I liked Peter Fonda’s The Hired Hand a lot when it was fresh out of the box, but when I revisited it again a few years back, I wasn’t in the proper mood to be receptive. This time, I was very impressed.
The film is slow and contemplative, with considerable self-consciously arty touches, the sort of thing that’s not for all tastes. (See below.) As you may have heard down at Big Ed’s Billiard Parlor, your humble correspondent prefers style to all else in the cinematic universe, and Hired Hand has style to burn. It opens with a montage of overlapping images including a naked man (innocence), a man calmly fishing (the simple life to which some of us aspire), and the corpse of a little girl floating in the river (the harsh reality of life). The rest of the film contrasts what the characters want out of life and what imposes itself to make these aspirations unlikely.
Harry Collings (Fonda) married Hannah (Verna Bloom) when he was twenty and she was thirty, leaving 21 months later to do what a man has to do. When he returns with friend Arch Harris (Warren Oates), Hannah at first doesn’t recognize him. (Their little girl, played by Megan Denver, seems to be around six or seven.) Hannah initially resents Harry’s return, so he and Arch become hired hands. When Harry discovers that Hannah has been having sex with previous hired hands, he’s upset, but she stands up to him in a scene remarkable for its time and beautifully performed by Bloom. They reach a détente only for Harry once again having to do what a man’s gotta do.
Hired Hand was written by Alan Sharp during that remarkable period when he also wrote The Last Run, Ulzana’s Raid, and Night Moves, each taking different existential approaches to film genres. Hired Hand is the subtlest and most effective of these. Directing the first of his three films, Fonda displays a sure feel for Westerns and paces the film perfectly. His only weaknesses, common with actors directing their first films, may be the overuse of closeups, though Bloom and Oates have remarkably expressive faces.
In the same year he gave McCabe and Mrs. Miller a similar but gloomier look, Vilmos Zsigmond creates some striking images, especially the sunsets which correspond to the fading light in the lives of the characters. Editor Frank Mazzola, who had just worked on the quite different Performance, provides some lovely montages with not just two images overlapping but multiple images. The spare score by Bruce Langhorne is the sort of thing some composers make sentimental and corny, but it works here as perfect complement to the images and the film’s melancholy themes.
“How come you don’t have a dog.”
Leslie Halliwell: “A potentially enjoyable small-scale western is spoiled by pretentious direction and effects which bore the spectator to death.”
Stanley Kauffmann: “When a film begins with a ‘lyrical’ shot, your heart has a right to sink.”
Random thoughts:
The Arrow Blu-ray includes a lengthy 2003 documentary in which Fonda, Bloom, Zsigmond, Mazzola, Langhorne, and production designer Lawrence G. Paull (Blade Runner, Back to the Future) recall making the film. Zsigmond says that Fonda wanted the film to have the poetic feel of My Darling Clementine. We learn that Langhorne plays all the instruments we hear. Bloom tears up talking about what a special actor Oates was. She was recommended for her role by Fonda’s pal Sylvia Miles.
This was the first score composed by Langhorne, a session musician who recorded with all the major folk-music acts of the 60s, including The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and Bringing It All Back Home. Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” may have been inspired by a drum Langhorne played on some recordings.
Mazzola had a remarkable career, beginning as a child extra in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Casablanca, and The Boy with Green Hair. He has small roles in East of Eden and Rebel without a Cause. Mazzola is seen in the center of this still. As an editor, he worked frequently with Donald Cammell (Performance, Demon Seed, Wild Side).
First seen in a theater in Auburn, AL.
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I went into George King’s Crimes at the Dark House just hoping it would be watchable, but it turns out to be a hoot, a perfect example of nothing exceeding like excess.
The false Sir Percival Glyde (Tod Slaughter), whose real name we never learn, murders the real Glyde on Australia’s goldfields and comes to the Glyde family estate in England expecting to inherit a fortune. Alas, the real Glyde’s recently deceased pa left 15,000 pounds of debt, while our protagonist, let’s call him Percy, has only 60 pounds. What to do. What to do.
But the lucky bastard discovers Glyde is betrothed to orphan Laurie Fairlie (Sylvia Marriott), who will inherit 100,000 pounds. When Laurie meets Percy, she is appalled. Not only is she in love with dashing Paul Hartwright (Geoffrey Wardwell) but Percy looks just like Tod Slaughter.
All this is, of course, very loosely based on Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, shifting the emphasis from the damsel in distress to the villain. So many troubles pile up for Percy that I can’t help feeling some sympathy for the poor devil. Mrs. Catherick (Elsie Wagstaff) turns up saying Glyde is the father of her daughter Anne (also Marriott), who’s been locked up in the nuthouse of slimy Dr. Isidor Fosco (Hay Petrie). Mrs. C and Fosco immediately begin blackmailing Percy for being an imposter. And if that wasn’t enough, luscious servant Jessica (Rita Grant), with whom Percy has been holding hands, announces there’s a bun in the oven. What would you do if you found yourself in such straits? That’s right. That’s exactly what Percy does.
King, who made the very good The Case of the Frightened Lady this same year keeps this nonsense roaring at a frantic pace. The pace matches the one-of-a-kind Slaughter’s over-the-top performance. Cackling all the way, Tod gives his thick eyebrows a real workout. The diminutive Petrie is delightful in his attempt to keep up with the imposing Slaughter. I say they end in the film in a tie.
Being familiar with the Collins novel is not essential to enjoy Dark House but helps appreciate how economically all the source’s highpoints are presented. The film puts the mellow in melodrama in a highly entertaining way.
“That’s all you’ll get, you little worm. Take it for leave it.”
Leslie Halliwell: “Cheeky adaptation of a classic to make one of the star’s most lip-smacking barnstormers.”
The Monthly Film Bulletin: “Cast and direction have co-operated admirably in putting over this marvellous story in exactly the right manner. Never were villains more sinister nor heroines more pure, while right is triumphant and wrongdoing punished to the satisfaction of all. Tod Slaughter has a part after his own heart, and he enters into it with immense gusto.”
Random thoughts:
Rita Grant ended her brief film career in 1941 but didn’t go to the big screening room in the sky until 2017 when she was only 100.
Sylvia Marriott (1917-1995) went on to have a long career. Her credits include Two English Girls, The Story of Adele H., Never Say Never Again, Empire of the Sun, two Amicus horrors (Asylum, The Vault of Horror), and episodes of Wagon Train and Doctor Who.
The imposter has an oval-shaped mole on his right hip, but Percy is never asked to offer evidence.
Watched on DVD.
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“I see everything.”
In the last couple of weeks, the inhabitants of Chateau Noir have started at least a dozen films we were unable to finish because they were bad, boring, or incompatible with our many moods. I asked the dogs if they had any ideas about how to deal with this dilemma, and they pointed out the obvious: go with a popcorn movie. After going back and forth for a few hours, we realized that while we watched The Terminator almost exactly a year ago, we hadn’t followed with any of its offspring. Before beginning T2, I was saddened to discover we were out of popcorn, so we mimed slamming kernels down our gullets. Marcel Marceau would have been envious.
Jimmy Cameron knows how to appeal to our inner twelve-year-old selves, and all the special effects are quite special. But my favorite part of the film comes early: the motorcycle-truck chase down the mighty Los Angeles River. I wish it could have gone on longer. Call me jaded, but while I like the film a lot, my attention began wandering toward the end. There can be too much of a good thing. I kept thinking of Jalmari Helander’s Sisu films, which are constantly inventive. In comparison, Cameron’s seems a tad repetitious.
What I like most about the film is Arnold’s deadpan deliveries, a perfect example of how to be funny without seeming to try: “You were going to kill that guy.” “Of course, I’m a terminator.” I love the way Arnold says this as if it should be obvious. I also love the way Cyberman Systems Model 101 becomes increasingly human as the film progresses: “I need a vacation.”
Even though T2 is a popcorn movie, it has a serious side without being pushy about it, as when Arnold sez, “It’s in your nature to destroy yourselves.” The film opens with Los Angeles reduced to a wasteland in 2029 with humans fighting for their survival against machines. That sound about right.
Toodle pip, old chums.
Watched on Amazon Prime.
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“No lighthouse shines on itself.”
Koreyoshi Kurahara’s Intimidation is a nearly perfect film noir. Banker Kyosuke Takita (Nobuo Kaneko) has been promoted and is leaving his small town for Tokyo. But there’s a problem. He has married Kumiko (Yoko Kosono), the daughter of his boss (Jun Hamamura), stealing her from his childhood friend Nakaike (Ko Nishimura) while breaking the heart of Nakaike’s sister Umeha (Mari Shiraki), his longtime girlfriend. Takita will do anything to get and stay ahead, including making illegal loans. Then blackmailer Kumaki (Kojiro Kusangai) shows up demanding three-million yen, insisting Takita must rob his own bank.
The film contrasts Takita’s confident arrogance with Nakaike’s timidity and insecurity. But all is not what it seems, with one surprising development after another. Kurahara’s direction is sublime, with no wasted moments, building up slowly to the robbery and presenting it with little dialogue and increasing tension. I love all the ironic touches, though a development at the end keeps the film from being perfect. Kaneko and, especially, Nishimura deliver wonderful performances, making us feel their characters’ conflicted emotions. Intimidation is one of those films all aspiring filmmakers should see to find out how to do a lot with a little.
“I’ll come to bed after I sober up again.”
Watched on the Criterion Channel.
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In Clarence Brown’s The Rains Came, Fern Simon (Brenda Joyce) loves Tom Ransome (George Brent) who loves Lady Edwina Esketh (Myrna Loy) who loves Major Rama Safti (Tyrone Power) even though she isn’t supposed to because she’s white and he’s Indian. She’s also selfish and without purpose, having married the older and despicable Lord Albert (Nigel Bruce) for his moolah. Meanwhile, Rama is a saint, healing the sick and trying to see the best in all people. So Edwina tries to be a saint, too, and almost makes it. The end.
Based on a novel by Louis Bromfield, who wrote hefty bestsellers with a little literary heft, the film wants to dazzle us with its exotic Indian setting, shot partly in exotic San Diego, and to make us forget our troubles by drowning us in the troubles of people much prettier than we are, even on our best days.
It’s romantic hokum, but it’s very well-made Hollywood hokum. Loy and Power are very good, as is Chateau Noir favorite Maria Ouspenskaya as the local Maharani. Of course, Ty and Maria don’t look or sound remotely East Indian, but forget it, dear cinephiles, it’s Zanucktown. Ouspenskaya’s distinctive accent seemed made for any and all nationalities. Her role is larger than usual, and she smiles in most of her scenes, a rare sight.
Brown, who worked several times with Crawford and Garbo, and cinematographers Arthur Miller and an uncredited Bert Glennon know how to make gals glamorous. Loy has never looked so beautiful. Joyce is also quite lovely. Ty—well, he’s kinda cute, too.
But the main thing the film has going for is the special effects by Fred Sersen and Edmund Hansen. The big scene is an earthquake which sets off a gigantic flood, with buildings collapsing all over the place and extras running for their checks. It goes on and on and is impressively realistic for the period. It truly looks like the extras are done for several times. Rains was nominated for five tin trophies, with Sersen and Hansen winning, beating Gone with the Wind, Only Angels Have Wings, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Topper Takes a Trip, Union Pacific, and The Wizard of Oz.
Rains is an impressive example of what Hollywood could do in 1939 when Uncle Darryl was willing to foot the bill. The one previous time your humble correspondent and Mrs. yhc saw it, the film perked us up on a gloomy, rainy day. We could even forgive it dreary George.
Leslie Halliwell: “Wholly absorbing disaster spectacular in which the characterization and personal plot development are at least as interesting as the spectacle, and all are encased in a glowingly professional production.”
Charles Higham: “It would be difficult to improve on the direction, the outbreak of the monsoon, a current billowing in the breeze, a lamp casting the shadow of lattice work against white silk, servants scattering for cover.”
Random thoughts:
Rains was remade in 1955 as The Rains of Ranchipur with Richard Burton (an even less likely Indian than Power), Lana Turner, and Fred MacMurray. It got a special-effects nom but lost to The Bridges at Toko-Ri.
Loy was cast after Dietrich and Lamarr turned it down. Brent was second choice after Ronnie Colman.
Watched on FXM Retro.
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"I've never seen an Indian girl with a bra."
A Mario Bava Western? Reheat the spaghetti.
In Roy Colt and Winchester Jack, outlaw-turned-lawman Roy Colt (Brett Halsey), outlaw Winchester Jack (Charles Southwood), Roy’s old friend, Jack’s Native American girlfriend Manila (Marilu Tolo), and really nasty bad guy the Reverend (Teodoro Corra) are after some buried bags of gold. How did they get buried? Sorry, I missed it.
There are lots of shootouts, fistfights, and slapstick as Bava tries to send up the genre but is mostly just silly, as happens when you try tongue-in-cheek and bite your tongue. Is it Bava’s worst film? I refer you to Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs. It isn’t embarrassingly bad, just boring.
Bava makes the mistake of having the most interesting thing in his film come near the beginning when a miscreant shoots a gentleman’s crutches a few inches at a time, dropping him lower and lower. Otherwise, Tolo is very lovely and gives the best performance, having better comic timing than her costars, Isa Miranda has a small role as a madam, a long way from her triumph in Ophuls’ Everybody’s Woman, and Piero Umiliani’s score, which takes on a different style in each scene, including an organ fit for a horror film in one, is quite interesting. I also like Roy’s distressed leather jacket.
"We'll meet again, stranger."
Tim Lucas, Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark: The film “involves a deliberate element of grotesquery, resulting sometimes in overbearing exaggerations of nature, overstated action and distorted performances that are all too easy to interpret unfavorably.”
Troy Howarth, The Haunted World of Mario Bava: “the film is definitely the most outré and experimental of Bava’s Westerns. Bava’s unique visual style is evident in the film’s unusual angles and camera movements. Elegant dolly shots are juxtaposed with more grotesque visual devices, such as the use of fisheye lenses. Piero Umiliani’s score is a major improvement on his work for The Road to Fort Alamo, and his Hammond Organ-drenched music helps build the film’s off-kilter ambience. The end result is very much a lark; it is a minor work, but it is not completely without charm.”
Random thoughts:
Tolo turned 83 on January 15. She hung up her greasepaint in 1985.
