The Mummy Movie Season kicks off inauspiciously with Time Walker (1982). I watched this in snatched moments over four days, probably not the ideal way to watch a movie but I don’t think it would be improved at all by a continuous viewing.
The premise has promise – a mummy taken from an Egyptian tomb turns out to be an alien - but the promising premise is sadly squandered in this badly bungled, bargain basement, bandaged baddie bilge.
The first problem is the star, Ben ‘Alias Smith And Jones’ Murphy in the role of ProfessorDouglas McCadden. He’s either a.) wishing he were doing something else or b.) not a very good actor or c.) both. In any case he’s as wooden as a cricket bat but with less charisma.
The script (perhaps ‘teleplay’ would be nearer the mark) was obviously written to comply with the overriding directive – make it cheap! Thus the entire opening sequence comprises stock footage of the Pyramids and the entrance to a temple (supposedly the façade of Tutenkhamun’s tomb). Inside are McCadden and some other archeologist fellow. There’s an earthquake which causes a secret wall to collapse and inside is a sarcophagus (along the skeletal remains of a pharoahonic cortege).
So it is shipped to the Professor’s college in California, to be opened by….his students! This is a common set up in countless mummy (and ‘cursed artefact’ movies in general). You would expect a discovery of this magnitude to be handled by the world’s leading archeological specialists, in a strictly controlled environment and with the necessary security arrangements, not by a bunch of inept, horny, beer swilling teens in a modest laboratory which anyone can enter, on the science faculty of a minor college. But I could be out of touch, maybe it really does happen like that. They also seem to have their own on-site nuclear reactor…
The incompetence of the students in charge of X-Raying the contents of the sarcophogus leads to the Mummy being exposed to an overdose of radiation and we all know what that means. On the day that the press reporters (seemingly from the local rag) are convened to witness the grand opening, surprise, surprise! The Mummy’s not at home.
But his coffin does contain a green mould that turns out to be a flesh eating fungus. As it’s also all over his bandages, anyone he touches will be infected. And the theft of five crystals from a very obvious secret compartment in the base of the sarcophogus (which had been overlooked by everyone except the thieving bellend student) means that he’ll be ‘touching’ quite a few people in his quest to recover the glowing gems which somehow enable him to teleport back to his own planet. And at the end that’s what he does, vanishing in a blue glare and taking the willing McCadden with him.
Although there seems to be a lot going on, nothing really happens, we’re left with a lot of talking, endless Mummy POV shots (tinted green), some very brief ‘attacks’ and some more talking. There’s a crappy, Ancient Egypt themed ‘Frat party’ and a listless police investigation (conducted by the Campus Cop). Direction is pedestrian, acting just adequate, SFX cheap, and the whole perfunctory thing is as bleak as the moon and equally lacking in atmosphere and gravity. Instead of ‘The End’, the final caption warns the audience ‘To be continued….’ Luckily we never saw the return of this monster from the Id….stupid and insipid.
Paddington/Paddington 2. Just what this awful time calls for; two perfectly sunny and charming instant classics of British cinema.
Carry On Up The Jungle/Carry On Loving. If 1970 could be described as Hammer's annus horribilis it's pretty evident that the Carry On team were having bother with their annus too. Jungle is a huge misfire that feels like it was thrown together without a proper story and little more than a series of crude, rather than clever, double entendres to offer. The writing is much more like the feeble stuff that the Carry On TV series consisted of than the often brilliant movies. Terry Scott is awfully weak in the cod Tarzan role that was surely intended for Jim Dale. Valerie Leon turns up as a sort of African Amazon in a bit that might have been intended as a parody of Hammer's exotics, such as Slave Girls. Watching it tonight I realised that this was probably the film that Queen Kong aspired to be. Loving is a little better in that there's a bit more to the characters but, like most of the series entries that followed, it's mostly uninspired. One plus is that poor Imogen Hassall has a reasonably big role and shows a knack for comedy, particularly when her character is in dowdy mode.
The Villain Still Pursued Her, an oddball movie from 1940 that spoofs Victorian melodramas, although it seems uncertain whether its target is stage productions or silent movies. I don't know of an earlier example of the sort of movie that Mel Brooks and the ZAZ team would do much better later on so it's interesting from that point of view, although very few of its gags actually land and Buster Keaton is wasted in a supporting role. There are a couple of chuckles along the way and it somehow managed to smuggle through what is probably the filthiest joke of the 1940s: "I have not fallen. I am standing in the full force of my manhood. Erect!"
Child's Play (1972), in which malevolent forces are at work in a Catholic boys' boarding school. Sidney Lumet directs powerfully and James Mason is terrific as a strict Latin teacher. There's a palpable sense of evil at work and a horror movie score so this is at least a borderline horror movie. File alongside Unman, Wittering & Zigo and The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. I liked it a lot.
Stolen Assignment, in which journalists investigate an artist who is accused of murdering his wife. Practically the dictionary definition of "run-of-the-mill", the most interesting thing about this one is that it was directed by Terence Fisher, at Bray, with a few Hammer personnel involved.
Inferior remake, given a period makeover (set in Victorian / Edwardian England). It lacks the light hearted first half of the ’37 version and the antagonists are pretty bland. The serial wifekiller looks somewhat like John Travolta and the attempts to build suspense come to nothing. Admittedly, Basil Rathbone's edgy, twitching, shell shocked madman was a hard act to follow, but this comes nowhere near.
The title is a bit of a misnomer, but it’s snappier than “Charlie Chan In Retfordshire”, the fictional English county where the action mainly takes place. This time Charlie is asked to clear an innocent man due to be hanged for the murder of a friend among the huntin’fishin’shootin’ set. The film is peppered with offensive racial stereotypes - the English are portrayed as a race of either superficial, privileged, hedonistic, heavy drinking toffs, or dimwitted, headscratching, inarticulate Cockneys – including the local police inspector! It’s outrageous!
Another constant of the series initiated in this film is the “mystery arm through the window” weilding pistol, knife or other lethal weapon and a narrow escape for Charlie. There’s footage of an actual fox hunt and some neat stunt riding, and this is also the one which introduces the hereafter customary revelation that the culprit is always the one nobody suspects. Ray(mond) Milland has a supporting role and Madge (White Zombie) Bellamy is among the socialites.
The second film in Fox’s Charlie Chan series (the first is lost) gives us our first sight of Warner Oland in the role. Bela Lugosi co-stars as a phoney astrologer and Dwight Frye plays a butler as if he were Renfield. The plot is adapted from Earl Derr Biggers’ homonymous novel whose title supposedly comes from an old saying: "Death is a black camel that kneels unbidden at every gate."
It establishes the format which would continue throughout the series – contrived and convoluted plot, plethora of suspects, perfunctory romance, countless red herrings, the trap to make the killer give the game away, numerous cod-Chinese aphorisms (“Can cut off monkey's tail, but he is still monkey”) and witty ripostes ("Inspector, you need a lie-detector...an invention that detects instantly when anyone is telling a lie." “Oh, I see. You mean a wife. I have one”), plus the inevitable comedy relief character, in this case Kashimo, the bumbling Japanese assistant assigned to Charlie by the Honolulu Police Department - in the original Chan novels, Charlie has an almost xenophobic disdain for the citizens of the Land Of The Rising Sun.
The location filming in Hawaii adds local colour, but the cumbersome equipment of the time means these scenes are rather static and the rhythm sedate, while the interior/studio scenes seem to flow better, notwithstanding a few awkward pauses and an occasional abrupt edit.
The Assassination Bureau, in which journalist Diana Rigg engages the head of an assassin-for-hire organisation (Oliver Reed) to kill ... himself. The two stars shine in this period romp and there's a fun supporting cast. It lacks the directorial touch of a Richard Lester or maybe a Blake Edwards to turn it into a classic but it's well worth a look.
The Seventh Survivor, in which the survivors of a U-Boat attack are taken in by lighthouse keepers. Among the group are a British agent and a German agent. All the right ingredients then for a wartime comedy thriller and this one passes the time nicely enough that I'm not going to nitpick the plot. The capable cast includes Martita Hunt who always seems to be the same age in everything.
One of the most enjoyable of the early Fox produced Charlie Chan films, but definitely not one for the PC crowd – this film contains ‘yellowface’, wild animals in cages, circus ‘freaks’ including a giant and a pair of midgets, fur coats galore, male chauvinism and copious cigar smoking - mainly by one of the midgets.
For those who like to take restrospective offence on behalf of others, it should be noted that Warner Oland’s Charlie Chan provided a positive reversal of the customary Hollywood casting of Oriental characters as Fu-Manchu style, ‘Yellow Peril’ villains or stereotypical coolies and laundrymen. Oland’s portrayal of the cultivated and wily Chinese detective from Honolulu proved highly popular with both contemporary American Asians and the films were likewise very successful in China – to the extent that when Oland made a promotional trip to Shanghai he was greeted as a national hero.
As for the diminutive circus performers, they were played by successful sibling Vaudeville singers/dancers Olive and George Brasno. Their film appearances were few – they turned down an offer to appear in The Wizard Of Oz because they were making more money on the Vaudeville circuit. Olive appears here quite accomplished as an amateur actress, her brother less so. In spite of puffing his way through an endless stream of (full sized) cigars -(even when he’s disguised as a baby in a pram!) - with the evident relish of the serious smoker, the little man lived to be seventy years old, while his sister passed away at eighty, just two days after her husband, to whom she was married for thirty seven years. Their parts in aiding Chan are central to the narrative, leaving Number One Son (played by Keye Luke, later of Kung-Fu fame) free to pursue a romance with Su Toy, a pretty Chinese contortionist.
At just seventy minutes, the pace never flags and the Big Top setting and scenes on a train carrying the circus from town to town provide a welcome change from the customary mystery film milieux of old dark houses or mean city streets. It’s also one of the few Chan films to include scenes with Charlie’s wife and all twelve (later thirteen) of their offspring – when they enter the circus in single file, the ticket collector quips ‘that guy’s brought his own sideshow’.
The mystery itself centres around the murder of the unpopular co-owner of the "Kinney and Gaines Combined Circus" As usual, just about every character has a motive for wishing the man dead and, equally as usual, the audience don’t get all the gen until Charlie has had the killer give him/herself away via an ingenious trap, when he explains everything to the conveniently assembled cast of characters. In short, a treat for Chan fans, general mystery movie addicts, circus historians and connoisseurs of tatty gorilla suits.
A revisit to this, the twenty third film in the Fox series and Sidney Toley’s seventh portrayal of the Honolulu detective.
The Charlie Chan films are well known for convoluted plots, but this one surely takes the prawn cracker. Lead antagonist Doctor Cream is not only a world class plastic surgeon, but also an expert sculptor of waxworks, which he displays in his educational Wax Museum Of Crime where he has, among tableaux of historical and contemporary murders, exhibits of the Guillotine, the gallows, the headsman’s block and a working(!) Electric Chair, ex-property of Sing Sing Penitentiary. Amusingly, his macabre Museum is endorsed by the Civic Authorities for proving to the citizenry that ‘Crime never pays’. Another of the doctor’s talents appears to be engineering, as he has fashioned a larger than life mechanical automaton with which he plays chess!
But beneath the museum he maintains a fully equipped operating theatre – or as Chan puts it, “Surgical birthplace of new faces. Evidence betrays Museum to be hideout for hunted criminals who change faces to cheat Law”. As if this weren’t far fetched enough, the Museum also hosts a weekly live radio broadcast of ‘The Crime League’ where famous criminologists re-examine celebrated criminal cases. Chan is lured to participate in one such broadcast so that one of Cream’s current clients, escaped killer Steve McBirney can get revenge on Charlie, whose testimony was key in his conviction.
Of course, the attempt to murder the detctive goes awry and another participant, who was coincidentally just about to reveal McBirney’s involvement in framing an innocent man for a murder he committed ten years before, is killed instead.
While awaiting the arrival of the police, Chan is helped and (mainly) hindered by Number Two Son as he attempts to determine the identity of the murderer from among all those present – the doctor, his lady assistant, the broadcasting staff, a female reporter, a lawyer, the gatecrashing avenging widow and the suspiciously screwy janitor.
Apart from the hilariously over-contrived plot, this entry in the Chan series is great fun for being set in the atmospheric, storm bound museum populated by creepy effigies and gruesome devices of torture and execution, along with the swift succesion of sinister comings and goings through various concealed exits, secret stairways, hidden rooms and characters hiding in plain sight by posing as waxwork figures. And no Chan feature would be complete without Charlie’s catch phrases “Thank you – so much”, “Contradiction, please”, cod-Oriental aphorisms - here we get, among others, “Only very foolish mouse make nest in cat's ear”, “Every bird seek its own tree, never tree the bird” and pithy quips “Will imitate woman and change mind”. But I will not imitate woman – I enjoyed this second viewing just as much as the first.
A return visit to 1988's Ghost Town last night, no overlooked classic but a solid and respectable entry in the too-small sub-genre of horror westerns.One of the last films from Charles Band's Empire Pictures, it loses points for a bit of a muddled script and for showing too much of its main villain, but compensates with a decent atmosphere and a lot of musical stings culled from, I believe, the likes of Re-animator and Prison.
The Day of the Locust, a criminally long, unfocused drama set in 1930s Hollywood. I don't know why I'm supposed to be interested in the characters, who are as dull as they are unconvincing, or what passes for a story. Donald Sutherland plays a character called Homer Simpson. Karen Black was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role as a hooker/actress. Black is an acclaimed actress with multiple awards to her name but I've mostly found her to be absolutely atrocious. I don't know if this is because her severe squint is so distracting or whether she really is that bad. For no apparent reason, the film ends on gruesome scenes of mob violence that might well have influenced Romero's Dawn of the Dead. These scenes are so pretentiously directed by John Schlesinger that I laughed out loud. Dreadful, self-important crap.
The Big Short, the funny, angry, thrillingly-made masterpiece about the 2007 banking collapse. It's cathartic viewing, then you realise that, instead of doing something about the system, we just rolled over, lubed up and let ourselves be fucked over by ever greedier and stupider criminals.
Rising Damp, the feature film of ITV's best sitcom which is included in the series' complete boxset (a warning for anyone planning to watch that set - series 4 is presented out of continuity sequence which is a little annoying as there is some plot progression). The film is very much a "damp" squib as it lazily rehashes plots and jokes from the series and most of the new material (a brief Grease parody, for instance) is terrible. There is one nice, touching scene between Rigsby and Philip where we learn a truth about the latter that always seemed like a bit of unspoken subtext in the series. Otherwise, and despite a few decent performances, it's terrible. Made by Roy Skeggs' company and with a few Hammer alumni behind the scenes.
ETA: One of the worst things about the film is the set which replaces the sitcom's wonderfully grotty rooms (including a poster for a Tarzan movie) with much blander interiors.
Another José Larraz effort, this is one of those ambiguous affairs where what happens may be down to machinations, madness or manifestations of the supernatural.
The setting is a plantation in India in 1930. Lots of stock footage (as in lots), decent interior sets but so slow and lacking in incident, with an excess of expositionary dialogues and no mystery, suspense or surprises it soon outstays its welcome, and eventually peters out into an unconclusive ending.
Genre regular Rosalba Neri is in it for the first five minutes and the female lead is Mary Maude in her second Spanish picture, having appeared the same year in Narciso Ibañez Serrador’s La Residencia.
It didn’t help that I saw an old and damaged VHS rip in which all the colours had faded to pinky red, but I suspect even a pristine restored edition wouldn’t bring this one to life.
This is another film I’d never heard of and whose existence I discovered by chance after watching a video of an old British comedy show (At Last, The 1948 Show)….just two hours after I first heard of it I’d watched it. The wonders of technology – I remember the ‘good old days’ when the time between first reading about a film and actually getting to see it could be measured in years, depending mainly on TV programme planners.
La Familia Vourdalak de Alexie Tolstoi, one of the thirteen episodes of Televisión Española's El Quinto Jinete (The Fifth Horseman, 1975-6). Contemporay sex-symbol (also a fine actress) Charo López starred as a sexy vampire in an otherwise unremarkable and lacklustre adaptation of the story done so much better by Mario Bava.
Directed in occupied France by Maurice Tourneur (while his son Jacques was directing I Walked With A Zombie in Hollywood), The Devil’s Hand is an intriguing and visually arresting fantasy satire version of the oft-adapted Faustian legend.
The beginning, with the societal cross section of guests at an Alpine hotel, gathered in the lounge and engaged in reading, knitting, playing cards, moaning and idle banter vividly brings to mind Les Vacances De Monsieur Hulot, and the tone of Tourneur’s tale of struggling artist Roland Brissot (Pierre Fresnay)’s ill advised pact with the Devil is not far removed from the later whimsy of Gallic compatriot Jacques Tati’s films.
Of course, the basic concept of eternal damnation also requires that there be a certain amount of disturbing supernatural manifestations and existential terror once the protagonist cottons on to the fact that you can’t bluff your way out once you’ve sold you soul to Satan (in this case represented by a meek, ‘provincial looking’ chap in a black suit, tie and bowler).
At eighty minutes, the film moves at a brisk pace and touches a lot of stylistic and generic bases along the way, from the ‘policier’type opening, through Hollywood pattern romantic comedy, film noir, Expressionism, comedy of manners, fairy tale, mystery thiller…but the overriding sensation is one of light hearted playfulness, the director evidently enjoying the opportunity to string together a series of tonally and visually disparate pastiche tableaux to (re)tell an old, familiar story.
There’s no dwelling on (nor attempt to exploit) the sinister (in fact, it’s remarked that the titular appendage is a left hand) and horrific, even when they do make an appearance (the living, moving hand trapped inside a box, the ghastly, demonic artworks Brissot is compelled to create, the brutal murder of his lover, the grotesquely masked phantoms of the past – even the ‘tragic’final scene is rendered less traumatic by the preceding reconciliation and the contrivedly neat ‘closing the cycle’finale.
Although the narrative and dramatic aspects are effective but rather ‘lightweight’, the film as a whole is a celebration of the visual potential of the ‘classic age’ motion picture, and a masterclass in framing, compostion and elegant but unobtrusive camera movement, as well as lighting and set design and even simple animation effects. Well worth a look.
I, Tonya, a semi drama-documentary depiction of figure skater Tonya Harding and the "incident" in which her rival was assaulted. This is lovely stuff that knows that it's true story is almost unbelievable and has fun with the idea, We even get some footage of the real people in the closing credits to prove that they really were absurdly cartoonish people. Script, direction, performances, music are all first rate. Highly recommended.
Director Richard Oswald’s quasi-remake of his 1919 portmanteau film turns out to be a semi-anthology.
A journalist named Richard Briggs (Harald Paulsen) pursues an unhinged (and unnamed) wife murdering inventor (Paul Weggener) through four distinct episodes based on / inspired by classic horror tales – guess which ones;
(1) The inventor’s wife’s black cat upsets one of his experiments, the inventor flies into a rage and kills the woman and bricks up the body in the wall of his cellar laboratory. The reporter, who had heard the woman’s screams while driving past, returns four days later with the police – the cat, which has been accidentally entombed with its mistress gives the game away.
The murderer flees into (2) a nearby travelling carnival’s Chamber of Horrors, exhibiting animatronic models of historical criminals (Mechanischen Museum). The journalist follows, there’s a fight, the killer escapes again, arriving at a nearby hospital where he deliberately acts insane in order to be sent to the nearby mental institution and thus give the authorities the slip.
But (3) the lunatics have taken over the asylum and when Briggs arrives the increasingly eccentric behaviour of the asylum’s director, staff and dinner guests and their refusal to let him leave make him realise his life is at risk. When his original quarry joins the party and starts inciting the loonies to murder, it looks like it’s curtains. Luckily, the police arrive in the nick of time but their man escapes again.
Some years pass and the paper where our newshound works receives an anonymous letter denouncing the existence of (4) a Suicide Club. Sent to check it out the investigator discovers that the man behind said ‘Selbstmörderklub’ is none other than…you guessed it. Defying death yet again, Briggs finally traps the elusive wife murderer and the men from Scotland Yard arrive to make the arrest.
A slightly lightweight and rather irregularly paced film, but nonetheless entertaining and fun to watch. The balance between the comedic and the horrific is well maintained and Paul Weggener, with his Slavic features and larger than life screen presence carries the film (Paulsen doesn’t leave much of an impression in the ‘hero’s role). The asylum sequence is both funny and disturbing, with some memorable performances and an appropriately anarchistic tone: there’s virtuoso ballad singing, delusional declamations, chamber music, violent fits, piano playing, grandilocuent speeches, brawling, pop-eyed oddballs in evening dress – it could be a sequence from a Marx Brothers movie with a more sinister edge.
The cinematography occasionally harks back to (or perhaps spoofs) German Expressionism while at the same the Anglicised names and supposed London locations seem to be foreshadowing the German cinema’s 1960s obssession with setting their Krimis in an imagined sterotypical English landscape.
Universal return to their stable of ‘Classic Monsters’ for a reasonably entertaining new outing. Elisabeth Moss as protagonist/victim Cecilia carries the show with a strong performance (a good choice to present her as a regular woman and avoid the usual Hollywood 'glamour girl' mould) and the rest of the cast do OK with their underwritten roles. Fortunately we are spared the usual prolonged R & D + i prologue (cf Hollow Man et al), we don’t need it, the clue’s in the title, just cut to the chase. This one does. It gives us a leisurely paced build up of suspense, chills and action and an unexpected ending.
Unfortunately it’s also predictable most of the way through, up until the deliberately ambiguous and somewhat unsatisfying finale. As is often the case with this particular subgenre (bar the 1933 original and possibly Invisible Agent), a discovery as Earth shatteringly transcendental as the ability to make people invisibile is put to incredibly unambitious, unimaginative and petty use, for all the kicks it might provide someone out for revenge after being jilted/abondoned by their partner/spouse. Basically we have a blend of Gaslight, Sleeping With The Enemy and Jimmy Sangster’s ‘women-in-peril’ Hammer thrillers (and even the ‘New Hammer’ film The Resident) with an added sci-fi gimmick.
I’m not usually too bothered with plot holes, coincidences and contrived narrative devices, especially in fantasy movies, as long as they aren’t too intrusive and numerous, but here they tend to spin out of control – John Fulton and the Universal SFX crew achieved incredible invisibilty effects in the James Whale film and some of the sequels, including rain and smoke making the invisible one’s outline plain to see – but here, he’s only glimpsed (partially and implausibly briefly) when doused in paint or when his optical distortion suit is on the blink…despite running around in the pouring rain. Said suit seems insanely easy to create, just press a button on a touch screen and there you go. Why Celia didn’t take the suit to prove to the authorities that her claims of being perecuted by an unseen person were true, or at least, possible is a blantant case of BISSITS. The wounded security guard in the car park would have been a witness, but that would have been too simple. The police interrogation is conducted by the very cop in whose house she is living. Only in the scriptwriter’s world. They accuse her of sending death threats to her sister by email. They don’t even entertain the possibilty of hackers….and so on and so forth (fifth, sixth…)
Perhaps the most frightening thing about this new Invisible Man is the number of distressingly unintelligent and/or downright bigoted ‘reviews’ appearing online, whingeing about ‘Woke/PC/ MeToo agendas’ being shoved down our throats; the ‘diversity lobby’ making sure the nominal ‘good guy’ was black (and a single parent, to boot), the feminist propaganda that dictates that ‘rich white men’ are always portrayed as ‘evil sadists’, abusing and terrorising defenceless women – it’s like they’d never seen a horror film before (much less read a history book or even a newspaper). Many other discerning film connoisseurs also lament the casting of 'an ugly woman' in the lead instead of a 'hot chick'. Isn't social media wonderful? (Rhetorical)
Sunstruck, in which schoolteacher Harry Secombe gets a job in the Australian outback. Surprisingly charming family comedy, typically Aussie in its down-to-earth approach and its obsessive approach to the consumption of beer. Harry does very well.
