Exploito All’Italiana / October Horrors 2019 # 2: Death Smiles on a Murderer (Aristide Massaccesi, 1973)

 ‘Death Smiles on a Murderer’ [a direct translation of the domestic release title, ‘La Morte Ha Sorriso All'Assassino’] is a 1973 Italian horror film so narcotic in its effect that I have now watched it three times – and read the booklet, and listened to the audio commentary – and I still have no idea what happens in it.

I don’t mean that in the sense of, “I don’t understand the plot” (that’s only to be expected), I mean - I actually remember very little about the nature and order of the events which are portrayed on screen.

Quite an achievement for gifted cinematographer Aristide Massaccesi, here making the first and only proper feature film he would direct under his birth name before taking on the better known (nay notorious) alias of Joe D’Amato.

An unstable melange of gothic horror and giallo tropes with some additional envelope-pushing gore, ‘Death Smiles..’ lingers in my mind rather like a frustrating, three-quarters forgotten dream – a formless haze of pink cheeks and red lips, huge, dewy eyes, creased silk sheets and hyper-real green grass photographed in crisp, bright sun-light; of spatially disorientating extreme close-ups, looming low angle shots, languorous palacio exteriors, psyched out fish-eye madness, occasional bursts of garish blood-letting and an overriding feeling of claustrophobic immobility and confusion.

Further suffocating my rational senses meanwhile is Berto Pisano’s exquisitely languorous, melancholic main theme, which plays more or less constantly throughout, and which sounds like the accompaniment to a ballerina suffering from tuberculosis expiring during her final dance and witnessing the dust of her bones reforming itself into the shape of a gliding, celestial swan.

Though occasionally interspersed with the obligatory searing fuzz guitar stings and hideously jaunty ballroom dancing music, this remarkable melody tunnels its way into the viewer’s brain across the course of the film like a flower-bearing, funereally-garbed earwig, and indeed, the double LP soundtrack release which was recently issued alongside Arrow’s blu-ray upgrade of the film contains about 156 variations on it, all equally wonderful.

Trying to piece anything together beyond that feels like dipping into some deep and unsavoury region of the unconscious mind, but if I recall correctly, things might get underway with ubiquitous blond-mopped wild man Luciano Rossi, who is even more wild than usual here, playing a character who I think is the unhinged brother of a woman who may or may not have been murdered by the residents of the palacio, so he is running around like a madman and suchlike.

Then I think we switch to a flashback, or flashforward, or something, bringing us to a bit of business cribbed from LeFanu’s ‘Carmilla’ (or perhaps indirectly from Hammer’s ‘The Vampire Lovers’), in which a young blond girl in a black and red cloak (Ewa Aulin) is rescued from a coach accident, and invited into the nearby palace to recover.

Disconcertingly, Klaus Kinski plays the doctor overseeing her recovery, and, when no one is looking, he pulls out a big needle and sticks it directly into her eyeball (I certainly remember that bit). Kinski, it soon transpires, is actually a Frankensteinian mad scientist, and before long he’s down in the basement, mixin’ up the medicine, in the finest tradition of such characters.

There is some kind of sub-plot about an ancient Inca medallion(!?), which Ewa seems to have brought with her, and which Kinski declares contains the secrets of life and death within it, or something. So, he goes to work trying to reanimate a subject on his operating table, but sadly he doesn’t get very far with this, as he is promptly killed – possibly by Rossi, or possibly by his creature… or perhaps Rossi IS his creature, I really don’t remember – but either way, this regrettably spells the end of both the mad science plotline and the thing with the medallion, which I don’t think is ever mentioned again. Au revoir Klaus!

Meanwhile, we spend loads of time with the rich occupants of the palace, characters who feel so ephemeral that I’m still not really sure who they are. Are the man and woman husband and wife, or brother and sister? And, does it even MATTER in a movie like this? Inevitably, the man (Segio Doria) gradually falls in love with Aulin’s character, who, vaguely following the ‘Carmilla’ blueprint, also seduces the woman (Angela Bo) too. I mean, you’d think I’d remember THAT scene at least, but no dice.

I think Aulin is probably a ghost who is seducing these folks in order to take revenge upon them after they murdered her in an earlier time period, but I’m not entirely sure about that. There is also some stuff with a maid, who is being haunted and/or menaced by Rossi, who is possibly also a ghost, or just a bad memory?

At one point, Giacomo Rossi Stuart (whom you’ll recall as the male lead in ‘Kill Baby Kill!’, alongside a wealth of other Italian genre credits) turns up, playing Doria’s brother or father or something, but as their characters look fairly similar and neither of them have any actual personality traits, it kind of just seems as if the ‘man’ character has split in two.

At another point, the maid character flees the palace in terror, and gets her face blasted off with a shotgun, in full on blood-drenched papier-mâché Eastman colour glory. Again, I remember that bit!

Then there’s some stuff with Ewa getting bricked up behind a wall, Poe-style, a lot of torch-lit running around in the catacombs, and, towards the end, Rossi gets his eyeballs torn out by an enraged cat (a scene memorably depicted on the film’s visceral Italian poster design).

And there my friends, my recollection ends.

Describing a film as a “mood piece” usually implies that it will slow and stately, but ‘Death Smiles..’ is quite the opposite – indeed, Massaccesi’s directorial approach here is fairly deranged, cutting relentlessly between exhausting close-ups of over-wrought, rose-cheeked faces expressing mad emotions we’ve either forgotten the significance of or never understood in the first place, and throwing in every kind of disorientating photographic effect he can think of along the way, as if convinced that he was still essentially a cameraman, treating the film as a head-spinning show-reel to try to impress potential employers.

Perhaps ‘Death Smiles..’ does actually anticipate later Joe D’Amato horror films to a certain extent, in the sense that it intersperses long, languid passages of nothing-in-particular with startling moments of grotesque, rub-yr-nose-in-it gore, and also in the way in which the whole feels imbued with an inexplicable aura of diseased wrong-ness, but from my own POV, I certainly found this one much livelier and more watchable than the likes of ‘Anthropophagous’ (1980) and ‘Absurd’ (1981).

Though much of what transpires within it may be pretty mystifying, it’s too loud and visually restless for even its most meandering moments to be written off as “filler”, unlike D’Amato’s later films, in which he often seemed to be killing time waiting for the next outrageous incident to occur. By contrast, it feels as if he is always trying to put SOMETHING worthwhile on the screen here, even if the question of what exactly that ‘something’ was supposed to be often hovers unanswered like a bluebottle above a sugar bowl.

Despite having apparently been driven to watch it three times, I’m not even really sure whether or not a would consider this a good film. I can’t really think of a conventional measure by which it may be certified as such, and, even when assessed using the less rigorous criteria of a ‘70s Erotic Castle Movie, the film’s anxious, volcanic instability, bright, weirdly hyper-real photography and distracting sado-gore moments all mitigate against the kind of languorous, psychotropic sensuality I favour in such ventures.

But nonetheless, I seem to keep watching it, so I suppose I must enjoy it? I’m sure I’ll find cause to watch it again too, trying again to penetrate its secrets. And each time, I know I’ll feel more and more like William Hurt in ‘Altered States’, descending into his isolation tank to plumb the primordial depths of consciousness… who knows, maybe I’ll eventually turn into Luciano Rossi and go on a rampage in the zoo or something? Watch this space.

October Horrors 2019 # 1: Mausoleum (Michael Dugan, 1983?)

 An independently-produced horror film shot in Los Angeles and Ventura County, ‘Mausoleum’ seems to have first surfaced on video in 1983, although evidence would seem to suggest that it was actually shot in the late ‘70s. IMDB meanwhile specifies Feb-Mar 1981 shooting dates, which seems like a happy compromise. Either way, the film’s widescreen 35mm photography and general technical proficiency suggest that its producers were initially gunning for a theatrical distribution deal which never materialised.

Be that as it may, ‘Mausoleum’ is a crudely commercial venture which strays into the realm of high weirdness solely as a result of its fevered determination to “deliver the goods” to a hypothetical target audience. Though the film exhibits a near total lack of talent, taste or originality, its makers nonetheless seem to have had a perfect understanding of the kind of stuff they needed to throw onto the screen in order to keep rubes like me watching, and for that I salute them.

