Zoltan... Hound Of Dracula

Boneward Hound

Zoltan - Hound Of Dracula
aka Dracula’s Dog
USA 1977 Directed by Albert Band
EMI/Kino Lorber Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: Spoilers, I guess.

Wow, this is a terrible film but, you know what? Even though it’s not stood the test of time very well, it’s still kinda watchable and for people of a certain age, like myself, the nostalgia of revisiting this strange movie will probably more than make up for the somewhat pedestrian pacing and dull bits.

I must have been around twelve years old when I was allowed to stay up late and watch Zoltan... Hound Of Dracula on TV (my parents elected to go to bed instead). And so I watched a film which was so, mostly, unexciting that I’d always assumed that it was a made for TV movie. It was a title that also kinda haunted me over the years because nobody I could remember for the longest time, until the internet came along decades later, could even remember the title. Watching it now, it’s still mostly dull but I can appreciate it a little more and it’s certainly far from incompetent... just a little plodding in places.

The film starts off with an offshoot of the military, presumably in Transylvania, blasting open a crypt where they find a load of coffins of the House of Dracula. While one guy sits and guards the site overnight, a coffin breaks loose from its crypt and said guard foolishly removes the stake from the sheet covered corpse he finds inside. Then, quick as a flash, the titular vampire dog jumps on him and fangs him up on the neck before pulling out another coffin and freeing his master, Veidt Smith, played by Reggie Nalder. Genre fans may remember Nalder in such roles as the spy posing as an Andorian in the first series of the original Star Trek, as ‘Mr. Barlow’ the Nosferatu looking vampire in the original TV mini series of Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot (reviewed here) and even as an assassin in Dario Argento’s The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (reviewed by me here). He and Zoltan go to America to find the last living descendent of the Dracula family, to bite him up so he becomes his own master. Now, personally, I would have thought he’d have made things easier on himself if he just opened all the other Dracula family members in the crypt and revived them all instead but, hey, 1970s movie logic, I guess.

Hot on his trail is Inspector Branco, played with considerable presence, it has to be said, by José Ferrer. He also goes to America to try and locate Dracula’s descendent Michael Drake, played by Michael Pataki (who also plays the main Dracula in some of the flashback scenes, including a ‘Zoltan origin scene’ where he changes into a vampire bat and bites the poor pooch on the neck). As luck would have it, Michael, his wife, his two kids and their four dogs (two adults and two puppies) are on a camping holiday in the wilderness. They immediately start having trouble with missing dogs during the night, when Zoltan starts biting them up to grow Smith’s army of vampire hounds... intending to ‘Draculise’ Michael when they can get near him. Can Inspector Branco locate and save the Drake family before it’s too late?

Well, the film is a bit basic, it has to be said. There’s too much of the ‘idyllic family camping’ montage with saccharine soundtrack at the front end of the movie and, there’s a bunch of local camper encounters (who, of course, have their own dogs to get bitten up and added to the ‘vamp pack’) which all feel a bit light weight and padded. But there’s at least a consistent tone to the production, even if the scene where Drake and Branco are holed up in a cabin for a night while attacking vampire dogs try to eat their way through the walls and roof seems to go on just as long... that is... all night.

However, you do get to see and then wonder at why vampire dogs would be scared of the Christian symbol of the cross (maybe the term ‘old faithful’ means just that) and there’s a nice touch where Zoltan, on seeing the cross worn by Drake at the end of the picture, backs up over a cliff edge, only to be impaled on the fencing below, staked through its doggy heart.

Yeah, okay... it’s nonsense but it does hold together quite well and, with the added nostalgia rush I was getting from this, I did kind of enjoy this one. Ferrer probably comes off the best here, driving around in his black sports car and wearing his French resistance style beret. And there’s even a silly punchline at the end where the camera follows a trail of a decapitated owl and a half eaten rabbit carcass to come upon one of the kids’ puppies, who has now got glowing eyes, suggesting it’s been vamped up by the titular hound.

