Three Films Make A Post: He's Six Feet Six Inches of Dynamite. She's Crazy. Absolutely Crazy.

La Funeraria aka The Funeral Home aka The Undertaker’s Home (2020): Mauro Iván Ojeda’s Argentinean horror film is about a mortuary business that’s haunted by ghosts the undertaker and his family just have to arrange themselves with as parts of their normal life, until they can’t anymore. It is an interesting mixture of Weird family drama, with relatively typical horror movie beats but also a handful of genuinely original ideas about the nature of life, death and love; a film that takes some very un-generic decisions on what to show and what not to; and a bleak film whose friendlier elements in the climax make it feel even bleaker.

La Tulipe noire aka The Black Tulip (1964): Based on Dumas in title only, Christian-Jaque’s French Revolution-set swashbuckler with Alain Delon playing two very different brothers manages to be a fun blast of a film as befits an entry into its genre on-screen, but also has undertones of surprising bleakness (one can argue, also perfectly in keeping with the genre as it should be) that seem to mirror the nature of its main characters, as well as that of the French Revolution itself. Of course, the old order as represented by the sadistic clowns ruling over the part of the French countryside the film takes place in is the main enemy here, and the film knows what its genre is for and what not too well to be too critical of the Revolution. But thanks to the bitter and cynical of the two twins, there’s also the shade of the bitter and cynical turn the revolution itself would take visible.

Special Delivery (1976): In this film by the often great Paul Wendkos, the plot about a war vet robber’s (Bo Svenson) attempt to get at the loot he had to deposit in a mailbox while on the run from the police, encountering a young divorcee looking for herself (Cybill Shepherd) and finding quite a talent for crime and love, really isn’t the point of the film. Instead, Wendkos uses the single street in LA and a couple of places outside of it to create a microcosm of the nightly side of the city and the encounters our leads have in it, with characters like the would-be motorcycle gang of rapist thugs of a young Jeff Goldblum(!), the local crime boss (Robert Ito), and so on and so forth. It’s rather a lot like a road movie that takes place in only one stop on the way.

Apart from Wendkos direction that makes a lot out of people watching other people from unexpected angles, the film also recommends itself by the great actors. Svenson – not always a favourite of mine – turns a character personable and interesting who could be a simple thug, and Shepherd creates a woman who is at once driven by doubt and insecurity and capable, courageous and determined, while also being charming as hell.

Past Misdeeds: Choke Canyon (1986)

This is a re-run with only the slightest of edits, so please don’t ask me what the heck I was thinking when I wrote any given entry into this section.

Rogue physicist Dr. David Lowell (Stephen Collins) is convinced he is going to be able to develop a clean, infinite source of energy out of sound waves. To prove that particularly interesting theory, he has set up a lab with awesome blinking doodads in a beautiful choke canyon. There, he’s waiting for the passing of Halley’s Comet because he’ll need to somehow use the comet’s soundwaves for his experiment. Or something – the film’s rather vague about its ridiculous nonsense science, so we’ll just have to take it at its word. Alas, Lowell has leased the canyon from the evil nuclear energy corp of one John Pilgrim (Nicholas Pryor), and Pilgrim really needs the place to illegally dump a huge ball full of nuclear waste there. You’d think the film would rather go for an “evil nuclear energy corp wants to destroy progressive green science” plot but that’s not happening.

First Pilgrim’s people – mid-level henchman-managed by Lance Henriksen himself - try to buy David out, which he of course declines, for the time and place for his experiment isn’t optional (oh, please, don’t ask me why). Then they come back to rough him up, shoot up his lab with submachine guns and probably think this should frighten him into submission. Yet this only manages to make our hero even more determined, if now without a lab. To correct that, Lowell gets on his (non-metaphorical) horse, blows up parts of the facility (or as we know it, a couple of sheds) supposed to house the illegal nuclear waste and tries to blackmail Pilgrim into buying a new lab for him.

From there, things escalate further quickly: Pilgrim calls in The Captain (Bo Svenson), a man with “methods” as well as a flying circus job when he isn’t working as a heavy for an evil corporation. His day job will be important for the film’s biggest set piece later. Lowell puts The Captain in a barrel; The Captain brings a mortar. Finally, Lowell kidnaps Pilgrim’s daughter Vanessa (Janet Julian) – who will of course change sides soon enough because what’s hotter than a little kidnapping, right? – and threatens to blow her up(!) which actually gets him his new laboratory, but certainly no peace. So the film will just have to culminate in a big chase scene between The Captain’s air carnival biplane and Lowell and Janet in a helicopter carrying a big ball of nuclear waste beneath them, followed by a tiny little punch up. The practice of physics is clearly more physically demanding than our teachers let on.