Garish gel lighting, swathes of dry ice, gratuitous nudity, lashings of bright red gore, gruesome prosthetic wound make-up, ridiculous creature designs and a wafer thin grasp of narrative logic…. man, anyone would think this thing was secretly made by Italians, were it not for the complete absence of style or atmosphere. (It does have J&B product placement though, so anything’s possible.)

Whilst taking in the film’s genuinely bizarre prologue – in which disembodied voices lure a little girl in a fairy tale dress toward an artificial fog-shrouded, disco-lit gothic chapel which incongruously lurks in the middle of an otherwise drab suburban cemetery – it occurred to me that ‘Mausoleum’ may possibly have been inspired by the success of 1979’s Phantasm, with its similarly surreal, graveyard-based shenanigans and use of an evocative / antiquated word as a title. If Don Coscarelli’s film was indeed an influence though, the similarities are soon dropped once the main body of the movie gets underway.

The body in question is that of dead-eyed, platinum blonde actress Bobbie Bresee, appearing here in what I believe was her only leading role, though she went on to scale the giddy heights of minor b-movie renown through supporting parts in the likes of ‘Ghoulies’ and ‘Surf Nazis Must Die’. Bresee plays Susan, the grown up version of the girl we saw in the prologue, and her ‘department store model’ physique is ruthlessly and rather mechanically exploited by the filmmakers - so if you like looking at it, you’re already quids in with ‘Mausoleum’.

Susan, it transpires, is now the idle trophy wife of a successful businessman played by perpetually weird-looking former child evangelist Marjoe Gortner (‘Food of the Gods’, ‘Starcrash’, etc). The couple are apparently quite rich, as they live together in an extravagant white columned mansion-house with its own grounds, assorted grotesque-yet-expensive looking furniture, flashy cars etc, but despite these material comforts, all is not well.

I’m not sure I quite have all this straight, so please bear with me, but I think the general idea is that Susan is an unwitting descendent of – wait for it – the thrice-cursed NEMOD dynasty, erstwhile owners/occupants of that spooky chapel we saw in the prologue. As a result of her childhood visit to the mausoleum, Susan has become possessed by a demonic spirit which, now that she is all grown up, occasionally takes over her body, gifting her with luminous, glowing eyes, sharp teeth, sundry supernatural powers, and, in extreme cases, a hob-gobliny face like some creature from ‘The Dark Crystal’ or whatever.

Well, I think that’s basically the gist of it, anyway – my address is in the sidebar if credited screenwriters Robert Barich, Robert Madero or Katherine Rosenwink wish to set me straight on the finer details.

So yeah, from hereon in, what we’re essentially looking at is an OTT ‘80s trash version of an exorcism movie, structured around the idea of the demonically possessed Susan gradually murdering a procession of obnoxious and/or comedic secondary characters, whilst poor old Marjoe frets and wonders what’s wrong with her, and her psychiatrist (ubiquitous Hollywood character player Norman Burton, who must have had an especially big tax bill to deal with in 1981 or something) steps up in the all-important exorcist role.

Susan’s first victim is a boorish, inebriated slob who harasses her whilst she and her husband are ‘enjoying’ an evening at their local night club – a location which I confess I found more terrifying than any of the film’s supernatural horror scenes. I don’t know what benighted corner of Southern California they found this place in, but it’s a low-ceilinged, ‘hotel bar’ type room full of dark wood panelling and plush leather furnishings, in which tired-looking middle-aged couples in formal evening wear shuffle around distractedly to sounds of a white, ersatz disco ensemble (heavy on the Kenny G sax), after being served unappealing cocktails in grotesquely elaborate glassware.

Quite possibly the most comprehensively uncool night spot I have ever seen featured in a motion picture, the horrors of this unsavoury joint entirely overshadow the telekinetic car fire which does away with the drunken groper – an incident which is merely *awkward* for all concerned.

Awkwardness continues to be the film’s defining motif as Susan turns her attentions to here house’s stereotypically lecherous Hispanic gardener (actor Maurice Sherbanee’s performance reminded me of Dr Nick Riviera from ‘The Simpsons’). This whole business takes up what feels like a pretty long stretch of the movie’s middle half hour, with Susan alternately leading the horny devil on with peek-a-boo balcony appearances (whilst demonically possessed), and being repulsed by his attentions (whilst in ‘normal’ mode).

Although I realise I was probably supposed to be looking at Bobbie Bresee’s breasts whilst all this was going on, I instead found myself becoming increasingly infuriated by the way the gardener seemed to be spending ages and ages attempting to remove an unsightly tree stump by half-heartedly swinging an axe into the top of it. That won’t bloody work mate! What the hell are you even doing? You’ve at least got to get a pitchfork under there to pull the roots up, or maybe even use a small digger. What a useless gardener! (Actually, now that I think about it, Susan does eventually butcher him with a planting fork post-coitus, so maybe that’s poetic justice of a sort?)

Mercifully spared from Susan’s wrath meanwhile is the family’s comic relief maid Elsie, played by veteran comedienne LaWanda Page, who is instead called upon to enact a hand waving “fleeing from the haunted house” routine unseen since the days of Mantan Moreland.

I feel a bit torn about Elsie’s character to be honest. On the one hand, she clearly represents an appalling racial stereotype which should have been consigned to the dustbin of history long before 1981, but, on the other hand, she is also hands down the most entertaining character in this movie, raiding her employers’ liquor cabinet with gusto, and delivering lines like “good googly-moogly, I need a drink of the hard stuff” and “no more heaving’, I’m leavin’” with Dolemite-level sass.

Meanwhile, poor old Auntie Nemod (no, really) suffers one of the film’s more elaborately grisly deaths, as she is suspended in mid-air by Susan’s evil powers and has her torso graphically torn open. A delivery guy subsequently gets splatted by invisible evil whilst trying to make a phonecall, and, during a visit to the shopping mall, an art dealer gets impaled on a big, spiky abstract sculpture when Susan’s demonic alter-ego develops an obsessive attraction to a painting that… well, words can’t quite express it, so it’ll probably be easiest if I just give you a quick screen-grab:

Thereafter, the film’s exorcism plot-line picks up speed for the final act as the psychiatrist – who has recorded one of Susan’s demonic transformations on tape - calls in a former mentor of his who specialises in this sort of thing.

Refreshingly for a movie of this vintage and general boorishness, this professor turns out to be woman who is neither sexy n’ objectified nor a crazy old bag, and together, the two of them set about delivering masses of exorcism-related exposition and begin preparing for a showdown loaded with more ridiculous, rubbery demon effects and green n’ purple tinted lighting than even I can really tolerate, culminating in what some viewers may consider ‘Mausoleum’s most memorable moment, as Bresee’s demonic boobs stretch out and develop their own pus-drooling faces. Cor blimey.

Special effects here were handled by John Carl Buechler, who went on to direct stuff like ‘Troll’ and ‘Cellar Dweller’ for Charles Band, which… actually kind of makes sense, I suppose? I mean, I may not have quite as much of a detailed understanding of 80s b-horror chronology as fans more thoroughly steeped in this particular area, but I’ve always had the general impression that it was in the late ‘80s - when trolls, gnomes, killer dolls and god knows what were running amok and films like ‘House’ and assorted ‘..Elm Street’ sequels were ruling the video shelves – that medium budget horror films, perhaps wary of censorship or simply aware of the genre’s increasingly young fan-base, began to focus on fantastical, rubbery creature designs as a substitute for more quote-unquote “realistic” sex n’ violence.

To my mind therefore, 1981 feels very early for the kind of latex monstrosities which dominate the last few reels of ‘Mausoleum’; perhaps we could even see Buechler’s work here as somewhat pioneering in that respect, although the film as a whole could perhaps be better framed as a transitory work, mixing full on, creature-feature goofiness with lurid gore and a defiantly puerile, ‘70s drive-in approach to nudity and sexual exploitation?

Well, who knows. Overall, ‘Mausoleum’ is a strange beast, standing out largely for its EC Comics-on-crack tastelessness, and for the eye-watering ugliness of its production design. In this respect, the film is pitched roughly on the level you’d expect from the kind of teenage SOV movie celebrated by Bleeding Skull, which sits oddly alongside its technical proficiency, orchestral score and cast of industry professionals.

In an attempt to understand this disjuncture, I will close by simply drawing your attention to the background of a couple of the film’s principal architects.