And yes, Zoltan... Hound Of Dracula is not a film I would probably recommend to most, if any people but, if this is a film that people of a certain age remember from when they were a kid, well, all I can say is that Kino Lorber’s Blu Ray transfer looks pretty good and, despite how it looks, the aspect ratio and odd scene of bloody carnage can attest to the fact that my initial instincts in the early 1980s was wrong... this one definitely had a theatrical release back in 1977. So, yeah, not the most spectacular film but I suspect some people reading this would benefit from knowing it’s on a US Blu Ray presentation (I don’t expect something like this to get any kind of release over here in the UK, that’s for sure). Glad I caught up with this one... might well watch it again some day.

The Disco Exorcist

The Devil In Miss Jones

The Disco Exorcist
Directed by Richard Griffin
USA 2011
Monster Pictures
DVD Region 2

Warning: Spoilers deep inside.

Disclaimer: The producers have no memory of making this motion picture.

Ha! Well I’ve had this movie languishing in an old pile of DVDs for some years now but I’ve finally got around to watching it and, I have to say, it’s both hilarious and, honestly, one of the most politically incorrect films I’ve seen in a long time (if ever).

The Disco Exorcist starts with a cold opening at a badly rendered strip club (showing it’s low budget to the full)... we watch as a witch kills one of the punters in a gory way. Cut to main leading man Rex Romanski, played by Michael Reed, as he sexes up his two lady friends in his lava lamp lit apartment during a credits sequence set to a funky disco/bad porno music beat... and then follow him back into the film properly as he gets down at the local disco and picks out a lady for that evening’s pleasure.

Unfortunately for Rex, he picks the witch lady from the pre-credits, Rita Marie played by Ruth Mahala Sullivan. Everything is fine until the next evening, when someone he’s been dying to meet enters the disco in search of love. That someone is introduced to us earlier when Rex and his DJ pal are watching one of her films, Disco Ball Delivery, which is double billed with a Marilyn Chambers film called Saturday Night Beaver (which I think is a fake movie too... I don’t think she was in the real porn film of that title, although I’m no expert so I may be wrong).

The lady in question is world famous porn star Amoreena Jones, played by Sarah Nicklin and, when she walks into Rex’s disco world it’s love (and sex) at first sight... much to the fury of the woman scorned, who curses Amoreena for her trouble. The next day, when Rex is standing in for a late actor on Amoreena’s next porn film, all hell breaks loose and the women, including Amoreena, slaughter most of the crew. When she snaps out of it later, Amoreena and Rex realise they have a problem but, who can they call on for help? Not The Disco Exorcist, for sure, as this movie didn’t play out in any way like I thought it would and, at the film’s denouement, Rex himself has to take up the role of exorcist after another guy’s head explodes while doing the ritual.

And the trailer and my rough synopsis is really selling this short. I haven’t even got into the carnage at the orgy or Rex’s priest brother who is also into nuns whipping him. This movie is one of those ‘ironic grindhouse’ exploitation movies... so you’ve got the worn out 1970s film stock all the way through and the odd “Scene Missing” caption. Now I find these films hit and miss but this one has all the right ingredients... tonnes of nudity, loads of sex with bouncing bosoms and dangling male members, strong goriness, witchcraft, kill crazy demon infested porn actresses and a completely funky score plus songs which, I think, were even written for the film.

Now the inclusion of all those elements should but, rarely do guarantee, a good time is had by all but, in this case, the film also has some slick dialogue and some witty one liners. Not to mention call backs to other films. I mean, fans of The Exorcist will recognising the one-upmanshipness of the line “You suck faggots from you’re mother’s asshole!” and know exactly why it’s in there but there are some really silly gems such as, when the group of porn actresses go to get Rex and he assumed they want to do some more sexing, his line pleading off when he says “I need at least 15 minutes to put a bullet in this chamber, if you know what I mean?” Even the not exactly subtle last line of the film, “From now on, you’re the only devil I want coming inside me.” is a bit of a winner the way it’s delivered.

