>Additionally, he has just returned from ‘the tropics’, where he was struck down by an intense fever which seems to have left him suffering from bouts of amnesia... which of course neatly coincide with the ‘catman’ killings. The first victim of which, we should note, was a Ministry of Justice clerk carrying a confidential dossier containing details of the trial Charles is alleged to have forbidden knowledge of, whilst the second victim ends up being his vindictive ex-fiancée (a great turn by singer and b-movie stalwart Adele Mara). </p>
<p>So, all in all, you can see why the gendarmes (engagingly represented by believer / sceptic duo Gerald Mohr and Fritz Feld) soon want to have a few words with our defensive and bewildered protagonist - although of course they don’t attempt anything so vulgar as to throw him behind bars and see what happens when he next experiences one of his alleged periods of amnesia, because you can’t go around treating a gentleman like that, now can you? </p>
<p>Whenever Charles experiences one of his amnesiac attacks incidentally, we see the same series of images projected over footage of his agonised face, in the same order: some sheaves of wheat blowing in the wind, a fork of lightning striking across what looks like a solarised black sun, the face of a hissing cat, and - entirely inexplicably - a shot of a thing which looks like some kind of space capsule (but couldn't possibly be, in view of the film's production year), floating in a storm-tossed sea with icebergs in the background, spewing oil from its cone/nozzle. </p>
<p>If any living person has an explanation of what in the hell that’s all about, I’d certainly love to hear it. </p>
<p>There’s also a memorably bizarre moment when we see a very striking shot (repeated from the opening credits) of a black cat walking through a highly detailed miniature scale model of one of the street sets, appearing as a giant beast, until the camera pulls back, and Mohr shoos the pesky moggie out of the way, casually announcing, “this is a replica of the murder site I had made over night..”. (WHAT?!) </p>
<p>Similarly perplexing, there’s a great bit later on in which Fritz Feld outlines he wildly holistic rationale for believing a cat-demon is on the loose in Gay Paree, citing a volume of ‘Astrological Prognostications’ apparently compiled by his grandfather, in which “further evidence of planetary influence on transmutation” suggests a regular historical reoccurrence of were-cat phenomena which can be traced back to the reign of Ivan The Terrible. </p><p>The were-cat under investigation in the current case, it seems, is in fact the <i>ninth</i> in the this astrologically defined series, thus making it the <i>final</i> reoccurrence, as per the scientifically recognised nine live of the cat. Any questions?<br /></p>
<p>Meanwhile, pre-empting Glenn Danzig’s <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2023/07/horror-express-verotika-glenn-danzig.html ">Verotika</a> by 70+ years, the film’s entire cast consists of American actors ordered to adopt French accents of highly variable quality and consistency. (Perhaps the worst offender in this regard is leading lady Lenore Aubert, who largely sticks to yankee diction, with the exception of referring to her beloved as “Sharl” at all times.) </p><p>That questionable decision aside though, Parisian atmos is ‘The Catman of Paris’ is largely limited to finding space in its lean 62 minute run time for a genuinely entertaining, highly energetic can-can routine, taking place in the Café du Bois, the decadent, fin-de-siecle basement hang-out where Charles and his best pal / literary agent Henry (Douglass Dumbrille) meet to carouse away their evenings in the intoxicating social whirl of whichever sound stage Republic weren’t currently shooting a western on. </p>
<p>Indeed, director Selander had shot well over fifty(!) oaters for Republic by the time he changed tack to handle ‘The Catman..’, and whilst his style remains admirably pacey and fluid throughout, there is definitely still a persistent sense of he and his employers’ more usual day-to-day creeping in around the edges here. </p>
<p>In their commentary track on Imprint’s recent <a href="https://www.filmtreasures.co.uk/catman-of-paris-le-blu-ray-slipcover ">blu-ray release</a>, Kim Newman and Stephen Jones have a whale of a time pointing out costumes which might previously have belonged to ranchers, riverboat gamblers or saloon girls, noting extras who look burlier and more heavily whiskered than habitués of the Parisian underworld really should, and observing that the night club set is clearly a slightly rejigged frontier saloon. </p><p>For the most part though, this odd cross-genre bleed actually plays very much in the movie’s favour, as the talky, set-bound boredom which inevitably begins to predominate once the details of the plot get underway is broken up by such unusual (and welcome) additions to the ‘40s b-horror formula as a furniture-smashing, ‘knock down drag out’ bar fight (complete with a leap off the bar from Esmond), and an elaborate, under-cranked stage-coach chase, taking place, one assumes, in some Gallic equivalent of Central Park. </p>
<p>In addition to the errant images and intriguingly odd plot details I outlined above, this all proved enough to keep me thoroughly hooked right up to the film’s finale, when the dreaded ‘catman’ finally makes an appearance, and boy, it’s a memorable one. </p>
<p>A spirited take on a furry-faced, ersatz Mr Hyde, the well-dressed fiend has a lot of fun chasing Lenore Aubert around like a slightly more menacing Benny Hill, until a barrage of police bullets knocks him on his arse, prompting a big reveal / wrap up scene which will remain unspoiled here, aside from noting that its proffered explanation of the event swhich have just transpired frankly makes <i>no sense whatsoever</i>. </p>
<p>So, that’s ‘The Catman of Paris’ folks - W, and indeed TF. </p>
<p>On the basis of this one, you’d better believe I’ll be making time to check out the other Republic horrors post-haste.</p>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-1484169545312953262023-10-12T21:00:00.001+01:002023-10-12T21:00:00.148+01:00Hammer House of Horror: Carpathian Eagle (Francis Megahy, 1980)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWmK0WLsM5WiGKFmbGKr1ss2Rmyn3DtK3sWli5HF1FU0Wj1EKZoh1tRxZ3aZ7XFMCxPUhPTus4eKslcJjjDlwereYVVMNbbjfipunILnnxkOVK0LxKAV_v7BXcdcAWKJFrqnCLPWEbBSOLO9t8CKYG2IXiib-v8REog6y-t5hrr_gnuV38r1iuM0xwlEQ/s960/0%20HHoH%20-%20Carpathian%20Eagle00005.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWmK0WLsM5WiGKFmbGKr1ss2Rmyn3DtK3sWli5HF1FU0Wj1EKZoh1tRxZ3aZ7XFMCxPUhPTus4eKslcJjjDlwereYVVMNbbjfipunILnnxkOVK0LxKAV_v7BXcdcAWKJFrqnCLPWEbBSOLO9t8CKYG2IXiib-v8REog6y-t5hrr_gnuV38r1iuM0xwlEQ/w400-h300/0%20HHoH%20-%20Carpathian%20Eagle00005.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuf8YI6MZQW1-waWhmriL0x6NekGVjU0O__mcRMbz-igHQbioqyWywsOvIekPef6QHgSua7GCT8m_Wmy7Aw908q-pjZhT5_SEoWHzb_W_OINXaiAacRRcorjCJh0wUzoC4TwyXDpNM8_UqGOgwQRIe611D0311_EIM0l5-Z-0yZPGg-ZmLD7IprgpSJkY/s960/0%20HHoH%20-%20Carpathian%20Eagle00007.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuf8YI6MZQW1-waWhmriL0x6NekGVjU0O__mcRMbz-igHQbioqyWywsOvIekPef6QHgSua7GCT8m_Wmy7Aw908q-pjZhT5_SEoWHzb_W_OINXaiAacRRcorjCJh0wUzoC4TwyXDpNM8_UqGOgwQRIe611D0311_EIM0l5-Z-0yZPGg-ZmLD7IprgpSJkY/w400-h300/0%20HHoH%20-%20Carpathian%20Eagle00007.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglQj_5y-2lOZWtTssdn-ZqeW2DfV6ARF5QlXsqw-o6PI9cMnK9k334E_NFgo4dvZG5H11C0gFlOC31qecKUIOJ6S4uSQ7u3aIAtS6cQ4qW8dhlmo_ZashRfap4dJTw7JfEawrILfFXgAZjr_63UF8_PrRHA9Wwj2XPFMpn9yZpSPxcShWPyR6wC18UrOk/s960/0%20HHoH%20-%20Carpathian%20Eagle00011.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglQj_5y-2lOZWtTssdn-ZqeW2DfV6ARF5QlXsqw-o6PI9cMnK9k334E_NFgo4dvZG5H11C0gFlOC31qecKUIOJ6S4uSQ7u3aIAtS6cQ4qW8dhlmo_ZashRfap4dJTw7JfEawrILfFXgAZjr_63UF8_PrRHA9Wwj2XPFMpn9yZpSPxcShWPyR6wC18UrOk/w400-h300/0%20HHoH%20-%20Carpathian%20Eagle00011.jpg" width="400" /></a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipEXKKL3C72DLfThoTuBj3g9M58_u7JhhvVq-BIqLrI679-gPpHUuzA9VNsALqBYETvG_5F9xLh3hrRlcqP3QZJ5P7KzWhzympiw5_ndVxG8pLaWaFea758rKdNYlfX9mAbAm_Tpo8GdgoCoPw95BnDf4XO3srzpt6UVLLq9CVgM7U62jmXSpD_qKha6o/s960/0%20HHoH%20-%20Carpathian%20Eagle00016.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipEXKKL3C72DLfThoTuBj3g9M58_u7JhhvVq-BIqLrI679-gPpHUuzA9VNsALqBYETvG_5F9xLh3hrRlcqP3QZJ5P7KzWhzympiw5_ndVxG8pLaWaFea758rKdNYlfX9mAbAm_Tpo8GdgoCoPw95BnDf4XO3srzpt6UVLLq9CVgM7U62jmXSpD_qKha6o/w400-h300/0%20HHoH%20-%20Carpathian%20Eagle00016.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWV-7p3gxYzlqHStQwoZ7NLXHCwfgLL1PdtoY3d2mUuJ_TPfewYSvQ5qG-EPp-zfc6L-8AgwNXxN8vcax-WQI-odM0cJ5a3pYAC2l75D-_7wJsFddjarx0sJjsLeur64hooYzttauT3RVviez9Eeb8auUPOkzhIhEbgNZgBEI3FM80V-BacgBl77sVeaU/s960/0%20HHoH%20-%20Carpathian%20Eagle00020.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWV-7p3gxYzlqHStQwoZ7NLXHCwfgLL1PdtoY3d2mUuJ_TPfewYSvQ5qG-EPp-zfc6L-8AgwNXxN8vcax-WQI-odM0cJ5a3pYAC2l75D-_7wJsFddjarx0sJjsLeur64hooYzttauT3RVviez9Eeb8auUPOkzhIhEbgNZgBEI3FM80V-BacgBl77sVeaU/w400-h300/0%20HHoH%20-%20Carpathian%20Eagle00020.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>So we’re up to episode #9 here, and, whilst there were undoubtedly a few clunkers earlier in the run of ‘Hammer House of Horror’, by damn, they’re really hitting their stride by this point! The two preceding episodes were perhaps my two favourites to date, and this one is definitely a strong contender too. <p></p>
<p>Largely ditching the ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ / “bad things upset the life of a blameless contemporary couple” formula used by most of the earlier episodes, this one (co-written by Bernie Cooper and director Megahy) plays out more like a spec script for a prospective Halloween episode of ‘The Sweeney’ which was ditched for being too weird. (And if that description’s not enough to reel you in… you’re probably reading the wrong weblog, to be honest.) </p>
<p>Anchored around a gritty police procedural framework, ‘Carpathian Eagle’ finds world weary / soft spoken Detective-Inspector Cliff (Anthony Valentine) investigating the exploits of an erotic murderess who, in true Jess Franco style, has been preying upon a succession of outrageously shabby would-be playboys in the dark hinterlands of the Home Counties commuter belt, harvesting their hearts with a curved ceremonial dagger. </p>
<p>A radio interview overheard whilst he’s making his tea n’ toast in the morning leads our detective-hero into the midst of a somewhat Bathory-inspired gothic horror back story, involving the legend of a heart-extracting Hungarian countess whose alleged last living descendant (played by Siân Phillips) is still hanging around in good ol’ blighty, and subsequently also the travails of her nephew, a haughty, Rudolf Nureyev-type character who has defected to the west in order to escape the persecution he faced behind the iron curtain whilst plying his trade as a renowned female impersonator. <b><span style="color: red; font-family: courier;">(1) </span></b></p>
<p>All of which you’d think would be more than enough to keep DI Cliff busy, but the lonely lad also finds time to cultivate a budding romance with the be-permed author (played by Suzanne Danielle, star of ‘Carry On Emmanuelle’) whose interview publicising her book on the heart-gouging countess led him to make the connection in the first place, and whose taste in pattern-framed glasses and garishly mis-matched print dresses proves more obscene than any of the kinky outfits donned by the murderess during her seductions. </p>
<p>Indeed, one of the great pleasures for me personally in going through these Hammer House of Horror episodes has come from noting the highly specific fragments of period detail, unique to that peculiar period in UK social history in which a hangover from the flares n’ sideburns ‘70s was gradually blending into the cruel dawn of the Thatcherite yuppie era - and, in addition to having a really odd, interesting story, it is here that ‘Carpathian Eagle’ really shines. </p>
<p>Just about every scene provides an absolute riot of horrendous fashion choices, exquisitely dated interior decor, flashy motors, sexist / homophobic attitudes, nostalgia-swathed branded products and shabby, deadzone suburban locations, the like of which fairly boggles the mind. </p>
<p>The sequences involving the succession of hapless murder victims prove especially remarkable in this regard, painting such a repulsively fascinating picture of life in these isles circa 1980, I could probably write an extended essay about each one. </p>
<p>The first victim is none other than Barry Stokes (the man-shaped alien from Norman J. Warren’s ‘Prey’, here sporting an unflattering pencil moustache), who is tooling around the country lanes in his vintage Jag when he picks up a provocatively dressed, rainbow-hued young lady and carts her straight back to the ‘secret’ bedroom he keeps hidden from his wife, where he lies, resplendent and smug, upon a bed of furs, awaiting his bloody comeuppance. </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj13gPg9PZZmbWJDXG1IPL8vyTwUD_z2aVaBjguuQVhL6it__eqsVdver5mNzk22dJI2s8nY1dlZLfwjwf4s2dYdpqcyMuEJzH-Z2Mm7YdYrbfosjENES1gBva-3f3cHUhfrVB4Xze9S0jU-mwX4PlT8f9Cpn-AS9uqae-imwhJYUZMfKiILtZqRjAzwXs/s960/06%20HHoH%20-%20Carpathian%20Eagle00001.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj13gPg9PZZmbWJDXG1IPL8vyTwUD_z2aVaBjguuQVhL6it__eqsVdver5mNzk22dJI2s8nY1dlZLfwjwf4s2dYdpqcyMuEJzH-Z2Mm7YdYrbfosjENES1gBva-3f3cHUhfrVB4Xze9S0jU-mwX4PlT8f9Cpn-AS9uqae-imwhJYUZMfKiILtZqRjAzwXs/w400-h300/06%20HHoH%20-%20Carpathian%20Eagle00001.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Then, perhaps most memorably, we have ‘Randy Andy’ (“Andy’s the name, and randy’s my game”), a loathsome, lime-green shirted middle-aged singles bar crawler who resembles a local radio breakfast show host, and who bombards his statuesque conquest with a whole pamphlet’s-worth of the world’s worst pick-up lines before dragging her back to a Stone Age Bachelor Pad which must be seen to be believed.
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTYCK7sBct8IKcvT4NYd0Pdi0TcmOcuRkyChS5dOzZz78pZrwuXgkjpqmd0o1zx-FP4OqZB5JJ4VxQUrAO8Zg7Kjsn2S0xoMaWwGTghw0ggVi1AkvxMkhZScN7wxlaIeOCb8TCO5S3NbQohWpoKTR1zp7_0cNn_dLzwz4atxjRONwXAKH8RNa9qxWEG_o/s960/07%20HHoH%20-%20Carpathian%20Eagle00010.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTYCK7sBct8IKcvT4NYd0Pdi0TcmOcuRkyChS5dOzZz78pZrwuXgkjpqmd0o1zx-FP4OqZB5JJ4VxQUrAO8Zg7Kjsn2S0xoMaWwGTghw0ggVi1AkvxMkhZScN7wxlaIeOCb8TCO5S3NbQohWpoKTR1zp7_0cNn_dLzwz4atxjRONwXAKH8RNa9qxWEG_o/w400-h300/07%20HHoH%20-%20Carpathian%20Eagle00010.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Even more direct in his approach though is no less a personage than Pierce Brosnan(!), who turns up as a tracksuited jogger, latching on to his pink nylon-clad prey in an overcast public park. “I fancy you, you fancy me… why mess about?”, he ventures, before creeping back to his bed-sit and attempting to smuggle his would-be shag-partner (whose luminous gear can probably be seen for miles around) past the eyes of his watchful landlady, who, revisiting a comedy cliché you’d hope would have died out at the end of the 1950s, “has got a bit of a thing about visitors”.
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhemOLeIpj5Q9e8W9j864bR6T5klWSp5cvDLWyT1KYCbDAPJ1egwQcRUJO2OtjEfhSl5Y0moWEV-Ox7ZpYu7lrZ7pI58wPiAUpvMj6AuJKQVzOjCHeI7lYMvxNjNCT-G3q122W1VDURdiUTNyI0Ivh85TdYGwLLCIxBypEZhXo_hGogE523VfkRJa3g8iI/s960/08%20HHoH%20-%20Carpathian%20Eagle00018.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhemOLeIpj5Q9e8W9j864bR6T5klWSp5cvDLWyT1KYCbDAPJ1egwQcRUJO2OtjEfhSl5Y0moWEV-Ox7ZpYu7lrZ7pI58wPiAUpvMj6AuJKQVzOjCHeI7lYMvxNjNCT-G3q122W1VDURdiUTNyI0Ivh85TdYGwLLCIxBypEZhXo_hGogE523VfkRJa3g8iI/w400-h300/08%20HHoH%20-%20Carpathian%20Eagle00018.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Though it’s difficult not to imagine him transmogrifying into Jon Thaw at times, Anthony Valentine certainly proves a sympathetic male lead in comparison to this lot, a worthy addition to the pantheon of down-at-heel British horror cops alongside Ian Hendry in ‘Theatre of Blood’ and Alfred Marks in ‘Scream and Scream Again’, and to the script’s credit, his character actually seems to grow and become more open-minded as the strange events of the story unfold.