Producer Michael Franzese was an heir to New York’s notorious Colombo crime family who earned himself the nickname “The Yuppie Don” during the ‘80s, reportedly raking in a vast fortune via a gasoline bootlegging operation he arranged with the Russian Mafia. A veteran of numerous Grand Jury appearances, racketeering trials and state indictments, he is widely assumed to have begun investing in the film industry for the purposes of money laundering and/or tax avoidance. After ‘Mausoleum’, he went on to produce the impossibly crass (yet hugely entertaining) Linda Blair exploitation classic ‘Savage Streets’ (1984), before eventually getting hit with a jail term and subsequently re-inventing himself as a born-again motivational speaker.

Meanwhile, the sum total of director Michael Dugan’s other film industry credits to date are, in order: a 1976 kids movie named ‘Super Seal’, a 1999 T&A comedy (‘Raging Hormones’), and a 2015 “TV mini-series” entitled ‘The Adventures of Turkey Dude’, which does not appear to have ever been publically screened.

Somewhere between the aesthetics embodied by these two gentlemen, the essence of ‘Mausoleum’ lies, waiting.

October Horrors 2019: intro.

I’m sure I don’t need to remind readers that it’s that time of year again, so, beginning tomorrow, I’m going to try to get a new review of a horror movie (or some similarly seasonal horror-y stuff) up on this blog once every two days until the big day at the end of the month.

Here in the UK of course, enjoyment of our favourite holiday is liable to be marred this year by some gruesome business of an entirely different order, but regardless of how things pan out, I hope this writing project will give me a nice opportunity to put those battles aside and… I dunno, think some nice thoughts about Peter Cushing and Norman J. Warren and funny business going on in dusty old manor houses, I hope?

So, here’s modestly hoping that my rambling can offer a similar happy place so at least a few others this month, regardless of where they live (because goodness knows, few areas of the earth really offer their residents much of a reason to dance around in a spirit of carefree optimism at present). As usual, horror movies might help, so let’s watch ‘em whilst we can.

As in prior Octobers, usual standards of proof-reading and comprehensibility may suffer because I’ve got to knock these posts off pretty quickly, but we’ll see how it goes.

Deathblog: Sid Haig (1939 - 2019)

As 2019’s great celestial purge of good and kind souls continues apace, it goes without saying that I was very sad to hear this week that the great Sid Haig has checked out, aged 80.

A wildly charismatic performer in his ‘60s and ‘70s hey-day, the nuance and variety Haig brought to his roles, and his capacity for creating fully-formed (albeit larger-than-life) characters in a matter of seconds, remain underappreciated.

The performances he gave us whilst working as a kind of totem for director Jack Hill are all, without exception, brilliant, whether playing primitive, cannibalistic creeper Ralph Merrie in ‘Spider Baby’ (1964), a feckless beatnik in the U.S. reshoots which helped create ‘Bloodbath’ (‘66), a sociopathic racing driver in ‘Pit Stop’ (‘67), a sadistic warden in ‘The Big Doll House’ (‘71), an equally sadistic thug in ‘Coffy’ (‘73), or an easy-going, sleazeball pilot in ‘Foxy Brown’ (‘74).

Sure, he goes over the top, but when you’re playing a rampaging weirdo in a Jack Hill movie, no one’s gonna give you a medal for under-playing it, y’know? Suffice to say that few could have brought this rogue’s gallery to life with the wit, charm and physical dynamism that Sid brought to the party. (It’s a shame that Haig and Hill seem to have parted company in the mid-70s – I would have loved to have seen him strutting his stuff in ‘The Swinging Cheerleaders’, ‘Switchblade Sisters’ and ‘Sorceress’ too.)

My all-time favourite Sid Haig character though must be one he played outside of Hill’s catalogue, during a sojourn in The Philippines which saw him appearing in a string of action-exploitation U.S. co-productions, including Eddie Romero’s immensely entertaining ‘Black Mamma, White Mamma’ (1973). The wild n’ woolly circumstances of Filipino film production seem to have suited Haig’s on-screen persona perfectly, and he’s an absolute riot in this one, playing a psychedelically-clad cowboy gangster / pimp cruising around the nation’s back-roads in a jeepy full of heavily-armed goons. (Highly recommended, if you’ve not seen it – it’s a hoot.)

Although Quentin Tarantino to some extent deserves credit for enabling Haig’s 21st century resurgence (convincing him to come out of self-imposed retirement to appear in ‘Jackie Brown’ in ’97), it is of course his work for Rob Zombie which has kept him in the public eye and given him an (I hope rewarding) second wind as a “horror man” – a designation which is odd, given that he pretty much never appeared in a straight horror film back in the old days (‘Spider Baby’ notwithstanding).

But, he certainly seems to have made it work for him, lending to his distinctive services to dozens of movies in the genre across the past few decades. Though Zombie’s recently released ‘3 From Hell’ seems likely to be his official swan-song, his great turn in the prologue to S. Craig Zahler’s Bone Tomahawk also seems to make a perfect cap-stone to his career.

Outside of his film appearances, Haig also worked as a gigging drummer through the late ‘50s and early ‘60s (he played on The T-Birds 1959 hit ‘Full House’), served a two year apprenticeship at the Pasadena Playhouse, played mute ‘heavy’ roles in just about every ‘60s/’70s U.S. TV show under the sun, founded and managed a community theatre project in Simi Valley, and, according to IMDB, was a qualified hypnotherapist too. By all accounts, he was also a really nice guy - something which comes across loud and clear in every interview or Q&A I’ve seen with him, and indeed crossed over into his screen persona too; even when he’s playing a raving psychopath, you can feel the really-nice-guyness creeping through. He will, of course, be hugely missed.

The way all films should end.

Exploito All’Italiana: The Great Alligator (Sergio Martino, 1979)

(Holy cow, what a poster.)

The dog days of summer, when indoor spaces temporarily begin to feel like pizza ovens and the simple pleasures of falling into a stupor beckon, demand simple, undemanding entertainments; things which will induce neither tension nor agitation.

It is a time for films with bright photography – so as to hold up better to the shards of sunlight persistently creeping through the blinds - and vaguely familiar actors hanging around near oceans or lakes, or perhaps unhurriedly plodding through a jungle or something. Either way, there will probably be some water-side locations, plenty of time spent with people mopping sweat from their brows – and probably a monster.

Because, yes, having a monster is pretty important for these things. After all, none of us want to admit that we’re really just tuning in to enjoy the ambient pleasures of watching a bunch of poorly characterised bozos lazing around near a large body of water for 90 minutes. Our friends and loved ones would laugh at us for this, and would consider it insufficient justification for, say, refusing to open the curtains, or go outside.

So we need a monster. (Preferably just one monster though, and a relatively slow one confined to a particular habitat if possible, because we might tend to get a bit jumpy and over-excited if there are multiple monsters running about the place.)

Oh no, we must be able to tell our co-habitants, I can’t go to the park. I’m busy watching a movie about a KILLER CROCODILE. It’s exciting - you know, like ‘Jaws’.

Of course we know it isn’t, but we need the excuse.

What I’m leading up to, basically, is the declaration that *now is the optimum time* to watch Sergio Martino’s ‘The Great Alligator’ (Italian title: ‘Il Fiume del Grande Caimano’, aka ‘Alligator’, ‘Big Alligator River’).

If you’ve heard/read anything about this this film, you may have encountered the suggestion that Martino was reduced to shooting additional footage in his own bathtub. In truth, the effects aren’t that bad, with the offending shots of a motionless miniature croc flopping about amid some fish-tank flora wisely reduced to split-second duration, but nonetheless, ‘The Great Alligator’s failure to deliver a great alligator has understandably done a great deal of damage to the film’s reputation over the years.

This is a shame, because in most other respects, it’s surprisingly good. In fact, it is hugely entertaining, assuming you’re in the right frame of mind [see paragraphs above for details]. Certainly the best Italian ‘Jaws’ rip-off I’ve seen to date (beat that for a back-handed compliment), it stands as a worthy addition to the filmography of one Italian genre cinema’s most consistently rewarding directors.

Like a number of Martino’s most memorable films, this is essentially a generic cross-breed, taking the tried n’ tested ‘Jaws’ formula and boldly splicing in aspects of both the slightly questionable “erotic travelogue” films which enjoyed a brief vogue in the late ‘70s (you know, all those post-‘Emmanuelle’ movies about Europeans holidaying in exotic climes and getting, ahem, “awakened” by the dusky locals), and subsequently from their even more questionable cousin, the cannibal horror sub-genre.