Yeah, the film isn’t subtle, for sure but it is a hoot and the 1970s style of shooting combined with the low budget and juvenile sex jokes... somewhat surprisingly... give it a certain charm which I didn’t see coming (if you know what I mean?). So, definitely don’t watch The Disco Exorcist with people who wouldn’t understand where it’s coming from but, yeah, this is one fine movie. It’s not just Not Safe For Work... it’s pretty much not safe for most people you know but, I dunno, this film won me over quite quickly and didn’t let go. Definitely worth a look if silliness mixed with gore, nudity and sex is your thing. 

The Mummy And The Curse Of The Jackals

Taste The Blood
Of Jackal, ahhh!

The Mummy And The
Curse Of The Jackals
USA 1969
Directed by Oliver Drake
Vega International Pictures
Severin Films US Blu Ray

The Mummy And The Curse Of The Jackals is, from what I understand, a film bought by one of the heads of Severin Films in an estate auction of film cans. This film was shot in 1969 and, as far as I can tell, it never had any kind of legitimate release until a quite muddy 4:3 transfer in the 1990s on VHS casette. So, no matter what you think of the film, a big shout out to Severin for rescuing and fully restoring another obscurity of cine-art which may have stayed lost forever. Of course, many people who see this one might think that would probably have been the best fate for it but, not me. I loved it. Whenever you see one of those almost mythical ‘so bad it’s good’ films in the flesh, I am all for it.

This one stars Anthony Eisley as archaeology professor David Barrie who has found a perfectly preserved mummy princess and her less than perfectly preserved, bandaged guardian. And when I say perfectly preserved, the mummy Princess Akana (played by Marliza Pons) has no ageing… she’s just an Egyptian lady laying in a glass covered box. In one of many statements made by the film to anticipate accusations of continuity errors, this one from David’s best friend Bob (Robert Alan Browne)... he didn’t realise that the ancient Egyptians were able to make such sophisticated glass which they’ve only been able to make in America for a few years. Hmm. Another one is when, as the back story of the mummy and the princess is being covered (and it’s pretty much the same as all the old 1940s Hollywood mummy movie back stories), it’s said that Isis (who makes a cameo when Bob suddenly transforms into her midst a puff of smoke at one point) will ensure that Akana will be able to speak whatever language is being spoken thousands of years later when she awakens in… well… in 1969. Aha… they’ve thought of everything. Well, some things… well.. oh, never mind.

Anyway, when the moon is full, David comes under the spell of Akana and changes into a Jackal… so, yeah, this is a were-jackal film. So he attacks innocent bystanders at night and serves Anaka by day in his normal human guise. It’s not long before the Mummy (Saul Goldsmith) and the were-jackal come to blows of course and, it all ends unhappily ever after, as you would expect.

The film is perfectly silly. It’s not just the absolutely, ridiculously bad script which is entertaining… the inept acting in this means that there’s never any credibility to anything in the film (you have to witness the line readings in this to believe them). And the continuity errors come thick and fast… not to mention the little leaps in logic (or lack of) that the film is guilty of on a regular basis. For example, when David leaves Akana to go out shopping for 20th century clothes for her, he tells her he hasn’t got a car so it’s going to take him a while to walk the three miles. Well, when he returns home later in the movie… well, maybe this section was shot first from an unfinished script because, he arrives home in his car. Wait, what?

Okay, so the were-jackal make up is both terrible and, honestly, quite cute. It’s like a Lon Chaney Jr make up from the 1940s (and the director actually helped produce one of those and provided the story for it, actually… but this later movie is far less sophisticated) but, with added big ears and cute, protruding nose. A bit like a huggable werewolf, to be honest. The light jazz twangs accompanied by stripper saxophone when he goes prowling makes for a preposterous but also somewhat cool atmosphere, it has to be said.

