Freddie Francis' Nightmare is one of those lesser-known movies from Hammer Films which usually finds itself lumped together in box sets dominated by their more popular Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy series. It's obscurity is slightly unfair, as this black-and-white psychological horror-come-slasher unravels itself cleverly and with a healthy dose of style. Written by Hammer regular Jimmy Sangster, Nightmare conjures up a fair share of creepiness despite its age, and often feels somewhat Hitchcockian in its execution.
Janet (Jennie Linden) is a young girl attending boarding school. At night, she is plagued by nightmares of when she witnessed the stabbing of her father at the hands of her deranged mother. As her mental state worsens, she is sent back home to her guardian Henry Baxter (David Knight) and assigned a nurse Grace Maddox (Moira Redmond). Soon after arriving, Janet starts to have visions of a woman she has never seen before with a huge scar on her cheek. Essentially a movie broken into two parts, the second act cannot be summarised without giving away a spoiler.
The visuals are rather bland - Hammer tended to churn out movies quickly and cheaply to serve as a starter for the main event in cinemas - but the black-and-white photography gives the film a gothic, and almost noirish, sense of style. While Knight is enjoyably smug, the rest of the cast fail to make any real impression, with the pre-Women in Love (1969)Linden extremely lucky to find herself cast after a number of preferable choices, including Julie Christie who chose to make Billy Liar instead, were unavailable. But the film's flaws are to be expected - it is a quickie B-movie after all - and it makes the most of its limitations. The plot's mystery is engrossing and the pacing is odd yet intriguing, and I would recommend Nightmare to any fan of British horror.
Originally intended to be the first 'TV movie', Don Siegel's brutally thrilling and ice-cool adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's story was deemed too violent for the small screen. With filming taking place as John F. Kennedy was assassinated and one key scene certainly bringing the incident in Dallas to mind, The Killers was tactically granted a cinema release instead. Such a talented and experienced cast, and a director who delivered at least one masterpiece throughout his career, The Killers was always going to be too good not to appear on the big screen. More of a re-make of Robert Siodmak's 1946 film than of Hemingway's text, Siegel drops the film noir tone in favour of bright and sunny exteriors, while somehow heightening the sense of pessimism throughout.
After a routine hit in which race-car driver-turned-teacher Johnny North (John Cassavetes) is gunned down at a school for the blind, hired killer Charlie (Lee Marvin) and his partner Lee (Clu Gulager) discuss the strange way Johnny allowed himself to be killed and offered no resistance. Deciding the circumstances are too strange not to warrant further investigation, and with the possibility of recovering a missing $1 million, the two thugs interview Johnny's former mechanic friend Earl (Claude Akins). He tells them of Sheila (Angie Dickinson), the femme fatale who stole Johnny's attention, and her lover, the fearsome mob boss Jack Browning (Ronald Reagan), who embroiled Johnny and his skills behind the wheel in a million-dollar heist.
Appearing in his final movie role before moving into politics and becoming one of America's most infamous presidents, Reagan steals the movie as the slimy gangster Browning. He apparently hated the role, and had always played the hero during his career, but he proves to be surprisingly apt at playing a loathsome criminal. The Killers is remarkably tough, emphasising the roles of Marvin and Gulager's heartless brutes, who both have no qualms about dangling a woman out of a high-rise window. Despite Marvin's hulking presence, its actually Gulager who steals their scenes, with his mix of all-American handsomeness, preening narcissism and emotional coldness giving dimension to his stock character. The sickly brightness of it all does little but highlight the film's budget constraints, but The Killers thrills thanks to Siegel's unfussy direction and terrific performances all round.
Masahiro Shinoda's Pale Flower, like many products of the Japanese New Wave movement, is an immaculate mixture of the old and the new. Having studied under Ozu, Shinoda frames the film beautifully, taking influence from American film noir and the French New Wave to tell a story of ageing mobster Muraki (Ryo Ikebe) who is fresh out of prison. However, this is no straight-forward yakuza movie, and the film's loose plot and broodingly charismatic anti-hero are used at every turn to subvert the genre.
Having served his time for murder and winning the respect of his peers for keeping his mouth shut, Muraki drifts back into the life he once knew. It's a world of excessive gambling, and it's whilst partaking in an unfathomable game involving black chips that he meets the mysterious Saeko (Mariko Kaga), a beautiful girl with an unhealthy thirst for excitement. He is told that she comes every night and loses all of her money, only to come back the next day for more. Muraki is instantly drawn to her, and the two embark on an equally destructive, but not physical, relationship.
With his sharp suits, handsome face, perfect hair and nigh-on permanent black sunglasses, Muraki is the epitome of New Wave cool. But Pale Flower is a more than just an exercise in style. Like Alain Delon's character in Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai, Muraki is a creature of violence stuck in an existential void. Loyal to his yakuza boss for seemingly no other reason than habit, he is constantly restless and bored. Saeko fiercely sparks his interest; as she embarks in a high speed car race with a man she's never met just for the thrill, Muraki watches her, hypnotised and confused.