As such, our setting here is a luxurious new tourist resort – ‘Paradise House’ - hewn straight from a stretch of remote, untouched jungle by an ambitious entrepreneur identified only as “Joshua”, played by Mel Ferrer (the ever-dignified former husband of Audrey Hepburn whose late career embrace of exploitation won him the unique distinction of having appeared in both ‘Eaten Alive’ (1976) and ‘Eaten Alive!’ (1980)).

As is often the case with these things, ‘The Great Alligator’ seems reluctant to divulge the actual location of Senor Ferrer’s resort. The implication seems to be that we’re in the Amazon here, but closer scrutiny of a map of shipping routes visible on the wall of Paradise House’s radio room suggests that we’re actually in Sri Lanka, where indeed the film turns out to have been shot, back-to-back with Martino’s horror film ‘Island of the Fishmen’, which shares much of the same cast and crew.

According to the – ahem - extensive research I carried out for this review, Sri Lanka’s inland waterways do indeed remain home to both deadly crocodiles (though NOT alligators) and indigenous tribes of hunter-gatherers, so yep – that’s enough realism for me to be going on with. Well done everybody. (1)

Stepping into this treacherous tropical paradise is our hero for the day, Daniel, a hard-boiled photographer played by the late, great Claudio Cassinelli, who delivered a wonderfully off-beat lead performance a few years ealrier in Martino’s audacious giallo/poliziotteschi/comedy mash-up ‘The Suspicious Death of a Minor’ (1976, and a lot more fun than the English title suggests). (2)

Daniel has been hired by Ferrer’s character to shoot publicity material for the resort, and he arrives in the company of a statuesque black model, Sheena (Geneve Hutton in her only screen role). Sheena smokes cigarettes with a long holder and glowers at everyone, so we know she is cool. When Joshua ventures to tell her, apropos of nothing, that “I believe Eve herself may have been black,” Sheena replies, “all I know is, Adam was a stupid shit”, and terminates the conversation right there. I think I like Sheena.

Perhaps it’s just me though, but her presence left me rather confused about the nature of Cassinelli’s character. I mean, his cynical, serious-minded demeanour, five-day stubble and practical wardrobe of camo fatigues all seem to suggest a wildlife or current affairs photographer. But, if he’s brought a model to pose for him on the other hand, wouldn’t that make him a fashion / glamour photographer, which calls for a whole other set of clichés..?

I’m guessing that this chronic stereotype malfunction probably results from the fact that ‘The Great Alligator’s script rather unfeasibly required the services of no less than five credited screen-writers (including such eminent figures as George Eastman and Ernesto Gastaldi amongst their number), so…. best just let it go, eh?

Naturally, Daniel soon finds himself gravitating toward the only resident of Ferrer’s artificial idyll who is neither a greedhead nor a simpleton - and the fact she’s a knock-out blonde no doubt helps too - Ali, played by the one and only Barbara Bach. Though she is essentially employed as Joshua’s right hand woman, Ali is also serious and sensible and dresses appropriately, so she must know what’s what, right? Indeed, it turns out that she is actually an anthropologist who has only taken the job at the resort in order to allow her the opportunity to research the culture of the local tribespeople, with whom Joshua has negotiated a tenuous ‘supply & demand’ type employment agreement.

And finally, rounding out our central cast of (predominantly) white interlopers, we find a surly “Great White Hunter” type guy (SGWH henceforth) who acts as Ferrer’s head of security / all-purpose native overseer. He immediately proves himself a bad ‘un by making crude advances toward Barbara, I mean, uh – checks notes - Ali. Don’t worry about him though, because he never really gets around to doing very much. Merely weep for the fact that he is inexplicably not played by George Eastman, in spite of the fact that Italio-exploitation’s most ubiquitous heavy even apparently wrote some of the damn story for this thing.

Throughout his career, Sergio Martino could usually be relied upon to bring stronger filmmaking chops to the table than most of his contemporaries, and ‘The Great Alligator’ is no exception. The film’s locations are singularly beautiful, the sets constructed within them are fairly impressive, and Giancarlo Ferrando’s photography captures everything with flair and professionalism, ensuring that, if nothing else, this is certainly a very nice movie to look at.

The editing (courtesy of Eugenio Alabiso) is also extremely good here, with swift and relatively complex cutting rhythms keeping things pacey even during the script’s more lugubrious moments, and successfully distracting our attention from the more questionable effects work. The strengths of Alabiso’s editing are particularly evident during the film’s opening stretch, in which proceedings are livened up by some exuberantly stylish montage sequences, built around the snappy, rhythmic freeze-frames of Cassinelli’s photography, and cut to the tempo of Stelvio Cipriani’s enjoyably unconventional, minimalist score.

Though Cipriani’s work here is unlikely to ever rival the cult status enjoyed by his compositions for Ovidio Assonitis’s similarly themed ‘Tentacles’ (1977), ‘Great Alligator’ certainly finds him striking out in some interesting directions, ditching his trademark staccato harpsichord workouts to deliver a set of lithe, rubbery p-funk and electro/disco jams, foregrounding heavy, fretless bass and quasi-“tribal” percussion in a manner which somehow manages to sound more enervating than cheesy. Worth a listen.

Back to the movie meanwhile, and, as Daniel has a good look around the resort complex, we learn amongst other things that an impregnable underwater fence has been installed in order to keep crocodiles out of the designated swimming area, thus allowing guests the thrill of paddling around “nose to tail” with the terrifying beasts. Can we detect a touch of grinding, new-career-low despair creeping into Mel Ferrer’s eyes as he takes a deep breath and gamely reassures us that there is no way this can possibly go wrong?

Sadly, ‘The Great Alligator’ also forces us to bear witness to one of Italian cinema’s more surreal incidents of animal cruelty, as the SGWH guy is shown tying a bunch of tiny piglets to ropes and throwing them into the water, ostensibly as bait to attract crocs to the ‘viewing bridge’ from which tourists are encouraged to gawk at them.

It is impossible to process the fact that this scene only exists in order to allow Cassinelli’s character the opportunity to decry the resort’s inhumane treatment of animals (“is cruelty one of the features of the tourist programme?” he sneers), whilst the filmmakers meanwhile are actually throwing cute little piggies into the river in order to demonstrate this. I mean, one hopes that they pulled the little critters out again, and that they survived their ordeal, but I’m pretty damn sure they didn’t enjoy it very much. W and indeed TF, Sergio?

Meanwhile, the ‘erotic travelogue’ bit comes into play as Sheena becomes entranced whilst watching the local tribe’s rituals – perhaps there is supposed to be some sub-text about her “returning to her roots” or something here, but probably best not think too deeply about that – and instigates a flirtatious exchange of body language with a young male tribesman. Naturally enough, this leads to her ducking the resort’s sunset curfew in order to enjoy a nocturnal rendezvous on the tribe’s forbidden ‘Island of Love’.

Unfortunately however, Sheena’s career as a budding Emmanuelle is abruptly curtailed when the couple are rudely interrupted on their journey home by none other than KARUNA, the tribe’s big daddy God-Alligator, who, apparently angered by the incursion of modern civilisation into his realm, has returned to stir shit up, selecting Sheena and her heretical beau as his first victims. Man, what a drag!

Filling us in – in a manner of speaking – on the legend of Karuna, we find none other than good ol’ Richard Johnson (whom you’ll recall either as that “the boat can leave now” guy from ‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’, or as Dr Markway from ‘The Haunting’, depending on the classiness of your horror fandom), appearing in an extremely strange cameo as a missionary who has been driven out of his mind after witnessing an earlier manifestation of the God-Gator, and is now reduced to a raving, loin-cloth clad wild man with full-on Ben Gunn style wig and beard, living alone in a remote cave, where he has kept himself busy by carving a big alligator head out the rock itself.

Perhaps the scene in which Daniel and Ali track Johnson down and try to talk to him was intended to invest the movie’s monster with a certain degree of Lovecraftian grandeur, but to be honest, it’s all just… really weird. Which usually strikes me as a good second best, so, great! Let’s move on.

This being a ‘Jaws’ rip-off, you will of course be unsurprised to hear that missing persons, native unrest, giant alligator sightings and sabotaged radio equipment constitute no problem whatsoever to Mel Ferrer, as he happily welcomes his first cohort of gawping, cretinous guests to Paradise House for the resort’s big opening weekend.