And talking of Lon Chaney Jr, the ‘one crazy swollen eyeball’ bandaged mummy shuffles around with exactly the same gait as the Tom Tyler/Chaney Jr incarnations from the 40s, even down to the one gammy arm hugged close to the chest. So as not to spoil the tone, however, it also looks incredibly silly and, this silliness is exacerbated vastly when the two stalk each other in Las Vegas... as the crowds and passers by on the streets pause to watch the filming and laugh at them in their ridiculous costumes.

During the Akana/mummy back story there are the usual scenes of the slaves being speared to preserve the secret of the pharaohs and there’s also a tongue ripping effect which, I can only assume was inspired by Herschel Gordon Lewis’ Blood Feast in 1963 (reviewed here) but that’s about as daring as the film gets, it would seem. Even the scene where David has to explain to Akana how to put on a bra is tamer than you could possibly imagine.

About a quarter of an hour before the end of the picture, the film’s number one billed star actor turns up… yep... John Carradine. Carradine was probably drunk but could always deliver his lines well and he seems to run rings around the other actors here (and of course, he has the required audience baggage in that he was in a few of those 1940s mummy movies himself). He’s there to name the creature as the ‘jackal man’ (just as the werewolf in the Lon Chaney Jr productions was the ‘wolf man’) and to basically explain the plot to the police and speed up the film’s inevitable ending, such as it is. It’s a bit of an anticlimactic conclusion to say the least and, also, makes no logical sense with the rest of the story, it seems to me. But this doesn’t matter because I could watch his film a fair few times without getting bored of it, for sure. Especially with the needle dropped stock music playing all the way through it… choices ranging from surf-instrumental bubble gum pop to the equally unsubtle topless jazz dance fodder. Great stuff.

The film comes with the usual Severin quality extras, including a 20 minute segment of Francophile Stephen Thrower telling us how much he loves the film and giving the complete, as far as anyone knows it, story of Vega International Pictures… pointing out just how shady they were. Included in the extras is another film, which is the only reason I’m gong to review that one for this blog at some point soon… the Vega soft core porn production Angelica: The Young Vixen, which I think was also picked up in the same auction as part of the same package although, the quality of it is so deteriorated that the film has been relegated to an extra rather than get its own release. I’ll get to it though and, honestly, if you’re a fan of the ‘so bad it’s good’, cringeworthy z-grade horror movies then, like me, you might just find you love The Mummy And The Curse Of The Jackals.

Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein

Muted Monster Mash

Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein
aka Drácula contra Frankenstein
Directed by Jess Franco
Spain/France/Liechtenstein/Portugal 1972
Severin US Blu Ray

Warning: I guess some spoilers but, meh, it’s not that kind of movie.

Like many people who tend to weigh in on the subject, I find that Jess Franco is a bit of a hit and miss affair. Sometimes he’s an absolute genius producing classic films such as Vampyros Lesbos (reviewed here), She Killed In Ecstacy (reviewed here), Countess Perverse (reviewed here) and Female Vampire (reviewed here). Then there are the many movies he’s directed which are just plain awful, such as Nightmares Come At Night (reviewed here) or A Virgin Among The Living Dead (reviewed here). Then there are the in-betweeners... movies which are still pretty awful but have some great sequences in them and also manage to maintain a high entertainment value... like Shining Sex for example (review coming soon... been holding that one back for possible inclusion in a themed ‘sexy week’ on the blog, perhaps?).

Anyway, I think it’s safe to say that his monster mash-up  Dracula, Prisoner Of Frankenstein falls into that third category.

The film stars the British ‘thespian’ Dennis Price playing possibly the most casual and ineffective Dr. Frankenstein I’ve ever seen. Then we have Franco regular Luis Barboo as Morpho, Frankenstein’s variant Igor for the movie. We also have Alberto Dalbés playing the Bram Stoker character Dr. Seward and yet another Franco regular, Howard Vernon, playing Count Dracula himself. All four would be back for what I can only assume is some kind of sequel the following year, The Erotic Rites Of Frankenstein (which I’ve not seen but I hope to grab a copy for the blog in the next few weeks), although only Price and Dalbés would be playing the same roles.