<p>During Valentine’s investigation of the first crime scene, we bear witness to a sterling example of ‘70s style police work. “Any sign the geezer was bent?,” he demands to know - the plod’s logic apparently being that the killing was clearly sexual in nature, but that no mere female would have had the physical strength to carry it out. </p>
<p>Later on though, once things have gotten a bit weirder, we start to see a different side of DI Cliff, as he sticks up for the effeminate nephew character, expressing apparently genuine admiration for his artistry, and cutting off his boorish colleague’s queer-baiting jibes, telling him, “you’re thinking in clichés old son - Tadek’s a hard lad, he’s just very nervous, that’s all”. Which is considerate of him, given that he’s talking about a bloke who’s ostensibly the prime suspect is series of brutal murders, but…. no spoilers here, readers. </p>
<p>Loosely plotted and rattling along at a fearsome clip ‘Carpathian Eagle’ represents a colossal improvement on Francis Megahy’s previous directorial outing in this series (the woeful <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2022/10/hammer-house-of-horror-growing-pains.html">Growing Pains</a>). </p><p>Throwing in more ideas and imagery along the way than it really knows what to do with, and packed with memorably off-the-wall performances from a host of lesser known character players and TV pros, it in fact constitutes an almost overpowering conjuration of the exact moment in British culture which saw my birth, refracted through a distorting mirror of sketchily-plotted, sex n' violence-drenched cross-genre weirdness. </p><p>
And, needless to say, I loved every minute of it - just a staggeringly entertaining 50-something minutes of television, which I've not really fully recovered from or properly assembled my thoughts on yet, some 24 hours later. </p><p>---
</p><p><b><span style="color: red; font-family: courier;">(1)</span></b> <i>As a curious side note, the nephew character is played by an actor named Jonathan Kent, whose only previous screen credit was in an impossible to see, quite possibly lost, 1976 BFI-financed adaptation of the Marquis De Sade’s ‘Justine’ by director/producer Stewart MacKinnon. Quite a thread for some inquisitive cultural historian to tug on there I suspect…</i></p>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-70815178131841967892023-10-10T09:00:00.022+01:002023-10-10T09:00:00.132+01:00Horror Express: The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster (Bonami J. Story, 2023)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig1I-SN414l16RNVOZEMapdpbFyF33e0qw4InSXhWIYoU5HNraLlIryZv0AajHDESjMd_DC_OSXg88iRVzOCIV-MPIin-QFAMmgLyT2yTTezrzK7Mp4m92N29pes1HoIQr2eXZT6RrLvWlXEsawNor-6jtDv_18EW8eI5Y8oSysXdGpcMMTTGZBvRR7fI/s827/Angry%20Black%20Girl%20poster.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="827" data-original-width="560" height="589" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig1I-SN414l16RNVOZEMapdpbFyF33e0qw4InSXhWIYoU5HNraLlIryZv0AajHDESjMd_DC_OSXg88iRVzOCIV-MPIin-QFAMmgLyT2yTTezrzK7Mp4m92N29pes1HoIQr2eXZT6RrLvWlXEsawNor-6jtDv_18EW8eI5Y8oSysXdGpcMMTTGZBvRR7fI/w434-h640/Angry%20Black%20Girl%20poster.jpg" width="399" /></a></div>So, yes, a word on the title. It’s a bit ‘on the nose’, isn’t it? Could probably stand to lose the ‘angry’ at least... not that I wish to question the character’s anger, you understand, but it just seems unnecessary to cram such descriptors into the title, and it would scan better without it. Also, then maybe they could’ve made it a reference to Bernard Shaw’s ‘The Black Girl in Search of God’ or something instead, who knows? (One for the kids there!) <p></p>
<p>Anyway - at first, I wasn’t really down with the movie the title is attached to either. In fact, through the opening half hour I was getting ready to give it to stern a lecture about how I’m all for genre movies exploring socio-political issues, but how it tends to work better when they naturally arise <i>from</i> the genre elements. Whereas, this seems to have approached things the other way around, presenting a well-intentioned but dispiritingly one-dimensional take on systemic racism, drugs, police brutality and social inequality (all of which are bad, dontcha know), with a featherweight take on the Frankenstein mythos overlaid on top. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, any narrative tension seemed liable to be nullified by the presence of a central character - Vicaria, played by Laya DeLeon Hayes - who appeared to be destined to spend the film being smarter than everyone else, right about everything all the time, and generally morally unimpeachable / intellectually undefeatable. </p>
<p>In particular, I just didn’t <i>buy </i>Vicaria’s whole “death is a curable disease” shtick as a message which is in any way positive or helpful for those dealing with grief - which is a problem, given that it’s the single rhetorical device upon which most of Bomani J. Story’s script rests. And, similarly, I found the decision to open the film with a succession of close up, slo mo familial deaths to be not so much harrowing (as was presumably intended), but simply emotionally manipulative, establishing a tone of grim self-seriousness which proves hard to shake through the opening act. </p>
<p>Thankfully though, I also felt that the film becomes a lot more interesting as it goes along, really kicking into gear during the second half, and winning me over in the process. </p>
<p>Though Story clearly has no interest whatsoever in delivering the all-black-cast version of ‘Reanimator’ or ‘Monster on Campus’ I suppose I was vaguely hoping for, he does give us a surprisingly faithful reinterpretation of ‘Frankenstein’, as taken straight from the novel, concentrating in particular upon the rarely filmed trope of the creator abandoning and losing track of his/her monster immediately after creating it, only to become engaged with its plight once it returns to threaten his/her loved ones. </p>
<p>Towering in the darkness, its face hidden by dangling, blood-caked dreads and a voluminous hoodie, Vicaria’s ‘monster’ (a reconstituted version of her brother Chris, who was slain in a gang shooting during the opening) proves a pretty menacing and memorable creation, capable of dishing out some reassuringly gruesome ultra-violence at various points in the film. (Although, the attempt to humanise him through the use of a generic, distorted ‘monster voice’ falls rather flat, it must be said.) </p>
<p>Once the monster is on the scene though, the film as a whole becomes more intense, more chaotic and more convincing across the board, questioning our heroine’s motives and means in appropriately Frankensteinian fashion, and incorporating enough moral ambiguity and emotional turbulence to more than justify its existence. </p>
<p>An improv-heavy set of performances from the supporting cast very much helps in this regard, as characters who initially seemed pretty one-note are allowed to come into their own and acquire some depth, lending a sense of authenticity to the avowedly realist setting, and achieving some genuinely powerful moments here and there. </p>
<p>A particular shout out in this regard must go out to Chad L. Coleman, playing Vicaria’s father, who, to not put too fine a point on it, is fucking brilliant. As a broken man struggling to keep it together in the face of grief and substance abuse, he has pathos to burn, and in the (sadly too few) scenes when he’s on screen, the movie really takes flight in dramatic terms. </p>
<p>In fact, it is Coleman who carries the weight of the movie’s most cathartic moment, when he stands his ground and refuses to unlock his surrogate family’s front door for the police who are outside carrying out a door-to-door search. </p>
<p>Amidst all the wide-ranging political point-making and generalised rage at the state of contemporary America crammed into Story’s script, it is this tangential detail, conveyed through Coleman’s all-too-convincing fear and determination, which perhaps made the deepest impression on me, prompting me to reflect on the sobering reality of the fact that, although the family in this case have nothing to hide from the law, black people in the USA (and by extension, members of similarly marginalised communities across the globe) have nothing to gain from allowing armed cops access to their living space, but a hell of a lot to lose. </p>
<p>Elsewhere, Denzel Whitaker is also very good as the housing project’s resident drug dealer, blurring our sympathies as he’s revealed to be just another frightened, overgrown kid once the threat from the monster takes hold, and delivering some of the film’s very few genuine laughs in the process. Child actor Amani Summer meanwhile does great work too, in one of the more interesting portrayals of the obligatory “little girl who befriends the monster” character I can recall seeing in Frankensteinian cinema. </p>
<p>Whilst avoiding spoilers, I’ll conclude simply by noting that the ending of ‘The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster’ is… significantly different from that of a standard Frankenstein narrative, let’s put it that way. By the time we get there though, it feels as if the film (and the characters) have earned it. </p>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-47061912533050199302023-10-07T17:13:00.001+01:002023-10-07T17:13:32.197+01:00Hammer House of Horror: Children of the Full Moon (Tom Clegg, 1980)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9hrDq77Vhes4kLlBzzHVQy81hL5ANLuBIHIPcN9fM32qHRyBcLOqepzGBqpsX9lvU17YPhSZkQkROsKxC3U689dKR4dAvXlZWBHK73KXrE4EvS_HbzlFr6-dcsqj6APi6dWuM7zkWUosE44X3In9NCxbpsiAAoqzzTKHtTp-BpAl5zxJD9NHFvVFWmyc/s960/01%20HHoH%20-%20ChildrenotFullMoon00002.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9hrDq77Vhes4kLlBzzHVQy81hL5ANLuBIHIPcN9fM32qHRyBcLOqepzGBqpsX9lvU17YPhSZkQkROsKxC3U689dKR4dAvXlZWBHK73KXrE4EvS_HbzlFr6-dcsqj6APi6dWuM7zkWUosE44X3In9NCxbpsiAAoqzzTKHtTp-BpAl5zxJD9NHFvVFWmyc/w400-h300/01%20HHoH%20-%20ChildrenotFullMoon00002.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY8OYtk0IM4ND-6tt1uRgJDV-dgsQXjr-7fyLZEl7WgyoloiDqI1mi1qj9YdB1eZBaYMD1bzigG8Qjn0wLXW4z7QYiN3uLXyldibWjkOqAhgiH_vpJmVwsgsNQ1pOe1MdajjMCdxvFcaawgd39xL_705WMKoZ1cP_eklCI0ou2Rm5OScy4uHfq4ImB5ZM/s960/02%20HHoH%20-%20ChildrenotFullMoon00008.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY8OYtk0IM4ND-6tt1uRgJDV-dgsQXjr-7fyLZEl7WgyoloiDqI1mi1qj9YdB1eZBaYMD1bzigG8Qjn0wLXW4z7QYiN3uLXyldibWjkOqAhgiH_vpJmVwsgsNQ1pOe1MdajjMCdxvFcaawgd39xL_705WMKoZ1cP_eklCI0ou2Rm5OScy4uHfq4ImB5ZM/w400-h300/02%20HHoH%20-%20ChildrenotFullMoon00008.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5jPFXDAZaocKcYPRJ6oeFY9x1X365sgYGE-UyNUlR12iPhuoXP55JlBO2QVrIzqTTxEWW9kRTN57RSvfWMN3PacXXcSt6b9XRdmaryxJEnFdqxb3kiH0lB-t3RRqm2TCs5OZKRlXkOQEy47qA9yg4NmQlBD8hoBwiQJdlvDrgoJfCsWpBXxPbyWhKrRg/s960/03%20HHoH%20-%20ChildrenotFullMoon00005.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5jPFXDAZaocKcYPRJ6oeFY9x1X365sgYGE-UyNUlR12iPhuoXP55JlBO2QVrIzqTTxEWW9kRTN57RSvfWMN3PacXXcSt6b9XRdmaryxJEnFdqxb3kiH0lB-t3RRqm2TCs5OZKRlXkOQEy47qA9yg4NmQlBD8hoBwiQJdlvDrgoJfCsWpBXxPbyWhKrRg/w400-h300/03%20HHoH%20-%20ChildrenotFullMoon00005.jpg" width="400" /></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJOGuh-R1BZAyqc2JAbgxwQL8g3Nq1jT7LzyqOiGy6SP_XkK6bZCVEvTuB8vJxcihuezQZObdJ4uCES4rqAreU_fAhz0UQgtBRSErYRRbwiKirSduQ5wDoBOtzWXmiM_esPsKxoIT-xACCxsNFr1PMJ9YgL3BL25cfqdSfsX_quFqDxTuHDmOw0dyIeoc/s960/04%20HHoH%20-%20ChildrenotFullMoon00010.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJOGuh-R1BZAyqc2JAbgxwQL8g3Nq1jT7LzyqOiGy6SP_XkK6bZCVEvTuB8vJxcihuezQZObdJ4uCES4rqAreU_fAhz0UQgtBRSErYRRbwiKirSduQ5wDoBOtzWXmiM_esPsKxoIT-xACCxsNFr1PMJ9YgL3BL25cfqdSfsX_quFqDxTuHDmOw0dyIeoc/w400-h300/04%20HHoH%20-%20ChildrenotFullMoon00010.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLJbKMuhhjBBO8-6jtvtn-mcyicMUSmrPHpH8ebhdcEh4hcxG0BZw0cLATI1DK91zow5NH2E9Z7WEa-slhwU1-Af5dzpltm_YYOGfKM8tPbeTIEHg_6sxDREPxcMXj0rxPmeTgOn7SaNWBEeZQ42bvQFgXphURwzQUR1l4h4MLiLFUkPegFhb3VNjo5O4/s960/05%20HHoH%20-%20ChildrenotFullMoon00006.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLJbKMuhhjBBO8-6jtvtn-mcyicMUSmrPHpH8ebhdcEh4hcxG0BZw0cLATI1DK91zow5NH2E9Z7WEa-slhwU1-Af5dzpltm_YYOGfKM8tPbeTIEHg_6sxDREPxcMXj0rxPmeTgOn7SaNWBEeZQ42bvQFgXphURwzQUR1l4h4MLiLFUkPegFhb3VNjo5O4/w400-h300/05%20HHoH%20-%20ChildrenotFullMoon00006.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Up to this point in the series, the otherwise disparate episodes of ‘Hammer House of Horror’ have been united by their complete avoidance of the kind of gothic horror tropes with which the titular studio had become synonymous over the preceding decades. <p></p>
<p>True, we’ve had a <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2022/10/hammer-house-of-horror-witching-time.html ">witch episode</a>, and a <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2022/10/hammer-house-of-horror-house-that-bled.html ">haunted house episode</a>, but both have taken a rigorously quotidian approach to their subject matter, emphasising their present day settings and prioritising attention-grabbing narrative twists and the disruption of everyday life over the pulpy, escapist grandeur which defined Hammer’s glory days. </p>Like those episodes (and most others in the series, to be honest), ‘Children of the Full Moon’ centres around the travails of a recently married, contemporary British couple - in this case, smarmy young corporate solicitor Tom (Christopher Cazenove) and his wife Sarah (Celia Gregory), a possessor of no other immediately obvious character traits.
<p>Whilst roaring around the West Country in their BMW in search of a holiday home belonging to Tom’s even-smarmier boss (the great Robert Urquhart, a veteran of ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ (1956), no less), the young lovers fall victims to a supernatural joy-riding incident which leaves their swanky motor wrapped around a tree in what is, evidently, the middle of bloody nowhere. </p>
<p>This time around however, the fateful misadventures which befall our characters as they stomp off into the forest in search of help bring us such easy pleasures as creaking wrought iron gates surrounded by banks of spot-lit ground fog, dim lights burning in the windows of an imposing gothic revival manor house (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampden_House">Hampden House</a> in Buckinghamshire, location fans may wish to note), shadowy cinematography, ominous howls in the night, axe-wielding folkloric woodcutters, creepy pale-skinned children in Victorian garb, and - as the episode’s title so subtly implies - some honest to goodness werewolves. </p>All of which proves a hell of a lot of fun, needless to say, even as Murray Smith’s knocked-off-in-a-weekend script remains sloppily predictable throughout.