This brings us to another reason why ‘The Great Alligator’ may have taken a critical battering over the years – namely, the fact that the film’s English dub is extremely poor, certainly far below the usual high standards of the era’s export-minded Italian product, and the sections of the film dealing with the tourists suffer particularly badly in this respect.

Although more sympathetic voicing could only do so much to mitigate the fact that Martino’s extras seem to have been directed in such a way as to suggest that they spend every second of the way gluttonously downing bottles of wine, indulging in goon-ish disco dancing, leering at each other and wantonly disrespecting the natural environment, their sloppily rendered comedic banter, alternately incomprehensible and irritating, certainly doesn’t help matters.

As tension mounts, alligator attacks intensify and the local tribespeople become actively aggressive – parading around in big, paper mache crocodile heads, wielding spiky weapons and so forth – the scene is set for Martino to swiftly shift gears from the movie’s rather leisurely opening hour and propel us straight into a closing act in which things go absolutely bananas, in a manner reminiscent of only the very finest ‘80s Italian genre films.

This descent into chaos is initially instigated when Joshua – obviously - decrees that the scheduled nocturnal river-boat trip he has laid on for his inebriated guests must proceed, turning a blind eye to the growing body of evidence suggesting that conditions on the river increasingly resemble a cross between ‘Piranha’ and ‘Apocalypse Now’ (even the SGWH guy thinks it’s a bad idea, forgodssake).

Meanwhile, the tribespeople have kidnapped Barbara, and tied her to a wooden frame on a special sacrificial canoe, sending her out onto the river as an offering to placate Karuna! Naturally, Cassinelli is soon in hot pursuit, machete in one hand, outboard tiller in the other.

Before too long of course, Ferrer’s party-boat (the thatched-roofed ‘Tarzan’s Raft’, which frankly looks to have been a pretty precarious vessel even before anything went wrong) is sized up by the God-Gator, who prepares to split it down the middle like a human-filled taco. Safe to say, any of those extras who were assured they wouldn’t get wet have another thing coming, and the production’s invaluable “big chomping jaws” puppet and fake blood supply are about to get a serious work-out.

Although *literally everything bad* which has happened in this film has been his fault, Ferrer’s character suddenly manifests a surprising degree of concern and competency once the proverbial shit hits the fan, working hard to save lives and get his inebriated charges to safety, instead of making a cackling getaway with a big suitcase full of money, as is usually de-rigour for his character-type… but needless to say, his last minute efforts at redemption prove too little too late.

When the first bedraggled passengers scale the spiked anti-croc fence make it back to shore, they discover that the tribe’s warriors have launched a full-on slash n’ burn massacre against the resort’s remaining residents, turning the place into a flame-lashed killing field, littered with corpses. Soon, children, OAPs and Hawaiian shirted yahoos alike are being crushed and trampled against that underwater fence, as Karuna chomps away behind them and a rain of flaming arrows meets them from the shore. It’s absolute fucking carnage, and it’s all your fault Mel, all your fault!

As I hope my synopsis above has helped make clear, ‘The Great Alligator’ has a lot more to offer the world than irritating dubbing and poor special effects. Though many of the films which fall loosely into this particular “Italians go nuts in the jungle” bracket can prove risky propositions, both from the POV of morality and watchability, Martino as usual puts us safely over the line with this one (give or take a few traumatised piggies).

By taking us from the “sittin’ on the dock of the bay” drowsiness of ‘Tentacles’ or Lamberto Bava’s ‘Devil Fish’ to the “literally ANYTHING could happen next” mayhem of Cannibal Apocalypse or ‘Nightmare City’, with healthy doses of sleaze, racial insensitivity, unintentional hilarity and flat-out weirdness along the way, this absurd little number definitely earns its place in the pantheon. If you can summon the strength to reach for it the next time the mercury creeps up to ‘heat wave’ levels on a weekend afternoon, you will not be disappointed.

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(1) If you’re wondering at this point about the whole alligator/crocodile thing, well, good luck to ya, although in fairness this IS briefly addressed in the script, when Barbara (who is clever) notes that the idol worshiped by the local tribespeople represents the head of an alligator, which are not native to – quote – “the orient”, thus marking the film’s monster out as something immediately distinct from the area’s resident crocodiles.

(2) An always likeable actor in both lead roles and character parts, Cassinelli is sadly probably best known today for the manner of his untimely death, which occurred when a helicopter stunt went badly wrong on the set of Martino’s ‘Hands of Steel’ in 1986.

Noir Diary # 6: Private Hell 36 (Don Siegel, 1954)

Produced and distributed by ‘The Filmakers’ (the pioneering non-studio outfit founded in 1950 by Ida Lupino and her soon-to-be-ex husband Collier Young), ‘Private Hell 36’ is a low budget crime picture telling the tale of a cop-on-the-edge lured into perdition by his association with a down-at-hell night club singer, played by Lupino, who also co-wrote the script (with Young), a year or so after she directed ultra-hardboiled classic ‘The Hitch-Hiker’.

Don Siegel directs - his only assignment for The Filmakers - and Sam Peckinpah fans may wish to note that, though their man had no discernible creative input on this film, he was nonetheless on hand as “dialogue director”, having assisted Siegel a year earlier on the explosive ‘Riot in Cellblock 11’.

Based solely on the information in the preceding paragraphs, you’ll appreciate that I approached ‘Private Hell 36’ more or less certain that it would be a sure-fire fucking classic (pardon my French), but, after viewing, I’d caution potential viewers to dampen their expectations. This is a decent, efficient little picture, but despite the big-hitters on both sides of the camera, it never really engages with the kind of sordid thrills implied by its attention-grabbing title.

In fact, the opening act here is pretty routine police procedural stuff (moral melodrama sub-division), only really elevated to ‘noteworthy’ status thanks to good performances from Steve Cochran as a risk-takin’, trigger happy Hollywood cop Carl Bruner, and Howard Duff (Lupino husband # 3) as his more straight-laced, even-tempered partner Jack Farnham.

Cochran and Duff’s characterisations here are effective and believable, as is the latter’s interplay with his wife (Dorothy Malone), but some of the stuff in the film’s first half nonetheless borders on the hokey. It’s always nice to see Dean Jagger popping up, but the relationship between his canny Station Captain character and our central pair of cops comes across as annoyingly paternalistic, whilst the core mechanics of the plot they become embroiled in stretch our credulity just a little too far for us to really take it seriously.

I mean, would the Captain really send two of his best men off on a long-term assignment that required them to hang around the race-track all day, accompanying a night club singer who received a hot $50 dollar bill as a tip, just on the off-chance that she might recognise the guy who gave it to her -- and then assign them to guard her by night as well…? Seems to be going way out on a limb for a pretty slim lead to me.

Things certainly become a lot more interesting however when Bruner & Farnham eventually do get their man, accidentally killing him at the climax of an under-cranked, out-of-town car chase and apparently suffering no repercussions for their fatal recklessness (the Captain is shown joking with them and patting shoulders right there on the scene).

Before Jagger arrives however, things have already taken a far darker turn following the crash. As the two cops survey the wreckage, they follow a trail of high denomination bills fluttering in the breeze, and discover the box in which the deceased suspect had stashed the proceeds of a recent armed robbery. Without a word, Bruner – who had made the opening moves in his romance with Lupino’s character just a few hours earlier, chatting to her about diamond bracelets – picks up a few massive wads of cash, and pockets them.

Casually done, this is a real shocker, and immediately turns the film on its head, simply because, up to this point, we had no intimation that Cochran’s character was anything other than a trustworthy, rough-around-the-edges good guy.

Naturally this leaves Farnham, as his partner, in a tight spot. Though he immediately expresses shock and disbelief at Bruner’s theft, he can’t bring himself to rat on his best friend once the Captain turns up. In subsequent scenes, he may harp on about being sick to the stomach and unable to look at his mug on the mirror and so on, but when Bruner introduces him to the concept of “your share” on their drive back to town, and suggests a diversion to a spot where they can stash the loot, he quietly follows his friend’s lead.

As so often in the world of noir, the path to the dark side is a slippery slope, rather than a sudden cliff edge – just a few small decisions, taken a bit too quickly, from which there is no way back - and in its best moments, ‘Private Hell 36’ reflects this, evoking a sticky feeling of creeping, soul-withering corruption. It’s underplayed for sure, but it’s there, lurking in the background, right from the moment Cochran impulsively pockets the dough.