Added to this cast you have Geneviève Robert as a gipsy witch woman (of the good variety), Carmen Yazalde as a vampire lady, Fernando Bilbao as the Frankenstein monster and, just in case you thought this film didn’t have enough monsters in it, somebody called Brandy playing the Wolfman!

Okay, so the plot is almost non-existent with its simplicity and lack of credibility. After Dr. Seward tracks down Dracula in his coffin and stakes him through the heart, reverting him to the model bat which we have glimpsed hanging from strings earlier in the film, Dr. Frankenstein absconds with the dead bat, removes the stake and revives Dracula, making him his slave and leader of his growing vampire army (which numbers an incredible... four... by the end of the movie) with which he wishes to dominate the world. But luckily, the wolfman pops up for the last five minutes (the make up is... less effective than you may imagine) and then gets soundly trounced by the Frankenstein monster. 

Meanwhile, Frankenstein sees some kind of betrayal from Dracula (although I couldn’t see one myself) and stakes him again, also going on to destroy his own monster, for no apparent reason that I could figure out. When Dr. Seward arrives on the scene and thanks the spirits for their help in aiding him to defeat the monsters, you have to wonder why he thinks he had anything to do with it at all... he literally arrives on the scene after the monsters are all dead and Frankenstein has fled.

Now, I had a strange experience with this film. The first 17 minutes, which I watched in Spanish, were free from dialogue and, despite the fact that those suffering from epilepsy in the audience might be affected by the huge amount of zoom shots used to establish various environments, it’s actually an incredibly effective and eerily atmospheric film up until this point. However, as soon as I got to the first word spoken... I realised that the subtitles were not working correctly, they seemed to be subtitles for the hard of hearing for the English language version, which was obviously using slightly different dialogue (another subtitle option was heavily out of synch from scene to scene) so I switched to the English dub and rewatched. More wordage is added (when mouths are out of sight ) for this opening and it’s perhaps a little less effective. Although, I don’t think the Spanish dub could possibly save a lot of the rest of the movie, that’s for sure. It’s ridiculous and, although there is a total lack of nudity in the film (hey, Jess, what’s going on?) it does make for an entertaining and, sometimes unintentionally funny movie.

But there are also touches of brilliance. The entrance of Price’s somewhat antiseptic Frankenstein starts with his blurred head in close up in the left of shot inside his car. Then his head, consisting of just his eyes and a bit of his forehead come into focus before, the inevitable ‘Franco zoom out’ reveals more of his features. It’s a brief shot but it works quite well. There’s another shot where two characters eyes are zoomed in and out of, in turn, for about three rounds each, to establish an empathy between them... and that’s not half as bad as it sounds.

Now then, things of note...

Some of the location shots feel a little like they’re a part of a spaghetti western of the time but, honestly, that’s not a bad thing. What is a strange artistic choice, I thought, is the Frankenstein monster’s skin being green (just like the beautiful Mego Boris Karloff version action figure I had as a kid). Now this green colour has quite often been used in some nods to Frankenstein over the years and I suspect it comes from people seeing behind the scenes colour stills of Karloff (and possibly Glen Strange) in the Universal films of the time (there’s some film footage of Karloff in the green make-up from Son Of Frankenstein, reviewed here, for sure). However, I suspect/believe that, since these films were black and white movies, the green paint was applied in the make up to make the features appear drab and lifeless, zombie-like if you will, in monochrome. I don’t think it was Universal’s, or Jack Pearce’s intention to ever suggest that the Frankenstein monster actually had green skin but, yeah, there it is... and certainly the monster in this movie is a beautiful shade of green.

Then there’s the music. Bruno Nicolai’s score is pretty cool in this. Imagine my disappointment, then, when I went to Soundtrackcollector online and found that it has never has a commercial release. But hold on though... I then found a website review claiming that the score was recycled from that composer’s score for Franco’s Justine. So, yeah, I will at some point crack open my Blue Underground Justine Blu Ray set with its bonus soundtrack CD and give that a listen when I get a chance (and, you know, watch the movie too), for sure.

