In short: Siamese Outlaws (2004)

Original title: 2508 pit krom jap taai

Honourable bandit Khaw (Dom Hetrakul) has a grand plan to rob a whole town full of gold merchants. He can't realize that plan with his small gang alone, so he uses his connections to Bai, the right-hand man of bandit king and black magician Lamay (Akekaphan Bunluerit), to convince the big man to help him out partnering up with Lamay's and some other bandit groups.

The raid on the town goes rather well, even though Khaw's partners don't hold to the rule of no unnecessary killing he has put into effect, and despite a large police force that's getting on their trail soon, the bandits manage to get away clean loaded with riches.

The group decides to part ways and let the literal chest full of treasure rest for seven days, until Lamay can contact what must be a pretty spectacular fence.

Obviously there's betrayal in the air, and Lamay and the other bandit leaders try (and sometimes succeed) to kill each other, and especially Khaw, for the gold, as is tradition. When the bandits aren't infighting, they also have to cope with a particularly angry cop of the type that has no compunctions against torture and shooting bandits in the back.

Winai Patoomboon's Siamese Outlaws may look like a film shot in 2004 (or thereabouts), but at its core, the film is an homage to an earlier era of Thai filmmaking, when Sombat Metanee was king. It's clearly no accident that the great Metanee (who would have played Khaw or the cop when he was younger) has a supporting role here too as one of the smaller bandit leaders. The old star seems to have a lot of fun with his role, affably strutting, shooting from impossible positions and winking at the ladies, and really, if these scenes of Metanee doing his thing in a slightly ironical manner were all Siamese Outlaws had to offer, I'd be perfectly alright with it.

But there's also some humour I found myself actually laughing at (not something that happens often with the comical elements of Thai movies for me), some cool gunfights that won't dethrone the greatest action director of your choice yet have an air of unassuming creativity and - again - fun surrounding them only the terminally po-faced would complain about, a bit of magical (or is it) fighting and some perfectly great shots of jungle, ruins, and ruins in the jungle.

The only element of the film that doesn't seem primed for fun first and anything else second is a slightly awkward turn for the dark in its final act and a bit of moralizing that doesn't fit the mood of the rest of Siamese Outlaws too well. However, Patoomboon's film goes about its tragic and morally uplifting business with the same lack of pretention it shows in every other aspect, making it difficult to disagree with it too much; after all, the film is much too laidback to try and convert you to anything.

Did I mention how fun Siamese Outlaws is?

Technorati-Markierungen: thai movies,in short,action,fantasy,winai patoomboon,dom hetrakul,sisithorn thawngsut,akekaphan bunluerit,sombat metanee

The Legend of Hell House (1973)

Millionaire Mr. Deutsch (Roland Culver) hires physicist with interest in paranormal matters Dr. Barrett (Clive Revill) to examine "the Mount Everest of haunted houses", the Belasco house, a former place of controlled debauchery (yay) and murder (boo) that has cost the lives, limbs or sanity of most of its former investigators. Barrett - who smugly does believe in paranormal manifestations yet not in ghosts and is clearly obsessed with his work to the detriment of his marriage - takes his sexually repressed wife Ann (Gayle Hunnicutt) with him. Deutsch has also reserved the help of two mediums - one the painfully optimistic believer in a very Christian interpretation of ghosts - of course also sexually repressed - Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin), the other the only whole survivor of the last Belasco house investigation, Ben Fischer (Roddy McDowall), clearly a believer in repressing everything.

Of course, the house really is as dangerous as people think, and of course, it's going to play on the single character trait of everyone, so soon enough, Barrett will be even more obsessed with his work, Ann will want to have sex, Florence will try to save the ghost of Belasco's son even if it means implied ghost rape, and Fischer will mug as if he were played by Roddy McDowall.

While mostly ignored in the first decade or so of its existence, confusingly broad-minded director John Hough's The Legend of Hell House is now more often than not described as "highly underrated", " a forgotten masterpiece", or "nearly as good as The Haunting" (and I suspect anonymous internet commenter C doesn't mean the dreadful remake, even though that abomination is actually closer to Hell House in spirit). It's also often described as subtle, a statement that just leaves me puzzled, for subtlety is living in a completely different town than this film.

But before I go into what bothers me about the film, I shall not fail to mention some of its very clear surface charms. While I don't think John Hough's direction actually succeeds in achieving the creepy mood the director clearly sets out to build, I do appreciate how desperately he goes all out in trying to achieve it. There's a whole carnival of fisheye lenses, Dutch angles, uncomfortable close-ups, fog, and deep shadows, all so tirelessly working at playing haunted house they don't have any effect on me at all. The permanent piling on of directorial tics that would be subtle used in a controlled manner, or could create a mood of the weird if used in a more individual one, keeps the film teetering on the edge of the unintentionally funny for most of its running time, and it's only saved from permanently - and not just for half of the time like it does - going over the edge by some very decent performances by Franklin, Revill and Hunnicutt who make the best out of the flat roles they are given, excellent music by Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson of BBC Radiophonic Workshop fame, and fine art direction.

Unfortunately, the fourth of the film's four main actors is Roddy McDowall, whose performance is, as usual when he's not playing a monkey, problematic. He starts out slowly enough with the most showy attempts at "subtle acting" this side of Tom Cruise, but once his character "opens up", he seems to be caught in a scenery chewing contest with himself, which is at times pretty funny to watch but not helpful to keep up the po-faced serious mood of Richard Matheson's script (based on his own novel).

That script features most of the things I loathe about large parts of Matheson's work - the stiff dialogue, the insistence on Freudian bullshit (a problem he shares with Robert Bloch) instead of actual characterisation, all women being hysterics in the Freudian sense at heart - while lacking the things I love about large parts of Matheson's work - the ability to actually do interesting and sometimes even enlightening things with said Freudian bullshit, a deep interest in exploring the darker sides of the human spirit by way of supernatural horror, and a sense for keeping things weird with a capital W. In this version of Hell House, everyone is horribly one-dimensional. Florence is stuck up and trusting, Barrett a smug scientist, Ann sexually frustrated and Fischer played by Roddy McDowall, so the house's attempts at destroying them through their own character flaws are equally flat. If you've seen the character introductions, you know exactly how the place will influence them. It's as if Matheson had written the characters with crayon. Not even Belasco escapes that problem - let's just say that a haunting based on the inferiority complex of a guy who cut off his own legs so he could buy prostheses that make him look taller (that's the degree of "subtlety" you can expect from this movie) is not very frightening, no matter how often the film tells us how frightening it is supposed to be.

This dispiriting lack of nuance runs through the whole film and also infects many of its horror set-pieces: Franklin's ridiculous fight with a cat doll, a finale that consists of McDowall mugging into the wind, and (horror of horrors!) hot and bothered Ann Barrett's attempts at seducing McDowall (whose reaction shots do of course ruin every possibility of the scene working as intended). The list just goes on and on.

It's all so clichéd and cheesy in its attempts to be somewhat daring that my only reaction to The Legend of Hell House is a lot of rather embarrassed laughter, the kind of reaction I usually reserve for larger family meetings.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,reviews,john hough,pamela franklin,roddy mcdowell,clive revill,gayle hunnicutt,horror

In short: Paranormal Effect (2010)

Not to be confused with, well, you know…

Japanese American Reiko (Mirei Yamagata) and her very white American boyfriend Darren (Darren McIntyre) are making a short trip to Japan. The couple is staying in the house of Reiko's grandmother - who has been dead for a few months - at the outskirts of Tokyo for the duration.

That does not turn out to be very wise decision, because strange things start happening right from the start. Who'd have thought in a film called Paranormal something-or-other!? At first, the haunting consists of nothing more than a bathtub full of what looks like swamp water that leaves behind a spot which can't be cleaned, so as far as paranormal somethings go, the couple's comparatively lucky.