The ‘36’ of the film’s title by the way refers to the number of the rented trailer which the pair use to stash their ill-gotten gains – a brilliant touch which provides a great setting for the momentarily atmospheric finale, but like so much in this movie, its potential is sadly under-utilised.

Already a seasoned specialist in low budget crime flicks by this point in his career, Siegel’s direction is breezy and fast-paced, but as a filmmaker who always privileged movement over visual style, he has little time for the kind of brooding, expressionistic flourishes which may have given visual emphasis to the script’s darker themes (an oversight which may at least partially be the fault of time and budget constraints, I’d imagine).

Instead, we get bland-looking interior sets and uniform daylight for the most part, although the location shooting at the race-track has some scope and energy to it, and the rudimentary car chase gives us a welcome blast through that ubiquitous b-movie scrubland that we’d get to know so well in subsequent decades.

Lurid, sleazoid jazz meanwhile seems to creep into the background of almost every scene, whether emanating from the radio of a crashed car, from Lupino’s ‘night club’ (which looks more like a suburban soda counter, to be honest), or merely piped into the air from nowhere – a siren call to the darker underbelly of this ostensibly dull, work-a-day world.

As with so many of these post-HUAC ‘50s noirs though, this is a character piece really – a quiet little ‘actor’s movie’ that sometimes feels closer to a TV “play for today” piece than a big screen thriller. Lupino is as brilliant as ever – I’d describe her character as a “quintessential hard boiled dame”, but she’s f-ing Ida Lupino ferchrissakes, so you knew that already – and Cochran and Duff bounce off each other really nicely.

The former has a touch of that riveting Italian-American machismo about him (connecting the dots between Richard Conte and Pacino, possibly?), whilst Duff has a pudgy-faced, jobs-worth, Joe Friday kind of vibe about him that makes it all the more fun seeing him descend into more tormented, morally compromised territory than that self-righteous shmuck ever had to contemplate.

You get the feeling that a writer like Jim Thompson or David Goodis could really have gone to town on a story like this, turning it into an airless nightmare of moral degradation and self-immolation, but at every turn, the filmmakers (and indeed The Filmakers) hold back. It’s all just a little too polite, too restrained – a little too mainstream perhaps? - to really deliver on the kind of emotional gut punch the material demands.

All the ingredients are in place here for a devastating, pitch-black noir masterpiece, but as it is, it all just seems a bit timid and under-cooked. Shaky scripting and continuity errors bespeak a lack of time or effort, and when Lupino at one point tells Cochran she’s “seen that bit on ‘Dragnet’”, it feels all too appropriate to the finger-wagging, buddy-cop morality tale the movie eventually settles for.

(Far be it from me to second guess respected movie industry professionals long since in their graves, but wouldn’t this story have been a lot more exciting if Lupino’s character was actually a nefarious femme fatale with underworld connections, knowingly coaxing Cochran to his doom? As it is, she eventually emerges as rather boring and incidental to the central plot, in spite of Lupino’s best efforts to liven her up a bit; sure she’d like some diamonds, but what girl wouldn’t? She certainly didn’t mean to encourage her boyfriend to steal for her, and is shocked when she learns of his crimes, etc etc.)

‘Private Hell 36’ is certainly not a bad movie, I should stress – it’s a solid programmer with the seed of a great story buried in it, and, given the weight of talent on both sides the camera, it naturally has its share of arresting moments. But, at the end of the day, it feels like a very minor work for all concerned – certainly nowhere near the level of greatness achieved by Lupino on ‘The Hitch-Hiker’, or by Siegel a few years later on ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’.

(Sadly, the scene depicted on this lobby card does not appear in the film itself.)

Creepy-Crawl Cinema: One Upon a Time in… Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

1969 feels pretty impossible to escape at the moment. All these 50th anniversaries coming thick and fast – moon landing, Manson murders, Woodstock, Brian Jones, Altamont – and now, man-of-that-particular-moment Peter Fonda passing away right on schedule, an exact half century after his image was pinned up on a thousand dorm room walls. Perfect timing then, for retromancer in chief Quentin Tarantino to chime in with the celluloid equivalent of a shiny collectible plate. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got some room on the sideboard.

I.

Like many movie fans, I could frankly spend all day here trying to unpack my mixed feelings about Tarantino and his work, but for the sake of both your sanity and mine, I’ll try to keep it brief.

As sophisticated, cine-literate readers, you will no doubt have realised long ago that all of Tarantino’s films are essentially set within a fantastical movie wonderland. They are films-about-films, indulgent thrill-rides with zero real world relevance, offering pure, dumb-headed escapism.

An obvious point perhaps, but one that is worth restating at the outset, given the persistent failure of many mainstream critics to comprehend it. (Honestly, how they can continue to toil away under the misapprehension that ‘Django Unchained’ actually has something to say about slavery, or ‘Inglorious Bastards’ about the Second World War, is beyond me.)

Though I can dig this superficial, ‘fantasy-land’ approach to a certain extent, I confess its appeal has worn pretty thin for me over the years, particularly when (as in the examples above) the Big QT finds himself romping around in the midst of subject matter which would conventionally seem to demand a certain amount of depth or ideological engagement. For a while now, I’ve been hoping that one day he might finally leave the play-pen behind and make, like, you know – a proper, sincere movie of some kind?

By gently weaning Tarantino away from his films-about-films universe and moving to a painstakingly researched, naturalistic historical setting that just happens to be all about the making of those films he loves so much, ‘Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood’ (man, I HATE that ellipsis) would seem to offer him the perfect opportunity to do this, allowing him to play his meta-textural, movie nerd games, but in a more grounded / ‘realistic’ context - one in which actions may be seen to have consequences, and in which characters might finally manage to acquire a second or third dimension for themselves.

Given that he basically fails to take up this offer though, instead delivering yet another barrage of defiantly shallow, crowd-pleasing nonsense, I think we can assume by this stage that he probably never will make the jump to the quote-unquote ‘next level’.

As such, this leaves us with a few things that we are just going to have to accept if we are ever going to enjoy any Tarantino movies.

Firstly, they will mean nothing. Any thematic framework or ideological intent detected within will be purely coincidental - probably just a by-product of all the cultural tropes being re-heated and played around with.

Secondly, they will be massively indulgent, typically containing upwards of an hour of entirely irrelevant material that he shot and kept in the movie just because he could. (We may roll our eyes, but hey, if it’s good enough for Fellini…)

And, thirdly, everything in his films will feel just slightly cartoon-ish and overblown. Comedy / character scenes will drag on too long, just to make sure everyone gets the joke. Serious/violent scenes will pretty much always fall off a cliff into OTT absurdity, just because, as all exploitation fans know, crazy stuff is cool, and cool = good. Pop-cultural references and tributes meanwhile will be so shamelessly foregrounded that they might as well be accompanied by a little QT popping up in a box in the corner of the screen ala a Japanese TV show, pointing to them and guffawing.

Once we accept these certainties and abandon the possibility that things may one day be otherwise, we can hopefully loosen up a bit and appreciate the fact that, taken on its own terms, ‘Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood’ is about the most purely enjoyable three hours of cinema that the 21st century has yet been able to offer.

II.

As someone who has spent a great deal of time living and breathing the storied mythos of Hollywood ’69 over the years, I’ll confess that I was pretty psyched about seeing this movie, and that – leaving aside the caveats outlined above – I was not disappointed.

Although the film is packed with things (small details, creative decisions, wasted potential) which irked me, each of them is balanced out by two other things (character beats, clever gags and references, likable performances) which delighted me. (1)

Yes, this makes for a large number of ‘things’ in total - but such is only right and proper for a picture with this kind of gargantuan run time. If you like films with ‘things’ in them, well strap in buddy, cos you’ll certainly get your money’s worth here. The frantic pace barely ever flags across 170-odd minutes, and new stimuli comes thick n’ fast with every shot. As an immersive ‘Where’s Wally?’ puzzle for a pop-culturally literate crowd to lose themselves within, this film is hard to beat.

As such, it is ‘Once Upon a Time…’s production design which is chiefly deserving of celebration. Barbara Ling [Production Designer], John Dexter [Art Direction], Nancy Haigh [Set Decoration], Arianne Phillips [Costumes] – take a collective bow.