And that’s me just about done on this one, I think. Dracula, Prisoner Of Frankenstein is not a great movie and certainly not a great ‘Franco movie’... but it is entertaining and does still have a certain pizazz to it. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world and am grateful to Severin for putting this one out. If you are a Franco fan then you’ll obviously want to pick this one up (if northing else than for another couple of Francophile Stephen Thrower’s entertaining featurettes) but if you’re new to this particular director, I wouldn’t recommend starting on this one.

Venom - The Last Dance

Knull And Void

Venom - The Last Dance
Directed by Kelly Marcel
USA/UK/Mexico 2024
Columbia Pictures
UK Cinema Release Print

Okay... so Venom - The Last Dance was not quite the Venom film I was looking for but I think criticisms I’ve heard about it from various quarters have been a little harsh. It’s been said that it’s ‘all over the place’ both tonally and plot wise but... I don’t think that’s true. The various set pieces do not outweigh or distract from the fact that there is a distinct through line and it all does hold together quite well. At least in as much as most Hollywood large budget productions these days are mostly just set pieces strung together with a bunch of connective tissue anyway.

That being said, the story such as it is... evil Knull, imprisoned in some kind of dimensional void but with bizarrely God-like powers enough that he can send powerful demon dogs to other universes through portals to hunt down a codex to free himself... is utterly ridiculous and doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny. I mean, if you can control all that power... why are you still imprisoned in the first place? Just open up a portal around you dude! Also, if the codex is only in the incarnation of the Venom/Eddie Brock symbiote because he brought Eddie back to life in a previous film and that’s what magically causes one to manifest (for absolutely no logical reason I can fathom) then what about certain other lives in the movie which were saved by other symbiotes? Wouldn’t that also generate another codex? Take your pick.

And that’s the only real problem with this one... well, the main problem, anyway. That the story and logic of that through line, which I assure you is there and at least holds things together, is so idiotic and paper thin that, you just don’t really care about the action that the story is holding up anymore.

Also, what the hell is going on with the casting? I mean, I know since the Disney MCU/Columbia merger from the last few years that we’re now in a different aspect of the multiverse but, having two actors who are known for portraying villains in the Marvel films as different characters is pushing it a bit. I mean, the Chris Evans callback to another era thing just about worked in Deadpool and Wolverine (reviewed here) but having Chiwetel Ejiofor, who played two different versions of Baron Mordo in two different Dr. Strange movies... and  Rhys Ifans, who played The Lizard in both a Columbia and an MCU Spider-Man movie... here playing completely unrelated characters... seems to me to be a couple of odd choices. As good as these actors are.

Okay, so we have Tom Hardy as both Eddie and the voice of Venom and that stuff, the double act he does, still hasn’t gotten old and is really entertaining. And there are some spectacular sequences... such as the Venom horse and the short action sequence in Mexico near the start of the film. And it also addresses Tom Hardy’s cameo appearances in the MCU films too, right from the outset. But there’s just something unsatisfying about all this good stuff without a really credible story to give the fantasy a believable foundation to act as secure tent pegs.

And what could have been a very moving couple of sequences at the end... did still seem quite moving, to be fair but, they just didn’t have the gravitas they could have had in the service of... well, a better story. And, okay, the final montage sequence of the movie (before the two post credits scenes) did seem quite clumsily executed, it has to be said.

But there’s stuff in here which is still worth a watch, such as the expected cameo appearance of Peggy Lu, returning again as Mrs. Chen (it probably works better if you like ABBA songs, I’m guessing). And, overall, I have to say I was fairly entertained by Venom - The Last Dance but it’s definitely my least favourite of the Venom movies, I would say.