Warn That Man, in which a German actor poses as his aristocratic double in a plot to capture a British war leader. Enjoyable wartime comedy thriller with a good cast that includes Gordon Harker.
Ten Seconds to Hell. In post-WWII Berlin the six members of a German bomb disposal squad form a tontine. This ambitious Hammer film has become one of the company's most obscure works despite starring a couple of big Hollywood names in Jeff Chandler and Jack Palance and being directed by cult director Robert Aldrich. It seems to have been a bit of a troubled production with a fair amount of footage cut out of it which might explain why things feel a bit clunky at times with some clumsy voiceover filling in plot and character points. Even at an hour and a half it does feel a bit long and talky with a boring romance dissipating what ought to be considerable tension. Performances are good so it's a pity that the film isn't more successful. The print that has turned up on the Paramount Network has been colorized, not to the film's benefit.
This is an odd one. As is routinely pointed out, a precursor of both Planet Of The Apes (spaceship crosses time warp, arriving on post apocalyptic Earth) and The Time Machine (docile humans living in fear of brutish mutants). Four American astronauts (including Oz-American Rod Taylor) end up in the year 2508 AD, where the aftermath of nuclear war has forced the few survivors underground, where they have built a scientifically and culturally advanced society. Surprisingly, after 550 years they still speak exactly the same English as the inadvertent time travellers, who after crash landing and confronting giant rubber spiders and one eyed mutant cavemen, stumble into the entrance of the subterranean 'safe zone'.
Unsurprisingly the remnants of humanity abhor weapons and violence and through generations of inbreeding and absence of sunlight have grown physically puny and lacking in vigour, ever less fertile, and lacking the slightest inclination to venture up to the surface and confront the 'beasts' in order to reclaim 'humanity's natural habitat'. But that's just the men. The women are all voloptuous, young and dressed in pin-up girl style cocktail waitress mini dresses and instantly get the hots for the quartet of all-American hunks (two of whom must be in their fifties, leading to some hard to believe love scenes).
Among all the usual 1950s space opera clichés, there is a little philosophising about Man's place in the universe, the virtues or otherwise of pacifism/passivism, a critique of soft 20th century society far removed from the daring days of the stoic, hardship-bearing Pioneers, and the inevitable, evil consequences of nuclear weapons ("a war which nobody wanted but nobody could prevent"). As usual in these things, the tough Yanks inspire the 'gutless' inhabitants ("they think safety and comfort are all there is to life") to 'man up' and 'grow a pair'and they get them to start building bazookas to blast the surface dwellers to smithereens. The final scene shows our heroes (and their adoring busty beauties) out in the sunshine, overseeing the building of a settlement of log cabins and admiring the rough and tumble juvenile antics of the hitherto peaceful twenty sixth century children .
So a mixture of teenage boys' erotic fantasy, the usual right wing 'might is right' clap trap and a fleeting visit to the outskirts of intellectual debate.
The Silent Partner, in which psycho bank robber Christopher Plummer engages in a cat-and-mouse game with Elliott Gould, the bank clerk who cheated him. This Toronto-based thriller (with Toronto for once not pretending to be anywhere other than Toronto) is a splendid blast from the past, specifically the early days of VHS when the poster was in every video shop and every video magazine. The script is clever, the violence ruthless and the nudity gratuitous. Plummer is surprisingly menacing and Gould displays the charisma that was sadly lacking in his turn in Hammer's The Lady Vanishes soon afterwards.
Wes Craven's 1978 TV film Summer of Fear (aka Stranger In Our House). Teenager Linda Blair stars as Rachel whose life is disrupted when Julia, her teenage cousin comes to live with her family after her parents are killed in a car crash. Rachel begins to suspect Julia is a witch when she steals her boyfriend, spooks her horse during a show jumping competition and starts coming on to her father. But nobody will believe her. Very routine and rather dull effort which took me three sittings to finish. The ever irritating Fran Drescher has a small role.
GUNN, in which Peter Gunn investigates something or other while inappropriately young women inexplicably fling themselves at him. Blake Edwards breaks off from a run of massive hits to revive his TV PI hit in a cheap-looking and under-cast movie. Craig Stevens is somehow both bland and sleazy in the title role in the way that only American leading men of a certain age manage to be. Only the classic theme music thrills.
"Group of immigrant Haitian farm workers (in South Carolina, USA) tries to fight off an evil Haitian voodoo priest who tries to kill them & use their body parts to make up a zombie army."
The two claims to fame (of sorts) of this anaemic supernatural potboiler are that it was co-written by one of the co-producers of Romero's Night Of The Living Dead (John Russo plus three others!) and it stars pre Candyman Tony Todd. The scant Voodoo content is all made up stuff and the silent villain named Makoute (Todd) is described as a houngan and sorcerer (or 'hexer', as I watched a German dubbed print) when even a little superficial research would reveal that the correct term is bokor. But such nitpicking is really beside the point. The plot is imbecilic; Makoute kills people with a machete and cuts off body parts, then stitches them together and magically reanimates the resulting composite corpses, for reasons known only to the scriptwriters - and they're not telling. There's a lot of wandering around and a lot of arguing, some inept killing scenes and a typical 1990s bladders'n'animatronics finale that makes zero sense but puts a monster on screen for twenty seconds. To quote one of the characters in Funnyman, "it's totally P.C. -Pure Crap".
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, in which various characters race to be first to dig up stolen loot. It's 40+ years since I last watched this on its ITV premiere when ad breaks pushed it to a(n even more) ludicrous running time. As it is, this is about 150 minutes of tiresome slapstick and top comedy actors yelling at each other until I just wanted to start yelling myself. Apparently some people consider this one of the funniest films ever made. I didn't laugh once, except nervously at the thought that the original roadshow version ran over three hours. Low point: Jerry Lewis gurning in a wordless cameo.
Looper, in which a hitman gets wrapped up in a timey-wimey stuff. I seem to remember that this one got very good reviews at the time but I kept missing it, both at the cinema and every time it turned up on the telly. Turns out it was so bad I dan near switched it off on several occasions. There's a load of sub-Minority Report (the dreadful film, rather than the excellent short story) paradoxes, all badly explained in voiceover. That put me in a bit of a bad mood, then everything got really boring until the lousy ending. I have no idea why I was supposed to empathise with a mass-murdering hitman either. Keep Rian Johnson away from SF in future is my plea.
Ooh ... you are Awful, in which Dick Emery has to track down the number of a Swiss bank account tattooed on the buttocks of a number of young ladies. I well recall how happy this one made me a my schoolmates back when it got its first TV outing. For one thing, it's a surprisingly good vehicle for Emery, letting him showcase his various popular TV characters when he has to go in disguise; for another thing ... bums. Talking Pictures' screening took a bit of a liberty with the bums though, censoring them (inconsistently) by slapping graphics over them. This has been a bit of a trend with them recently and I hope they pack it in. This was the final film exec'd by Launder & Gilliat and Sheila Keith has a scene as a magistrate.
It's All Over Town, a short-ish, British musical from the 1960s in which Willie Rushton and Lance Percival get involved in various sketches in between songs from various artistes, including headliner Frankie Vaughan, the Springfields (complete with Dusty), Acker Bilk, the Hollies and the Bachelors. Ivor Cutler turns up as do some of the personnel from Raymond's Revue Bar. It's all very much a jaw-dropping time capsule, although not remotely good. From Douglas Hickox, director of Theatre of Blood.
The Bliss of Mrs Blossom, in which Shirley MacLaine moves her lover, James Booth, into the attic while husband, Richard Attenborough, remains unaware. There's a remarkable supporting cast on view: Willie Rushton makes another appearance as the sidekick to Freddie Jones' camp copper; others include John Cleese, Bob Monkhouse, Barry Humpries, Clive Dunn and on it goes ... Denis Norden co-writes and talent-vacuum Joe McGrath directs. Crucially, none of it is remotely funny and most of it is really annoying. There are loads of fantasy scenes in which MacLaine and Booth take on the roles of great lovers of the past, apparently to waste huge sums of money. Dire stuff but, again, a time capsule of the era.
It seems I’m not yet throughdoo with Voodoo. Another couple of titles have become available to view.
Today I watched Dying Day (1983), of which I’d never heard but was made aware of by obscure films buff extraordinaire Gav Crimson (aka Flash on the BHF) on FB. The copy on YT is pretty poor, many scenes are too dark to see much of what’s going on and the rest is rendered in 3rd gen fuzz-o-vision.
However, it had potential. The simple but intriguing plot - recycling a kind of ‘I Am Legend’ riff but without the post-apocalypse setting - tells of Morgan Randall (Robert Deveau), a lone man compelled to defend himself night after night from attacks of the living dead whose sole objective is his destruction. He’s been on the run for two years, destroying the creatures at each encounter and fleeing to the next town, but is understandably coming to the end of his endurance. A chance encounter with Shelly Godwin (Donna Assali), the woman who succours him after a hit and run accident provides him with both an unexpectedly resourceful ally and a reason to keep going. Fans of ‘strong female characters’ will be happy to know that she exhibits more intelligence than Randall, tracking him to his next hideout and explaining what he needs to do to free himself of the persecution once and for all (without resorting to his own suggested foolproof technique – suicide). The main strength of this bargain basement effort is the lead couple, whose performances are credible (they talk and act like ‘normal’ people, not always a given in this type of production) and creditable (doing a decent job with what’s available). There’s also a suitable degree of chemistry between the two which is always a big help.
Supporting cast do ok, but the antagonist (‘Man In Black’ played by one Bob Sacchetti) is a second rate panto villain. It is he who, two thirds into the running time, explains the motive behind the generations long vendetta against the Randall family. “Once upon a time…1837 if you want a date….” he commences, a sugar plantation owner in Cuba (Morgan’s great, great, great grandfather) whipped a slave woman to death in public because she spurned his libidinous attentions. The woman’s husband escaped, fled to Haiti, met “a Ton Ton Macoute, a Voodoo medicine man”(sic) and learned the secret of raising zombies (of the Hollywood fantasy kind), sending them to kill his one time slave master and all his relations one after another (and leaving a tell-tale card on each body with a sketch of Baron Samedi). The secrets of Voodoo were passed down among his own descendants in order to continue the killings down the generations until the Randall line was extinguished.
In the film’s opening scenes we see a frock-coated, nineteenth century rapist (in hindsight, obviously a Randall) throttled by a mouldering zombie just before he submits his victim to a fate worse than death, and then we get an interlude in 1936 in which a motorist (evidently a later family member) is dismembered by zombies in a wood. These scenes, accompanied by the sound of a lashing rainstorm and flashes of lightning could have been quite creepy if it were possible to see more in the darkness.
Then we’re into the 1980s and Morgan starts to narrate his own story in a cod-film noir voiceover. The balance between earnestness and whimsy makes the film easy to watch and some quasi surreal visual moments (including probably unintentional Expressionistic like set ups) along with the pseudo experimental soundtrack music (‘performed by Accident’ says the credits and it sometimes seems like it….another frank credit proclaims ‘Special Effects by Cheap Tricks’) help to hold the interest despite the obvious paucity of resources, cramped sets, tacky zombie makeup and poor acting from the villain. There’s no Voodoo content beyond the backstory (no drummin’n’dancin, rituals, possessions…or even black people). Our Man In Back just wanders into a random cemetery, waves a stick or rings a bell – hard to tell in the dark- over a random grave and raises a random corpse. ‘You will obey only me. Kill him!’
It would be interesting to see a cleaned up, digitally restored version. Or maybe not.
However what IS interesting is the film's susequent fate, as chronicled by Gav/Flash "The project caught the attention of former Al Adamson collaborator Sam Sherman, who ended up radically overhauling it. Among other things Sherman directed new footage, removed the 'voodoo curse' angle, included a subplot that irresponsibly showed kids how to turn a laserdisc player into a lethal weapon, replaced the original villain of the film with a new, mad scientist, one as well as adding an insanely catchy theme tune. The resulting chop-shop creation was put out in 1986 as "Raiders of the Living Dead". "
Curiously, I became aware of 'Raiders Of The Living Dead' a couple of years ago because it was Zita (Universal's The Mummy) Johann's last film role, apparently she hadn't been in anything since 1934(!) but I didn't know about the connection to (or existence of) Dying Day.
To Joy, in which we look back at the relationship between two musicians after the untimely death of the wife. Typically profound, funny, harrowing, heart-wrenching and truthful stuff from Ingmar Bergman. He's probably the only film maker who regularly makes me feel it in my stomach as well as stimulating my intellect.
The Dark Knight. The first superhero film to really feel like an epic although it's really driven by a single performance, Heath Ledger's extraordinary turn as The Joker.
Bride of the Monster, the Ed Wood "classic". I watched this since the disc was in the player anyway for the double bill viewing of The Bat. Of the two, I think Bride of the Monster was made with more enthusiasm. By most people's standards BotM would stand out as one of the most memorably inept and hilarious films ever made. It's a testament to the heights of Wood's mad poetry that it's probably only his third craziest opus but even then he had to go over and above and have the film withheld by the lab for a few decades. From what I remember it was still "lost" when the Medveds popularised Plan 9 from Outer Space. I can only imagine how delighted the fans who recovered it were when they discovered that it lived up to expectations.
Duel at Diablo, in which a dwindling number of US cavalry and a few civilians are trapped in a canyon by a band of Apaches. Tense, action-packed and violent western that comes with the traditional baggage of presenting Native Americans as one-note baddies to be disposed of. It's indicative of how big the western genre still was in the mid-60s that they were able to assemble such an eclectic cast of actors: James Garner, Sidney Poitier, Bibi Andersson, Dennis Weaver and Bill Travers. I was struck by how violent the film was with multiple arrow shootings, tortures and an attempted rape and decided to check the BBFC site only to find that it was originally released uncut as A certificate but it has always been a 15 on home video. Compared with some of the ratings handed out to the likes of Hammer films it does make me wonder whether the censors were more lenient with Hollywood studio product than they were with small British independents. Director Ralph Nelson's next western would be the notorious charnel house that is Soldier Blue.
Distant Trumpet, in which two brothers, one a GP and one a medical missionary, change places. Ghastly stuff, stiff, dull and wholly unappealing. One of Terry Fisher's early films.
The Long Good Friday, the classic London gangster film has lost none of its power. The Arrow BD has a very interesting making of that includes such fascinating snippets as the fact that Tony Franciosa was originally cast as the mafia man and walked out when he saw the revised script; replacement Eddie Constantine was so used to post-dubbing European movies that recording live dialogue was a challenge to him. At school we used to get an afternoon off and I first saw this movie with some chums in a memorable matinee double bill with The Roaring Twenties, two of the best gangster movies ever made for the price of one.
Hail the Conquering Hero, in which medically-discharged marine Eddie Bracken is mistakenly lionised as a hero in his home town. One of Preston Sturges' best comedies and the second of two that he made back-to-back with Bracken, the other being the amazing The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, the poster for which can be briefly glimpsed at the railway station scene at the end.
Foul Play, the Goldie Hawn comedy thriller that also launched Dudley Moore's Hollywood career. Good fun, written and directed by Colin Higgins who had a tragically AIDS-curtailed career that was remarkably high quality - scripts for Harold and Maude and Silver Streak; scripts and direction for Foul Play, 9 to 5 and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
Operation Mad Ball, in which Jack Lemmon organises an illicit soldiers/nurses dance in France just after WWII. Another very modest Lemmon comedy from the very weak Mill Creek set. Sammy Davis sings the title song, Mickey Rooney turns up for an obnoxious guest appearance.
The Desperate Hours, in which three escaped criminals hide out in a suburban home. Humphrey Bogart's compelling performance is the main draw in this influential film, the title of which was borrowed by episodes of both Steptoe and Son and Porridge.
The Palm Beach Story, in which Claudette Colbert screwballishly leaves Joel McCrea even though they're madly in love. Preston Sturges' comedy is wildly overrated, convoluted and rarely amusing. There's an extended scene on a train with a hunting club that made me want a shotgun of my very own. To make matters worse, Rudy Vallee has a major role and the old lech has creeped me out since I saw him interviewed in (I think) The RKO Story in which he boasted that his nickname back in the day was "The Man with the Cock in His Voice". Let them make a biopic of that! The highlight of the film is the opening credits which delivers at breakneck speed the story of what happened to our characters before this story begins. Then it's all downhill...
The Great Moment, in which Joel McCrea invents anaesthesia. This time Preston Sturges, one of cinema's greatest masters of sophisticated comedy, delivers ... a quite dreadful biopic that shoehorns in some badly misjudged comedy moments.
Last but certainly best, Val Lewton’s ‘stunningly poetic horror classic’ brings my seven month journey through Voodoo In The Cinema to a fittingly brilliant end.
The first thing which becomes clear right from the opening frames is that although this film bears a horrific title, it’s not going to be a horror movie as we know it, Jim. Or not even as most contemporary audiences would have known it either, being generally more used to the likes of the Universal Monster franchises and other studios’ similar cash-ins, the Mad Doctor and Weird Science sagas starring Karloff and Lugosi, and sundry Old Dark House melodramas.
In fact, because its creators, especially producer Val Lewton, were not at all interested in conventional scary movies but were under duress from RKO to make a ‘horror picture’, they took pains to avoid the usual genre clichés and standard chiller formula and came up with something far more subtle and lyrical but simultaneously far more disturbing and unsettling than many of the usual ‘cut to the chase’ shockers of the day, even in spite of Lewton’s celebrated remark that he was going for ‘Jane Eyre In The West Indies’ (six decades before anyone came up with the seemingly nutty notion of Pride And Prejudice And Zombies).
One of the few real precursors to this type of atmospheric, understated, noir-ish, supernatural tinged drama that 1940s audiences would have experienced was in fact Lewton’s own genre opera prima, the previous year’s Cat People, also directed by Jacques Tourneur.
The very opening of the movie must have proved a letdown for some cinemagoers; as the credits come up to the strains of Roy Webb’s swelling romantic score, more suited to a love story (which, of course, it also is), we see the silhouettes of a cloaked woman and an extremely tall, thin man, placidly strolling along a beach at dusk. Nothing horrific or menancing whatsoever – although the customary anti-defamation disclaimer contains a facetious italicised addition ‘Any similarity to actual persons, living, dead or possessed, is purely incidental’. Then nurse Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) opens her off-screen narration with the words ‘I walked with a zombie’ So was that it? What we just saw? In fact we will soon learn that Betsy takes more than one walk with more than one zombie and they will be considerably more frightening than the sedate opening seaside promenade.
After a seemingly innocuous beginning when Betsy is engaged in Ottawa to nurse the wife of a sugar company supplier in the West Indies, things start to turn a little darker when Betsy meets her new employer, plantation owner Paul Holland (a fine, controlled, urbane but intentionally aloof performance from Tom Conway, a decade before his unfortunately declining career forced him to appear in poverty row potboilers, ironically including the atrocious Voodoo Woman) aboard ship bound for the Caribbean island of St Sebastian. Accompanied by the mournful shanty sung by the black crewmen in the background, Holland shatters Betsy’s idyllic appreciation of the tropical sights and sounds. “Everything seems beautiful because you don’t understand,” he says. “Those flying fish, they’re not leaping for joy, they’re jumping in terror – bigger fish want to eat them. That luminous water – it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies, the glitter of putresence. There’s no beauty here, only death and decay.” Upon sighting a shooting star he remarks “everything good dies here, even the stars.” Throughout the film he often gloomily points out the unpleasant or dubious side of life and the human condition, ultimately including his own.
More downbeat talk ensues as the driver (Clinton Rosemond) taking Betsy to the plantation house ‘Fort Holland’ educates her as to the island’s past. “The Hollands was the most old family, Miss, they brought the coloured folks to the island…an enormous boat brought the long ago fathers and the long ago mothers of us all, chained to the bottom of the boat.” To which the newcomer’s rather ingenuous reply is “ they brought you to a beautiful place, didn’t they?”
The picture’s earnest tone doesn’t require Rosemond and the other black actors in the cast to portray the broad sterotypes or demeaning caricatures which was their lot in many US films of the time, and in fact the nearest to a clichéd stock character would be Holland’s self pitying, hard drinking, half brother Wesley Rand (James Ellison, who nevertheless manages to inject some restraint into the role).
Christine Gordon (in what seems to be the only credited appearance of her scant half dozen screen roles in a brief three year film career) is limited to non-verbal acting in the pivotal role of Jessica Holland, Betsy’s patient who has apparently been left in a comatose, trance-like state as the result of some mysterious, post traumatic illness. Unwholesomely thin, with her flowing nightgown, gaunt and pallid face and staring, unresponsive gaze she makes for a memorable ‘white zombie’.
Betsy’s first encounter with her employer’s spouse, kept in a tower room of the mansion (cf Mr Rochester’s insane wife in the attic) is the first of a series of memorably eerie sequences, achieved by a perfect combination of masterful direction, atmospheric lighting, crisp chiaroscuro photography, evocative sets, spot-on performances, subtly suspenseful music, deft editing, flowing camerawork, all the trademarks in fact of the best of classic Hollywood cinema. And all for under 150,000 dollars!
Another constant is the skillful use of incidental sound to heighten tension – a woman’s weeping in the night, the cascading of water in the Fort Holland garden, the moaning of the tropic wind, the rustling of the sugar canes as the nurse walks with the zombie (?) to the Voodoo temple in a desperate attempt to procure a possible ‘cure’ through ancestral magic, the nocturnal pulsing rhythms of the drums in the distance (and again during one of the best choreographed drummin’n’dancin’ sequences in any Hollywood Voodoo picture), Paul’s melancholic piano playing, the crashing of the waves during the finale – as well as the equally effective occasional sudden silences. Of course the customary ‘Lewton bus’ is also present, in this case when Betsy is startled by a large owl.
As in most of Lewton’s ‘horror’ pictures, there is plenty of room for ambiguity and in this particular case Ardel Wray’s rewrite of Curt Siodmak’s script (and presumably Lewton’s final retouching) eschews a lineal revelation of the mystery, instead supplying pieces of the puzzle (and certain ‘red herrings’) as the story progresses, via diverse sources such as the gossip of Betsy’s maid Alma (Theresa Harris, seen in the 1932 Voodoo thriller Black Moon and in an uncredited role in Cat People), snatches of a strolling busker’s song (performed by celebrated Calypsonian Sir Lancelot), Wesley’s drunken recriminations, Betsy’s own observations of strange goings-on, etc allowing us to gradually learn about the origin of the ‘traumatic event’, the subsequent diagnosis of the illness and its sequel, as well as insinuating the other ‘obvious’ cause of the woman’s ‘living dead’ state: Voodoo. In fact there are almost as many plot twists in I Walked With A Zombie than in any of Jimmy Sangster’s famous Hammer thrillers – though in this case they are rather more plausible.
