I realise I’m getting started on this list pretty late this time around, for which apologies, but, we’re all living with delays at the moment, right? Post, vinyl pressing, medical procedures… weblogs? Why not? Anyway, on the plus side, with other social engagements curtailed, my household was running movies right up to New Year’s Eve, so waiting until January at least allows this list to be comprehensive.
It’s been another big movie-watching year all round in fact, and I could easily have subjected you to a top 60 if I only had the time. I’m also trying to teach myself to be more concise in my writing though, so a mere 30 it is, and I’ll try not to go quite so overboard with the verbiage as I have in previous years.
Humphrey Bogart’s last movie may not be anywhere near the best boxing noir (for that title, I’ll give you ‘The Set-Up’ (1949) and ‘Body & Soul’ (1948), just for starters), but it’s solid. Essentially a late entry in the cycle of earnest, “capitalism is destroying our souls” type dramas which inexplicably flourished in the artsier end of Hollywood under the shadow of McCarthyism (also see: ‘The Big Knife’ (1955), Thieves’ Highway (1949), etc), it’s perhaps a bit too much of a straight up, populist effort to garner the kind of praise heaped upon earlier, more expressionistic classics of the form like ‘Force of Evil’ (1948), but it still puts its core points across pretty efficiently.
Admittedly, the story of Bogart’s transition from out-of-work sports writer to PR shill for a shamelessly corrupt boxing promoter (Rod Steiger) buying his glass-jawed Argentinian patsy a place in the championship sometimes feels a bit soppy and manipulative - but, for scenes of shark-eyed operators in smoke-filled rooms belting the bottom line back and forth across the table as they trade human lives for a dime, this shit is hard to beat. And seeing the ailing Bogart slicing through their sails, doing his ‘thing’ one last time (hat, bow tie and - unfortunately - smokes all present and correct) is wonderful to behold. If he walks through much of the movie, well, Bogie takin’ it easy beats most other actors straining every sinew in pursuit of glory, and rest assured, there are some moments here where he absolutely shines (literally as well as figuratively, in view of the humidity flying around in those fight arenas).
It probably says something for the scripting that, about two thirds of the way through, I was still wondering whether they were going to go the ‘In a Lonely Place’ ending or the ‘Casablanca’ ending. I had my bets placed, my cynical fingers crossed, and… no spoilers here though folks, you’ll just have to find out for yourself.
This wonderfully-named Italian thriller begins with a classic Hitchcockian ‘wrong man’ set up, wherein a feckless amateur fisherman (Enzo Cerusico) becomes the sole witness to the brutal murder of a prostitute, only to find himself framed for the crime by the killer (a respected university professor played by Riccardo Cucciolla).
Whereas in a Hitchcock movie we’d expect our wrong man to be a charming, resourceful go-getter though, Salerno defies both convention and commerciality here by presenting his protagonist as a hopeless, morally ambivalent idiot, who, after initially failing to report the crime he has witnessed, proceeds to dig himself deeper and deeper into an intractable mess, pretty much cementing his guilt-by-implication, whilst nervy closet psychopath Cucciolla meanwhile gets away scot-free (or does he?)
Cerusico’s character was presumably intended to function as a stand-in for the apathetic Italian public, and protracted scenes of him blundering around like a headless chicken, abusing and alienating his friends and family in the process, prove excruciatingly (albeit deliberately) frustrating. Feeling rather like an Elio Petri movie on training wheels in places, Salerno’s directorial debut is likewise in some respects a scrappy, oblique and episodic affair - but, it still gets under your skin something rotten.
Driven on by excellent performances from Cucciolla, Cerusico and the director’s brother Enrico Maria Salerno (who pretty much steals the show as a flamboyant muck-raking journalist), it boasts an ingenious premise, a handful of genuinely powerful scenes and a wealth of more casual, low key moments which live long in the memory, unpacking a sly and insightful take on the sundry inequalities underlying Western democratic process.
[POLITE NOTICE: Viewers checking out this film on blu-ray or DVD are advised to take note of the director’s preferred ending, included as an extra, which is infinitely more satisfying than the botched last minute conclusion tacked on to the release version.]
This lesser known, late period noir from Jacque Tourneur is elevated from a routine crime caper to a minor classic by a confluence of factors: an essence of poetic/existential yearning perhaps derived from David Goodis’s source novel, crisp location photography and imaginative staging from Tourneur and DP Burnett Guffey, and a delightfully dysfunctional pair of psycho antagonists (screenwriter Stirling Silliphant warming up for The Line Up, possibly). Best of all though, we have excellent, soulful performances from Aldo Ray and Anne Bancroft as the leads. (I never knew old Aldo had it in him, but really, he’s fantastic here.)
It’s interesting to note that whilst Tourneur’s earlier ‘Out of The Past’ (1948) is in many ways the Ultimate Film Noir - doubling down on the genre’s conventions to a frankly psychotic degree - ‘Nightfall’ takes the opposite approach, casually reversing many of our expectations of this kind of story, whilst remaining far more light-touch and naturalistic than the narcotic, quasi-gothic atmos I generally associate with Tourneur’s direction.