As far as the future of Venom at the cinema goes... I’m sure the plan is to keep things going symbiote-wise for a while but possibly not with the inclusion of Venom or Brock as characters themselves. However, Columbia’s other two Spider-Man spin off characters this year are not going to be as successful as this one, for sure. Madam Web (reviewed here) was okayish but a bit of a let down and seems to be generally hated by the general public (and at least one of the lead actresses). And as for the upcoming Kraven - The Hunter... well... this looks about as far away as the original Spider-Man villain as you can get. I’m really expecting it to fall flat on its face, just like Madame Web and Morbius (reviewed here) did. Things are really not looking good for Columbia’s Spider-Man universe movies and I wouldn’t be surprised if another co-production deal with the Disney MCU is going to be on the cards in the near future. Time will tell, I guess.

Salem's Lot

The Stake’s Progress

Salem's Lot
USA 2024
Directed by Gary Dauberman
New Line Cinema

By my reckoning this must be the fifth time that Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot (which should actually be, surely, ‘salem’s Lot, since it’s short for Jerusalem’s Lot) has been either adapted, sequalised or been inspiration for a TV or movie adaptation. Of those I’ve only seen three, including this one. So the original mini series with David Soul as Ben Mears (which I revisited and reviewed here) which I so loved in my childhood, the big screen sequel A Return To Salem’s Lot (which I’ve never seen, though I probably should because Sam Fuller is in it), another TV version of Salem’s Lot in 2004 (which, again, due to my memory of the classic version I saw when I was around 11 years old, I gave a hard pass... may come back to it), the brilliant, stealth prequel show Chapelwaite (based in part on King’s own prequel, Jerusalem’s Lot and reviewed by me here) and now this one.

This one is... well, it’s easy to say this one is not as good as the original TV mini series... so easy, in fact, that I’ll certainly say that now... it’s not as good. But that certainly doesn’t invalidate it as a movie and both versions I’ve seen tend to stray from King’s original novel somewhat. This time around it’s Lewis Pullman playing returning writer Ben Mears and he’s well matched by a great cast including Makenzie Leigh, Alfre Woodard, Jordan Preston Carter, Bill Camp, Pilou Asbæk as Straker (definitely not as good at playing an Englishman arriving from London as James Mason was, for sure... this guy seems to be playing him with a Deep Sourthern US accent if I’m not much mistaken) and Alexander Ward as Mr. Barlow (once again abandoning the book’s description of the lead vampire and returning him, just as in the original mini series, to the look of Count Orlock from Nosferatu).

Now, it has to be said that this doesn’t have the lurking, creeping fear of the original TV show... this one is more of an adrenalised romp which, perhaps is to be expected somewhat (the original show was around four hours long, after all) but, for lovers of B movie vampire pictures, this has a nice, fun atmosphere and it’s also set in the mid-1970s, around the year the original novel was released (which is useful because living in an age of mobile phones would definitely have given the main protagonists more of an edge against the vampires here).

And it has to be said, this film looks absolutely wonderful...

There’s a nice shot from inside a car where the two kids out the window are bookended by the driver’s head on the left and a reflection of his face on the right in the wing mirror, for example. Or a trek through a forest where all the twigs, branches and tree trunks... and the human figures... are all seen in silhouette and in motion while the sky is awash with blue and pink. That just looks great and the film is also full of wonderful transitions such a panning a camera down to a sign with an intricate pattern which then changes into a perfectly matching bird’s eye view of a staircase well in a house. It’s all great stuff, for sure.

And alongside a tonne of pop culture references like horror comics, Aurora model kits (I think the original used these too), posters for films like Trog and Sugar Hill and a whole raft of others, there are also references to keep Stephen King fans happy. Like an early drive through the town revealing a mechanic working on a certain 1957 red Plymouth Fury for example (yeah, we all know what that car’s called, right?). That being said, though, King enthusiasts may be a little disappointed in the final fate of Father Callahan here... no future appearance in The Dark Tower series for this iteration of the character, once again.