Though we see her laugh orgasmically at the cheap thrills life can offer and talk about her desire to try heroin, there is little revealed about Saeko's inner thoughts and background. Muraki is drawn to her perhaps because she shares his disconnection with the structure of modern life, a common theme in the Japanese New Wave. Though the film is, for the most part, moody and intense, shrouded in shadows and cigarette smoke, Shinoda doesn't neglect to include some black humour. A running joke involving a severed fingers adds a nihilistic quality to the film, leading to a bleak ending that is powerfully fitting.
The films that immediately come to mind when considering Roger Corman's considerable cycle of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations are undoubtedly titles such as The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) and The Pit and The Pendulum (1961), both starring Vincent Price as a man psychologically torn by a past event or his looming fate, and both featuring the gothic, set-based atmosphere that is now so celebrated by movie fans. The Tomb of Ligeia may be one of Martin Scorsese's all-time favourite horror movies, but it has been strangely, and unfairly, overlooked in the horror cannon.
Price once again plays a man, Verden Fell, haunted by the death of his wife. While out fox-hunting one day, the young and boisterous Lady Rowena (Elizabeth Shepherd) comes across Verden in a graveyard, apparently looming over the grave of his wife, the mysterious Ligeia, and forced to wear protective glasses due to his failing eye sight. Rowena takes pity on him, and witnesses his psychological torment first hand, which is mainly due to the presence of a threatening cat and the idea that his dead wife is haunting him from the grave. The two eventually marry, but Rowena finds herself the subject of increasingly strange goings-on.
Ligeia is noticeably different to the other entries into the Corman-Poe cycle, mainly due to it's use of exterior filming. While this causes it to lose the claustrophobic, and beautiful, sets of the likes of Usher and Pendulum, it makes for a spookier atmosphere. Price is excellent as always, as is Shepherd, but the blooming romance between their two characters suffers from a distinct lack of chemistry and the niggling problem of the glaring age-gap. However, Ligeia was written by Chinatown (1974) scribe and all-round Hollywood titan Robert Towne, so the absorbing dialogue more than makes up for the awkwardness between the two leads. Certainly a different experience, but Ligeia is up there with the very best of Corman's output.
At just 25, Brazilian director Glauber Rocha directed Black God, White Devil, now considered one of the most important pictures to ever come out of Brazil, and a key entry into the Cinema Novo movement. Combining elements of Sergio Leone, Italian neo-realism, and Soviet propaganda such as the work of Sergei Eisenstein, Rocha created a brutal, grainy world inhabited by suicidal religious fanatics, wandering hit men, and psychopathic bandits. From the opening shots of rotting animal corpses and the endless Brazilian sertão, Rocha portrays a grim social realism, one of the key aspects of Cinema Novo.
Ranch-hand Manuel (Geraldo Del Rey) lives in poverty with his wife Rosa (Yona Magalhaes). Fed up with his situation, he goes into town to sell his stock, only to have his boss try to cheat him out of his money, so Manuel kills him with a machete. Fleeing the authorities, he falls in with maniacal preacher Sebastiao (Lidio Silva), who leads Manuel, Rosa and his other followers on a killing spree. Circumstances lead to Manuel leaving the cause, and joining up with famous bandit Corisco (Othon Bastos), who also leads the couple on an orgy of meaningless violence and thievery. But shadowy gun-for-hire Antonio das Mortes (Mauricio do Valle), having been paid by the church and a poltician, is hot on Corisco's tail.
The film very much reminded me of Cormac McCarthy's astounding novel Blood Meridian, where the sheer brutality of the violence played as a metaphor for a society gone sour and a world intent of self-destruction. Like Blood Meridian's The Kid, Manuel and Rosa follow blindly to whichever cause they see a glimmer of hope in. They fail to see the lunacy of Sebastiao's behaviour, and it's only at the point where he stabs a baby in the heart that their eyes seem to be opened, only for them to shack up with the gibbering Corisco, a man who speaks like a poet but doesn't seem to be able to comprehend his own existence. It is at this point, about two-thirds in, that the film seems to lose momentum and becomes somewhat of an unfathomable mess.
But it isn't just the social-political ponderings that make Black God, White Devil so memorable, it also has style in abundance. The camerawork is shaky and urgent at times, full of character close-ups from awkward angles, but it also uses fast editing reminiscent of Eisenstein's greatest works. Similar to Battleship Potemkin's (1925) Odessa steps sequence, the Monte Santo chapel massacre at the hands of Antonio das Mortes is simply electrifying. It is das Mortes' presence that leads to the moments that evoke the work of Sergio Leone, wrapping the shady anti-hero in moody atmosphere like Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name. It's a dangerous mixture of conflicting styles that works beautifully, making the film beautiful and cool, occasionally horrifying, and undoubtedly important. It's just a shame it doesn't manage to keep up with the absolutely astonishing opening two-thirds.