However, Reiko decides to spend their first day visiting a shrine, and Darren can't help himself but play the respect-impaired American and crawl around in a little cave he isn't supposed to enter. After that, things get weirder: an invisible presence seems to share the house with the couple, turning on the camera Darren uses to film everything anyway when nobody is looking; Reiko starts sleepwalking, muttering about swamps in Japanese. And that damn bathtub continues misbehaving.

On the couple's very last night, something more serious happens, leaving Reiko to wander the woods with Darren nowhere to be found. Reiko ends up in a psychiatric hospital, remembering nothing of that last night. After a few sessions, her psychologist there (Sayaka Kunii) decides that it's necessary for Reiko to return to the house to remember and get better. She's not the type of psychologist unwilling to accept some supernatural dimension to her patient's troubles, so she and Reiko will be accompanied by a shinto priest (Wani Yoshimoto) who will attempt an exorcism.

The Japanese POV horror film Paranormal Effect - shot in Japan by Ryuichi Asano and Teruo Ito yet mostly with English dialogue for reasons of authenticity and easy overseas marketability I suppose - is obviously one of the children of (the loathsome) Paranormal Activity, but unlike that film, it doesn't leave me rolling my eyes and looking bored. It's just a bit more of an actual movie with a script that seems to have knowledge of basic dramaturgical techniques, which - as you know - is not something you can say about all pieces of POV horror, a sub-genre whose films often become confused about the differences between a lack of structure and a feeling of authenticity. The characters don't act quite as much as total idiots than in the American movie I dislike so much either.

If this sounds as if I'm damning Paranormal Effect with faint praise, I don't really do. This is the sort of bread and butter, solid horror film that won't ever shake up its genre, but it is at its heart a solid, well-made film that knows what it wants to achieve (be a POV horror film riding on the coattails of a certain other movie yet doing it without being a complete rip-off) and then achieves it.

It's also a movie that has quite a few enticing little elements it never really explores too deeply, but that still can't help but make it feel slightly richer. There is the obvious element of culture clash, of course, with Darren standing in for every tourist romping dumbly through a foreign country ever, as well as the only hinted at mythological background. Most interesting of all, is the subtext about Reiko being the victim of the supernatural because she's subconsciously drifting between two cultures, seemingly neither able to decide on belonging to one, nor to decide on not having to decide on belonging to one; states of confusion like this do tend to open one up to the supernatural in these films. I do wish the film were a little more ambitious about exploring this aspect, but its mere presence helps make Paranormal Effect that decisive bit more interesting to watch than its title would suggests.

Technorati-Markierungen: japanese movies,in short,horror,ryuichi asano,teruo ito,mirei yamagata,darren mcintyre

Three Films Make A Post: The girls do exactly what you think they do!

Female Chivalry (1975): This Taiwanese martial arts comedy directed by Yeung Jing-Chan is mostly playing the cheap variation of its genre by the book. It's still more entertaining than I'd have expected thanks to Chia Ling's (you may knows her as Judy Lee) performance: she kicks people around with great conviction, she smirks as if her character knew she were a nameless roguish heroine in a silly martial arts movie and approved of that particular lot in life, and she looks pretty smashing in men's clothing. That's more than enough to not only carry the film but drag it up a notch or three in quality and win my heart for ninety minutes.

Der Tod im Roten Jaguar (1968) aka Death in the Red Jaguar: There's a minor series of films based on German "Heftroman" (which are a little like post-war pulps, but different in ways generally making them inferior - I'll explain someday, if I ever find a more interesting film based on one) hero Jerry Cotten (in the movies played by the sleeping pill medicine knows as George Nader), working for an FBI that has as little to do with the original as the German Edgar Wallace movie adaptation Scotland Yard has with the real one. Cotten's adventures usually take place in a not-New York that's unreal in similar, yet less interesting, ways to the Wallace movies not-London; Der Tod mostly takes place in not-San Francisco.

Despite being directed by Harald Reinl who was generally pretty great at pulpy thrills, Der Tod contains a bit too much of the typical provincial stink of German genre film, and way too little that could lead to actual excitement. In fact, watching the film, one can't help but think the film is actively trying not to be too exciting, or weird, or funny, instead aiming for the boring middle ground for no discernible reason beyond the idea that a good German bourgeois is in love with the concept of the "middle ground".

Vessel (2012): This little SF/horror movie directed by Clark Baker, on the other hand, packs more excitement into its thirteen minute running time than can be found in a whole Cotten movie. Clearly, you can still use airplanes and tentacular aliens and a certain Twilight Zone episode for good.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: taiwanese movies,german movies,american movies,martial arts,crime,horror,sf,in short,yeung jing-chan,chia ling,harald reinl,george nader,clark baker

Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (1934)

On the wedding day of his brain-dead sidekick Algy (Charles Butterworth), adventurer Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond begins to think about retirement in Sussex; after all, all that romance and excitement in his life is beginning to get tiresome, and now that Algy isn't around for a quickie anymore, what's left?

Drummond changes his mind very quickly when he leaves his friend's wedding and steps into a foggy London night, where he first meets a confused young woman (Loretta Young) - later to be named as Lola Field - and then stumbles upon a dead body lying in an empty villa. Strangely enough, once Drummond returns to the villa with a bobby in tow, the place isn't empty any longer but populated by Achmed (Warner Oland), the "oriental" (because Warner Oland) envoy or prince or something of a made-up country, and his henchpeople. There's no trace of a dead body anymore, and the bobby sure as hell isn't going to think anything bad about a decent gentleman like Achmed.

Drummond for his part returns to his home to call Algy away from his wedding night and ponder things quietly. Until the confused young woman he met in the fog appears on his doorstep right when Drummond - the creepy toffer - is fantasizing about his need for a woman in need. Her name is Lola Field, and she was actually looking for Drummond's neighbour Captain/Colonel/Inspector Neilson (C. Aubrey Smith) of Scotland Yard, for her uncle is missing, and people seem to pretend he never even existed. Of course, Drummond is instantly smitten by Lola and willing to help, and of course, the dead man he saw will turn out to have been Lola's uncle. From this point on, people will repeatedly be kidnapped from Drummond's living room, Drummond will repeatedly break into Achmed's villa, Neilson will doubt Drummond's sanity (he's right), and Algy's wedding night will be a no-show. Fun will be had by all.

This is the second and last time Ronald Colman was taking on the role of Bulldog Drummond - the actor's first appearance in the role being in 1929's Bulldog Drummond - and like his first outing this mystery comedy in the same spirit of style and verve responsible for The Thin Man is quite a bit of fun.

Unlike the earlier movie, Drummond Strikes Back does not feature the stiff and possibly slightly confused acting of an early talkie. Instead, the film is dominated by the type of slick and glossy acting I find typical of classical Hollywood films. Colman still is the stand-out actor here, hitting the right spot between charming and smug, convincing the audience that being a crime fighting vigilante must be quite the lark, and again pulling the rest of the cast with him in any scene he is in; the difference this time around is just that his colleagues don't need as much pulling and clearly are able to stand on their own feet.

Most of what I have written about the 1929 film stands here too, though the level of pulpy thrills has been reduced a bit - there's no mad scientist in place, the more risqué psychosexual undertones have gone missing, and Warner Oland's "evil oriental" (sigh) is a bit bland as a villain for my tastes - in favour of more comedic bits, which usually would spell doom for me liking any film. I don't mind in Drummond Strikes Back's case though, for most of the humour - except for the always insufferable Algy - is as witty and charming as what Colman projects.

Even though the movie's plot really is paper thing - the mystery Drummond is trying to solve isn't much of one, and there isn't much happening beyond kidnappings and rescues once the situation has been set up - it's a whole lot of fun to watch Colman having fun, delight at the often very stylish manner director Roy Del Ruth shoots his few yet finely made sets, and forget all about the rather nasty political background of the Bulldog Drummond books. Sure, there is Oland's "oriental" evil mastermind (sort of) to remind one of the latter, however, there's so little mean-spirited about his use I found it difficult to get annoyed. It's an unfortunate cliché in a generally good-natured film, and seems to me more of a sign of the times the film was made in than any sign of active racism of its makers; it's the difference between actively doing evil and being thoughtless.