<p>In particular, it’s an absolute delight to see Diana Dors popping up here as the homely matriarch of the lycanthrope brood, giving it her all as usual, gradually dialling up the glassy-eyed malevolence behind her ingratiating smile and ‘Archers’-worthy Somerset drawl as things become increasingly hairy (pun intended) for our not-especially-likeable yuppie protagonists, perhaps adding a touch of ‘city vs country’ social tension to the thin subject matter in the process. </p>
<p>Sadly, we don’t get to see Diana experiencing a full-on werewolf transformation, but her opposite number (played by Jacob Witkin) eventually does the honours instead, and, in view of the TV drama level production budget and notorious difficulty of achieving decent werewolf effects, I think it must be acknowledged that the make up team here did a fair job. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, regular series director Tom Clegg was probably wise to minimise screen time for the werewolf, keeping the stalking beast safely confined to the darkened woods until the finale, whilst meanwhile allowing the bulk of the episode’s creepitude to instead fall upon the shoulders of wolf-family’s brood of creepy, carnivorous children. </p>
<p>Given that one of them plays the flute, that they have ‘suspicious’ foreign names like Tibor and Eloise, and that they wear incongruous Victorian costumes, M.R. James’ ‘Lost Hearts’ (or more likely, Lawrence Gordon Clark’s 1973 ‘Ghost Stories For Christmas’ adaptation thereof) would seem to be a prime influence here, which is certainly no bad thing. </p>
<p>As noted above, even casual horror fans will find very little to surprise them in the way this story pans out, but in a sense, the very predictability of Smith’s script serves to move the series away from the twist-heavy ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ type yarns which have tended to predominate in earlier episodes, and more towards something approaching good ol’, no nonsense gothic horror (albeit, a contemporary-set variation with a touch of ‘70s b-movie nastiness thrown in for good measure) - a change which I, for one, welcome with open arms. </p>
<p>In fact, if ‘Children of the Full Moon’ had been a segment of an Amicus anthology film from the preceding decade, it would have ranked as a pretty damn good one, which is high praise in this context. Definitely one of my favourite episodes so far in terms of pure entertainment value, even if its artistic merits may be questionable at best. </p>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-3780272287819896902023-10-04T16:17:00.003+01:002023-10-04T17:35:05.951+01:00Gothic Originals: La Llamada del Vampiro[‘Cry of the Vampires’] (José María Elorrieta, 1972)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKjmx2_w8IDM9WXWMEChlu43SKxgRIOiyaMg6qFQb-dsiHjGEofn1x7G0a9hpOvOT02ZSOzanZqE0erS2d9Q7OAtUqzNb8par5XlHtFYiajswnZ_QlraMTzPeXDJCa4VV5NUYXnBgrpoAnFRLL6mm55B7s3LAfuyiCAHvERbK0ctbLrOsyyO60kA9Gdh0/s866/01%20Llamada%20del%20Vampiro00001.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="542" data-original-width="866" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKjmx2_w8IDM9WXWMEChlu43SKxgRIOiyaMg6qFQb-dsiHjGEofn1x7G0a9hpOvOT02ZSOzanZqE0erS2d9Q7OAtUqzNb8par5XlHtFYiajswnZ_QlraMTzPeXDJCa4VV5NUYXnBgrpoAnFRLL6mm55B7s3LAfuyiCAHvERbK0ctbLrOsyyO60kA9Gdh0/w400-h250/01%20Llamada%20del%20Vampiro00001.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4kr8GP-arq5YVotpHPFyPBMnQlnjYcuZzbpGQ79lspvyhmTJLRg1XBI66ykwtqgruodEFgrGEY_RXfsYUZp4TSGkT5gmpvioO0EWax9AMomRl6GjI7WUvtEh1-wQpC3zjYLBrHqNxzdHj_3KeHyCU5kp4tKbVpveuZu1wayUu6v9OoNKbavjHo43drlE/s866/02%20Llamada%20del%20Vampiro00003.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="542" data-original-width="866" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4kr8GP-arq5YVotpHPFyPBMnQlnjYcuZzbpGQ79lspvyhmTJLRg1XBI66ykwtqgruodEFgrGEY_RXfsYUZp4TSGkT5gmpvioO0EWax9AMomRl6GjI7WUvtEh1-wQpC3zjYLBrHqNxzdHj_3KeHyCU5kp4tKbVpveuZu1wayUu6v9OoNKbavjHo43drlE/w400-h250/02%20Llamada%20del%20Vampiro00003.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPY8bW1DodAo9tKt1OLW4no3igWLBr2VQKEk9BfQUliXT61tj6Qw1ta7NksZrr08j_-fanZT4MzcmNHnSHfu3BDE7mOPQvLlbRjAU4hRgDcRRxi4fY1LQ-7gmjHI5GuDhq0f1Ogliwukk9RiWo39G9uuIhWCWktser0Daft1Y856da1hW17Hs4wXwC76U/s866/03%20Llamada%20del%20Vampiro00005.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="542" data-original-width="866" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPY8bW1DodAo9tKt1OLW4no3igWLBr2VQKEk9BfQUliXT61tj6Qw1ta7NksZrr08j_-fanZT4MzcmNHnSHfu3BDE7mOPQvLlbRjAU4hRgDcRRxi4fY1LQ-7gmjHI5GuDhq0f1Ogliwukk9RiWo39G9uuIhWCWktser0Daft1Y856da1hW17Hs4wXwC76U/w400-h250/03%20Llamada%20del%20Vampiro00005.jpg" width="400" /></a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBsXlYOG1L2rz55hmxqJlwK_9l_SPorhFugYr-FC1rhh9zQyK0R8zQtdBxhcJftdZF34iC50_lsFO_84315iGTh2vLoMU4gKRNy1n-8RMq3yh2d49Ft7mcYWab3n75Qbe0FioefJEs5nhJWvBVDUJUljHgXkVCUpfDD4DNUoXZtNN7isuK0CzQvDQ8qvU/s866/04%20Llamada%20del%20Vampiro00010.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="542" data-original-width="866" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBsXlYOG1L2rz55hmxqJlwK_9l_SPorhFugYr-FC1rhh9zQyK0R8zQtdBxhcJftdZF34iC50_lsFO_84315iGTh2vLoMU4gKRNy1n-8RMq3yh2d49Ft7mcYWab3n75Qbe0FioefJEs5nhJWvBVDUJUljHgXkVCUpfDD4DNUoXZtNN7isuK0CzQvDQ8qvU/w400-h250/04%20Llamada%20del%20Vampiro00010.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAM4foJ5l5Rm7CrntpiFHM0n2BUqQMZCGvHcy0venIS0XL2WF-vTF6YpF3iSEIc9sSjm4naCFeAJqRhshYa8-h69QUxSg7eqRsci8S8AXXiPeYcQLJZs7dRb49nr8CkKCGtEX4AWq9-4TyjxgpeDPZqiOWM1NRbCbyU3IcBRJYiK1YjGe90plDFchcNRc/s866/05%20Llamada%20del%20Vampiro00016.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="542" data-original-width="866" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAM4foJ5l5Rm7CrntpiFHM0n2BUqQMZCGvHcy0venIS0XL2WF-vTF6YpF3iSEIc9sSjm4naCFeAJqRhshYa8-h69QUxSg7eqRsci8S8AXXiPeYcQLJZs7dRb49nr8CkKCGtEX4AWq9-4TyjxgpeDPZqiOWM1NRbCbyU3IcBRJYiK1YjGe90plDFchcNRc/w400-h250/05%20Llamada%20del%20Vampiro00016.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>In view of the cult which has built up around Euro-horror cinema, I’m surprised that this prime-era Spanish vampire flick has remained so determinedly obscure over the years. Rarely acknowledged or discussed even amongst genre die-hards, José María Elorrieta’s film is still only accessible (insofar as I’m aware) as a murky, fan-subbed TV rip with a very intrusive station logo burned into the top right corner (channel 18, folks). <p></p>
<p>Telling the tale of a sexy doctor (Diana Sorel) and her even sexier assistant (Beatriz Elorrieta - any relation?) who travel to a remote town afflicted by an outbreak of vampirism and soon agree to move into the local castle to care for the bed-ridden Baron and hang out with his feckless, would-be Byronic son (Nicholas Ney in his only screen credit), it’s probably fair to say that ‘La Llamada del Vampiro’ often feels quite a lot like an early Paul Naschy movie, minus the unique sense of imagination and enthusiasm which the great man brought to his productions. </p>
<p>In fact, I’d go one further and humbly suggest that quite a lot of what goes on in ‘La Llamada..’ comprises a direct imitation of the preceding year’s smash hit ‘La Noche de Walpurgis’ [aka ‘Werewolf Shadow’, aka ‘The Werewolf vs The Vampire Woman’]. </p>
<p>Qualified professionals who clearly don’t let their intellectual acumen prevent them from expressing their femininity and indulging their fondness for wearing baby doll nighties and/or hot pants, Sorel and Elorrieta’s characters are clearly modelled on the glamorous archaeological researchers at the centre of Naschy and León Klimovsky’s film, even to the extent that, in both cases, one half of the learned duo gets romantically involved with a moody, black-clad fellow who wonders the woods bemoaning his cursed lineage, whilst the other instead becomes enslaved by a predatory lady vampire. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, in the course of presenting Ney’s scraggle-haired, “moping teenager” type character as an extremely unconvincing stand-in for Naschy’s Waldemar Daninsky, the film even manages to bungle things by getting its vampire and werewolf mythos all mixed up, presenting Ney (and, by extension, the other vampires) as folks who are pretty normal most of the time, but freak out, grow fangs and set off against their will to seek the blood of the living whenever the moon is full. </p>
<p>As if all this didn’t constitute enough of a ‘homage’ to ‘La Noche de Walpurgis’, ‘Llamada..’s debt becomes blindly obvious later on, when we’re treated to slo-mo shots of the vampire women dancing around in flowing night gowns, showing off their fangs - an effect shamelessly cribbed from one of the more memorable images in the earlier film. </p>
<p>Furthermore I might add, ‘Llamada’ even has the gall to shoot in many of the same <i>locations</i> as ‘..Walpurgis’, with both the <a href="https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castillo_de_la_Coracera">Castillo de la Coracera</a> and the familiar <a href="https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monasterio_de_Santa_Mar%C3%ADa_de_Valdeiglesias ">Monasterio de Santa María de Valdeiglesias</a> once again pressed into service.</p>
<p> (Very much hallowed ground for Spanish horror, the extraordinary ruins and imposing castillos in the province of San Martín de Valdeiglesias near Madrid have provided a home for everyone from The Blind Dead to The Blancheville Monster, making it difficult to imagine any fans being unfamiliar with them by the time they get around to a lower tier picture like this one.) </p><p>Even leaving aside the issue of plagiarism in early ‘70s Euro-gothic though, suffice to say that we’re looking here at a pretty run-of-the-mill example of the genre - but, the thing is, I <i>like</i> the genre, so still managed to have a lot of fun with it regardless. </p>
<p>Indifferently directed, blandly photographed and entirely lacking in originality though ‘La Llamada del Vampiro’ may be, the simple pleasures of looking at the pretty ladies in their groovy costumes, taking another tour of the spectacular locations, and hearing some way-out bits of canned music from the CAM archives provided my refined sensibilities with all the stimuli required to keep me happily enthralled through the film’s double bill friendly 84 minute run time. </p>
<p>Speaking of the pretty ladies meanwhile, it’s also worth noting that the version of the film screened by good ol’ Channel 18 appears to have been the international export cut, complete with a variety of easily snippable naughty bits clearly intended to entice us saucy foreigners into the (presumably very few) cinemas which played this thing in territories beyond the reach of the still highly censorious Franco regime. </p>
<p>For the first half hour or so in fact, I thought this was going to be a pretty chaste, old fashioned exercise in gothic horror, notwithstanding a few of our heroines’ fashion-forward costume choices. But then, without warning, we start to get a few surprising flashes of full frontal female nudity, before, during the final half hour, we’re suddenly hit with a pretty full-on softcore lesbian scene, followed by some extended kinky business with chains and feathers in the castle dungeons, as the ever-growing legion of vampire ladies titillate their victims in the lead up to the film’s agreeably action-packed and chaotic finale. </p>
<p>All of which serves, I suppose, to belatedly edge the film into the ‘erotic horror’ category, although viewers approaching it primarily for this reason will be in for a good long wait before getting their jollies, that’s for sure. </p>
<p>Commentators of a more cynical disposition may be apt to question exactly what <i>else</i> anyone might want to approach it for, but personally I’d advise shunning such cynicism and embracing the half-hearted vision of <i>le fantastique</i> sloppily conjured up here by Elorrieta and his time-pressed collaborators. As outlined above, I still found plenty to give me a warm glow within this almost reassuringly routine and unexceptional addition to the Euro-horror canon. </p>
<p>Though certainly not any kind of overlooked classic, ‘La Llamada del Vampiro’ is definitely worth seeking out and saving up for that moment when you find yourself jonesing for another dose of that very particular ‘70s Spanish horror vibe, but have already seen all the good ones too many times. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR_yeCvjp8YNjQphHjrbpKNNqi1TdMcMMc0BD3-JMVD0mpYgchNSDaTAcsvCqgMjGtr1RTtfuxgZvBdPtKeRWdpBHh8bXFErwWJ-wQJl7el2L5j5lNrEbhBGUMlAIWjkRijLLhk2Puj6hjKjXZgK-LKGoKqnJCnzsuVcWnLYonvTvNhahnnuJFgbjwWyY/s1434/La%20Llamada%20del%20Vampiro%20poster%2001.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1434" data-original-width="1000" height="570" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR_yeCvjp8YNjQphHjrbpKNNqi1TdMcMMc0BD3-JMVD0mpYgchNSDaTAcsvCqgMjGtr1RTtfuxgZvBdPtKeRWdpBHh8bXFErwWJ-wQJl7el2L5j5lNrEbhBGUMlAIWjkRijLLhk2Puj6hjKjXZgK-LKGoKqnJCnzsuVcWnLYonvTvNhahnnuJFgbjwWyY/w446-h640/La%20Llamada%20del%20Vampiro%20poster%2001.jpg" width="397" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFcrc8fAM-qWQxVFUGO9yaiUtpmuO2DUWLXlA9bqpwyooUsj552r2lMEKq061HVM7mlH1vSNjftIeXBCoQ1v-bL25q1j-ENRCrZv34gd8LuXufPbgaxogm4htB2iA3517qQqqyBS9RURclDYVRaUoTeO6dZMwJNHAX7A31fa1jzM9EMsukyiC78LAP75w/s786/La%20Llamada%20del%20Vampiro%20poster%2002.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="786" data-original-width="500" height="627" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFcrc8fAM-qWQxVFUGO9yaiUtpmuO2DUWLXlA9bqpwyooUsj552r2lMEKq061HVM7mlH1vSNjftIeXBCoQ1v-bL25q1j-ENRCrZv34gd8LuXufPbgaxogm4htB2iA3517qQqqyBS9RURclDYVRaUoTeO6dZMwJNHAX7A31fa1jzM9EMsukyiC78LAP75w/w408-h640/La%20Llamada%20del%20Vampiro%20poster%2002.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-87782371620065309492023-10-02T10:00:00.001+01:002023-10-02T10:00:00.134+01:00Hammer House of Horror: The Silent Scream (Alan Gibson, 1980)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgowqtCGqOhCj5hghs4m7hEfL4NlssOeS45S3v4QQISvUITdduJCTY0n9_4rLvdAj9n2W2RIAXD8Xj0A-YJNXNJybsjrHYceeIIRd-VA_JuooR5iRqRdaoIDmetbe49PEdZDxxJOpljFdLqpv7J9xQ0VxWmF8pkFDJFckMgxLkhc-zcdIKVgdzflIoK1ho/s960/1%20HHoH%20Silent%20Scream00004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgowqtCGqOhCj5hghs4m7hEfL4NlssOeS45S3v4QQISvUITdduJCTY0n9_4rLvdAj9n2W2RIAXD8Xj0A-YJNXNJybsjrHYceeIIRd-VA_JuooR5iRqRdaoIDmetbe49PEdZDxxJOpljFdLqpv7J9xQ0VxWmF8pkFDJFckMgxLkhc-zcdIKVgdzflIoK1ho/w400-h300/1%20HHoH%20Silent%20Scream00004.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7I4rvUgAKMKeByK-YdZM8dr1786bwNTrRpBaXmFqMJBQAjGSKPdUa7rQrrkkU5JoBIRi_uQqpr3pNcQqQ4eCWbjV_3Nxv8B8ZTBt8kLdlnC9tNEJGrgUA9g1g-La0OEIg485pF4NejuoiZyhmkdcfJ8WYXicmk_NH7twDD8TOktIm0nBtn1mTkiWSHG4/s960/2%20HHoH%20Silent%20Scream00005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7I4rvUgAKMKeByK-YdZM8dr1786bwNTrRpBaXmFqMJBQAjGSKPdUa7rQrrkkU5JoBIRi_uQqpr3pNcQqQ4eCWbjV_3Nxv8B8ZTBt8kLdlnC9tNEJGrgUA9g1g-La0OEIg485pF4NejuoiZyhmkdcfJ8WYXicmk_NH7twDD8TOktIm0nBtn1mTkiWSHG4/w400-h300/2%20HHoH%20Silent%20Scream00005.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgjZ7NcO65E6eaZkTWKSpR2B7RktD68HpY5krC3IDOIQc1-F5_obHKKH0pnqyhqvK0lcknpO4D8Jk86L9qNYJuwQuLl5pnvECbgVr5ploF6fwA858Wk5zlzEXlZqL-MpFlGuczTqbiD1qz5gmd6jz2V-mOws6q7RKxehzn3z7eZKVlXDLNNHFvFu4lfoE/s960/3%20HHoH%20Silent%20Scream00015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgjZ7NcO65E6eaZkTWKSpR2B7RktD68HpY5krC3IDOIQc1-F5_obHKKH0pnqyhqvK0lcknpO4D8Jk86L9qNYJuwQuLl5pnvECbgVr5ploF6fwA858Wk5zlzEXlZqL-MpFlGuczTqbiD1qz5gmd6jz2V-mOws6q7RKxehzn3z7eZKVlXDLNNHFvFu4lfoE/w400-h300/3%20HHoH%20Silent%20Scream00015.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPbxCmZeQTAp7UKleh_M2cCrpntwG-Ct0n3xwo24CIG79OOPjl5NEDy9RvwSOax4WiPOOIMjJxUQZctca1DeYl1lWnnJPkkwMWNO6L9gQHEAWJ_9XiNAemC15LM4UGgJ6QQC4NpTxw0DdFGKcnrl2mQCKp9T4Rlq2ScbQq4aPM0eSpee7Z5oUYVIbShJg/s960/4%20HHoH%20Silent%20Scream00013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPbxCmZeQTAp7UKleh_M2cCrpntwG-Ct0n3xwo24CIG79OOPjl5NEDy9RvwSOax4WiPOOIMjJxUQZctca1DeYl1lWnnJPkkwMWNO6L9gQHEAWJ_9XiNAemC15LM4UGgJ6QQC4NpTxw0DdFGKcnrl2mQCKp9T4Rlq2ScbQq4aPM0eSpee7Z5oUYVIbShJg/w400-h300/4%20HHoH%20Silent%20Scream00013.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNTO0o372N01HRpmuLS6KrddngE5qMmAXTTJRmCy8GraMweTqekYZFrIFlYQtvuxfQePlwn-LO4fnCnOMr5kBVpB3HA3akP6pP-2UVEcKCGdBdVROFvt-zp_cSVfMHx7ib0d2WLTd5sDJj9i3lvaITTFddkRQXcOxgdNV64i9ZX4dIltpSsRZQX4U4H90/s960/5%20HHoH%20Silent%20Scream00012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNTO0o372N01HRpmuLS6KrddngE5qMmAXTTJRmCy8GraMweTqekYZFrIFlYQtvuxfQePlwn-LO4fnCnOMr5kBVpB3HA3akP6pP-2UVEcKCGdBdVROFvt-zp_cSVfMHx7ib0d2WLTd5sDJj9i3lvaITTFddkRQXcOxgdNV64i9ZX4dIltpSsRZQX4U4H90/w400-h300/5%20HHoH%20Silent%20Scream00012.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>Continuing last October’s trawl through the ‘Hammer House of Horror’
archives where we left off, here we go with episode # 7, originally
broadcast on ITV on 25th October 1980. </p><p>Probably the most unsettling and seriously intentioned instalment of the series thus far, this one tells the tale of a feckless safebreaker (Chuck, played by Brian Cox), who, having just completed a debilitating prison sentence, grudgingly accepts a part-time job offered by sinister pet shop owner Martin Blueck, played by your friend and mine, Mr Peter Cushing.