Halsey will be 93 on June 20. Brett has had a fascinating career. He enrolled in the Universal Unintentional Academy of Film Acting along with David Jansen and Clinton Eastwood, Jr., making his debut with a bit part in Doug Sirk’s All I Desire. He later worked with Clint in Lafayette Escadrille, Bill Wellman’s final film. He’s in The Cry Baby Killer, Jack Nicholson’s first film. He then starred in Return of the Fly, the disappointing sequel to The Fly, and eventually headed to Italy. Upon his return, he worked mostly in TV, including a lot of soaps. Halsey has a small role in The Godfather Part III and another in the extended version of his pal Clint’s Million Dollar Baby. Another Eastwood connection is his second wife, Heidi Bruhl, Clint’s costar in Chateau Noir favorite The Eiger Sanction. Halsey’s son with Luciana Paluzzi, Christian Halsey Solomon, produced Amercan Psycho. Victoria Korda, his wife since 1977, is the granddaughter of Alexander Korda. As Lady Bracknell would say, a life filled with incident.
Watched on a Shout! Factory Blu-ray.
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“Why do you carry that murderous thing?”
What I like most about Knife in the Water is that Polanski takes the conventions of a thriller and plays with our expectations. The setup is something like that of Dead Calm, but the melodrama is subdued in comparison. RoPo is more interested in the psychological effects of the situation on his characters. At first, the unnamed hitchhiker (Zygmunt Malanowicz) is an annoyance. Andrzej (Leon Niemczyk) and Krystyna (Jolanta Umbecka) are his social and intellectual superiors, but the young man has survival instincts which come in handy as matters develop. Krystyna learns something about herself and her feelings for Andrzej through the experience and does something she would never have expected at the beginning of the film. When confronted with her actions, Andrzej refuses to believe them because they don’t fit in with his egocentric view of his world.
Many films set on boats are claustrophobic, but not here. Because these are lost souls, Polanski emphasizes that the boat is almost like a leaf caught up in maelstrom, making the lake setting almost seem like a vast ocean. RoPo’s direction in his first film is amazingly assured, alternating closeups, medium shots, and shots emphasizing the characters’ physical and emotional isolation to great effect. This is alienation and ennui out for a Sunday sail, all beautifully photographed in b&w by Jerzy Lipman. And that wonderful sax-dominated score by Krzysztof Komeda (Rosemary’s Baby) seals the slutry, noirish deal. (I’ve ordered the CD.)
Some seeing Knife in the Water now may not get what’s so special about it because its quirks have been copied many times, even by Polanski in Bitter Moon. It is typical of what was coming from Europe and Asia in the 50s and 60s, displaying an emotional and intellectual depth rarely seen in American and British films. I wonder, however, what Tony Chekhov’s response was. Sure, the knife comes into play but not in a way we expected.
“I left the cucumbers behind.”
Stanley Kauffmann: “the film is visually rich; compositions are not merely striking, they are relevant; light is used in complements; shots like the rainstorm seen across the surface of the water knit us into the drama with intrinsic cinema means.”
Random thought: Polanski will be 93 on August 18. Umecka turned 89 on March 17. Knife was the first of her five films before she hung up her greasepaint in 1967.
Watched on TCM.
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“Mob boss’s women are always so sexy.”
Seijun Suzuki’s Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell, Bastards! has a terrific title and some virtues, but it’s one of the maestro’s lesser efforts. Hoping to make money for his struggling three-person detective bureau, Hideo Tajima (Joe Shishido) goes undercover as an ex-con for the cops to foil the nasty business being conducted by two rival yakuza gangs. Constantly running the risk of being discovered by gang boss Hatano (Kinzo Shin), Hideo finds his quest complicated when sparks fly between him and Hatano’s reluctant girlfriend, Chiaki (Reiko Sasamori). So we have narrow escapes and all sorts of duplicities interrupted now and then by musical numbers starring Sally (Naomi Hoshi). The last twenty minutes or so are a series of nifty gun battles, with Suzuki’s energetic style finally kicking into top gear. The film’s main asset is the always wonderful Shishido who seems to treat all the danger as a lark. He even gets to dance the Charleston and sing a duet with Hoshi. As usual, Shigeyoshi Mine’s cinematography is lush, especially during the nightclub scenes.
“Mobilize the ninth team.”
Random thought: Sasamori will be 86 on September 9. She hung up her greasepaint in 1965.
Watched on an Arrow Blu-ray.
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My friends hereabouts are much more generous toward Joseph Cates’s Who Killed Teddy Bear? than your humble correspondent. It’s a mess but a fascinating one.
In Joseph Cates’s Who Killed Teddy Bear?, someone is making strange phone calls to Norah Dain (Juliet Prowse), a disco DJ and would-be Broadway star. We know early on that Lawrence Sherman (Sal Mineo), a busboy at the discotheque, is the culprit, but it takes Norah and cop Lt. Dave Madden (Jan Murray) a long time to figure it out. Larry’s problem has something to do with being unfulfilled sexually and with his damaged sister, Edie (Margot Bennett), who has the mind of a child. It’s all a sticky puddle of paperback Freudianism.
Among my problems with the film are that it doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself from other stalker films, not my favorite genre, and that there is too much time devoted to mulling over Norah’s problem in place of action. The talky scenes disrupt the rhythm established by the best ones. There’s also a lot of dancing, Prowse’s primary skill. In fact, Prowse and Murray are on screen much more than Mineo. Elaine Stritch, as the gruff disco manager, has almost as much screen time as Mineo.
The film’s virtues include the performance of Mineo whose career had been in decline since his second Oscar nom, for Exodus, five years earlier. His first had been for Rebel without a Cause, and we can see the influence of Dean, as well as Brando, on what Sal is trying to accomplish. In the scene in which Larry and Edie unexpectedly meet Norah and Dave in a park, Mineo’s startled reaction reminded me of Clift. But he isn’t simply imitating his idols. He’s displaying what he learned from them, and it’s a terrific performance, arguably his best. Mineo makes us feel Larry’s pain. I cared much more for him than for Norah.
The other main virtue is showing us what Manhattan looked like in the mid-60s, when its glamour was going to seed. I especially like the scene in which Norah travels through the theater district looking for work as a performer and Larry’s nighttime stroll through Times Square, trying and failing to avoid the temptations of pornography. (The film clearly implies that porn is for sickos.)
All this is beautifully photographed in b&w by Joseph Brun (Edge of the City, Odds Against Tomorrow) with lots of cinema verité shots alternating with arty distorted images. Assistant cameraman Michael Chapman learned something from the experience that he put to good use as the cinematographer for Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. The dreamlike qualities they achieve lift the film above the triteness of its plot.
“I dig soft things, don’t you?”
Random thoughts:
Bennett, formerly married to Keir Dullea and Malcolm McDowell, turned 91 on February 19. Daniel J. Travanti, who plays the disco’s deaf-mute bouncer, turned 86 on March 7. Stanley Beck, who plays a suspect, will be 90 on June 5. A friend of Dustin Hoffman, Beck has small roles in John and Mary and Lenny and produced Straight Time.
The opening credits read “Miss Prowse’s wardrobe from Orbach’s.” Orbach’s (1923-1987) was a weak competitor to Gimbel’s and Macy’s, both a half block west on 34th Street, and B. Altman, a half block east. Your humble correspondent and Mrs. yhc stopped there once on our way to Altman, our favorite Manhattan department store until its demise, and were not impressed. Part of Orbach’s space is now an Amazon pickup facility.
When Larry goes to an adult bookstore in the Times Square area, in addition to pulp novels and what were known as girly magazines, we see copies of Last Exit to Brooklyn, Naked Lunch, and Tropic of Cancer, in addition to Mailer’s Deer Park, an even less likely offering. I wonder if Uncle Norm saw the film. Despite the flaws in Teddy Bear, Mailer’s Tough Guys Don’t Dance is much, much worse. His protagonist is named Madden, a possible homage?
Watched on TCM.
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“Was it good?”
“It works! It works!”
After enjoying Paul Morrissey’s Flesh for Frankenstein recently, I had to see his Blood for Dracula. It’s even more fun.
The count (Udo Kier) is feeling a bit poorly, needing the blood of virgins who seem to be in short supply in Romania. So his servant (Arno Jurging) suggests they travel to priest-ridden Italy. They visit the villa of the wealthy Marchese Di Fiore (Vittorio De Sica) and the Marchesa (Maxime McKendry) in hopes that their four daughters (Milena Vukotic, Dominique Darel, Stefania Casini, and Silvia Dionisio) will provide a solution. But they hadn’t counted on a randy servant (Joe Dallesandro) who proves to be a spot of bother in more ways than one.
As in Flesh, Morrissey’s direction is assured and his dialogue a bit better. The film looks gorgeous thanks to cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller (Deep Red) and the production design of Enrico Job (Seven Beauties). Add a wonderful score by Claudio Gizzi—I especially love the waltz in the opening credits—and bloody special effects by Carlo Rambaldi, and you have an often dazzling entertainment.
The acting is also better than in Flesh, with Vukotic the standout. The bug-eyed excesses of Kieur and Jurging are delightful. Dallesandro’s often bizarre pronunciations are amusing. I defy anyone to keep a straight face when Joe sez “whores.” A highlight is De Sica’s practicing various ways of saying “Dracula.” Another highlight is Dallesandro’s insisting on discussing socialism during sex. Then we have an absolutely bonkers conclusion, making what came before seem genteel. As a bonus, we have an unbilled Roman Polanski in a long scene with Jurging.
“Take me to the vault, please.”
Random thought: Polanski will be 93 on August 18, Vukotic will be 91 on April 23, Gizzi will be 80 on May 16, Casini will be 78 on September 4, Dallesandro will be 78 on December 31, and Dionisio will be 75 on September 28.
Watched on Severin Blu-ray.
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While several of my friends hereabouts are lukewarm about Project Hail Mary, I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to seeing it again. Screenwriter Drew Goddard, who previously adapted another Andy Weir novel, The Martian, and also wrote Chateau Noir favorite Bad Times at the El Royale, bombards the viewer with a lot (make that a ton) of science, only 1.9% I understood, but there’s so much going on that it doesn’t matter. The film treads dangerously closely to being overly treacly because of the cutesy relationship between Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) and the alien Rocky (voiced by James Ortiz), but it’s so sweet and emotionally involving it doesn’t matter.
The directors, a couple of dudes named Phil and Chris, balance the talk about saving the world and the action quite well. The film is beautifully edited by Joel Negron, alternating perfectly between intense moments and more contemplative ones, with a lively score by Daniel Pemberton. I love the Latin pieces. Gosling is almost always appealing but is especially so here, striking a lovely balance between being smart and goofy. I can't imagine anyone else playing this role. Sandra Huller is excellent as the most adult character.
All the special effects are quite special. I enjoyed it as a popcorn movie while finding it a moving emotional experience. My only qualm is that it suffers from twenty-first-century cinema syndrome, being 10-15 minutes longer than it needs to be.
Random thoughts:
I haven’t seen Gosling’s other outer-space film, finding fictional astronauts much more interesting than real ones.
Project is an MGM release. When the lion roars at the beginning, the first roar is sort of muted and the second one is silent. Did anyone else notice this?
The Hollywood Reporter makes interesting points about the film's box-office success.
First seen in a theater in Cumberland, Georgia.
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“Why would anybody want to steal blood?”
Philip Ford’s Valley of the Zombies is a slightly entertaining Republic B-movie. Criminally insane Ormand Murks (Ian Keith) supposedly died four years earlier, but you can’t keep a bad man down. Murks somehow discovers how to breathe again by ingesting the hemoglobin of others, as long as they have the same blood type. When Dr. Rufus Maynard (Charles Trowbridge) is killed, Dr. Terry Evans (Robert Livingston) and his nurse/girlfriend Susan Drake (Lorna Gray, billed as Adrian Booth) set out to track down Murks.
Although ostensibly a horror film, Valley resembles the comedy-mysteries so prevalent in the 30s and 40s with Terry and Susan making their way to the spooky Murks mansion and bumping into stuff in the dark. As Susan observes, she’s really good at screaming. Ford, who did much better with The Last Crooked Mile and The Inner Circle this same year, keeps the silliness flowing smoothly. The main things the film has going for it are Gray’s cute spunkiness and Keith’s Karloffian intensity. But the title is misleading since Murks is the only zombie and there’s no valley.
“I think I need a drink.”
“I think I need one, too. Let’s get a zombie.”
Random thoughts:
Although Gray hung up her greasepaint in 1951 after marrying actor David Brian, she didn’t go to the big screening room in the sky until 2017, three months shy of her hundredth birthday.
Your humble correspondent grew up watching Livingston in the dozens of B-Westerns he made in the 30s and 40s. Bob worked in films from 1921 to 1975, ending his career in a blaze of glory with appearances in The Naughty Stewardesses, Girls for Rent, and Blazing Stewardesses.
Watched on Kino Lorber Blu-ray.
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Suppose Mario Bava woke up one AM and decided to make his version of an Agatha Christie novel, which one would it be? You got it. Mario just loves piling up the bodies.
The best part of Five Dolls for an August Moon is the opening. While loud music plays, we see a group of Eurotrash having a good time, especially Marie Chaney (Edwige Fenech) who dances around provocatively until her host, George Stark (Teodoro Corra), chains her before handing out nasty-looking knives to his other guests. In the background, we see an array of red candles, making a painting on the wall appear to be bleeding. There are similar red stripes at a window. These are soon joined by some gooey fake blood.
The fun and games have begun, but soon they’re not so much fun. George, Jack Davidson (Howard Ross), and Nick Chaney (Maurice Poli) try to convince scientist Fritz Farrell (William Berger) to sell his formula for an industrial resin. Fritz doesn’t like these boys and their games and doesn’t wanna. The punch line is that all this is transpiring in a modernist villa on an isolated island cut off from civilization. The isolation increases when phone service is terminated. Meanwhile, teenager Isabel (Ely Galleani) bounces around the island spying on her elders.
Those who prefer Bava at his bloodiest may not find much to like with Five Dolls. The violence, in keeping with its Christie inspiration, is almost genteel next to what Mario gets up to elsewhere. But the boy does have a macabre sense of humor. The second best part of the film is having the victims covered in plastic and hung from hooks in a meat locker: “Looks like we’re all going to wind up subzero.” Even with a relatively minor effort, Mario is cool. And seeing greedy, duplicitous folks getting what they deserve is always fun.
As usual with Bava, the film is a feast for those fond of midcentury décor as with this and this. Even better is the cliff-hugging villa, representing the dangers facing its inhabitants.