There are, it is safe to say, few other living filmmakers who have both the resources and the inclination to retro-fit vast swathes of Los Angeles to conform to some mystic, rose-tinted dream of late ‘60s perfection, and the results Tarantino’s team achieve in this regard are magnificent – a triumph of “world building” equal to any of this century’s CG-enhanced fantasy epics, and a hell of a lot more fun from my personal POV.

Again and again over the past forty years, we may have seen movie directors pay teary-eyed tribute to the days when Americans could roar around guilt-free in massive, pastel-coloured automobiles, chain-smoking their way into an early grave as they negotiate a neon labyrinth of cinema marquees, movie billboards and fast food outlets…. but never has this celebration been rendered quite so exuberantly, quite so convincingly, as it is here.

As a result, moments such as the panoramic shot in which Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth stands on the roof of Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio)’s Cielo Drive house to fix the TV aerial, looking down over the perfectly rendered sprawl of the Hollywood Hills and down to the streets below, are pretty darn spine-tingling.

(The cinema in which I saw the film isn’t exactly what you’d call top of the line in terms of its A/V presentation, but even so, Robert Richardson’s 35mm photography, ripped through whatever kind of cutting edge HD processing brings it to our 21st century screens, looked *incredible*.)

Yes, brothers and sisters (but mainly brothers, let’s face it), this really WAS the promised land, Quentin seems to be telling us, and for a moment or two here and there, I do not feel inclined to disbelieve him.

The fact that Tarantino grew up in L.A. and was six years old in 1969 should probably be noted here, particularly in view of ‘Once Upon a Time..’s all-consuming obsession with syndicated TV, movie posters and radio ads. As you might well imagine, the film’s dense collage of movie nerd fan service is a joy to behold, at times becoming so dominant that it almost takes the movie into quasi-documentary territory, complete with voiceover narration and clip / poster-based alternate history recaps.

And, just as inevitably, I can’t help but love this stuff. Whatever high-minded reservations I may have about Quentin’s oeuvre, all I need do is think back on the fact that Rick Dalton’s calling card action movie was “The Fourteen Fists of McClusky”, or upon hearing Al Pacino (playing Dalton’s liaison with the Italian movie industry) describe Sergio Corbucci as “…only the SECOND BEST director of Spaghetti Westerns in the world” (in outraged, what-do-you-mean-‘who’ tone of voice), or indeed upon the clip of DiCaprio appearing in an Antonio Margheriti spy movie… and all is forgiven. I might as well be sharing popcorn with the fucker on weekend movie night.

(Incidentally, based on the audience’s mocking laughter, I think many of them must have assumed Tarantino was just making all this Italian b-movie shit up for giggles. Little do they know…)

III.

More surprisingly meanwhile, the film’s other great strength is its cast. In the past, I’ve often been surprised to read critics earnestly praising the committed performances of actors in Tarantino movies, given that the director doesn’t display much more concern for in-depth characterisation than if he were Michael Winner shuffling around the cannon fodder in a ‘Death Wish’ sequel… but, such is the paradox of an exploitation filmmaker who finds himself working with the kind of talent and resources usually reserved for critically-acclaimed Oscar-winners, I suppose.

Here though, the plaudits seem more justified. After all, ‘Once Upon a Time..’ is a long film which needs to retain our attention whilst holding back violent action or pyrotechnics until the final reel, and, as fictional creations with the chutzpah to get us there, Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth certainly make for a winning pair of protagonists.

An anxious, clumsy, floundering movie star and his vastly more handsome and confident stuntman / gopher, they’re clearly conceived as an odd couple in the age-old Jeeves and Wooster mould, but their relationship is believable, their interplay with the movie’s other characters is always fun, and it’s basically easy for us to settle in and have a good time with their assorted travails and misadventures.

DiCaprio’s performance may have a touch too much huffing-and-puffing Wellsian grotesquery about it for my tastes, but this suits his character, and if nothing else, he certainly succeeds in persuading us to anchor our sympathies to a guy who is essentially pretty pathetic and dislikeable.

Here, though, is a sentence I never thought I’d find myself writing in a Breakfast in the Ruins post: it is Brad Pitt who is the real revelation here. He is not an actor I’ve ever much cared for in the past, but what can I say, he really seems to have “grown into himself” in ‘Once Upon a Time..’, if that makes any sense?

Essentially representing Tarantino’s ideal of the time-honoured Hollywood hero, Cliff Booth is our requisite humble, taciturn working class guy who looks good, does good, and always comes out on top. And, somehow, Pitt manages to embody this storied archetype whilst also ringing true as a fully-formed and immensely charming individual, absolutely nailing that crucial “yeah, what a cool guy” feeling we all love to get from our favourite movie heroes.

Of all of the far-fetched notions which film’s script asks us to accept in fact, probably the most outlandish is the idea that this guy has apparently been hanging around on TV and movie sets for decades, and no one seems to have noticed that he radiates star quality like a goddamned lighthouse.

IV.

Backing up this dynamic duo meanwhile are a wide variety of equally talented supporting players, whose work in small roles and ‘one-scene-wonder’ parts enhances the film considerably. I don’t so much mean the inevitable big name cameos (Pacino, Kurt Russell), but more the younger cast members really… which brings us neatly to the thorny issue of the film’s portrayal of the Manson Family.

Again, I have mixed feelings about this. In script terms, the Mansonites don’t really serve much of a purpose here beyond providing some generic antagonists, parachuted in to liven up the final act of what would otherwise basically be a stress-free three hour “hang out” movie. Indeed, Tarantino seems entirely unconcerned with exploring the context behind the Family’s existence and activities, instead relying entirely upon his audience’s perceived familiarity with the historical background – an approach which worked just fine for me, but which could easily cause problems in terms of the way the film plays for a wider audience.

For instance, I watched the film with a predominantly young crowd, and when, in a beautifully rendered scene early in the film, we see Cliff and Rick cruise past a group of ragged teenage girls who are scavenging from a roadside dumpster whilst singing one of Charlie’s songs, I could almost sense a 50/50 split in the audience between those who shared my shiver of recognition, and others who had no idea of the intended significance of what they were seeing.

Throughout the film, references to the cult’s lunatic beliefs or to Manson’s psychological hold over his followers are entirely avoided, leaving us in a strange situation where the only message which can drawn from the text itself is that dirty hippies are inherently evil and murderous, and that Quentin Tarantino hates ‘em.

That said however, the pivotal sequence in which Cliff visits the Spahn Ranch after picking up a fictional (I think?) Manson girl named ‘Pussycat’ (Margaret Qualley - and yes, fear not, Tarantino’s feverish obsession with trying to wring comedic value out of terms for female genitalia remains undiminished here), is wonderfully observed, feeling ‘real’ enough, and crammed with enough esoteric detail, to satisfy even the most demanding of Manson obsessives. (2)

Although Tarantino has the scary, dead-eyed hippies swarm and diminish like Romero zombies at times, what really won me over here is the fact that most of the Mansonites (barring a witchy, passive-aggressive turn from Dakota Fanning as Squeeky, and James Landry Hébert as a redneck grotesque Clem) are disarmingly naturalistic. The fact that they play it calm, friendly and not overtly crazy is to me more unsettling than any quantity of ominous, horror movie shit the film might have thrown at us.

(In view of my speculations below, it might be worth noting that the kill squad, when we share some time with them in the car on their way to Cielo Drive, basically speak very much like 21st century young people; I particularly liked Sadie/Susan (Mikey Madison) exclaiming that, “I’m sorry if I’m not familiar with every FASCIST who was on TV in the FIFTIES”.)

Likewise, the decision to concentrate during the ranch sequence on Cliff’s need to ascertain the well-being of George Spahn (a splendidly cantankerous performance from Bruce Dern – notable here I think as the only cast member who was actually on the scene in Hollywood when these events went down) proves an inspired one. It’s dramatically interesting, true to Pitt’s character, and allows the film to shine a light on an element of the Manson mythos which has largely been side-lined in the past, in factual and fictional chronicles alike.

Thinking about how Cliff immediately zeroes in on the necessity of speaking to George (because I mean, of course this 40-something stuntman would be more concerned with checking in on an old buddy than with quizzing a buncha fuckin’ hippies about the finer points of their belief system) meanwhile gets me thinking about the extent to which Tarantino essentially frames this entire film through the prism of his protagonists’ worldview. (Admittedly, it could be argued that this is not too far removed from his own worldview as another middle-aged Hollywood dude, but… let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume at least a thin line of division, shall we?).