</p><p>Beginning with the unfortunate death-by-electrocution of a caged tiger, followed by Chuck’s return to the isolated roadside cottage he shares with his wife Annie (Elaine Donnelly), the first half of Francis Essex’s script is almost comically over-loaded with themes and imagery related to imprisonment and confinement. </p>
<p>Upon his return home, Chuck tells Elaine that she <i>can’t possibly understand</i> the misery he has experienced as a result of being incarcerated, causing her in turn to point to the virtual imprisonment she has faced while he was inside, as a result of poverty, isolation and societal disapproval. (To hammer home the point, her introductory shots are even framed through the bar-like partitions on the kitchen window.) </p>
<p>When Chuck visits Blueck’s shop, initially to thank him for visiting him in prison and gifting him with some money as part of a charitable programme, he scarcely finds much reassurance. Backed by the budgerigars and puppies he keeps caged in the shabby, public facing front room of his shop, Blueck quietly acknowledges his history as a concentration camp survivor, before inviting Chuck into the secret back room where his <i>real</i> work is done. </p>
<p>Therein, we find an appalling mockery of a zoo, in which a variety of flagrantly illegal animals (a panther, a leopard, assorted other big cats, a few apes and even a wallaby) subsist in cramped, bare cages, trained via the application of massive electric shocks to remain within their allotted spaces until a bell is sounded to let them know the circuits have been disengaged, at which point the sorry creatures can poke out their heads and gobble up the raw meat which comprises their chow. </p>
<p>For any animal lovers in the audience, the footage of these obviously unhappy beasts prowling around their tiny cages will prove immediately upsetting, whilst the idea that a veteran of the holocaust has become obsessed with imprisoning and controlling his fellow creatures - like a victim of familial abuse growing up to perpetrate the same cycle over again - is horribly perverse and disturbing. </p>
<p>As you’d imagine, it doesn’t take a huge leap of logic for us to realise that Blueck is set upon expanding his unsavoury “research” to human subjects, and that his motives in offering a questionable job to a hapless ex-con - and placing a very tempting safe in plain view when he leaves Chuck to look after the joint - are less than wholly philanthropic. </p>
<p>In fact, Blueck makes this fairly plain from the outset, expounding upon his Orwellian dream of creating “prisons without bars”, in which the terror-stricken inmates are ostensibly free, but paralysed by mind-destroying Pavlovian conditioning - a concept which pushes the story into the realm of the truly nightmarish. (Again, note the insane perversity of a man who finds the physical paraphernalia of imprisonment so repugnant, he is fixated on removing it, even as he craves the power of control over others which it represents.) </p>
<p>Perhaps inevitably given that we’re watching a mainstream TV production here, Essex’s script rather sidesteps the darker psychological implications of this tale, downplaying the whole concentration camp angle just, just as Cushing likewise rather downplays his characterisation of Blueck. Providing something of a call back to his always fascinating portrayals of Baron Frankenstein in previous decades, he keeps the character soft-spoken, slow and pointedly non-emphatic in his gestures, allowing his evil and mental instability to reveal themselves more in his actions than through any displays of cackling villainy, but still managing to radiate a certain, implacable coldness. </p>
<p>As his fans will be aware, accents could sometimes prove Cushing’s Achilles’ heel as an actor, but he handles this one very well, betraying just a hint of Blueck’s Eastern European origins, gradually eroded over decades spent settled in a particularly seedy corner of England, allowing him to add just the right amount of unholy relish to his dialogue. </p>
<p> (There’s scarcely a bigger chill in the whole episode meanwhile than the lazy, off-hand cruelty Cushing manages to inject into his character’s tired attempts to fob off an investigating police officer visiting his shop with “..a hamster for the boy, perhaps?”) </p>
<p>Relatively few of the big-hitters from Hammer’s feature film era deigned to lend their talents to Roy Skeggs’ venture into TV, so it is of course wonderful to see the ever-loyal Cushing stepping up for what I believe was his penultimate horror role (followed up only by his touching farewell to the genre in Pete Walker’s ‘House of Long Shadows’ two years later). Needless to say, the producers of the series could scarcely have found a better, more challenging role for him to get his teeth into. </p>
<p>Cox and Donnelly are both excellent too (the former doing a fine thick-yet-sympathetic turn, the latter convincing as the brains of their marital operation), allowing ‘The Silent Scream’ to develop into a strongly played three-hander drama, lending these characters a sense of realism which transcends the excesses of the increasingly far-fetched premise. </p>
<p>Perhaps mercifully, the second half of the episode becomes slightly less distressing, as the script concentrates more on the nuts-and-bolts survival horror of Chuck and Annie’s attempt to contend with the fiendish travails Blueck has devised for them, temporarily turning ‘The Silent Scream’ into what feels perhaps like an early prototype for the ‘Cube’-style “puzzle box” horror film. </p>
<p>A less high profile veteran of Hammer’s feature film era, Alan Gibson directs efficiently, with a certain amount of style, as befits the voluminous CV of TV work he’d racked up since helming the last two Christopher Lee Dracula movies in the early ’70s. Rather ironically in view of the episode’s subject matter, there is also some very nice location work to enjoy here; both Chuck and Annie’s remote rural cottage, lonely and isolated just off the motorway, and the thoroughly seedy row of commuter-belt businesses which houses Cushing’s shop (perhaps just a few doors down from Denholm Elliot’s estate agents from <a href=" https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2022/10/hammer-house-of-horror-rude-awakening.html ">Rude Awakening</a>), are very well chosen.</p><p>In view of my above observations on Cushing’s character however, I can't help but feel that Essex fumbles the ball rather dreadfully in the final act, when he drops what is clearly intended to be the blood-and-thunder revelation that Blueck was not actually a <i>prisoner</i> within the concentration camp, but a <i>captor</i>. </p>
<p>As well as stealing the punch-line to my all-time favourite bad taste gag, this misfiring twist actually succeeds in making the story far l<i>ess </i>disturbing than would otherwise have been the case. (After all, a mad Nazi on the loose is a far easier threat to deal with than that of a traumatised victim becoming secretly obsessed with exercising control over others.) </p>
<p>Sadly, this casual revelation also robs Cushing of the opportunity to give Blueck a touch of that sublime, sympathy-for-the-devil pathos he always did so well in his villainous roles - or indeed to invest the character with any of the knotty complexity we may have hoped for. (It’s perhaps no coincidence that the scene in which this twist is revealed is also that in which Blueck finally bursts out in a fit of ol’ fashioned villainous cackling.) </p>
<p>An unfortunate misstep, this can’t help but make the episode’s conclusion feel a little flat in dramatic terms, but regardless - on the surface of it, we still get a satisfyingly nasty and hopeless denouement, worthy of any grimy ‘70s British horror shocker, cementing ‘The Silent Scream’s place as easily the best episode of ‘Hammer House of Horror’ I’ve watched thus far. </p>
<p>Be sure to tune in this time next week, and we’ll learn whether episode # 8 proves a contender to the throne…</p>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-29836053028751655662023-09-30T16:02:00.002+01:002023-09-30T16:06:20.242+01:00Horror Express 2023:All Aboard!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkMv_xr18RWT4PTUXUpgLdHy46gA3DOihcSxdT-HVQlgrdSYsow2CZJFDGQj5fzgBCv33sqY193JwSWYScvYLXwN3gCt8akeOSuJc7pfpzypZoRodwDvvLgZ8kE4j5jxBYXobhF7doGEhkOPBTZ81TYjTIufeW_7nIOWCRMRHSH07YAkwbKGPcoNpS35s/s2322/Horror%20Movies%20-%20Carlos%20Clarens.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2322" data-original-width="1457" height="634" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkMv_xr18RWT4PTUXUpgLdHy46gA3DOihcSxdT-HVQlgrdSYsow2CZJFDGQj5fzgBCv33sqY193JwSWYScvYLXwN3gCt8akeOSuJc7pfpzypZoRodwDvvLgZ8kE4j5jxBYXobhF7doGEhkOPBTZ81TYjTIufeW_7nIOWCRMRHSH07YAkwbKGPcoNpS35s/w402-h640/Horror%20Movies%20-%20Carlos%20Clarens.jpg" width="398" /></a></div><i><span style="font-family: courier;">“It would be logical to suppose that troubled art is born out of troubled times. But it would be wrong to be that systematic about it, for what period of history has sailed in, pre-ordained and self-acknowledged a golden age? </span></i>
<p><span style="font-family: courier;"><i>Edgar Allan Poe existed in a momentary by-way of relative peace and security in a new country still full of hope, yet his work is limned by the same dark phantoms that haunt E.T.A. Hoffman’s, a writer who lived when Europe was an open field trampled by the Napoleonic Wars. The landscape of the mind does not always correspond to external circumstance. Rather, there seems to be inside us a constant, ever-present yearning for the fantastic, for the darkly mysterious, for the choked terror of the dark.”</i> </span></p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p><i><span style="font-family: courier;">“The superficial moralists who deplore the tendencies of certain movies to alarm them and in the same breath pretend that film is art would do better to realise that always alongside the art that pleases, ‘the Art of seduction’, springs the art of terror. Often we find pleasure in non-pleasurable forms. Next to smiling terracotta couples reclining on top of their Etruscan tombs, to whispering angels with gold-leaf wings, to ‘The Rape of the Lock’ and ‘The Marriage of Figaro’, there have always arisen hair-blanching depictions of the damned, of Saturn devouring his children, the temptations of St Anthony, ‘Wozzeck’, and Man the Wastrel lost to gorgons, dragons, destiny, and death. </span></i></p>
<p><i><span style="font-family: courier;">Moreover, art works that stir the dregs of human experience have a steady unvarying coherence in their emblems and embodiments, while the style of patterns of perfect, healthy, happy beauty fluctuate as rapidly as fashion itself and contradict one another’s ideal forms according to period and culture. Satan is immutable, it would seem, whether ancestral dark angel or devil in the flesh. Those who imagine him today are not the doctors of demonology but the psychiatrist, the anthropologist, the sociologist. To them, horror movies might be seen as a historical imperative, if not an aesthetic necessity.” </span></i></p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p><i><span style="font-family: courier;">“Still, we are expected to be terrified by the horror film, and fear, no matter how diluted or sublimated, is a very intense reaction to an experience, aesthetic of otherwise, and, failing Art, one not to be enjoyed with an easy conscience. Rather than sheer perversity, horror films require of the audience a certain sophistication, a recognition of their mystical core, a fascination of the psyche. […] What seemed to put the reviewers off horror films, what prevents them (even now) from surrendering their critical resistance, is their frequent - usually necessary - depiction of the fantastic. </span></i></p>
<p><i><span style="font-family: courier;">This would be as superficial and absurd as dismissing Fra Angelico or Max Ernst because we don’t, or simply won’t, believe in angels and sphinxes. And yet the movies were progressing from the Manichaean simplicity of the Western - a genre that was more readily acceptable - to the Promethean ambiguity of the horror story, from start back-and-white to the nuances of the dark, from the wide open spaces to the psychic hinterland.” </span></i></p>
<div style="text-align: left;"><b>- Carlos Clarens, from his foreword to ‘Horror Movies: An Illustrated Survey’ (Panther, 1971) </b></div>
<p>Any questions? No? Good. </p>
<p>I’m aware that updates to this blog have, once again, been rather piecemeal so far this year, but rest assured - I’ve been looking forward to my October horror marathon like a storm-tossed sailor longing for shore leave, and, come hell or high water, I’m going to be offering some choice words on assorted examples of the horror genre in this space across the next 31 days. </p>
<p>It’s unlikely any of it will prove quite as lyrical or well turned out as Mr Clarens’ mellifluous prose above (vocab: “limned”, best phrase: “..the choked terror of the dark”), but I’ll do the best that a couple of tired sessions across the Witching Hour will allow. As always, expect insensible first draft blather, typos and weird grammar all over the joint, but I hope they won’t spoil the fun too much. </p>
<p>Comments and feedback, as ever, warmly received.</p>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-37567097567446554882023-09-23T15:42:00.056+01:002023-09-23T15:42:00.143+01:00Penguin Time/Psyched Out Sci-fi: The Squares of the City by John Brunner (1969) <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKZ7g1VlBS5QEWQFpcPJPX5cwW1yzHnKqwEDOz4yH1S74y9yqesvid_uShmTwqvYMhKYs_VTxC8NNk4Z6CQYQXCvuAvxv_63pIM5eizqjGaOeVZpkoDldxX-jOwCfV0SpYnKRluPpXkkIY_CXei6YPpRx0FS_W2JcodA214WiCBdcDUH0u5wJrXsd6zmA/s2129/Squares%20of%20the%20City%2001.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2129" data-original-width="1321" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKZ7g1VlBS5QEWQFpcPJPX5cwW1yzHnKqwEDOz4yH1S74y9yqesvid_uShmTwqvYMhKYs_VTxC8NNk4Z6CQYQXCvuAvxv_63pIM5eizqjGaOeVZpkoDldxX-jOwCfV0SpYnKRluPpXkkIY_CXei6YPpRx0FS_W2JcodA214WiCBdcDUH0u5wJrXsd6zmA/w398-h640/Squares%20of%20the%20City%2001.jpg" width="398" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFPp1K1h4dPgddZmrSWd9FX00YaWKyz9ctWwKghk58kvoD6wOPhuYivQy8PFgehDSaoeuBr0N62hOSdA_E7chSxb4iHO1uAKp3l87g9xB04JmUalEdsW4P1nWWkmxb13krfJm9_gSOAGgKXZWQ2XdG9gA_eGroVwdWI_fW7Q3hl7TECRUvbkXYLJsdbgI/s2127/Squares%20of%20the%20City%2002.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2127" data-original-width="1296" height="653" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFPp1K1h4dPgddZmrSWd9FX00YaWKyz9ctWwKghk58kvoD6wOPhuYivQy8PFgehDSaoeuBr0N62hOSdA_E7chSxb4iHO1uAKp3l87g9xB04JmUalEdsW4P1nWWkmxb13krfJm9_gSOAGgKXZWQ2XdG9gA_eGroVwdWI_fW7Q3hl7TECRUvbkXYLJsdbgI/w390-h640/Squares%20of%20the%20City%2002.jpg" width="398" /></a></div>Only marginally qualifying as science fiction, John Brunner’s 1965 novel is really more of a high concept socio-political thriller, taking place in Ciudad de Vados, the purpose-built capital city of the fictional South American nation of Aguazal. <p></p>
<p>Presumably modelled on President Juscelino Kubitschek’s construction of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia ">Brasilia</a> in the early 1960s, the city is the crowning achievement of the charismatic President Vados, and we arrive in its environs in the company of one Boyd Hakluyt, an Australian expert in urban planning who has been engaged by the city’s municipal authorities in an initially rather vague consultancy role. </p><p>Upon arrival, Hakluyt soon discovers that his expertise in the fields of traffic management, industrial rezoning on so on will primarily be put to use in solving the problem presented by the masses of impoverished, disenfranchised rural peasants who are now migrating to the new metropolis, settling in a series of sprawling shantytowns and slums beneath the gleaming overpasses, and rather undermining El Presidente’s vision of a shining beacon of civilised modernity in the process. </p>
<p>Less than enthralled by this task, and unnerved by the evidence of creeping authoritarianism and violent political disorder he sees broiling away beneath the city’s tranquil surface, Hakluyt becomes drawn into a complex web of subterfuge and treachery, crossing paths with bureaucrats and politicians, dissidents and revolutionaries, union leaders, industrialists, media personalities, generals, journalists, gangsters and so on, all engaged in an exhaustingly complicated wrangling for influence and power which seems to eerily mirror the Aguazalian nation’s all-consuming obsession with the game of chess. </p>
<p>And beyond that, I will keep quiet, as ‘The Squares of the City’ is a novel which is very easy to “spoil”. </p><p>Suffice to say that, like much of Brunner’s work, it takes a bit of patience to get into - his prose initially seems quite dry, and his plotting needlessly convoluted - but it ultimately proves a very rewarding read. It is certainly a unique entry within its supposed genre, that’s for sure, and if the above synopsis has piqued your interest, I’d recommend giving it a go. </p>
<p>As to Franco Grignani’s cover illustration meanwhile - well, it’s not one of my favourite examples of his work for Penguin to be honest, but it certainly conveys the novel’s idea of an urban eco-system collapsing into entropic chaos fairly effectively. </p>
<p>Those little white dots on my scan of the cover, by the way, are not stars or any other part of the design - I’m afraid they’re just remnants of damp, of concrete dust, or something, which have become stuck to my copy of the book, suggesting it might have spent some time sitting atop a pile of paperbacks in an attic or similarly insalubrious environment. </p>
<p>As you may have gathered, these Grignani Penguins often ain’t cheap, and my insistence on picking them up for pennies does not lend itself to acquiring them in primo condition - but at least this one was readable. </p>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-60836937428169125362023-09-16T15:42:00.003+01:002023-09-16T18:00:14.949+01:00Penguin Time/Psyched Out Sci-fi: The Traps of Time edited by Michael Moorcock (1970) <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1z8l43I0fALzkoDamCsm21_xNsqHdRc3KpB2ChFx4zm_quxMRo2Hzimm8DY4lQuhDtJIPepDt7egStwvwtFmCtZ_nKt30sToVQutvMDtWw-_rgiq29zvqpO58ML_UoXoQu2QOAHkB5h75V492G85N4wWgG2Q-JBuqxJ2Xai3mb4r7_9-lwins8CP9ja8/s2129/Traps%20of%20Time%2001.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2129" data-original-width="1309" height="646" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1z8l43I0fALzkoDamCsm21_xNsqHdRc3KpB2ChFx4zm_quxMRo2Hzimm8DY4lQuhDtJIPepDt7egStwvwtFmCtZ_nKt30sToVQutvMDtWw-_rgiq29zvqpO58ML_UoXoQu2QOAHkB5h75V492G85N4wWgG2Q-JBuqxJ2Xai3mb4r7_9-lwins8CP9ja8/w394-h640/Traps%20of%20Time%2001.jpg" width="398" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinOhVNChbjoJ-qNFuo0C8BozvMn-qeKXCM42DBv9Ipn23pcClu1i2BF91VNmy_xZ98q9ZErhlEqDj8058CJO_oc5Z10M9HwC7MgZW-NuIfWY4q3Ldjo8iz6UpBwp9ZZafsYlCBLtvgCwAziEyIo3d01dxZ5Jci_7CMnz7brG2peVo9Fk-AixF4Zy3sVhw/s2127/Traps%20of%20Time%2002.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2127" data-original-width="1300" height="646" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinOhVNChbjoJ-qNFuo0C8BozvMn-qeKXCM42DBv9Ipn23pcClu1i2BF91VNmy_xZ98q9ZErhlEqDj8058CJO_oc5Z10M9HwC7MgZW-NuIfWY4q3Ldjo8iz6UpBwp9ZZafsYlCBLtvgCwAziEyIo3d01dxZ5Jci_7CMnz7brG2peVo9Fk-AixF4Zy3sVhw/w392-h640/Traps%20of%20Time%2002.jpg" width="396" /></a></div><br /><p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxBF3vTKrWy7mOCAobhBBcOfoNFFHJZwhzVTXZHjPjjudbn_Xy-8jrOXBXN7mOCga4_58edXx491Wbu7HnQgHvpoABiXRt0pfHvZzzIbpWNl05M9hpoGMWgW6Xa-LNHaSONhiLwQfhbCSFx3hq5E22Z7jGZHAL9KU4FJvW5NMaVKp_m50FO1lHS3yzvlY/s1225/Traps%20of%20Time%2003.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1225" data-original-width="1116" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxBF3vTKrWy7mOCAobhBBcOfoNFFHJZwhzVTXZHjPjjudbn_Xy-8jrOXBXN7mOCga4_58edXx491Wbu7HnQgHvpoABiXRt0pfHvZzzIbpWNl05M9hpoGMWgW6Xa-LNHaSONhiLwQfhbCSFx3hq5E22Z7jGZHAL9KU4FJvW5NMaVKp_m50FO1lHS3yzvlY/w365-h400/Traps%20of%20Time%2003.jpg" width="365" /></a></p><p>Remarkably, I don’t think I’ve ever actually featured any of the extraordinary covers produced by Franco Grignani for Penguin’s science fiction line in 1969-70 on this weblog before. </p>
<p>So, having picked up a few of them recently, now seems as good a time as any to rectify that. </p>
<p>According to the invaluable <a href="https://www.penguinsciencefiction.org/13.html ">The Art of Penguin Science Fiction</a> website, Grignani, <i>“..was a leading figure in the field of experimental photography, with a career stretching back some forty years to his early work with photograms. From this he progressed to a range of techniques based on standard photography which he then projected and distorted using lenses, shards of glass, pieces of broken mirror, or liquids such as oil and water.” </i></p>All of which, needless to say, made him very much the man of the hour when it came to finding a way to combine the precise / modernist Penguin design aesthetic with the mind-bending chaos of the op-art / psychedelic light show era.