Although not introduced until a third of the way through, the key figure at the centre of events is the Holland family matriarch Mrs Rand (Edith Barrett, who played Mrs Fairfax in a ‘conventional’ film version of Jane Eyre later the same year). Presented as a kindly, dignified, resourceful and self confident elderly lady (though Barrett’s old age makeup is not as effective as could be desired), she is respected by the local community and we eventually discover she has more than one hidden involvement with the voodooists.
Her explanations to Betsy about the local religion show that Lewton’s team did fair research into the subject, with talk of houngans, the sabreur, the hounfort, possession by Loas, foremost among whom Legba and Damballah (cryptically referred to by Alma as ‘better doctors’), the animal skulls placed along the route to the temple, ceremonial rites, even the name of the imposing zombie ‘Carrefour’ (Darby Jones, who reprised the role in RKO’s own parodical revisit to St Sebastian, Zombies On Broadway the following year) as well as the more prosaic need for ‘drugs, poisons, zombie dust’ to induce the death-like state prerequisite for zombification. There is one error (or possibly a deliberate simplification) though, which would only be apparent to those acquainted with Voodoo terminology; at one crucial point, Mrs Rand says ‘houngan’ when she can only mean ‘bokor’.
Scenes depicting rituals are dynamic and suspenseful, while also in a sense ‘more realistic’ than similar sequences in other films. Here the celebrants are not all bare-chested, daubed in mystical painted symbols, or clad in outlandish‘native’ or ‘ethnic’ garb. Many are dressed in everyday ‘Euopean’ clothes, with men in suits, jackets, shirtsleeves, panama hats, quite a few of them wearing ties and the clichéd rudimentary Voodoo fetish rag doll is prosaically replaced in this film by a shop-bought plastic child’s doll.
All of which helps to underline that the syncretic Caribbean religion is just as much an unremarkable aspect of everyday life in the eyes of its adherents as the other variants of monotheism are to practising Christians, Jews and Moslems. From a narrative perspective this helps the screenwriter(s) to further pursue their intended line of ambiguity and lends weight to Paul’s categorical statement (and Mrs Rand’s purported belief) that the ‘magical powers’ attributed to Voodoo are so much ‘mumbo jumbo’.
Inevitably for a film which runs to just sixty eight minutes, the love story between Betsy and Paul Holland unfolds at an implausibly rapid pace but seems doomed from the start. Holland attributes his wife’s vegetative condition to his involuntary but compulsive psychological mistreatment of her and fears he is only capable of destroying any woman he allows himself to love, as he admits to the despairingly devoted Betsy;
“You remember the first night I saw you? You were looking at the sea. You were enchanted. And I felt I had to destroy that enchantment. Make you see ugliness and cruelty”
“You were trying to warn me.”
“No, I was trying to hurt you. It was the same way with Jessica.I had to hurt her. Everything she did or said made me lash out at her. That’s why I want you to go. You see, Betsy, since you’ve been here I’ve seen how fine and sweet things can be between a man and a woman. How love can be calm and good. I’d rather not have that sort of love than have it and destroy it…..that’s why I want you to go. It’s no good for you to stay so long as I have this fear of myself”. A predicament which harks back to the condition suffered by Simone Simon’s character Irena in Lewton/Tourneur’s previous joint venture, the aforementioned Cat People.
Once the whole story (in each of its diverse versions) has been revealed, the denouement comes with the inevitably of a Greek tragedy. Betsy refuses Wesley’s request to ‘free’ Jessica by administering a drug overdose. Apart from the evident ethical professional reasons, the nurse tells him “I love Paul too much for that”. Now seemingly resigned to his destiny, the man who had been about to steal his half brother’s wife opens the gates – literally and figuratively- to the unavoidable fate awaiting the ‘cursed’ adulterous couple. The ending is the final iteration of the film’s ongoing ‘human agency or Voodoo magic?’ dichotomy, though, this being a 1940s Hollywood production the very last scene fades out on Paul and Betsy finally embracing their true feelings and each other, a cinematic convention which in no way detracts from the brilliance of the finest of Lewton’s exceptional series of nine ‘low budget horror pictures’.
And of course next year will be the 40th anniversary of its ultimate accolade, being on the bottom half of a double bill with Zoltan - Hound of Dracula.
Good Neighbor Sam, in which mild family man Jack Lemmon has to pretend to be the husband of sexy neighbour Romy Schneider so that she can inherit a fortune. Edward G. Robinson guest stars. Another weak 1960s comedy that has a few decent moments but nowhere near enough to justify the punishing 130-minute running time, despite which several subplots are barely developed.
The Lady Eve, in which con woman Barbara Stanwyck sets her romantic sights on naive Henry Fonda. Preston Sturges shows how to cram a whole load into a brisk 93 minutes, including the opportunity to let a wonderful supporting cast shine. The oly thing that doesn't work so well is that I can't see why Stanwyck should fall for Fonda who is wet and not very likable here.
Three for the Show, in which Broadway musical writer (Jack Lemmon) comes out of the US Airforce to discover that he'd been reported dead and his wife (Betty Grable) has married his friend and writing partner (Gower Champion). Hijinks ensue and several standards are sung. Light, serviceable and forgettable, apart from the Gershwin covers which are now stuck in my head.
The Notorious Landlady, in which newly-appointed diplomat Jack Lemmon rents a London apartment from, and falls in love with, Kim Novak who is suspected of murdering her husband. Tonally bizarre film that starts off as a laughless comedy before taking a sharp turn into thrill-less thriller ending up in embarrassing slapstick. There's plenty of star power - Fred Astaire, Lionel Jeffries, even Henry Daniel turns up in a small role but the script from the usually reliable Blake Edwards and Larry Gelbart is a total mess that looks like it was made up as it went along.
My Sister Eileen, musical remake of the 1942 comedy in which two sisters try to make it in New York. Betty Garrett is the aspiring writer, Janet Leigh the sister that all the men adore and Jack Lemmon is Betty's suitor. Quite fun with a good New York vibe and lively Bob Fosse choreography. The songs are fairly unmemorable which is something of a disappointment. Richard Quine directs, having appeared in the earlier film.
A Touch of Love, in which PhD student Sandy Dennis is knocked up by Ian McKellen and decides to have the baby. Dennis is excellent, Margaret Drabble's adaptation of her own novel is unsentimental. Perhaps Amicus' least typical film, it's worth a look but much more like a Play for Today than a theatrical feature.
Fantastic Voyage, the miniaturised sub inside the human body SF that they keep threatening to remake. It has not aged well but it's still fun. The best things about it are probably Leonard Rosenman's score and Donald Pleasence, oh and Racquel Welch in a skintight wetsuit. Apart from that, you can chuckle at the plotholes and the bits that seem to have come straight out of Airplane! Notable for having inspired at least two Doctor Who stories: The Invisible Enemy (in which the enemy is not invisible; it's a crustacean so awkwardly constructed that it has to be wheeled about on its arse) and Into the Dalek.
The Big Money, in which Ian Carmichael is the least successful member of a family of crooks until he pinches a suitcase full of counterfeit pound notes. I watched this with a bizarre sort of fascination, so misguided is its script. There's not a tolerable character in the whole thing. The thing about petty crooks in movies is that they really need to be stealing from faceless authorities like banks or other organisations but the family of crooks here are pinching wallets from ordinary punters or books from libraries, so there's something immediately repellent about them. Then they ostracise Carmichael after he accidentally steals too big and he stays ostracised when you might think that some sort of redemption might provide a bit of humanity to the proceedings. Then Carmichael has to pass off the forged money, again in ordinary small businesses, in order to launder it to try to impress the awful, gold-digging barmaid that he has fallen for. She's so ghastly that she even steals money from him to buy herself a mink coat. The "happy" ending is that she somehow has an unearned change of character and falls in love with him when he goes to prison and exonerates her. Horrible stuff.
Sweet Country, an Australian "western" in which an Aboriginal man goes on the run after killing a deranged, rapey "whitefella". It's perfectly fine but I suppose I was hoping for more given that it has had mainly stellar reviews. It never reaches the heights of the great Australian films of the 1970s like The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith.
Watchmen, in its 215-minute "Ultimate Cut" edition, complete with the interpolated "Tales of the Black Freighter" animation (which is gruesome fun). I can certainly see why they didn't release this version of the film to cinemas as I'd have been struggling to follow what was going on if I hadn't seen the theatrical cut already. I liked it a lot though, despite hating everything else Zack Snyder has made. I'll no doubt watch the TV limited series adaptation of the graphic novel at some point.
Under the Yum Yum Tree, in which college students Carol Lynley and Dean Jones (looking every day of his 30+ years and then some) decide to test their relationship by cohabiting platonically in sleazy landlord Jack Lemmon's apartment. Another unfunny, creepy 60s comedy that wastes a good cast. Surprisingly, this got Golden Globe nominations and the play from which it was adapted was popular enough to also generate a TV pilot.
So it turns out this stinker was actually the antepenultimate film of the season – having seen White Zombie, I recalled that I had never been able to stay awake on the three occasions I attempted to watch the Halperins’ follow up and so was compelled by some kind of OCD to make another effort. I just kept telling myself ‘It’s only an hour….it’s only an hour…’ but believe me, if you only have an hour to live, watch this film, it will seem like an eternity.
There’s no Voodoo here, instead the ‘zombies, automatons, men without souls, robots’ (as they are variously referred to) are created by a Cambodian sorceror via telepathy/mind control and Bela Lugosi’s superimposed eyes from the previous film. He’s the last man to know the secret and as it’s World War One he does the obvious and offers his services to the Allies, to create an unkillable army of mindless slave soldiers (from the colonies, of course). After a field test with a single platoon of the unstoppable creatures ( obviously being mesmerised makes them immune to bullets and explosives) assaulting a German trench, the Top Brass are apalled by the implications – ‘this could mean the end of the white race!’ they conclude (for reasons known only to themselves). So they decide to imprison the Cambodian in solitary confinement to keep the secret secret. But one of the Allied officers (the sinister foreign looking one) kills the man and steals a paper which apparently holds the key to the location of some temple in a lost city in the Cambodian jungle where the ‘formula/ritual’ can be rediscovered. Then it’s a race to get an international task force to the ruins before it’s too late….
The rest is a tepid soap opera, played out against a back projected Oriental jungle and the expedition’s HQ in same. The CO’s daughter is the fly in the ointment (this is no place for a woman!) getting engaged to the mild mannered officer who secretly has the hots for her only in order to make his comrade, the macho hunk she’s really interested in, jealous and galvanise him into amorous action. But the ring is on the other finger when MMO is the one to discover the power of Bela’s eyes and puts his disapproving superiors and a contingent of coloured troops under the spell of that ol’ black magic.
Basically this is really just a remix of the ‘love triangle’ motif employed in White Zombie. In the Lugosi film, a man uses Voodoo when the woman he loves rejects his advances, being in love with another man, and he has her made into the titular living dead woman. This time a man uses the mere threat of ‘zombifying’ the lover of a woman he’s also in love with to force her to break up with his rival and marry him instead. In both cases the perpetrator repents because the object of his desire is unresponsive – in the first because she’s an unfeeling zombie, in the second because she still loves the other chap. ‘If I give up my powers, will you believe I really love you?’ he asks, desperate for his new wife to requite his passion. ‘Oh, yes!’ she responds, so he ingenuously turns off Lugosi’s eyes and all the people previously under mind control snap out of it. A native servant leads the troops against their oppressor to make sure he doesn’t try the same dirty trick again. Scores of the now ‘human’soldiers storm the HQ, tripping over furniture, getting bayonets stuck in wooden doors, barely able to break a window until finally two bullets from a Lee Enfield put an end to the rotter. The girl is reunited with her hunk and the now paralysed CO entones the profound epitaph ‘Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad’. And if the gods don’t make you mad, wasting sixty four minutes on this soppy, poorly acted, snail paced, cheap and tacky crap should do the trick.
Christmas in July, in which William Powell is tricked into thinking he has won $25k. Title apart (it's not a Christmas film so it's fine to watch it at any time of year without feeling a bit weird), that is a lovely, brisk Lubitsch comedy. It's interesting that the guys who trick Powell aren't presented as villains; instead, they realise that what they've done is stupid and try to own up and face the consequences. It's so rare that a filmmaker doesn't go for the easy choice of making them cheap baddies that it really stands out.
The antepenultimate film in my Voodoo Season was Wes Craven’s horror fantasy based on (or ‘inspired by’) the Wade Davis investigation into the case of Clairvius Narcisse, the only officially documented zombie (which was also the basis of the 2019 French film Zombi Child).
Adding historical licence to the mix, scripters Richard Maxwell and Adam Rodman incorporate the then topical civil unrest and eventual popular uprising against the totalitarian regime of ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier and his Tonton Macoutes, which led to the flight of the dictator and the collapse of the regime in 1986, some six years after the Narcisse case became public knowledge and three years after Wade published his findings.
Nonetheless, such ‘historical readjustment’ is easily justified since the Duvaliers actually combined violence against political opponents with exploitation of Voodoo to instill fear in the majority of the population and many houngans were incorporated into the ranks of the Macoutes, all of which is illustrated on screen.
The inclusion of the academic research angle, the historical recreation of political repression and corruption, the sociocultural panorama of a country in the grip of abject poverty and the dichotomous presentation of the Voodoo cult as both just one more syncretic religion and also a dreaded form of evil sorcery means that Craven’s film becomes a somewhat tonally mismatched blend of gritty political thriller, quasi-anthropological chronicle and supernatural fantasy, tending more towards the latter as the story progresses, even at times heading into familiar Nightmare On Elm Street territory once the bokor threatens 'I can enter your dreams' and the Krueger-esque hallucinations begin.
Of course there’s also the obligatory romantic subplot and some typically (often gratuitous) eighties shock-horror effects. But despite the disparate styles and strands it all comes together rather well (better in fact than in the aforementioned Zombi Child which covers much of the same ground but comes over like two distinct films running in parallel). The film's success is in great measure due to the solid performances of the leads Bill Pullman and Cathy Tyson, a panic inducing turn by Zakes Mokae as the truly horrendous secret police chief, and a well judged character act from Paul Winfield as the ‘loveable rogue’ purveyor of ‘zombie dust’.
Although it does get a bit too ‘Poltergeist’ at the end, The Serpent And The Rainbow is a fine addition to the genre and probably the last (English language) film to date to feature ‘authentic’ zombies.
Also nice to see The Goffster in a couple of scenes.
The film debut of Voodoo in the cinema features one of Bela Lugosi’s most celebrated performances, which is just as well because the rest of the cast are lousy. Added to the silent-era style, over-gesticulating, exaggeratedly melodramatic, theatrical physicality of their performances, their line deliveries ironically lead one to think that they, and not Lugosi, are barely acquainted with the natural rhythms and speech patterns of the English language. In Bela’s case, his alien cadences lend the character a layer of sinister strangeness, but the rest of the company seem like they’ve been recruited from an inept amateur dramatics society.
Apart from Lugosi, the saving graces of the picture are the atmospheric sets (courtesy of Universal) and dreamlike B/W photography, plus Legendre’s rag-tag troupe of living dead slaves, who are effectively creepy rather than truly scary.
Director Victor Halperin exhibits the odd interesting composition and there’s some commendable experimentation with low key lighting, split screen, wipes, disolves etc. The infamous scene of the zombie toppling into the sugar cane grinder still raises a shudder while the running gag ‘excuse me, have you got a match’ remains eternally tiresome.
As I noted when reviewing Ritual (2002), the remake of 1943’s classic I Walked With A Zombie, the basic premise of White Zombie is tacked on to the end of that picture as a kind of reversed coda; the antagonist relishing the unresisting state of his zombie bride rather than experiencing Beaumont’s remorse at her unresponsiveness.
Twice-Told Tales, in which Vincent Price takes the lead in three adaptations of Nathaniel Hawthorne stories. Incredibly, this is two hours long which surely must have made it one of the longest horror movies up to this time (1963). That's a real problem, particularly as the first two stories are awfully similar - both feature triangles of a sort and plots that involve chemical experiments that have tragic effects on the human body. Things perk up a bit in the final tale, an adaptation of The House of the Seven Gables, which has a few grisly bits. All three stories have small casts and are shot on cheap, cramped sets, very much lacking the visual style of Roger Corman's Poe adaptations, which clearly inspired this film. I'm certainly glad I didn't have to watch this late at night with half an hour of adverts to extend the running time beyond endurance.
Recoil, in which Elizabeth Sellars fake romances the man who killed her father. Modest crime drama offers the opportunity to look at Sellars' startling beauty so that's nice. I've just learned that she only died in December at the age of 98.
The Invisible Agent, another of Universal's dismal non-horror sequels, this time a WWII "comedy" adventure about the latest in the Griffin family spying in Nazi Germany. The only amusing bit in it is a dated piece of racism when the Invisible Man says something along the lines of "all Japs look the same", only he's saying this to Peter Lorre whose Japanese "make-up" consists solely of a pair of round glasses.
Goin' South, a comedy western in which Mary Steenburgen marries outlaw Jack Nicholson to save him from hanging. Steenburgen, in her debut, is adorable but Nicholson, who also directs, goes way over the top, as do Christopher Lloyd and John Belushi (completely wasted as a Mexican).
Captain Boycott the story of the real-life rent strike and, well, boycott against the man who gave his name to that particular noun and verb. It's unusual and refreshing to see Irish history getting the film treatment and it doesn't shy away from the violent nature of the events. There's an excellent cast: Stewart Granger, Kathleen Rt=yan, Alastair Sim, Mervn Johns, Robert Donat, Niall MacGinnis and even Michael Ripper. Unfortunately, the title role goes to Cecil Parker who seems simultaneously lightweight and too fat (since he has to be a jockey in a horse race at one point).
Just William's Luck, Val Guest's adaptation of the Richmal Crompton stories about the mischievous schoolboy. I loved these books as a child, although I was always puzzled as to why William Brown's lifestyle bore no relation to that of me or my friends. The spooky bit: William and his gang decide to fake a haunting in a mansion.
The Dummy Talks, in which there is a murder backstage at a variety theatre. That means we're going to get a lot of variety acts; fortunately, they are mostly decent ones. Jack Warner makes his film debut - in the starring role no less - in his late 40s; Ivy Benson, of Dance Band fame, has a prominent role. The spooky bit: there's a faked seance to help expose the killer.
Phffft, in which Judy Holliday and Jack Lemmon get divorced and find out they're still in love. The first film from writer George Axelrod, whose comedies more often than not feel a lot more heavy-handed than they should (which explains the clunkiness of the screwball parts of Hammer's The Lady Vanishes), this one gets by on the charm of its two leads, freshly-reunited from the much better It Should Happen to You. Kim Novak makes an early appearance as a perpetually available dumb blonde of the same sort that Marilyn Monroe would portray in Axelrod's next film, The Seven Year Itch. Directed by Val Lewton protege Mark Robson.
So I'm back in the room and it's time to tackle the final five and get my Voodoo Season done and dusted. The first....
Sugar Hill (1974)
In the wake of their hits with the Blacula pictures, AIP continued along the blaxploitation road with this simple tale of revenge by Voodoo.
Marki Bey makes for a spirited heroine as Diana ‘Sugar’ Hill who enlists the aid of local Mambo woman Mama Maitresse after her lover is murdered by the mob for refusing to sell them his successful ‘Club Haiti’ nightspot. Baron Samedi (Don Pedro Colley in a larger than life performance that just manages to avoid overstepping into parody) is summoned and raises a number of zombies to obey Sugar’s commands and wipe out the gangsters one after another, leaving the top man, played by Robert Quarry, for last.
The zombies are memorably different from the majority of your typical post ’68 shambling corpses. With blue-ish grey skin, heads festooned with cobwebs and silver globes for eyes they manage to be appealingly creepy rather than disgustingly sickening. The miscreants receive their comeuppance in grisly ways although filmed in a non-graphic style. It’s all very colourful, even the nocturnal, foggy graveyard scenes and Paul (‘Police Academy’) Maslansky pulls off an occasional directorial flourish along the way. Unfortunately, once the undead are on the case, there is little in the way of dramatic tension or suspense since the outcome is never in doubt and the protagonist is never in the slightest jeopardy, leaving this a notch below AIP’s other Voodoo outing Scream, Blacula, Scream.
Spider-Man: Far From Home. Watching this at home without the weight of the aftermath of Avengers: Infinity War I enjoyed this a bit more than I did at the cinema but it's still far from (sic) being one of the better films in the MCU. The teenage comedy is charming at times but the fights against the Elementals are very generic superhero fare and Mysterio absolutely needed to be played by a star with charisma to rival that of Robert Downey Jr. and, talented actor though he is, Jake Gyllenhaal very much lacks that quality.
Luv, in which suicidal Jack Lemmon is saved by his old school pal, Peter Falk, who then tries to offload his wife (Elaine May) onto him. Based on a hit play (which at various times starred Alan Alda and Gene Wilder) this feels very theatrical with most scenes consisting of two or three cartoonish characters delivering mannered dialogue at each other. There are bits that might have been on stage with actors delivering big, showy performances but on screen the whole thing is just shrill and obnoxious and a horrible waste of a talented cast. Harrison Ford can be briefly glimpsed.
Eyewitness, in which a woman witnesses a robbery from a cinema and the murder of the manager, is immediately knocked unconscious in a traffic accident, then taken to hospital where the killer plans to bump her off before she can identify him. This is magnificently, hilariously, even heroically dated stuff. You have to love any film that begins with a domestic row over the profligate husband spending £3 a month renting a brand new 21" television set on which to watch Godfrey Winn. The vicious, sadistic killer is played by ... Donald Sinden. Nicholas Parsons plays a surgeon. For some reason the score seems to have been composed for a sci-fi B-movie, coming complete with theremin
A Fire Has Been Arranged, in which Flanagan & Allen are hired to work in a department store that Alastair Sim plans to burn down. There's not enough Sim or Robb Wilton, too many bad songs, and way, way too much Bud & Chesney. And let's be clear, any Flanagan & Allen is too much Flanagan & Allen: their cross-talk patter is bewilderingly unfunny.
The Mad Magician, in which Vincent Price is a builder of magic tricks who gets revenge on people who cross him ... in 3D. This is an exceptionally silly and cheesy effort, and quite sloppily made at times, but I confess that I enjoyed it more than House of Wax. As Price has to disguise himself as a couple of his victims the actors who play those roles are also unconvincingly made up (and too short), including one scene where someone's moustache is flapping half off. There feels as if a major plot point has gone missing as there's no reason given for Price's impersonations. Conversely, there's an extended sequence in which Price has to go in pursuit of a bag that contains the head of one victim that ends in a total anticlimax and and feels like it has been put in for padding. The 3D is rather indifferently used.
Indicator's BD has a nice little doco shot in 3D about 3D movies, an informative Jonathan Rigby commentary, and a couple of 3D shorts starring the The Stooges, one of which has the annoying and unfunny trio coming up against a mad scientist and a man in an ape suit.
Atomic Blonde, in which Charlize Theron is a kick-ass, lesbian agent in Berlin as the wall comes down. Brutal, pulverising fight scenes are the highlight here.
The Brigand of Kandahar, again with the commentary track playing to distract from the tedium. It's camper, and therefore more fun than, Visa to Canton and there's some slight interest in having a hero conflicted because of racism in his regiment. Ultimately, it's the cheapness that defeats it with the fairly lavish battle scenes (stock footage from another film) looking out of place alongside the indoor exteriors.