Troy Howarth: The Haunted World of Mario Bava: “The project came to him at the last second when an earlier, unidentified director bowed out of the project. Bava hated the script and asked for a chance to do a rewrite, but the production was set to go (‘They paid me on Saturday and we started shooting on Monday’), but he reluctantly agreed to accept the assignment. It remains one of his most hotly debated titles and the director cited it as his worst picture. . . . almost all the killings occur off-camera. Why is this? It may have been part and parcel of Bava’s utter contempt for the project, but this seems unlikely. It may have been that the extremely low budget and lack of prep time prevented him from developing the make-up effects that would have been required.”
Random thoughts:
Fenech will be 78 on December 24. Galleani will be 73 on April 24.
The Shout! Factory Blu-ray includes commentary by giallo enthusiast Tracy Letts who welcomes viewers as “shag-carpet weirdos.”
Watched at the North Georgia Center for Cinephilia.
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“Are you tired?”
“The whole world’s tired.”
In Anatole Litvak’s The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun , all secretary Dany Lang (Samatha Eggar) has to do is drive the car of her boss, Michael Caldwell (Oliver Reed), from Orly Airport back to Paris. But she takes a wrong turn and decides to continue heading south. Then Dany keeps meeting people who swear they met her the day before driving the same car to Paris. En route she picks up Phillipe (John McEnery), and after some rather chaste rumpy-pumpy, the ungrateful bastard steals the car. Then suddenly he returns it. Turns out there’s a spot of bother in the coffre de voiture. Dany just isn’t having a good day.
Lady is one of those films I have to keep watching to find out what the heck is going on. It’s based on a novel by Sebastien Japrisot, the source of the much better The Sleeping Car Murders and One Deadly Summer. The issue is finally revealed as someone’s inserting the wrong appendage into the wrong orifice with unexpected consequences. The best thing about the film is the villain’s explanation of why and how Dany has been framed, but the resolution to her problem is handled very tritely.
The film is Tola’s last in a career that began in 1930. His direction is adequate but uninspired. I kept thinking how much better it might have been if it had been made by someone like Chabrol with a better sense of irony, especially with Stephane Audran (Madame Chabrol) on hand as Caldwell’s wife.
The worst thing about the film is that the car of the title is a very boring white 1969 Mercury Marquis convertible, not the kind of vehicle anyone wants to spend 105 minutes with. In the 2015 remake, the car is a much groovier 1966 Thunderbird.
Michelangelo Capua, Anatole Litvak: The Life and Films: “The critics accused Litvak of making a thriller with an implausible plot, little tension and a rushed ending. Oliver Reed in his autobiography called it ‘a terrible movie.’ The picture had a limited release and disappeared quickly from the theaters.”
“Then go to a movie, any movie, and then another one.”
Random thought: Tarantino likes the film and considers it a giallo.
Watched on YouTube with French subtitles.
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The dogs suggested we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by watching something by Mari O’Bava, Bert O’Lucci, or one of the other boyos. After considerable discussion, we decided it would be fitting to visit Dari O’Argento’s Gaelic Deep Green--or something like that.
“It’s always a maniac, and they never catch them.”
One of many things to admire about Deep Red is that opening: a bloody body, a children’s song, and a Christmas tree in the corner. Argento is going to bombard us with images and sounds, challenging us to connect all the pieces. This first scene ends with a bloody knife tossed toward the camera (and the viewer) to make clear the challenge has been issued. Then psychic Helga Ulmann (Macha Meril) commits a faux pas, and when pianist Marcus Daly (David Hemmings) witnesses the consequences, we’re off.
What impresses me most is the way Argento gives us a series of images, and sometimes sounds, in each scene, with some having to do with the central mystery and some being red herrings. Are the crows, the little redheaded girl, and the lizard important? What do they suggest about pain, death, and strangeness? More obviously, we have all the mirrors, windows, paintings, and dolls, one of which is truly creepy. To top it off, we have a spooky house, with Marcus ending up desperately clinging to its exterior, just as the viewer is hanging on trying to figure everything out.
“Why did I not notice that before?”
I love how Argento focuses on objects, especially that red string doll, and how editor Franco Fraticelli assembles all the pieces, never focusing on any too long. Of course the presence of Hemmings reminds us of a similar film by one of Argento’s countrymen. As in Blow-Up, Hemmings becomes an investigator, looking at drawings, paintings, and texts to try to solve the mystery, with the biggest clue not becoming clear until the very end. The truth is not always a matter of black and white, and Marcus always wears a black shirt and a white or cream suit. At a crucial point, his shirt is covered with white dust, suggesting how complicated matters can overlap.
Of course, the film is very violent, especially toward the end. The overkill is gruesome on one level but also comes close to giving the film a comic overlay, as with Psycho. The thundering score by Goblin both emphasizes the film’s intensity and offers an ironic counterpoint. It’s a great film.
Random thoughts:
Argento will be 86 on September 7. Meril will be 86 on September 3. Gabriele Lavia, who plays Marcus’s friend who is central to it all, will be 84 on October 11.
For those who think I was having a larf about the Irishness of it all, check out this green VW Beetle.
While all of us in Chateau Noir thoroughly enjoyed the film, the dogs say they won’t go to bed until your humble correspondent checks under the bed and inside all the closets. Mrs. yhc sez she’ll stay downstairs with an axe, a machete, a Louisville Slugger, and three flashlights with spare batteries.
Watched on Amazon Prime.
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Sergio Martino’s The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail strikes a good balance between the gore we associate with giallo and a murder mystery. The husband of Lisa Baumer (Ida Galli) is killed when the plane on which he is a passenger explodes. Lisa goes from London to Athens to collect on his million-dollar insurance policy, insisting on receiving the loot in cash, turning the money into a MacGuffin of sorts. Then she is murdered and the money stolen, but deaths continue anyway, sprinkling red herrings all over the place. On the case are insurance investigator Peter Lynch (George Hilton), Inspector Stavros (Luigi Pistilli), Interpol’s John Stanley (Alberto de Mendoza), and French journalist Cleo Dupont (Anita Strindberg).
Martino directs with his usual style, with odd camera angles in each sequence. Sergio loves overhead shots, so we have the characters climbing two spiral staircases, the architecture a metaphor for the film’s twisting plot. The screenplay by Ernesto Gastaldi is very clever, with all the pieces fitting perfectly at the end. The best performances are by de Mendoza, allowing us never to quite trust his cop, and the extremely lovely Strindberg, who ably conveys Cleo’s smarts and guts. I also love little touches such as Stavros’s assembling a jigsaw puzzle while interrogating suspects.
Random thoughts:
Martino will be 88 on July 19. Strindberg will be 88 on May 29. Galli will be 87 on October 8.
The Arrow Blu-ray includes a video essay by Troy Howarth (So Deadly, So Perverse) about Gastaldi’s status as the most prolific and important giallo screenwriter because of such credits as All the Colors of the Dark, Almost Human, and Torso. Howarth says Gastaldi’s female characters are the most complex in all of giallo.
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The best things about Sam Fuller’s China Gate are the gorgeous b&w cinematography of Joe Biroc, Fuller’s masterful CinemaScope compositions, and the presence of Angie Dickinson, in the most significant of her film roles to this point.
“I don’t want trouble over this woman. We have a job to do. Let’s do it.”
Angie is Lucky Legs, the half-Chinese owner of a bar in a Vietnamese village in 1954. Alas, her joint has been heavily damaged in the war between Communists and the French. Lucky’s main concern, however, is getting her five-year-old son (Warren Hsieh) to safety in America. She’s received no help from estranged husband Brock (Gene Barry), who rejected the boy at birth because of his predominately Chinese features. Lucky agrees to lead Brock and his fellow French Foreign Legionnaires north to the border with China to destroy the commies’ arsenal in exchange for her son’s passage to the US. Lucky knows the way because of her relationship with Major Cham (Lee Van Cleef), leader of the bad guys.
“You’re tough. You can handle explosives. But you’re not tough enough to handle life.”
China Gate spends too much time with Lucky and Brock jawing about their domestic issues, but when the shooting starts, Fuller excels. All the action sequences are well done, especially the climactic showdown. Angie stands out because Lucky is smarter and braver than all the fellas combined. She also delivers the sometimes awkward dialogue with more conviction than the rest of the cast. The other standout performance is by Nat Cole in a rare shot at acting, dominating each of his scenes with considerable presence. Of course, he also sings the film’s theme song twice. Van Cleef gets a larger role than usual and even gets to kiss Angie, though she doesn’t seem to enjoy it too much. Barry is mostly along for the ride. As a bonus, there’s a cute puppy.
“Keep them off me while I grenade them.”
Lisa Dombrowski, The Films of Samuel Fuller: If You Die, I’ll Kill You: “The first American combat picture set in Vietnam, China Gate is also the only Fuller war film whose protagonist is motivated by something other than survival. Lucky Legs, the film’s Eurasian hero, agrees to undertake a search and destroy mission in order to ensure a life for her child in America. Fuller exploits her mixed ancestry and love affair with a Communist leader for extended discussions of race and politics, making China Gate the most didactic of his combat pictures.
Random thought: Angie will be 95 on September 30. James Hong, who plays a soldier, turned 97 on February 22. Ziva Rodann, who has a very tiny role, turned 93 on March 2. Fuller gave her a bigger part in his next film, Forty Guns.
Watched on Olive Films Blu-ray.
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“No one can be happy without money.”
Seijun Suzuki made Underworld Beauty before his films became stylized, but as a relatively straightforward noir, it’s terrific. Miyamoto (Michitaro Mizushima) is released after three years in prison and immediately retrieves the diamonds he stole and hid in the wall of a sewer. He wants to sell the diamonds and give the money to his friend Mihara (Toru Abe) who was severely injured during the robbery. But yakuza boss Oyane (Shinsuke Ashida) sez “Hold on.” The greedy bastard wants the diamonds for himself. Before you can say fugu, everybody’s betraying everybody else, with guns and knives all over the place. Miyamoto must get the diamonds back while trying to protect Akiko (Mari Shiraki), Mihara’s younger sister and the beauty of the title. No damsel in distress, Akiko is a tough gal, as well as being quite sexy.
The film is enormously entertaining from the very beginning, with Suzuki displaying what he’s learned from American noirs and perhaps from Jean-Pierre Melville as well. Mizushima, sort of a combo of Bogart and Mitchum, makes Miyamoto a compellingly soiled noir hero. Then in the final fifteen minutes or so, we have an elaborated staged and beautifully edited, by Akira Suzuki (Tampopo), shootout that takes the film up another level. This is one of the most enjoyable Suzukis I’ve seen.
“Hey! Here comes Sophia Loren!”
Random thoughts:
Shiraki turned 89 on February 23.
The film also offers a rare look at a 1958 Hino-Renaut 4CV, used as a taxi.
Watched on Radiance Blu-ray.
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“Could they be beating someone?”
“They like strange sex.”
After seeing bits of Paul Morrissey’s Flesh for Frankenstein in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bleeder, I had to see the whole film. I have seen the whole film. I wonder if Pete, Chris, and the gang over at Hammer saw it and what they thought.
“Some people don’t know how to behave themselves.”
Regardless of what one thinks about the campiness and the bad acting, with Udo Kier and Arno Jurging going full blast as if to make up for the deficiencies of the others, the film is definitely different. If you want an auteur to express his personality, his world view, in his films—here’s Paul, with a little sex and a lot of blood. Because we never know what Morrissey will get up to, the film is endlessly fascinating and also quite funny, though I’m not sure how much of the humor is intended. To top it off, we have Joe Dallesandro’s decidedly un-European accent, sounding as out of place as Tony Curtis in The Prince Who Was a Thief and The Black Shield of Falworth.
Even though the film is low budget, many of Carlo Rambaldi’s special effects are remarkable. I especially like Baron Frankenstein’s removal of the stitches from the lovely female creature (Dalila Di Lazzaro). Carlo was clearly the man to tackle John Hurt’s tummy in Alien.
My favorite parts of the film are the decapitation, Kier and Jurging going bug-eyed, the kids who just want to have fun, the odd camera shots, the ending, and, of course, the fish tank.
“And I thought you were interested only in sex.”
Random thought: Dallesandro turned 77 on December 31. Di Lazzaro turned 73 on January 29. Kier went to the big screening room in the sky on November 23. He was 81.
Watched on a Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray borrowed from the North Georgia Center for Cinephilia’s high potentate, a friend of Morrissey.
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This one’s going out for Maurice Joseph Micklewhite, born March 14, 1933.
The one previous time I watched Cy Endfield’s Zulu, I wasn’t impressed. Part of the problem was seeing it on a modest standard-definition TV. The most impressive thing about the film is the visuals, so it must be experienced with better equipment. On my new 4K widescreen, it pops.
Alas, the film doesn’t get off to the best possible start. We have around fifteen minutes of Zulu dancing because we’re in the period when filmmakers were under the misapprehension that local color was interesting. Then we have an extended introduction to cowardly shirker Private Hook (James Booth) whom we know will come through when the spears start flying. Worst of all, we have Jack Hawkins’ clergyman going on and on about “Thou shalt not kill.” Hawkins is an excellent actor, but more than two minutes of this character is too much.
“Why?”
“I’ll be damned if I know why.”
But finally, the action arrives. I love the shot of the Zulus assembled on the crest of a hill, letting us know what overwhelming odds the soldiers are up against. The ensuing battles are well staged, though I kept wondering how so many Zulus were willing to sacrifice themselves just as a matter of military strategy. The film can be interpreted in many ways, as both imperialist and anti-imperialist. Blacklistee Endfield shows that war is hell but at the same time a chance for the chaps to show what they’re made of.
Stephen Dade’s cinematography is spectacular, with the reds of the uniforms being especially vibrant. The film’s visual style is supported by excellent performances from Stanley Baker and Michael Caine. It’s funny that Caine is playing an upper-class twit when he will devote most of his career to working-class lads. The character’s transformation from fop to hero is a bit much, but Caine sells it. There is solid support from Paul Daneman, Patrick Magee, Neil McCarthy, and, especially, the great Nigel Green.
“Mark your target when it comes.”
Random thought: The opening credits say “Introducing Michael Caine,” although he had been in 30 TV episodes and 16 films, including A Hill in Korea with Baker and The Two-Headed Spy with Hawkins. The latter was directed by Andre de Toth whose great ironic war film Play Dirty would star Caine and Green.
Watched on Amazon Prime.
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“After we kill y’all, we gone have heaven right here on earth.”