<p>Spilling over, as was often the case, onto the back cover (though not, disappointingly, across the spine), ‘The Traps of Time’ showcases one of Grignani’s more menacing and abstract efforts - equally as far out as the era’s <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2010/02/no-explanation-necessary.html ">most attention-grabbing</a> Penguin Crime covers. </p><p>I particularly like the hands on the back cover - suggestive of some technologically enhanced séance which has gone horribly wrong. (Shades of <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2021/12/horror-express-devil-commands-edward.html ">The Devil Commands</a> / ‘The Edge of Running Water’, perhaps?) </p><p>As to the book itself meanwhile… well unfortunately, I’ll have to forego the opportunity to bask in the light of Michael Moorcock’s no doubt exemplary anthologising skills for the time being, as the binding on my copy is knackered to point of imminent collapse. </p>
<p>Nonetheless though, you’ve got to appreciate the none-more-new-wave audacity of shoving Aldiss and Zelazny in right next to Borges and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Jarry">Alfred Jarry</a>, of all people. </p><p>In fact, the inclusion here of Jarry’s idiosyncratic 1899 text ‘How to Construct a Time Machine’ helps lends ‘The Traps of Time’ a certain level of underground historical significance, as again pointed out by the compilers of The Art of Penguin Science Fiction <i>[see link above]</i>. </p>
<p>In view of Moorcock’s connections to the band, it was in all likelihood between these pages that Hawkwind’s resident poet/ideas man/maniac Robert Calvert first encountered Jarry’s essay, which - upon realising that the ‘time machine’ described by Jarry is in fact merely a bicycle - inspired him to compose the lyrics for what became <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdTFeW8FCto ">Silver Machine</a>, a work recognised by most right-thinking people as one of the towering achievements of human civilisation. Nice!</p>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-90675765940497351942023-08-22T15:48:00.003+01:002023-08-22T18:40:50.522+01:00Horror Express: Cinta Terlarang [‘Forbidden Love’] (Pitradjaya Burnama, 1995)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3Ftp7VRY-XcCbDPoiHJeqzdh84FUtYGJ8SjR-lkcK8N2dCzsdOsF8C1p5HuUAljtnp_dmP19u9-1AF8NjJFYlWSuKS-jwvhK1j2QPAqXvWnbMiVgSYK2BIvHu67DAZvTaAkWLEoS22j-Iai5EHSEzmFRTp8yqVnZnqE_RzfFwKwbMTVi4hp0Kq43yRT4/s2560/cinta%20terlarang%20poster.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1920" height="531" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3Ftp7VRY-XcCbDPoiHJeqzdh84FUtYGJ8SjR-lkcK8N2dCzsdOsF8C1p5HuUAljtnp_dmP19u9-1AF8NjJFYlWSuKS-jwvhK1j2QPAqXvWnbMiVgSYK2BIvHu67DAZvTaAkWLEoS22j-Iai5EHSEzmFRTp8yqVnZnqE_RzfFwKwbMTVi4hp0Kq43yRT4/w480-h640/cinta%20terlarang%20poster.jpg" width="398" /></a></div>Though it dates from somewhat after the ‘70s-’80s glory days of Indonesian horror/fantasy cinema, the opening of Pitradjaya Burnama’s ‘Cinta Terlarang’ certainly makes good on his nation’s proud history of maniacal cinematic insanity, as two women wearing translucent white dress shirts over their sensible white pants descend the steps leading to a cobweb-shrouded, blue fog-drenched subterranean altar chamber. <p></p>
<p>It turns out that Ratih (Lela Anggraini) and Nita (Welda Hidayat) are here to exact black magickal vengeance upon the father of Ratih’s unborn child, who has refused to claim the child or even marry her (the swine!) </p>
<p>Conveniently, all the gear they need for this task is neatly stored in a box which they extract from inside a smoking, blue-light emitting coffin, including both an ancient grimoire and some rather fetching ceremonial leotards and matching cloaks,
which they promptly change into, as the scene is inexplicably intercut with footage of dancers writhing in a neon-drenched night club. </p>
<p>Right on cue, the reverb-y voice of an apparent demonic entity chimes in, telling them, “your spite of love will be the foundation of our alliance”. A black rooster is duly slaughtered (in long shot, and I believe the effect is faked, thank god) and its blood dripped onto a photograph of the witches’ intended victim. <span style="color: red; font-family: courier;"><b>(1) </b></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgevDPBdYezdNzsanbgfx9iIaTxKFZcDv-wO8d5jDBDqnN_rQeRunDyvEgGioWEifpWkvo1yzdZ1u0zYrlDBT8v57APwSWJhuc1JIWRYPTp2gumvP7Qp5ywDXc2O3NcvdJYjOI06IidHN_-ALbmiqRKlhq8ly84oWAOiAHDXW5Mde4UrjKN7GOd9IFvQZI/s640/02%20Cinta%20Terlarang00027.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgevDPBdYezdNzsanbgfx9iIaTxKFZcDv-wO8d5jDBDqnN_rQeRunDyvEgGioWEifpWkvo1yzdZ1u0zYrlDBT8v57APwSWJhuc1JIWRYPTp2gumvP7Qp5ywDXc2O3NcvdJYjOI06IidHN_-ALbmiqRKlhq8ly84oWAOiAHDXW5Mde4UrjKN7GOd9IFvQZI/w400-h300/02%20Cinta%20Terlarang00027.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirTL6NAjHQ1InHDhlpydS_GxM6XR48zZXLCrKaaM4U3UXD0zDwtJjs9AlpoxFjxPgVb-ZOkXvFqcGhkPlGX2pvAMRJ5ZIDBnROn_q5xs0jBdABXKw5DA8EzDBpGvGqHnk0ZwOPKcn2egRDKROMylqeIy3c7uNocUZdb1KPL2hmmkpLPj3E50WdB9Xq7Yw/s640/Cinta%20Terlarang00028.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirTL6NAjHQ1InHDhlpydS_GxM6XR48zZXLCrKaaM4U3UXD0zDwtJjs9AlpoxFjxPgVb-ZOkXvFqcGhkPlGX2pvAMRJ5ZIDBnROn_q5xs0jBdABXKw5DA8EzDBpGvGqHnk0ZwOPKcn2egRDKROMylqeIy3c7uNocUZdb1KPL2hmmkpLPj3E50WdB9Xq7Yw/w400-h300/Cinta%20Terlarang00028.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Clearly, this kind of threat to the patriarchal order cannot be left unchecked, and so, outside the witches’ lair, a bunch of men armed with machetes and clubs have assembled, apparently taking orders from Ratih’s shady, white-haired boyfriend, and another fellow who seems to be acting as his occult advisor.
<p>After gaining access to the altar chamber, shady boyfriend belatedly attempts to take the gentlemanly route, apologising to Ratih for his prior conduct and offering her his hand in marriage. Evidently though, it’s a bit late for that, and the girls are having none of it, responding to his overtures with suitably miffed “HMPH!”s, before - brilliantly - they strike martial arts poses and begin enthusiastically beating the living daylights out of loverboy and his henchmen, employing their new-found supernatural fighting prowess in the process. </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinElaKOg7Cc-sMAV25eHFlmiH61QTZ4Rjr9KUiQQ6Qw1PxPh7_baa0-Dh-bDeT_tOSMU5a5y7HvequL6pFgJd06ttNUh1Wae-H_nkheonCDS3lZ8lILx6XmZtl-hRu37InX9cSMmrjvR2lg1DYXuRGucGP_gfGMUdaxMxpiyascIofrABQe0cRLFqvHag/s640/03%20Cinta%20Terlarang00032.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinElaKOg7Cc-sMAV25eHFlmiH61QTZ4Rjr9KUiQQ6Qw1PxPh7_baa0-Dh-bDeT_tOSMU5a5y7HvequL6pFgJd06ttNUh1Wae-H_nkheonCDS3lZ8lILx6XmZtl-hRu37InX9cSMmrjvR2lg1DYXuRGucGP_gfGMUdaxMxpiyascIofrABQe0cRLFqvHag/w400-h300/03%20Cinta%20Terlarang00032.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>In the course of the ensuing melee however, Ratih regrettably ends up getting decapitated by the falling lid of the blue-lit coffin. “You’re mean and cruel,” her still conscious severed head spits at the assembled males. “Await my revenge!”
<p> “I will come back after 13 full moons,” Ratih’s now-disembodied voice continues as Nita grabs her bloody noggin and makes a flying, wire-assisted exit, “and I will bring the sacrificial blood of three male virgins! Remember that! Remember that!” </p>
<p>At which point, I sat back and offered praise to whatever unholy deities preside over the unruly world of Indo-horror, for once again allowing the genre’s efforts to hit that perfect sweet-spot of bloody, fantastical craziness I so crave in my cinema viewing. </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwpsuU-Pt10xXFDhV7pw_8VLixrLDxdwb9ZB_agnNanFDDxyhx5I7TM1IW6Gd5bTxlQ3V_cS8uqvuxw1bXpHgIS09CuRwKKY-HHaQb5KGZSP6lALRSel77uudiuqfRcAs93o-YoRW582w4z21ds-y9k0IHP7bubseBmouwUIvN1IaP6lEQfy7dMes27wE/s640/04%20Cinta%20Terlarang00030.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwpsuU-Pt10xXFDhV7pw_8VLixrLDxdwb9ZB_agnNanFDDxyhx5I7TM1IW6Gd5bTxlQ3V_cS8uqvuxw1bXpHgIS09CuRwKKY-HHaQb5KGZSP6lALRSel77uudiuqfRcAs93o-YoRW582w4z21ds-y9k0IHP7bubseBmouwUIvN1IaP6lEQfy7dMes27wE/w400-h300/04%20Cinta%20Terlarang00030.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnv4pz2Ja7g2T6uJVi0er67KSYT_wjF48EJXOg7F1ff7hcOEB1Ju56Qf6GmCo6Bohhb385xxW7wXZ0aple5Eurs4fLwojLalV8mRfOLDre3hvDxBaSBtoq7Tpiug7P4gxsvUbnnG_IugiMOsFQ0AyinlZOy1PcHMWshKwvhGbFOdgNuviNrGU9atDQg7c/s640/05%20Cinta%20Terlarang00001.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnv4pz2Ja7g2T6uJVi0er67KSYT_wjF48EJXOg7F1ff7hcOEB1Ju56Qf6GmCo6Bohhb385xxW7wXZ0aple5Eurs4fLwojLalV8mRfOLDre3hvDxBaSBtoq7Tpiug7P4gxsvUbnnG_IugiMOsFQ0AyinlZOy1PcHMWshKwvhGbFOdgNuviNrGU9atDQg7c/w400-h300/05%20Cinta%20Terlarang00001.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>Meanwhile, at Jakarta’s famed Cleopatra Executive Discotheque (the signage is fucking amazing) - which we have been randomly cutting to throughout the preceding sequence - another, rather confusing, storyline begins to unfold. </p><p>This involves a chap named Andre (Sonny Dewantara, sporting a mighty ‘tache), who is arguing with his girlfriend over the paternity of <i>their</i> unborn child.
</p><p>As Andre’s girlfriend storms off, never to return, Nita watches pensively from the bar, whilst a woman named Lola (top-billed Sally Marcellina, in a fetish-y combo of lace and leather) reacts to cut-away shots of a black cat, and contemplates a bloody tampon she lifts from a bin in the bathroom. <span style="color: red; font-family: courier;"><b>(2) </b></span></p>
<p>At the end of the night, Andre (who later turns out to be the son of Ratih’s white-haired boyfriend) goes home with Lola (who may or may not be a prostitute - it’s a little unclear). Before they can get it on though, Lola falls asleep, and - apparently being a more chivalrous soul than his conduct thus far would tend to suggest - Andre gently tucks her into bed and calls it a night. </p>
<p>Back in the witches’ realm however, Nita is now poised over her scrying bowl, as Ratih’s spectral head looms from the shadows pleading for reincarnation. And so, a black cat is dispatched to Lola’s residence, and, we presume, a rather vague form of possession-based vengeance is about to be enacted! </p><p>
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4UsUnAi9Fb4MsaGfzNLuz8i8iIlcGQoYIHoEFOKjPlvkWkLGB2ntCVb6rX3sfS3KBBjmZbi_wxJpi1w5lOxygXwm_7raoghA5CUtP-NtcoBvWgftmIp63L0i3AJMzkzTe9c_yci0Jb1dmCyiep6XkTbY9HVNQcOlsED-xY-cymNxIMYk5Q_NSYAs3TjY/s640/06%20Cinta%20Terlarang00023.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4UsUnAi9Fb4MsaGfzNLuz8i8iIlcGQoYIHoEFOKjPlvkWkLGB2ntCVb6rX3sfS3KBBjmZbi_wxJpi1w5lOxygXwm_7raoghA5CUtP-NtcoBvWgftmIp63L0i3AJMzkzTe9c_yci0Jb1dmCyiep6XkTbY9HVNQcOlsED-xY-cymNxIMYk5Q_NSYAs3TjY/w400-h300/06%20Cinta%20Terlarang00023.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVf7MI_-hVzzImTShcAbgZBoTWixkqi5FW0VK0cRRFqKtJDW35Y4pdbMrDNvvpw05Ax_ZCavnTcAWe1agzxfElRGTuTn9CS5Lp4KtPJwt64DltvRrAWQA-tiSnYk6ZDCzV5-VZHIqTkZ4nxUqphc6HHJh-2Z_l8zGV5NCsuf6Xnps0RBIokye45HZotvk/s640/07%20Cinta%20Terlarang00006.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVf7MI_-hVzzImTShcAbgZBoTWixkqi5FW0VK0cRRFqKtJDW35Y4pdbMrDNvvpw05Ax_ZCavnTcAWe1agzxfElRGTuTn9CS5Lp4KtPJwt64DltvRrAWQA-tiSnYk6ZDCzV5-VZHIqTkZ4nxUqphc6HHJh-2Z_l8zGV5NCsuf6Xnps0RBIokye45HZotvk/w400-h300/07%20Cinta%20Terlarang00006.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>The first fruits of this malediction are reaped the following night, during a truly uproarious scene in which Lola, at the behest of the sleazy, quasi-pimp type guy who seems to control her activities at the night club, goes home with a musclebound dude named Randy. <p></p><p>At the height of their passion, after she has spent quite a long time sensually rubbing her face around Randy’s knees (which I suppose must be as far as local censorship at the time permitted these things to progress), Lola announces, “now it is time for me to suck your blood”! After transforming into a vision of Ratih, complete with her purple ceremonial garb, proceeds to send Randy reeling with a set of bloody gashes scratched across his face. </p><p>Then, she goes one better by sucking his very life-force (represented by a kind of post-production laser beam) directly out of his brain, before plunging her fist into his chest and eviscerating him with her bare hands. Blimey! </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBxkuaWDCsL7gFeJ3_0VAtvUcmo_sM_qshdilFLCMPeax7yWiU8LwV9eaTcC7aKhi0dLSdmNghP41BuCaHc8TiftdBOHt-t0iC78NeHhJAuZrRh-u1BS4zmwGA97AInwFLvZIRvMo3WEzp3Kl_I7qleaCYClmbSkiFKcWk7P7dMYDBGUYdvJ_SrGPelv8/s640/08%20Cinta%20Terlarang00008.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBxkuaWDCsL7gFeJ3_0VAtvUcmo_sM_qshdilFLCMPeax7yWiU8LwV9eaTcC7aKhi0dLSdmNghP41BuCaHc8TiftdBOHt-t0iC78NeHhJAuZrRh-u1BS4zmwGA97AInwFLvZIRvMo3WEzp3Kl_I7qleaCYClmbSkiFKcWk7P7dMYDBGUYdvJ_SrGPelv8/w400-h300/08%20Cinta%20Terlarang00008.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZTuCk8nEue4TewcuXjpi4Bs8SqEBr1ZZ2BFRlXCSpoAVAOqE2B129nFVnFvL5My42ONFP-povaRBZ_gISzqf_4SWOtDv41lPlkkAoNngHOI0ZXy6BZwW3YoxKqIzROk_1Omj4x1HLLi7I0ZDWt94C7IbGQSItwLvmIOoLpOL8x31DsSgpyqW4mFBJtec/s640/09%20Cinta%20Terlarang00009.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZTuCk8nEue4TewcuXjpi4Bs8SqEBr1ZZ2BFRlXCSpoAVAOqE2B129nFVnFvL5My42ONFP-povaRBZ_gISzqf_4SWOtDv41lPlkkAoNngHOI0ZXy6BZwW3YoxKqIzROk_1Omj4x1HLLi7I0ZDWt94C7IbGQSItwLvmIOoLpOL8x31DsSgpyqW4mFBJtec/w400-h300/09%20Cinta%20Terlarang00009.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>To western eyes and ears, ‘Cinta Terlarang’ will seem ‘80s to a fault, in spite of its mid-90s release date. Hazy, diffused lighting provided by blinding blue spotlights is filtered through smoke and translucent, billowing curtains, along with gleaming neon and the best chrome / glass / silk interiors the production could manage. <p></p>
<p>The bedroom sets within which much of the action takes place often look as if they’re under water, such is the quantity of blue light pulsing through their windows, and thumping electro-pop and wistful, Tangerine Dream-esque synth jams dominate the soundtrack. </p>
<p>Though there is no actual nudity (again, presumably due to diktats of local censorship), implied sexual content is fairly strong, and almost every frame of the movie features at least one woman wearing some form of impractical, kinky lingerie. (Seriously, the costume designer(s) must have had the time of their lives on this one, and the results are remarkable.) </p>