Visa to Canton, Hammer's dull espionage adventure. I watched it with the commentary track on as I'd seen the film before and needed something to keep me interested because the story wasn't going to and there's only so many times one can exclaim in bewilderment "are they really supposed to be Chinese" (Athene Seyler and Eric Pohlmann are saddled with a couple of the worst ethnic make-ups you'll ever see). Apparently, this was originally intended as a TV pilot and around 15 minutes were added to it to turn it into a B-feature when it became apparent that there would be no interest in a series. That's different to what I'd read about the film previously so at least that was worth knowing. Perhaps fittingly, the extras on this Indicator BD are the weakest I've seen for one of this company's releases.
Happy Death Day, in which Groundhog Day is re-imagined as a post-modern slasher movie and somehow manages to be a funny, charming, feel-good experience with a terrific lead performance from Jessica Rothe.
I Am Not Your Negro, a timely showing for the documentary looking at US race relations from the point of view of late author James Baldwin. It's kind of odd looking at this film that contains a lot of archive footage and stills of police brutality and lynchings and suddenly realising that the phone cam clips we've probably all seen over the past few weeks are not extraordinary; they're part of the everyday reality for some people and only the ability to capture the incidents easily and share them quickly is a relatively new thing. Oddly, I've probably learned more about race relations from watching Birth of a Nation than from a documentary like this since Griffiths' film properly communicates the twisted mindset of the white supremacist since that's what Griffiths was and he was trying to sell his propaganda as truth.
The Pirates of Blood River, one of Hammer's best swashbucklers. Christopher Lee at his most iconic, all in black and sporting an eye patch, Ollie Reed, Michael Ripper, Andrew Keir and some (off-screen) piranhas. I've always enjoyed this one and sill remember being thrilled when it would turn up on Saturday night telly. I have a vague memory of being a wee boy sometime in the early '70s seeing a poster for this and Mysterious Island advertising a matinee in Berwick-Upon-Tweed. This would have been around 10 years after the original release of that double bill. The Indicator BD is terrific and includes a lengthy Jonathan Rigby appreciation of Jimmy Sangster and an interesting look at how Pirates was originally given an X certificate before being re-edited for an A then edited again to get a U. The full uncut version is what we get on the disc, now certified 12.
Watched a double bill last weekend of The Toolbox Murders and the Italian Hitch-Hike (both on my new fave, you guessed, Amazon Prime). Wanted to see both for a while now and glad I did not have to buy them to be able to do this...if you are a fan of a sweaty and hammy Cameron Mitchell you will like the first and if you like to watch Franco Nero with a big moustache, you'll like the second. I preferred the latter.
Last night we watched Robert Altman's Images (courtesy of...you guessed) which I really liked, Javier didn't. No accounting for taste.
Nightmare in Wax, in which Cameron Mitchell is (I think) a former Hollywood make-up man who now runs a wax museum where he kidnaps people and uses them for his statues, except they're still alive and have to keep being injected to keep them in suspended animation ... or something. In fairness, it's not entirely the film's fault that I was having difficulty following it (although it does have an incomprehensible ending) because the Mill Creek DVD has such poor sound quality that much of the dialogue is inaudible. It's dull and fairly bad but there are a few points of interest to it. Guest appearances from waxworks of Gary Cooper and Rudolph Valentino. Script from Rex Carlton, the writer of The Thing That Wouldn't Die, with which film this one shares a liking for people with their heads through holes in tables. According to Imdb Rex killed himself because he couldn't pay back a mob loan that he took out to fund another (presumably terrible) movie. On UK release NiW went out in a double bill with Blood of Dracula's Castle (I used to have the press synopsis for this pairing), which was also penned by Rex but directed by the notorious Al Adamson. It's less dull than NiW but worse (unless your mileage is that less dull = better).
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, a sort of This Is Spinal Tap for the younger generation. Quite amusing with some hilariously awful lyrics but probably a lot funnier if you get the reference and know who more of the guest stars playing themselves are.
Fiddlers Three, in which two sailors and a WREN are struck by lightning in Stonehenge and end up in Nero's Rome. I'm declaring it brave of me to tackle another 1944 time travel comedy starring a Tommy (in this case Trinder) after the tedium of Time Flies a few weeks ago but this Ealing effort is a lot better with some gags that are actually quite funny and a bit risque for the period and an ending that sort of pre-empts Back to the Future. A reference to Eddie Cantor's Roman Scandals provides a bit of post-modernism to the proceedings.
I watched Four Sided Triangle. again, always liked its Home Counties gentility cum overwrought sci fi trappings. Strange to see Van Eysen looking for puncture marks on a woman's neck four years prior to Dracula.
Smashing Time, musical comedy in which northern (English) lasses Lynne Redgrave and Rita Tushingham go to London. I wanted to like this one more than I did because '60s swinging London looks adorably colourful and the two leads are great but, oh my!, there are too many scenes of clumsy slapstick that go on and on and on. By the end I was more irritated than entertained.
The Monster, in which mostly standard old dark house comedy thriller shenanigans occur in a sanitarium that has been taken over by mad surgeon Lon Chaney. There's a bit too much weak comedy in the early portions of the film, and barely any Chaney, but it picks up mightily towards the end with some exciting stunt work in a storm and some proper menace from Lon.
Trip with the Teacher, in which some elderly teenage girls and their teacher are menaced and molested by a couple of rapey psycho bikers and their tiny knife. Sleazy and badly-made mid-'70s grindhouse/drive-in fare. Zalman King as the lead pycho is better than the film deserves, everyone else is a plank. Amazingly, the end credits have a sort of You Have Been Watching for the assorted treen. The only film ever auteured by Earl Barton who had a small role in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
Footsteps in the Fog, in which maid Jean Simmons blackmails Stewart Granger after he murders his wife. Entertaining stuff that feels a little like a proto-Hammer, only with fewer Gothic elements.
Moulin Rouge, the biopic of Toulouse-Lautrec. This one has been shown for decades in horribly faded prints which, considering the film's major appeal lies in its recreations of Lautrec's paintings, made it almost unwatchable. The recent restoration released on BD by the BFI at least restores the original Oscar-winning visual splendour. It doesn't stop it from being a rather lifeless portrayal of the artist though; it's really quite hard to believe that he didn't have more fun. It's of interest here though as it's the first film in which Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee appeared. (I know Lee always liked to claim he was in Hamlet but I'm not convinced that sneaking onto a set and shouting in the dark actually counts. By that token, I was in an episode of Bob Servant and at least I was invited). Each has one scene (Lee as dotty artist Seurat and Cushing as Lautrec's love rival) and both make an impact. Ballerina Colette Marchand made her feature film debut, was Oscar-nominated and only ever made two further features. A sizable hit in its day. perhaps its most lasting impact was in the amount of comedy sketches it inspired featuring kneeling comedians with shoes strapped to their knees. Like this one: https://youtu.be/Omg5YHJhoW0
The Girl with a Pistol, in which Sicilian Monica Vitti comes to Britain to shoot the lover who spurned her. Notwithstanding that this Italian comedy is absolutely terrible - unfunny, shrill, annoying and quite badly made - it has a number of points of interest. Firstly, it was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, which is quite unbelievable, unless the Italian-language version is vastly different to the English-language one shown by Talking Pictures. Secondly, it features location shooting in various cities in Scotland and England that don't feature a lot in British films from the late '60s. It was quite fun seeing shots of Edinburgh from that period. Thirdly, there are a few well-known British faces in the cast, including Stanley Baker, Tony Booth, Corin Redgrave and Corrie's Johnny Briggs. I thought I spotted a very young James Cosmo in there as well but I can't find any confirmation of that.
I Know Where I'm Going, the charming Powell & Pressburger romance that benefits enormously from location filming in the Western Isles.
Searching for Ingmar Bergman, a personal documentary on the Swedish master by German director Margarethe von Trotta. Moderately interesting if you like Ingmar but not enormously deep or enlightening.
Wild Strawberries, in which an elderly professor takes a road trip, muses on his past and encounters various characters. One of Bergman's best-loved films and deservedly so. Woody Allen nicked a fair bit of this for Deconstructing Harry, his last really good movie.
Vertigo. I still don't really get the love for this one despite being able to recognise that there are some impressive sequences, a brilliant performance from James Stewart and fine support from Barbara Bel Geddes. It doesn't help that I've never understood the appeal of Kim Novak as an actress.
Ratatouille, in which a rat becomes a chef. I think this may be my favourite Pixar, although a good case could be made for Up or Wall-E. I love Michael Giachinno's score and the Parisian ambiance. Star Patton Oswalt (voice of Remy) is a huge film buff and Hammer fan.
The House in the Woods, in which writer Michael Gough and his wife, Patricia Roc, in search of a quiet abode, go to stay with artist Ronald Howard. There's an interesting idea behind this one but the execution is very poor. Howard's pretentious artist has some hilarious dialogue, not helped by the examples we see of his paintings being terrible. There's a key moment where a villain is thwarted by stopping to pet a cat. The best bit is when the Larry Adler record that Howard plays obsessively finally gets the needle knocked off it. It doesn't help that Network's DVD has very poor sound, although maybe being unable to hear some of the dialogue helps.
Great news for anybody with a taste for Japanese exploitation, I stumbled across the 1973 revenge flick Sex and Fury in a decent print on Internet Archive.
https://archive.org/details/SexAndFury1973
Reiko Ike is incredible as a katana-wielding thief out to kill the people behind her father's brutal murder when she was a child - and a scene where she's ambushed in the bath only to slaughter a dozen would-be assassins naked in the snow rivals any sword fight I've ever seen.
Great arterial sprays, endless sleazy blokes and corrupt politicians fill out the rest of the bill nicely - all this, plus Scandsploitation legend Christina Lindberg in a support role and an epic final showdown.
A Canterbury Tale, in which 3 travelers find themselves in an ancient English burgh which is being terrorised by the "Glue Man" who throws glue in the hair of girls. I'd never seen this Powell & Pressburger film and thought it started out very well, almost like it was going to be an early folk horror tale but the outcome of the Glue Man plot left me feeling a bit nauseated to be honest. I don't want to go into spoilers but the violent misogyny of the character somehow being excuse or brushed off is more horrifying than if this had been an actual horror film.
Mr. Topaze, in which Peter Sellers plays an honest Parisian schoolteacher who becomes corrupted. It's Sellers only film as director and it has a fantastic supporting cast (Leo McKern, Michael Gough, Herbert Lom, Martita Hunt to name but a few) so it's extraordinary that this was almost a lost film and has only recently been made available again after the BFI restored it from the only surviving print. I'm not sure if the film's odd sepia look is a deliberate artistic choice or down to the limitations of the print. While the film starts pretty well it seems to lose focus as it goes along and when it ends abruptly it feels as if the third act has gone missing. Worth a look for the cast though.
I haven't seen any films for a couple of days, what with work, incipient socialising and outdoor activities in the sun drenched Jardin CMM.
My Voodoo Season is drawing to a close, with the best left to last - Sugar Hill, The Serpent And The Rainbow, Plague Of The Zombies, White Zombie and I Walked With A Zombie are the remaining titles.
On the Beach, in which Americans in Australia await the arrival of the nuclear fallout that will kill them like it has killed everyone else. This may not have been the best choice of viewing in the present conditions. My previous viewing had taken place at a time when it looked as if we'd overcome the fear of immediate Armageddon that audiences in the 1960s would have felt while watching this. It feels a lot more real now. Fred Astaire delivers a fine straight performance.
“A wealthy industrialist hires the renowned hoax-buster Phillip Knight (Boris Karloff) to prove that an island he plans to develop isn't voodoo cursed. However, arriving on the island, Knight soon realizes that voodoo does exist when he discovers man-eating plants and a tribe of natives with bizarre powers.”
Perversely filmed in B/W in exotic Hawaiian locations, Voodoo Island is a rather unengaging example of the kind of low budget, low thrill ‘horror’ pictures so prevalent in 1950s US cinema.
Karloff seems to enjoy his role as a smug smart Alec who relishes scotching people’s beliefs in weird phenomena such as the Loch Ness Monster, the Yeti et al, and appears fairly sprightly at 70, wading ashore at said island and hacking his way through the jungle with brio (and a ruddy gurt machete).
The rest of the cast play their thankless roles in earnest, but the main problem is the feeble script. Apart from inventing ‘Voodoo’ goings-on in the Pacific Ocean instead of the Carribean (director Reginald LeBorg had previously directed Weird Woman (1944), which also located a ‘Voodoo Tribe’ on a South Seas island), practically the entire 78 minutes are taken up by talk, apart from the very occasional ‘horror’ scene of people being attacked and/or eaten by rubber ‘carnivorous’ plants.
Of course, ineptitude and incongruity are what make so many of these potboilers amusing to watch, and while the totally rubbish ‘tree crab’ and aforementioned ravenous shrubbery are indeed laughable, such ‘highlights’ are few and far between. Karloff gets to deliver the two most risible lines of dialogue in the whole movie; ‘ Carnivorous plants living in the water! There could be others on land – even more carnivorous!’ and urging his colleague not to resist the natives who have captured them with ‘Don’t be a fool, they’ll slaughter us to bits!’
One other notable element that adds a slight note of interest is the inclusion of a lesbian architect who makes tastefully veiled lascivious insinuations to the conventional damsel in distress. Of course, being 1957, the Sapphic siren gets killed first, leaving the way open for the macho boat captain to inveigle his way into the other girl’s…. arms.
Karloff and co are briefly held captive while the Chief (a vaguely camp white man who looks a bit like Ernest Thesiger) explains that he has led his people from island to island (but probably not all the way from Haiti), fleeing from the wicked ways of modern civilisation. ‘Don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone you’re here’ promises Karloff and the Chief replies ‘My men will show the way back to the boat. Goodbye’. Who needs a dramatic finale anyway?
(Co)incidentally, yesterday’s film was Zombie Nightmare, starring Adam West. And look! Here he is (uncredited) as a radio operator in his very first film appearance. What are the chances of that? Could it be Voodoo?
I saw that at Edinburgh's notorious Caley cinema back in the day. It was dire. I don't know if this was the fault of the film or if the projectionist got the masking wrong but the viewing experience was enhanced by having the boom mike visible at the top of the frame for virtually the whole film.
@Crazy Man MIchael Yeah, that's the one. Mostly a bag o' shite with little to commend it but a few cleavage shots and the odd spot of gore. Still, there's that 😄
The Hurricane, in which South Sea islander Jon Hall is unjustly persecuted by the white authorities. Eventually there is a hurricane. Hall is so very, very dull, both as an actor and how his character is written, and the baddies (including Raymond Massey and John Carradine) so one-note, that this is a bit of a drag to watch, despite the slightly hilarious disaster scenes. Not one of John Ford's better directorial efforts.
Odds Against Tomorrow, in which Harry Belafonte and Robert Ryan rob a bank. The former is an indebted-to-the-mob gambling addict and the latter is a volatile racist. Both actors are superb in what is largely a character study of the two men with very little actual bank robbery. Robert Wise directs tautly. This is very close to brilliant but, unfortunately, it scuppers that with a terrible last couple of minutes. A shootout concludes with a laugh-out-loud bit of what-the-fuckery and this is followed by A MESSAGE, and a bit of a confused one at that. Well worth watching apart from that.
Laughter in Paradise sees Sim at his most lugubrious. What a joy it must have been for any comedy writer to have Sim perform his or her work. This is among the most delightful of British comedies ... and there's a bonus "Introducing" credit for Audrey Hepburn as a cigarette girl.
Geordie, in which shy Scottish gamekeeper, Bill Travers, becomes an Olympic champion. Full disclosure: I've never seen this one before because my family always disliked it. Turns out, I did too. Sim is always watchable, there's some lovely scenery and there's a few familiar faces to enjoy but it's terribly twee with an all-bagpipes-and-tartan portrayal of Scotland. Plus, Geordie is such a fucking boring character and it's impossible for me to empathise with someone who evangelically shoots kestrels, even against his employer's instructions.
Bergman of the week:
A Ship to India, in which a hunchbacked sailor confronts his bullying father who is going blind, while both compete for the same woman. It's a good job that Bergman is brilliant because this could so easily have tipped over into so-miserable-it's-hysterically-funny territory and in the wrong hands the dialogue could have become pretentious. But, as always seems to be the case, Ingmar finds the beauty and hope among the misery and gloom. Sunlight dapples on dark waters in his films like in no-one else's.
Copacabana, a vehicle for Groucho Marx and Carmen Miranda. There's fun to be had when Groucho is on screen, not much otherwise. It's amazing how massive Carmen Miranda was and how her image has sustained, based on very little as far as I can see.
Victor/Victoria, not the movie but a recording for Japanese TV of the Broadway version of the stage musical adapted from the film (adapted from the other film ...) in which Julie Andrews plays performer who disguises herself as a man so she can pretend to be a female impersonator. The film always felt to me like a musical was aching to burst out and only really burst into life during Julie's performances. The musical is a definite improvement.
Melody (AKA S*W*A*L*K*), in which schoolboy Mark Lester falls in love. Charming and truthful, if a bit slow, depiction of childhood. An early script from Alan Parker, several Bee Gees' numbers on the soundtrack and Doctor Who's Waris Hussein on directorial duties.
Just discovered Reggie Perrin, the 2009 remake of Rise And Fall of Reginald Perrin, starring Martin Clunes as Reggie. Despite initial misgivings it turns out to be a rather good updating and it's still very recognisably David Nobbs' creation, even if the middle class suburban ennui seems more suited to the 1970s than the 21st century. The laughter track is somewhat offputting and quite unnecessary because there is still a great deal of wit and hilarious silliness that doesn't need to be flagged up. Wendy Craig is magnificent as Reggie's Mum and Geoffrey Whitehead (Silas, son of Silas) is uncannily similar to Geoffrey 'cock up on the catering front' Palmer.
The Day It Came To Earth, in which a corpse is revived by a meteor. Very cheap, 1970s sort-of-pastiche of 50s grade-Z scifi with a hopeless monster and terrible performances. Having just checked BBC Genome it would appear that my long-standing memory of having watched this on the BBC and thinking "what is this shite doing on the BBC" is somehow a false one. Could it have turned up on Channel 4 in the early 80s? The only alternative I can think of is that I rented a pre-code VHS (the BBFC certified release was in 1996 and it certainly wasn't as late as that that I saw it).
Incidentally, the DVD I'm watching it on is a Grindhouse Double Feature from Frolic Pictures. It's paired with Tender Dracula. The programme starts with Lonely Water (quite an odd choice for a US disc), followed by trailers for The Witching (AKA Necromancy) and The Beast in the Cellar. After the first feature there is an intermission bumper and trailers for The Bloodstained Shadow and The Slayer.
Never seen it before and only took a punt because I’d read there was Voodoo involved. Well, there’s about two minutes of a Haitian crime boss’ masked henchmen sprinkling Jacqueline Bisset with chicken blood and that’s your lot. For the rest it’s a nicely photographed but rather tedious underwater treasure hunt affair. Nick Nolte’s character comes over as a petulant arsehole and la Bisset has little to do but model wet T-shirts and get her kit off. At two hours it soon outstays its welcome. At least Donna Summer had a disco hit with the feem toon.
The Invisible Woman, in which...ah, who cares! Third entry in Universal's "Invisible" series is a screwball comedy rather than a horror film. It's also a particularly tiresome and unfunny screwball comedy and even the special effects are tired and repetitive. With a few notable exceptions it's remarkable how bad most of Universal's second wave is.
Here’s a Voodoo film you won’t find mentioned in most (if any) genre publications. A glossy, costly, sumptuous, historical adventure-romance produced by Twentieth Century Fox in blazing Technicolor.
“A young Boston lawyer, Albion Hamlin, goes to Haiti in 1802 to find Lydia Bailey, whose estate he must settle. The island is war-torn in the strife between Toussaing L'Overture, the black president, and the French who are trying to retake possession of the country. Hamlin finds Lydia, reluctantly betrothed to French aristocrat Col Gabriel d’ Autremont and, against the background of war and rebellion, they fall in love while helping the Haitians against the French.”
Of course, Voodoo played a large part in the uprising which led to independence and is duly central to the story. William Marshall, in his first film role, plays one ‘King Dick’ (Ooh, Matron!) twenty years before he became Blacula and Anne Francis is the title character four years before becoming Altaira in Forbidden Planet.
As you might expect, the emphasis is on action and spectacle, fine costumes, lovely frocks, elegant Chambers and lavish Balls on the one hand and exotic locations, filthy clothes, decrepit hovels and chicken decapitation / drummin’n’dancin on the other. The period sets are meticulously dressed, the scenes of nineteenth century gracious living stylishly shot and artistically lit, visually recalling the Gainsborough Gothics (or, perhaps more aptly in view of the colour, Blanche Fury or Jassy) while foreshadowing the look of the early Hammer horrors.
Seven Days to Noon, in which a scientist steals an atom bomb and threatens to detonate in London if the government won't stop producing bombs. André Morell leads the police effort to track him down while the city is evacuated. Gripping stuff from the Boulting Brothers from a story idea by none other than James Bernard. I was reminded of The Day the Earth Caught Fire at times with its end of the world vibe and similar music cues.
Rotten to the Core, in which a gang try to rob an army payroll. More from the Boultings, this time a comedy. It's a strange effort that plays quite flat, partly due to casting issues. Somehow, the lead role is taken by Anton Rodgers. Imdb says that Peter Sellers was intended to play the lead and it would make total sense if this was the case and if it had been made a few years previously. There are parts that seem made for the likes of Lionel Jeffries and Bernard Cribbins and even character names that reference The Wrong Arm of the Law and Two Way Stretch. Ultimately, it's a bit tired and not very funny. Charlotte Rampling looks stunning though, there's a good jazz number over the titles and it's crisply shot in widescreen black and white.
Timeslip, in which an atomic scientist turns up in the Thames with a bullet in him. He "dies" on the operating table then things get really strange. Dull crime drama with some dull scifi bollocks thrown in as a red herring. This one takes the casting of imported US stars to a bit of an extreme as the leads are Gene Nelson and Faith Domergue with an "introducing" credit for Peter Arne (who is half American ... and had a very colourful life). Carl Jaffe, way down the credits, gives the best performance, somehow managing to deliver the scifi exposition with a straight face. Jaffe is German, as is Paul Hardtmuth. By the time you add Joseph Tomelty as the main detective there aren't many of the more prominent parts left for anyone with an English accent. US viewers must have been very disappointed to see Domergue turn in what they were presented as The Atomic Man when there's so little scifi in it, coming off a couple of genre classics in It Came from Beneath the Sea and This Island Earth. Charles Hawtrey has a small role as an office boy - he is in his 40s at this point. A comically over-emphatic score adds a couple of much-needed chuckles.
Pot O'Gold, in which James Stewart likes music but his grumpy uncle doesn't, leading to conflict with the Irish neighbours who include Paulette Goddard and Mary Gordon. Stewart and Goddard in a Golden Age of Hollywood musical ought to be a reliable indicator of quality ... but it isn't. This one's a bit of a stinker, lacking any decent songs for one thing.
The Mummy Movie Season kicks off inauspiciously with Time Walker (1982). I watched this in snatched moments over four days, probably not the ideal way to watch a movie but I don’t think it would be improved at all by a continuous viewing.