I tried watching Sinners a few months ago and gave up after around 40 minutes. I just couldn't get into it for some reason. This time, I made it all the way through, and while it’s too slow and too long, taking a unique approach to horror films makes up for a lot of what normally bothers me. The last half-hour is really something, and topping it all off with that sweet coda is special. All the performances are very good. I was especially taken by Helena Hu’s ability to express the complex pains of loss. I also enjoyed seeing the great Buddy Guy’s brief appearance. It’s an impressive achievement for Ryan Coogler and his collaborators. But I will have to buy a jar of pickled garlic.
Random thought: Buddy Guy will be 90 on July 30. He performs on two songs in Van Morrison’s new album Somebody Tried to Sell Me a Bridge.
Watched on Amazon Prime.
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Libido, co-written and co-directed by Ernesto Gastaldi and Vittorio Salerno, is usually categorized as a giallo, but it slowly becomes more humorous than typical gialli. I enjoyed it from the beginning, especially once its dark humor began to emerge.
“My God, don’t let me be like my father.”
The film opens with young Christian Coreau witnessing his father commit a murder. Traumatized by the event, Christian, played as an adult by a very young Giancarlo Giannini, billed as John Charlie Johns, returns to his family estate for the first time in twenty years with his wife, Helene (Dominique Boschero), his estate manager, Paul Benoit (Luciano Pigozzi), and Benoit’s sexy young wife, Brigitte (Mara Maryl). Christian is quickly haunted by reminders of the killing, including Brigitte’s resemblance to the murder victim.
Christian will inherit the estate when he turns twenty-five only if he remains sane, an unlikely occurrence given all the events rattling his delicate nerves. He suspects one of the others of trying to drive him over the edge, but matters turn out to be more complicated than he would ever expect. The film lulls the viewer into closely identifying with Christian and his dilemma, becoming a slow-motion nightmare, only to become something else with all the revelations and developments in the final minutes. Imagine Diabolique crossed with The Ladykillers.
The directors use the seaside setting of Brest and the many rooms of the Coreau chateau quite effectively, especially the mirrored bedroom. (Kids, when mayhem is afoot, never get close to the edge of a cliff.) Romolo Garroni provides atmospheric b&w cinematography.
But in addition to the cleverness of the screenplay, the main thing the film has going for is the performances, especially those of Giannini and Maryl. In his first film, Giannini masterfully displays Christian’s gradual disintegration. Maryl, who provided the story upon which the screenplay is based, deconstructs the dumb-blonde stereotype. Her tantalizing dance early in the film makes clear that Brigitte is a born manipulator. Such outfits as this one indicate the film's tongue-in-cheek approach.
Random thoughts:
Giannini will be 84 on August 1. Boschero will be 89 on April 27.
Gastaldi will be 92 on September 10. He and Maryl were married from 1960 until her ascension to the big screening room in the sky in 2021. Maryl collaborated with her husband on the screenplays for two Sergio Martino films.
Gastaldi also edited the film as George Money and served as art director and costume designer as Dick and as second-unit and assistant director as Ernst Gasthaus. Maryl was in charge of wardrobe as Angie Travel. Sergio Martino was production manager as Serge Martin. I composed these comments as Ernst Stavro von Sternberg-Stroheim-Sydow.
Watched on Radiance Blu-ray at the North Georgia Center for Cinephilia.
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“What terrifying secret was unfolding?”
Our dog Maisie has always been terrified by loud noises, especially thunder and fireworks, but recently she seemed to have overcome the problem. The New Year’s Eve fireworks near Chateau Noir didn’t bother her at all, neither did the two or three recent thunderstorms, until 4 AM today, when a protracted storm set her off. So we got up to sit with her until she calmed down. It seemed like a good time to revisit Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr which we had seen only once many years ago. Besides, it’s only 74 minutes and might last out the storm.
Vampyr is CTed’s first sound film but is mostly still silent, with intertitles and little dialogue. As with all of his films, it proceeds quite slowly, with a dreamlike atmosphere. Star Nicolas de Gunzburg (billed as Julian West) acts almost as if he’s sleepwalking. Niki got the role because he partially financed the film, but his large eyes are perfect for conveying the wonders his Allan Gray encounters in the remote inn terrorized by Marguerite Chopin (Henriette Gerard), a bloodsucking crone who also has the power to get others to do her bidding. (If ever I’m under the influence of a female vampire, I sure hope she’s sexier than Maggie.)
Dreyer gives his story, adapted from Sheridan Le Fanu’s In a Glass Darkly, a poetic style, supported considerably by the atmospheric cinematography of Rudolph Mate and Louis Nee. The film also examines the psychological effects of the fear of the unknown, as when Gray sees his body in a coffin. That scene is one of several nifty ones, my favorite being the one in which one of the vampire’s operatives is suffocated by flour.
The style of Vampyr can be seen as an influence on Herzog’s Nosferatu. The film is also interesting as a contrast with the quite different approaches to horror by Universal’s Dracula and Frankenstein a year earlier.
“My soul is free.”
Carl Theodor Dreyer: “Imagine we are sitting in an ordinary room. Suddenly we are told there is a corpse behind the door. In an instant, the room is completely altered; everything in it has taken another look; the light, the atmosphere have changed, though they are physically the same. This is because we have changed, and the objects are as we have perceived them. That is the effect I meant to get in my film.”
Lotte Eisner: “a worthy successor to Murnau’s Nosferatu. It is bathed in an atmosphere whose magic only the cinema could express; it would be impossible for the theater to give shapes the characteristic fuzziness of the world of nightmares.”
Leslie Halliwell: “Vague, misty, virtually plotless but occasionally frightening and always interesting to look at, this semi-professional film long since joined the list of minor classics for two scenes: the hero dreaming of his own death and the villain finally buried by flour in a mill.”
Pauline Kael: “Most vampire movies are so silly that this film by Carl Dreyer—a great vampire film—hardly belongs to the genre. Dreyer preys upon our subconscious fears. Dread and obsession are the film’s substance, and its mood is evocative, dreamy, spectral. Death hovers over everyone. . . . Movie-lovers may cherish what appears to be Dreyer’s homage to Cocteau—the use of the little heart from The Blood of a Poet.”
Random thought: This is the only acting credit for Gunzburg who emigrated to the US in 1934 and later became an editor at Town & Country, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar. He was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1971. His well-tailored suit in Vampyr is immaculate except in one shot we can see something, perhaps an insect, has attached itself to his back. I assume it wasn’t a bloodsucker.
Watched on the Criterion Channel.
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Brian De Palma is one of my favorite directors, but his films are rather hit and miss. I was underwhelmed by Snake Eyes the one previous time I saw it, and nothing has changed.
“No operation goes entirely as planned.”
Snake Eyes gets off to a good start with the Steadicam following Atlantic City cop Rick Santoro (Nicolas Cage) entering an arena where a heavyweight-championship boxing match is to be held. The camerawork is very energetic, as is Cage, seemingly doing a tribute to his excessive style. (And how many times has he done so?) When the Secretary of Defense (Joel Fabiani) is assassinated, I enjoyed all the repetitions of the event from different perspectives, and I usually like conspiracy thrillers. This one comes about because in the US big business is more important than anything else. (Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.)
But once we’re shown what’s going on, De Palma and screenwriter David Koepp try to talk us to death. Since much of the talk involves Gary Sinise’s Kevin Dunne and I can’t stand Sinise, death couldn’t come quickly enough. As with other De Palmas, there are a few holes in the plot. How could the redhead (Jayne Heitmeyer) have played her role in the conspiracy if a seat hadn’t been vacant ringside?
Still, I enjoyed Cage’s distinctive overzealousness, and the presence of the lovely Carla Gugino, looking very lovely indeed, helps a lot. I also like Santoro’s yellow Chevrolet Corvette.
Random thoughts:
Santoro flirts with the roundgirl (Christina Fulton, mother of Cage’s son, Weston) holding the “7” sign. Santoro sez 7 is his lucky number. In De Palma’s Dressed to Kill, Angie Dickinson is in an elevator on her way to the seventh floor when she meets her fate.
When Gugino goes to the ladies’ room, there are yellow sinks. Yellow is my favorite color, but I have never encountered yellow sinks, despite having been in public restrooms in at least a third of the states. I would travel to Atlantic City to see these sinks, but they’re in the ladies’ room. Maybe if I . . . .
Watched on Amazon Prime.
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“There can be only one explanation.”
Frank Telford’s The Bamboo Saucer is low-budget science-fiction silliness that’s amusing if you’re in the right mood. Test-pilot Fred Norwood (John Ericson) is fired after reporting seeing a flying saucer. Fred is then recruited by government agent Hank Peters (Dan Duryea) to go to China where such a spacecraft has been spotted. The American contingent runs into a Soviet unit, including the lovely Anna Karachev (Lois Nettleton), leading to a rather heavy-handed message about international cooperation.
The film consists mostly of standing around talking until the two sides have to unite to battle some Red Chinese, who apparently have a doctor’s excuse to ignore any cooperation. Most of the talking involves how to get into the saucer and then what to do once inside. The best part comes when Fred (Ericson doesn’t look like a Fred), Anna, and scientist Jack Garson (Bob Hastings) fly to Saturn and back in less than ten minutes. The highlight comes when they almost collide with a nifty-looking red asteroid.
Saucer is the only feature by Telford, a prolific TV writer-director-producer, and it’s paced ploddingly like something for 50s-60s TV. Amazingly, the cinematographer is the great Hal Mohr who won Oscars for A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the 1944 Phantom of the Opera. Even though I saw the film on DVD, it looks good despite the cheap special effects. After Siegel’s The Lineup and Fuller’s Underworld USA, Mohr drifted into B-movies such as The Creation of the Humanoids and this one, his final film.
Saucer is also the final film for the great Duryea who went to the big screening room in the sky four months before the film’s general release.
“And give my regards to your CO.”
Random thoughts:
The American translator is played by James Hong who turned 97 on February 22. Still active, Hong is best known to many for his appearance in the Seinfeld episode “The Chinese Restaurant.” He and Nettleton, who appears in “The Gymnast,” may be the only actors to work with both Duryea and George Costanza, whom Hong memorably calls “Cartwright.”
Hastings began his career with roles in the early 50s series Atom Squad, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, and Captain Video and His Video Rangers, produced by Telford. Hastings did lots more science-fiction work, mostly on TV, and was the voice of Clark Kent in the animated The New Adventures of Superman and that of Commissioner Gordon in Batman: The Animated Series. If there’s a pop-culture hall of fame, he should be inducted.
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“No, I don’t think you can compare Steven Seagal to Fred Williamson.”
“Hey, we’re just watching a film, OK?”
“You watch films, you know fuck all. You watch four films a day. OK?”
“Do you like Bruce Lee?”
“Why do you always talk about films?”
Bleeder is a Nicolas Winding Refn joint about sensitive youths not looking for meaning in life. Lenny (Mads Mikkelsen) works in a video store, which rarely seems to have any customers, and watches, he sez, ten-to-twelve films a week. Leo (Kim Bodnia) is his best friend, who’s a bit unsettled when his girlfriend, Louise (Rikke Louise Andersersson), reveals she’s pregnant. Louis (Levino Jensen) is her hotheaded, racist brother. Lea (Liv Corfixen) works in a diner, which also never seems to have any customers, and is admired by Lenny. Kitjo (Zlatko Buric) is Lenny’s boss. Lenny, Leo, Louis, and Kitjo get together frequently to watch such films as Paul Morrissey’s Flesh for Frankenstein. (Paul is thanked twice in the closing credits.) Oh, and there’s a special-guest appearance by Tony Chekhov’s gun.
The very clearly low-budget Bleeder seems improvised at times and creeps very slowly from scene to scene. Much of the film is devoted to watching the characters think—or avoid thinking. It can be seen as a portrait of an aimless generation refusing to grow up but shows they have little reason to do so. They are trapped in a world with little meaning or future.
One of my favorite scenes has Lea going to a bookstore with miles of shelves on several levels organized haphazardly. We watch as she wanders around, possibly searching for meaning, the books suggesting possibilities beyond the characters’ dismal existences. Lea is looking for Last Exit to Brooklyn and once she finds it chooses two others. I wish Nic had shown us what they are. Another favorite is the sweet one between Lea and Lenny at the end. After a bit of violence, we deserve some sweetness.
All the performances are good, with Bodnia showing us Leo’s painful uncertainty with minimal expressions and gestures—beyond one or two outbursts, of course. In the smallest of the roles, Buric demonstrates perfect timing. Mikkelsen, a huge favorite at Chateau Noir, particularly for Hannibal, presents Lenny as a kinder, gentler Travis Bickle, a quiet guy who puts ketchup on his spaghetti. This is the way De Niro would play the character, especially when Lenny tentatively approaches Lea on a walk and keeps glancing back at her after they part.
Bleeder is a depressing film, but I like it. The first item in the closing credits is “For my mom.” What percentage of viewers chuckle at that?
“Are we going to have coffee or what?”
Random thought: Lenny wears t-shirts for Plan Nine from Outer Space and Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror. Your humble correspondent watched the film in his Boudu Saved from Drowning tee. I’ll try to do better next time.
Watched as part of the Criterion Channel’s VHS Forever series.
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“And when Dr. Evil angry, Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset.”
In my 62 months on LB, I’ve mentioned my fondness for spy spoofs 83 times. That’s an average of . . . , well, some average. During all these times, I’ve never thought of Austin Powers, which I found only fitfully amusing on my one previous viewing. A little Mike Myers goes a long way.
This time I was amazed by how unfunny most of it is. Maybe it’s one of those films you have to see with an audience. But even that wouldn’t eliminate the sluggishness of Jay Roach’s pacing. Maybe what I see as hesitations are deliberate pauses allowing us to chuckle.
Myers’s Powers is all teeth, chest hair, and poses. His deliveries as Dr. Evil, however, are quite good—except in the poorly written scenes with son Scott (Seth Green). The only exception is the family therapy scene with Carrie Fisher giving the best performance. Her professionalism and those of Michael York and Robert Wagner add a lot. I also like the 60s outfits at the beginning, most of the music, Random Task, and, of course, Mr. Bigglesworth, both editions.
“Listen, son, I want you to forget what you’ve seen here today.”
Random thought: Wagner turned 96 on February 10. York will be 84 on March 27.
Watched on Amazon Prime.
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After loving Georges Franju’s Eyes without a Face a few months ago, I’ve been meaning to watch another of his films, bringing us to Judex. A period crime film inspired by the silent serials of Louis Feuillade suggests that the film might be action-packed. But Eyes without a Face is slow and deliberate, as is Spotlight on a Murderer, the only other Franju I had seen, a Christiesque murder mystery. Judex is lovely to look at, with beautiful b&w cinematography by Marcel Fradetal, but it’s really, really slow, with lots of seemingly meaningless shots of characters walking from here to there instead simply using a cut.
