Mini-Review: Voodoo Passion aka. Der Ruf der blonden Göttin (1977)

From http://imageshack.us/a/img802/1332/l9x3.jpg

Dir. Jesus Franco

Voodoo Passion is straight-up softcore. There is a story of such, but the main and consistent part of the film is the nudity of its female actresses and sex. It feels like a Franco film, a slow and deliberate pace, dream-like, but its streamlined back to the obsession with the female form more so than Female Vampire (1973). Your ability to like this film depends on your liking of mood in Franco's work. A newly wedded wife of a government official moves to Haiti, only to feel that her sense of reality is dissipating as she believes she's murdered people. As this happens, the sensuality of the local music, and the draw of both her husband's platinum blonde haired, and horny, sister and their maid servant, is becoming too much to handle.

What could come off as a "voodoo is bad" film, under the belief that she's being manipulated and with voodoo dolls laying around the house, actually turns out to be immensely different. Baring in mind it feels less like French softcore than the older film, but more Euro softcore, with said sister whose continually nude and lusting over her brother's wife, it's very much a reimagining of Franco's own Nightmares Come at Night (1970). There's shades of Female Vampire too in at least one moment. Far from feeling like Franco tritely repeating himself, it's actually cool that he was riffing on his own work repeatedly in different tones and styles. It helped that he never made the same type repeatedly each time - which may have made this sort of thing too much when he had the expansive filmography he had - and the interconnectivity of it all, that characters are doomed to be repeating the follies of previous Franco characters, is engaging as an idea in taking his whole filmography as one giant film. It comes off as befitting a musician whose main obsession, jazz, could be as much about repeating sequences from previous work and taking it into new improvisions. The thin plot for Voodoo Passion is enough for Franco to push his female protagonist through a series of scenarios where erotic and bloody incidents take place out of her hands. It also becomes apparent, even if depicting its setting as exotic, that Franco is on the side of the Haitians just because he leaps on the opportunity to use the environment's musical rhythms in his film's score instantly, mixing it with jazz as the film progresses. A lot of the film is people being taken away by the beats of the music, equal opportunity nudity by the bucket load, the entire film more of a musical piece than a narrative. Long stretches, when it's not the softcore sex, is lengthy moments of dance, of characters wandering rooms and outside, the entire eighty minutes or so a vast lengthy atmospheric piece.

Its definitely a weaker Franco piece. It does feel long trying to exist only on its nudity and music, not even a basic plot. Nightmares Come at Night (1970), which it takes its inspiration from, was drawing on an abstract air and slightly more complicated narrative. Admittedly the films which repeat tropes from his previous work, that I've seen so far, have felt weaker, though I don't dismiss those films at all, just that in this case, Voodoo Passion is definitely the weakest of the two. It mainly rests on its erotic material and it has to be viewed through that mainly. Is it sexy? Titillating? I confess to being attracted to every woman onscreen, and to Franco's credit the women (and men) are of many shapes and sizes, and that his actresses, even if lusted over, at least had a distinctness and charisma to them that made them more human than vacant. For a man who could get very scuzzy, the film is actually a lot more held back too despite the wall-to-wall nudity. Its solid visual appearance probably  explains this - this is not The Devil Hunter (1980) which does feel scuzzy - and for simple titillation this film is far and above most softcore of now, which is legitimately worse than something like this in quality in so many ways. Whether you can appreciate this film for that or not is entirely of a subjective opinion in this case rather than with other Jess Franco films.

From http://eutorrents.ph/imagehost/images/derrufjvj.jpg

Mini-Review: The Claim (2000)

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyjvRYQU0emV2DEggh2jlfLGF9E17NSAsho5kWUaNY_QdXlDVEfta_mxUJ3QQxGoriZxZQcFbsD9ROJaQvXmPgT6lTRIC4OI8kY_ocu7gTe6zDCHF6KwyVc26OH7CAelCkR4aadSOsCOI/s320/The+Claim.jpg

Dir. Michael Winterbottom

Set in the 19th century American frontier, The Claim is set in a small pioneer town when members of a railway company, including Wes Bentley, enter to negotiate the building of a railway. Interacting with the townsfolk including the head Daniel Dillon (Peter Mullan), conflict slowly starts to take place alongside various domestic issues, Dillon's past coming to haunt him when the chance to rekindle his love for the wife he sold (Nastassja Kinski) becomes possible but with the baggage of memories. The promise of the film is the possibility of all the actors within it being onscreen - Mullan, Kinski, even Milla Jovovich in a drastically different type of role - plus the fact that its setting is one of a community of different nationalists (Chinese, Irish, Scandinavian etc) suggesting the potential for a really complex film on the nature of these pioneer towns in the New American. The Claim however is just dull. Its everything I hate about modern cinema even if this is now a decade old or more.