After his début, The Grim Reaper (1962), the then 22-year old Bernardo Bertolucci made this, Before the Revolution, an often astonishing homage to the ongoing French New Wave movement and a work of almost unbelievable maturity given his age. Set very much after the revolution, presumably referring to the Italian unification, this is undoubtedly a bleak film, looking back on Italy's history with blind, fond nostalgia, and staring into the abyss of their future. Despite the occasional Marxist monologue, the film is in no ways political, and instead focuses on very human drama, with characters seemingly locked into their social roles and resigned to their fate.
The handsome and idealistic Fabrizio (Francesco Barilli) is destined to marry his childhood sweetheart Clelia (Cristina Pariset), a beautiful woman teetering on aristocracy. After his friend Agostino (Allen Midgette) drowns in a possible suicide, he falls headlong into a potentially dangerous love affair with his aunt Gina (Adriana Asti). Gina is unpredictable, highly emotional and possibly borderline mentally ill, but she is also attractive, seductive and wilful, challenging for the sullen Fabrizio. The death of Agostino clearly damages the passionate Fabrizio, whose studies of Marxism with his teacher and friend Cesare (Morando Morandini) had made him outspoken, but now finds himself blindly wandering into the bourgeoisie.
The film doesn't really have a plot as such, but is instead a collection of scenes and interplays that channel Bertolucci's somewhat pessimistic views of Italy in the 1960's. The characters seem locked in the past, a past that they weren't alive for, and as Fabrizio states, full of nostalgia for the present, as if every passing moment is somehow being snatched away from them. It's best summarised in what is undoubtedly the stand-out scene in the movie, as they visit Puck (Cecrope Barilli), a man crippled with so much debt that he is soon to lose his beloved land. While the camera stays calm and graceful throughout the film, Puck laments as the camera sweeps into their air over rivers and forests, Ennio Morricone's astounding score blaring over the visuals. It's a beautiful moment, full of sad longing that reminded me of Sam the Lion's moving monologue in The Last Picture Show (1971) - one of favourite moments in cinema.
Although this is clearly a wink to Godard and the French New Wave, Bertolucci takes a much more controlled approach to the direction. The camera often glides slowly from side to side, switching character focus as they talk, filmed in crisp black-and-white. It was this approach that caused Godard to voice his displeasure at Bertolucci after viewing his masterpiece The Conformist (1970), claiming it to be too contrived. But cinema can be anything and everything you want it to be, and this makes for beautiful cinema, anchored by a powerful performance by Asti, who makes any possible taboo regarding her incestuous relationship with her nephew become redundant. This is much more than a simple love story, this is a film about a country, it's past and present.
After his successful début, Blood Feast (1963), which introduced cinema audiences to splatter horror, Herschell Gordon Lewis made his redneck horror movie, Two Thousand Manics!. Just a few years later, horror movies set in America's Deep South were all the rage, and are still a popular location for some gruesome slicing and dicing (Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil (2010) made fun of the racial stereotyping), so perhaps we have this film to thank for the likes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Deliverance (1972). And Lewis goes all out, with Dixie flags aplenty and thick-accented inbred simpletons in dungarees, in what is a noticeable improvement on his ropey début.
Celebrating their centennial, the town of Pleasant Valley welcome six Yankee visitors who unwittingly drive into their celebrations. The town's mayor, Buckman (Jeffrey Allen - who went on to star in a few of Lewis's films), promises them some of that famous Southern hospitality, but with his two retarded henchman, plans to butcher them all to gain vengeance for a massacre committed a hundred years previously in the midst of the American Civil War. Terry Adams (Connie Mason), who has picked up hitch-hiker Tom (William Kerwin) on his way to a 'teacher's conference', notice their fellow Yankees disappearing under strange circumstances and attempt to flee the increasingly bizarre town.
Everything about this film looks more professional than Blood Feast, with a more patient approach taken with the moments of gore, and less atrocious editing and camerawork. Don't get me wrong though, the Lewis tropes are there - mannequin limbs, dodgy sound editing, paint-red gore, but it just seems that little bit better. It's still a dreadful film, with Feast's block-headed cheeseball William Kerwin - who actually had a pretty successful acting career - returning for more ham-fisted dialogue delivery, and elongated moments of tedium, but it's still quite fun. The gore is certainly better handled, with everything from dismemberment-by-horse and being pushed down a hill in a barrel full of nails being use to satisfy the blood lust. Which makes it all the more strange that Lewis seemed to retreat back into complete ineptitude after this, with his next film, Color Me Blood Red (1965) being the worst of his 'Blood Trilogy', and the long line of nudie cuties and Z-grade horror films that followed. Still, it's a must-see for horror fans.