Banker Favraux (Michel Vitold) is a right bastard, cheating his way to an immense fortune. But he hadn’t counted on the mysterious Judex (Channing Pollock) getting on his case, intending to bring the banker to justice while falling for Jacqueline (Edith Scob), the daughter of his target, along the way. Meanwhile, Favraux has his eye on the governess calling herself Marie Verdier (Francine Berge). But the governess, whose real name is Diana Monti, is more than she seems, setting her eye on the banker’s fortune with the help of sidekick Morales (Theo Sarapo). Deceptions upon deceptions ensue.
I could never make up my mind about how seriously Franju was taking all this. Much of it, especially the Monti-Morales scenes, strike me as comic, perhaps brought about by the mischievous twinkle in Berge’s eye. I was initially concerned because the divine Sylva Koscina, featured prominently in the opening credits, was nowhere to be seen. When she finally arrives, at the 1:25 point, as acrobat Daisy, the film’s energy picks up. Why is she an acrobat? Because Daisy has to scale the side of a building to try to foil Diana’s scheme. And where is Judex, the supposed hero, all this time. Well, he’s sending his operatives up the side of the same building, the most visually stunning part of the film, aside, of course, of the three ladies. Daisy and Diana eventually have a tussle on top of the building, a struggle resembling that between Archie and George in another Paris-set 1963 film.
My ranking was going to be 2.5 or 3 before this climax, but the ending lifts the film’s impact considerably. The best thing about the film is Berge, a cool femme fatale. Even though Marie/Diana is pure evil, I was pulling for her.
“Bring the car around to the door by the empty lot.”
Random thoughts:
Berge, who is still active, will be 88 on July 21.
Sarapo, a singer, made only one other film, Yves Boisset’s The Cop, before dying in a traffic accident. He was married to Edith Piaf at the time of her death.
Watched on the Criterion Channel.
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I was surprised how much I enjoyed Sam Fuller’s Hell and High Water the last time I watched it. This time, I was bewildered by my previous reaction. It’s barely OK.
There are suspicions that the Chinese have a secret atomic base on an island in the North Pacific, so a volunteer expedition led by Professor Montel (Victor Francen) investigates from a submarine commanded by Captain Adam Jones (Richard Widmark). Along for the ride is Montel’s assistant, Professor Girard (Bella Darvi). Will sparks fly between Jones and Girard? Did Darryl Zanuck have lovely “proteges” like lovely Darvi?
It’s all rather routine, with one unsurprising obstacle after another being overcome. One atypical aspect is that the crew is made up of men from various countries, with the film suggesting we’re all doomed if we don’t learn to cooperate. The film’s other distinction is that in an era showing scientists as reckless and dangerous, the ones here are clearly admirable.
Alfred Newman’s score is cliched martial music, and Cameron Mitchell overacts in several scenes, but Widmark and Francen give good performances. The great Richard Loo, who spent WWII showing American audiences how nasty the Japanese can be, gets to be a good guy for a change.
“All ahead one-third.”
Lisa Dombrowski, The Films of Samuel Fuller: If You Die, I’ll Kill You: “Hell and High Water is so conventionally shot it barely seems like a Fuller production. . . . Fuller had the resources and the time to craft a high-quality Hollywood action film; in all likelihood, he also experienced the increased production oversight afforded big-budget spectacles. The end result is Fuller’s least personal film, featuring a few signature narrative elements but defined by strict adherence to classical stylistic conventions.”
Random thought: The voiceover narration identifies Montel as a “former Nobel Prize winner.” This means he had to return it?
Watched on FXM Retro.
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Jacques Dupont’s Trapped by Fear is the least interesting French film noir I’ve seen. Laurent Porte (Claude Brasseur) accidentally kills a cop while stealing a car. His friend Paul Frapier (Jean-Paul Belmondo) tries to help him. Paul’s girlfriend, model Vera (Alexandra Stewart), feels neglected. Vera and fellow model Arabelle (Sylva Koscina) talk about the nature of love. Paul looks distracted, not paying enough attention to either Laurent or Vera. Laurent looks glum. Vera looks sad. Alexandra and Sylva look lovely. I look bored.
Dupont worked primarily in documentaries and uses the locales in and around Paris quite well, but he never seems to get a handle on the material. He made a four-minute film about Jean-Pierre Melville but shows no real interest in noir here. Trapped comes alive slightly when the cops chase Laurent through some woods. Everything builds to a conclusion vaguely resembling that of High Sierra though without the dog.
Random thought: At a press party, we see Claude Chabrol as himself.
Watched on Kino Lorber Blu-ray.
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“Do you like mystery novels, Mr. Tamon? Carr, Queen, Irish—their work is so wonderfully convoluted.”
Take Aim at the Police Van finds Seijun Suzuki just before he became arguably the most stylized Japanese crime director. The film is a more traditional noir but is still quite impressive.
Two convicts are murdered while being transported on a van under the supervision of prison guard Tamon (Michitaro Mizushima), and he is suspended from his duties for six months. With time on his hands and no sweetie to cuddle with or dogs to walk, Tamon decides to investigate the killings. As with American noirs, the further Tamon’s investigation leads him, the more complicated the case becomes. He discovers it all has something to do with a prostitution racket under the temporary control of Yuko Hamajima (Misako Watanabe) while her pa (Shinsuke Ashida) recovers from an illness. Tamon learns that a mysterious Mr. Big is the real nasty behind everything, but he is quite difficult to identify. Meanwhile, Tamon and Yuko find themselves falling for each other.
Tamon is far from his hardboiled American counterparts, being a sensitive soul: “I think of all criminals as human beings no matter their crime.” But Tamon-san, some of these miscreants have guns and knives. A few even have bows and arrows, used in one vivid murder. But be assured noirniks, when our hero is faced with no alternative, guns go a-blazing.
Suzuki’s films are a departure from most crime films. There is very little sitting around chewing the sushi. Most of the scenes are short with lots of cuts within them. And if you want action, Uncle Seijun is your man. We have a narrow escape from a gasoline tanker about to explode, and the film ends with an elaborate shootout in a train depot. One miscreant meets his end in an ironic manner through which Suzuki seems to be acknowledging his predecessors. As with Jean-Pierre Melville, he is deeply influenced by American films while establishing his own style and view of the corrupt world. Take Aim is notable for how well developed most of the characters are, making us experience their confusion and pain.
Take Aim also offers gritty b&w cinematography by Shigeyoshi Mine, terrific editing by Akira Suzuki, and a wonderful score by Koichi Kawabe, drawing upon Henry Mancini’s Peter Gunn music. I especially like how in one scene following a barrage of bullets, the music becomes piercing, approximating the ringing in the ears we might have after a loud noise. All the performances are good, with Mizushima the standout in conveying Tamon’s increasing determination against seemingly overwhelming obstacles.
“How about some melon?”
Random thought: Watanabe will be 94 October 22. According to IMDb, she has 132 credits from 1953 through 2024.
Watched on the Criterion Channel.
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“This scent intoxicates me.”
Your humble correspondent may have mentioned once or twice that I prefer style over content, remaining puzzled about what the latter might involve. Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s Reflection in a Dead Diamond is style in overdrive, a celebration of style for its own sake.
In a luxury hotel on the French Riviera, retired spy John Diman (Fabio Testi) recalls events from his life, with Yannick Renier as the younger Diman, many involving a mysterious female assassin. That’s about all I can say about the plot which is difficult to follow, though that isn’t remotely important. Current and past events wrap around themselves. Characters disappear from what passes for reality into movies and graphic novels. It finally boils down to an elderly woman (Maria de Medeiros) living next door to the hotel. It’s a hoot.
Reflection is an homage to spy films of the past such as the Lemmy Caution series, the OSS 117 films, and, especially, Danger: Diabolik. The directors, cinematographer Manuel Dacosse, and production designer Laurie Colson seem to be going for the pop-art look of the latter and other Mario Bava films. Reflection is a celebration of what can be done with color, with at least one scene dissolving into monochrome to remind us how important color is to art and life.
There are lots of other films references. The most obvious is having Amanda (Celine Camara), an African-American singer, perform Catalani’s La Wally, as in Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Diva. Another clear influence is the Mission: Impossible films through the use (and use and use) of masks. Friends hereabouts have pointed out borrowings from James Bond, of course, Mulholland Drive, Watchmen, The Shining, and many gialli. I would add Modesty Blaise and the films of Seijun Suzuki, especially through the use of color and the dreamlike logic of the narrative. The presence of de Medeiros underscores the influence of the fractured narrative of Pulp Fiction. Despite all this, the film remains distinctively itself.
What matters about Reflection is its style, energy, and relentless inventiveness, but you (or your analyst) could make something about the meanings of the mirrors, windows, masks, blood, chocolate, leather, diamonds, caves, and lots more. But the film is so dazzling to the eye that the mind gives itself permission to turn off for a while.
Reflection is extremely violent, with your humble correspondent, noted wimp, flinching a few times. My favorite scene, however, is one of the bloodiest. When a woman is surrounded by assailants, she uses her dress to dispatch them. Should I ever encounter such a garment, I shall keep my distance.
Reflection is immensely entertaining. I will have to catch up with Helene and Bruno’s other films.
Random thought: Testi will be 85 on August 2. Maria de Medeiros will be 61 on August 19.
Watched on AMC+ via Amazon Prime.
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Dear cinephiles, if you’re ever in a pub quiz and the question is “What is the worst Terence Fisher-Christopher Lee-Peter Cushing film?” the answer being sought is likely The Night of the Big Heat.
“We’ve got to destroy them before they destroy us.”
What’s it about? According to the Cheezy Movies DVD for Island of the Burning Damned, the American title, “Mysterious invaders from outer space create their scorching heat rays that consume the people on an island!” That description is misleading because there’s a really, really boring subplot consuming almost half the narrative.
A sparsely populated island somewhere off the UK coast is experiencing an increasing heat wave, inexplicable because it’s snowing back on the mainland. Luckily, mysterious scientist Godfrey Hanson (Mr. Lee) is staying at the only inn on the island, so he eventually figures out the problem is extraterrestrial, though not what to do about it. The inn is run by Frankie Callum (Sarah Lawson), whose reclusive husband, Jeff (Patrick Allen), is a novelist. Angela Roberts (Jane Merrow) arrives to be Jeff’s secretary. The other protagonist is Dr. Vernon Stone (Mr. Cushing) who seems to spend all his time throwing ‘em back at the inn. Island residents, if you become ill in the middle of the night, just tough it out.
It turns out Angela is Jeff’s former mistress and refuses to let him go. Why? Why, indeed. Just look at luscious Angela. Then look at gaunt, middle-aged Jeff, not exactly a girl’s wet dream. He resists her advances. Then he doesn’t. Frankie finds out and is quite upset. Then she isn’t. Then she is. All this would be annoying if it involved ten percent of the narrative, but it’s more like forty percent.
The film was clearly made on a very low budget, with most of it limited to the pub portion of the inn, becoming so claustrophobic it reminded me of The Petrified Forest. Most of the exteriors take place in the glooming to try to hide the cheap sets. The creatures resemble puddings with lights inside. The crisis is resolved in a manner stolen from Herbie Wells’ The War of the Worlds. If the visitors are so smart, how could they not know this was going to happen?
None of this is Fisher’s fault. He’s doing the best he can with the budget restrictions and the dumb script. At least Lee and Cushing get to play characters more normal their usual ones during this period, and Percy Herbert plays a non-military role for a change—at least I think he’s not military. Oh, and Cushing gets to scream.
Leslie Halliwell: “Sloppily made and over-prolonged science fiction with far too much irrelevant talk.”
Random thoughts:
Merrow will be 85 on August 26.
Allen and Lawson were married from 1960 until his ascension to the big screening room in the sky in 2006.
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“She has dark chestnut hair or light brown hair. I’m not sure which.”
Seeing two Marina Vlady films recently reminded me that I’d seen her best-known film, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, only once. Now I’ve seen it twice.
2 or 3 is a Godard film as he was abandoning traditional narrative, not that such ever meant much to him. So we have a voiceover narration, a static camera, musings on current events (Vietnam, LBJ’s heavy heart) and politics in general, frequent digs at consumer culture, film references (Muriel, Ugetsu, Nanook of the North), literary references (Simenon, Faulkner, Chekhov), and aphorisms (“Language is the house man lives in.” With a little nudity.
“With image, anything goes—the best and the worst.”
It’s boring, especially the beauty salon section, and pretentious. This is Godard without a sense of humor. However, if you’re in the right mood, you could interpret some of it as self-mocking, as with anyone who takes himself so seriously. But I can’t blame JLG for trying something different, for not wanting to be trapped into any box, though you could say he goes on to do just that. I can admire his audacity even if I don’t care for what he’s doing with it.
“All I’m doing is looking for reasons to live happily.”
On another level, the film is a time capsule for a period when people were questioning traditional values. Ironically for JLG’s aim to criticize consumerism, the film is also a showcase for mid-60s fashions, as with this little number. And we get to spend much of its 87 minutes with Vlady and Anny Duperey.
“I only have cat food.”
Random thought: Vlady will be 88 on May 10. Duperey will be 79 on June 28.
Watched on the Criterion Channel.
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“Nobody ever makes it back from Villa Graps.”
Mario Bava’s Kill, Baby, Kill! is OK but not primo Bava. There are notable elements but little to get excited about.
The film opens with Dr. Paul Eswai (Giacomo Rossi Stuart) arriving in a Carpathian village to help Inspector Kruger (Piero Lulli) and Burgomeister Karl (Luciano Catenacci) sort out a spot of bother. Melissa Garps (Valerio Valeri), who died twenty years earlier when she was seven, has returned to drive locals to suicide just by looking at them. She wants revenge against the villagers after being kicked by a horse. If we’re told why she’s waited twenty years, I missed it. Also on hand for the scarification are medical student Monica Schuftan (Erika Blanc), who exchanges goo-goo eyes with the good doc, Ruth (Fabienne Dali), a sort of combo witch and exorcist, and Baroness Graps (Giovanna Galletti), the little girl’s ma who springs a big secret on us near the end.
The action consists mostly of alternating between Melissa doing what a vengeful ghost’s gotta do and Eswai running around trying to come up with solutions. As usual with Bava, the film is heavy on atmosphere with dust and spiderwebs all over the place and with gothic lighting by Bava and Antonio Rinaldi, often reminding me of Hammer horrors and Corman’s Eddie Poe films. I also love the several spiral staircase shots. Bava uses Melissa’s chilling stare quite effectively. The shots of her with her ball foreshadow similar ones on Fellini’s Toby Dammit two years later. My favorite sequence involves Eswai chasing an image of himself repeatedly through the same rooms. In other words, the look of the film is much more engrossing than the narrative.