27. Les Désaxées
Probably best known (relatively speaking) for his appearances in such films as Jess Franco’s Necronomicon and Adrian Hoven’s ‘Castle of the Creeping Flesh’, the late Michel Lemoine has long been a subject of fascination for me. His demented erotic horror film ‘Les Weekends Maléfiques du Comte Zaroff’ [aka ‘Seven Women for Satan’] is a personal favourite, so it has been a delight to discover (via the series of restored releases coordinated by French label Le Chat Qui Fume) that much of his other directorial output tapped a broadly similar vein.
Lemoine’s feature debut as a director, ‘Les Désaxées’ [roughly: “The Misfits”] scores an instant hit by kicking off with the sight of Janine Reynaud frugging in silken hot-pants to the sounds of a fuzz-drenched garage-rock band, before proceeding to exhaustively catalogue the carnal misadventures of Lemoine’s priapic, castle-dwelling aesthete as he shags his way through wide-ranging assortment of wild and beautiful Parisian ladies, whilst callously ignoring the needs of his impossibly beautiful young wife (Claudia Coste) back at the chateau. All the while, that weird look of wide-eyed, Satyr-like ecstasy Lemoine does so well rarely leaves his face. May the Great God Pan bless his Luciferian countenance.
Viewers unaccustomed to the ways of ‘70s euro-cult entertainment are liable to have a coronary when presented with the sheer, vein-clogging excess of self-indulgence on display here, but for devotees such as myself, this is an unadulterated, full strength hit of the kind of ridiculous, unfettered escapism we crave. May those giant brandy glasses never be empty, and those harpsichords never cease.
Like most of Don Coscarelli’s films, this low budget wilderness survival epic is hugely entertaining, disarmingly good-natured and very charming indeed. Initially a totally straight forward Fordian tale of a group of diverse misfits learning to realise their potential and endure the privations of the Oregon wilderness under the tutelage of grizzled outdoorsman / father figure Lance Henriksen, things are dragged into ‘Deliverance’/ ‘Southern Comfort’ territory when - somewhat inevitably - our happy gang is brought into conflict with the idiotic, gun-toting blackshirts led by Henriksen’s cruel, neo-fascist opposite number Mark Rolston.
Though the story plays out pretty much as you’d expect, this is a solidly-mounted drama which belies its budgetary constraints; it’s exciting and action-packed where it needs to be, but also emotionally affecting and politically/emotional astute without ever getting too saccharine about things. It feels hideously redundant to claim that the lessons learned herein seem “more relevant than ever” in the USA’s current vexed climate, but, well… they do, frankly. Long overlooked as a result of its non-genre status and lack of a USP, this cool and heartfelt little movie is overdue a revival, I feel.
A cornerstone of both early American horror and pulp aesthetics in cinema more generally, this oft-referenced spin-off from the production of ‘King Kong’ has proved, in a weird sort of way, to be just as influential as the more famous film whose sets, cast and crew it re-appropriated. It clearly rattled around for decades in the brainpans of euro-horror mavericks like Michele Lemoine (see above) and Jess Franco, but Schoedsack’s film (based on Richard Connell’s short story) could also, at a stretch, be seen as ground zero for the entire men-hunting-men sub-genre which led us eventually to everything from ‘The Naked Prey’ to ‘The Running Man’ to ‘The Hunger Games’.
Despite this, the film has proved quite difficult to actually see in recent years, but I finally scored a copy in 2021, and it did not disappoint. Leslie Banks’ outrageously camp performance as the original Count Zaroff (accept no imitations) is a total delight, essentially dragging Lugosi’s ‘Dracula’ mannerisms through the back alley behind a Soho absinthe parlor, whilst Fay Wray is - as usual - fantastic as the ill-humoured heroine. (The extended sequence in which she tries to alert square-jawed shipwreck survivor Joel McCrea to the fact that something is very wrong here, without alerting Zaroff’s suspicion, is an all-time classic.)
As good as all the interior yakking is though (and god, WHAT an interior Zaroff has managed to pull together on his island-based fortress), it’s in the second half of the movie that things really start poppin’. First for the ghoulish trophies preserved in the Count’s subterranean dungeon, and then for the feverish, near hallucinatory sight of Wray and McCrea fleeing in terror and fighting for their lives through the mossy depths of Kong’s all-too-familiar jungle sets.
Cut through with more sweat-drenched, malarial / colonial South Seas exoticism than most 21st century citizens could reasonably stomach, and incorporating some of the most startling, white knuckle action the early ‘30s had to offer, ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ easily wins a spot in the pantheon of the era’s weirdest, wildest and most perversely fascinating horror films (which is no mean feat, in view of the competition).