The problem for me with it became immediate when it tries to depict a "reality" of what the west at the time was like - worn faces, Jovovich with little makeup on, dirt, cramped environments, cussing and sex - but undermines it completely with a glossy film style that presumes to be realistic but chops its plans down by the knees, made worse because so many films repeat this style to death exactly. Soft lighting. Pointless amounts of editing for a single conversation. Orchestral string score that sounds like so many others.  Its drama that is supposed to be serious and sober, but without any sense of real meaning and depth to it. It could have been about the industrialisation of the frontier, the tensions between the immigrants, and what would have to be sacrificed, conflict between a senior and a young upstart, love and death. But its hollow. It takes thirty minutes or so to establish a beginning to its main ideas, and it cannot decide if it's a character piece or a drama. There's nothing vaguely entertaining let alone intriguing about The Claim, continuing the problem with many realistic historical films in that they feel like cinematic taxidermy onscreen. It's so deathly serious without any real moment that grabs your attention; the closest is when a whole house is moved over a mountain, which should have been longer a scene, could have been a whole feature film by itself and likely more interesting. It's worse when great actors like Peter Mullan are trying their hardest in something that strives for pretence but is not touching anything actually interesting. By its end its supposed to become incredibly emotional, but its signposting of this through its obvious musical cues and pauses for dramatic effect feel contrived and overused. Classic, more fictional westerns from the fifties or so are far more interesting in how they try to tackle serious issues like race, gender or family relations, their lack of pretence and their glamour allow them to pull you into them with characters who stand out greater. Their clear, quick narratives, and short lengths, allow them to emphasis the issues clearly through the briefness of the material. The Claim never allows its narrative to stand out because it goes for bad drama and tedious structure choices, far too long at two hours and confusing sluggishness for being profound. The unfortunate thing is that there are many films in this art film area of cinema that are just as bad for this reason, my heckles slowly growing to the point they are a nuisance and my hopes drop if a movie strays into these habits just in their beginning. It feels like it misses the complete point of its existence when something like Flaming Star (1960) with Elvis Presley manages to be far more interesting in its themes alongside its Don Siegel-directed western content. Its attention seeking through a form of laziness, not willing to entertain like those classic films, not willing to truly push to grab the human heart of the viewer, and it seethes that it's not just a film like The Claim that suffers from this, but so many other works in cinema including ones celebrated for this problem that justifiably chastised for it.

From http://www.cinemotions.com/data/films/0004/30/2/photo-Redemption-The-Claim-2000-4.jpg

Mini-Review: Carnival of Souls (1998)

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Dirs. Adam Grossman (and Ian Kessner)

The late nineties in my mind seemed to have an obsession with evil clowns and ringmasters, circuses and carnivals places you'd likely encounter something nasty rather than just throwing up on the rollercoaster. I remember an arcade game I sadly never got to play, the scrolling shooter CarnEvil (1998). KISS had their reunion album based on a "Psycho Circus", and at some point the Insane Clown Posse became a legitimate cult born from the Juggalo consciousness. Baring in mind Carnival of Souls is about pretty serious subject matter, which I don't want to trivialise, you have to wonder if some people had really bad experiences about carnival rides and some really slimy clowns working in the circus back then. Technically, this is a remake of the 1962 cult film of the same name. Both are drastically different aside from the type of ending they share, and I need to see the original film again. Wes Craven is immensely varying for me, (possibly?) described as having the trajectory of a narcoleptic on a trampoline in terms of his films high and low qualities, made worse by the fact that I don't like The Last House on the Left (1972), The Hills Have Eyes (1977) or Scream (1996), so having him merely presenting this film has no interest. The only real draw of this film is remaking the original in the form that, from its DVD cover, it looks like you're getting Hellraiser, late nineties-style, mixed with a heavy metal mentality. Said cover doesn't really suggest what Carnival of Souls actually is.

Alex Grant (Bobbie Phillips) has been traumatised since childhood by the murder of her mother by child molester and carnival worker Louis Seagram (Larry Miller). An encounter with him when she grows up into an adult leads to a series of disorientating events where reality is completely disjointed for her. Chronology and place is liable to switch, and she believes Louis is stalking her despite the fact he may no longer exist. A carnival, near the bar her late mother owned and she kept onto, proves to be an ominous site and she occasionally sees horrifying, fleshy demons that no one else could see. The film is bad. Tired and bored. It's the perfect example of how a "mindbender" film, which un-anchors chronology, place and perception, is done badly and sloppily. Someone can argue a film like David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE (2006) is pretentious, but its design in distorting the concept of reality is still a masterpiece in craftsmanship. The best films in terms of design, placing the actual content to the side for another debate, are those which usually greatly divide audiences, where you are as lost as the protagonist and feel every sensation in terms of the distortion. The shifts in time in Carnival of Souls are laboured, trying to keep the viewer on their toes but with no sense of forcing you to be in the protagonist's shoes. It's like a generic blueprint, or a crude drawing with obvious flaws, being compared to a perfect illustration which weaves every part together. When it tries to include scares into its narrative as well, it feels pathetic and signposted, knowing the scare will happen, and that its actually not scary despite the prosthetics, making it lame instead. It's cheap jump scares with abrupt pop-ups by fleshy demons, and the actually story never goes anywhere as well. With this tone to the film throughout its narrative, it really starts to test one's patience.