Troy Howarth, The Haunted World of Mario Bava: “Kill, Baby…Kill! offered Bava precisely the sort of artistic and creative validation he craved after taking over as a gun-for-hire on two projects that were originated by other directors. It is one of his most subtle films and is sometimes pointed to as his masterpiece. In this case, he set out to chill the audience rather than to shock them, and he succeeded in this goal admirably. Of his later works, it is the one that best evokes the classical mood and style of Black Sunday. The atmosphere he creates is so overpowering that the film seems to exude a hypnotic, hallucinatory effect akin to the real-life state of delirium that informed Dario Argento’s disturbing The Stendhal Syndrome (1996).”
Random thoughts:
Blanc, whose most recent credit came in 2024, will be 84 on July 23. Dali, who hung up her greasepaint in 1969, will be 85 on September 22.
Rossi Stuart (1925-1994) has three biological issues who have acted in films. In addition to acting, Valentina Rossi Stuart has extensive stunt credits, including Gangs of New York, Mission Impossible III, and Spider-Man: Far from Home. Surely you recall her terrific performance as Dead Rabbit Gang Member in Marty’s film.
Watched on DVD at the North Georgia Center for Cinephilia whose high potentate pointed out that the scene of Eswai chasing himself recalls the Powell-Pressburger The Tales of Hoffmann.
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Robert Hossein’s The Wicked Go to Hell unspools in three segments. In the first, we are introduced to cellmates Lucien Rudel (Serge Reggiani) and Pierre Macquart (Henri Vidal) who dislike and mistrust each other, which makes matters a tad awkward when they escape together. The prison section is mostly predictable and boring. One scene, however, in which a prisoner (Robert Dalban) learns that the wife (Marthe Mercadier) he adores wants a divorce foreshadows later events. Hossein stages the escape with considerable energy, giving the film a boost after the claustrophobia of the earlier scenes. When the boys finally make their way to a seaside shack, the film takes on a different tone, almost elegiac with, of course, typical French irony and fatalism.
The most unusual aspect of The Wicked Go to Hell is that Marina Vlady gets top billing although she doesn’t appear until 51 minutes in. When Lucien and Pierre encounter Vlady’s Eva, her name winking at the irony of the false paradise they have stumbled into, the tensions between the two only increase. It all builds to an ending which had me chuckling and shaking my head.
While Reggiani and Vidal give good performances, the film is dominated by Vlady, strikingly beautiful at seventeen. When Eva enters, she really makes an entrance, with Hossein’s camera caressing her from top to Tarantinos. The caressing turns Eva into an erotic fantasy of the available but unattainable. When the boys make a big mistake by thinking they’re cleverer than her, they seal their fates. We are witnessing the director, who also plays a convict, falling in love with his subject. Hossein and Vlady were married soon after finishing the film.
The film’s only serious weakness, beyond the relatively weak opening, is the overly melodramatic score by Andre Hossein, the auteur’s pa. But the beautiful b&w cinematography of Michel Kelber (French Cancan, Bitter Victory) makes up for such flaws.
“Life isn’t all bad.”
Random thought: Vlady will be 88 on May 10.
Watched on a Radiance Blu-ray.
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Robert Aldrich’s Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte is a worthy follow-up to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?>. It’s well made and clever without reaching the operatic regions of its predecessor. It’s like something Thomas Lanier Williams might dash off on a rainy weekend if in a murderously gothic mood, though without the bourbon-soaked dialogue. As with Baby Jane, we know we’re being misled from the beginning, but it’s fun ride.
Though going overboard a couple of times, Bette Davis gives a fairly modulated performance given the material and makes Charlotte Hollis suitably sympathetic. While Olivia de Havilland and Joseph Cotten are very good, the standouts are the supporting players such as Victor Buono and Cecil Kellaway. Agnes Moorehead, no stranger to excess, goes well over the top, but she’s fun to watch.
Aldrich again shows his vast range, ably dealing equally well with Westerns, films noir, and war films, as well as overheated melodramas. The scene in which Charlotte imagines she’s back in the past dancing again with her lost love, John Mayhew (Bruce Dern), is wonderfully directed and beautifully photographed by Joe Biroc, as is the entire film. I wonder, however, if Bette thought Dernsie was attractive enough for her.
Leslie Halliwell: “Padded but generally enjoyable replay of elements from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? with a large helping of Diabolique. The stars help more than the director.
Pauline Kael: “The story, redolent of mutilation and assorted horrors, is from a novel by Henry Farrell, who also was the source of the earlier film. A lot of people seemed to enjoy the spectacle of Davis crawling and howling and looking wildly repulsive.”
Random thoughts:
Dern, the only surviving cast member, will be 90 on June 4.
Of the cast members, Davis, De Havilland, Mary Astor, and George Kennedy won Oscars, while Buono, Kellaway, and Moorehead got noms, while poor Cotten was perpetually empty-handed.
Part of Charlotte was shot in Baton Rouge, as were earlier films such as The Long Hot Summer and many more afterward, including sex, lies, and videotape, but during the five years your humble correspondent and Mrs. yhc lived there, only the dismal The Toy, with Richard Pryor and Jackie Gleason, was shot locally.
Charlotte refers to “county commissioners,” and my dear friend Percy Helton calls himself the “county coroner,” but Louisiana is composed of parishes, not counties.
De Haviland’s role was originally played by Joan Crawford. In his highly entertaining Joan Crawford: A Woman’s Face, Scott Eyman spends more time on Charlotte than on any films she actually made. Production was delayed because Crawford was ill, though Aldrich suspected she wasn’t sick the entire time. When she finally had to leave the production, considerable drama was devoted to choosing her replacement. Aldrich wanted Barbara Stanwyck, but Missy called Joan to say she’d never betray her friend. Loretta Young said the same. Aldrich then wanted Vivian Leigh who said she could work with Joan but never with Bette. He also wanted Katharine Hepburn but suspected her agents never told her. Anyway, Bette, whose contract gave her cast approval, wouldn’t have worked with either Viv or Kate. Miss Davis felt that Olivia wouldn’t overshadow her.
Watched on FXM Retro. First seen in a theater in Lanett, AL.
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For those of us old enough to remember video stores, Alex Ross Perry’s Videoheaven evokes nostalgia for the olden days when we went to such establishments looking for a specific film only to find it already rented by someone else or never even in stock. The experience was often frustrating but could be exciting when stumbling upon a store that actually had older films and foreign gems in addition to current commercial dreck, and in the 80s, there was lots of dreck.
Perry, whose Listen Up Philip is very entertaining, is extremely thorough in tracing the evolution of the VHS format and the stores renting the tapes, providing considerable statistical evidence along the way. While there is some non-fictional footage, as with a TV reporter wondering how video will affect movie theaters while standing outside one showing 52 Pick-Up, ironically also part of the Criterion Channel’s VHS Forever series, most of the doc is devoted to depictions of video stores in films and TV series, almost exclusively American ones.
Perry is to be admired for tracking down clips from an amazing number of sources, but there seems to be a lot of repetition, making the same points over and over. These points include the embarrassment of people caught looking for mainstream garbage or erotica instead of Bergman, Fellini, etc., and the arrogance of clerks who look down on their customers’ tastes. The narration written by Perry analyzes the significance of some films while placing them in the sociological importance of their time. He seems to enjoy pointing out the factual errors in Watching the Detectives, another film in the Criterion Channel series.
While Videoheaven is consistently informative, at 172 minutes it’s asking a lot from viewers, few of whom, as with your humble correspondent, will watch it all in one sitting. Another flaw is the narration by Maya Hawke who reads it rather than performing it, only occasionally altering her cadence. While her voice isn’t unpleasant, it becomes tiring given the excessive length of the doc.
“Free Willy back yet?”
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“We’re entering savage new times, and we’re going to have to be pure and direct and strong if we’re going to survive them.”
I found David Cronenberg’s Videodrome a bit hard to take when I saw it back in the 80s, but having become more indoctrinated into genre films and seeing Crony’s satirical intent more clearly, I appreciated the film better this time.
However, it’s a film easier to admire than to enjoy. The snuff scenes are upsetting, and Crony’s vision of the world is often depressing, as with the treatment of business as society’s dominant force. (Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.)
“It bites.”
But Crony’s a highly original auteur, overflowing with ideas, especially about how sex and violence affect us differently, and using quite striking special effects. I had to keep looking at my abdomen to make sure it wasn’t behaving like Jimmy Woods’. Once again proving that Rick Baker is a special-effects genius, the film illustrates how hard it can be to separate reality from illusion, especially nowadays when we seem trapped within someone else’s warped fantasy.
“I like it. It turns me on.”
Crony’s vision of how TV dominates our lives seems quaint when traditional media are quickly disappearing and the interwebosphere is having effects on all aspects of our lives that Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, and folks like that could not have contemplated.
“See ya in Pittsburgh.”
Leslie Halliwell: “Dangerous when it is not risible, this thoroughly tawdry concept is made worse by being slickly done.”
Random thought: Cronenberg will be 83 on March 15. Woods will be 79 on April 18. Female lead Debbie Harry will be 81 on July 1. Rick Baker will be 76 on December 8.
Watched on the Criterion Channel as part of its VHS Forever series.
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“I have it on good authority that the world is coming to an end.”
After enjoying Robert Fuest’s The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, and And Soon the Darkness, I intended to revisit his The Final Programme which I remembered being interesting on my one previous viewing, but it disappeared into my memory hole until I stumbled across a reference recently. It’s still interesting but less successful than I had recalled.
Jerry Cornelius (Jon Fich) is a very unconvincing Nobel-Prize-winning physicist, seeming more credible as a dandyish playboy. His scientist pa has just died, and Jerry wants to find his formula for a new lifeform. He needs to find it soon because he’s convinced the end of the world is near. Jerry’s sloven bro Frank (Derrick O’Connor) has the MacGuffin but won’t give it up. With the help of the mysterious Miss Brunner (Jenny Runacre), Jerry tracks down Frank and does what a physicist’s gotta do.
Or something like that. Fuest’s adaptation of Michael Moorcock’s novel is often difficult to follow. Sight and Sound, with some justification, called the film “Clumsy and almost incomprehensible.” The narrative takes so many divergences that it’s easy to lose one’s way.
Even when the film, released in the US as The Last Days of Man on Earth, meanders, it’s always captivating to look at. According to the opening credits, Fuest designed, wrote, and directed the film, the only such credit I’ve ever seen. He got his start as a production designer for TV commercials and for early episodes of The Avengers, which he later directed, and Final Programme has the pop-art look of that series.
The film’s other virtue is the performances. I was amused by how much Finch sounds and delivers his lines like the Peter O’Toole of The Ruling Class. There are brief but memorable bits by Harry Andrews, Hugh Griffith, Sterling Hayden, and Patrick Magee, with Chateau Noir favorite Ronald Lacey being strange as only he can as Jerry’s pinball-obsessed friend.
The dominant performance in every sense is by the towering (5-10 plus heels) Runacre, who seems to have the best handle on the film’s tongue-in-cheek approach to science fiction. Near the end, Jenny also has a nifty nude scene. I had to invoke the strongest possible will power to keep from dancing to the TV and embracing it. If I had one like those in Videodrome, it would have been no contest.
“So you are the new messiah.”
To top everything off, the film ends with the most absurd Bogart imitation imaginable.
Leslie Halliwell: “Intellectualized sci-fi, hard to take as entertainment but glossy.”
Random thought: Runacre will be 80 on August 18.
Watched on Amazon Prime. First seen at the University of South Carolina.
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John Frankenheimer’s 52 Pick-Up is not about a truck. On my one previous viewing, I had a mixed response. Nothing has changed.
Businessman Harry Mitchell (Roy Scheider) is having an affair with the much younger Cini (Kelly Preston) despite being married to Barbara (Ann-Margret). (Now if you were married to A-M . . . .) This is a big mistake for Mitch because three lowlifes are using Cini to set him up for blackmail. The predicament is complicated because Barbara is running for LA city council. (She has my vote.) Mitch needs to protect his wife from scandal and also doesn’t have the $105,000 the blackmailers are demanding.
The film is adapted from Elmore Leonard’s 1974 novel. As is often the case with Uncle Elmore, his villains are more interesting than his ordinary citizens. A typical Leonard sleazeball, Alan Raimy (John Glover), who runs a porno theater, is the mastermind, but he isn’t half as smart as he thinks he is. Bobby Shy (Clarence Williams III) is the cool cat in charge of the rough stuff. Nervous Leo Franks (Robert Trebor) is the weak link. Late in the film, Bobby asks Raimy why they need Leo. Why indeed? Mitch’s best way of surviving is to turn these creeps against each other. Everything builds up to a resolution I find far-fetched.
The problem with late-career Frankenheimer is that his films don’t have the same surety and energy of such earlier efforts like The Manchurian Candidate. With 52 Pick-Up, he does an adequate by-the-numbers job, never displaying any notable stylistic flourishes.
The best thing about the film is the performances. Scheider, A-M, Williams, Trebor, and, especially, Glover are all very good. I have seen Glover play creeps many times, and he never seems to repeat himself, always clearly enjoying being bad.
The worst thing about 52 Pick-Up is Gary Chang’s electronic score which screams 80s mediocrity. Frankenheimer must have liked the music, however, since the two collaborated several other times.
"Clean living. It pays off every time."
Random thoughts:
Ann-Margret will be 85 on April 28. Glover will be 82 on August 7.
Mitch’s 1963 Jaguar XK-E is almost as beautiful as Ann-Margret.
52 Pick-Up is the second adaptation of Leonard’s novel by producers Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan of the notoriously cheesy Canon Group. Two years earlier, they produced The Ambassador, a much looser adaptation set in the Middle East with Ellen Burstyn in Scheider’s role and Robert Mitchum in Ann-Margret’s.
Before going to the big screening room in the sky on March 11, 2025, Trebor wrote The Haircut Who Would Be King about our courageous leader’s friendship with his much-smarter Russian pal.
In Cooler Than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard, C. M. Kushins explains why Leonard is credited as one of the screenwriters: “Although Leonard had never actually written a script for John Frankenheimer’s newly titled 52 Pickup, both the director and producer insisted that the author get screen credit for the amount of dialogue retained from his original novel. ‘All I did was add commas where proper names are used in the dialogue, and spell “all right” with two words.’”