The premise has promise – a mummy taken from an Egyptian tomb turns out to be an alien - but the promising premise is sadly squandered in this badly bungled, bargain basement, bandaged baddie bilge.
The first problem is the star, Ben ‘Alias Smith And Jones’ Murphy in the role of ProfessorDouglas McCadden. He’s either a.) wishing he were doing something else or b.) not a very good actor or c.) both. In any case he’s as wooden as a cricket bat but with less charisma.
The script (perhaps ‘teleplay’ would be nearer the mark) was obviously written to comply with the overriding directive – make it cheap! Thus the entire opening sequence comprises stock footage of the Pyramids and the entrance to a temple (supposedly the façade of Tutenkhamun’s tomb). Inside are McCadden and some other archeologist fellow. There’s an earthquake which causes a secret wall to collapse and inside is a sarcophagus (along the skeletal remains of a pharoahonic cortege).
So it is shipped to the Professor’s college in California, to be opened by….his students! This is a common set up in countless mummy (and ‘cursed artefact’ movies in general). You would expect a discovery of this magnitude to be handled by the world’s leading archeological specialists, in a strictly controlled environment and with the necessary security arrangements, not by a bunch of inept, horny, beer swilling teens in a modest laboratory which anyone can enter, on the science faculty of a minor college. But I could be out of touch, maybe it really does happen like that. They also seem to have their own on-site nuclear reactor…
The incompetence of the students in charge of X-Raying the contents of the sarcophogus leads to the Mummy being exposed to an overdose of radiation and we all know what that means. On the day that the press reporters (seemingly from the local rag) are convened to witness the grand opening, surprise, surprise! The Mummy’s not at home.
But his coffin does contain a green mould that turns out to be a flesh eating fungus. As it’s also all over his bandages, anyone he touches will be infected. And the theft of five crystals from a very obvious secret compartment in the base of the sarcophogus (which had been overlooked by everyone except the thieving bellend student) means that he’ll be ‘touching’ quite a few people in his quest to recover the glowing gems which somehow enable him to teleport back to his own planet. And at the end that’s what he does, vanishing in a blue glare and taking the willing McCadden with him.
Although there seems to be a lot going on, nothing really happens, we’re left with a lot of talking, endless Mummy POV shots (tinted green), some very brief ‘attacks’ and some more talking. There’s a crappy, Ancient Egypt themed ‘Frat party’ and a listless police investigation (conducted by the Campus Cop). Direction is pedestrian, acting just adequate, SFX cheap, and the whole perfunctory thing is as bleak as the moon and equally lacking in atmosphere and gravity. Instead of ‘The End’, the final caption warns the audience ‘To be continued….’ Luckily we never saw the return of this monster from the Id….stupid and insipid.
Paddington/Paddington 2. Just what this awful time calls for; two perfectly sunny and charming instant classics of British cinema.
Carry On Up The Jungle/Carry On Loving. If 1970 could be described as Hammer's annus horribilis it's pretty evident that the Carry On team were having bother with their annus too. Jungle is a huge misfire that feels like it was thrown together without a proper story and little more than a series of crude, rather than clever, double entendres to offer. The writing is much more like the feeble stuff that the Carry On TV series consisted of than the often brilliant movies. Terry Scott is awfully weak in the cod Tarzan role that was surely intended for Jim Dale. Valerie Leon turns up as a sort of African Amazon in a bit that might have been intended as a parody of Hammer's exotics, such as Slave Girls. Watching it tonight I realised that this was probably the film that Queen Kong aspired to be. Loving is a little better in that there's a bit more to the characters but, like most of the series entries that followed, it's mostly uninspired. One plus is that poor Imogen Hassall has a reasonably big role and shows a knack for comedy, particularly when her character is in dowdy mode.
The Villain Still Pursued Her, an oddball movie from 1940 that spoofs Victorian melodramas, although it seems uncertain whether its target is stage productions or silent movies. I don't know of an earlier example of the sort of movie that Mel Brooks and the ZAZ team would do much better later on so it's interesting from that point of view, although very few of its gags actually land and Buster Keaton is wasted in a supporting role. There are a couple of chuckles along the way and it somehow managed to smuggle through what is probably the filthiest joke of the 1940s: "I have not fallen. I am standing in the full force of my manhood. Erect!"
Child's Play (1972), in which malevolent forces are at work in a Catholic boys' boarding school. Sidney Lumet directs powerfully and James Mason is terrific as a strict Latin teacher. There's a palpable sense of evil at work and a horror movie score so this is at least a borderline horror movie. File alongside Unman, Wittering & Zigo and The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. I liked it a lot.
Stolen Assignment, in which journalists investigate an artist who is accused of murdering his wife. Practically the dictionary definition of "run-of-the-mill", the most interesting thing about this one is that it was directed by Terence Fisher, at Bray, with a few Hammer personnel involved.
Love From A Stranger (1947)
Inferior remake, given a period makeover (set in Victorian / Edwardian England). It lacks the light hearted first half of the ’37 version and the antagonists are pretty bland. The serial wifekiller looks somewhat like John Travolta and the attempts to build suspense come to nothing. Admittedly, Basil Rathbone's edgy, twitching, shell shocked madman was a hard act to follow, but this comes nowhere near.
Charlie Chan In Transylvania (2011)
Fifteen minute fan made sho(r)t on video oddity. Waste of time.
Charlie Chan In London (1934)
The title is a bit of a misnomer, but it’s snappier than “Charlie Chan In Retfordshire”, the fictional English county where the action mainly takes place. This time Charlie is asked to clear an innocent man due to be hanged for the murder of a friend among the huntin’fishin’shootin’ set. The film is peppered with offensive racial stereotypes - the English are portrayed as a race of either superficial, privileged, hedonistic, heavy drinking toffs, or dimwitted, headscratching, inarticulate Cockneys – including the local police inspector! It’s outrageous!
Another constant of the series initiated in this film is the “mystery arm through the window” weilding pistol, knife or other lethal weapon and a narrow escape for Charlie. There’s footage of an actual fox hunt and some neat stunt riding, and this is also the one which introduces the hereafter customary revelation that the culprit is always the one nobody suspects. Ray(mond) Milland has a supporting role and Madge (White Zombie) Bellamy is among the socialites.
The Black Camel (1931)
The second film in Fox’s Charlie Chan series (the first is lost) gives us our first sight of Warner Oland in the role. Bela Lugosi co-stars as a phoney astrologer and Dwight Frye plays a butler as if he were Renfield. The plot is adapted from Earl Derr Biggers’ homonymous novel whose title supposedly comes from an old saying: "Death is a black camel that kneels unbidden at every gate."
It establishes the format which would continue throughout the series – contrived and convoluted plot, plethora of suspects, perfunctory romance, countless red herrings, the trap to make the killer give the game away, numerous cod-Chinese aphorisms (“Can cut off monkey's tail, but he is still monkey”) and witty ripostes ("Inspector, you need a lie-detector...an invention that detects instantly when anyone is telling a lie." “Oh, I see. You mean a wife. I have one”), plus the inevitable comedy relief character, in this case Kashimo, the bumbling Japanese assistant assigned to Charlie by the Honolulu Police Department - in the original Chan novels, Charlie has an almost xenophobic disdain for the citizens of the Land Of The Rising Sun.
The location filming in Hawaii adds local colour, but the cumbersome equipment of the time means these scenes are rather static and the rhythm sedate, while the interior/studio scenes seem to flow better, notwithstanding a few awkward pauses and an occasional abrupt edit.
The Assassination Bureau, in which journalist Diana Rigg engages the head of an assassin-for-hire organisation (Oliver Reed) to kill ... himself. The two stars shine in this period romp and there's a fun supporting cast. It lacks the directorial touch of a Richard Lester or maybe a Blake Edwards to turn it into a classic but it's well worth a look.
The Seventh Survivor, in which the survivors of a U-Boat attack are taken in by lighthouse keepers. Among the group are a British agent and a German agent. All the right ingredients then for a wartime comedy thriller and this one passes the time nicely enough that I'm not going to nitpick the plot. The capable cast includes Martita Hunt who always seems to be the same age in everything.
Charlie Chan At The Circus (1936)
One of the most enjoyable of the early Fox produced Charlie Chan films, but definitely not one for the PC crowd – this film contains ‘yellowface’, wild animals in cages, circus ‘freaks’ including a giant and a pair of midgets, fur coats galore, male chauvinism and copious cigar smoking - mainly by one of the midgets.
For those who like to take restrospective offence on behalf of others, it should be noted that Warner Oland’s Charlie Chan provided a positive reversal of the customary Hollywood casting of Oriental characters as Fu-Manchu style, ‘Yellow Peril’ villains or stereotypical coolies and laundrymen. Oland’s portrayal of the cultivated and wily Chinese detective from Honolulu proved highly popular with both contemporary American Asians and the films were likewise very successful in China – to the extent that when Oland made a promotional trip to Shanghai he was greeted as a national hero.
As for the diminutive circus performers, they were played by successful sibling Vaudeville singers/dancers Olive and George Brasno. Their film appearances were few – they turned down an offer to appear in The Wizard Of Oz because they were making more money on the Vaudeville circuit. Olive appears here quite accomplished as an amateur actress, her brother less so. In spite of puffing his way through an endless stream of (full sized) cigars -(even when he’s disguised as a baby in a pram!) - with the evident relish of the serious smoker, the little man lived to be seventy years old, while his sister passed away at eighty, just two days after her husband, to whom she was married for thirty seven years. Their parts in aiding Chan are central to the narrative, leaving Number One Son (played by Keye Luke, later of Kung-Fu fame) free to pursue a romance with Su Toy, a pretty Chinese contortionist.
At just seventy minutes, the pace never flags and the Big Top setting and scenes on a train carrying the circus from town to town provide a welcome change from the customary mystery film milieux of old dark houses or mean city streets. It’s also one of the few Chan films to include scenes with Charlie’s wife and all twelve (later thirteen) of their offspring – when they enter the circus in single file, the ticket collector quips ‘that guy’s brought his own sideshow’.
The mystery itself centres around the murder of the unpopular co-owner of the "Kinney and Gaines Combined Circus" As usual, just about every character has a motive for wishing the man dead and, equally as usual, the audience don’t get all the gen until Charlie has had the killer give him/herself away via an ingenious trap, when he explains everything to the conveniently assembled cast of characters. In short, a treat for Chan fans, general mystery movie addicts, circus historians and connoisseurs of tatty gorilla suits.
Charlie Chan At The Wax Museum (1940)
A revisit to this, the twenty third film in the Fox series and Sidney Toley’s seventh portrayal of the Honolulu detective.
The Charlie Chan films are well known for convoluted plots, but this one surely takes the prawn cracker. Lead antagonist Doctor Cream is not only a world class plastic surgeon, but also an expert sculptor of waxworks, which he displays in his educational Wax Museum Of Crime where he has, among tableaux of historical and contemporary murders, exhibits of the Guillotine, the gallows, the headsman’s block and a working(!) Electric Chair, ex-property of Sing Sing Penitentiary. Amusingly, his macabre Museum is endorsed by the Civic Authorities for proving to the citizenry that ‘Crime never pays’. Another of the doctor’s talents appears to be engineering, as he has fashioned a larger than life mechanical automaton with which he plays chess!
But beneath the museum he maintains a fully equipped operating theatre – or as Chan puts it, “Surgical birthplace of new faces. Evidence betrays Museum to be hideout for hunted criminals who change faces to cheat Law”. As if this weren’t far fetched enough, the Museum also hosts a weekly live radio broadcast of ‘The Crime League’ where famous criminologists re-examine celebrated criminal cases. Chan is lured to participate in one such broadcast so that one of Cream’s current clients, escaped killer Steve McBirney can get revenge on Charlie, whose testimony was key in his conviction.
Of course, the attempt to murder the detctive goes awry and another participant, who was coincidentally just about to reveal McBirney’s involvement in framing an innocent man for a murder he committed ten years before, is killed instead.
While awaiting the arrival of the police, Chan is helped and (mainly) hindered by Number Two Son as he attempts to determine the identity of the murderer from among all those present – the doctor, his lady assistant, the broadcasting staff, a female reporter, a lawyer, the gatecrashing avenging widow and the suspiciously screwy janitor.
Apart from the hilariously over-contrived plot, this entry in the Chan series is great fun for being set in the atmospheric, storm bound museum populated by creepy effigies and gruesome devices of torture and execution, along with the swift succesion of sinister comings and goings through various concealed exits, secret stairways, hidden rooms and characters hiding in plain sight by posing as waxwork figures. And no Chan feature would be complete without Charlie’s catch phrases “Thank you – so much”, “Contradiction, please”, cod-Oriental aphorisms - here we get, among others, “Only very foolish mouse make nest in cat's ear”, “Every bird seek its own tree, never tree the bird” and pithy quips “Will imitate woman and change mind”. But I will not imitate woman – I enjoyed this second viewing just as much as the first.
A return visit to 1988's Ghost Town last night, no overlooked classic but a solid and respectable entry in the too-small sub-genre of horror westerns. One of the last films from Charles Band's Empire Pictures, it loses points for a bit of a muddled script and for showing too much of its main villain, but compensates with a decent atmosphere and a lot of musical stings culled from, I believe, the likes of Re-animator and Prison.
The Day of the Locust, a criminally long, unfocused drama set in 1930s Hollywood. I don't know why I'm supposed to be interested in the characters, who are as dull as they are unconvincing, or what passes for a story. Donald Sutherland plays a character called Homer Simpson. Karen Black was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role as a hooker/actress. Black is an acclaimed actress with multiple awards to her name but I've mostly found her to be absolutely atrocious. I don't know if this is because her severe squint is so distracting or whether she really is that bad. For no apparent reason, the film ends on gruesome scenes of mob violence that might well have influenced Romero's Dawn of the Dead. These scenes are so pretentiously directed by John Schlesinger that I laughed out loud. Dreadful, self-important crap.
The Big Short, the funny, angry, thrillingly-made masterpiece about the 2007 banking collapse. It's cathartic viewing, then you realise that, instead of doing something about the system, we just rolled over, lubed up and let ourselves be fucked over by ever greedier and stupider criminals.
Rising Damp, the feature film of ITV's best sitcom which is included in the series' complete boxset (a warning for anyone planning to watch that set - series 4 is presented out of continuity sequence which is a little annoying as there is some plot progression). The film is very much a "damp" squib as it lazily rehashes plots and jokes from the series and most of the new material (a brief Grease parody, for instance) is terrible. There is one nice, touching scene between Rigsby and Philip where we learn a truth about the latter that always seemed like a bit of unspoken subtext in the series. Otherwise, and despite a few decent performances, it's terrible. Made by Roy Skeggs' company and with a few Hammer alumni behind the scenes.
ETA: One of the worst things about the film is the set which replaces the sitcom's wonderfully grotty rooms (including a poster for a Tarzan movie) with much blander interiors.
La Muerte Incierta (1971)
Another José Larraz effort, this is one of those ambiguous affairs where what happens may be down to machinations, madness or manifestations of the supernatural.
The setting is a plantation in India in 1930. Lots of stock footage (as in lots), decent interior sets but so slow and lacking in incident, with an excess of expositionary dialogues and no mystery, suspense or surprises it soon outstays its welcome, and eventually peters out into an unconclusive ending.
Genre regular Rosalba Neri is in it for the first five minutes and the female lead is Mary Maude in her second Spanish picture, having appeared the same year in Narciso Ibañez Serrador’s La Residencia.
It didn’t help that I saw an old and damaged VHS rip in which all the colours had faded to pinky red, but I suspect even a pristine restored edition wouldn’t bring this one to life.
This is another film I’d never heard of and whose existence I discovered by chance after watching a video of an old British comedy show (At Last, The 1948 Show)….just two hours after I first heard of it I’d watched it. The wonders of technology – I remember the ‘good old days’ when the time between first reading about a film and actually getting to see it could be measured in years, depending mainly on TV programme planners.
La Familia Vourdalak de Alexie Tolstoi, one of the thirteen episodes of Televisión Española's El Quinto Jinete (The Fifth Horseman, 1975-6). Contemporay sex-symbol (also a fine actress) Charo López starred as a sexy vampire in an otherwise unremarkable and lacklustre adaptation of the story done so much better by Mario Bava.
La Main du Diable (1943)
Directed in occupied France by Maurice Tourneur (while his son Jacques was directing I Walked With A Zombie in Hollywood), The Devil’s Hand is an intriguing and visually arresting fantasy satire version of the oft-adapted Faustian legend.
The beginning, with the societal cross section of guests at an Alpine hotel, gathered in the lounge and engaged in reading, knitting, playing cards, moaning and idle banter vividly brings to mind Les Vacances De Monsieur Hulot, and the tone of Tourneur’s tale of struggling artist Roland Brissot (Pierre Fresnay)’s ill advised pact with the Devil is not far removed from the later whimsy of Gallic compatriot Jacques Tati’s films.
Of course, the basic concept of eternal damnation also requires that there be a certain amount of disturbing supernatural manifestations and existential terror once the protagonist cottons on to the fact that you can’t bluff your way out once you’ve sold you soul to Satan (in this case represented by a meek, ‘provincial looking’ chap in a black suit, tie and bowler).
At eighty minutes, the film moves at a brisk pace and touches a lot of stylistic and generic bases along the way, from the ‘policier’type opening, through Hollywood pattern romantic comedy, film noir, Expressionism, comedy of manners, fairy tale, mystery thiller…but the overriding sensation is one of light hearted playfulness, the director evidently enjoying the opportunity to string together a series of tonally and visually disparate pastiche tableaux to (re)tell an old, familiar story.
There’s no dwelling on (nor attempt to exploit) the sinister (in fact, it’s remarked that the titular appendage is a left hand) and horrific, even when they do make an appearance (the living, moving hand trapped inside a box, the ghastly, demonic artworks Brissot is compelled to create, the brutal murder of his lover, the grotesquely masked phantoms of the past – even the ‘tragic’final scene is rendered less traumatic by the preceding reconciliation and the contrivedly neat ‘closing the cycle’finale.
Although the narrative and dramatic aspects are effective but rather ‘lightweight’, the film as a whole is a celebration of the visual potential of the ‘classic age’ motion picture, and a masterclass in framing, compostion and elegant but unobtrusive camera movement, as well as lighting and set design and even simple animation effects. Well worth a look.
I, Tonya, a semi drama-documentary depiction of figure skater Tonya Harding and the "incident" in which her rival was assaulted. This is lovely stuff that knows that it's true story is almost unbelievable and has fun with the idea, We even get some footage of the real people in the closing credits to prove that they really were absurdly cartoonish people. Script, direction, performances, music are all first rate. Highly recommended.
Unheimliche Geschichten (aka Eerie Tales, 1932)
Director Richard Oswald’s quasi-remake of his 1919 portmanteau film turns out to be a semi-anthology.
A journalist named Richard Briggs (Harald Paulsen) pursues an unhinged (and unnamed) wife murdering inventor (Paul Weggener) through four distinct episodes based on / inspired by classic horror tales – guess which ones;
(1) The inventor’s wife’s black cat upsets one of his experiments, the inventor flies into a rage and kills the woman and bricks up the body in the wall of his cellar laboratory. The reporter, who had heard the woman’s screams while driving past, returns four days later with the police – the cat, which has been accidentally entombed with its mistress gives the game away.
The murderer flees into (2) a nearby travelling carnival’s Chamber of Horrors, exhibiting animatronic models of historical criminals (Mechanischen Museum). The journalist follows, there’s a fight, the killer escapes again, arriving at a nearby hospital where he deliberately acts insane in order to be sent to the nearby mental institution and thus give the authorities the slip.
But (3) the lunatics have taken over the asylum and when Briggs arrives the increasingly eccentric behaviour of the asylum’s director, staff and dinner guests and their refusal to let him leave make him realise his life is at risk. When his original quarry joins the party and starts inciting the loonies to murder, it looks like it’s curtains. Luckily, the police arrive in the nick of time but their man escapes again.
Some years pass and the paper where our newshound works receives an anonymous letter denouncing the existence of (4) a Suicide Club. Sent to check it out the investigator discovers that the man behind said ‘Selbstmörderklub’ is none other than…you guessed it. Defying death yet again, Briggs finally traps the elusive wife murderer and the men from Scotland Yard arrive to make the arrest.
A slightly lightweight and rather irregularly paced film, but nonetheless entertaining and fun to watch. The balance between the comedic and the horrific is well maintained and Paul Weggener, with his Slavic features and larger than life screen presence carries the film (Paulsen doesn’t leave much of an impression in the ‘hero’s role). The asylum sequence is both funny and disturbing, with some memorable performances and an appropriately anarchistic tone: there’s virtuoso ballad singing, delusional declamations, chamber music, violent fits, piano playing, grandilocuent speeches, brawling, pop-eyed oddballs in evening dress – it could be a sequence from a Marx Brothers movie with a more sinister edge.
The cinematography occasionally harks back to (or perhaps spoofs) German Expressionism while at the same the Anglicised names and supposed London locations seem to be foreshadowing the German cinema’s 1960s obssession with setting their Krimis in an imagined sterotypical English landscape.
The Invisible Man (2020)
Universal return to their stable of ‘Classic Monsters’ for a reasonably entertaining new outing. Elisabeth Moss as protagonist/victim Cecilia carries the show with a strong performance (a good choice to present her as a regular woman and avoid the usual Hollywood 'glamour girl' mould) and the rest of the cast do OK with their underwritten roles. Fortunately we are spared the usual prolonged R & D + i prologue (cf Hollow Man et al), we don’t need it, the clue’s in the title, just cut to the chase. This one does. It gives us a leisurely paced build up of suspense, chills and action and an unexpected ending.
Unfortunately it’s also predictable most of the way through, up until the deliberately ambiguous and somewhat unsatisfying finale. As is often the case with this particular subgenre (bar the 1933 original and possibly Invisible Agent), a discovery as Earth shatteringly transcendental as the ability to make people invisibile is put to incredibly unambitious, unimaginative and petty use, for all the kicks it might provide someone out for revenge after being jilted/abondoned by their partner/spouse. Basically we have a blend of Gaslight, Sleeping With The Enemy and Jimmy Sangster’s ‘women-in-peril’ Hammer thrillers (and even the ‘New Hammer’ film The Resident) with an added sci-fi gimmick.
I’m not usually too bothered with plot holes, coincidences and contrived narrative devices, especially in fantasy movies, as long as they aren’t too intrusive and numerous, but here they tend to spin out of control – John Fulton and the Universal SFX crew achieved incredible invisibilty effects in the James Whale film and some of the sequels, including rain and smoke making the invisible one’s outline plain to see – but here, he’s only glimpsed (partially and implausibly briefly) when doused in paint or when his optical distortion suit is on the blink…despite running around in the pouring rain. Said suit seems insanely easy to create, just press a button on a touch screen and there you go. Why Celia didn’t take the suit to prove to the authorities that her claims of being perecuted by an unseen person were true, or at least, possible is a blantant case of BISSITS. The wounded security guard in the car park would have been a witness, but that would have been too simple. The police interrogation is conducted by the very cop in whose house she is living. Only in the scriptwriter’s world. They accuse her of sending death threats to her sister by email. They don’t even entertain the possibilty of hackers….and so on and so forth (fifth, sixth…)
Perhaps the most frightening thing about this new Invisible Man is the number of distressingly unintelligent and/or downright bigoted ‘reviews’ appearing online, whingeing about ‘Woke/PC/ MeToo agendas’ being shoved down our throats; the ‘diversity lobby’ making sure the nominal ‘good guy’ was black (and a single parent, to boot), the feminist propaganda that dictates that ‘rich white men’ are always portrayed as ‘evil sadists’, abusing and terrorising defenceless women – it’s like they’d never seen a horror film before (much less read a history book or even a newspaper). Many other discerning film connoisseurs also lament the casting of 'an ugly woman' in the lead instead of a 'hot chick'. Isn't social media wonderful? (Rhetorical)
Sunstruck, in which schoolteacher Harry Secombe gets a job in the Australian outback. Surprisingly charming family comedy, typically Aussie in its down-to-earth approach and its obsessive approach to the consumption of beer. Harry does very well.