I'd like to think that I've seen a lot of movies, of varying quality and genre; enough to believe I have at least a basic grasp of cinema as a whole. But during all the classics and tripe I've endured over the years, Mary Poppins has somehow managed to evade me. I was too busy watching rabbits getting torn to pieces in Watership Down (1978) and clapping giddily at Rocky Balboa's training montage in Rocky (1976) as a child to be distracted by something quite as colourful as this. So, it's at the ripe old age of 28 that I came round to sitting through Mary Poppins, to struggle through its squeaky-clean visage and many, many songs that I somehow knew all the words to before seeing the film. Well, I was wrong to be so cynical, as although the film is hardly what I would call a classic, it's really rather good.
London, 1910. Merry jack-of-all-trades Bert (Dick Van Dyke) is playing a one-man-band to an enthusiastic street audience when he senses something magical in the air, signalling the return of his good friend Mary Poppins (Julie Andrews). He takes us into the stable yet unhappy Banks' family home, where the household is ran by lord-of-his-castle Mr. Banks (David Tomlinson), and his suffragette wife Mrs. Banks (Glynis Johns). Busy attending to work and other matters, the Banks' have started to neglect their children, Jane (Karen Dotrice) and Michael (Matthew Garber). After their umpteenth nanny walks out on them, Mr. Banks makes a desperate newspaper plea for a nanny who will lay down the law, and teach the children respect and the harshness of life. So enters Mary Poppins, 'perfect in every way', a nanny who is as strict as she needs to be but one capable of also showing the children the joys of life.
Mary Poppins suffers mainly from the same thing that I feel plagues most musicals - it's too long. Seemingly every musical feels the need to round-up every change of emotion and sub-plot with a grand song-and-dance number that gets old quickly. The first half of the film is pure family entertainment, with memorable songs and some stunning special effects (for its day) making the film zip by happily. Then the songs get more clunky and forgettable, and we are exposed to much more of Dick Van Dyke's terrible accent and his grating, over-enthusiastic Bert than we need (although I'm sure he has his many fans). Yet after the somewhat exhausting 139 minutes is over, Poppins still leaves you with that cuddly feeling inside, something I thought had died inside me when I sprouted my first pube.
Most of the success of Poppins comes from the performance of Julie Andrews. All sweet and idyllic, she could have come across as a stuck-up Miss Perfect, but Andrews' effortless likeability and stage experience makes her more of a supernatural missionary, sent to make a stand against Mr. Banks' stern and rigid outlook on life. Disney were really coming out of their Golden Era at the time of this being released, but it's still one of their most fondly remembered, and certainly their most critically successful live-action efforts. It's more than likely that children will turn away from it, due to the mega-bucks spewed into children's films these days, but it will continue to enchant adults, especially those that grew up with it, and even those new to it, like me. Chim-chimernee, chim-ernee, chim chim, cheroo! Damn it, it's in my head again!
After spending the first few years of his career on traditional 'nudie cuties', director Russ Meyer made his first foray into 'real' film-making with 1964's Lorna, written by and starring James Griffith. Though his colourful visuals and sense of humour were evident in the likes of The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959) and Eve and the Handyman (1961), these films were still very much confined to being nothing more than a peep show. With Lorna, Meyer resorted to black-and-white photography, but whether this was for budgetary reasons or stylistic choice, I don't know. But the decision to shoot this way gives the film more gravitas, and the attention is moved away from the big-breasts and onto the story and script, giving birth to the auteur that is now so revered.
Beginning with the rape of a girl named Ruthie (Althea Currier), the two men responsible, Luther (Hal Hopper) and Jonah (Doc Scortt), travel to work and pick up Jim (James Rucker) on the way. Jim is married to the beautiful Lorna (Lorna Maitland), who is sexually unsatisfied by the nice-guy Jim. Luther proceeds to tease Jim about Lorna at work, while an escaped convict (Mark Bradley) forces himself onto Lorna. Lorna is extremely turned on, and invites the convict back to the house where she feeds and washes him. Clearly, it's not the most complex of plots, but we are in familiar Meyer territory with square-jawed men, put-upon women, and a funky jazz score.
One of the most familiar traits of a Meyer film is the narrator. Commonly, the role of the narrator in his films was to play the traditional man, one that obeyed the values and traditions of the 1950's American. The idea of sexual repression was clearly something that amused Meyer, and in Lorna, he employs James Griffith to play 'the Man of God', who is littered throughout the film addressing the audience directly to camera and questioning their moral fibre. He introduces the film, and this leads to one of the best moments in the films. He stands in the middle of a wide desert road, allowing the camera to glide past him and forward into the unknown as the jazz score kicks in. It's a lovely little touch, and a clear indication that this isn't simple another nudie-cutie.