Apart from that, I can only criticize Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back for making me unhappy Colman didn't star in more Drummond films, and that's a criticism born of the fun I had with this one as well as the actor's earlier stint as the character.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,mystery,comedy,in short,roy del ruth,ronald colman,loretta young,warner oland

Music Monday: Anne Boleyn Edition

Technorati-Markierungen: music,music monday,eux autres

Das Phantom von Soho (1964)

aka The Phantom of Soho

A shadowy figure wearing a skull mask and what looks a lot like silver oven mitts stalks the streets of Soho to start a charming little series of murders. Curiously, the killer doesn't steal from his victims, but leaves manila envelopes with money and little gifts with them; if it were Christmas, you'd probably think him to be a Santa Claus themed serial killer. Chief Inspector Patton (Dieter Borsche) and sort of comic relief Sergeant Hallam (Peter Vogel) are investigating the case, but after the first success of realizing that the murders have something to do with a bar cum bordello named the Zanzibar, it's slow going.

There are just too many suspects - most of whom will soon enough turn into victims of the murderer - and unlike the audience, the policemen don't even know these suspects share a dark secret that may very well be the motive for the murder. Among the dubious people Patton and Hallam encounter are the wheelchair-bound and scarred owner of the Zanzibar, Joanna Filiati (Elisabeth Flickenschild), the gangster who manages the place for her (Stanislav Ledinek), a member of parliament (Hans Nielsen), a peculiar masseur (Werner Peters), a sea captain (Hans W. Hamacher), and the young club photographer (Helga Sommerfeld). Really, the policemen can thank the murderer for slowly whittling down the number of suspects.

However, there are other problems troubling Patton, too. The head of Scotland Yard, Sir Phillip (Hans Söhnker), takes a personal interest in the case, and acts increasingly like a good suspect himself, while Sir Philip's girlfriend, crime writer Clarinda Smith (Barbara Rütting) does her damndest to be part of the investigation.

Das Phantom's director Franz Josef Gottlieb is another filmmaker whose stint in the krimi genre hints at a talent neither his later nor his earlier films would suggest. By now, my working hypothesis explaining this singularly strange - for post-war German filmmaking - tendency is that the krimi was the only genre where either producers allowed the directors to do more than point and shoot, or one of the few genres that actually interested them enough to put some effort in. Looking at the horrible TV shows Gottlieb worked for at the end of his career (45 episodes of a show starring a chimpanzee as its most talented cast member will kill anyone's creativity, I suppose) I'd tend to the latter explanation.

Be that as it may, fact is that the Franz Josef Gottlieb who directed this Bryan Edgar Wallace adaptation for Artur Brauner's CCC Filmkunst, was quite a different director from the director he would all too soon turn into. There's hardly a second in The Phantom where the director isn't setting up a creative shot, letting his camera glide from a room's ceiling to a more normal position, positioning his camera in a cabinet, or letting it swirl nearly psychedelically in a knife throwing sequence. Somehow, Gottlieb still manages to keep his stylistic excesses at least so much in check the film they dominate doesn't fall apart; it's just a bit more surreal than one would expect of one the actually more sanely plotted krimis.

I was a bit surprised, even slightly shocked, by how much of an exploitation movie - for something made in Germany in 1964 - Das Phantom is: there aren't just the comparatively intense knife murders, but also more weird nightclub scenes than in a Jess Franco production (and I'm sure if the great man saw this one, he must have approved of it heartily as made by a kindred spirit), and two striptease numbers that actually show bare breasts, completely going against the spirit of a prudishness that was at its most obvious when a given film was trying to be risqué that always haunted the Wallace adaptations, be they based on Edgar or Bryan.

Gottlieb's visual oomph and the distractions of bloods and breasts and pretty people (well, pretty women - the men here are all of the sort of stiff-necked middle-age that makes girls cry and boys never want to grow old for sheer terror of what they might become) are very helpful as a distraction from the weaknesses of its script, or rather, the script's love for long, pointless dialogue scenes that always threaten to overwhelm the awesome bits with their sheer length; fortunately, unnecessary scenes of characters talking can be made quite bearable through a distracting execution Alfred Vohrer would be proud of.

So, if you want to venture into the weird, sometimes wild, sometimes hilariously conservative not-England of the krimi, you could find far worse films than Das Phantom von Soho.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: german movies,reviews,franz josef gottlieb,dieter borsche,barbara rütting,hans söhnker,peter vogel,helga sommerfeld,krimi

In short: No Blade Of Grass (1970)

Humanity's finally done it. The Earth's natural resources have been wasted and poisoned, and now a new disease is destroying all grass-type plant life like rice and wheat, promising food shortages in apocalyptic dimensions.

While China is gassing its own population centres to reduce its population to a survivable number, the UK hasn't quite been reached by the catastrophe yet, but it's only a question of time until it does.

Architect John Custance (Nigel Davenport) plans to take his wife Ann (Jean Wallace), his teenage daughter Mary (Lynne Frederick), and their youngest child David (Patrick Holt) to his brother's farm far away in the countryside, for he's cultivating plants that aren't (yet) touched by the disease there. Plus, the farm's naturally situated so it can be easily defended once the expected anarchy breaks out.

Warned by Mary's boyfriend Roger (John Hamill), who works in some scientific capacity for the government, that a state of emergency will be declared shortly, the Custance's and Roger begin to make their way towards safer pastures. The situation deteriorates quickly, though, and soon enough, the group kills and steals its way to survival, not so much slowly losing its civilized veneer but throwing it away with great enthusiasm.

Cornel Wilde's No Blade of Grass (based on a novel by John Christopher whom you may know for his - also post-apocalyptic - YA book series The Tripods) is an early, desperately bleak example of the post-apocalypse movie that not only predates most of this particular genre (at least on screen), but is also much grimmer than many of its successors.

Seldom have I seen a film this willing to make no particular moral difference between the way its protagonists try to achieve survival, and those the groups they encounter do. In No Blade of Grass's world, barbarity seems to be humanity's natural state that it only too happily falls back into again once civilization gets into trouble. However, it's clear that Wilde, unlike a representative of the survivalist bend of post-apocalyptic fiction would be, may be deeply pessimist about human nature, but isn't perverse enough to celebrate this state of affairs. So there's an - often blunt, sometimes quiet - sense of desperation running through the film I found particularly moving.

On the directorial side, No Blade Of Grass (at least in its newly restored full-length version) is a bit of a schizophrenic case. Half of its emotional punch is based on laconic, semi-documentarian shots of people wandering through the empty English countryside, polluted nature, and action sequences that are suspenseful yet devoid of action hero behaviour. This mood is regularly broken up by strange stylistic flourishes like flashbacks and flashforwards, negative shots and freeze frames (most of this stylistic excess is completely missing from the film's shorter versions, making that version more easily digestible, and weaker) that can seem awkward and blunt, yet also help emphasise that the film isn't meant as a man's adventure movie. Wilde doesn't want his audience to be excited by the action, so he's undermining the normal build-up of suspense for this sort of movie. It's a rather bizarre way to go about it, but it works.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: in short,american movies,post-apocalypse,sf,cornel wilde,nigel davenport,jean wallace,john hamill,lynne frederick

On WTF: The Scarlet Blade (1964)

aka The Crimson Blade

As you know, Jim, there aren't many adventure movies set during the English Civil War, but fortunately, the glorious people of Hammer did at least provide us with John Gilling's The Scarlet Blade, a film that features a comparatively active female lead, Oliver Reed and others glowering with all their might, and an incredibly boring hero.

If that adds up to something good or something rather bad I'll tell you in this week's column on WTF-Film.