<p>In this regard however, it’s worth noting that the ill-fated Randy also strips down to his Y-fronts and does a sweaty erotic dance at one point, whilst a subsequent hunky victim of Lola/Ratih also gets stripped and tied to the bed, so - props are due to the filmmakers for making a rare attempt at equal opportunities titillation, I suppose. </p><p> In spite of all the mad supernatural horror stuff I’ve described above in fact, the prime intention here was presumably to ape the style of the then-ubiquitous erotic thrillers emerging from the USA in the wake of ‘Basic Instinct’ - a conclusion supported by the (very sparse) promotional materials for the film which can be found online, featuring images of clinching couples and nothing to suggest this is actually a horror movie. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRMtfauHBhotjW-YErrRVjaKhJv9Ia4ZvR8pFsbqEnH0pdjkgIsrWWFTc5y5k027pNdqkQlITa8p8cNztpWl_FJyPEJvz4e4rjWhvf3rUxGJDnAxXsD_73aCw12vgAO5deEBfv0vbrz5C8g6XCMqnGmF_3_Gu9ZPC5epkYevOrgnNJ9Af2v8ROID_y51M/s640/10%20Cinta%20Terlarang00010.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRMtfauHBhotjW-YErrRVjaKhJv9Ia4ZvR8pFsbqEnH0pdjkgIsrWWFTc5y5k027pNdqkQlITa8p8cNztpWl_FJyPEJvz4e4rjWhvf3rUxGJDnAxXsD_73aCw12vgAO5deEBfv0vbrz5C8g6XCMqnGmF_3_Gu9ZPC5epkYevOrgnNJ9Af2v8ROID_y51M/w400-h300/10%20Cinta%20Terlarang00010.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4IGwLm8BHpb_-99gNhY-718rIjL1cp6MDc4Tdsv7QtGCH4ZHX4UcS_J8zts1clBmwqhMag7u5vrQPOUlV0gaGaUeasfrPWXv32GSA6SZfLhc6UQD12UHtocl96o_SD5LzKJAMy7UtzH0rYhmOvZDON_cy7o6pHJ2lwPFHvMO_PfJl1rsPcqmOAI_qnIQ/s640/11%20Cinta%20Terlarang00035.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4IGwLm8BHpb_-99gNhY-718rIjL1cp6MDc4Tdsv7QtGCH4ZHX4UcS_J8zts1clBmwqhMag7u5vrQPOUlV0gaGaUeasfrPWXv32GSA6SZfLhc6UQD12UHtocl96o_SD5LzKJAMy7UtzH0rYhmOvZDON_cy7o6pHJ2lwPFHvMO_PfJl1rsPcqmOAI_qnIQ/w400-h300/11%20Cinta%20Terlarang00035.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>And indeed, this is largely the direction the film takes during its middle half hour, possibly with a side dish of TV soap opera thrown in for good measure. A garish approximation of high gloss eroticism takes precedence, whilst a love triangle plot line develops involving Andre, Lola and… Nita, who, in civilian life, it transpires, is actually Lola’s possessive lesbian lover! <p></p>
<p>Amidst the lengthy stretches of melodramatic relationship talk which result from all this however, director Burnama at least has the good sense to keep the witches’ cauldron boiling, as Ratih and Nita instigate further occult outrages, claiming that aforementioned pimp guy as Lola/Ratih’s second victim, and also undertaking an unsuccessful spectral assault upon Andre’s Dad’s house. </p>
<p> (The latter, incidentally, fails largely as a result their insistence on utilising billowing silk and flying vases as their sole weapons, leading to Ratih’s spirit being buried beneath a glowing flower pot on the lawn, trapped by an ‘antidote talisman’ which the occult advisor guy has told him Andre’s Dad to bury there!) </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl5PxJTruecs6s3z0PqhMA79qtgaYWAscPTmcZ5Es-KVXb75ZmI2wr4ZzXu5TZ3IxlNyKvPcbMU8xGoN3zoDizXrTBjfjVpXH9cQ6clWSr0dIx97KVkTtw65Wh5kn_8CsqghF8B-kERNZEhcegUZRT_oqqYjQazoAWoOEMWhqVKgapbjHEmX5gGXDx0Aw/s640/12%20Cinta%20Terlarang00019.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl5PxJTruecs6s3z0PqhMA79qtgaYWAscPTmcZ5Es-KVXb75ZmI2wr4ZzXu5TZ3IxlNyKvPcbMU8xGoN3zoDizXrTBjfjVpXH9cQ6clWSr0dIx97KVkTtw65Wh5kn_8CsqghF8B-kERNZEhcegUZRT_oqqYjQazoAWoOEMWhqVKgapbjHEmX5gGXDx0Aw/w400-h300/12%20Cinta%20Terlarang00019.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgedXJQ9W8nSXHN6V_tXfDY_DJfk23rYHQEL52U6TqB_uTCq8b1yKDkGG2My2OWNxj0vS4h7v8bEb5-KMFFADeLOmWNz3ZvACAmYnj8L7zvFVQ1CnTqxJzzua3P8saLDrozSVhkCT002wjLLZWwj-Uteo85D44Xw8XwtfT5tBat-NK32i8lPlyHUyoNJnI/s640/13%20Cinta%20Terlarang00014.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgedXJQ9W8nSXHN6V_tXfDY_DJfk23rYHQEL52U6TqB_uTCq8b1yKDkGG2My2OWNxj0vS4h7v8bEb5-KMFFADeLOmWNz3ZvACAmYnj8L7zvFVQ1CnTqxJzzua3P8saLDrozSVhkCT002wjLLZWwj-Uteo85D44Xw8XwtfT5tBat-NK32i8lPlyHUyoNJnI/w400-h300/13%20Cinta%20Terlarang00014.jpg" width="400" /></a>Just to further confuse the film’s genre identity meanwhile, there are also a number of decently choreographed martial arts fight scenes, suggesting that perhaps Burnama secretly wished he was helming a full scale action movie. (Perhaps the influence of sexed up Hong Kong action movies like ‘Naked Killer’ (1992) and ‘Robotrix’ (1991) can also be detected here?)</div><p>Naturally, this is all to the good in terms of the film’s overall entertainment value, and the scenes in which the thoroughly bad-ass Nita lays waste to gangs of machete-wielding goons in her slo-mo, silk-flowing splendour prove especially awesome, even incorporating some fairly elaborate HK/wuxia style wire-work in places. <span style="color: red; font-family: courier;"><b>(3) </b></span>
</p><p>In a sense, I can see a similar methodology at work here to that guiding H. Tjut Djalil’s classic of Indo-horror/action insanity, ‘Lady Terminator’ from 1989. </p><p>With that film, Djalil didn’t seem able to simply make a straight rip-off of ‘The Terminator’, instead switching out the sci-fi elements in favour of an insane, quasi-feminist black magickal possession story. By the same token, Burnama seems to have been unable (or unwilling) to make a standard erotic thriller here without spicing it up with… an insane, quasi-feminist black magickal possession/revenge story (and indeed, some kung fu). For this excellent decision making, we can all offer him our gratitude. </p>
<p>Having said that though, in visual terms, ‘Cinta Terlarang’s ultra-garish ‘80s bad trip splatter-horror aesthetic is actually probably more closely aligned with Djalil’s later ‘Dangerous Seductress’ (1992)… but yes, that one also goes pretty big on the insane, quasi-feminist black magickal shit as I recall, so the point still stands. </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgetjxhhw2UyVQ9Ol1zkZlGYld5rdPGeB_2RfDO3R6D1yBIPXTftBBaK17qCVyYPRKwScc1mhwV34SZSYizFY00Eons1ffF_6JEIkapwT-gQym0PsWC9rAUb9Nm2hNqxw0NhL-qXcWkjTe6MItsfMPin4KEMzMojquxWDjfIshQOCZ5srmV1deIGlgrNTI/s640/15%20Cinta%20Terlarang00020.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgetjxhhw2UyVQ9Ol1zkZlGYld5rdPGeB_2RfDO3R6D1yBIPXTftBBaK17qCVyYPRKwScc1mhwV34SZSYizFY00Eons1ffF_6JEIkapwT-gQym0PsWC9rAUb9Nm2hNqxw0NhL-qXcWkjTe6MItsfMPin4KEMzMojquxWDjfIshQOCZ5srmV1deIGlgrNTI/w400-h300/15%20Cinta%20Terlarang00020.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4mFdCtcQPogwIoa2U1Es9SGQAAgCQIzgv2So-cbGoqcT9B-vF1ari8YLO-GHt1FKo9pAgiUcYjbhlmKn2a978JREHOxEGfZqZHiOXp5i5pZEuBN_URib6rwApTDzG8RmEfKu_2YlWHEQKl2EhnTse4RVqAFyj_vqatAG54XocD2j73dh8h3FadyZ1T_M/s640/16%20Cinta%20Terlarang00033.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4mFdCtcQPogwIoa2U1Es9SGQAAgCQIzgv2So-cbGoqcT9B-vF1ari8YLO-GHt1FKo9pAgiUcYjbhlmKn2a978JREHOxEGfZqZHiOXp5i5pZEuBN_URib6rwApTDzG8RmEfKu_2YlWHEQKl2EhnTse4RVqAFyj_vqatAG54XocD2j73dh8h3FadyZ1T_M/w400-h300/16%20Cinta%20Terlarang00033.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Though ‘Cinta Terlarang’ is evidently working on a lower budget than Djalil’s films - and is, comparatively speaking, less ambitious in its craziness as a result - all of this helps illustrate why I believe that pre-2000 horror films from Indonesia are <i>always</i> worth checking out, even when, like this one, they don’t quite manage to entirely achieve their potential.
<p>Speaking of which, the pedant in me demands that I state that ‘Cinta Terlarang’ is fairly incoherent in logical, thematic, emotional, and even spatial, terms, but honestly - <i>does it matter</i>, when there is so much pure, wild, diabolical fun here to enjoy? </p>
<p>On a more depressing note meanwhile, the existence and rediscovery of wonderful films like this one also causes me to reflect sadly on the way in which a nation whose popular cinema was once overflowing with unashamed lesbian love, implied oral sex, vampiric flying heads, kung fu battling witches and leather-clad Lady Terminators laying waste to neon-drenched nightclubs, has, in more recent years, regressed to a state in which media portrayals of homosexuality are effectively <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Indonesia#Media">outlawed</a>, sex outside of marriage has recently been <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/indonesias-parliament-passes-controversial-new-criminal-code-2022-12-06/">criminalised</a>, and women are increasingly facing <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/03/18/i-wanted-run-away/abusive-dress-codes-women-and-girls-indonesia">harassment</a> for venturing outside without full face-covering. </p>
<p><i>Oh well. </i>For now, let’s all close our eyes tight and/or cue up ‘Cinta Terlarang’ and return for 80-something minutes to wild and carefree days of… 1995? I know - who’d have thought it, right? </p><p>
-- </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhibGkVpWi-wzDzHLAGh9_CVjxj8DPdrZoHxfz0xQPJTTahmxs670xtmdifH_-Lk3-FcWLWzZdi1PcmeSnkR6wgJ6nQJH_aeOVhgVHigx2YNtUjuDGWYW33ZwtP3xLBn8BBzyLet1e8TfMVlCHOhecD742FmK1S3ihQWdv43I-MysMvLK3GJrJc-lOrKvA/s640/17%20Cinta%20Terlarang00011.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhibGkVpWi-wzDzHLAGh9_CVjxj8DPdrZoHxfz0xQPJTTahmxs670xtmdifH_-Lk3-FcWLWzZdi1PcmeSnkR6wgJ6nQJH_aeOVhgVHigx2YNtUjuDGWYW33ZwtP3xLBn8BBzyLet1e8TfMVlCHOhecD742FmK1S3ihQWdv43I-MysMvLK3GJrJc-lOrKvA/w400-h300/17%20Cinta%20Terlarang00011.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiMJNLHQCfehOvdYwIITcRrcZ6E93GORXO_WM1OEaA7cgPgrT8YNrjer-LweGdOF1g_uO19JN6A2UZMg8uZdT_IwdYny9AHmuAMfgr1QQNLtwBYIWifTJmewz-TP0VIKa4gsA9UKCJ9IoiMIp1Lazyw53g-tg8c3t57wWp29DCo1G2c43SYnvxpW5Mye8/s640/18%20Cinta%20Terlarang00012.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiMJNLHQCfehOvdYwIITcRrcZ6E93GORXO_WM1OEaA7cgPgrT8YNrjer-LweGdOF1g_uO19JN6A2UZMg8uZdT_IwdYny9AHmuAMfgr1QQNLtwBYIWifTJmewz-TP0VIKa4gsA9UKCJ9IoiMIp1Lazyw53g-tg8c3t57wWp29DCo1G2c43SYnvxpW5Mye8/w400-h300/18%20Cinta%20Terlarang00012.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p> --
</p><p><span style="color: red; font-family: courier;"><b>(1)</b></span><i>Curiously, the demonic entity in ‘Cinta Terlarang’ is addressed by the witches as “Eyang”, which the internet informs me means “grandparent” in Indonesian, perhaps suggesting some kind of diabolical ancestor worship is going on here?</i></p>
<p><span style="color: red; font-family: courier;"><b>(2)</b></span><i>It is only after watching the film several times, and writing this review, that I’ve finally realised that, rather than just being totally inexplicable, that bit with the bloody tampon is perhaps meant to imply that Andre’s girlfriend is not actually pregnant, thus excusing him of being an arsehole when he refuses to believe her? If so, this plot point is… not very clearly explained, to put it mildly.</i></p>
<p><span style="color: red; font-family: courier;"><b>(3)</b></span><i>Given that Nita possesses such impressive fighting prowess whilst in her witch-y incarnation, I’m curious why another scene finds her (in her day time / ‘jilted lesbian lover’ guise) hiring a bunch of male goons to beat up Andre whilst taking no part in the assault herself, but… NEVER MIND!</i></p>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-51818080812291917912023-08-14T14:11:00.000+01:002023-08-14T14:11:00.142+01:00Random Paperbacks: Trailer Camp Woman by Doug Duperrault (Bedside Books, 1960)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBlMYRirn3jk43x1Wc764kC4lBJiOs7ObkzGxmDm5Ls_e1z8yjCZ3IoX8TU7-eHvSoxyLisAMHHXv4d_zoLBpjDM8Bu5iBUbtAOx0b5Zp38qfYGWePJxGziBNhMniB7sat_bQYmHvoxgdCKBEXns9i2BcIq39IaSYnEIutm6aeu9wlYM1anywCHglo5AM/s2070/Trailer%20Camp%20Woman%2001.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2070" data-original-width="1257" height="663" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBlMYRirn3jk43x1Wc764kC4lBJiOs7ObkzGxmDm5Ls_e1z8yjCZ3IoX8TU7-eHvSoxyLisAMHHXv4d_zoLBpjDM8Bu5iBUbtAOx0b5Zp38qfYGWePJxGziBNhMniB7sat_bQYmHvoxgdCKBEXns9i2BcIq39IaSYnEIutm6aeu9wlYM1anywCHglo5AM/w388-h640/Trailer%20Camp%20Woman%2001.jpg" width="396" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcR6nAAJtMYQuvmEiQV9FLM5Lbd9AxhgkG-m8daVmdI7t9D_97Gg3spUWU6us6-TpXTX6llXVGR0YdXrCDuKeK4bEOpDX6syBdfNH_OI_1wz_XPI2Muj0gs8vQFuaKS-smrhjoT9dPK11kn9egaZkXdY36k6UuWmXdi_jpaVYAsgS7diN5wMRHo1XxU_0/s2069/Trailer%20Camp%20Woman%2002.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2069" data-original-width="1235" height="666" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcR6nAAJtMYQuvmEiQV9FLM5Lbd9AxhgkG-m8daVmdI7t9D_97Gg3spUWU6us6-TpXTX6llXVGR0YdXrCDuKeK4bEOpDX6syBdfNH_OI_1wz_XPI2Muj0gs8vQFuaKS-smrhjoT9dPK11kn9egaZkXdY36k6UuWmXdi_jpaVYAsgS7diN5wMRHo1XxU_0/w382-h640/Trailer%20Camp%20Woman%2002.jpg" width="397" /></a>Another example of a ‘60s US sleaze paperback recently discovered on these shores - I scored this one at a car boot sale in Peckham, no less. </div>
<p>Though pretty boilerplate stuff in terms of concept and content, the cover art here is way above average (albeit poorly reproduced). Unfortunately, it resides permanently in the “artist unknown” category on the <a href="http://greenleaf-classics-books.com/vintage/book/btb958 ">Greenleaf Classics web archive</a> (which is about as comprehensive a reference on this stuff as exists anywhere). </p><p><a href="http://greenleaf-classics-books.com/vintage/imprint/bedside-books">Bedside Books</a> were an early exemplar of the <a href=" http://greenleaf-classics-books.com/vintage/timeline ">multiple imprints</a> which flourished as part of the wider Greenleaf Classics empire, effectively flooding the market with ‘adult reading’ throughout the ‘60s. According to the aforementioned archive, at least 110 books were published under the Bedside banner between 1959 and 1963. </p>‘Trailer Camp Woman’ is actually a re-print - it was first published, with different artwork, by Beacon Books in 1959, if anyone cares. An <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53893121-trailer-camp-woman ">online review</a> on goodreads.com states that it reads like the work of the ubiquitous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orrie_Hitt">Orrie Hitt</a>, and I’m content to take their word for it. <br /><p>Probably more interesting in this case however is what I discovered when I first skimmed through the book’s pages; </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicPeX_GOU2qcVdiYvWzvMnW4GhbQT-RuHbQSurivjcsgQWAx0BOn3zkJUkNUHK9vGDEfa3O7PwJaVSjHD5T4T8hvsV8ZY1q0ih6lHtkRaoIWhEoWyGvb3s3ZWbFA0RHMnE_nJ8fcdNl5m1Zk88qd9jdegClVzbiECufs8OxaK7jsJ012aNaDRpMcpSt3U/s4032/Trailer%20Camp%20Woman%2004.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicPeX_GOU2qcVdiYvWzvMnW4GhbQT-RuHbQSurivjcsgQWAx0BOn3zkJUkNUHK9vGDEfa3O7PwJaVSjHD5T4T8hvsV8ZY1q0ih6lHtkRaoIWhEoWyGvb3s3ZWbFA0RHMnE_nJ8fcdNl5m1Zk88qd9jdegClVzbiECufs8OxaK7jsJ012aNaDRpMcpSt3U/w400-h300/Trailer%20Camp%20Woman%2004.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>Oh boy.