Visually it looks flat, flat in a way of a TV movie which doesn't take any interest in the visual quality of the material as its being depicted onscreen, especially one that was originally designed to go to the cinema. On a positive note it also points to the fact that the last years of the nineties, which I thought could still be contemporary, are very much of their era, not in that they've dated badly, but that aesthetically even 1999 feels like a different decade. Looking back at it, even at moments of cringe worthy pop culture, is inherently fascinating even with a film like this that is very limited in its locations and narrative. However that does not defend how bland the film actually looks. Bland is the perfect way to describe it all baring some early computer effects. Bland is the perfect way to describe the entire film. The story, despite its serious content, never grabs you and when the ending comes about it has no effect. The result is completely unemotional, and with its carnival aesthetic it squanders it for bad drama and riffing on the demons of Hellraiser pointlessly. It presents nothing interesting and is completely forgettable, a scrap of an idea that drastically needed a great amount of craft on it to make it work. It needed to be at least a cheesy film about creepy clowns and where even the candy floss is suspicious, not something that tries to be extremely serious but is so unknowing about the level of quality needed to make it work.

From http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-39vjnjTq3D4/Tv0ipNzxxVI/
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Mini-Review: Yellow Sky (1948)

From http://annyas.com/screenshots/images/1948/yellow-sky-title-still.jpg

Dir. William A. Wellman

After a group of outlaws, led by Gregory Peck, rob a small town bank, they escape through into a barren desert wasteland. It sets up a great deal of promise to keep for the black-and-white shot western. A great amount of time is spent with just these characters at first. The actors - Peck, Richard Widmark, Robert Arthur, John Russell, Harry Morgan and Charles Kemper - have a good repartee, already established that the outlaws can easily gun other down if pushed to it. The lifeless landscape emphasises the great cinematography on display in the film and the use of locations, as the journey to an unknown place is physically felt. One of the biggest virtues of the western, in any country's cinema or language, is that it requires the use of landscape outside of human comfort, giant rock formations for characters to hide behind in shoot-outs, vast desert plains, and grand valleys that are silent and overbearing. Geo-formations that are as much part of the characters as well as the natural landscape. Unlike how Meek's Cutoff (2010) forgot to use the land halfway through to depict the characters' minds physically, the straight forward western, at its best visually, uses the landscapes to emphasise the actions and journeys of the characters onscreen. Eventually the outlaws almost halfway through encounter an abandoned ghost town called Yellow Sky. Lifeless, the dilapidated saloon and buildings set up what could be a very good film.

It has some flaws. It suffers from being too talky. While its idea of the conflicting relationship between the outlaws and the two remaining people there, an old prospector and his granddaughter (James Barton and Anne Baxter), engages immensely, it over depends on dramatic scenes of dialogue to the point of padding its runtime too much. Also annoyingly it drifts away from what is the most interesting aspect of Yellow Sky, the granddaughter, nicknamed Mike, being a tomboy who can handle a rifle, who shows no interest in the males, and can knock Peck off his feet with a strong right hook. The relationship between her and the lustful outlaws gets very uncomfortable, surprisingly sexual and going for discomforting moments that stick out considering the Hays Code would be in full effect at the time. The sexual tension is palpable, Mike threatened but still able to exhibit a toughness liable to take down any of the outlaws. It is only because there are many of them, pressuring the two occupants of the town for a stash of gold, that she and her grandfather are in danger, with only the "Indians" that arrive at one point being stronger than anyone else. It's a shame however she is not this character to the end. Mike stands out because of Baxter's performance and prescience, so it hurts a great deal that once the end credits finish Mike will be shoved into a dress, and be expected to be respectable and "feminine". Even in terms of placing it in the period it was made, there are American film noirs that, even if they could be killed or arrested, had femme fatales, in dresses or not, who stood toe-to-toe with the males by the end with no changes to their personality. It makes Yellow Sky disappointing in this area.

Still, the film is good despite its flaw. Despite being padded in drama, enough of the dialogue scenes feel like they are worth their existence in the narrative. It's very much a great ensemble cast working well together; even if Peck stands out as the matinee idol he's surrounded by a cast on equal grounds to him. Its visually rich and the narrative reaches a good conclusion even despite the problems depicting Mike. It is not up there with the best of the classic American western, my personal canon still needing to be developed, but it makes a solid inclusion for one of the earlier entries within it.

From http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l221n6T6NU1qavi9wo1_500.jpg

Mini-Review: Meek's Cutoff (2010)

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBDM3BhhUbn_jx8BkOHBFfX7zaIEAqP73a5x5tK-QYZLGG2n8vFv4ojc7PXvZP4dK2KHonIE5fnhMRTPWIslhx2GGD6p2DrOSZfTVPHYOtFqjdTzKVYr3gAGRA7176ccVgdgm1IORgT3w/s566/Meek%2527s+Cutoff+DVD.JPG

Dir. Kelly Reichardt

1845. On the Oregon trail westward, two families are on a pilgrimage across the untamed American landscape to a new civilisation. They follow the advice of a bold stranger Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), who guides them across the trail only for it to become clear that they are lost with dwindling amounts of water and food available to survive. When they encounter  a lone Native American, the families against Meek's desires use him as a new guide. But their relationships are breaking down, they have no idea if there are any more Native Americans in the desert around them, creating paranoia, and they don't know if they'll reach anything.