Watched on the Criterion Channel as part of its VHS Forever series. The blackmailers use two tapes against Mitch.
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“Dogs follow masters. But I’m a stray cat.”
In Seijun Suzuki’s Pistol Opera, an agent (Sayoko Yamaguchi) for assassins decides it will be swell to stage a tournament with the killers knocking off each other to decide once and for all who’s number one. (Those planning to watch the NCAA basketball tournaments may enjoy warming up with this film.) The festivities center around Stray Cat (Makiko Esumi) who thinks she has a good chance of winning. She’s also as beautiful as she is ruthless. Her main opponent is played by Masatoshi Nagase of the Maiku Hamma trilogy, in a blonde wig. All this is rather mechanical and predictable until Stray Cat is confronted by an opponent she hadn’t expected.
As with many other Suzuki films, the plot is secondary to his style. This is also good because your humble correspondent was frequently baffled by what was going on. But I kept going because the film is so beautiful, even on DVD. Suzuki’s films are always colorful, and this one is especially, with yellows and reds dominating. Cinematographer Yonezo Maeda and production designer Takeo Kimura create an endless series of striking images, many of them almost abstract. I especially like the scene in which a black gun slowly becomes red.
Sound is more important here than in any other Suzuki films I’ve seen, with silences frequently obliterated by loud noises to accentuate the unpredictable danger faced by Stray Cat. The sudden intrusion of the score by Kazufumi Kodama also heightens the suspense. The mixture of romantic motifs, jazzy pieces, and Latin-tinged bits also supports the film’s exoticism. I ordered the CD as soon as the film was over.
“Tell the evil that I’ll be coming.”
Random thoughts:
Esumi will be 60 on December 18. Nagase will be 60 on July 15.
Pistol Opera is instructive if you want to learn where to shoot someone if you want your victim to smile while dying.
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“We’ll bury the body in the cellar.”
How could I resist a giallo entitled Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key? What vice or vices are involved? Are the locked room and the key metaphors? Will the violence be too intense for wimps like me? Will there be female nudity?
Oliverio Rouvigny (Luigi Pistilli) is a bit of a bastard. A once prominent novelist, he has been unable to write for three years. He takes out his frustrations on his wife, Irina (Anita Strindberg), including humiliating her in public. If that wasn’t enough, Irina is also tormented by Oliverio’s beloved black cat, Satan. Then a former student (Carla Mancini) of Oliverio, with whom he’s been fooling around, is brutally murdered, followed by the similar murder of the Rouvignys’ maid (Angela La Vorgna). Oliverio’s kid sister, Floriana (Edwige Fenech), whom he hasn’t seen in fifteen years, shows up all luscious. Can you kids say incest?
Sergio Martino directs the screenplay by his brother Luciano very well, especially with the use of Satan, but it all seems too familiar until the final twenty minutes or so. Then there’s a series of swell twists, at least one of which will be familiar to fans of Eddie Poe’s “The Black Cat” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” These twists, combined with the performances of Fenech, Pistilli, and, especially, Strindberg lift the film considerably.
“Please, you have to call the police.”
Random thoughts:
Fenech, who was married to Luciano Martino during 1971-1979, will be 78 on December 24. Strindberg will be 88 on May 29. Mancini will be 76 on April 21. Sergio Martino will be 88 on July 19.
The gals ain’t the only beauties in the film. There is the blue 1939 BMW 327 Sport-Coupe.
Watched on AMC+ via Amazon Prime.
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“In her two months with us, I’d never looked at Belle.”
Cinephiles, if you need a shot of Gallic fatalism, Edouard Molinaro’s The Passion of Slow Fire is just what you’re looking for. Stephane Blanchon (Jean Desailly) teaches history at a Geneva boys’ school. He and his wife, Christine (Monique Melinand), take in an American student, Belle Shermann (Alexandra Stewart), the daughter of Christine’s friend, Lorraine (Louisa Colpeyn). When someone strangles Belle, Stephane is suspected, despite the lack of evidence, and the community, including Christine, turns against him.
“At heart, all men are little boys. But you can’t say that.”
Stephane is a sexually inexperienced wimp who might as well have a kick-me sign permanently attached to his posterior. When it’s revealed that Belle wrote a friend back home in Virginia that she was in love with him, he’s all confused, as well as turned on. The film, adapted by Jean Anouilh, whose plays include Becket, from a Georges Simenon novel, moves expertly between Stephane’s anguish and confusion, and the suspicions of others, especially magistrate Beckman (Jacques Monod), who emerges as the ironic villain through his insistence on the teacher’s guilt.
“It’s about a man’s honor and not just another case.”
Slow Fire is smoothly directed by Molinaro (Back to the Wall, La Cage aux Folles), beautifully photographed by Jean-Louis Picavet (Rossellini’s The Taking of Power by Louis XIV), and with an ironically romantic score by Georges Delerue, but the main thing it has going for it is Desailly’s performance as a man fighting for his dignity while discovering his life has been too conventional and confined. This discovery leads to some questionable actions toward the end, but as Preston Sturges warned us long ago, the French differ from the rest of us. It all builds to a powerful conclusion that left me shaken.
Random thoughts:
Stewart, who will be 87 on June 10, is perfect casting for this role since she left Canadia to polish her French only to become a sought-after actress, working with Ozon, Penn, Polanski, Preminger, Truffaut, and many other top directors, including her boyfriend, Louis Malle.
The film opens with a shot of Stephane smoking a pipe, looking exactly like Simenon except for the absence of eyeglasses.
Two of the Swiss cops drive VW Beetles.
Watched on Kino Lorber Blu-ray.
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As longtime perusers know, Andre de Toth is one of my favorite directors. I watched Ramrod, the first of two films with Veronica Lake (aka Mrs. de Toth), a dozen or so years ago after seeing several of his Randolph Scott Westerns and had high hopes. Alas, I found it boring. I wanted it to improve with age but still found little to like.
“From now on, I’m going to make a life of my own, and being a woman, I won’t have to use guns.”
Adapted from a Luke Short novel, Ramrod is one of those cattlemen vs. sheepmen tales and all that implies. (Unless I dozed off, no livestock other than horses is on view.) In addition to the too-familiar plot, the film is full of tired dialogue such as “I give the order around here” and “We have a legal right to be here. You can’t throw us out.” Except for Donald Crisp, as the sheriff, and Arleen Whelan, as the good girl, the performers are unimpressive. Joel McCrea gives one of his few uninteresting performances. At best, Lake is a limited performer. Here, she’s decidedly listless.
Directing the first of his eleven Westerns, Andre has a feel for the landscape but can’t enliven the cliched plot. The best thing about the film is the beautiful b&w cinematography of Russell Harlan just before he shot Red River. The scene shot from inside a cave is especially beautiful.
Derek Hill: “Ramrod is one of the best American Westerns of its era and a rangy gallop into more adult fare for audiences in 1947, without coarsening the entertainment factor.”—from “Action Shooting: The Westerns of Andre de Toth,” Bare Bones, number 25, winter 2026.
Veronica Lake: “I’m certain Bandi [de Toth] stayed with the film all the way only because I was involved. The crew hated him and was quick to let him know about their feelings. I don’t know how many times I had to smooth his ruffled feathers, usually with him turning on me whenever I’d even hint at taking someone else’s side in whatever dispute happened to arise that particular day.”—from Veronica: The Autobiography of Veronica Lake.
Andre de Toth on Veronica Lake: “She was not my wife on the set and when we got back home she was no longer the star of Ramrod or any other picture anymore. I didn’t marry a star, she didn’t marry a director. No problem. At home, she was what she wanted to be: my wife and a very good cook.”
Watched on Olive Films Blu-ray.
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I like The Most Terrible Time in My Life, the first film in Kaizo Hayashi’s Maiku Hama trilogy, a lot. The second, The Stairway to the Distant Past, is disappointing, a darker film than the mostly comic first one. The finale, The Trap, begins promisingly but quickly becomes even darker than its predecessor.
A masked figure is killing attractive young women in Yokohama. Private eye Maiku (Masatoshi Nagase) is framed when his fingerprints are found at one murder. His mentor (Joe Shishido) rounds up a group of private eyes to help sort matters out. Meanwhile, Maiku’s mute girlfriend, Yuriko (Yui Natsukawa), becomes a target for the killer.
Hayashi’s direction is stylish as always, but I miss the comic touches from the first film and the beginning of the second. The motivations behind the killings turn out to be very disturbing, much too dark for me. Hayashi is better with less psychologically complex mysteries. Still, Nagase is very good, as are Shishido and Akaji Maro as Maiku’s antagonist in the police.
Watched on Blu-ray.
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“I want you to do something for me.”
A giallo starring John Mills sounds like it could by interesting or awful, but it’s somewhere in between. In Massimo Dallamano’s A Black Veil for Lisa, Hamburg Inspector Franz Bulon (JM) suspects his beautiful, much younger wife, Lisa (Luciana Paluzzi), of infidelity, so he hires hitman Max Lindt (Robert Hoffmann) to resolve his worries. He must not have noticed that Max is kinda cute. What could possibly go wrong?
I like Mills in Hobson’s Choice and Ice Cold in Alex, but his presence never excites me. Here, I have trouble accepting him as a narcotics cop and as someone married to luscious Lisa, who has a shady past. (John kisses Luciana passionately twice. Good for him.) Dallamano’s direction is adequate, but I kept hoping for more original twists and turns. I’m left admiring Luciana’s beauty and little else.
And there’s a truly awful song in the closing credits.
“Everybody has to pay for what they do.”
Random thought: Paluzzi will be 89 on June 10.
Watched on Olive Films Blu-ray.
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“I saw behind the door.”
As a card-carrying wimp, I had been avoiding Dario Argento’s Suspiria for fears it would have me hiding under the bed clutching my teddy-bear collection. But Mario Bava, Jean Rollin, Jess Franco, Terence Fisher, and the like have initialed me into the joys of blood-letting, so I ventured forth.
While there is some gruesome stuff in Suspiria (if you’ve seen it, you know which scene had me closing my eyes; luckily, the dogs were asleep), it turns out the plot doesn’t matter that much. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage has a more interesting story. What elevates Suspiria is that it’s a visual feast.
“I think we’ll do nicely together. I think you’re sweet.”
When Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) leaves the airport at the beginning of the film, the wind blows her scarf back across her neck, as if to strangle her. She’s dressed in white to show her innocence. In the cab, she’s bathed in red light, suggesting the danger ahead. Her destination, the ballet school, is overpoweringly red, with crimson becoming the film’s dominant color. She can’t get in, a sign of things to come, while being drenched by the rain, a source of both danger and purification. Soon, we see the first two murders, and boy are they bloody affairs. Kids, if you’ve never seen a knife going into an exposed heart, this is the film for you.
The narrative progresses from there, but what matters is the way it looks and sounds. Argento’s mise-en-scene, Luciano Tovoli’s cinematography, Guiseppe Bassan’s production design, Pierangelo Cicoletti’s costumes, Massimo Anzellotti and Federico Savina’s sound, and the score by Argento and the group Goblin overwhelm the familiar slasher/witches plot.
There is one striking image after another. There are too many to catalog, but the one most memorable for me is this b&w wallpaper. It’s beautiful, but it doesn’t suggest peace and calm like we would want wallpaper to do but chaos, confusion, and threat. Then there’s Harper herself, treated as an object not so much for her beauty as for her large, expressive eyes, perfect for capturing all the fears on display.
The film is full of the sounds of not only screams but rain, footsteps, a blood-filled gurling sink, etc. All the ominous sounds are amplified and are complemented by the very loud, dissonant score. This ain’t horror, dear cinephiles. It’s art.
Argento shows his debts to such masters as Lang and Hitchcock in casting Joan Bennett and Alida Valli, who resembles Mrs. Danvers blended with a concentration-camp guard. Argento’s debt to Hitchcock is very clear, as with the film’s similarities to Psycho and the bat attack recalling The Birds. My favorite Hitchcockian touch, however, is this visual allusion to the United Nations scene in North by Northwest. Like Roger O. Thornhill, Suzy will prevail because she’s clever.
Leslie Halliwell: “Psycho meets The Exorcist with no holds barred; a genuinely scary thriller with gaudy visuals and a screaming sound track. A pyrotechnic display for those who can take it.”
Random thought: Argento will be 86 on September 7. Harper will be 77 on October 3.
Watched on Synapse 4K.
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“I prefer the love of life rather than the love of death.”
All of Jean Rollin’s films that I’ve seen aim for poetry to some extent, none more so than The Iron Rose. A young couple (Francoise Pascal and Hugues Quester) who have just met go for a wander in a huge cemetery. When they come upon an underground crypt, they decide to go down for a cuddle, and who among us, I ask you, hasn’t done the same? When they finish, it’s dark, the cemetery is locked, so they go for a big-time wander, seeking a way out, touching a lot of statuary and such as they go. Rollin is a very tactile auteur. And just as you and I would do in similar circs, they go a tad nutso, with expected and unexpected results. Now, that’s what I call poetry. Even though the version I watched on Amazon Prime was standard definition, some shots by Jean-Jacques Renon are gorgeous, especially one of burning flowers, several shots of the graveyard in the early morning at the end, and, of course, Pascal’s beachside nude scene. Some of it is tedious, but Rollin’s typically hypnotic approach worked for me. He may be saying something about life, death, and love, but look at those flowers, look at Francoise’s lovely flesh . . . .
“That’s the way we’ll leave real life.”
David Hinds, Fascination: The Celluloid Dreams of Jean Rollin: “La Rose de Fer is Rollin’s most personal film and also his biggest commercial failure. It is a beautiful exploration of life, love and death, represented with rich visual metaphors. The film constantly presents us with objects and places that were once filled with life but are now nothing more than static structures condemned by time. Their significance has greatly altered. The monstrous locomotive, the beach, the graveyard and the derelict once possessed life and power, but not anymore. Objects and items that were once important now have a different meaning, having evolved from life to death. A sense of tragedy and dark romance pervades the film. A beautiful past is as haunting as a troubled history, because one can never relive those perfect moments. They fade in time.”
Random thoughts:
Pascal will be 77 on October 14. Quester will be 78 on August 5.
The film opens with some startling shots of a decrepit village. I doubt if Jean ever won any awards from the French Tourist Bureau despite all the nudity.
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“Do you read murder mysteries?”
The Girl Who Knew Too Much is Mario Bava light, with a low-key approach to the elements he would intensify soon afterward. Considered the first giallo, the film is a psychological murder mystery with minor Hitchcockian touches.