<p>Immediately, my mind conjures up an image of the lair of some debauched early ‘60s pervert, his stash so glutted with (then rare and illicit) pornographic photos that he’s taken to tearing them up and using them for bookmarks. </p>
<p>Or, perhaps a more likely possibility, could the book’s former owner have been a transient person or serviceman, carefully stashing their, uh, ‘favourite’ dirty picture somewhere where it wouldn’t be found? </p>
<p>Either way, I’ll keep it where I found it - preserving the sordid mystery for whoever ends up taking ownership of ‘Trailer Camp Woman’ once I’m obliged to part with it. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKCo7O0c8VdFIBAuF_562tCtube0URrzajn65p43wJkOnKFTs0t6O9gFQJm5iY4Be7X3S6FbQ8RnR8wrtLGR-pneJ8TdDbUWuTQlXRoWJcp0rMKbFp1-yPpOYk-7lSlyqsvd48NMwsk_EQ6J-EUjLEStv3kuuM1yZK6h3p7KoM0Th5uRxO9dh9lD9L1C4/s747/Trailer%20Camp%20Woman%2003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="569" data-original-width="747" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKCo7O0c8VdFIBAuF_562tCtube0URrzajn65p43wJkOnKFTs0t6O9gFQJm5iY4Be7X3S6FbQ8RnR8wrtLGR-pneJ8TdDbUWuTQlXRoWJcp0rMKbFp1-yPpOYk-7lSlyqsvd48NMwsk_EQ6J-EUjLEStv3kuuM1yZK6h3p7KoM0Th5uRxO9dh9lD9L1C4/s320/Trailer%20Camp%20Woman%2003.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-33494215503500185972023-08-09T16:46:00.000+01:002023-08-09T16:46:55.820+01:00Deathblog: William Friedkin (1935-2023)<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: courier;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT2Ko1GzxDMCNrnX64coghygBiNGlbG3Ca1ifDjkWEIXeC9uO9R3VRVnod-jg_2k-Ts-NDwQgFCmhtnLriIdQ_52tTIV0dqqhO1dt2sLNsk2GUIzeASnSP2eKjbEDjA1OkwEYLN6zvPeJmv-Um8CI3jaz68Tn-EahaFyq8Jq5T9Um60lFUD7npM1T4jhc/s1200/William-Friedkin-Leap-of-Faith-Exorcist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT2Ko1GzxDMCNrnX64coghygBiNGlbG3Ca1ifDjkWEIXeC9uO9R3VRVnod-jg_2k-Ts-NDwQgFCmhtnLriIdQ_52tTIV0dqqhO1dt2sLNsk2GUIzeASnSP2eKjbEDjA1OkwEYLN6zvPeJmv-Um8CI3jaz68Tn-EahaFyq8Jq5T9Um60lFUD7npM1T4jhc/w400-h225/William-Friedkin-Leap-of-Faith-Exorcist.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>“I have no regard for and no knowledge of the value of money, I'm not saying that’s a virtue, just a fact. For me, the greatest thrill in the world, the only thrill, is getting 20 seconds on the screen that really gases you.” </span>- William Friedkin, early ‘70s</div>
<p>And so, after saying farewell to <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2023/05/deathblog-kenneth-anger-1926-2023.html ">Kenneth Anger</a> a few months ago, we mark the departure of another bad tempered, uncompromising, fiendishly inspired director whose work succeeded in turning American film culture upside down and shaking the hell out of it.</p><p>It probably shouldn’t be a surprise when someone passes away at the age of 87, but, Friedkin always seemed like one of those guys who’s just going to keep on banging away forever.</p>
<p>Personality-wise, he was... abrasive, to say the least. I’ll admit that I’ve increasingly started to find interviews and commentaries with him painful to sit through in recent years, but -- he sure could get shit done. And he <i>continued</i> to get it done too, fighting to get provocative and divisive material up on the screen right to the bitter end (for better or for worse). He could easily have just rested on his laurels in his later decades, played the Hollywood game and taken it easy; but such was not his way, and at the very least we got unsettling films like ‘Bug’ (2006) and ‘Killer Joe’ (2011) as a result. </p>
<p>Ultimately in a case like this though, what can you say, except: look at the work.</p>
<p>‘Sorcerer’ is a serious contender for my favourite film of all time. Every time I see it, I’m just stunned by the sheer intensity of the imagery Friedkin managed to get onto the screen. It is <i>awesome</i>, in the original / primal sense of the word. </p>
<p>But, on some days, ‘To Live and Die in L.A.’, ‘Cruising’ and ‘The French Connection’ could all easily make it into my all-time top 10 too – a trio of superlative crime films, all perfect examples of Friedkin’s stated preference for what he modestly called “off-kilter action-adventure movies”, each of them leaving genre/audience expectations dead in the gutter as they explore uncomfortable, liminal realms, mapping out both the disintegration of the line separating crime from the law, and the disintegration of individual identity itself.</p>
<p>And yes, I’ll even grudgingly admit that ‘The Exorcist’ is pretty flawless in technical terms, even though its heavy-handed literalism and self-serious attitude has always left a bad taste in my mouth. </p>
<p>Meanwhile though, away from the provocation and self-immolation, there was another Billy Friedkin out there too, wasn’t there? The classicist golden age Hollywood devotee who made odd, old-fashioned pictures like ‘The Brink’s Job’ and ‘The Night They Raided Minsky’s’? Is anyone going to sing <i>his</i> praises, before the moment passes? Well, I’m not going to, but someone probably should.</p>
<p>Friedkin is deserving of a much longer, more in-depth tribute, of course, but what else can you say at this point -- a great loss to cinema. RIP.</p>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-90919070080691909212023-08-05T21:17:00.070+01:002023-08-05T21:17:00.164+01:00Random Paperbacks: Stranger in Town by Raoul D’Orque (Unique Books, 1967)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD4837xpEJ8TPfuULcnXrTqgVkbrg6BAJf_PdBuz-XyzYRKEs45jPTiB4UBDhxzLCH7lz55qwLeX6I01Maa2z5rhpYgGgm1AqlWlB6JeJIipuWptJ_zqWLV3DOgbdQnudaRPyIWzJGlfqS3cZewoicGmuZFjD673JgbwE32aguQOa6p3rtTj_y9EOCk0I/s2111/IMG_20230802_0001.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2111" data-original-width="1293" height="653" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD4837xpEJ8TPfuULcnXrTqgVkbrg6BAJf_PdBuz-XyzYRKEs45jPTiB4UBDhxzLCH7lz55qwLeX6I01Maa2z5rhpYgGgm1AqlWlB6JeJIipuWptJ_zqWLV3DOgbdQnudaRPyIWzJGlfqS3cZewoicGmuZFjD673JgbwE32aguQOa6p3rtTj_y9EOCk0I/w392-h640/IMG_20230802_0001.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>A rare example of a ‘60s U.S. sleaze paperback snagged in the wild here in the UK, I recently picked this up at Oxfam of all places, for a bargain price presumably reflective of the fact that the binding and spine are absolutely shot. <p></p>
<p>I mean, as if they actually expected anyone to read it! The cover art by <a href="https://www.thisishorror.co.uk/weird-world-bill-alexander/ ">Bill Alexander</a> is the big draw here, and I’ll freely admit to staring at its warped, weirdo beauty for far longer than is healthy. </p><p>Though the artist’s intention was probably for our attention to be focused on the figure of the innocent (white-haired?) nymphet being assaulted by a jumpsuit-clad dominatrix immediately after stepping off the bus in the Big City, my focus instead keeps getting drawn back to the male figure on the left, with his Clint Eastwood scowl, jaunty neckerchief and fragile, elongated hands, clutching at the victim’s pasteboard suitcase. </p>
<p>Is he working in cahoots with the dominatrix, or has he just scuttled round the corner, drawn magnet-like by the opportunity to snatch some luggage? (“Yoink!”) </p>
<p>Either way, the demented cartoon world created by Alexander in this one mad vignette is sublime; the implicit idea that moral standards in America’s cities have collapsed to such an extent that a buxom, mid-western lass can’t even make it out of the bus station without getting clobbered by perverts and ripped off by rat-men… and the unspoken promise that, if you’re enough of a freak to be checking out a volume like this, you should probably find this prospect <i>exciting</i>, and hit the mean and sticky streets in search of flesh forthwith. Yowza! </p>
<p>I’ve always felt you could draw a direct line between this kind of sleaze paperback artwork, the more highly regarded/subversive fetish illustration which was its contemporary cousin, and the similarly ugly/beautiful atmosphere conjured up (albeit in more self-aware fashion) by ‘90s comic artists like Dan Clowes and Charles Burns - and indeed, clicking through to the above-linked ‘This is Horror’ story on Bill Alexander reveals that his long and varied career touched on all these areas, and plenty more besides. </p>
<p>A rare example of an African-American commercial artist, Alexander began his career in the ‘40s, illustrating the labels of 78rpm records by cats like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb6zAhtSKmc">Roy Milton</a> (see some examples <a href="https://dulltooldimbulb.blogspot.com/2010/07/black-sleaze-rocking-raunchy-drawings.html">here</a>), before helping to create “arguably the first black superhero strip”, ‘The Bronze Bomber’, which appeared in the Los Angeles Tribune from 1941-43. (Sadly, all artwork from this strip appears lost - for more detail, see the Wikipedia entry for Alexander’s contemporary <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Bilbrew">Gene Bilbrew</a>.) </p><p>After seeing service in WWII, Alexander seems to have moved on to paperback covers and S&M / fetish illustration through the ‘50s and ‘60s, including work for the legendary <a href=" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Klaw">Irving Klaw</a>, before achieving renown of a different order through his covers for the Eerie Publications line of horror comics in the 1970s - for more on which, I’ll refer you back to <a href="https://www.thisishorror.co.uk/weird-world-bill-alexander/">the This is Horror article</a>, which is a great read.</p><p>As to the book itself, this appears to be the sole volume credited to the supremely named Raoul D’Orque -- and if I was ever looking for an alias to use for anonymously checking into hotels or making pornography, I think I just found it. </p>
<p>Rather than trying to provide a plot synopsis or similar, I’ll just hit you with this scan of the novel’s opening pages: </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsoX6ZuiaImrsjyM66VX1HBQ5PsYUCYvX5DCiyZ57yR1hONIuhoG152JYYxwM7H92-ir_bK4Jhl2AowaQT7sWXsa9Nea9U5gD4AmgiNF2bz7he1eSEz80ckAq6KtxjlK1_lrfjkOG0wQN5FDNzLftfi2Luxjq6yNfGakRAzYCLFmwERiLA0PsnePEDG_w/s1095/IMG_20230802_0008.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="538" data-original-width="1095" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsoX6ZuiaImrsjyM66VX1HBQ5PsYUCYvX5DCiyZ57yR1hONIuhoG152JYYxwM7H92-ir_bK4Jhl2AowaQT7sWXsa9Nea9U5gD4AmgiNF2bz7he1eSEz80ckAq6KtxjlK1_lrfjkOG0wQN5FDNzLftfi2Luxjq6yNfGakRAzYCLFmwERiLA0PsnePEDG_w/w400-h196/IMG_20230802_0008.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl0Qb-ug7RY6lO2JvgqNwZZDZwV64D5W65yzmNipX8YmIC2CYme28cieDtvDD_REOo7-AMa2yVaHj6G1qICjUAnl6aE_o4itTY47mahn4DNiP3pUL_3xcpYN937ARSpvwDMFys0oLBsaeWi4UMR_y6XSPwRI6eW-i1SuJbcAcVCzBTrBKbVyIbmXUXUhE/s1807/IMG_20230802_0007.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1807" data-original-width="1103" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl0Qb-ug7RY6lO2JvgqNwZZDZwV64D5W65yzmNipX8YmIC2CYme28cieDtvDD_REOo7-AMa2yVaHj6G1qICjUAnl6aE_o4itTY47mahn4DNiP3pUL_3xcpYN937ARSpvwDMFys0oLBsaeWi4UMR_y6XSPwRI6eW-i1SuJbcAcVCzBTrBKbVyIbmXUXUhE/w390-h640/IMG_20230802_0007.jpg" width="390" /></a></div>I realise coherence wasn’t a big concern for authors of single draft roughie sleaze books or their publishers, but still - there’s something fairly awe-inspiring about the idea that a manuscript which descends into gobbledegook <i>within its third sentence</i> can still go to print unaltered.
<p>Just imagine the Burroughs-esque cut-up mayhem and made up words (‘matine’?) which might unfold across the following 150 pages, and shudder with misplaced ecstasy. </p>
<p>Oh, and - you see that ‘UB’ logo stuck in the middle of the above cover, like a sticker on an apple or something? That’s not actually a sticker on the book, it’s printed on. Someone must have artlessly slapped it onto Alexander’s original artwork whilst setting it out for printing. </p>
<p>This practice seems to have been standard operating procedure not only at Unique Books, but across all the associated imprints operated out of Buffalo, NY during the ‘60s by frequently indicted Times Square porno/sleaze entrepreneur <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/edward-mishkin-yonkers-porn-dealer-1966-united-states-supreme-court-case-robert-grey-reynolds-jr/1136273585">Eddie Mishkin</a>. (Also see: ‘After Hours’, ‘First Niter’, ‘Nitey Night’ etc, all of which used near-identical typography, and frequently featured the work of fetish-affiliated artists like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Stanton">Eric Stanton</a> and the aforementioned <a href="https://dulltooldimbulb.blogspot.com/search/label/Eugene%20Bilbrew">Gene Bilbrew</a>.) </p><p>I wonder, incidentally, whether Eddie Mishkin was any relation to Andy Milligan’s producer / nemesis William Mishkin, who was based out of nearby 42nd street, and frequently worked with other Mishkin brothers on assorted dubious enterprises? My sole reference on such matters, Jimmy McDonough’s essential Milligan biography <a href="https://www.fabpress.com/the-ghastly-one-paperback.html ">The Ghastly One</a>, ain’t telling, but either way, the spider’s web of subterranean cultural connections uncovered by my visit to Oxfam grows...</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg57zUK4UzToJI1YBg8g6xY2nfPcwn8KBTpEihpNRlCBw1dsI20bQV_sThmWm-GGHFb-HZnp2_2aZ9qDejwKb97DFKEs_k6J8BwPdW1uCA_R78kmy38ov-UVkJ3t6k5KaXwvW8_Z3ERUJzc8DYe9g1KUV-wYnuDnlZmY0Lu704kIt-t7LKGgfGUHpLKHo/s1102/IMG_20230802_0004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="542" data-original-width="1102" height="157" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg57zUK4UzToJI1YBg8g6xY2nfPcwn8KBTpEihpNRlCBw1dsI20bQV_sThmWm-GGHFb-HZnp2_2aZ9qDejwKb97DFKEs_k6J8BwPdW1uCA_R78kmy38ov-UVkJ3t6k5KaXwvW8_Z3ERUJzc8DYe9g1KUV-wYnuDnlZmY0Lu704kIt-t7LKGgfGUHpLKHo/s320/IMG_20230802_0004.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvGpk3-ywfGnCwTt5LRm6B_oQvj3TYPMZ1NJESR9ryZPX9oWuIFWqpprqx9QrBrELnJe9XJ_MSpNMy7k5ebgXTHBN88_WbIWRMysgTcH3D58gJKqjk4sg2paOjiAXm1IpFr-ZvV9-azlnHMgktfw-FbQsbmscGv9LuhaH_vjEEHzLc7nMZx_Qn_9TW6h8/s598/IMG_20230802_0002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="319" data-original-width="598" height="107" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvGpk3-ywfGnCwTt5LRm6B_oQvj3TYPMZ1NJESR9ryZPX9oWuIFWqpprqx9QrBrELnJe9XJ_MSpNMy7k5ebgXTHBN88_WbIWRMysgTcH3D58gJKqjk4sg2paOjiAXm1IpFr-ZvV9-azlnHMgktfw-FbQsbmscGv9LuhaH_vjEEHzLc7nMZx_Qn_9TW6h8/w200-h107/IMG_20230802_0002.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br />Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-56747398400267411212023-08-01T15:38:00.060+01:002023-08-01T15:38:00.140+01:00Random Paperbacks: Appointment in Paris by Fay Adams (Gold Medal, 1958)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUp165Fugz0MfBLbxbqKp-RO-6qhO92zcP2aST_RJX14S50tDcJWeOVpJ3Qg3iN89jS4S-EpobnmhfCoMVfbEds0-2dfpk9dsSietEAlres_PBRqU7jRt-FzrdyX2pQzOd59MlE9npGDh13cO3ZFKYR_eAVx0GnO4u_2nYRsAkm8V23mKY0WdFAth6S8I/s2133/Appointment%20in%20Paris%2001.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2133" data-original-width="1286" height="659" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUp165Fugz0MfBLbxbqKp-RO-6qhO92zcP2aST_RJX14S50tDcJWeOVpJ3Qg3iN89jS4S-EpobnmhfCoMVfbEds0-2dfpk9dsSietEAlres_PBRqU7jRt-FzrdyX2pQzOd59MlE9npGDh13cO3ZFKYR_eAVx0GnO4u_2nYRsAkm8V23mKY0WdFAth6S8I/w386-h640/Appointment%20in%20Paris%2001.jpeg" width="398" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMWNkLGib_XaoHRPKnAKIC-iIdH2bDkuBX0b0f9xJHsBCpyfOmwUX6LhkT23jQ-C7FM6ooillzBtl8_VjQx305kVBpT6JWTPMQdq8k1AL0R4rJ03uMahQf_VUOIwerzWssVon5cO6roxBIVq-c4jDrWNlSgswA804LGGMZVRXteudm-CjhfJsbKSJE1VM/s2119/Appointment%20in%20Paris%2002.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2119" data-original-width="1283" height="653" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMWNkLGib_XaoHRPKnAKIC-iIdH2bDkuBX0b0f9xJHsBCpyfOmwUX6LhkT23jQ-C7FM6ooillzBtl8_VjQx305kVBpT6JWTPMQdq8k1AL0R4rJ03uMahQf_VUOIwerzWssVon5cO6roxBIVq-c4jDrWNlSgswA804LGGMZVRXteudm-CjhfJsbKSJE1VM/w388-h640/Appointment%20in%20Paris%2002.jpg" width="396" /></a></div>From a distance, the uncredited artwork for Fay Adams’ Gold Medal paperback original ‘Appointment in Paris’ looks like a pretty respectable, atmospheric cover for a suspense or mystery novel. <span style="color: red; font-family: courier;"><b>(1) </b></span>
<p>Give it a second look though, taking a bit more time, and you’ll start to realise it’s actually a pretty rushed piece - sketchy, lacking detail. Then you’ll clock <i>that left arm</i>, and you’ll never be able to unsee it. </p>
<p>And in fact, ‘Appointment in Paris’ isn’t a suspense or mystery novel at all, in spite of the cover’s moody lighting and suspenseful pose. </p>
<p>Instead, it’s a thoroughly old fashioned, lightweight romance / coming-of-age sort of affair, in which a young American debutante spends a summer in Paris under the tutelage of a wise old Aunt, gets mildly shocked by the somewhat forward customs of French society and becomes involved in some (reassuring chaste) romantic entanglements, in a variation on the same formula which is apparently <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_in_Paris ">still packin’ ‘em in</a> on Netflix over sixty years later. </p><p>Or, is it..? </p>
<p>The plot thickens when some quick searching online reveals that Fay Adams’ only other published work (in book form anyway - unsure if she sold any stuff to magazines/periodicals) appears in the 2005 anthology <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/159000.Lesbian_Pulp_Fiction ">Lesbian Pulp Fiction: The Sexually Intrepid World of Lesbian Paperback Novels, 1950-1965</a>. </p><p>Widely offered for sale online as an e-book, ‘Appointment in Paris’ is often noted as forming part of the ‘Classic Lesbian Pulp Series’, and the cut-and-pasted plot synopsis reads as follows: </p>
<p><span style="font-family: courier;"> 'Primarily set against the backdrops of Paris and the French countryside, and taking us back in time to the year 1936, Appointment in Paris tells the story of a young girl named Havoc. Hattie, as she is also known, is having a difficult time living under the strict watchful eye of her aunt. She wants to strike out for adventure on her own. One day she meets Marcelle, a woman older than she, in the hallway of their apartment building. Neither can ignore the spark of attraction that flames between them and before long they are hopelessly head over heels in love.' </span></p>
<p>I’ve got to say, this is news to me, as, having skim-read the book, I didn’t get any inkling of same-sex romance at all. In fact, the final chapter finds the heroine weighing up the relative virtues of her male French ex-lover and her newly acquired American husband, whilst wishing a tearful goodbye to her Parisian best friend, who is also now happily married. </p>
<p>Such a conclusion doesn’t exactly speak of a ground-breaking work of lesbian fiction, you’d have to admit. But, what we instead have here instead I suppose is a sobering reminder of an era in which non-hetero relationships remained such a taboo that they could only be addressed in almost entirely sub-textural terms, even in the context of a below-the-radar pulp paperback. How things would change, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35684768-satan-was-a-lesbian">just a few short years later</a>. </p><p>Oh, and yes - the heroine of this book is indeed named <i>Havoc</i>, which is pretty amazing. </p><p>--
</p><p><span style="color: red; font-family: courier;"><b>(1)</b></span><i>My usual painstaking research - ie, a quick google search - has left me unable to turn up an artist credit for this cover, but as ever, please just drop us a line if you have any leads.</i></p>
Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3369610344911858466.post-78030647476614817552023-07-22T21:18:00.001+01:002023-07-22T21:18:51.692+01:00Horror Express: Verotika (Glenn Danzig, 2019)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Ojyai5zSE0rFNReB5WBxA7ua_S9C60hXMZqV9jat15Rqoq0Vp4_MFH3myMySfMWLS5oXtT9_LTgXOcLAnKqd9dTa-arqJgBGAIdGlQGoa_6xMXMY0pzMKoZ_vsTElUymeiRdB3PG8_L8xtUVuDr7vCvGZ3-f-R3GMihzXqQWrDcmZ19IAD25HZChjAg/s640/Verotika%20poster.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="418" height="608" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Ojyai5zSE0rFNReB5WBxA7ua_S9C60hXMZqV9jat15Rqoq0Vp4_MFH3myMySfMWLS5oXtT9_LTgXOcLAnKqd9dTa-arqJgBGAIdGlQGoa_6xMXMY0pzMKoZ_vsTElUymeiRdB3PG8_L8xtUVuDr7vCvGZ3-f-R3GMihzXqQWrDcmZ19IAD25HZChjAg/w418-h640/Verotika%20poster.jpg" width="397" /></a></div>Say what you like about Glenn Danzig’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9425078/reviews ">widely derided</a> feature debut as writer/director/composer/co-cinematographer, which I finally persuaded myself to get around to watching last week - it’s a remarkable achievement in at least one respect. <p></p><p>Specifically, I’m referring to fact that, despite having been a successful musician and public figure for at least forty years at the time of this film’s production, Danzig still managed to create a movie <i>exactly</i> like the one a horny sixteen-year-old goth kid would probably have made, given access to the same resources. </p>
<p>Whatever your thoughts on the result of his efforts, his refusal to countenance any form of maturity whatsoever here is genuinely quite extraordinary, arguably making ‘Verotika’ the most purely (accidentally?) punk rock thing he has been associated with since Robo quit as The Misfits drummer in 1983. </p>
<p>Unfortunately however, simply being a contender for the most adolescent film ever directed by a sixty-four year old man does not necessarily mean ‘Verotika’ is worth watching. Indeed, for anyone lacking either a pre-existing interest in its creator’s oft-questionable oeuvre or a <i>very</i> indulgent attitude toward low budget 21st century horror, I’d recommend a hard pass. </p>As much as I’d love to defy critical consensus and declare this an unappreciated masterpiece, the sad truth is that, by any reasonable yardstick, ‘Verotika’ is an extremely bad film in pretty much every respect; indifferently directed, cheaply staged, sketchily scripted (to put it kindly), thoughtlessly misogynistic, entirely devoid of originality and filled with dead-eyed non-performances from a cast seemingly comprised of aspirant fetish models and porn stars. <span style="color: red;"><b><span style="font-family: courier;">(1)
</span></b></span>
<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi29gMkwRnfQizS2qwOCge9oD48pG6BCdv75qKySTPqt-YXdvp-isM7jujiAIjI0Q1hcrqhL83SMn9steBfYJZ0rjB7BJpCf2bjkQ3n6-WV5gtxeQcjKe3tgVhBzXPoGJIskbS5Mj6ydoEttbq2EbAevzusZ5gC1e-qIbi8Kn2iDtyFixZdILSR_yhFKgo/s1271/Verotika00001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="1271" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi29gMkwRnfQizS2qwOCge9oD48pG6BCdv75qKySTPqt-YXdvp-isM7jujiAIjI0Q1hcrqhL83SMn9steBfYJZ0rjB7BJpCf2bjkQ3n6-WV5gtxeQcjKe3tgVhBzXPoGJIskbS5Mj6ydoEttbq2EbAevzusZ5gC1e-qIbi8Kn2iDtyFixZdILSR_yhFKgo/w400-h170/Verotika00001.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>To paraphrase Chris Morris, we’re looking here at a crass, ugly and deeply stupid work, and yet.... what kind of horror/exploitation fan would I be if I couldn’t find something perversely captivating in the midst of this lumbering, irredeemable mess of nonsense? <p></p>
<p>Though it is not remotely as significant or enjoyable, ‘Verotika’ still, to some extent, captures the same mixture of gleeful nastiness and utter weirdness which helps make the early Misfits material so extraordinary. For all its faults, it bears the same gory signature of an artist whose brain-damaged concerns have (perhaps worryingly) remained remarkably consistent across five decades of creative output. </p>
To run down a few elements of the ‘weirdness’ part of that equation, I’ve firstly got to commend Danzig’s refusal to adhere to the narrative conventions which usually govern the EC-via-Amicus anthology framework he has chosen to work within here.