The film has promise. A female director taking on a typically masculine genre in the western. Three core female characters - Michelle Williams, Shirley Henderson and Zoe Kazan - Williams the most distinct if just for the fact that she is willing to lift up a rifle with intent. Stripped of the tropes of the genre in favour of a minimalist drama. It baffles at first, but the beginning half suggest something special. Very minimalistic. Little dialogue. Stunning shots of western frontier desert, barren but evoking. Reichardt name checks Nanook of the North (1922), one of the first momentous documentaries in cinema's history, and the first half consists of the actors working on everyday tasks as they travel, promising a journey which draws you into a trance-like tone of these activities against the participants asking each other if they will ever get to their goal or die. Moments in the first part visually almost become abstract, mistaking the core cast far away as mirages or ghosts.

When the Native American character is introduced and the film becomes more dynamic in story, it sadly becomes a bad drama. I suspect Meek's Cutoff would still be as flimsy on another viewing. It has no tension with what will happen to the characters, their potential deaths or paranoia of Native Americans attacking them in the night never having a sense of real fear or suffocation. The visual potency of the landscape is dropped in favour of a lacking narrative where it feels its cast - including Paul Dano - are just going off a story that feels lifeless. It never feels like the viewer should concern themselves with the group falling to pieces, and both the mundanely of doing tasks and the potential feminist tone are not used at all by its final. Worse is its attempt at being profound. The setting evokes the concepts of "Manifest Destiny", conquering land presumed to be there for white colonists, but never feels like a fully evocative look at it. It's too slight for it to tackle the historical issues of the time subtly, and the scenes with monologues, like Meek saying women are chaos and men are destruction, feel useless attempts at profundity within the structure around them to be significant and linger in your thoughts. The ending is anti-climatic in a terrible way, finishing abruptly. It was support to, clearly, leave the viewer thinking, but for me felt like an ending wasn't written at all. By the end of Meek's Cutoff, there is nothing said in it of worth, of mood, historical analysis, even a good drama. Its actors in period garb  in a film which squanders it promise. Neither does it dissect the western in a profound way like an actual western film could.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi0Lic7pqPUiarxfphl37jiE-_MEKXD07xBGKDOFIs3xHvxqgOmiX-bI8mNN8Z2WKVozSqwyg-60EqitlJeVMLi0J6uWWICAykvces9TtVeesjtgqfP8aOR_CeB7dySFLRqoazhxc_VOGI/s400/Meeks.Cutoff.LIMITED.DVDRip.XviD-DoNE.avi_snapshot_00.19.10_%255B2011.08.13_16.59.06%255D.jpg

I Is For... The Idiots

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRcyEsUfzSblHSgximtQa30RKApLJD-K7YqKT5pbRNm6oE3_50fB5VwbR-6-Njz2XJIEiniR6KDvcITFfwTHSCGXHzDeMRmsJrs48R4C49nChqjmujI2dcb0hw128sQoI9xqjFnmfd54ea/s640/idioterne-original.jpg

Dir. Lars von Trier

This is probably one of the most personal pieces I've written, but considering the subject matter, it felt appropriate to bring in some of my own personal life into it. The only other thing I can say is that there were too many flags to be able to put them all up. A co-production between six countries, it'll be insane to stick that many into such a small piece. I'll just stick with the Danish one and have the others in the labels.

Review Link - http://www.videotapeswapshop.co.uk/16026/i-is-for-the-idiots-1998-director-lars-von-trier/

From http://i1143.photobucket.com/albums/n627/worldscinema/2nakapz.jpg

Mini-Review: Dead Hooker in a Trunk (2009)

From http://www.brutalashell.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Dead-Hooker-In-A-Trunk-DVD-art1-e1306338980540.jpg

Dirs. Jen Soska and Sylvia Soska

Very rarely does anyone become instantly good at their work the first attempt. Just because I'm writing about genre films here doesn't mean I've instantly become Kim Newman. Likewise, Dead Hooker In A Trunk should be seen as the first steps for the directors Jen Soska and Sylvia Soska, that shows how they managed to get a film created amongst themselves and with a small group in the film, and pushed them along to be potentially great in the future. As an actual film, its only worth viewing as a beginning attempt.

It's very unfocused. Four characters, the Geek (Jen Soska), the Junkie (Rikki Gagne), the Badass [sic] (Sylvia Soska), and the Goody Two Shoes (C.J. Wallis), a Christian volunteer and the sole male pulled into this situation, find themselves on a bloody odyssey when they find a literal hooker in the trunk of their car. There are plenty of surreal journeys taking place in films. Likewise, there are a lot of films made by young directors that are about the frivolous gore and tangents, Street Trash (1987) coming to mind. Unfortunately this film comes across like so many movies in which, no matter how it tries to be inventive, the content of the film and its practical gore effects are padded around a work that has no idea where it is going. It comes off as not really trying its hardest, almost abandoning the titular point of the thin story halfway through with a short, abrupt introduction of Chinese gangsters that go away immediately afterwards. Later plotting is just trying to plug holes up in a tone that has no real drive to it and is sinking quickly from the beginning. It attempts to bring the unexpected to the content, but comes off as messy without any effect. Only a few films can make this tone work, by utter accident or on purpose like with Frank Henelotter films, but that's because the tangents do have an immense effect on you or the entire narrative pulls on to keep you on your toes. This tries its best at its tasteless tone - never has limb loss been treated so matter-of-fact like it was a paper cut - but like the minor, tedious genre films which try a gonzo edge it feels like bad improvisation.