Yes, all of these things really happen in Chuck Bail’s Choke Canyon, and the film truly is as bonkers as this makes it sound. Fascinatingly, despite making no darn sense at all and being the sort of family-friendly action film where automatic weapons, mortar and nuclear waste are applied in various violent ways without anybody ever actually getting hurt, the film doesn’t seem to be meant as an action comedy. It does play most of this awesome and inspired nonsense as straight as you can, which of course does make it much funnier than it otherwise would be, as well as even more bonkers.

Speaking of bonkers, among the awesome elements I didn’t mention when talking about the film’s plot (such as it is) is Lowell’s dress sense, which turns him into more of a cowboy scientist than a rogue scientist, what with his long coat, the appropriate cowboy hat, as well as a disturbingly close relation with his Bollywood approved anipals, a horse and a goat. For the record, I have not the faintest idea why the man has a goat in his lab, but he has, and he clearly loves it very much. In this context, the rather wrong love story between our hero and Janet looks comparatively healthy. After all, Choke Canyon teaches us, what’s a bit of kidnapping and threatening to blow someone up among hot young things?

Then there’s the final fist fight between Lowell and The Captain, a scene that isn’t satisfied with just showing two guys beating each other to a pulp but also finds Lowell having to shout computations between punches, because of course The Captain comes for his revenge exactly in time for the big experiment. An experiment which for its part generates much pulsing of Lowell’s doodads (and probably his equipment too), a cheap light show, and the scientific revelation that Lowell’s theory works, “if only for a moment”. Well, he’ll have time enough to iron out any wrinkles in his computations, given his need for Halley’s Comet.

Now, all of this awesome, inspired nonsense doesn’t really sound like the kind of thing US low budget film makers are usually up to, nor feels much like it when you’re watching it. I’d really rather call this a nominally American movie, for while director Bail (a veteran of stunt work, as well as a bit of acting) certainly is American, and this was visibly shot in Utah, the film’s producer and co-writer is Greek exploitation film impresario Ovidio G. Assonitis (working for a company with a decidedly Dutch sounding name), one of the other co-writers is Sheila Goldberg, who was responsible for the dubbing scripts of various Italian genre films, and the final writer is the glorious genius we know as director, writer and all-purpose provider of the bizarre Alfonso Brescia, which is about as European exploitation style as any writing team can get. No effort is made by anyone to write (if “write” is what you do to produce a script like this) anything in a more American style.

As a fan of Brescia’s peculiar sensibilities in particular I’m not complaining, mind you, preferring the man’s combination of the shamelessly bizarre with the outright silly played seriously to most other approaches to scriptwriting I can imagine; particularly since Brescia-style madness seldom is boring.


The great joy about Choke Canyon though is how the Italian writing approach and the mildly off acting (probably caused by the actors’ confusion about what the hell it is that’s going on in the script) collide with the not terribly cheap looking, and generally impressive shots of the desert and rock landscapes, and Bail’s very accomplished version of the classically – by 1986 probably rather old-fashioned to a contemporary audience - American way of shooting stunts and action, mixing approaches to low budget filmmaking that don’t mix all that often, providing the best of both worlds for precious one and a half hours.

On ExB: Choke Canyon (1986)

If you’re one of those people sceptical about the value of international understanding and cultural intermingling, this film will change your mind. Americans, Greeks and Italians came together to create whatever the hell Choke Canyon is supposed to be. It’s bold, it’s (kinda) beautiful, and I have no idea what anyone involved in it was thinking.

Read further praise in my column on the glorious Exploder Button, currently hanging from a helicopter near you.

In short: Crackerjack 3 (2000)

If you were – like me - hoping for another retcon of the craziness of Jack Wild, cop on the edge, with Jack Wild doing another “Die Hard in an improbable place” bit, you will be sorely disappointed. In fact, we’re not even in the same genre anymore, and instead of weirdo action, this is a piece of unfunny espionage comedy.

The only tenuous connection to the first two movies is the first name of our hero – Jack, the most original first name available. This, though, is Jack Thorn (Bo Svenson), freshly pensioned off CIA boss who finds himself and a bunch of elderly friends in the position as the scapegoats for the insane plan of his replacement Marcus Clay (Olivier Gruner) and a bunch of young up-and-comers to detonate a neutron bomb and make lots of money on the financial markets afterwards. Despite the desperately stupid evil plan of the bad guys, this might very well have made for a funny little movie, but the script’s just too weak for that, going for inane and utterly random rambling where a clash of espionage cultures and generations could actually have been funny.