Warn That Man, in which a German actor poses as his aristocratic double in a plot to capture a British war leader. Enjoyable wartime comedy thriller with a good cast that includes Gordon Harker.
Ten Seconds to Hell. In post-WWII Berlin the six members of a German bomb disposal squad form a tontine. This ambitious Hammer film has become one of the company's most obscure works despite starring a couple of big Hollywood names in Jeff Chandler and Jack Palance and being directed by cult director Robert Aldrich. It seems to have been a bit of a troubled production with a fair amount of footage cut out of it which might explain why things feel a bit clunky at times with some clumsy voiceover filling in plot and character points. Even at an hour and a half it does feel a bit long and talky with a boring romance dissipating what ought to be considerable tension. Performances are good so it's a pity that the film isn't more successful. The print that has turned up on the Paramount Network has been colorized, not to the film's benefit.
World Without End (1957)
This is an odd one. As is routinely pointed out, a precursor of both Planet Of The Apes (spaceship crosses time warp, arriving on post apocalyptic Earth) and The Time Machine (docile humans living in fear of brutish mutants). Four American astronauts (including Oz-American Rod Taylor) end up in the year 2508 AD, where the aftermath of nuclear war has forced the few survivors underground, where they have built a scientifically and culturally advanced society. Surprisingly, after 550 years they still speak exactly the same English as the inadvertent time travellers, who after crash landing and confronting giant rubber spiders and one eyed mutant cavemen, stumble into the entrance of the subterranean 'safe zone'.
Unsurprisingly the remnants of humanity abhor weapons and violence and through generations of inbreeding and absence of sunlight have grown physically puny and lacking in vigour, ever less fertile, and lacking the slightest inclination to venture up to the surface and confront the 'beasts' in order to reclaim 'humanity's natural habitat'. But that's just the men. The women are all voloptuous, young and dressed in pin-up girl style cocktail waitress mini dresses and instantly get the hots for the quartet of all-American hunks (two of whom must be in their fifties, leading to some hard to believe love scenes).
Among all the usual 1950s space opera clichés, there is a little philosophising about Man's place in the universe, the virtues or otherwise of pacifism/passivism, a critique of soft 20th century society far removed from the daring days of the stoic, hardship-bearing Pioneers, and the inevitable, evil consequences of nuclear weapons ("a war which nobody wanted but nobody could prevent"). As usual in these things, the tough Yanks inspire the 'gutless' inhabitants ("they think safety and comfort are all there is to life") to 'man up' and 'grow a pair'and they get them to start building bazookas to blast the surface dwellers to smithereens. The final scene shows our heroes (and their adoring busty beauties) out in the sunshine, overseeing the building of a settlement of log cabins and admiring the rough and tumble juvenile antics of the hitherto peaceful twenty sixth century children .
So a mixture of teenage boys' erotic fantasy, the usual right wing 'might is right' clap trap and a fleeting visit to the outskirts of intellectual debate.
The Silent Partner, in which psycho bank robber Christopher Plummer engages in a cat-and-mouse game with Elliott Gould, the bank clerk who cheated him. This Toronto-based thriller (with Toronto for once not pretending to be anywhere other than Toronto) is a splendid blast from the past, specifically the early days of VHS when the poster was in every video shop and every video magazine. The script is clever, the violence ruthless and the nudity gratuitous. Plummer is surprisingly menacing and Gould displays the charisma that was sadly lacking in his turn in Hammer's The Lady Vanishes soon afterwards.
Wes Craven's 1978 TV film Summer of Fear (aka Stranger In Our House). Teenager Linda Blair stars as Rachel whose life is disrupted when Julia, her teenage cousin comes to live with her family after her parents are killed in a car crash. Rachel begins to suspect Julia is a witch when she steals her boyfriend, spooks her horse during a show jumping competition and starts coming on to her father. But nobody will believe her. Very routine and rather dull effort which took me three sittings to finish. The ever irritating Fran Drescher has a small role.
GUNN, in which Peter Gunn investigates something or other while inappropriately young women inexplicably fling themselves at him. Blake Edwards breaks off from a run of massive hits to revive his TV PI hit in a cheap-looking and under-cast movie. Craig Stevens is somehow both bland and sleazy in the title role in the way that only American leading men of a certain age manage to be. Only the classic theme music thrills.
Voodoo Dawn (1990)
"Group of immigrant Haitian farm workers (in South Carolina, USA) tries to fight off an evil Haitian voodoo priest who tries to kill them & use their body parts to make up a zombie army."
The two claims to fame (of sorts) of this anaemic supernatural potboiler are that it was co-written by one of the co-producers of Romero's Night Of The Living Dead (John Russo plus three others!) and it stars pre Candyman Tony Todd. The scant Voodoo content is all made up stuff and the silent villain named Makoute (Todd) is described as a houngan and sorcerer (or 'hexer', as I watched a German dubbed print) when even a little superficial research would reveal that the correct term is bokor. But such nitpicking is really beside the point. The plot is imbecilic; Makoute kills people with a machete and cuts off body parts, then stitches them together and magically reanimates the resulting composite corpses, for reasons known only to the scriptwriters - and they're not telling. There's a lot of wandering around and a lot of arguing, some inept killing scenes and a typical 1990s bladders'n'animatronics finale that makes zero sense but puts a monster on screen for twenty seconds. To quote one of the characters in Funnyman, "it's totally P.C. -Pure Crap".
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, in which various characters race to be first to dig up stolen loot. It's 40+ years since I last watched this on its ITV premiere when ad breaks pushed it to a(n even more) ludicrous running time. As it is, this is about 150 minutes of tiresome slapstick and top comedy actors yelling at each other until I just wanted to start yelling myself. Apparently some people consider this one of the funniest films ever made. I didn't laugh once, except nervously at the thought that the original roadshow version ran over three hours. Low point: Jerry Lewis gurning in a wordless cameo.
Looper, in which a hitman gets wrapped up in a timey-wimey stuff. I seem to remember that this one got very good reviews at the time but I kept missing it, both at the cinema and every time it turned up on the telly. Turns out it was so bad I dan near switched it off on several occasions. There's a load of sub-Minority Report (the dreadful film, rather than the excellent short story) paradoxes, all badly explained in voiceover. That put me in a bit of a bad mood, then everything got really boring until the lousy ending. I have no idea why I was supposed to empathise with a mass-murdering hitman either. Keep Rian Johnson away from SF in future is my plea.
Ooh ... you are Awful, in which Dick Emery has to track down the number of a Swiss bank account tattooed on the buttocks of a number of young ladies. I well recall how happy this one made me a my schoolmates back when it got its first TV outing. For one thing, it's a surprisingly good vehicle for Emery, letting him showcase his various popular TV characters when he has to go in disguise; for another thing ... bums. Talking Pictures' screening took a bit of a liberty with the bums though, censoring them (inconsistently) by slapping graphics over them. This has been a bit of a trend with them recently and I hope they pack it in. This was the final film exec'd by Launder & Gilliat and Sheila Keith has a scene as a magistrate.
It's All Over Town, a short-ish, British musical from the 1960s in which Willie Rushton and Lance Percival get involved in various sketches in between songs from various artistes, including headliner Frankie Vaughan, the Springfields (complete with Dusty), Acker Bilk, the Hollies and the Bachelors. Ivor Cutler turns up as do some of the personnel from Raymond's Revue Bar. It's all very much a jaw-dropping time capsule, although not remotely good. From Douglas Hickox, director of Theatre of Blood.
The Bliss of Mrs Blossom, in which Shirley MacLaine moves her lover, James Booth, into the attic while husband, Richard Attenborough, remains unaware. There's a remarkable supporting cast on view: Willie Rushton makes another appearance as the sidekick to Freddie Jones' camp copper; others include John Cleese, Bob Monkhouse, Barry Humpries, Clive Dunn and on it goes ... Denis Norden co-writes and talent-vacuum Joe McGrath directs. Crucially, none of it is remotely funny and most of it is really annoying. There are loads of fantasy scenes in which MacLaine and Booth take on the roles of great lovers of the past, apparently to waste huge sums of money. Dire stuff but, again, a time capsule of the era.
It seems I’m not yet throughdoo with Voodoo. Another couple of titles have become available to view.
Today I watched Dying Day (1983), of which I’d never heard but was made aware of by obscure films buff extraordinaire Gav Crimson (aka Flash on the BHF) on FB. The copy on YT is pretty poor, many scenes are too dark to see much of what’s going on and the rest is rendered in 3rd gen fuzz-o-vision.
However, it had potential. The simple but intriguing plot - recycling a kind of ‘I Am Legend’ riff but without the post-apocalypse setting - tells of Morgan Randall (Robert Deveau), a lone man compelled to defend himself night after night from attacks of the living dead whose sole objective is his destruction. He’s been on the run for two years, destroying the creatures at each encounter and fleeing to the next town, but is understandably coming to the end of his endurance. A chance encounter with Shelly Godwin (Donna Assali), the woman who succours him after a hit and run accident provides him with both an unexpectedly resourceful ally and a reason to keep going. Fans of ‘strong female characters’ will be happy to know that she exhibits more intelligence than Randall, tracking him to his next hideout and explaining what he needs to do to free himself of the persecution once and for all (without resorting to his own suggested foolproof technique – suicide). The main strength of this bargain basement effort is the lead couple, whose performances are credible (they talk and act like ‘normal’ people, not always a given in this type of production) and creditable (doing a decent job with what’s available). There’s also a suitable degree of chemistry between the two which is always a big help.
Supporting cast do ok, but the antagonist (‘Man In Black’ played by one Bob Sacchetti) is a second rate panto villain. It is he who, two thirds into the running time, explains the motive behind the generations long vendetta against the Randall family. “Once upon a time…1837 if you want a date….” he commences, a sugar plantation owner in Cuba (Morgan’s great, great, great grandfather) whipped a slave woman to death in public because she spurned his libidinous attentions. The woman’s husband escaped, fled to Haiti, met “a Ton Ton Macoute, a Voodoo medicine man”(sic) and learned the secret of raising zombies (of the Hollywood fantasy kind), sending them to kill his one time slave master and all his relations one after another (and leaving a tell-tale card on each body with a sketch of Baron Samedi). The secrets of Voodoo were passed down among his own descendants in order to continue the killings down the generations until the Randall line was extinguished.
In the film’s opening scenes we see a frock-coated, nineteenth century rapist (in hindsight, obviously a Randall) throttled by a mouldering zombie just before he submits his victim to a fate worse than death, and then we get an interlude in 1936 in which a motorist (evidently a later family member) is dismembered by zombies in a wood. These scenes, accompanied by the sound of a lashing rainstorm and flashes of lightning could have been quite creepy if it were possible to see more in the darkness.
Then we’re into the 1980s and Morgan starts to narrate his own story in a cod-film noir voiceover. The balance between earnestness and whimsy makes the film easy to watch and some quasi surreal visual moments (including probably unintentional Expressionistic like set ups) along with the pseudo experimental soundtrack music (‘performed by Accident’ says the credits and it sometimes seems like it….another frank credit proclaims ‘Special Effects by Cheap Tricks’) help to hold the interest despite the obvious paucity of resources, cramped sets, tacky zombie makeup and poor acting from the villain. There’s no Voodoo content beyond the backstory (no drummin’n’dancin, rituals, possessions…or even black people). Our Man In Back just wanders into a random cemetery, waves a stick or rings a bell – hard to tell in the dark- over a random grave and raises a random corpse. ‘You will obey only me. Kill him!’
It would be interesting to see a cleaned up, digitally restored version. Or maybe not.
However what IS interesting is the film's susequent fate, as chronicled by Gav/Flash "The project caught the attention of former Al Adamson collaborator Sam Sherman, who ended up radically overhauling it. Among other things Sherman directed new footage, removed the 'voodoo curse' angle, included a subplot that irresponsibly showed kids how to turn a laserdisc player into a lethal weapon, replaced the original villain of the film with a new, mad scientist, one as well as adding an insanely catchy theme tune. The resulting chop-shop creation was put out in 1986 as "Raiders of the Living Dead". "
Curiously, I became aware of 'Raiders Of The Living Dead' a couple of years ago because it was Zita (Universal's The Mummy) Johann's last film role, apparently she hadn't been in anything since 1934(!) but I didn't know about the connection to (or existence of) Dying Day.
To Joy, in which we look back at the relationship between two musicians after the untimely death of the wife. Typically profound, funny, harrowing, heart-wrenching and truthful stuff from Ingmar Bergman. He's probably the only film maker who regularly makes me feel it in my stomach as well as stimulating my intellect.
The Dark Knight. The first superhero film to really feel like an epic although it's really driven by a single performance, Heath Ledger's extraordinary turn as The Joker.
Bride of the Monster, the Ed Wood "classic". I watched this since the disc was in the player anyway for the double bill viewing of The Bat. Of the two, I think Bride of the Monster was made with more enthusiasm. By most people's standards BotM would stand out as one of the most memorably inept and hilarious films ever made. It's a testament to the heights of Wood's mad poetry that it's probably only his third craziest opus but even then he had to go over and above and have the film withheld by the lab for a few decades. From what I remember it was still "lost" when the Medveds popularised Plan 9 from Outer Space. I can only imagine how delighted the fans who recovered it were when they discovered that it lived up to expectations.
Duel at Diablo, in which a dwindling number of US cavalry and a few civilians are trapped in a canyon by a band of Apaches. Tense, action-packed and violent western that comes with the traditional baggage of presenting Native Americans as one-note baddies to be disposed of. It's indicative of how big the western genre still was in the mid-60s that they were able to assemble such an eclectic cast of actors: James Garner, Sidney Poitier, Bibi Andersson, Dennis Weaver and Bill Travers. I was struck by how violent the film was with multiple arrow shootings, tortures and an attempted rape and decided to check the BBFC site only to find that it was originally released uncut as A certificate but it has always been a 15 on home video. Compared with some of the ratings handed out to the likes of Hammer films it does make me wonder whether the censors were more lenient with Hollywood studio product than they were with small British independents. Director Ralph Nelson's next western would be the notorious charnel house that is Soldier Blue.
Distant Trumpet, in which two brothers, one a GP and one a medical missionary, change places. Ghastly stuff, stiff, dull and wholly unappealing. One of Terry Fisher's early films.
The Long Good Friday, the classic London gangster film has lost none of its power. The Arrow BD has a very interesting making of that includes such fascinating snippets as the fact that Tony Franciosa was originally cast as the mafia man and walked out when he saw the revised script; replacement Eddie Constantine was so used to post-dubbing European movies that recording live dialogue was a challenge to him. At school we used to get an afternoon off and I first saw this movie with some chums in a memorable matinee double bill with The Roaring Twenties, two of the best gangster movies ever made for the price of one.
Hail the Conquering Hero, in which medically-discharged marine Eddie Bracken is mistakenly lionised as a hero in his home town. One of Preston Sturges' best comedies and the second of two that he made back-to-back with Bracken, the other being the amazing The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, the poster for which can be briefly glimpsed at the railway station scene at the end.
Foul Play, the Goldie Hawn comedy thriller that also launched Dudley Moore's Hollywood career. Good fun, written and directed by Colin Higgins who had a tragically AIDS-curtailed career that was remarkably high quality - scripts for Harold and Maude and Silver Streak; scripts and direction for Foul Play, 9 to 5 and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
Operation Mad Ball, in which Jack Lemmon organises an illicit soldiers/nurses dance in France just after WWII. Another very modest Lemmon comedy from the very weak Mill Creek set. Sammy Davis sings the title song, Mickey Rooney turns up for an obnoxious guest appearance.
The Desperate Hours, in which three escaped criminals hide out in a suburban home. Humphrey Bogart's compelling performance is the main draw in this influential film, the title of which was borrowed by episodes of both Steptoe and Son and Porridge.
The Palm Beach Story, in which Claudette Colbert screwballishly leaves Joel McCrea even though they're madly in love. Preston Sturges' comedy is wildly overrated, convoluted and rarely amusing. There's an extended scene on a train with a hunting club that made me want a shotgun of my very own. To make matters worse, Rudy Vallee has a major role and the old lech has creeped me out since I saw him interviewed in (I think) The RKO Story in which he boasted that his nickname back in the day was "The Man with the Cock in His Voice". Let them make a biopic of that! The highlight of the film is the opening credits which delivers at breakneck speed the story of what happened to our characters before this story begins. Then it's all downhill...
The Great Moment, in which Joel McCrea invents anaesthesia. This time Preston Sturges, one of cinema's greatest masters of sophisticated comedy, delivers ... a quite dreadful biopic that shoehorns in some badly misjudged comedy moments.
I Walked With A Zombie (1943)
Last but certainly best, Val Lewton’s ‘stunningly poetic horror classic’ brings my seven month journey through Voodoo In The Cinema to a fittingly brilliant end.
The first thing which becomes clear right from the opening frames is that although this film bears a horrific title, it’s not going to be a horror movie as we know it, Jim. Or not even as most contemporary audiences would have known it either, being generally more used to the likes of the Universal Monster franchises and other studios’ similar cash-ins, the Mad Doctor and Weird Science sagas starring Karloff and Lugosi, and sundry Old Dark House melodramas.
In fact, because its creators, especially producer Val Lewton, were not at all interested in conventional scary movies but were under duress from RKO to make a ‘horror picture’, they took pains to avoid the usual genre clichés and standard chiller formula and came up with something far more subtle and lyrical but simultaneously far more disturbing and unsettling than many of the usual ‘cut to the chase’ shockers of the day, even in spite of Lewton’s celebrated remark that he was going for ‘Jane Eyre In The West Indies’ (six decades before anyone came up with the seemingly nutty notion of Pride And Prejudice And Zombies).
One of the few real precursors to this type of atmospheric, understated, noir-ish, supernatural tinged drama that 1940s audiences would have experienced was in fact Lewton’s own genre opera prima, the previous year’s Cat People, also directed by Jacques Tourneur.
The very opening of the movie must have proved a letdown for some cinemagoers; as the credits come up to the strains of Roy Webb’s swelling romantic score, more suited to a love story (which, of course, it also is), we see the silhouettes of a cloaked woman and an extremely tall, thin man, placidly strolling along a beach at dusk. Nothing horrific or menancing whatsoever – although the customary anti-defamation disclaimer contains a facetious italicised addition ‘Any similarity to actual persons, living, dead or possessed, is purely incidental’. Then nurse Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) opens her off-screen narration with the words ‘I walked with a zombie’ So was that it? What we just saw? In fact we will soon learn that Betsy takes more than one walk with more than one zombie and they will be considerably more frightening than the sedate opening seaside promenade.
After a seemingly innocuous beginning when Betsy is engaged in Ottawa to nurse the wife of a sugar company supplier in the West Indies, things start to turn a little darker when Betsy meets her new employer, plantation owner Paul Holland (a fine, controlled, urbane but intentionally aloof performance from Tom Conway, a decade before his unfortunately declining career forced him to appear in poverty row potboilers, ironically including the atrocious Voodoo Woman) aboard ship bound for the Caribbean island of St Sebastian. Accompanied by the mournful shanty sung by the black crewmen in the background, Holland shatters Betsy’s idyllic appreciation of the tropical sights and sounds. “Everything seems beautiful because you don’t understand,” he says. “Those flying fish, they’re not leaping for joy, they’re jumping in terror – bigger fish want to eat them. That luminous water – it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies, the glitter of putresence. There’s no beauty here, only death and decay.” Upon sighting a shooting star he remarks “everything good dies here, even the stars.” Throughout the film he often gloomily points out the unpleasant or dubious side of life and the human condition, ultimately including his own.
More downbeat talk ensues as the driver (Clinton Rosemond) taking Betsy to the plantation house ‘Fort Holland’ educates her as to the island’s past. “The Hollands was the most old family, Miss, they brought the coloured folks to the island…an enormous boat brought the long ago fathers and the long ago mothers of us all, chained to the bottom of the boat.” To which the newcomer’s rather ingenuous reply is “ they brought you to a beautiful place, didn’t they?”
The picture’s earnest tone doesn’t require Rosemond and the other black actors in the cast to portray the broad sterotypes or demeaning caricatures which was their lot in many US films of the time, and in fact the nearest to a clichéd stock character would be Holland’s self pitying, hard drinking, half brother Wesley Rand (James Ellison, who nevertheless manages to inject some restraint into the role).
Christine Gordon (in what seems to be the only credited appearance of her scant half dozen screen roles in a brief three year film career) is limited to non-verbal acting in the pivotal role of Jessica Holland, Betsy’s patient who has apparently been left in a comatose, trance-like state as the result of some mysterious, post traumatic illness. Unwholesomely thin, with her flowing nightgown, gaunt and pallid face and staring, unresponsive gaze she makes for a memorable ‘white zombie’.
Betsy’s first encounter with her employer’s spouse, kept in a tower room of the mansion (cf Mr Rochester’s insane wife in the attic) is the first of a series of memorably eerie sequences, achieved by a perfect combination of masterful direction, atmospheric lighting, crisp chiaroscuro photography, evocative sets, spot-on performances, subtly suspenseful music, deft editing, flowing camerawork, all the trademarks in fact of the best of classic Hollywood cinema. And all for under 150,000 dollars!
Another constant is the skillful use of incidental sound to heighten tension – a woman’s weeping in the night, the cascading of water in the Fort Holland garden, the moaning of the tropic wind, the rustling of the sugar canes as the nurse walks with the zombie (?) to the Voodoo temple in a desperate attempt to procure a possible ‘cure’ through ancestral magic, the nocturnal pulsing rhythms of the drums in the distance (and again during one of the best choreographed drummin’n’dancin’ sequences in any Hollywood Voodoo picture), Paul’s melancholic piano playing, the crashing of the waves during the finale – as well as the equally effective occasional sudden silences. Of course the customary ‘Lewton bus’ is also present, in this case when Betsy is startled by a large owl.
As in most of Lewton’s ‘horror’ pictures, there is plenty of room for ambiguity and in this particular case Ardel Wray’s rewrite of Curt Siodmak’s script (and presumably Lewton’s final retouching) eschews a lineal revelation of the mystery, instead supplying pieces of the puzzle (and certain ‘red herrings’) as the story progresses, via diverse sources such as the gossip of Betsy’s maid Alma (Theresa Harris, seen in the 1932 Voodoo thriller Black Moon and in an uncredited role in Cat People), snatches of a strolling busker’s song (performed by celebrated Calypsonian Sir Lancelot), Wesley’s drunken recriminations, Betsy’s own observations of strange goings-on, etc allowing us to gradually learn about the origin of the ‘traumatic event’, the subsequent diagnosis of the illness and its sequel, as well as insinuating the other ‘obvious’ cause of the woman’s ‘living dead’ state: Voodoo. In fact there are almost as many plot twists in I Walked With A Zombie than in any of Jimmy Sangster’s famous Hammer thrillers – though in this case they are rather more plausible.