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,reviews,adventure,john gilling,lionel jeffries,oliver reed,jack hedley,june thorburn,michael ripper,other places

In short: Iron Sky (2012)

Usually, the proper reaction for me when I hear words like "camp" and descriptions like "instant cult classic" buzzing around a movie is to keep as far away from it as humanly possible, even though this goes against the spirit of hopeful masochism I otherwise cling to in my movie watching decisions. Fortunately, I made an exception to this sanity-defending rule for the Finnish, German and Australian co-production Iron Sky, and while my sanity probably is not the better for it, my mood surely is.

For this campy comedy about a Nazi invasion of Earth that moonlights as a silly yet bitter satire on contemporary political culture (and perhaps even human nature, but that does make the film sound rather pretentious, so let's just say that there's a surprising large amount of Dr. Strangelove in its gene pool) is actually good; more surprisingly, it's so funny I found myself snorting, even regularly laughing, about more of its jokes than I usually do when it comes to comedy. Of course not every moment is a hit in that regard, but then, humour tends to be as personal a thing as sexual preferences.

What - besides it actually being funny - differentiates Iron Sky from many other attempts at being consciously camp is its utter lack of laziness. While plot and worldbuilding are patently absurd, they are also pretty damn well thought through, adding fittingly absurd details that logically derive from absurd premises. That seems especially fitting when it comes to Nazi ideology, for what else is it than atrocity based on absurd and grotesque premises?

For a film with a comparatively small budget of 7.5 million Euro (that's what, five minutes of - the of course awesome - John Carter?), Iron Sky also manages to squeeze in a very impressive amount of CGI. Even better, it's the right kind of digital effects work that puts effort into letting objects look as if they had an actual physical presence. Plus, the sense for the funny and telling detail that runs through the film's writing is clearly visible in the designs of moon zeppelins and space ships too.

The effects, like just about everything else in Iron Sky, are the product of filmmakers who care about their film and don't just shrug off problems with a handwaving "it's supposed to be bad".

 

Technorati-Markierungen: finnish movies,german movies,australian movies,in short,comedy,sf,pulp,timo vuorensola,julia dietze,udo kier,götz otto,christopher kirby,peta sergeant

In short: The Lady Constables (1978)

The fiendish men of the Black Wind Fortress steal a set of pearls known as the Night-Shining Pearls, slaughtering the escorts protecting them in the process. Because the Pearls belong to Prince Cheng (whoever he is), the bandits' leader, either called Coldwater or Coldstar Tiger (depending on if you believe the subtitles or the HKMDB), in any case played by Chang Yi, disbands the group; the Pearls are divided between Tiger and his four sub-chiefs.

Some time later, three heroes begin stalking the former Black Wind Fortress members. There's the (lady) constable Tien Ying Hung (Angela Mao being Angela Mao, which is more than enough for me) who is the straightforwardly temperamental type. Tang Lin (Chia Ling), a lady who is looking for vengeance for the murdered escorts. She likes to play with coffins and home-made torture devices and is something of a charming psychopath. Prince Cheng's bodyguard Hung Yi (Wong Goon-Hung) has his orders and doesn't like to talk, so he's only communicating via little pre-written scrolls which just happen to always have the right content - or so I assume, for the (of course often terrible and unreadable) subtitles don't bother with his messages, so I found myself bound to think whatever he's saying with them must be as supremely sarcastic as his face is unmoving.

The three don't really team up, instead opting for trying to outwit and outrace each other to the black fortress people whenever possible. In the end, one of the three always ends up torturing one of the Black Wind Fortress chiefs while the others come in a minute later, only for all three to get distracted by something and their victim to end up dead by unknown hands (oh, whoever might it be?). Yes, our heroes are torturers and idiots.

Still, how difficult can it be to work through a bunch of bad guys and get some pearls back?

I don't really know why Cheung San-Yee's Taiwanese wuxia is called "The Lady Constables", seeing as it does only contain one actual lady constable, but I have to say the slight loopiness of that fact fits the slight loopiness of everything else about the film well enough. Now, The Lady Constables is not a true piece of weird fu - it's just not weird enough for that - and rather a relatively straightforward wuxia film that can't completely escape the natural tendency of a film of its genre and its era to always drift toward strangeness. So while there's nothing even close to a scene of a little person riding a giant and spraying acid from his goitre, the film still has its weird moments, like Chia Ling's coffin fixation, that whole "I'm not mute, but I still only communicate with tiny scrolls that even have their own sound effect" business, the metal armours that look like metal space suits the bodyguards of one of the chiefs wear (and which are of course beaten with a big magnet), the other bodyguards whose kung fu is based on standing in a leg-up, or Coldstar Tiger's umbrella of doom. It's not mind-blowing stuff if you're used to Taiwanese wuxia madness, but it's imaginative enough to help the characteristically basic plot stay interesting; a sense of whimsy goes a long way.

Cheung San-Yee's direction is nothing special either: he really likes to zoom in and out and in and out, keeps everything in focus and the characters in the shot, and that's about it as far as his direction goes. It's serviceable enough, which is exactly the thing I'd say about the fight choreography too.

There's nothing to make me go "oooh!" about The Lady Constables, yet also nothing that's disappointing or boring.

Technorati-Markierungen: taiwanese movies,in short,cheung san-yee,angela mao,chia ling,wong goon-hung,wuxia

I have to take a small break from the unending stream of write-ups

until Wednesday. Certain names have been called from certain hills, so certain answers have to be given.

If you can't live without me, I'm still on Twitter as @houseinrlyeh and reachable via the email in the sidebar.

Technorati-Markierungen: maintenance

On WTF: Occult (2009)

It's one of my more lonely convictions that Koji Shiraishi is one of the great unsung heroes of post-Ring Japanese horror.

Sure, he's made some horrible crap too, but for every Shirome there's a film like Occult. That film once again sees the director returning to the fake documentary format (this time around with cameo appearances by the great Kiyoshi Kurosawa and mangaka Peko Watanabe), and is very much worth seeing.

I'll explain why in my column on WTF-Film.

Technorati-Markierungen: japanese movies,reviews,other places,horror,koji shiraishi,kiyoshi kurosawa,shinobu kuribayashi

In short: John Carter (of Mars) (2012)

Adding insult to the many injuries Disney caused over the length of its existence - please don't get me started on their influence on the continuing prolonging of copyright into all eternity and keeping large parts of our cultural heritage locked up so they can make more money on that idiot mouse - is the inability of the company to hype this piece of actually awesome and fun blockbuster cinema into the at least minor hit it deserved to become.

It's got wonderful world-building, silly quips, romance, awesome (yes, I'll use this word again and again when talking of John Carter of Mars) action scenes, actually does a little more with its female characters than these films usual do (I'd watch a film that runs rough-shot over Burroughs and features the adventures of Lynn Collins's Dejah Thoris and Samantha Morton's Sola any time; oh, for a parallel universe), shows respect for its minor characters and makes awesome use of CGI effects. It even has a cute CGI dog monster thing that manages to be not annoying at all, for Cthulhu's sake! John Carter is certainly not a film to overburden the minds of the mainstream cinema public, but it, unlike the comparably budgeted films of the Bays and Bruckheimers of this world, is neither dumb, nor cynical, nor driven by an actual hatred of the human race; the film also just happens to be extremely fun once it gets going, taking what's good of its pulp roots and mostly leaving what isn't.

Of course, the film's not perfect. There are far too many superfluous introductory scenes, and the film gets a bit flabby around the waist once it enters its final ten minutes. Personally, I could also have lived without the flashbacks into Carter's (played by the unfortunately named Taylor Kitsch) traumatic past that seem to want to hammer home a point an audience should get on its own. However, the core of John Carter's running time is taken up by moments of awesome (see, I told you) fun that often even suggests the responsible filmmaker Andrew Stanton is pretty much in love with Burroughs's Barsoom - but obviously not with Burroughs's racism and sexism - and truly wants his audience to fall in love with it too. Worked well enough for me, as you can see.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,sf,fantasy,this is not a review it's me making a squee noise,andrew stanton,taylor kitsch,lynn collins,samantha morton,willem dafoe,thomas haden church,james purefoy

In short: The Frozen Dead (1966)

If you're a fan of the "cult movie watching as a form of prospecting for gold in the dross" theory, Herbert J. Leder's film about the troubles with unfreezing Nazis and keeping their sanity intact (please insert a clever observation about the obvious disconnect between Nazism and sanity here) - the sort of project that needs a fresh human head to experiment on - may be right up your alley, seeing as you have to fight through some very potent dross to get at the film's handful of good scenes. There's a non-plot that stops and starts - but mostly stops - and never goes anywhere, long scenes of pointless and listless talk by actors earnestly doing phony German accents until your brain hurts, all filmed with the enthusiasm of a family slide show, the wooden romance between two wooden young people to end all wooden romances, and all manner of attempts by Leder to sabotage his own film further by not filming many of the potentially exciting (and important) scenes so he can fit more talking, and then even more talking, in.