V.

Though the surface signifiers of the counter-culture – in the form of sex, drugs and long hair - may have been ruling the roost in Movieland by 1969, Hollywood nonetheless remained a world in which women were expected to be seen and not heard, and in which non-white faces were almost literally invisible. And, this is exactly what Tarantino gives us - reality filtered through the eyes of a couple of old school, movie industry bros, with no explanation or apology offered along the way.

For better or for worse, proceeding in this manner, without even a passing nod to contemporary standards of representation, is a ballsy move on the director’s part, and as usual, certain sections of the media seem to have had a hard time even comprehending it. In particular, articles such as this one, which criticise the director for giving Margot Robbie little to do beyond looking pretty in her role as Sharon Tate, seem to be missing the point entirely.

After all, the sad fact is that the real Sharon Tate was given little to do in her tragically foreshortened life, beyond looking pretty. She was the product of a culture that allowed young women few other avenues for advancement, and her portrayal in the film merely reflects this. Of course, we can always imagine that she may have steered her life and career in a more rewarding direction had she lived, but trying to retrofit this ultimate victim of the era’s chauvinist attitudes as a super-capable 21st century heroine would have seemed questionable to say the least.

Likewise, I’m happy to defend Tarantino when it comes to the movie’s other big bone of contention, comedian Michael Moh’s portrayal of Bruce Lee as an egotistical buffoon. In a complete reversal of the Robbie/Tate issue, I have no reason to believe that this is an accurate characterisation of Bruce Lee, but at the same time there is something very refreshing about seeing such a revered, untouchable figure get the bubble of his legend so crudely ‘popped’ and – the ultimate justification for anything in a Tarantino film – the scene he shares with Pitt is loads of fun. (I particularly enjoyed the perfect take-down of the old “my fists are registered as lethal weapons” routine.) (3)

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WARNING: Spoilers follow in the next few paras. This film has some nice surprises, so please do go and see it before reading the rest of this review.

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Whilst I’m generally cool with all this stuff though, I do fear that, whether by accident or design, the director’s willingness to court controversy and blow a few gentle raspberries in the direction of quote-unquote “political correctness” may be apt to lead him into some choppy waters here, should anyone choose to disregard my First Rule of watching a Tarantino movie above, and succumb to the cardinal sin of actually thinking about the damn thing for five minutes after the lights go up.

After all, QT’s personal/professional reputation only just made it out of the whole Miramax / Weinstein debacle in one piece, so, as much as I wish I could just turn my brain off and go with the flow, it’s pretty difficult not to detect a certain, uh, emphasis in the fact that the first movie he has made since severing those connections ends with the triumphant spectacle of two middle-aged Hollywood dudes violently murdering a couple of mouthy young women who wish to forcibly disrupt their comfortable, decadent way of life… y’know what I mean…?

In real life of course, we know that those women were the brain-washed pawns of a criminal lunatic whose practice of racism and misogyny dwarfed that of any Hollywood playboy, but, given that ‘Once Upon a Time..’ pointedly fails to address this and instead merely depicts them as a bunch of damn fuckin’ hippies who won’t get off Leonardo DiCaprio’s drive…. well, let’s just say that the potential for a very troubling alternative reading of the film is certainly there, should you insist on poking it with a stick.

Personally, I’m happy to leave it be. As I stated at the outset, I’d question whether Tarantino has *ever* set out to make a film with this kind of ideological subtext, and even if he did, I’d inclined to believe that this film’s violent finale should be read as heavily tongue in cheek – an intent clearly acknowledged by the young audience at the screening I intended, as they gasped and guffawed in “I-can’t-believe-he-just-did-that” style disbelief.

Basically, I think Tarantino chose to end the film this way for the only reason he has ever done anything in his films – because it’s cool, and funny, and will leave the audience feeling good. The bad guys lose, and DIE! Movies and the swell guys who make them triumph! Brad and Leo save the ‘60s, and a brighter alternative pop cultural universe opens up for everyone.

Which, come to think of it, is the only possible conclusion for a movie named ‘Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood’. Fairy tale ending meets Western ending meets po-mo inter-textural headfuck ending. Perfect.

It may be crass and ugly and contrived and stupid… but there’s a strange kind of beauty here too. Just like Hollywood, am I right?

Boom, great ending for a review! Cut and print!

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(1) I couldn’t find a way to slot this into the main text, but the only thing that seriously annoyed me about Tarantino’s direction here was his decision to include lengthy scenes of DiCaprio’s character performing his lines in a TV western pilot,  shooting them with gliding Steadicam, beautiful diffuse lighting, Leone-esque cutting between multiple angles and other things that would obviously NOT have been present in a 1969 TV pilot.

Basically he presents these scenes exactly as if they were part of one of his *own* Westerns, having apparently not yet got that bug out of his system, which feels both disruptive to this film’s period setting and indulgent in all the worst ways. Wouldn’t it have been a lot more interesting to pull back and take a verite / behind-the-scenes kind of approach to these TV-show-within-the-film bits, giving us a look at the detail of how shows like this were made, and of what the crew were getting up to as the actors did their thing etc…? Just a thought.

(2) The set looks pretty much like an exact repro of the photos I’ve seen of the Spahn Ranch, and I loved details like the pile of dune buggy parts, the sign pointing toward the ‘chop shop’, and the inclusion of a few surly, disengaged bikers, and even a guy done up like Bobby Beausoleil, in the background. Well done, team, well done.

(3) For anyone counting the beans re: the film’s representational issues, I’m fairly sure Moh is the only non-white actor in the cast who actually even has *lines* -- but again, I’d put this down to nature of the world inhabited by our viewpoint characters, rather than any reflection of Tarantino’s personal agenda.

Deathblog: Peter Fonda (1940 – 2019)

As you might imagine, I was very sad to hear of the death of Peter Fonda this weekend.

Whilst many of the mainstream obits will likely begin and end with ‘Easy Rider’, those of us with a more, uh, diverse taste in cinema will remember Fonda fondly for the myriad of other off-beat roles he essayed through the ‘60s and ‘70s, in the course of establishing himself as what I can only describe as the pre-eminent leading man of the exploitation / counter-culture wing of the New Hollywood.

Whether playing asshole anti-heroes in ‘The Wild Angels’ and ‘Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry’, freakin’ out in ‘The Trip’, popping up as an incestuous ghost(!) in Roger Vadim’s segment of ‘Spirts of the Dead’, kicking Satanic ass with his buddy Warren Oates in Race With The Devil, or radiating affectless calm as he upsets the lives of Oates and Harry Dean Stanton in Thomas McGuane’s oddball Florida fishing black comedy ‘92 in the Shade’, Fonda has always been an actor whose performances I’ve enjoyed, and for whom I’ve always felt a great deal of warmth, irrespective of the sense of stubborn, egotistical antagonism which often seems to bleed through into his on-screen persona.

Just as important however is the fact that the two films Fonda directed in the early 1970s – the elegiac, character-driven western ‘The Hired Hand’ (which I reviewed many years ago here) and the independently-produced sci-fi oddity ‘Idaho Transfer’ (which made my best first watches list last year) – are both excellent. Far removed from anything his “Hollywood bad boy” reputation may have led the world to expect, these films are both thoughtful, humane and challenging works which stand alone within their respective genres.

If Fonda had had the inclination and resources to further his career as a director, I have little doubt that the world wouldn’t have merely been mourning the guy from ‘Easy Rider’ this weekend, but an important and distinctive voice in American cinema.

Hearing him talk about his experiences behind the camera in contemporary interviews, I’d imagine it must have simply been his frustration with the machinations of the movie-making “system” – and, no doubt, his films’ notable failure to reap commercial rewards – which led him to direct his energies elsewhere; into family, environmental activism and community work, publically lambasting both Republican and Democratic presidents in typically forthright fashion – and of course a steady stream of acting gigs that kept him busy right up until the end.

In the statements released by his family following his death, I was touched by his sister Jane’s assertion that “he went out laughing,” and by their collective request; “In honour of Peter, please raise a glass to freedom.”

Consider it done, with Bruce Langhorne’s sublime soundtrack to ‘The Hired Hand’ as accompaniment.