Although not introduced until a third of the way through, the key figure at the centre of events is the Holland family matriarch Mrs Rand (Edith Barrett, who played Mrs Fairfax in a ‘conventional’ film version of Jane Eyre later the same year). Presented as a kindly, dignified, resourceful and self confident elderly lady (though Barrett’s old age makeup is not as effective as could be desired), she is respected by the local community and we eventually discover she has more than one hidden involvement with the voodooists.
Her explanations to Betsy about the local religion show that Lewton’s team did fair research into the subject, with talk of houngans, the sabreur, the hounfort, possession by Loas, foremost among whom Legba and Damballah (cryptically referred to by Alma as ‘better doctors’), the animal skulls placed along the route to the temple, ceremonial rites, even the name of the imposing zombie ‘Carrefour’ (Darby Jones, who reprised the role in RKO’s own parodical revisit to St Sebastian, Zombies On Broadway the following year) as well as the more prosaic need for ‘drugs, poisons, zombie dust’ to induce the death-like state prerequisite for zombification. There is one error (or possibly a deliberate simplification) though, which would only be apparent to those acquainted with Voodoo terminology; at one crucial point, Mrs Rand says ‘houngan’ when she can only mean ‘bokor’.
Scenes depicting rituals are dynamic and suspenseful, while also in a sense ‘more realistic’ than similar sequences in other films. Here the celebrants are not all bare-chested, daubed in mystical painted symbols, or clad in outlandish‘native’ or ‘ethnic’ garb. Many are dressed in everyday ‘Euopean’ clothes, with men in suits, jackets, shirtsleeves, panama hats, quite a few of them wearing ties and the clichéd rudimentary Voodoo fetish rag doll is prosaically replaced in this film by a shop-bought plastic child’s doll.
All of which helps to underline that the syncretic Caribbean religion is just as much an unremarkable aspect of everyday life in the eyes of its adherents as the other variants of monotheism are to practising Christians, Jews and Moslems. From a narrative perspective this helps the screenwriter(s) to further pursue their intended line of ambiguity and lends weight to Paul’s categorical statement (and Mrs Rand’s purported belief) that the ‘magical powers’ attributed to Voodoo are so much ‘mumbo jumbo’.
Inevitably for a film which runs to just sixty eight minutes, the love story between Betsy and Paul Holland unfolds at an implausibly rapid pace but seems doomed from the start. Holland attributes his wife’s vegetative condition to his involuntary but compulsive psychological mistreatment of her and fears he is only capable of destroying any woman he allows himself to love, as he admits to the despairingly devoted Betsy;
“You remember the first night I saw you? You were looking at the sea. You were enchanted. And I felt I had to destroy that enchantment. Make you see ugliness and cruelty”
“You were trying to warn me.”
“No, I was trying to hurt you. It was the same way with Jessica.I had to hurt her. Everything she did or said made me lash out at her. That’s why I want you to go. You see, Betsy, since you’ve been here I’ve seen how fine and sweet things can be between a man and a woman. How love can be calm and good. I’d rather not have that sort of love than have it and destroy it…..that’s why I want you to go. It’s no good for you to stay so long as I have this fear of myself”. A predicament which harks back to the condition suffered by Simone Simon’s character Irena in Lewton/Tourneur’s previous joint venture, the aforementioned Cat People.
Once the whole story (in each of its diverse versions) has been revealed, the denouement comes with the inevitably of a Greek tragedy. Betsy refuses Wesley’s request to ‘free’ Jessica by administering a drug overdose. Apart from the evident ethical professional reasons, the nurse tells him “I love Paul too much for that”. Now seemingly resigned to his destiny, the man who had been about to steal his half brother’s wife opens the gates – literally and figuratively- to the unavoidable fate awaiting the ‘cursed’ adulterous couple. The ending is the final iteration of the film’s ongoing ‘human agency or Voodoo magic?’ dichotomy, though, this being a 1940s Hollywood production the very last scene fades out on Paul and Betsy finally embracing their true feelings and each other, a cinematic convention which in no way detracts from the brilliance of the finest of Lewton’s exceptional series of nine ‘low budget horror pictures’.
Good Neighbor Sam, in which mild family man Jack Lemmon has to pretend to be the husband of sexy neighbour Romy Schneider so that she can inherit a fortune. Edward G. Robinson guest stars. Another weak 1960s comedy that has a few decent moments but nowhere near enough to justify the punishing 130-minute running time, despite which several subplots are barely developed.
The Lady Eve, in which con woman Barbara Stanwyck sets her romantic sights on naive Henry Fonda. Preston Sturges shows how to cram a whole load into a brisk 93 minutes, including the opportunity to let a wonderful supporting cast shine. The oly thing that doesn't work so well is that I can't see why Stanwyck should fall for Fonda who is wet and not very likable here.
Three for the Show, in which Broadway musical writer (Jack Lemmon) comes out of the US Airforce to discover that he'd been reported dead and his wife (Betty Grable) has married his friend and writing partner (Gower Champion). Hijinks ensue and several standards are sung. Light, serviceable and forgettable, apart from the Gershwin covers which are now stuck in my head.
The Notorious Landlady, in which newly-appointed diplomat Jack Lemmon rents a London apartment from, and falls in love with, Kim Novak who is suspected of murdering her husband. Tonally bizarre film that starts off as a laughless comedy before taking a sharp turn into thrill-less thriller ending up in embarrassing slapstick. There's plenty of star power - Fred Astaire, Lionel Jeffries, even Henry Daniel turns up in a small role but the script from the usually reliable Blake Edwards and Larry Gelbart is a total mess that looks like it was made up as it went along.
My Sister Eileen, musical remake of the 1942 comedy in which two sisters try to make it in New York. Betty Garrett is the aspiring writer, Janet Leigh the sister that all the men adore and Jack Lemmon is Betty's suitor. Quite fun with a good New York vibe and lively Bob Fosse choreography. The songs are fairly unmemorable which is something of a disappointment. Richard Quine directs, having appeared in the earlier film.
A Touch of Love, in which PhD student Sandy Dennis is knocked up by Ian McKellen and decides to have the baby. Dennis is excellent, Margaret Drabble's adaptation of her own novel is unsentimental. Perhaps Amicus' least typical film, it's worth a look but much more like a Play for Today than a theatrical feature.
Fantastic Voyage, the miniaturised sub inside the human body SF that they keep threatening to remake. It has not aged well but it's still fun. The best things about it are probably Leonard Rosenman's score and Donald Pleasence, oh and Racquel Welch in a skintight wetsuit. Apart from that, you can chuckle at the plotholes and the bits that seem to have come straight out of Airplane! Notable for having inspired at least two Doctor Who stories: The Invisible Enemy (in which the enemy is not invisible; it's a crustacean so awkwardly constructed that it has to be wheeled about on its arse) and Into the Dalek.
The Big Money, in which Ian Carmichael is the least successful member of a family of crooks until he pinches a suitcase full of counterfeit pound notes. I watched this with a bizarre sort of fascination, so misguided is its script. There's not a tolerable character in the whole thing. The thing about petty crooks in movies is that they really need to be stealing from faceless authorities like banks or other organisations but the family of crooks here are pinching wallets from ordinary punters or books from libraries, so there's something immediately repellent about them. Then they ostracise Carmichael after he accidentally steals too big and he stays ostracised when you might think that some sort of redemption might provide a bit of humanity to the proceedings. Then Carmichael has to pass off the forged money, again in ordinary small businesses, in order to launder it to try to impress the awful, gold-digging barmaid that he has fallen for. She's so ghastly that she even steals money from him to buy herself a mink coat. The "happy" ending is that she somehow has an unearned change of character and falls in love with him when he goes to prison and exonerates her. Horrible stuff.
Sweet Country, an Australian "western" in which an Aboriginal man goes on the run after killing a deranged, rapey "whitefella". It's perfectly fine but I suppose I was hoping for more given that it has had mainly stellar reviews. It never reaches the heights of the great Australian films of the 1970s like The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith.
Watchmen, in its 215-minute "Ultimate Cut" edition, complete with the interpolated "Tales of the Black Freighter" animation (which is gruesome fun). I can certainly see why they didn't release this version of the film to cinemas as I'd have been struggling to follow what was going on if I hadn't seen the theatrical cut already. I liked it a lot though, despite hating everything else Zack Snyder has made. I'll no doubt watch the TV limited series adaptation of the graphic novel at some point.
Under the Yum Yum Tree, in which college students Carol Lynley and Dean Jones (looking every day of his 30+ years and then some) decide to test their relationship by cohabiting platonically in sleazy landlord Jack Lemmon's apartment. Another unfunny, creepy 60s comedy that wastes a good cast. Surprisingly, this got Golden Globe nominations and the play from which it was adapted was popular enough to also generate a TV pilot.
Revolt Of The Zombies (1936)
So it turns out this stinker was actually the antepenultimate film of the season – having seen White Zombie, I recalled that I had never been able to stay awake on the three occasions I attempted to watch the Halperins’ follow up and so was compelled by some kind of OCD to make another effort. I just kept telling myself ‘It’s only an hour….it’s only an hour…’ but believe me, if you only have an hour to live, watch this film, it will seem like an eternity.
There’s no Voodoo here, instead the ‘zombies, automatons, men without souls, robots’ (as they are variously referred to) are created by a Cambodian sorceror via telepathy/mind control and Bela Lugosi’s superimposed eyes from the previous film. He’s the last man to know the secret and as it’s World War One he does the obvious and offers his services to the Allies, to create an unkillable army of mindless slave soldiers (from the colonies, of course). After a field test with a single platoon of the unstoppable creatures ( obviously being mesmerised makes them immune to bullets and explosives) assaulting a German trench, the Top Brass are apalled by the implications – ‘this could mean the end of the white race!’ they conclude (for reasons known only to themselves). So they decide to imprison the Cambodian in solitary confinement to keep the secret secret. But one of the Allied officers (the sinister foreign looking one) kills the man and steals a paper which apparently holds the key to the location of some temple in a lost city in the Cambodian jungle where the ‘formula/ritual’ can be rediscovered. Then it’s a race to get an international task force to the ruins before it’s too late….
The rest is a tepid soap opera, played out against a back projected Oriental jungle and the expedition’s HQ in same. The CO’s daughter is the fly in the ointment (this is no place for a woman!) getting engaged to the mild mannered officer who secretly has the hots for her only in order to make his comrade, the macho hunk she’s really interested in, jealous and galvanise him into amorous action. But the ring is on the other finger when MMO is the one to discover the power of Bela’s eyes and puts his disapproving superiors and a contingent of coloured troops under the spell of that ol’ black magic.
Basically this is really just a remix of the ‘love triangle’ motif employed in White Zombie. In the Lugosi film, a man uses Voodoo when the woman he loves rejects his advances, being in love with another man, and he has her made into the titular living dead woman. This time a man uses the mere threat of ‘zombifying’ the lover of a woman he’s also in love with to force her to break up with his rival and marry him instead. In both cases the perpetrator repents because the object of his desire is unresponsive – in the first because she’s an unfeeling zombie, in the second because she still loves the other chap. ‘If I give up my powers, will you believe I really love you?’ he asks, desperate for his new wife to requite his passion. ‘Oh, yes!’ she responds, so he ingenuously turns off Lugosi’s eyes and all the people previously under mind control snap out of it. A native servant leads the troops against their oppressor to make sure he doesn’t try the same dirty trick again. Scores of the now ‘human’soldiers storm the HQ, tripping over furniture, getting bayonets stuck in wooden doors, barely able to break a window until finally two bullets from a Lee Enfield put an end to the rotter. The girl is reunited with her hunk and the now paralysed CO entones the profound epitaph ‘Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad’. And if the gods don’t make you mad, wasting sixty four minutes on this soppy, poorly acted, snail paced, cheap and tacky crap should do the trick.
Christmas in July, in which William Powell is tricked into thinking he has won $25k. Title apart (it's not a Christmas film so it's fine to watch it at any time of year without feeling a bit weird), that is a lovely, brisk Lubitsch comedy. It's interesting that the guys who trick Powell aren't presented as villains; instead, they realise that what they've done is stupid and try to own up and face the consequences. It's so rare that a filmmaker doesn't go for the easy choice of making them cheap baddies that it really stands out.
The Serpent And The Rainbow (1987)
The antepenultimate film in my Voodoo Season was Wes Craven’s horror fantasy based on (or ‘inspired by’) the Wade Davis investigation into the case of Clairvius Narcisse, the only officially documented zombie (which was also the basis of the 2019 French film Zombi Child).
Adding historical licence to the mix, scripters Richard Maxwell and Adam Rodman incorporate the then topical civil unrest and eventual popular uprising against the totalitarian regime of ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier and his Tonton Macoutes, which led to the flight of the dictator and the collapse of the regime in 1986, some six years after the Narcisse case became public knowledge and three years after Wade published his findings.
Nonetheless, such ‘historical readjustment’ is easily justified since the Duvaliers actually combined violence against political opponents with exploitation of Voodoo to instill fear in the majority of the population and many houngans were incorporated into the ranks of the Macoutes, all of which is illustrated on screen.
The inclusion of the academic research angle, the historical recreation of political repression and corruption, the sociocultural panorama of a country in the grip of abject poverty and the dichotomous presentation of the Voodoo cult as both just one more syncretic religion and also a dreaded form of evil sorcery means that Craven’s film becomes a somewhat tonally mismatched blend of gritty political thriller, quasi-anthropological chronicle and supernatural fantasy, tending more towards the latter as the story progresses, even at times heading into familiar Nightmare On Elm Street territory once the bokor threatens 'I can enter your dreams' and the Krueger-esque hallucinations begin.
Of course there’s also the obligatory romantic subplot and some typically (often gratuitous) eighties shock-horror effects. But despite the disparate styles and strands it all comes together rather well (better in fact than in the aforementioned Zombi Child which covers much of the same ground but comes over like two distinct films running in parallel). The film's success is in great measure due to the solid performances of the leads Bill Pullman and Cathy Tyson, a panic inducing turn by Zakes Mokae as the truly horrendous secret police chief, and a well judged character act from Paul Winfield as the ‘loveable rogue’ purveyor of ‘zombie dust’.
Although it does get a bit too ‘Poltergeist’ at the end, The Serpent And The Rainbow is a fine addition to the genre and probably the last (English language) film to date to feature ‘authentic’ zombies.
Also nice to see The Goffster in a couple of scenes.
White Zombie (1932)
The film debut of Voodoo in the cinema features one of Bela Lugosi’s most celebrated performances, which is just as well because the rest of the cast are lousy. Added to the silent-era style, over-gesticulating, exaggeratedly melodramatic, theatrical physicality of their performances, their line deliveries ironically lead one to think that they, and not Lugosi, are barely acquainted with the natural rhythms and speech patterns of the English language. In Bela’s case, his alien cadences lend the character a layer of sinister strangeness, but the rest of the company seem like they’ve been recruited from an inept amateur dramatics society.
Apart from Lugosi, the saving graces of the picture are the atmospheric sets (courtesy of Universal) and dreamlike B/W photography, plus Legendre’s rag-tag troupe of living dead slaves, who are effectively creepy rather than truly scary.
Director Victor Halperin exhibits the odd interesting composition and there’s some commendable experimentation with low key lighting, split screen, wipes, disolves etc. The infamous scene of the zombie toppling into the sugar cane grinder still raises a shudder while the running gag ‘excuse me, have you got a match’ remains eternally tiresome.
As I noted when reviewing Ritual (2002), the remake of 1943’s classic I Walked With A Zombie, the basic premise of White Zombie is tacked on to the end of that picture as a kind of reversed coda; the antagonist relishing the unresisting state of his zombie bride rather than experiencing Beaumont’s remorse at her unresponsiveness.
Twice-Told Tales but once watched is enough.
Twice-Told Tales, in which Vincent Price takes the lead in three adaptations of Nathaniel Hawthorne stories. Incredibly, this is two hours long which surely must have made it one of the longest horror movies up to this time (1963). That's a real problem, particularly as the first two stories are awfully similar - both feature triangles of a sort and plots that involve chemical experiments that have tragic effects on the human body. Things perk up a bit in the final tale, an adaptation of The House of the Seven Gables, which has a few grisly bits. All three stories have small casts and are shot on cheap, cramped sets, very much lacking the visual style of Roger Corman's Poe adaptations, which clearly inspired this film. I'm certainly glad I didn't have to watch this late at night with half an hour of adverts to extend the running time beyond endurance.
Recoil, in which Elizabeth Sellars fake romances the man who killed her father. Modest crime drama offers the opportunity to look at Sellars' startling beauty so that's nice. I've just learned that she only died in December at the age of 98.
The Invisible Agent, another of Universal's dismal non-horror sequels, this time a WWII "comedy" adventure about the latest in the Griffin family spying in Nazi Germany. The only amusing bit in it is a dated piece of racism when the Invisible Man says something along the lines of "all Japs look the same", only he's saying this to Peter Lorre whose Japanese "make-up" consists solely of a pair of round glasses.
Goin' South, a comedy western in which Mary Steenburgen marries outlaw Jack Nicholson to save him from hanging. Steenburgen, in her debut, is adorable but Nicholson, who also directs, goes way over the top, as do Christopher Lloyd and John Belushi (completely wasted as a Mexican).
Captain Boycott the story of the real-life rent strike and, well, boycott against the man who gave his name to that particular noun and verb. It's unusual and refreshing to see Irish history getting the film treatment and it doesn't shy away from the violent nature of the events. There's an excellent cast: Stewart Granger, Kathleen Rt=yan, Alastair Sim, Mervn Johns, Robert Donat, Niall MacGinnis and even Michael Ripper. Unfortunately, the title role goes to Cecil Parker who seems simultaneously lightweight and too fat (since he has to be a jockey in a horse race at one point).
Just William's Luck, Val Guest's adaptation of the Richmal Crompton stories about the mischievous schoolboy. I loved these books as a child, although I was always puzzled as to why William Brown's lifestyle bore no relation to that of me or my friends. The spooky bit: William and his gang decide to fake a haunting in a mansion.
The Dummy Talks, in which there is a murder backstage at a variety theatre. That means we're going to get a lot of variety acts; fortunately, they are mostly decent ones. Jack Warner makes his film debut - in the starring role no less - in his late 40s; Ivy Benson, of Dance Band fame, has a prominent role. The spooky bit: there's a faked seance to help expose the killer.
Phffft, in which Judy Holliday and Jack Lemmon get divorced and find out they're still in love. The first film from writer George Axelrod, whose comedies more often than not feel a lot more heavy-handed than they should (which explains the clunkiness of the screwball parts of Hammer's The Lady Vanishes), this one gets by on the charm of its two leads, freshly-reunited from the much better It Should Happen to You. Kim Novak makes an early appearance as a perpetually available dumb blonde of the same sort that Marilyn Monroe would portray in Axelrod's next film, The Seven Year Itch. Directed by Val Lewton protege Mark Robson.
So I'm back in the room and it's time to tackle the final five and get my Voodoo Season done and dusted. The first....
Sugar Hill (1974)
In the wake of their hits with the Blacula pictures, AIP continued along the blaxploitation road with this simple tale of revenge by Voodoo.
Marki Bey makes for a spirited heroine as Diana ‘Sugar’ Hill who enlists the aid of local Mambo woman Mama Maitresse after her lover is murdered by the mob for refusing to sell them his successful ‘Club Haiti’ nightspot. Baron Samedi (Don Pedro Colley in a larger than life performance that just manages to avoid overstepping into parody) is summoned and raises a number of zombies to obey Sugar’s commands and wipe out the gangsters one after another, leaving the top man, played by Robert Quarry, for last.
The zombies are memorably different from the majority of your typical post ’68 shambling corpses. With blue-ish grey skin, heads festooned with cobwebs and silver globes for eyes they manage to be appealingly creepy rather than disgustingly sickening. The miscreants receive their comeuppance in grisly ways although filmed in a non-graphic style. It’s all very colourful, even the nocturnal, foggy graveyard scenes and Paul (‘Police Academy’) Maslansky pulls off an occasional directorial flourish along the way. Unfortunately, once the undead are on the case, there is little in the way of dramatic tension or suspense since the outcome is never in doubt and the protagonist is never in the slightest jeopardy, leaving this a notch below AIP’s other Voodoo outing Scream, Blacula, Scream.
Spider-Man: Far From Home. Watching this at home without the weight of the aftermath of Avengers: Infinity War I enjoyed this a bit more than I did at the cinema but it's still far from (sic) being one of the better films in the MCU. The teenage comedy is charming at times but the fights against the Elementals are very generic superhero fare and Mysterio absolutely needed to be played by a star with charisma to rival that of Robert Downey Jr. and, talented actor though he is, Jake Gyllenhaal very much lacks that quality.
Luv, in which suicidal Jack Lemmon is saved by his old school pal, Peter Falk, who then tries to offload his wife (Elaine May) onto him. Based on a hit play (which at various times starred Alan Alda and Gene Wilder) this feels very theatrical with most scenes consisting of two or three cartoonish characters delivering mannered dialogue at each other. There are bits that might have been on stage with actors delivering big, showy performances but on screen the whole thing is just shrill and obnoxious and a horrible waste of a talented cast. Harrison Ford can be briefly glimpsed.
Eyewitness, in which a woman witnesses a robbery from a cinema and the murder of the manager, is immediately knocked unconscious in a traffic accident, then taken to hospital where the killer plans to bump her off before she can identify him. This is magnificently, hilariously, even heroically dated stuff. You have to love any film that begins with a domestic row over the profligate husband spending £3 a month renting a brand new 21" television set on which to watch Godfrey Winn. The vicious, sadistic killer is played by ... Donald Sinden. Nicholas Parsons plays a surgeon. For some reason the score seems to have been composed for a sci-fi B-movie, coming complete with theremin
I recall the end credits song was a sequel to their biggest hit Underneath the Arches in which they sang that said arches had been demolished.
A Fire Has Been Arranged, in which Flanagan & Allen are hired to work in a department store that Alastair Sim plans to burn down. There's not enough Sim or Robb Wilton, too many bad songs, and way, way too much Bud & Chesney. And let's be clear, any Flanagan & Allen is too much Flanagan & Allen: their cross-talk patter is bewilderingly unfunny.
The Mad Magician, in which Vincent Price is a builder of magic tricks who gets revenge on people who cross him ... in 3D. This is an exceptionally silly and cheesy effort, and quite sloppily made at times, but I confess that I enjoyed it more than House of Wax. As Price has to disguise himself as a couple of his victims the actors who play those roles are also unconvincingly made up (and too short), including one scene where someone's moustache is flapping half off. There feels as if a major plot point has gone missing as there's no reason given for Price's impersonations. Conversely, there's an extended sequence in which Price has to go in pursuit of a bag that contains the head of one victim that ends in a total anticlimax and and feels like it has been put in for padding. The 3D is rather indifferently used.
Indicator's BD has a nice little doco shot in 3D about 3D movies, an informative Jonathan Rigby commentary, and a couple of 3D shorts starring the The Stooges, one of which has the annoying and unfunny trio coming up against a mad scientist and a man in an ape suit.