And if you're an admirer of classical Hollywood, Dana Andrews's performance as the main Nazi scientist nearly going native in the UK may possibly make you very sad with line readings so apathetic I'm still not sure if he was trying to do a German accent or was just too drunk to be bothered pronouncing his lines as if he were awake.

Despite these problems - and some others I don't feel the need to get into - The Frozen Dead does contain the proverbial gold nuggets. The head Andrews keeps alive for his experiment is the only example of this particular trope I can remember that is actually gruesome instead of silly, and even played tragically enough to evoke a degree of sympathy in a viewer. There's a real air of the macabre surrounding the head scenes the rest of the film does neither achieve nor even seem to aim for. This sense of the outré even infects some of the more generic parts of the movie, as is especially demonstrated by the scene in which the romantic lead stumbles upon part of Andrews's horrible secret, and instead of being revolted looks as if he'd like to make sweet, sweet love to what's left of the poor body-less woman. For science.

The wall of arms Andrews also keeps in his lab fits right into this aspect of the movie.

Unfortunately, these glimpses of a much more creepy movie are haphazardly nailed to the utter boredom that makes up at least 70 minutes of The Frozen Dead's 93 minutes of running time. While I don't rue having dragged myself through the mire of those minutes, I don't think I'll ever do so again.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,herbert j. leder,dana andrews,horror,in short

A Study In Terror (1965)

It's 1888 in London, and Jack the Ripper has begun his serial killings of Whitechapel Prostitutes. Fortunately, a mysterious persons sends a set of surgical instruments only missing a post mortem scalpel, and carrying the crest of the noble family of the Carfaxes, from Whitechapel to consulting detective Sherlock Holmes (John Neville) and his associate Doctor Watson (Donald Houston), enticing the pair to take an interest in the murders. Why Holmes needs an invitation to investigate this type of public serial killings is anybody's guess.

Soon enough, Holmes pokes into the complicated net of relationships between the disgraced heir of the Carfaxes, his prostitute wife, shady bar owners, and a charitable doctor trying to change Whitechapel one religious hymn and moralizing speech after the other.

It will take all the detective's powers of deduction to catch Jack the Ripper.

If you go by Sherlock Holmes movies and novels, Moriarty wasn't the detective's only arch enemy, at least if you take the number of stories, novels, and - to a lesser degree - films, concerning Holmes's investigation of the Ripper murders into account. As far as I know, the first of the literary Ripper hunts took place in a German Holmes pulp novel in 1907, with A Study in Terror being the first (of only two) movies taking care of the case.

The film at hand (competently if not remarkably well directed by James Hill) does not keep too closely to the facts of the actual Ripper murders, and instead opts for somewhat cleaner killings of somewhat more attractive looking prostitutes taking place in front of the background of a Victorian age that seems half interested in veracity and half in looking good on screen. That's not a criticism of the film, mind you, for a more realistic treatment of the times would really leave no believable place for Holmes and Watson in it. One could, of course, have moral qualms about taking a real, horrible series of murders and making a piece of merry entertainment out of it, but there's also an undeniable attraction of mixing a historic truth (and mystery) of the Victorian age like these murders with one of the age's great fictions that overrides all moral concerns for hard-hearted me.

For a film about a truly gruesome series of murders that is at least superficially (that is to say, as long as everything stays photogenic and just a little quaint) interested in showing the horrors of poverty of the Victorian age, A Study is a pretty cheerful little film. There are some relatively graphic (for the time and place) murder scenes with very pretty Technicolor blood, but the film's tone is that of a merry little adventure where none of the deaths and none of the emotions are meant to have much of an emotional impact on the audience.

The feeling of watching a friendly lark is only further emphasised by the way Neville and Houston interpret their iconic characters. Neville's Holmes is clearly in the detective business to have some fun, visibly delighting in impressing his friend Watson (and here, these two characters are played as friends, quite unlike the Rathbone/Bruce pairing where Holmes is the kind of man who drags a mentally disabled guy around to look cleverer in comparison) with his deductions - a bit like a stage magician - and having the time of his life annoying officials, gentlemen and the lower classes alike; it's actually a very human approach to the character. Houston's Watson can best be described as "cuddly". He surely isn't brilliant, or even more than averagely intelligent, but seems the kind of guy who has his heart in the right place, typically giving emotional grounding to Holmes's intellect as will be the role of Watsons (poor bastards) forevermore.

As a whole, A Study in Terror is a fun little mystery that doesn't set out to explore any depths of idea or emotion, but that takes itself not seriously in such a pleasant manner it would take a much grumpier man than me not to be entertained watching it.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,reviews,mystery,james hill,john neville,donald houston

Music Monday: Rooster Edition

Technorati-Markierungen: music,music monday,the roosters

Cold Eyes Of Fear (1971)

Original title: Gli occhi freddi della paura

Italian prostitute-in-London-exile Anna (Giovanna Ralli) did probably not expect going home with charming young solicitor Peter Flower (Gianni Garko) would end up to be quite as dangerous.

Soon after the couple has arrived at the home Peter shares with his uncle, Judge Flower (Fernando Rey), the corpse of the house's butler falls out of a cupboard, and they are threatened by a cockney with a gun (Julián Mateos). Quill, as the guy is called, doesn't actually seem to want anything from his victims right now, so a long, tense wait for something the criminal's victims are not sure of ensues.

Eventually, a cop (Frank Wolff) sent by the judge with a snarky "put away your strippers for a moment and look up some law for me" letter for Peter arrives. However, when Peter tries to clue the cop in on his plight, all he gets in return is a fist in his face, for the cop isn't really a cop, but Arthur Welt, the brain behind the whole strange criminal affair. Arthur has a plan that involves murdering the Judge for revenge and looting his house of certain files; his problem is that he doesn't know where the files are located, so he and Quill need to stay much longer at the Judge's villa than they'd like to. A cat-and-mouse game between them, Peter, and Anna begins that may turn deadly at any moment.

We who know and love the body of work of director Enzo G. Castellari mostly love him for his Eurocrime films, his handful of Spaghetti Western and his post-apocalyptic movies - all basically different kinds of action films - while ignoring his horrible TV action comedies (don't talk to me about the Extralarge films, maaan) as well as his more interesting sporadic expeditions into other genres. Often, that's pretty understandable, for the films Castellari took on outside of his core genres often aren't quite as exciting or complex as his action films are, even when they are not utter tripe.

Cold Eyes Of Fear is Castellari's contribution to the giallo. The film comes down heavily on the suspense-based thriller side of the genre, working with a plot thrillers have used at least since the time of the noir (I suspect since the beginning of time). Large parts of the film (with the big exception being the pretty random inclusion of a fight between bikers, what looks like fat karateka to me, and the police that might hint at the direction Castellari's post-apocalyptic movies would later take) take place inside of a few rooms inside of a villa, the Judge's office and a police call centre, therefore preventing Castellari from indulging in the awesome, largely movement-based action scenes he is so good at.