The visit of American tourist Nora Davis (Leticia Roman) to Rome gets off to an uneasy start when her fellow plane passenger is arrested for smuggling marijuana. No sooner has she arrived to stay with family friend Ethel Wignal Bartocci (Peggy Nathan) than the old lady dies. Stumbling into the street, Nora is mugged, hitting her head on the pavement. Then she sees a woman being stabbed to death. But the police don’t believe her story about the murder after the body disappears, with suspicion that she has been re-experiencing a murder committed on the same site ten years earlier. Only Ethel’s physician, Dr. Marcello Bassi (John Saxon), believes Nora. He also notices that she’s really cute. Also attempting to help are neighbor Laura Craven-Torrani (Valentina Cortese) and journalist Andrea Landini (Dante DiPaolo), who has been investigating three related murders.
The Hitchcockian touches come from an ordinary innocent getting caught up in circumstances beyond her control and finding herself out of her psychological depth. Imagine The Man Who Knew Too Much flavored with a bit of Psycho. It all builds to the big revelation of who the villain is, a discovery that will surprise few.
The virtues of Girl are Bava’s typically precise mise-en-scene, his slowly increasing suspense, his atmospheric b&w cinematography, with lots of shadows and a scary silhouette in one scene, and the performances of Roman, Cortese, and DiPaolo. Top-billed Saxon serves mostly as an observer and a source of sympathy for Nora. It’s all mildly diverting.
My favorite moment in Girl comes when Nora wishes Edgar Wallace, Mickey Spillane, and Agatha Christie could intervene to help her. The plot is slightly influenced by Christie’s The ABC Murders.
“Get me out of here or I’ll make a scene.”
Troy Howarth, The Haunted World of Mario Bava: “Working for the first time in more realistic settings and in the psycho-thriller genre in which the idea of voyeurism is especially prevalent (as evidenced most powerfully in Hitchcock’s Rear Window, 1954, and Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, 1960), the director establishes an intensely personal connection to the material. In his role as a filmmaker, Bava voyeuristically uses his camera to record details of violent death and sordid sexuality. At the same time, as a director and storyteller, he is guiding these actions along. In a sense, he is literally orchestrating the mayhem. This is the guiding principle of the giallo, the artistic, stylized representation of violent death. Admittedly, The Girl Who Knew Too Much does not fully dive into these murky waters. In many respects, the film seems very reticent and has dated a little more overtly than some of Bava’s other films. It does, however, lay the groundwork for the hundreds of Italian thrillers that would emerge in later years.”
Random thoughts:
Roman, the daughter of costume designer Vittorio Nino Novarese, who won Oscars for Cleopatra and Cromwell, retired from acting when she married in 1966. She will be 85 on August 12.
DiPaolo, who worked primarily as a dancer, appeared opposite Bing Crosby in The Star Maker when he was thirteen and much later had a small role in Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity. He was Rosemary Clooney’s second husband.
Watched on Blu-ray at the North Georgia Center for Cinephilia.
]]>- Hamlet
- Hammett
- The Hand
- The Hand
- A Handful of Dust
- The Handmaiden
- Hands Across the Table
- Hang 'em High
- Hangover Square
- Hannie Caulder
...plus 651 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- The Abominable Dr. Phibes
- The Abominable Snowman
- Above Suspicion
- Absolute Power
- Absolute Quiet
- Accident
- Accused of Murder
- Across the Pacific
- Act of Violence
- Action in Arabia
...plus 921 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>Feature-length theatrical films (real movies) seen in theaters or on TV. Documentaries and short films not included.
- The Birth of a Nation
- Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages
- The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
- Way Down East
- The Kid
- Orphans of the Storm
- Foolish Wives
- Nosferatu
- Safety Last!
- Three Ages
...plus 8084 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Rebecca
- His Girl Friday
- Foreign Correspondent
- The Letter
- The Philadelphia Story
- Gaslight
- The Case of the Frightened Lady
- Crimes at the Dark House
- Fantasia
- The Bank Dick
...plus 28 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- 100 Rifles
- The 10th Victim
- 2 Days in Paris
- 2 Days in the Valley
- 2 Minutes Late
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- 2046
- 3 Godfathers
- 36 Hours
- 36th Precinct
...plus 885 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Psycho
- Eyes Without a Face
- Breathless
- Intimidation
- Purple Noon
- L'Avventura
- A Touch of Larceny
- The League of Gentlemen
- Village of the Damned
- Take Aim at the Police Van
...plus 23 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Midnight
- Ninotchka
- The Rules of the Game
- Wuthering Heights
- Only Angels Have Wings
- Five Came Back
- Stagecoach
- There's No Tomorrow
- Tower of London
- Charlie Chan at Treasure Island
...plus 26 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Charade
- The Servant
- 8½
- The Birds
- Tom Jones
- Station Six-Sahara
- An Actor's Revenge
- From Russia with Love
- This Sporting Life
- The Fire Within
...plus 23 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Lawrence of Arabia
- Jules and Jim
- Lolita
- The Exterminating Angel
- The Manchurian Candidate
- Knife in the Water
- Cléo from 5 to 7
- Dr. No
- Sanjuro
- Le Combat dans l'île
...plus 23 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Chinatown
- The Godfather Part II
- The Conversation
- The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
- The Watchmaker of St. Paul
- Scenes from a Marriage
- Dark Star
- Blood for Dracula
- Young Frankenstein
- Swept Away
...plus 17 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Le Cercle Rouge
- The Conformist
- Little Big Man
- Claire's Knee
- Two Mules for Sister Sara
- The Cop
- Colossus: The Forbin Project
- The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
- Five Easy Pieces
- The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir
...plus 28 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Three Days of the Condor
- Deep Red
- Shampoo
- Dog Day Afternoon
- The Story of Adèle H.
- Seven Beauties
- Farewell, My Lovely
- Jaws
- Picnic at Hanging Rock
- The Eiger Sanction
...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- A Clockwork Orange
- The French Connection
- Get Carter
- Walkabout
- The Hired Hand
- The Abominable Dr. Phibes
- The Go-Between
- Carnal Knowledge
- Murmur of the Heart
- The Last Run
...plus 32 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Witness for the Prosecution
- The Bridge on the River Kwai
- Throne of Blood
- Plunder Road
- The Burglar
- Love in the Afternoon
- The Tall T
- Forty Guns
- Paths of Glory
- 3:10 to Yuma
...plus 34 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Body Heat
- Diva
- Prince of the City
- My Dinner with Andre
- Mephisto
- Excalibur
- Mad Max 2
- Reds
- Thief
- Das Boot
...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Vertigo
- Touch of Evil
- Murder by Contract
- Bell, Book and Candle
- Elevator to the Gallows
- Underworld Beauty
- Nowhere to Go
- The Snorkel
- The Fly
- The Hidden Fortress
...plus 38 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- The Day of the Jackal
- Mean Streets
- Day for Night
- The Mother and the Whore
- Don't Look Now
- Sleeper
- Serpico
- Charley Varrick
- Lady Snowblood
- The Spirit of the Beehive
...plus 22 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- A Hard Day's Night
- Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
- Onibaba
- Nothing But the Best
- My Fair Lady
- Pale Flower
- A Shot in the Dark
- Goldfinger
- The Best Man
- Seven Days in May
...plus 29 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- One Battle After Another
- Frankenstein
- Nouvelle Vague
- Nuremberg
- Black Bag
- Wake Up Dead Man
- Caught Stealing
- Sisu: Road to Revenge
- Reflection in a Dead Diamond
- Sentimental Value
...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- The Ipcress File
- Chimes at Midnight
- The Sleeping Car Murders
- Doctor Zhivago
- How to Murder Your Wife
- Repulsion
- King Rat
- Simon of the Desert
- The Flight of the Phoenix
- For a Few Dollars More
...plus 25 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Boudu Saved from Drowning
- Trouble in Paradise
- Shanghai Express
- The Old Dark House
- The Mummy
- This Is the Night
- Devil and the Deep
- Scarface
- The Bitter Tea of General Yen
- Vampyr
...plus 21 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- The Limey
- The Thomas Crown Affair
- Being John Malkovich
- Go
- The Talented Mr. Ripley
- Bleeder
- Sleepy Hollow
- Toy Story 2
- Fight Club
- Any Given Sunday
...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Rear Window
- Dial M for Murder
- Seven Samurai
- Hobson's Choice
- Black Tuesday
- Pushover
- The Naked Jungle
- Sabrina
- Touchez Pas au Grisbi
- Johnny Guitar
...plus 33 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- The Ladykillers
- To Catch a Thief
- Kiss Me Deadly
- The Trouble with Harry
- Diabolique
- Rififi
- Smiles of a Summer Night
- The Big Combo
- Cast a Dark Shadow
- Lady and the Tramp
...plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Local Hero
- Risky Business
- Betrayal
- The 4th Man
- Blue Thunder
- Christine
- Videodrome
- The Right Stuff
- Danton
- My Best Friend's Girl
...plus 17 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Gosford Park
- The Man Who Wasn't There
- Mostly Martha
- Y Tu Mamá También
- The Others
- Spirited Away
- The Devil's Backbone
- Spy Game
- Amélie
- Pistol Opera
...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- The Godfather
- Sleuth
- Aguirre, the Wrath of God
- Last Tango in Paris
- The Candidate
- Jeremiah Johnson
- Cries and Whispers
- A Cop
- Love in the Afternoon
- The Heartbreak Kid
...plus 23 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Yojimbo
- Last Year at Marienbad
- One-Eyed Jacks
- Blast of Silence
- The Hustler
- Taste of Fear
- The Innocents
- The Passion of Slow Fire
- El Cid
- The Day the Earth Caught Fire
...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Out of the Past
- Dark Passage
- The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
- They Made Me a Fugitive
- The Lady from Shanghai
- The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer
- Jenny Lamour
- Black Narcissus
- Born to Kill
- Lured
...plus 40 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Annie Hall
- The Late Show
- Suspiria
- House
- That Obscure Object of Desire
- The Gauntlet
- The Last Wave
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind
- Orca
- Sorcerer
...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Mission: Impossible – Fallout
- Cold War
- Can You Ever Forgive Me?
- At Eternity's Gate
- Burning
- Bad Times at the El Royale
- Red Sparrow
- Asako I & II
- Game Night
- Ocean's Eight
...plus 9 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- North by Northwest
- Anatomy of a Murder
- The 400 Blows
- Apur Sansar
- City of Fear
- Our Man in Havana
- Ride Lonesome
- Day of the Outlaw
- The Hound of the Baskervilles
- Fires on the Plain
...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Pulp Fiction
- Chungking Express
- Cemetery Man
- Three Colours: Red
- Interview with the Vampire
- Léon: The Professional
- Eat Drink Man Woman
- The Secret of Roan Inish
- Ashes of Time
- The Most Terrible Time in My Life
...plus 27 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Sunset Boulevard
- Rashomon
- In a Lonely Place
- The Asphalt Jungle
- Gun Crazy
- The Furies
- La Ronde
- Whirlpool
- The Strange Ones
- The Clouded Yellow
...plus 41 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Z
- Downhill Racer
- My Night at Maud's
- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
- The Italian Job
- Play Dirty
- On Her Majesty's Secret Service
- The Swimming Pool
- Women in Love
- Army of Shadows
...plus 18 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- All the President's Men
- Taxi Driver
- Police Python 357
- Assault on Precinct 13
- Marathon Man
- The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
- The Outlaw Josey Wales
- The House with Laughing Windows
- Carrie
- The Bad News Bears
...plus 17 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Headhunters
- Moneyball
- Midnight in Paris
- Rango
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
- Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
- Paul
- Hugo
- Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
- The Tree of Life
...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- La Chienne
- Frankenstein
- Safe in Hell
- The Man in Search of His Murderer
- The Public Enemy
- Little Caesar
- Dracula
- Platinum Blonde
- City Lights
- À Nous la Liberté
...plus 7 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Strangers on a Train
- The Man in the White Suit
- The Lavender Hill Mob
- Rawhide
- Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
- The Tall Target
- The Prowler
- An American in Paris
- His Kind of Woman
- Early Summer
...plus 31 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
- Kill Bill: Vol. 1
- Oldboy
- The Hunted
- Open Range
- Something's Gotta Give
- Lost in Translation
- Monsieur N.
- Girl with a Pearl Earring
- Intimate Strangers
...plus 7 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- The Lives of Others
- Casino Royale
- Pan's Labyrinth
- The Good Shepherd
- Tell No One
- Black Book
- Volver
- Mission: Impossible III
- Lady Chatterley
- Exiled
...plus 21 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- The Wolf of Wall Street
- The Great Beauty
- Gravity
- Inside Llewyn Davis
- Her
- The Best Offer
- The Counselor
- Blue Is the Warmest Color
- American Hustle
- The Grandmaster
...plus 9 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Bullitt
- Once Upon a Time in the West
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Pretty Poison
- The Thomas Crown Affair
- Kuroneko
- The Girls
- Greetings
- Planet of the Apes
- Shame
...plus 34 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- The Killing
- The Searchers
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers
- Forbidden Planet
- Bob le Flambeur
- The Bitter Stems
- The Harder They Fall
- Slightly Scarlet
- 7 Men from Now
- Early Spring
...plus 25 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Hot Fuzz
- No Country for Old Men
- There Will Be Blood
- Mad Detective
- Lust, Caution
- The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
- Ratatouille
- Zodiac
- La Vie en Rose
- 3:10 to Yuma
...plus 13 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Ex Machina
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- The Revenant
- Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
- Schneider vs. Bax
- Sweet Bean
- The Martian
- Carol
- Bridge of Spies
- Brooklyn
...plus 7 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- The Long Good Friday
- Kagemusha
- Flash Gordon
- Hopscotch
- Dressed to Kill
- Stardust Memories
- The Dogs of War
- Breaker Morant
- Night of the Juggler
- Airplane!
...plus 8 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Roman Holiday
- The Earrings of Madame de...
- Crime Wave
- Angel Face
- The Wages of Fear
- Summer with Monika
- Pickup on South Street
- Ugetsu
- The Naked Spur
- Niagara
...plus 32 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- Fanny and Alexander
- The Draughtsman's Contract
- Blade Runner
- Fitzcarraldo
- Android
- The Verdict
- Diner
- The Year of Living Dangerously
- 48 Hrs.
- Q
...plus 22 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>- The 39 Steps
- Bride of Frankenstein
- Remember Last Night?
- Peter Ibbetson
- Top Hat
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Captain Blood
- The Black Room
- The Whole Town's Talking
- Star of Midnight
...plus 23 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>