This is far from his best work, with Lorna being relatively subdued in comparison to his more wilder visions such as Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) and especially Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), and Lorna's pandering to the violent convict may seem rather chauvinistic in comparison to the majority of Meyer's output, where the female was quite often the dominant sex. But this was only the beginning of a now widely-celebrated career, so Meyer was still very much honing his craft. His sense of humour is unmistakable however, and one of the standout scenes has the despicable Luther writing and performing a song about Lorna's adultery to Jonah. It's played out so naturally that the two start to really laugh, making the scene really quite wonderful. It's this kind of playfulness that make Meyer's output such as joy to watch.
Based on the writings of Lafcadio Hearn, who studied Japanese folklore and supernatural tales to form his novel Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, Kwaidan tells four stories, all varying in length, tone, and quality. The first, The Black Hair, depicts a samurai who abandons his loving wife in search of a rise in the social hierarchy, marrying into wealth after displaying his fine gift for archery on horseback. Spending years in deep regret, he returns back to his first wife only to find her physically the same, yet entirely different. The second, The Woman of the Snow, is a very simplistic tale of a man's encounter with the Yuki-onna, a pale woman with blue lips who lives in the snow, who warns the man that she would kill him if he told anyone about her.
The stand-out segment is undoubtedly the third, Hoichi the Earless, a sweeping epic (in a portmanteau context) tale of a blind musician, Hoichi (Katsuo Nakamura), who's rendition of The Tale of the Heike (a multi-layered account of the long-standing conflict between the Taira and Minamoto clans in 12th century Japan), has gained him renown. The ghost of a warrior that perished during the decisive Battle of Dan-no-ura approaches Hoichi, informing him that his lord has demanded his presence in order to hear his legendary performance. After frequently disappearing during the night, Hoichi is followed and is seen to be playing to a graveyard full of ghosts. The fourth, which is the shortest, is the unfinished story In a Cup of Tea.
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes and nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 1965 Academy Awards, Kwaidan is a masterwork of visual splendour, using bold explosions of colour, Expressionist sets, and dream-like, almost fairytale lighting. Hoichi the Earless begins with a beautiful re-telling of the Battle of Dan-no-ura, with lavish red and orange back-drops juxtaposed with the microscopically detailed artwork from the period, making it seem almost like a painting come to life, all with the sound of Hoichi's beautiful rendition of The Tale of the Heike. This comes straight after the rather gloomy Woman of the Snow, which uses blue lighting amidst a snowy terrain to create the most haunting of the tales on show.
Yet Kwaidan is much more than visual elegance. It is deeply rooted in Japanese folk-lore, bringing to mind the Western tales of the Brothers Grimm, back when fairy-tales had a darker tone and social context. It is almost like lying in bed on a thunderous night reading ghost stories by candle-light. Director Makasi Kobayashi (director of The Human Condition trilogy (1959-1961) and Harakiri (1962)) seems especially fascinated and enchanted by these tales, giving each story its own visual style and colour scheme, and even dedicating the final segment to the many unfinished Japanese stories that end abruptly, shrouded in mystery, and ponders the fate of its author.
Running at three hours, Kwaidan never feels strained or tired, and doesn't waste a second of its running time to create something you could easily freeze-frame and hang on your wall. Hoichi the Earless could have been a masterpiece on its own, and is the most fondly remembered of the quartet (the image of Hoichi screaming, clutching his butchered head has become iconic amongst fans of more obscure, art-house 'horror'). The final story does end the film on a sadly quite anti-climactic note however, being by far the poorest of the stories, telling a slightly silly, un-involving twenty-minute story about the reflection of a mysterious man in a cup of tea that appears later to a confused samurai. It jars with what came before, slightly ruining what is a nigh-on perfect trilogy of beautifully rendered films.
Now known as the beginning of the 'Coffin Joe Trilogy', Jose Mojica Marins' supernatural horror has garnered a loyal cult following through it's camp sets, it's grainy, low-budget photography, and the wildly sadistic acts of violence by it's anti-hero, Ze do Caixao (or Coffin Joe - to translate - played by Marins). Dressed all in black, with a long cape, top hat and full beard, Coffin Joe has become an iconic figure amongst die-hard horror fans, and his (outlandish) presence is undeniable. Joe is an undertaker, and rejects all ideas of Christianity or faith (he literally laughs in the face of it), so his dark demeanour is the embodiment of evil, and ultimately, Satan.