Instead the director uses fast, sometimes nervous cuts, his zoom lens, a bit of standard giallo stylishness and lots of close-ups on the faces of a fine cast doing fine work to bring a sometimes tight, sometimes flabby script to life. Castellari also indulges in moments of pop-art surrealism to illustrate his characters' inner lives, which clearly isn't playing to his strengths; these scenes work on a camp level, but aren't as good at fulfilling the function of fleshing out the characters as they are supped to do, especially when you keep in mind that an actor like Wolff really has no need for this sort of visual crutch to show that his character is losing it fastly.

Still, the film does work more often than not, and even finds time to ask questions about some of Castellari's pet themes - the difference between justice and the law, as well as the influence of class on the two - as ever without finding any satisfactory answers. In fact, there's an especially great, silent moment between Garko and Rey right at the film's end that probably says more about the nature of corruption than any long philosophical discussion ever could.

Yet even if it weren't for that moment or the performances of the cast throughout the film, it would be worth it getting through Cold Eyes of Fear's too slow moments for the fantastic climax that once again demonstrates Castellari's class as a director of physical violence, be it between hordes of thugs or just between four frightened and mad people in a dark house.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,reviews,giallo,enzo g. castellari,giovanna ralli,frank wolff,fernando rey,gianni garko

Three Films Make A Post: Puts terror into a new dimension!

Evidence (2011): This just might be the shakiest of all POV/found footage movies - at least, it's the first one I've encountered that actually caused me motion sickness. Horror movie fans love to praise movies as "visceral", but I don't think it's really this sort of physical reaction we're hoping for from our films.

Evidence seems to be out to try to break records in other respects too: the characters are especially annoying, the non-stop bickering starts especially early, the part of the the film that consists of running and shouting and shaking the camera even more wildly (plus added shaky editing) is especially long. The film's actual claim to fame will probably be that it seems to have some rather decent monster suits and make-up, and that it's making an unexpected sub-genre change about two thirds in. Alas, the former are buried under a whole lotta shakin' going on, the latter would only be effective in a movie tightly enough scripted not everything that happens feels just random (there is, it turns out, a point to Blair Witch Project actually telling us the legends about the witch before stuff begins to happen).

It's clearly not worth the motion sickness.

Murder By Decree (1979): I know, this is the one of the two Holmes versus Jack the Ripper movies one is supposed to prefer, but I've never had much time for it. There's a stuffy worthiness and self-importance surrounding the proceedings that rubs badly against the silly conspiracy theory at the core of its plot, with worthily acting high class actors very slowly walking through worthily reproduced Victorian London while - worthily - things happen in excruciatingly low speed, a bit like I imagine the morning jog of Mycroft Holmes would go.

For me, the whole worthy, ponderous affair has the whiff of a TV movie that has stumbled onto a budget and into over-length and now doesn't really know what to do with them, except making gestures that try to affirm its own importance. Frankly, it's just boring, and feels dead compared to the charms of a film like A Study in Terror.

Blood Red Earth (2009): This short companion piece to J.T. Petty's fantastic The Burrowers leaves me in a much less foul mood than the much worthier Sherlock Holmes film. It concerns the run-in of a small group of Native Americans with the creatures from the film, and doesn't really broaden or explain the main film's mythology much. It's just a short, fragmentary companion that suggests where a sequel to the film might have gone (not that I think The Burrowers needs one), and doesn't really try to add anything. Still, after the shaky cam overkill of Evidence and the bloated monstrosity that is Murder by Decree, this kind of story vignette is actually refreshing, if not particularly exciting.

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,canadian movies,american movies,in short,horror,mystery,bob clark,christopher plummer,j.t. petty

On WTF: Gladiators 7 (1962)

Original title: I sette gladiatori

As a fan of dubious interpretations of mythology and rubber monsters, I often tend to come down on non-mythological peplums a little harder than they probably deserve.

Gladiators 7, starring the somewhat inevitable Richard Harrison, is not a film that gives me much opportunity to indulge in these rude and evil ways, because it's a pretty perfect example of what it is. Let my column on WTF-Film enlighten you what the hell I'm talking about.

Technorati-Markierungen: spanish movies,italian movies,reviews,peplum,adventure,pedro lazaga,richard harrison,loredana nusciak,gérard tichy

In short: Las Garras De Lorelei (1974)

aka When the Screaming Stops

aka The Lorelei's Grasp

A sleepy German town by the Rhine is disturbed by a series of brutal murders. A rude amphibian is roaming the night, killing people (predominantly women) and absconding with their hearts. The local Hungarian blind hippie "gypsy" fiddler knows what's going on: the Loreley has risen from her grotto, turned into a horrible creature by the light of the moon to hunt for the hearts that will sustain her for the coming centuries. Surprisingly, nobody seems to believe that theory.

Elke Ackerman (Silvia Tortosa), a Professor in the close-by school for (pretty adult) girls is understandably disturbed by the murders, so she and the school decide to hire the professional hunter Sigurd (Tony Kendall) to protect the girls from what they believe to be a dangerous animals. Sigurd's impossible manliness brings its own problems with it, though. Not only are all the girls only too willing to make sweet, 70s eye and breast contact with him, even the virtuous Professor can hardly resist Sigurd's charms and falls into the classic movie behaviour of love-bickering with him whenever she sees him prancing around in the horrifying, yet formfitting fashion he decides to wear on any given day.

With his testosterone level now probably driven to a nearly lethal heights, it's no wonder Sigurd soon meets and falls in love with the human form of the Loreley (Helga Liné), who likes to pose by the Rhine in a tiny bikini. Loreley loves him back, too, but the love between manly men on a mission and were-Deep Ones can only lead to trouble, especially when said were-Deep One just can't let go of her diet of human hearts.

Spanish director Amando de Ossorio may be best known for his Blind Dead movies (with the first and the fourth one of that series clearly being his best films), but he did of course make other films.

One of these is this curious interpretation of the Loreley myth that turns the siren into the guardian of the treasure of the Nibelungs with the honest to Wotan Alberic (Luis Barboo) as her assistant who's there to give people a good whipping. I am of course a sucker for weird sideways interpretations of any sort of Western myth, and can't help but admire a film that turns the Loreley into a were-Deep One (or, as the mandatory Professor explains, some sort of were-throwback to an earlier human form that just happens to look like a bad rubber amphibian monster) and still has scenes that attempt to give it a serious dream-like mood, even though plot, dialogue and acting here can only ever achieve a cheese-like mood, quite like the moon.

The more mythical scenes are standing in stark contrast to much of the rest of the film which consists of Tony Kendall and various very attractive actresses strutting their stuff in horrifying pieces of 70s fashion or varying states of undress, and some very unconvincing gore.

De Ossorio films this fine mixture of sleaze and nonsense - the film also features a radioactive dagger, people acting like proper idiots, super dynamite, and Loreley's female servants (the Rhine maidens?) cat-fighting over Kendall  - in an exceedingly pretty style with sometimes pleasantly eye-popping colours and location shots of picture postcard quality.

Las Garras De Lorelei is not a film I can find in my heart to take seriously in the least, but it is one that does delight me as a fine - and oh so typical of the 70s - melange of cheese, sleaze and imagination.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: spanish movies,in short,horror,tony kendall,helga liné,silvia tortosa,amando de ossorio

In short: Don't Open The Door (1975)

After an anonymous phone warning that something evil is afoot with her grandmother, so-spunky-she's-actually-just-rude Amanda Post (Susan Bracken) returns to her ancestral home where her mother was murdered twelve years ago.

Grandmother really is in dire need of help too, for her doctor (James N. Harrell) is keeping the sick old woman so drugged she's never conscious anymore. The doc is working for the local lawyer Judge (yeah, they call the lawyer judge for some - probably southern-ness induced - reason) Stemple (Gene Ross), who wants granny's house for himself even though he is living in an awesome rail wagon (with a train sound effect tape!).

Because these Southern gentlemen are less than subtle about their plans, Amanda soon realizes what's going on, packs her granny off into a hospital and decides to stay at the house for a while to spite the Judge.

That isn't such a good idea, though, for a creepy caller begins to bother Amanda, a caller who seems to know way too much about what's happening in the house, and who might have had something to do with her mother's death.