Visually, its unfortunately another low budget film shot on digital cameras which has to sacrifice its cinematic quality for cost. The shaking cameras through, always shaking even in dialogue sequences when they shouldn't, aren't as bad though as the mistakes in the editing, which botches a few key, sudden moments into practical effects to the point you briefly have no idea what is going for a second or two. Thankfully American Mary (2012) was the directors' film directly after this. It's far from perfect, and it's kind of startling how both films, from female directors, have a lot of violence against women especially in Dead Hooker In A Trunk, but it was a massive jump in quality. No abrasive use of loud rock or metal songs, potentially good if listened to separately but too high in the mix and not properly synchronised to the images and movements, a drastic shift up in the look of the film, and more importantly, really interesting ideas within the plot. In fact that film gives me hope the Soska Sisters will start to make some exceptionally good movies now they're jumped this high in quality already. I'm not going to give Dead Hooker In A Trunk a pass though, just because it's their debut, when its clearly lacking and more of a failed sketch of an idea they would improve on later on.

From http://media.jinni.com/movie/dead-hooker-in-a-trunk/dead-hooker-in-a-trunk-1.jpeg

Mini-Review: Half A Man [aka. Un Uomo a meta] (1966)

From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a9/Un_uomo_a_met%C3%A0.jpg/220px-Un_uomo_a_met%C3%A0.jpg

Dir. Vittorio De Seta

A man in a suit, with a briefcase, is laid down in the grass of a recreational park. With psychological issues coming forward, he asks why he is there, beginning a trawl through past traumas. They involve his family and a potential love that reveals the isolation, caused by him and willingly allowed by him, that he is in within his mind as well as to others. Halfway through the film, after seeing only fragments, we see how he became who is he is fully.

De Seta for me so far has only been a figure of short documentary pieces, so to see this was such a drastic change of pace. An abstract film which eventually opens more and more, it plays off with a languid tone as the viewer is drip fed new memories. Shot in black and white, it has a woozy poetic tone as it shifts between what is imagined and what is actually happening. The print quality of the version viewed was not great, but it's clear De Seta made a film that is intentionally alien in presentation, with slow motion and slow paced editing to create a dramatic effect. The sense of a documentary filmmaker is making the film is clear by how he makes sure the scenes do not feel artificial but environments and moments you are drawn into. Ennio Morricone, able to shift into varying types of Italian cinema, contributes one of his most avant-garde scores to fit the nature of the film, drones and atmospheric sounds that adds to the sense the film is from the main character's self-analysing mind. 

The central drama itself is immensely engaging. At times even unable to say a word, the protagonist is literally half a man, the past revealed to the viewer showing that he is damaged by his upbringing but as much the result of who he is as a person since he was born. The characterisation has been seen before in many other films - of the mother disappointed in her son, the superior older brother, the distant and antisocial younger son - but the tone of the film gives the drama more effect because the abstract tone forces you to engage with the drama more when its finally given to you. After abrupt images of birds falling out the sky in slow motion are first seen, the original context of such images later makes them even more striking when tied to a key point in the character's memories. It is a shame the film is difficult to find, as it is the kind of intense, minimalist drama comparable to Michelangelo Antonioni, that is far more rewarding in that it makes the route of the truths as rewarding as the reasons behind the characters themselves.

From http://www.ljplus.ru/img4/k/u/kuporo_s/Un-uomo-a-meta__125624_04-3.gif

Mini-Review: Death Line (1973)

From http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9zHzzN8rENI/URCW4q9bvuI/
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Dir. Gary Sherman

Death Line is undermined by its slightly disjointed structure. Not much threat actually takes place when you think about it. And yet this is why, before this problem arises, why I found this a lot more interesting than other British horror films. At a certain underground railway station, people are vanishing, a subterranean being preying on the unsuspecting public, the ordinary man to a lord which kicks off the police enquiry by the eccentric Inspector Calhoun (Donald Pleasance) to investigate what is going on. It's also amazing how violent and nasty the film actually is. It's not a gorefest, or able to match up to films from the period let alone now, but with its rotting corpses, head trauma, and a central idea I won't reveal because its only introduced part of the way through, it's amazing how lurid British genre cinema got in the period. Films like this and sleazier works managed to exist despite how severe British film censorship was at the time, and to encounter these films is a shock. It's a very low budget movie, a small cast consisting of a couple, an American student (David Ladd) and his British girlfriend (Sharon Gurney), Pleasance and one of his detectives (Norman Rossington), and one or two characters. Christopher Lee makes a cameo but unfortunately is in only one scene, and despite the promise of Lee and Pleasance onscreen, it's clear they may have been filmed separately, speaking directly to the camera as each one is cut to-and-from in their bitchy dialogue to each other. The prescience of Lee emphasies how radically different a film like this is from a Hammer production. Contemporary, set in the scuzzy streets with strip clubs and the underground, the old architecture of the turn of the century, bringing in the failures and greed of our great-grandfathers being responsible for the creature in the abandoned tunnels, against the then-contemporary locations and culture, British but also American with youth radicals and Jimi Hendrix posters. There is some nasty gore, decay and Pleasance mouthing "fuck" in disgust at Lee, the idea of Lee himself even saying a mild curse word, or existing in a non gothic or classical horror film, outside of the image he has, and furthering the split this film makes from the older tradition of British horror.