At Midnight... kick-starts Joe ultimate quest to find a suitable wife who will bore him a son, therefore cementing his precious blood-line for years to come. His current wife Lenita (Valeria Vasquez) loves him, though she cannot give him a son. Infatuated by Terezinha (Magda Mei), the fiancée of his best friend Antonio (Nivaldo Lima), he tries to seduce her, but she rejects his advances, leaving Joe infuriated. Convinced that Lenita is the thing standing between him and Terezinha, he ties Lenita to the bed and lets her get bitten by a venomous spider. But Joe learns that the things he wants in life must be taken rather than earned, and he begins a killing spree in the face of a prophecy that deems him to die on the night of the Day of the Dead.
Beginning with huge lashings of style, Marins introduces his actors in the opening credits by showing them dying later in the film. It's an interesting approach, and almost as if Marins wishes us to view the characters as the walking dead, as we already know their fate. There are freeze-frames, trippy texts, and an almost industrial soundtrack layered with shrills and screams. It's all very theatrical, akin to a pantomime at times, with the clichéd gypsy fortune teller talking directly to camera and warning the audience that they should not watch the movie. But it was this old-fashioned approach, and the almost ineptness of its execution, that made this such an enjoyable experience.
We have fake cobwebs, spiders, and a gypsy witch with a shrieking laugh combined with moments of utter surreality, and a surprisingly gruesome streak given its age (Joe removes a doctor's eyeballs, mashes the fingers of a rival poker player with a broken bottle, and flogs a man half to death). It's no surprise Marins is a national treasure in his native Brazil, as he single-handedly brought the horror genre to his country after starting his career with westerns and dramas. The final instalment to the trilogy was just made in 2008, so its quite impressive given that his character is memorable enough to stretch over four decades. Next up will be the deliciously-titled This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse (1967).
From 1903's Passion play, to Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic gore festival, The Passion of the Christ (2004), the story of Jesus as written in the new testament has been a cinematic staple since the start, and whilst there are many variations and interpretations, they have largely been produced by absolute believers. However, after a visit to Pope John XXII, who in the early 1960's was reaching out to non-Catholic artists, and a reading of the gospels, the Italian film maker, Pier Paolo Pasolini - vocal atheist, homosexual, and Marxist, - undertook a quite direct, and literal interpretation of the story of Christ. But unlike the usual productions of this narrative, Pasolini's film has none of the dramatic inventions of a more "mystical" interpretation such as The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), which was produced a year after this with a huge budget, starring Charlton Heston, and made under the machinations of the Hollywood system.
At this stage in Pasolini's career, he was still working within the neo-realist trend that had perpetuated in Italy in the post-war years. He brings this more loose style of film making to this "great" story. What he also brings is another trend of this movement, which was the use of non-actors. But fundamental to the directors work, and particularly this film, is his political views. His depiction of Jesus is that of a political thinker, and an advocate of social justice. The choice to watch this film at this time was purely coincidental, but it dawned upon me the significance of the message. In a week in politics in the United Kingdom where our current government's budget revealed heavy cuts to the taxes of the very rich, whilst the poor of the country are told to live in austerity, there is a very simple line spoken by Jesus (Enrique Irazoqui) - which should have been utilised by the occupy camp that was moved away from St Paul's Cathedral in central London, he states: "It would be easier for a camel to get in the kingdom of heaven, than it would be for a rich man."
Whilst I consider myself an Atheist, the message of these gospels are very clear, and yet we still live in a world where the rich get richer, and the catholic church gets sickeningly richer. To use a very tired, and over used statement in popular culture: What would Jesus do? If there were to be a second coming, surely he would not be pleased. Anyway, I digress. I believe that some of this may be Pasolini's point. If the story of Jesus were true, then his message was clear, and even if he never even lived, the fact of the matter is that his message is clear, and yet the people who follow his teachings largely simply ignore this and interpret to whatever means they feel is right.
As previously stated the film is shot in the cinema verite style and this helps give the story not only realism, but a gravitas that is lost in the more lavish productions. The film looks absolutely beautiful, and this is helped by the incredible southern Italian setting, which adds a seeming reality. Without question, this is the greatest film of the story of Christ, and clearly influenced the later Martin Scorsese film The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Even if you (as I am) are not a believer, this film is more about the crimes of social injustice, and the division caused by wealth. Essential film making.
When Isabella (Francesca Ungaro), a model, is brutally killed on the grounds of a fashion house by a masked killer, investigator Sylvester (Thomas Reiner) is called in. He discovers a nervous misfit group of employees and models, all seemingly nervous about the pending investigation. When Countess Cristina Como (Eva Bartok) finds Isabella's diary amongst her belongings, tensions run high, and a wave of corruption, drug abuse and blackmail is slowly uncovered as the body count piles up and the killer searches for the diary.
Generally considered as one of the most influential giallos ever made, Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace oozes style and blood. Opening with a quite stunning credits sequence, the cast are framed in beautifully lit shots alongside the mannequins of the fashion house. It's a great introduction to one of the most gorgeous horrors I've ever seen. I've long admired the style of Dario Argento (his Inferno (1980) and Opera (1987) are up there with the most stylistic) but this film blows him out the water in terms of sheer beauty. The early set piece which sees the killer stalk a model through the underbelly of the fashion house employs bright reds and blues, and it's a hugely effective way to juxtapose the beautiful with the ugly (the inevitable murder).
