Top Ten First Time Viewings, 2014.

I know that non-annotated lists of old things aren’t really worth a damn to anyone, but as a temporary space-filling measure, here is a list I cobbled together over the holidays of the ten films I enjoyed / appreciated the most this year (counting first viewings only). With a bit of luck, I’ll be able to expand on these with a few short(ish) review posts in the coming weeks and months, but for now, everyone likes a fatuous end-of-year list right, even if it is in this case assembled by a man who apparently managed to watch a grand total of ZERO newly released fictional films during 2014.

Even by my usual backward-looking standards, that’s quite an achievement – whether a negative or positive one, I’ll leave you to be the judge. In my defense, it’s certainly been one hell of a year vis-à-vis my personal life, but nonetheless, here’s hoping I find the time to take in at least a *handful* of contemporary motion pictures in 2015.

Until then though, a happy new year to one and all, and here are some of the very best old movies I watched for the first time during 2014.

1. Gate of Flesh (Seijun Suzuki, 1963)

2. White of The Eye (Donald Cammell, 1987)

3. Phenomena (Dario Argento, 1984)

4. Classe Tous Risques (Claude Sautet, 1960)

5. Dark of the Sun (Jack Cardiff, 1968)

6. Neon Maniacs (Joseph Mangine, 1986)

7. Sorcerer (William Friedkin, 1977)

8. Southern Comfort (Walter Hill, 1981)

9. Violent Virgin (Koji Wakamatsu, 1970)

10. Death Laid An Egg (Giulio Questi, 1968)

Sub-Machine Gun Hall of Fame.

As some of you will hopefully be aware, the estimable Unmann-Wittering and myself have, for the past twelve months, been polluting the interweb with a daily dose of subtitle-related ribaldry on the Sub-Machine Gun blog.

To celebrate our dubious achievement in keeping the damn this going for a year, I thought I’d mark the occasion by posting a gallery of my personal favourite entries below, and also formally announce that, as of the start of this month, the decision was taken for us to undertake a bit of a hiatus whilst we rebuild our stockpiles of screen-grabs, perhaps reopening proceedings in the new year with a slightly more manageable posting schedule.

To aid us in this goal, and to generally widen the scope of our endeavour, I would also like to call upon you (yes, YOU, etc) to help out.

So basically, if you think you can come up with some sub-titled screenshots – whether funny, surreal, baffling or strangely moving – to compete with those displayed below, let us have ‘em. A .jpg, .png or whatever, sent straight to me at breakfastintheruins ( a ) googlemail.com, will do the trick.

If used, we’ll credit you under whatever name you please, and will provide a link to a site of your choice. Alternatively, recommendations for sub-title rich films we should check out, including time codes or individual scenes, are welcome, and on the off chance that you’d like to consider becoming a regular contributor to the site, well.. drop me a line and we’ll talk.

In the meantime, for no reason other than that I enjoy compiling pointless statistics, here are some quick stats for our first year of operation.

TOP FIVE DIRECTORS:

Norifumi Suzuki – 24 posts

Jess Franco – 20 posts

Jean Rollin – 14 posts

Jose Mojica Marins – 14 posts

Ishiro Honda – 10 posts

TOP FIVE COUNTRIES:

Japan – 121 posts

Italy – 48 posts

France – 47 posts

Spain – 19 posts

Hong Kong – 17 posts

Mopping Up.

Just for my own amusement, some pointless statistical breakdown of my recently completed count-down…

COUNTRIES -

USA – 14
Britain - 5
France – 2
Italy – 1
Japan – 1
Germany/Poland - 1
Czechoslovakia - 1

Hmm… poor showing for Italy. Dunno how that happened.

MONSTERS -

Satan / Cults / Witches - 8
Zombies and other undead nastiness – 8
Mad Scientists - 4
Inexplicable Cosmic Terror of Some Kind - 4
Miscellaneous Psychos & Degenerates – 3
Vampires – 2
Frankensteinage - 2

What, no werewolves? I thought I really liked werewolf movies. Guess I don’t like any of them *that* much. Truth hurts.

STARS -

Christopher Lee – 2
Boris Karloff – 2
Denis Gilmore – 2
Everybody else – 1 each

Denis Gilmore is that ugly lookin’ kid with red hair who appeared in “Psychomania”, “Blood on Satan’s Claw” AND Corman’s “Tomb of Ligea”, so I thought I’d give him a shout-out. I hope he bought his agent something real nice to say thanks.

Funnily enough, Christopher Lee is probably my least favourite of all the big name horror stars, but… he sure made a shitload of movies, and in the two I’ve featured here he was indeed very good.

STUDIOS –

American International Pictures – 3 (4 if you count “Black Sunday”, 5 if you count “The Devil Rides Out”s US release as “Devil’s Bride”)
Hammer – 2
Universal - 2
Others – 1 each

Only four films on the list actually emerged from major Hollywood studio, and two of those were from the ‘30s. Result!

DECADES –

1970s - 10
1960s - 7
1980s - 4
1930s – 2
1950s – 1
2000s - 1

GENDER OF DIRECTORS -

Male – 25
Female – 0

Oh dear. Some stuff about the film industry in the 20th century really sucked, didn’t it?

ROCK N’ ROLL QUOTIENT -

ROCK N ROLL!!! – 1
Explicit rock n’ roll – 4
Implied rock n’ roll – 9
No rock n’ roll - 11