<p>The idea that segments within a horror anthology should consist of concisely rendered cautionary tales with a circular/twist ending goes completely out the window form the outset, but… in a way, I appreciated the open-endedness of this. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_bRihZsWoCHLS16NZGDE3yI2LqHpf_nIDoGKuwF3Cy9eDsv4JfJq28xs6WLYPF0ofr_5AGLCT8P2SzVwqGL_DSa--sNgzcf-2b6lAaO8wkolTLTGmGORqjNd7LHOPM8cG_Pic6YIBQf4cFWTOhhPJpU3diQV4Z4rfxncyfYu1348hsgipGORvmBHQekQ/s1279/Verotika00005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="1279" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_bRihZsWoCHLS16NZGDE3yI2LqHpf_nIDoGKuwF3Cy9eDsv4JfJq28xs6WLYPF0ofr_5AGLCT8P2SzVwqGL_DSa--sNgzcf-2b6lAaO8wkolTLTGmGORqjNd7LHOPM8cG_Pic6YIBQf4cFWTOhhPJpU3diQV4Z4rfxncyfYu1348hsgipGORvmBHQekQ/w400-h169/Verotika00005.jpg" width="400" /></a></div> I mean, let’s just take the first story here - ‘The Albino Spider of Dajette’ - and admit that I have no idea <i>why</i> the aspirant fetish model with eyeballs where her nipples should be (played by Ashley Wisdom) gets victimised by an anthropomorphic spider monster which manifests itself whilst she is asleep, and proceeds to rape and murder women. <p></p>
<p>And if there is ultimately no connection at all between the eyeballs-for-nipples thing and the spider-monster thing, well… why not? That’s life, right? Here’s this poor girl, just tryin’ to get through life with her freakish eye-boobs, and today, she’s having an especially hard time of it, vis-a-vis the whole aforementioned spider-monster situation. There’s no moral pay-off, no clever resolution, no lessons learned - fuck you, O.Henry! It’s actually quite refreshing. </p>
<p> (Of course, I didn’t realise at this point in my viewing that I was actually watching by far the most well-developed of the film’s three segments, but… we’ll get back to that soon enough.) </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbLXy4-godD_6MTRam-9c2289x7sFZDWhaYnFxT9rQ7VimTaGqn-gVjnlHSMizdRw58nmxYgJHxvUYV6dCLBqZ5TX_0JhTHUJq1qHb6dCP17Pijlft6B5GtOmU6g7kUGoTo5yF4H3qvrPotDaV9x25BU2cFxVgsYwCMgApF6lQ8OAnFKtjNZTFpJRpQhw/s1280/Verotika00004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="539" data-original-width="1280" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbLXy4-godD_6MTRam-9c2289x7sFZDWhaYnFxT9rQ7VimTaGqn-gVjnlHSMizdRw58nmxYgJHxvUYV6dCLBqZ5TX_0JhTHUJq1qHb6dCP17Pijlft6B5GtOmU6g7kUGoTo5yF4H3qvrPotDaV9x25BU2cFxVgsYwCMgApF6lQ8OAnFKtjNZTFpJRpQhw/w400-h169/Verotika00004.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>More mystifying - as one or two commentators have noted - is Danzig’s inexplicable decision to have the cast of this first story deliver their lines in ersatz French accents.
<p>If the intention here was to lend the film a sense of continental exoticism, I’m afraid it's rather undercut by the fact that ‘Verotika’ otherwise remains as all-American as a burger van parked outside a Sunset Boulevard strip joint. And, given that few of the performers appear to have much prior acting experience, and seem to have been informed about the whole accent thing about sixty seconds before shooting began.... well, you can imagine the range of out-rrrageous ac-CENTS we’re treated to here. </p>
<p> (My favourite must be the waiter who advises our heroine to hurry home before she falls victim to “zee neck brea-CURR”.) </p>
<p>Were it not for Danzig’s total devotion to the gospel of low-brow / trash culture, I’d be tempted to speculate that he intended this French accent thing as a kind of Brechtian disassociation technique - like Werner Herzog using hypnotised actors in ‘Heart of Glass’, but far more entertaining. But no. There is no way a man as steadfast in his aesthetic beliefs as Glenn Danzig would countenance such pretentious/abstract bullshit. </p><p>
Indeed, the most incredible thing about all this is that he is entirely <i>sincere</i>, but… we’ll return to that train of thought later, because unfortunately we still need to address the film’s two remaining stories. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHHS21WL10lOeV3f7-iGdRmcSyNMKvcWlMmUK_c90leBDCwJoz12Z02UsenE8c3Gra4oVpBvpi5ed7mmmczDr6juikS0SErbWwIJaM-evrwMMs8TM6kXu2DPMIVovt8Y1adp_SPaszd52sWpqeOQs06AIFywJSUT54bWwg25H1I5abVWWJ8Mji8JvrO98/s1278/Verotika00007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="538" data-original-width="1278" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHHS21WL10lOeV3f7-iGdRmcSyNMKvcWlMmUK_c90leBDCwJoz12Z02UsenE8c3Gra4oVpBvpi5ed7mmmczDr6juikS0SErbWwIJaM-evrwMMs8TM6kXu2DPMIVovt8Y1adp_SPaszd52sWpqeOQs06AIFywJSUT54bWwg25H1I5abVWWJ8Mji8JvrO98/w400-h169/Verotika00007.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Gbx_L3QKpForX3QVX5DUANDccdlN-rl1Wlbrswr01FKl4GErFlw_RyoVx80I_XCkedffG68cExWcV4oepQ-G-9G6Rdan2UWm25sEVpnAeWIkJermspzoSRCehsX-rt8OMqN7s6Hp0CrJ76o-4x53d6nAA5FP4ElnZqfBxpjP_nmB4N5GalxRdoZlGJY/s1277/Verotika00008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="536" data-original-width="1277" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1Gbx_L3QKpForX3QVX5DUANDccdlN-rl1Wlbrswr01FKl4GErFlw_RyoVx80I_XCkedffG68cExWcV4oepQ-G-9G6Rdan2UWm25sEVpnAeWIkJermspzoSRCehsX-rt8OMqN7s6Hp0CrJ76o-4x53d6nAA5FP4ElnZqfBxpjP_nmB4N5GalxRdoZlGJY/w400-h168/Verotika00008.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>So, sadly, the weird charm of the eyes-for-nipples/spider-monster business is entirely jettisoned in the second ‘tale’ presented here. A paper-thin item about a stripper with a mildly burned face (Rachel Alig) murdering and stealing the faces of other strippers, this one largely just serves as an excuse for what feels like hours of dispiriting bump n’ grind strip club footage, accompanied by a succession of mediocre stoner rock tracks. <p></p>
<p>Disappointingly, it also drops the French accents, but is notable for those of us charting ‘Verotika’s divergence from horror anthology tradition in that it doesn’t even <i>attempt</i> to have an ending. It basically just sets up its premise, and… stops? C’mon Glenn, give us <i>something</i>!</p>
<p>The third story, ‘Drujika: Countess of Blood’, certainly gives us… something… in that it’s a period-set Countess Bathory type affair. The attempt at a medieval setting is fairly ambitious under the circumstances, including use of actual horses, some limited location shooting and - get this! - a real wolf (albeit a not terribly threatening one). </p>
<p>But, on the other hand, you know we’re in trouble as soon as you note that the green-screened panoramic photo backdrop depicting the Contessa’s castle includes clouds of unmoving, still photographed smoke. Mario Bava, this ain’t. </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC35hH-wPDU3wkhA38iGAPSG6xxQFtBx_QKwWPNoJXvgWWQDJKxjOFjvq_nq02m0ecT_w0W3erPlKryTLdl_dlLGuNB4QdW7vwKJ9i_iBLB9jHY35V4cRJfYPTec1eK8VDbZ7jknQpAzC-RTE-JeS9P93jN1SO9zYK5H7WMC7_qxfnvS7Eb7QRi53BtsI/s1277/Verotika00010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="538" data-original-width="1277" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC35hH-wPDU3wkhA38iGAPSG6xxQFtBx_QKwWPNoJXvgWWQDJKxjOFjvq_nq02m0ecT_w0W3erPlKryTLdl_dlLGuNB4QdW7vwKJ9i_iBLB9jHY35V4cRJfYPTec1eK8VDbZ7jknQpAzC-RTE-JeS9P93jN1SO9zYK5H7WMC7_qxfnvS7Eb7QRi53BtsI/w400-h169/Verotika00010.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUmK5yfu9qduLWgetBsFFodq_O2XO_rYxPpU9me7FF2nQv1ThJVJDCKLqk7cfL08o48sdR1wuuhZyR4cCnnKk_KWj1jSkchT8SFnnbtdFLZe1pCVGi_CLbV2nBReBxHXs4dhDauoTcHE6RE1wmCKpgOnMnQQO2grYXbBrT60U-2kIC5CL1gMjFoCrl6Ws/s1276/Verotika00011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="1276" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUmK5yfu9qduLWgetBsFFodq_O2XO_rYxPpU9me7FF2nQv1ThJVJDCKLqk7cfL08o48sdR1wuuhZyR4cCnnKk_KWj1jSkchT8SFnnbtdFLZe1pCVGi_CLbV2nBReBxHXs4dhDauoTcHE6RE1wmCKpgOnMnQQO2grYXbBrT60U-2kIC5CL1gMjFoCrl6Ws/w400-h169/Verotika00011.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>With her spiked crown, latex fetish gloves and habit of staring contemplatively at bunches of grapes, the Contessa (played by Alice Tate) takes us straight into full-on Nigel Wingrove territory, somewhat reminiscent of those dreadful Redemption video promos we all had to sit through back in the bad old days every time we wanted to watch a Jean Rollin film.
<p>Probably the film’s most overtly erotic segment, this one also finds Danzig indulging in some pretty shameless ‘chained virgin’ type fantasies. Perhaps he was going for a vague Borowcyzk / ‘Immoral Tales’ kind of vibe, though the faint Eastern European accents adopted by the cast aren’t as funny as the French ones, and again, the intended effect is rather spoiled by the arid, atmos-free L.A. porno feel, which hangs around the footage like disinfectant in a hospital ward. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, this also proves to be the film’s most boring segment - because, above all I think, what kills ‘Verotika’s chances in the midnight movie / so-bad-its-good stakes is actually its pacing. </p>
<p>Like so many amateur / first time filmmakers, Danzig just cannot cut his stuff for shit, stretching out most shots at least a few beats too long, and the concluding story finds him expanding this lethargic approach to a frankly quite trying degree, as he subjects us to several extended, silent medium-close ups of the Contessa bathing in blood or gazing at herself in the mirror which just seem to go on <i>forever</i>, seriously challenging the wakefulness of any late-night viewers who have proved hardy enough to stick with the movie thus far. </p>
<p>As expected by this point, there’s also pretty much no narrative here at all - just the blood-bathing Contessa going about her virgin-slaying day-to-day in more or less the manner you’d expect. </p><p>
There is a certain audacity to the bit where she manages to begin fondling and eating a girl’s extracted heart whilst it remains beating and attached to the victim’s blood vessels, but the impact is deflated by the absurdly realised special effects, including the use of a heart prop whose size seems closer to that of an organ belonging to a large mammal than that of a human being. </p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIGuIg_Ik32w_evVXF8iOTVwWdaWBSyuFs1e1IwCFqi-KeEVNl-23K1H0d2RyzojhlA-vEGrytxEZLjP9VrI-p3SYo1z0bv8CYqQSoBfZDyKL7hgt0BaIXeOqT4M831bmJdbtnX0rwkBSdADrx1n8R5lvqd0y9slqZX1x2Uth42BhY3Muc4vBUhJ-1WZQ/s1277/Verotika00012.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="538" data-original-width="1277" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIGuIg_Ik32w_evVXF8iOTVwWdaWBSyuFs1e1IwCFqi-KeEVNl-23K1H0d2RyzojhlA-vEGrytxEZLjP9VrI-p3SYo1z0bv8CYqQSoBfZDyKL7hgt0BaIXeOqT4M831bmJdbtnX0rwkBSdADrx1n8R5lvqd0y9slqZX1x2Uth42BhY3Muc4vBUhJ-1WZQ/w400-h169/Verotika00012.jpg" width="400" /></a> But, it matters not. Only an utter goon would demand realism in a context like this, and besides, to return to the point I touched on above, ‘Verotika’s sole saving grace - the unique component that allows this otherwise terrible film to cycle back round and grasp at something approaching warped greatness - is that Danzig is <i>utterly sincere</i> in his intent to make a sexy, gory erotic horror movie. </p>
<p>Unbelievable as it may sound in view of what I’ve outlined above, there is not an ounce of self-mockery or camp intent discernible here. Given how rare this total absence of self-awareness is in any creative industry these days, maybe we should take a moment or two just to think about that - to let it sink in. </p>
<p>Like the aforementioned goth kid sitting in the corner of the classroom, scribbling drawings of women who look like Death from ‘Sandman’ fucking bat-winged demons, Danzig believes his half-baked cartoon atrocities are <i>transgressive</i> and <i>shocking</i>, and that if you don't like it, you just <i>can't handle his dark vision</i>. </p>
<p>Given how few of us can make it to adulthood whilst retaining such knuckleheaded naivety - let alone preserve it through the rigors of adult life - isn’t that, in itself, a beautiful thing? </p>
<p>Or, to put it another way, I’d rather sit through ‘Verotika’ a million times than read a page of Morrissey’s stupid novel. </p>
<p>Saner voices may contend that neither option is compulsory, but saner voices have no place in this discourse. For as the man of the hour himself <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khVNFS3xVA8">once sang</a>, “possession of a mind is a terrible thing..”. </p><p> --
</p><p> <span style="color: red;"><b><span style="font-family: courier;">(1)</span></b></span><i>As it seems ungallant to let a statement like that stand without unpacking it a bit, here are the results of my IMDB-based research into ‘Verotika’s cast. So, we do indeed have several porn stars (primarily Ashley Wisom), along with a large number of people who have very few IMDB credits aside from this one (so who knows what they normally do all day), and a few legit actors. </i></p>
<p><i>Surprisingly, probably the most noteworthy person in the cast is actually the one with the silliest name, Kansas Bowling, who it turns out has won considerable acclaim as a director of music videos (working with Iggy Pop amongst others) and played a small role as one of the Mansonites in Tarantino’s <a href="https://breakfastintheruins.blogspot.com/2019/08/creepy-crawl-cinema-one-upon-time-in.html">Once Upon a Time in Hollywood</a>. As </i><i>one of the Contessa’s victims in </i><i>‘Verotika’, she is assigned the thankless task of remaining dead and topless through several very long scenes.</i></p>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14951955227326548340noreply@blogger.com0