Atomic Blonde, in which Charlize Theron is a kick-ass, lesbian agent in Berlin as the wall comes down. Brutal, pulverising fight scenes are the highlight here.
The Brigand of Kandahar, again with the commentary track playing to distract from the tedium. It's camper, and therefore more fun than, Visa to Canton and there's some slight interest in having a hero conflicted because of racism in his regiment. Ultimately, it's the cheapness that defeats it with the fairly lavish battle scenes (stock footage from another film) looking out of place alongside the indoor exteriors.
Visa to Canton, Hammer's dull espionage adventure. I watched it with the commentary track on as I'd seen the film before and needed something to keep me interested because the story wasn't going to and there's only so many times one can exclaim in bewilderment "are they really supposed to be Chinese" (Athene Seyler and Eric Pohlmann are saddled with a couple of the worst ethnic make-ups you'll ever see). Apparently, this was originally intended as a TV pilot and around 15 minutes were added to it to turn it into a B-feature when it became apparent that there would be no interest in a series. That's different to what I'd read about the film previously so at least that was worth knowing. Perhaps fittingly, the extras on this Indicator BD are the weakest I've seen for one of this company's releases.
Happy Death Day, in which Groundhog Day is re-imagined as a post-modern slasher movie and somehow manages to be a funny, charming, feel-good experience with a terrific lead performance from Jessica Rothe.
I Am Not Your Negro, a timely showing for the documentary looking at US race relations from the point of view of late author James Baldwin. It's kind of odd looking at this film that contains a lot of archive footage and stills of police brutality and lynchings and suddenly realising that the phone cam clips we've probably all seen over the past few weeks are not extraordinary; they're part of the everyday reality for some people and only the ability to capture the incidents easily and share them quickly is a relatively new thing. Oddly, I've probably learned more about race relations from watching Birth of a Nation than from a documentary like this since Griffiths' film properly communicates the twisted mindset of the white supremacist since that's what Griffiths was and he was trying to sell his propaganda as truth.
The Pirates of Blood River, one of Hammer's best swashbucklers. Christopher Lee at his most iconic, all in black and sporting an eye patch, Ollie Reed, Michael Ripper, Andrew Keir and some (off-screen) piranhas. I've always enjoyed this one and sill remember being thrilled when it would turn up on Saturday night telly. I have a vague memory of being a wee boy sometime in the early '70s seeing a poster for this and Mysterious Island advertising a matinee in Berwick-Upon-Tweed. This would have been around 10 years after the original release of that double bill. The Indicator BD is terrific and includes a lengthy Jonathan Rigby appreciation of Jimmy Sangster and an interesting look at how Pirates was originally given an X certificate before being re-edited for an A then edited again to get a U. The full uncut version is what we get on the disc, now certified 12.
Watched a double bill last weekend of The Toolbox Murders and the Italian Hitch-Hike (both on my new fave, you guessed, Amazon Prime). Wanted to see both for a while now and glad I did not have to buy them to be able to do this...if you are a fan of a sweaty and hammy Cameron Mitchell you will like the first and if you like to watch Franco Nero with a big moustache, you'll like the second. I preferred the latter.
Last night we watched Robert Altman's Images (courtesy of...you guessed) which I really liked, Javier didn't. No accounting for taste.
Nightmare in Wax, in which Cameron Mitchell is (I think) a former Hollywood make-up man who now runs a wax museum where he kidnaps people and uses them for his statues, except they're still alive and have to keep being injected to keep them in suspended animation ... or something. In fairness, it's not entirely the film's fault that I was having difficulty following it (although it does have an incomprehensible ending) because the Mill Creek DVD has such poor sound quality that much of the dialogue is inaudible. It's dull and fairly bad but there are a few points of interest to it. Guest appearances from waxworks of Gary Cooper and Rudolph Valentino. Script from Rex Carlton, the writer of The Thing That Wouldn't Die, with which film this one shares a liking for people with their heads through holes in tables. According to Imdb Rex killed himself because he couldn't pay back a mob loan that he took out to fund another (presumably terrible) movie. On UK release NiW went out in a double bill with Blood of Dracula's Castle (I used to have the press synopsis for this pairing), which was also penned by Rex but directed by the notorious Al Adamson. It's less dull than NiW but worse (unless your mileage is that less dull = better).
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, a sort of This Is Spinal Tap for the younger generation. Quite amusing with some hilariously awful lyrics but probably a lot funnier if you get the reference and know who more of the guest stars playing themselves are.
Fiddlers Three, in which two sailors and a WREN are struck by lightning in Stonehenge and end up in Nero's Rome. I'm declaring it brave of me to tackle another 1944 time travel comedy starring a Tommy (in this case Trinder) after the tedium of Time Flies a few weeks ago but this Ealing effort is a lot better with some gags that are actually quite funny and a bit risque for the period and an ending that sort of pre-empts Back to the Future. A reference to Eddie Cantor's Roman Scandals provides a bit of post-modernism to the proceedings.
Smashing Time, musical comedy in which northern (English) lasses Lynne Redgrave and Rita Tushingham go to London. I wanted to like this one more than I did because '60s swinging London looks adorably colourful and the two leads are great but, oh my!, there are too many scenes of clumsy slapstick that go on and on and on. By the end I was more irritated than entertained.
The Monster, in which mostly standard old dark house comedy thriller shenanigans occur in a sanitarium that has been taken over by mad surgeon Lon Chaney. There's a bit too much weak comedy in the early portions of the film, and barely any Chaney, but it picks up mightily towards the end with some exciting stunt work in a storm and some proper menace from Lon.
Trip with the Teacher, in which some elderly teenage girls and their teacher are menaced and molested by a couple of rapey psycho bikers and their tiny knife. Sleazy and badly-made mid-'70s grindhouse/drive-in fare. Zalman King as the lead pycho is better than the film deserves, everyone else is a plank. Amazingly, the end credits have a sort of You Have Been Watching for the assorted treen. The only film ever auteured by Earl Barton who had a small role in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
Footsteps in the Fog, in which maid Jean Simmons blackmails Stewart Granger after he murders his wife. Entertaining stuff that feels a little like a proto-Hammer, only with fewer Gothic elements.
Moulin Rouge, the biopic of Toulouse-Lautrec. This one has been shown for decades in horribly faded prints which, considering the film's major appeal lies in its recreations of Lautrec's paintings, made it almost unwatchable. The recent restoration released on BD by the BFI at least restores the original Oscar-winning visual splendour. It doesn't stop it from being a rather lifeless portrayal of the artist though; it's really quite hard to believe that he didn't have more fun. It's of interest here though as it's the first film in which Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee appeared. (I know Lee always liked to claim he was in Hamlet but I'm not convinced that sneaking onto a set and shouting in the dark actually counts. By that token, I was in an episode of Bob Servant and at least I was invited). Each has one scene (Lee as dotty artist Seurat and Cushing as Lautrec's love rival) and both make an impact. Ballerina Colette Marchand made her feature film debut, was Oscar-nominated and only ever made two further features. A sizable hit in its day. perhaps its most lasting impact was in the amount of comedy sketches it inspired featuring kneeling comedians with shoes strapped to their knees. Like this one: https://youtu.be/Omg5YHJhoW0
The Girl with a Pistol, in which Sicilian Monica Vitti comes to Britain to shoot the lover who spurned her. Notwithstanding that this Italian comedy is absolutely terrible - unfunny, shrill, annoying and quite badly made - it has a number of points of interest. Firstly, it was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, which is quite unbelievable, unless the Italian-language version is vastly different to the English-language one shown by Talking Pictures. Secondly, it features location shooting in various cities in Scotland and England that don't feature a lot in British films from the late '60s. It was quite fun seeing shots of Edinburgh from that period. Thirdly, there are a few well-known British faces in the cast, including Stanley Baker, Tony Booth, Corin Redgrave and Corrie's Johnny Briggs. I thought I spotted a very young James Cosmo in there as well but I can't find any confirmation of that.
I Know Where I'm Going, the charming Powell & Pressburger romance that benefits enormously from location filming in the Western Isles.
Searching for Ingmar Bergman, a personal documentary on the Swedish master by German director Margarethe von Trotta. Moderately interesting if you like Ingmar but not enormously deep or enlightening.
Wild Strawberries, in which an elderly professor takes a road trip, muses on his past and encounters various characters. One of Bergman's best-loved films and deservedly so. Woody Allen nicked a fair bit of this for Deconstructing Harry, his last really good movie.
Vertigo. I still don't really get the love for this one despite being able to recognise that there are some impressive sequences, a brilliant performance from James Stewart and fine support from Barbara Bel Geddes. It doesn't help that I've never understood the appeal of Kim Novak as an actress.
Ratatouille, in which a rat becomes a chef. I think this may be my favourite Pixar, although a good case could be made for Up or Wall-E. I love Michael Giachinno's score and the Parisian ambiance. Star Patton Oswalt (voice of Remy) is a huge film buff and Hammer fan.
The House in the Woods, in which writer Michael Gough and his wife, Patricia Roc, in search of a quiet abode, go to stay with artist Ronald Howard. There's an interesting idea behind this one but the execution is very poor. Howard's pretentious artist has some hilarious dialogue, not helped by the examples we see of his paintings being terrible. There's a key moment where a villain is thwarted by stopping to pet a cat. The best bit is when the Larry Adler record that Howard plays obsessively finally gets the needle knocked off it. It doesn't help that Network's DVD has very poor sound, although maybe being unable to hear some of the dialogue helps.
Great news for anybody with a taste for Japanese exploitation, I stumbled across the 1973 revenge flick Sex and Fury in a decent print on Internet Archive.
https://archive.org/details/SexAndFury1973
Reiko Ike is incredible as a katana-wielding thief out to kill the people behind her father's brutal murder when she was a child - and a scene where she's ambushed in the bath only to slaughter a dozen would-be assassins naked in the snow rivals any sword fight I've ever seen.
Great arterial sprays, endless sleazy blokes and corrupt politicians fill out the rest of the bill nicely - all this, plus Scandsploitation legend Christina Lindberg in a support role and an epic final showdown.
Very tasty
A Canterbury Tale, in which 3 travelers find themselves in an ancient English burgh which is being terrorised by the "Glue Man" who throws glue in the hair of girls. I'd never seen this Powell & Pressburger film and thought it started out very well, almost like it was going to be an early folk horror tale but the outcome of the Glue Man plot left me feeling a bit nauseated to be honest. I don't want to go into spoilers but the violent misogyny of the character somehow being excuse or brushed off is more horrifying than if this had been an actual horror film.
Mr. Topaze, in which Peter Sellers plays an honest Parisian schoolteacher who becomes corrupted. It's Sellers only film as director and it has a fantastic supporting cast (Leo McKern, Michael Gough, Herbert Lom, Martita Hunt to name but a few) so it's extraordinary that this was almost a lost film and has only recently been made available again after the BFI restored it from the only surviving print. I'm not sure if the film's odd sepia look is a deliberate artistic choice or down to the limitations of the print. While the film starts pretty well it seems to lose focus as it goes along and when it ends abruptly it feels as if the third act has gone missing. Worth a look for the cast though.
I haven't seen any films for a couple of days, what with work, incipient socialising and outdoor activities in the sun drenched Jardin CMM.
My Voodoo Season is drawing to a close, with the best left to last - Sugar Hill, The Serpent And The Rainbow, Plague Of The Zombies, White Zombie and I Walked With A Zombie are the remaining titles.
On the Beach, in which Americans in Australia await the arrival of the nuclear fallout that will kill them like it has killed everyone else. This may not have been the best choice of viewing in the present conditions. My previous viewing had taken place at a time when it looked as if we'd overcome the fear of immediate Armageddon that audiences in the 1960s would have felt while watching this. It feels a lot more real now. Fred Astaire delivers a fine straight performance.
Voodoo Island (1957)
“A wealthy industrialist hires the renowned hoax-buster Phillip Knight (Boris Karloff) to prove that an island he plans to develop isn't voodoo cursed. However, arriving on the island, Knight soon realizes that voodoo does exist when he discovers man-eating plants and a tribe of natives with bizarre powers.”
Perversely filmed in B/W in exotic Hawaiian locations, Voodoo Island is a rather unengaging example of the kind of low budget, low thrill ‘horror’ pictures so prevalent in 1950s US cinema.
Karloff seems to enjoy his role as a smug smart Alec who relishes scotching people’s beliefs in weird phenomena such as the Loch Ness Monster, the Yeti et al, and appears fairly sprightly at 70, wading ashore at said island and hacking his way through the jungle with brio (and a ruddy gurt machete).
The rest of the cast play their thankless roles in earnest, but the main problem is the feeble script. Apart from inventing ‘Voodoo’ goings-on in the Pacific Ocean instead of the Carribean (director Reginald LeBorg had previously directed Weird Woman (1944), which also located a ‘Voodoo Tribe’ on a South Seas island), practically the entire 78 minutes are taken up by talk, apart from the very occasional ‘horror’ scene of people being attacked and/or eaten by rubber ‘carnivorous’ plants.
Of course, ineptitude and incongruity are what make so many of these potboilers amusing to watch, and while the totally rubbish ‘tree crab’ and aforementioned ravenous shrubbery are indeed laughable, such ‘highlights’ are few and far between. Karloff gets to deliver the two most risible lines of dialogue in the whole movie; ‘ Carnivorous plants living in the water! There could be others on land – even more carnivorous!’ and urging his colleague not to resist the natives who have captured them with ‘Don’t be a fool, they’ll slaughter us to bits!’
One other notable element that adds a slight note of interest is the inclusion of a lesbian architect who makes tastefully veiled lascivious insinuations to the conventional damsel in distress. Of course, being 1957, the Sapphic siren gets killed first, leaving the way open for the macho boat captain to inveigle his way into the other girl’s…. arms.
Karloff and co are briefly held captive while the Chief (a vaguely camp white man who looks a bit like Ernest Thesiger) explains that he has led his people from island to island (but probably not all the way from Haiti), fleeing from the wicked ways of modern civilisation. ‘Don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone you’re here’ promises Karloff and the Chief replies ‘My men will show the way back to the boat. Goodbye’. Who needs a dramatic finale anyway?
(Co)incidentally, yesterday’s film was Zombie Nightmare, starring Adam West. And look! Here he is (uncredited) as a radio operator in his very first film appearance. What are the chances of that? Could it be Voodoo?
Linda Blair in Hellnight - and lo, it was dire 😂
Racial tension double bill (for some reason...)
The Hurricane, in which South Sea islander Jon Hall is unjustly persecuted by the white authorities. Eventually there is a hurricane. Hall is so very, very dull, both as an actor and how his character is written, and the baddies (including Raymond Massey and John Carradine) so one-note, that this is a bit of a drag to watch, despite the slightly hilarious disaster scenes. Not one of John Ford's better directorial efforts.
Odds Against Tomorrow, in which Harry Belafonte and Robert Ryan rob a bank. The former is an indebted-to-the-mob gambling addict and the latter is a volatile racist. Both actors are superb in what is largely a character study of the two men with very little actual bank robbery. Robert Wise directs tautly. This is very close to brilliant but, unfortunately, it scuppers that with a terrible last couple of minutes. A shootout concludes with a laugh-out-loud bit of what-the-fuckery and this is followed by A MESSAGE, and a bit of a confused one at that. Well worth watching apart from that.
Alastair Sim double bill:
Laughter in Paradise sees Sim at his most lugubrious. What a joy it must have been for any comedy writer to have Sim perform his or her work. This is among the most delightful of British comedies ... and there's a bonus "Introducing" credit for Audrey Hepburn as a cigarette girl.
Geordie, in which shy Scottish gamekeeper, Bill Travers, becomes an Olympic champion. Full disclosure: I've never seen this one before because my family always disliked it. Turns out, I did too. Sim is always watchable, there's some lovely scenery and there's a few familiar faces to enjoy but it's terribly twee with an all-bagpipes-and-tartan portrayal of Scotland. Plus, Geordie is such a fucking boring character and it's impossible for me to empathise with someone who evangelically shoots kestrels, even against his employer's instructions.
Bergman of the week:
A Ship to India, in which a hunchbacked sailor confronts his bullying father who is going blind, while both compete for the same woman. It's a good job that Bergman is brilliant because this could so easily have tipped over into so-miserable-it's-hysterically-funny territory and in the wrong hands the dialogue could have become pretentious. But, as always seems to be the case, Ingmar finds the beauty and hope among the misery and gloom. Sunlight dapples on dark waters in his films like in no-one else's.
Copacabana, a vehicle for Groucho Marx and Carmen Miranda. There's fun to be had when Groucho is on screen, not much otherwise. It's amazing how massive Carmen Miranda was and how her image has sustained, based on very little as far as I can see.
Victor/Victoria, not the movie but a recording for Japanese TV of the Broadway version of the stage musical adapted from the film (adapted from the other film ...) in which Julie Andrews plays performer who disguises herself as a man so she can pretend to be a female impersonator. The film always felt to me like a musical was aching to burst out and only really burst into life during Julie's performances. The musical is a definite improvement.
Melody (AKA S*W*A*L*K*), in which schoolboy Mark Lester falls in love. Charming and truthful, if a bit slow, depiction of childhood. An early script from Alan Parker, several Bee Gees' numbers on the soundtrack and Doctor Who's Waris Hussein on directorial duties.
Just discovered Reggie Perrin, the 2009 remake of Rise And Fall of Reginald Perrin, starring Martin Clunes as Reggie. Despite initial misgivings it turns out to be a rather good updating and it's still very recognisably David Nobbs' creation, even if the middle class suburban ennui seems more suited to the 1970s than the 21st century. The laughter track is somewhat offputting and quite unnecessary because there is still a great deal of wit and hilarious silliness that doesn't need to be flagged up. Wendy Craig is magnificent as Reggie's Mum and Geoffrey Whitehead (Silas, son of Silas) is uncannily similar to Geoffrey 'cock up on the catering front' Palmer.
The Day It Came To Earth, in which a corpse is revived by a meteor. Very cheap, 1970s sort-of-pastiche of 50s grade-Z scifi with a hopeless monster and terrible performances. Having just checked BBC Genome it would appear that my long-standing memory of having watched this on the BBC and thinking "what is this shite doing on the BBC" is somehow a false one. Could it have turned up on Channel 4 in the early 80s? The only alternative I can think of is that I rented a pre-code VHS (the BBFC certified release was in 1996 and it certainly wasn't as late as that that I saw it).
Incidentally, the DVD I'm watching it on is a Grindhouse Double Feature from Frolic Pictures. It's paired with Tender Dracula. The programme starts with Lonely Water (quite an odd choice for a US disc), followed by trailers for The Witching (AKA Necromancy) and The Beast in the Cellar. After the first feature there is an intermission bumper and trailers for The Bloodstained Shadow and The Slayer.
The Deep (1977)
Never seen it before and only took a punt because I’d read there was Voodoo involved. Well, there’s about two minutes of a Haitian crime boss’ masked henchmen sprinkling Jacqueline Bisset with chicken blood and that’s your lot. For the rest it’s a nicely photographed but rather tedious underwater treasure hunt affair. Nick Nolte’s character comes over as a petulant arsehole and la Bisset has little to do but model wet T-shirts and get her kit off. At two hours it soon outstays its welcome. At least Donna Summer had a disco hit with the feem toon.
The Invisible Woman, in which...ah, who cares! Third entry in Universal's "Invisible" series is a screwball comedy rather than a horror film. It's also a particularly tiresome and unfunny screwball comedy and even the special effects are tired and repetitive. With a few notable exceptions it's remarkable how bad most of Universal's second wave is.
Bad Day At Black Rock (1955)
In CinemascopE and Eastmancolor. Sweaty, edgy, tense and suspenseful.
Lydia Bailey (1952)
Here’s a Voodoo film you won’t find mentioned in most (if any) genre publications. A glossy, costly, sumptuous, historical adventure-romance produced by Twentieth Century Fox in blazing Technicolor.
“A young Boston lawyer, Albion Hamlin, goes to Haiti in 1802 to find Lydia Bailey, whose estate he must settle. The island is war-torn in the strife between Toussaing L'Overture, the black president, and the French who are trying to retake possession of the country. Hamlin finds Lydia, reluctantly betrothed to French aristocrat Col Gabriel d’ Autremont and, against the background of war and rebellion, they fall in love while helping the Haitians against the French.”
Of course, Voodoo played a large part in the uprising which led to independence and is duly central to the story. William Marshall, in his first film role, plays one ‘King Dick’ (Ooh, Matron!) twenty years before he became Blacula and Anne Francis is the title character four years before becoming Altaira in Forbidden Planet.
As you might expect, the emphasis is on action and spectacle, fine costumes, lovely frocks, elegant Chambers and lavish Balls on the one hand and exotic locations, filthy clothes, decrepit hovels and chicken decapitation / drummin’n’dancin on the other. The period sets are meticulously dressed, the scenes of nineteenth century gracious living stylishly shot and artistically lit, visually recalling the Gainsborough Gothics (or, perhaps more aptly in view of the colour, Blanche Fury or Jassy) while foreshadowing the look of the early Hammer horrors.
Seven Days to Noon, in which a scientist steals an atom bomb and threatens to detonate in London if the government won't stop producing bombs. André Morell leads the police effort to track him down while the city is evacuated. Gripping stuff from the Boulting Brothers from a story idea by none other than James Bernard. I was reminded of The Day the Earth Caught Fire at times with its end of the world vibe and similar music cues.
Rotten to the Core, in which a gang try to rob an army payroll. More from the Boultings, this time a comedy. It's a strange effort that plays quite flat, partly due to casting issues. Somehow, the lead role is taken by Anton Rodgers. Imdb says that Peter Sellers was intended to play the lead and it would make total sense if this was the case and if it had been made a few years previously. There are parts that seem made for the likes of Lionel Jeffries and Bernard Cribbins and even character names that reference The Wrong Arm of the Law and Two Way Stretch. Ultimately, it's a bit tired and not very funny. Charlotte Rampling looks stunning though, there's a good jazz number over the titles and it's crisply shot in widescreen black and white.
Timeslip, in which an atomic scientist turns up in the Thames with a bullet in him. He "dies" on the operating table then things get really strange. Dull crime drama with some dull scifi bollocks thrown in as a red herring. This one takes the casting of imported US stars to a bit of an extreme as the leads are Gene Nelson and Faith Domergue with an "introducing" credit for Peter Arne (who is half American ... and had a very colourful life). Carl Jaffe, way down the credits, gives the best performance, somehow managing to deliver the scifi exposition with a straight face. Jaffe is German, as is Paul Hardtmuth. By the time you add Joseph Tomelty as the main detective there aren't many of the more prominent parts left for anyone with an English accent. US viewers must have been very disappointed to see Domergue turn in what they were presented as The Atomic Man when there's so little scifi in it, coming off a couple of genre classics in It Came from Beneath the Sea and This Island Earth. Charles Hawtrey has a small role as an office boy - he is in his 40s at this point. A comically over-emphatic score adds a couple of much-needed chuckles.
Pot O'Gold, in which James Stewart likes music but his grumpy uncle doesn't, leading to conflict with the Irish neighbours who include Paulette Goddard and Mary Gordon. Stewart and Goddard in a Golden Age of Hollywood musical ought to be a reliable indicator of quality ... but it isn't. This one's a bit of a stinker, lacking any decent songs for one thing.