Pleasance, pre-Halloween (1978), is so drastically different from his Dr. Loomis persona. Either it's a put-on accent or his real one exaggerated, complaining about the tea, taking tea bags out of his cup with a playing dart of all things, and more than twice, and stealing the film with his complete lack of care for other people's thoughts or following procedure. It's a great thing to see a vastly different performance from him, and the film itself is just interesting. Its failing is that it's a slight film, not going any further with its small cast. The central idea is interesting, of a being lurking underground, like us but through a radical, decades changing effect causing them to be a drastically different being whose only understandable words is a phrase used in the subway lingo above. Its great I didn't have to put up with all those crassly lazy plot tropes usually set upon you viewing most horror films - that people aren't believed, that the police are incompetent, just liable to get drunk the night before in this and suffering from hangovers, and having to wait for events to happen. It structure does sadly undermine any sense of a great finale, ending with somewhat of a whimper, but that could have been prevented with better writing. It looks good, has the ideas, and has probably one of the technically applaudable moments in a genre film like this, a long continuous camera turning around numerous times and examining an environment that, even if hidden edits were used, is still exceptional. It's a fascinating example of how British horror can have teeth, but could have been made better.

From http://hotdogcinema.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/rawmeat-dp.jpg

Mini-Review: The Halliday Brand (1957)

From http://fiftieswesterns.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/the-halliday-brand-movie-poster-1020533660.jpg

Dir. Joseph H. Lewis

Regardless of my thoughts, The Halliday Brand looks exceptional. Joseph H. Lewis, in just a few films, has shown a tremendous visual eye, encapsulated by the dark smoke covered alleys of The Big Combo (1955) and the gangsters standing in the middle of it blurred, and with The Halliday Brand, cinematographer Ray Rennahan adds to this with his talents. The black-and-white images, of closed rooms, cramp and shadow covered, to wide open plains, sprawling and at points baroque in look, are sumptuous with a rich use of lighting. At points it fells naturalistic, at others stylised and artificial, like a summary of the western genre in terms of images. After his sheriff father (Ward Bond) may have deliberately allowed a half American Indian employee to be lynched, because of his racism and hatred of the idea of his daughter being in love with him, one of the sons (Joseph Cotton) decides to act in a way to make his proud, egotistical father crawl on his belly to apologise for his nature. Using the dissolve flashback to enter its back-story for most of the film, the old, no longer used editing effect causing a complete fraction of time as an entire chapter in a person's life goes for just a minute in the present for them, the relationship between the father and son is problematic even on the father's deathbed.

As a technical piece of visual art, it's great, but the narrative is minor. It is enough when supported by the film's visual splendour and the prescience of the actors, especially Cotton and Bond, but by itself it doesn't match up to something like Lewis' own Terror In A Texas Town (1958). It feels lacking in story, which even in such a short length could have juggled this parental divide alongside the romance with the lynched man's sister (Viveca Lindfors), the son's brother and Cotton's character, but as is the case with such a continually churned out genre, it fells underwritten, with the ending feeling like a big anticlimax. It's more of a personal taste as times, but which such a visual eye to it, this isn't the film that's going to push Joseph H. Lewis (yet) from being a fascinating director to a great one. I'm going to have to see more of his films to see if this can happen.

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Mini-Review: On The Comet (1970)

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Dir. Karel Zeman

Czechoslovakia

A later film is Zeman’s filmography, making films since the later forties, On The Comet takes its influence from turn-of-the century literature. Literature which pre-existed before political correctness, as this film is set in a colonial ruled Middle Eastern country, but is still enriched with the imagination of authors of the time that mixes science fiction and fantasy together and never lets this fact take away from the creativity and fun the stories give. To the surprise of everyone within a colonial town – the French occupiers housed in a fort, an invading group of Arabs helped by the Spanish and the protagonist, obsessed with a girl that seems to have appeared from a postcard and his dreams – a rouge planet skims over the Earth’s atmosphere and pulls the entire town and its populous onto its surface. The warring groups still want to fight each other, as the protagonist and his love interest sit in the middle of it all, despite the fact that the prehistoric occupants of the satellite and the fact that it’s still moving in the universe between planets should be of greater concern.