Yet Black Lace seems to be a work of style over substance, and while there is a bucket load of style, there's precious little substance.Sylvestor's investigation is a prime focus early on, but seems to disappear when the revelation comes. The revelation itself is easily guessable, as the many red herrings are far too obvious, and the reasons behind the murders is a simply written story about blackmail. It was a flop on its release after Bava's two commercially successful films, Black Sunday (1960) and Black Sabbath (1963), and it's not too difficult to see why. I feel I'm yet to see the best of Bava (apart from the excellent Danger: Diabolik (1968) I have only seen the relatively flat A Bay of Blood (1971)), but I'm confident his reputation is there for a reason, and I'll look forward to discovering his better works.
In 1960, French visionary Jean-Luc Godard made A Bout De Souffle, a film that influenced generations of filmakers, and had a style that is still seen in films today. It was a low-budget, free-spirited crime film that mixed genres, conventions and techniques, and kicked off the French New Wave movement. As Godard progressed, he became more confident and experimental, making musical comedy Une Femme Est Une Femme in 1961, political thriller Le Petit Soldat in 1963, and the satirical Le Mepris in the same year. He had unfinished business, it seemed, as he returned to the B-movie crime genre in 1964 with Bande A Part, similar in themes to his debut. Why he did this is unclear, but thank God he did, as, in my opinion, it's an ultimately better film.
Shy student Odile (Anne Karina), is befriended and by two partners in crime, the quirky and silent Franz (Sami Frey), and the confident and reckless Arthur (Claude Brasseur). Both men are seemingly besotted with the beautiful Odile. The three become friends, hanging out in cafes, driving around, and generally messing about. After a while, a strange love triangle forms as the two men try their best to seduce Odile, who initially only seemed interested in Arthur. It soon becomes apparent, however, that the two men are using Odile to plan a heist of her Auntie, who she mentions has a large amout of cash stashed in her apartment.
The first two thirds of the film sees Godard at his most playful. The famous scene in which the three dance in time to a jazz song is one of the most delightful scenes I've seen in a Godard film. The music occasionally stops, allowing us to hear the characters inner thoughts, and also to see how ridiculous the characters look without the music playing. To me, it seemed Godard was both showing how wonderful cinema could be, as well as highlighting the deceitfulness of it. Perhaps I was mis-reading it, or maybe Godard was leaving it open to interpretation, or maybe it is just a fun scene. Either way, it's a great scene.
It's also delightful to see Anna Karina, as it always is. She is one of the darlings of French cinema (even though she is Danish), and truly one of the most beautiful women to have ever graced the screen. She was, at the time, married to Godard and appeared in many of his films until their divorce in 1967. She gives one of her best Godard performances here, playing shy and timid early on, to become more confident and calculating later on, having the two men practically worshipping her. That is until the final heist scene when the men become drastically vicious and nasty as they get desperate in their greed.
It is one of the last of the light-hearted films Godard made before taking a more political and controlled approach to cinema. After this he went on to make sci-fi masterpiece Alphaville (1965) and, in my opinion, his best film Weekend (1967), a dark and hypnotic odyssey into a bourgeois-consumerist nightmare future. Bande A Part may lack a recognisable plot, but it has spirit in abundance, and style to spare.
"There's something terrible in reality," Guiliana (Monica Viti) tells Corrado Zeller (Richard Harris) towards the end of the film. This statement encapsulates Viti's character perfectly. Guiliana is withdrawn, has bouts of anxiety and paranoia. She had previously been in a car accident involving a van and been hospitalised for a year with serious shock. This role is played beautifully by Viti (who had collaborated with Antonioni on his three previous films); whilst she strikes the occasional contorted pose, she uses her eyes majestically to portray a fractured, anxious thought process. If her eyes are not frantically darting around, encapsulating immaculate confusion, then they are sunken, glacial, and permeated with sadness.
Guiliana is married, but on meeting her, Corrado seems almost infatuated with her awkward, unstable demeanour. They enter into a subdued affair that is restrained by her seemingly perpetual elusiveness. She is haunted by details - that we have no awareness - of the road accident. It could also be argued that Guiliana is affected by the surroundings she inhabits. The film is set in Ravenna, an industrialised, bleak landscape of factories; chimneys pumping out fumes, infecting the horizon with a dense fog. All that is left of the natural surroundings of field and trees, is the bare-bones of rotten, forgotten husks. The once-green grass churned into slurry. The infected waters, yellow and frothing as the waves hit the poisonous rocks.