But who is the mysterious caller: the Judge? The creepy, manikin-loving owner of the local history museum (Larry O'Dwyer)? Amanda's ex-boyfriend (Hugh Feagin)? Whoever it is, he won't stop at just using the phone to terrorize the not easily terrorized Amanda.

S.F. Brownrigg's Texan Gothic thriller is a bit weaker than his first film Don't Look in the Basement, because the comparative lack of crazies doesn't play to Brownrigg's strengths that lie more in creating a mood of strangeness than in creating a tight, suspenseful thriller plot.

It's not that Don't Open's suspense scenes are bad, though. In fact,  there are some rather effective moments shot in a style that reminds me of a very cheaply produced giallo, which surely is the best Brownrigg could hope to achieve in a strictly local production as this one; there's even a staircase of the kind Bava and Argento did love so dearly, and it's even put to a use these two would have approved of. Brownrigg's problem aren't these scenes, but rather his problems connecting them through some very awkwardly staged dialogue scenes - whose quality isn't improved by the fact that Susan Bracken's character may be more resilient than you'd expect but she just isn't a good enough actress to convince me of it - that stop the film dead in its tracks instead of keeping its plot moving forward.

It's a shame too, for whenever Brownrigg allows his weirdo actors O'Dwyer and Ross (who also played a mad judge in Don't Look) to chew scenery, or allows himself to speak in his very own visual language - a language strong enough to make a basically silly threatening telephone conversation feel at least somewhat creepy - Don't Open becomes a very compelling movie. These scenes don't come quite often enough to completely make up for the drab dialogue scenes and moments of nothing of import happening, but they keep the film worth watching to anyone not afraid of a bit of boredom and awkwardness.

Brownrigg's brand of off-handed creepiness and very personal feeling weirdness aren't something you get to see every day, after all.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,s.f. brownrigg,in short,thriller,susan bracken,larry o'dwyer,gene ross,annabelle weenick

Hairy Beasts meets Assignment Naschy: La Bestia Y La Espada Mágica (1983)

aka The Beast and the Magic Sword

aka The Werewolf and the Magic Sword

This May the agents of M.O.S.S. throw their collective gaze (warning: may turn anyone into a lesbian vampire) toward everything hairy and beastly: Cerberus, the shirtless Bollywood actor of your choice and more. To stay up to date on our exploits regarding the matter, you can just follow this handy link.

Otto the Great (Gérard Tichy), ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, has beaten the Magyars decisively, but neither he nor his men dare execute their enemies' imprisoned leader for fear of being stricken by a horrible curse. The only curse-free solution would be a duel to the death, but nobody seems to be able to beat the Magyar in a fair fight. Only the Polish nobleman Irineus Daninsky (of course Paul Naschy, wearing such a frightening wig and false beard that this alone would qualify the movie for the Hairy Beasts month) dares risk his life in this way anymore. The Poles price for his heroic attempt at duelling is the hand of Otto's disturbingly young looking daughter, but hey, it's the early middle ages.

Irineus kills the Magyar in a hard-won fight, gets the hand and love (repeat after me: all women want Paul Naschy, even when he has hair on his head and in his face that makes him look like bigfoot) of the emperor's daughter, and everyone could live happily ever after, if not for the Magyar's witch wife, who some months later appears and pokes Daninsky's pregnant wife in the belly with a wolf's skull, cursing all future generations of the family with lycanthropy.

Half a millennium later, at the end of the 16th Century, the curse is still up and running, and Irineus's descendant Waldemar (also Paul Naschy, though with not quite as terrifying hair) appears with his "companion" (yeah, I don't know either) Kinga (Beatriz Escudero) at the home of enlightened Jewish alchemist, physician and wise man Salom Jehuda (Conrado San Martín), hoping the sage will be able to find a cure for the curse that's haunting him.

Alas, before Jehuda is able to help Waldemar (something he isn't even sure is possible), antisemitism and witchcraft fear strike, and some masked asshats murder the old man, only to be summarily dispatched afterwards by Waldemar's superior fighting skills. Jehuda has just long enough to live to ask Wally to take in his blind daughter Esther (Violeta Cela) - already in love with Waldemar like every woman in the world ever - and to send Wally and his harem on their way to the next enlightened man of science who just might be able to help: a man named Kian (Shigeru Amachi), living and working in Kyoto.

Next thing we know is that Kyoto is stricken by a series of bestial killings which always occur during the time of the full moon, for Waldemar isn't able to find Kian as easily as he hoped and now spends his time not doing anything to restrain his wolfman alter ego and moping about it afterwards like all Waldemar Daninskys do, the pricks.

Ironically, Kian is one of the people tasked with hunting down whatever and whoever is killing its way through town and country. It takes some time for the universally educated - he knows his Japanese culture but also Greek mythology, European werewolf myths and even talks about brain surgery later on - man to believe in something as ridiculous as a werewolf, but once he stares down Wolfman-shape Wally after a bordello massacre, there's no disbelieving for him. After the encounter, Kian doesn't need much time to find the Pole.

For inexplicable reasons, Kian then decides to find a cure for Waldemar instead of killing him outright, but, as it went for Jehuda, his attempts at finding a cure lead him nowhere. But hey, at least Kian's younger sister Akane (Yoko Fuji) becomes another woman who falls for fattening Paul Naschy's scriptwriting-induced charms, because Japan means "harem manga", right?

Things become even more difficult for Kian thanks to a would-be Jubei Yagyu (just look at the guy and his ninjas and don't tell me that's not what he's supposed to be even if he wears a different name) and his lust for vengeance for nothing in particular, and an evil sorceress (Junko Asahina) who - as women not falling under the Wally's spell always do - wants the wolfman as her new pet monster. The only question is which of the three girls lusting after Naschy's paunch will survive the film to kill him in the end.

Say what you will about Paul Naschy, but the man was as driven a filmmaker as anyone you could name, the kind of guy I wouldn't at all be surprised to find using something like Kickstarter for a financial infusion if he were still alive. As it stands, fanfunding was not in the cards during the early 80s, but even so, Naschy was not the kind guy who'd let himself be discouraged by lack of funding for his (perhaps unwise and dubious, yet also awesome) visions. If making a movie meant going outside of his native Spain and cooperating with Japanese producers, then Naschy would do that.

Naschy, never lacking in ambition and imagination, clearly wasn't content with just taking the Japanese money and running. His vision was obviously grander, and if he was working in Japan, then why not make a film taking place in Japan that was not just another of his Daninsky wolfman films but also at least in part a chambara?

Now, before any of my readers start dreaming about the awesome possibilities of a Naschy horror movie at its most dream-like crossed with the insane possibilities of Japanese exploitation, be advised that neither Naschy nor the Japanese genre film industry was at the height of power at this stage of their respective existences, so the ideas of La Bestia's incredible awesomeness you might possible have will have to be adjusted to a much more modest level.

For alas, this is one of those Naschy movies that - especially in its first half - does feature many more scenes of people telling each other the plot than scenes of said plot actually happening. While the European parts of the film may sound a lot like a medieval legend, their execution is rather bland and non-committal, with the more exciting moments sandwiched between many scenes of two guys in bad medieval costumes sitting stiffly in front of a nailed-down camera. It's clearly a budgetary problem this time around, for whenever things actually do happen, they are rather exciting.

Once we have arrived in Japan, there are still more "tell, don't show" moments to come, but the scenes of excitement and interest are getting quite a bit more numerous. Some of the action scenes are particularly good, with Naschy (surprisingly, when you keep in mind we are talking about a guy who writes himself as irresistible to all women in his scripts, though the Japanese producers may have had a hand in this for all I know) often stepping down and leaving room for Shigeru Amachi to kick ninja ass in not exactly inspired yet well-done scenes that have a lot more in common with action in Japanese films than those in Spanish ones, leaving me with the question which Japanese director was responsible for these scenes.