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Significant to Zeman’s style is his mix of live action and animation. In most cases, it is stop motion animation figures imposed on real sets. In Zeman’s work it is real actors on animated and artificially built sets. The results compare to Georges Méliès, or for a more modern example which borrowed from Méliès, to the music video Tonight Tonight by The Smashing Pumpkins. The results create a very appropriate tone for the tributes to classic storytelling, a peculiar mixture of adventure story with science fiction, romance and a handful of rubber dinosaurs. It’s not as extensive in terms of its look as with the director’s A Deadly Invention (1958), but the results, presented in tinted yellow and colour shading like a old silent era film, still fleshes out the results. It also balances out this fantastic plot with satire about the groups involved. The French especially are shown to be comically ridiculous and capable of pointless amounts of dominancy, with plans for any sort of event possible and liable to arrest anyone suspicious when there are flies as big as a man’s head. It would be interesting what this film would be like on an equal adult and child audience – dinosaurs and short length for the kids, a different (from current cinema) take on pulpy adventure stories for adults – and this satire adds a nice caveat to the film. Without the canons the French occupiers, despite being the good guys, would be on equal terms with everyone else and have soldiers who are not as reliable as they would wise. In the colonial era it also adds a nice, modern thought on this issue, replacing soapbox condemnation with a cheeky sense of humour. By the end, the film leaves off with a charming aftertaste to it, managing to feel full for such a short length and never lagging at the same time. And any film with a bipedal pigfish, for a brief scene, deserves an extra mark as a cherry on the top. 

From http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3024/5808919410_dd473c9498_b.jpg

Mini-Review: Krakatit (1949)

From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c7/Krakatit_poster.jpg

Dir. Otakar Vávra

Czechoslovakia

A scientist Prokop (Karel Höger) who is an expert in explosives is left dazed and badly injured after his new compound krakatit destroys his flat by accident. It leads him into a murky, distorting conspiracy of people vying for his creation, a subjective one where everyone wants the mega weapon that takes the form of white powder and an elegant woman (Florence Marly) keeps appearing in many different guises with the same, distinct and sensual face. The resulting film, adapted from a Karel Capek novel, is a fascinating hybrid, science fiction with the characters and monochrome shadows of an American Film Noir, oneiric cinema as the reality of the scientist’s world is under question and abstract manipulations take place, and digressions looking back at World War II and its devastation through the outspoken moral the film has. The cinematography is rich befitting the material – befitting a film as well from a country whose cinema for me alongside Iran is creeping up to the level that I will watch anything from the nation like with Italy and Japan – especially as it becomes more unconventional and hazy in tone as it goes along. Looking like the visions created in the illness and fading thoughts of its protagonist, it is suitable “off” and in its own realm distant from ours, the closest comparison being Guy Maddin to help you with the tone of the film picturing it. The individuals that eventually kidnap him and want him to create more of the krakatit have a militaristic edge, a foreign country whose military uniform for the grunt soldiers and the officers in command are similar to German uniform. Made at the end of the forties with only a few years absent from the chaos of a second global war, this film clearly wears its anti-war and anti-weapon message tattooed to its face, even more so when you consider the fear of nuclear weapons that was simultaneously felt in the period. As the scientist finds himself surrounded by numerous people who just want the compound for their nefarious desires, the reoccurring woman becomes a femme fatale of a more omnipresent type, everywhere he goes and part of his mind at the point she is introduced onwards, smouldering and yet completely out-of-comprehension. Florence Marly is sexual and alluring in just looking cold and aloof, the advantage of cinema before the sixties, of black-and-white and femme fatales, in that just her expression she’s both erotic and more powerful than the men in the same location. It has to be asked though whether Krakatit stands up as a great film; the word “rewatch” threatens to creep out from my thoughts, but there’s the question of, regardless of the look and unique tone, whether the storytelling in the centre is fully engaging. It’s interesting to see a film that is clearly influenced by American cinema of the time even if its mood is like that of a silent era, German Expressionist work, but as a narrative film which has to deal with dialogue, plotting, and the obvious message it has, it somewhat doesn’t have the full weight to carry such an immensely interesting veneer, especially as its begging to become even more abstract and dreamlike than the director allows it to be. To be narrative driven you need to either need to be willing to tighten it or completely throw it out the window. Matter of fact, it’s simply my own tastes which makes me hesitant to give it higher praise; outside of this it’s really something I cannot say I’ve seen before.

From http://i.imgur.com/qXRZb.jpg

Mini-Review: Dracula – Prisoner of Frankenstein (1972)

From http://wrongsideoftheart.com/wp-content/gallery/posters-d/dracula_prisoner_of_frankenstein_poster_02.jpg

Dir. Jess Franco

France-Spain

For a B-movie, it’s amazing to see how more economic and more watchable it is when it removes all the perceived requirements of a horror movie that usually hampers it. The first conversation between two characters takes place, in the eighty minute film, at fifty nine minutes, in vast contrast to a genre which is usually full of tedious character dialogue. Exposition is kept to an extreme minimum and it’s all about the images. Wide eyes heightened by makeup and prosthetics. Rubber bat abuse. Erratic camera zooms and female vampires. Times in Dracula: Prisoner Of Frankenstein I drifted off but I was not bored. Instead I found myself catching up with going on after this happened and finding myself gleefully pleased by the fact this happened. Dr Frankenstein (Dennis Price) and his hunchback assistant take over the castle towering a small village only to find the remains of Dracula (Howard Vernon, fake grey makeup, but with the look and bugged-out eyes perfect for a more corpse-like, mute Dracula). Resurrecting him, Frankenstein intends to use him and his turned victims, alongside his own Frankenstein creation, to start his own army of creatures to dominate the world. He now has to deal with Dracula’s arch enemy, a doctor (Alberto Dalbés) and the female clairvoyant who, almost catatonic, he uses to detect the evil beings.