This was Michelangelo Antonioni's first film in colour. The last in a loose tetralogy informed with themes of alienation in the modern, industrialised world. Red Desert was preceded by L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961) and L'eclisse (1962). Whilst much of the landscape filmed here, the overall effect of the visuals is astonishingly beautiful. These stark, brooding images stay with you. Whilst the natural colours (dissipated by the onslaught of industrial waste infecting the air) are washed out by heavy pollution, Antonioni lightly daubs his mise-en-scene with slight painterly strokes of colour (often out-of-focus) across the composition with a mass-produced object of manufactured descent.
The theme of the relationship between the polluting element of the manufacturing industry with human emotion is open to interpretation in this film. Do we see these objects of consumerist desires that illuminate the screen with their intensely garish, gauche, fabricated colours, as the fundamental fascination with the industrial age? Are we, like Guiliana, so totally absorbed by our modernist surroundings that we find solace in the objects that this modern industrial age has produced? Any film that is open to new ideas excites me. A film that can be represented with new adaptation of thought. Our understanding of technology, and the changing face of industrialisation/globalisation will undoubtedly change, as I am sure will the interpretations of this beautifully constructed piece of cinema/art.
This rarely-seen Japanese film centres around a mysterious wandering ronin Hachiro Kiyokawa (Tetsuro Tanba) as he juggles between the Shogunate and the Emperor sympathisers in 19th-century Japan. As the pre-credits text informs us (in detail), four American warships arrived in 1853, upsetting the political balance in Japan, as the country divides into the Liberal Shogunate, and the Imperialists who want all foreign influence banished. Kiyokawa's story is told by various supporting players in flashback and the film jumps around a detailed timeline. We never know or fully understand Kiyokawa's intentions and political preference as he proves unpredictable and at times, extremely ruthless.
The film is more of a political thriller than a traditional samurai film, full of conversations in dark rooms, back-stabbings, bargains and power-shifts. Director Masahiro Shinoda never feels like he has to make it easy for the audience to follow, as the large cast of minor players are never fully developed enough, so it's difficult to keep up with who is who. This, I feel, works both for and against the film. It is on one hand highly intelligent and intellectually stimulating, but on the other hand it allows the plot to become convoluted. It's a shame because I would like to have had time to soak up the mysterious atmosphere, and the beautiful cinematography on show. It is though, as a whole, a very good film, and one I will watch again when I get the chance, in order to wrap my tiny brain around the complex plot.
In 1962, when the careers of acting heavyweights such as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Olivia De Havilland were beginning to subside as the years took their toll, director Robert Aldrich directed Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, a story of sibling jealousy and sadism that saw Davis and Crawford go head to head. The film was notorious not only for it's brilliance, but for it's genuine rivalry between the film's two leads. The film was a success, and unwittingly gave birth to a new genre that has since become known as 'hagspolitation' or 'psycho-biddy thrillers', a splurge of films that usually portrayed a psychotic older woman played by a 1940-50's superstar. Davis and Crawford were the key players in the sub-genre, and they were both cast by Altman in his next film, Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte, only for Crawford to drop out due to 'illness', when in reality it was because she just couldn't take Davis' bullying and general nasty behaviour. She was replaced by De Havilland, and although the film doesn't come near to capturing the greatness of Baby Jane, it is still a nice little shocker.
Beginning with a shocking murder that sees a married man who is having an affair with Charlotte (Davis) have his arm and head hacked off with a huge cleaver, the film jumps forward four decades, where the ageing Charlotte lives alone in her giant mansion that is being torn down by city developers. Haunted by the murder of her former lover (for which she may or may not have been the culprit), Charlotte is losing her mind when her cousin Miriam (De Havilland) comes to stay to try and convince her to leave before she is arrested by the developers for failing to leave her home. What follows is Charlotte's fast decent into insanity, but is she being played and manipulated by people after her vast fortune?
The film is a solid horror film with some genuine shocks and extreme gore for its day. Of course, the ever-reliable Bette Davis is superb as the squeaky-voice southern gal seemingly with the mind of an infant. Although the film works well as both a Southern gothic horror and as a thriller, the film doesn't have the intensity to last out the 2 hours and 15 minute running time and slightly outstays his welcome. But their is solid support from Joseph Cotten, an actor who has never been recognised enough for his excellent body of work, and Agnes Moorehead, another main player in the genre.
Janet (Jennie Linden) is a young girl attending boarding school. At night, she is plagued by nightmares of when she witnessed the stabbing of her father at the hands of her deranged mother. As her mental state worsens, she is sent back home to her guardian Henry Baxter (David Knight) and assigned a nurse Grace Maddox (Moira Redmond). Soon after arriving, Janet starts to have visions of a woman she has never seen before with a huge scar on her cheek. Essentially a movie broken into two parts, the second act cannot be summarised without giving away a spoiler.