Even later in the film, once Waldemar visits the witch, even the irrational, dream-like mood one hopes for in a Naschy movie makes a late appearance and doesn't leave the film afterwards, as if it, once conjured up, were impossible to dispel again. The film's highpoint in this regard is clearly Shigeru Amachi's fight against a group of oni that's all moodily artificial light and strangeness.

La Bestia features other elements I found remarkable, like the fact that some of its true heroes are an elderly Jew and his daughter - both realized without much racial stereotyping - and a scientifically minded samurai, with the film using an exploitation film version of their respective cultures, yet clearly treating them and these cultures with a respect you don't generally find in exploitation films; as if the enlightened humanism these characters believe in would take over Naschy's often not quite as enlightened world view by their mere presence. A nice addition to that is a scene in which the sorceress (of all people) scolds Waldemar for being an egotist, not giving a damn for the people he kills during his wolfman escapades, and quite in love with his own tragic whining. Plus, there's a pretty dangerous looking scene of Naschy wrestling a tiger.

As it is often the case with Naschy's films, all the great moments and clever details don't really come together to make the great whole the director/writer/producer/star had already proven he could create if given the opportunity, but they're more than enough to make La Bestia Y La Espada Mágica a film worth watching. The trick, as always, is to treat every moment that works and every idea that succeeds as a moment where Naschy (the tragic and slightly unsympathetic hero even behind the camera) triumphs over the circumstances within and without that hold him back, and just live with the film's failures.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: spanish movies,japanese movies,reviews,hairy beasts,paul naschy,shigeru amachi,junko asahina,yoko fuji,violeta cela,horror,chambara

Music Monday: Divinity Edition

Technorati-Markierungen: music,music monday,xtc

The Woman In Black (2012)

The young lawyer Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) has had a very hard time for the last few years. His wife (Sophie Stuckey) died during childbirth, leaving him to to raise his son Joseph (to be played by Misha Handley) alone with the help of nanny (Jessica Raine). The whole thing has left Arthur borderline suicidal, and has influence his job performance so much he's one mistake away from being fired.

His boss gives Arthur a - actually pretty harmless sounding - last chance assignment: to travel to a country village and check the documents one of the law company's female clients left behind in her house, Eel Marsh. Eel Marsh is connected to the village by a causeway that becomes impassable when the flood comes, possibly leaving anyone in it stranded far away from any help for hours.

Still, there's nothing dangerous in looking through documents, so the assignment sounds easy enough. To make good use of his unexpected stay in the country, Arthur plans to spend a nice weekend there with his son after his work there is finished, but that's before he understands what's really going on in the village.

For the place is plagued by a series of child deaths - all caused by the children themselves in one way or the other - that are connected to the ghost of a woman in black haunting Eel Marsh. Arthur will learn about that soon enough, though, and he'll feel bound to lay the ghost of the woman in black to rest to protect his own son.

While the output of the new old studio (that isn't really a studio as the old one was, of course) working under the revived Hammer moniker hasn't been without its problems, a film like The Woman in Black (adapting the same short novel by Susan Hill as the excellent - and very different - TV movie) goes a long way to convince me the people behind these films are taking the tradition they've positioned themselves in seriously.

The Woman (directed by James Watkins, whom I have now officially forgiven the script for the second The Descent movie) is a deliberately paced mood piece standing firmly in the tradition of the British ghost story and the gothic horror film (even if it takes place a few years later than usual in that latter sub-genre), the kind of film that takes its time building up its mood and clearly defining its characters before it lets the really spooky stuff happen, working hard and well for a sense of impending dread in its audience, until it culminates in a series of highly impressive scenes of horror that would never work as well as they do if they weren't so meticulously prepared through the build up.

The film also shares the often problematic obsession of contemporary scriptwriting with connecting its main character's background with what's going in the plot by any means necessary. For my tastes, this sort of thing often takes away from my enjoyment of a movie, because it - if it isn't applied exceedingly well - points out the how constructed a given plot truly is by going for an integration of all its elements that fits neither the way life works nor the way stories speak to me. Writer Jane Goldman (curiously also responsible for films as different from this one as each other as X-Men: First Class and Kick-Ass) mostly manages to avoid this feeling of overbearing artificiality (even though the film is of course as artificial as any other film), instead actually achieving - for most of the time, at least - the kind of thematic unity this sort of thing is always aiming for. Goldman's script - except for one moment of bad Hollywood kitsch right at the end that runs absolutely counter the mood of loss and dread running through the rest of The Woman in Black that made me roll my eyes and wait for a chorus of fucking angels, or at least Frank Capra's ghost - also allows itself to be very grim, seemingly sharing the feeling of loss hanging over its main character, not shying away from going to painful and unpleasant places without being gratuitous. It's really quite impressive.

"Impressive" is a proper description for most of the film, really, be it the decayed and truly creepy production design (milking the horrors of Victorian and Edwardian interior design and toys for all the horror they are worth), the sound design, Watkins ability to pace scenes of horror that could be unintentionally hilarious instead of frightening if done wrong just right, to Daniel Radcliffe's surprisingly nuanced and un-showy (generally, the worst mistake mainstream movie stars can make when actually having to act is trying to impress their audience with their seriousness and dedication to looking as if they're incontinent) acting, there's hardly anything the film doesn't do right.

I don't even mind the handful of jump scares. Which really is the highest compliment I can give a horror film.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,reviews,horror,james watkins,daniel radcliffe,ciaran hinds

In short: Science Crazed (1991)

Mad Scientist Doctor Frank injects a woman in a garden chair with a green serum that's supposed to induce a 21 hour pregnancy in her. Or something.

The crazy science works, at least in so far that it produces a baby that somehow kills his mother, and then grows up into a mutant man who is also a (science crazed!?) killer in the space of a few minutes/hours/whatever.

Clearly, the guy's bound to go on a very slow killing rampage, beginning with Doctor Frank and continuing through a lot of women. It's the job of the only cop in town and two of Frank's former associates to hunt the mutant down by standing and staring.

Brothers and sisters! The good news is here! The good news is that Science Crazed is everything the Gods of Movies With Problems have promised us. The film (and I use that word in the broadest possible meaning) was supposedly shot on video in beautiful and talented Canada by a man named Ron Switzer, but in truth, it was etched onto video tape by the angels of madness themselves, resulting in the sort of incoherent, anti-filmic mess you either stare at with unwavering awe, or run away from as fast as you can.

As a veteran of watching things like this, I did of course enjoy myself immensely; there aren't after all, too many films this proudly displaying the flag of the Land of Gibberish.

The glories Science Crazed delivers unto us are many. Just imagine a film consisting to about fifty percent of shots of feet and shoes, with the rest is made up by animal grunting, a way too loud soundtrack, ten minutes of fitness training (I am neither joking nor overstating the matter), five minutes of the camera circling around a woman saying inaudible things on a darkened stage, a woman trying to sex the film's monster (he seems pretty buff, though the bandages on his face and the bloody ripped shirt should be a bit of a turn-off), and more peculiar random crap. There are, for example, a cop who works from a video store, people who can't outrun a monster that moves at the speed of a turtle (not Gamera), and much more strangeness.

Switzer lights many of these scenes with a single spotlight (again, I'm not making this up), while the camera is either nailed down or moving in an erratic and illogical manner, which seems a perfectly reasonable way to film things like a "suspense scene" that consists of ten minutes of two women doing fitness training intercut with the walking feet of a guy wearing jeans (and that's not the only time Switzer will use that technique); the sound consists of way too loud synthie music, tape hiss, and badly post-dubbed dialogue that is a) insane, b) completely out of sync and c) graced with sound levels so inconsistent it's surreal. But hey, every emotion on the actors' faces is held for minutes, so the sound fits what we see pretty well.

In combination, Science Crazed's bizarre decisions, technical tics, and mind-boggling script add up to what may be a genius piece of outsider art, a very bad drug trip, a religious experience or just a very bad movie. There is no way to really judge a film like it - one can only watch, experience, and react.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: canadian movies,in short,horror,wtf,ron switzer