The story is simple. It is stretched out for the whole of the film, languid and slow paced, with the main story only starting proper halfway through. But instead of padded, unbearable dialogue, which sadly can be found in Jess Franco’s own The Bloody Judge (1970), and like that film, ultimately uninteresting plotting, this one instead reveals in the material in what it shows onscreen. It comes off like a silent film in tone in how it, unlike many other movies, managing to convey its story economically through the images themselves and atmosphere. It’s ridiculous – the rubber bats being wiggled up and down just off camera, the idle attitude to plot points – and its last quarter throws in another classic movie monster and ends in the most abrupt of ways possible. But not only does it outdo Van Helsing (2004) in every conceivable way in terms of movie monster mash-ups, but this mix of economic storytelling and the complete lack of it makes it far more engaging. Franco is capable of some striking images even in a low budget film like this – Vernon’s mad eyes and blood around his lips, a hand poking out of a coffin – and scenes, such as Frankenstein’s monster kidnapping a female single with little effort whatsoever, are memorable. Its non-sequitur ending makes it better, adding to pulling the rug out from under your feet with a kick to push you further into its tone. Its far more entertaining like this, and it’s a testament to Jess Franco, as I’ve started going through his filmography, that its already clear that he had a distinct style which used weaknesses to his advantage and, decades later, makes films like this that could have been atrocious an immensely watchable surprise.

From http://whydoesitexist.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/vlcsnap-2011-04-13-18h12m47s78.png

Mini-Review: Rumble Fish (1983)

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Dir. Francis Ford Coppola

USA

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Rumble Fish manages to tackle a great deal in only ninety minutes. One of its director’s most well know film, The Godfather: Part II (1974), is over three hours long but he is able to make a film just as rich that is half the length or more. Many films procrastinate, but Rumble Fish both feels long in scope yet physically is brisk. This befits a film of adolescence and how short it is even if it feels long for the youths. A young man Rusty James (Matt Dillon) idolises his older brother, the quiet voiced Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke), but when he returns he is shown to be unable to, without “the smarts” of him and within a period where he is completely adrift. The monochrome clouds move rapidly above him and others in fluid rich swathes and time peters, Tom Waits behind the counter of his diner expressing how none of the youths realise they have little time, shot from the angled perspective of the wall clock looking down on him too. Days go on but for Rusty James he is nearing a drastic change in his life. His relationship with Patty (Diane Lane), youthful exuberance, who he obsesses over in classes rather than pay attention to the lessons, is precarious. His life is going nowhere and his father (Dennis Hopper) is alone and stuck in an alcoholic dependency. The Motorcycle Boy, and his younger brother’s view of him, is not who he thought he was despite the graffiti of “The Motorcycle Boy Reigns” on street corners.

From http://perfectionofperplexion.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/rumble-fish-1983-hdtv-720p-english-and-russian-mkv_200502.jpg

Never does Rumble Fish become pretentious despite the options that could have lead it there. It is too simple and clear in its thoughts to confuse them. It is cool in rich black-and-white with echoing post-synch sound. It has Dillon, Rourke, Waits, Lane, Lawrence Fishburne, Nicolas Cage and Chris Penn onscreen. Even an adolescent Sofia Coppola in a small role as Patty’s little sister, making the lambasting of her performance, older, in The Godfather: Part III (1990) overdoing it even if it was justified. But beneath the timeless veneer, motorcycle jacketed rebels against arcade machines, it’s about the restlessness of youth. Aimless, not connected to adult life. The violence, Rusty James continually battered and experiencing an out-of-body experience in one such incident, as much the pent-up desires of the males asserting themselves as the desire for sex with girls their age. The fighting fish of the title, bright colours, are trapped and feel the need to assault even their own mirror images. Coppola is controlled, nuanced in every moment angled and lit in an interesting way, but he is as much obsessed with his characters meaning a lot for himself and the viewers. His characters are trapped in situations against their own wills and have to make their way out of it, drastically changing by the end. Gene Hackman against his paranoia in The Conversation (1974). Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now (1979). Michael Corleone and his divine punishment by the end of The Godfather trilogy. Mina Murray and Dracula in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). The protagonists of Tetro (2009) and Tim Roth, against his superhuman burden, in Youth Without Youth (2007). Like them all, Rusty James is not in control of what happens to him, barring the final decisions, having to decide after it’s too late what to do next. The music, by Stewart Copeland, is precise as clockwork and as varying and changing as a heartbeat. It is cool but weaves with sincerity. Filtered through dialogue by S.E. Hinton, author of the original source novel, Rumble Fish is cool but never aloof, as varying as the drama changes even in its style. Its end is at the ocean and the route to it is justified and felt. In only ninety minutes you are there for characters like Rusty James and the Motorcycle Boy and feel everything that happens. Even if I am distant from their lifestyles and older than them, a young man like myself cannot help but feel, through this stylish film, how my youth is fresh and running quickly on the clock too. 

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