The pacing is pretty dreadful too, with scenes dragged out so incessantly even the film’s few genuinely funny basic ideas (like a blackly humorous discussion about the best ways to torture people) become boring and tedious; most of the film’s ideas are tedious and stupid, anyhow, and can’t actually be made worse by the atrocious execution. Among the actors, Svenson and Leo Rossi at least seem to have a degree of fun with their roles – I suspect much more fun than anyone can possibly have watching them going from one cringeworthy joke to the next – while Gruner is desperately misplaced in a role that plays to all of his weaknesses – like acting – and ignores all of his strengths – like fight scenes – while the rest of the cast does a perfect imitation of being drugged up and bored.

Do I even need to add that the film frankly looks like crap in a way that’s easier to explain with complete disinterest in actually making an enjoyable film by everyone involved than the film’s mere low budget, and that Simandl’s direction lacks ideas, spark, or even just the ability to avoid lulling me to sleep?

Technorati-Markierungen: canadian movies,in short,spies,comedy,lloyd a. simandl,bo svenson,olivier gruner,leo rossi,amy weber

Amok Train (1989)

aka Death Train

aka Beyond the Door III (and in no way other than being produced by Ovidio Assonitis connected to the first two films, of course)

A group of US college students (I think) makes a trip to a picturesque, muddy, creepy Yugoslavian village to witness "an authentic Slavic ritual for only $800", as their teacher (who for some reason - cough - isn't joining them) explains. Obviously special among the students in that she possesses some character traits is Beverly Putnic (Mary Kohnert) who has Serbian parents herself. Beverly is shy, virginal, frequently mocked by her travelling companions, and, as the film will soon enough disclose, marked by a birthmark on her belly as the chosen bride of Lucifer.

And wouldn't you know it, Professor Andromolek (Bo Svenson), the Yugoslavian teacher who made all that ritual watching possible is the chief Satanist, with said "Slavic ritual" actually being Beverly's marriage to his boss, Satan. With a sideshow of college kid slaughter, of course, because nothing could be more romantic.

The Professor and his muddy village full of Satanists aren't very good at their job, though, it seems, for their attempt to murder Beverly's friends in their sleep only leads to most of the gang escaping their evil clutches onto a train that is surprisingly enough not populated by Satanists.

Alas, that auspicious circumstance notwithstanding, the train is soon enough under the control of supernatural forces that first gorily get rid of the train personnel, then leave behind two thirds of the train, turn the rest of it into a havoc causing vehicle of transportation bureau confusing dimensions, and then begin to slowly kill off our protagonists in awesome and improbable ways. Will anyone be able to ruin Lucifer's wedding?

By 1989, Italian horror films like this weren't actually made anymore, for budgets and public interest in the genre had dropped disturbingly. Fortunately, there are outliers to every rule, which leads us to Amok Train. This is nominally an Italian/American/Yugoslavian co-production, but the spirit the film was made in clearly belongs to Italy. Apart from director Jeff Kwitny (whoever he is), all important roles in the production are filled by staff experienced in the ways of the Italian genre cinema industry, and it's all dubbed into the dubious and slightly loopy English we know and love from Italian productions.

But what makes Amok Train a movie worth gushing about isn't that it's a dream-like and wonderfully gory Italian horror movie made this late in the game, it's that it's one that does everything one could hope for so well. There's hardly a minute going by when nothing interesting, loopy or slightly crazy is happening with a scene in which our heroine has a vision of her dead mother, hairless and in white body paint and a goat between her legs (it's a metaphor, don't you know?), and the ickiest kiss scene - with a few worms, of course - I have seen in a long time as only two of the film's highpoints. Amok Train delights with toothless witches and a polite chief Satanist who dresses like Dracula, a monk who plays a flute that sounds like a synthesizer, an especially long-winded set-up for the strangest death by train I can remember seeing (watch out, that train's amphibian!), and more wonders than I can count.

I was also very impressed by finally having found a film that thinks of the simple solution to the problem of being the virgin Lucifer wants to marry - just have consensual sex with the ghost of a Saint from the 11th Century, and that rather picky Satanic gentleman will not want to have anything further to do with you, the hypocrite.

And all this are the glories Amok Train provides without me even having mentioned the half an hour or so when the gory horror movie grows a parallel plot right out of a disaster movie as if it were an evil twin, with very dramatic Yugoslavian officials trying desperately to hinder the train of evil from crashing head-on into a more standard train. I think even George Kennedy would have had trouble coping with an AMOK TRAIN that doesn't need rails, so it's probably better for man and myth neither he nor Chuckie Heston are in this wonderful piece of art. The film is overwhelmingly fantastic as it is already anyway.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,reviews,horror,jeff kwitny,mary kohnert,bo svenson