Written by the late Curtis Hanson two decades before he directed ‘L.A. Confidential’, this unconventional, Toronto-set bank heist flick struck me more than anything as a ‘40s/’50s film made in the ‘70s. Plotted to within an inch of its life, the intricately polished mechanics of the storyline reminded me of something like John Farrow’s ‘The Big Clock’ (1948), whilst the equally compelling human interest side of the movie seems to draw extensively from Billy Wilder’s ‘The Apartment’ (1960) - a comparison which also speaks to the film’s tone, as it veers uneasily between broad humour (with cross-dressing crooks, villainous Santas and sundry misunderstandings) and stuff which is Very Dark Indeed.
Seeing as this IS the ‘70s though, we also get tits, horrifying graphic violence and the assorted travails of mumbling, late 30-something singletons, brought to us in typically taciturn / agitated / icy [delete as applicable] method-acting fashion by Elliot Gould and Susannah York, both of whom are on absolutely top form here, pulling their characters through convolutions which lesser players would never have even guessed at. Christopher Plummer, by comparison, is entirely one dimensional as the psychopathic bad guy - but by damn, it sure is a dimension you don’t want to mess with.
So, basically, if you’re in search of an under-appreciated ’70s crime classic to tell your friends about this year, look no further - this is brilliant stuff.
You wouldn’t know it from browsing these pages, but one of the things which has helped keep my wife & I sane through the pandemic period has been excavating the catalogue of ‘80s/’90s martial arts icon Cynthia Rothrock - and to be honest, I’m not sure she ever bettered her Hong Kong debut, starring (as “Inspector Morris of Scotland Yard”!) opposite the equally incredible Michelle Yeoh in what must surely stand as one of the most accomplished showcases of female-led ass-kicking ever committed to celluloid.
Given that this is an ‘80s HK production of course, it stands to reason that much of the screen time is dedicated not to our high-kicking heroines, but to the slapstick antics of a gang of comedic losers named after over-the-counter painkillers. So, those of us with a limited tolerance for Cantonese slapstick will just have to live with that, but, naturally director Corey Yuen keeps the pacing so frantic that it’s never that long before something jaw-droppingly crazy happens and/or Michelle and Cindy are back on-screen - at which point chances are somebody’s going to get a foot to the face within seconds, lots of plate glass is going to get smashed and we’ll all be home safe.
As ever, it’s difficult to really find words to quantify the sheer, exhilarating greatness of top flight HK fight choreography / stunt work, so instead of listening to me blather on, why not check some of it out for yourself?
Needless to say though, with screen fighters of the calibre of Yeoh and Rothrock holding court, and pros like Yuen, Dick Wei and Sammo Hung chiming in both behind and in front of the camera to make them seem even more bad-ass, it goes without saying that this shit is phenomenal.
Presenting a fictionalised account of the death of ABC news correspondent Bill Stewart at the hands of Nicaraguan government troops during the fall of the country’s Somoza regime in 1979, Roger Spottiswoode’s contemporary war/reportage epic is - to get this out the way from the outset - dangerously politically naive, deplorably dated in its Western-centric POV, and generally in pretty poor taste across the board. (Imagine, say, Hollywood setting a star-crossed, ‘Casablanca’-esque love story against the backdrop of the plight of the Kurdish population in Syria circa 2015 for a rough present day analogue.)
If, however, we invoke the ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ caveat and ignore all of that, instead taking the movie purely as a work of cinema, it’s a pretty damned impressive achievement. Restaged (for the purposes of safety and practicality) within a sprawling Mexican city which the production seems to have managed to turn into a single giant set, the depiction of the Nicaraguan revolution, as seen through the lens of Nick Nolte’s photo-journalist character, feels authentic, exhilarating, and at times heart-in-mouth terrifying here, capturing the eerily placid, “death could come at any moment” type atmosphere which accompanies such chaotic upheavals very well indeed (or so I can only imagine).
In addition, we’re gifted with an excellent Gene Hackman performance (as the Stewart surrogate), a strong and convincingly self-determined heroine in the form of Joanna Cassidy, and a characteristically intense turn from Ed Harris, playing a nihilistic American mercenary whose scenes put me in mind of another overlooked, politically uncomfortable action-adventure classic, Jack Cardiff’s ‘Dark of the Sun’ (1968).
Best of all though perhaps is Jean-Louis Trintignant, essaying a sinister, morally ambiguous diplomat / spy / fixer found lurking under the carapace of the crumbling, autocratic regime. The Graham Greene vibes are strong whenever he is on screen, bringing a sense of irresolvable, greyscale complexity and bleak inevitability to proceedings which is sorely missed elsewhere, as soaring strings and melodramatic clinches mash the meaningless brutality of the real life events being portrayed into a more approachable, studio-friendly fudge.
Yet more ‘50s Columbia noir. I reviewed this so-cal car culture reinvention of Fritz Lang’s ‘Scarlet Street’ (1945), anchored by a harrowing, revelatory performance from Mickey Rooney, back in April last year.
To be continued...
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