And I think that’s me about done with the new version of ‘Salem’s Lot. A well acted and well shot film. Not especially scary but certainly a heck of a lot of fun, for sure. Worth a watch if you like well made vampire movies but don’t expect it to be as good as either the original TV mini series, nor the splendid novel on which it was based. There are certainly much worse vampire movies out there though, for sure.

Smile 2

Two Million Miles

Smile 2
Directed by Parker Finn
USA/ Canada 2024
Paramount Pictures
UK Cinema Release Print.

Warning: Some implied spoilers as to the endings of the Smile movies.

Well, once again Paramount Pictures is testing the water to see if their potential audience are ready to walk a million miles for one of their Smiles and, from what I can hear in the overwhelming furore of positive feedback, I suspect the box office will certainly support the idea that there’s a lot of worn shoe leather out there this weekend.

I liked the first film quite a bit but think it went a little off track towards the end. Smile 2, is a much better sequel and, although it has nothing as standout as the ‘head dangling’ moment from the first one, I think this one is a much more accomplished movie and it’s just well written and directed (both credits to Finn for that) and has an absolutely incredible lead performance by actress/singer/song writer Naomi Scott. In this she plays pop singer Skye Riley, about to open her comeback tour after her formally drug fuelled ‘bad gal of rock’ days ended with a car crash that scarred her and killed her famous boyfriend, one year prior to the events in this film. In this story she is accompanied by her mum, played really well by Rosemarie DeWitt, who really goes all out in a gory scene in the last quarter of the movie.

The now clean and sober Skye, it turns out, is not prescribed very strong drugs because of her past history of abuse but she’s in quite a lot of pain in her back still from where she was injured in the car wreck. So in order to perform all her dance choreography she has a drug dealer she calls on for really strong pain killers. However, said drug dealer, as we see from the opening sequence, has become host to the Smile demon, which was also the antagonist of the first film (although, now I think back to that early scene, I’m not quite sure how this particular guy got himself infected, truth be told).

Anyway, if you remember the first film (reviewed here), the demon will toy with a person, feeding off their negativity and fear for a number of days, before making them kill themselves in front of someone wearing the big rictus grin of the marketing campaigns for the two movies, thus passing the demon on to the next victim. So when Skye goes round to his apartment late one night to try and get some pain killers, he bashes himself repeatedly in the face, to death, with a weight from his personal gym and transfers the demon into her... something she is more than made aware of not long after the incident.

The rest of the film is basically Skye trying to do press tours and ready herself for her concert while trying to ward off the constant smile demons and hallucinations of violence and carnage hijacking her throughout... some of which might be real and some of which may not. And it’s ferocious and fast paced and, honestly, almost every shot (apart from the pre-credits sequence involving some drug dealers) features Naomi Scott expressing a huge amount of different and often quite wild and strenuous emotions... she’s nothing short of sensational in this role. I’m pretty sure this must have been a lot of hard work for her because it can be exhausting just watching the thing.

Acting aside, it’s also nicely directed and has some wonderful shot compositions and even some nice dance choreography for some of the scenes. Some nice scene transitions too... such as when she is in an elevator (well, over her in the UK they are called lifts) and the doors open and instead of it being the lobby of the building, it opens onto the next shot which is a birds eye view of her pulling up in a car at her next destination... so expedient but creative shot design is the name of the game here. Although, to be honest, I’m still not quite sure why a lot of moderns directors lately seem to want to turn the image upside down in various scenes. It’s almost become a bizarre trend now and there’s a lot of that kind of shot in this movie.

All this makes for a fast paced horror story (you won’t feel the two hours plus running time) and it also has another wonderful score by the composer of the first, Cristobal Tapia de Veer. Although, like the first, the studio has not seen fit to issue a proper, stand alone CD of said score so, yeah, I guess I won’t be able to listen to this one either.

I will comment on the ending here though. Like the first one, Smile 2 is unrelentingly grim and, if possible, even darker than the first one. The ending is somewhat similar in some ways and, I wish I could say I didn’t see it coming but there’s a big clue as to what the demon benefits from latching onto a multi-media singing sensation and the film takes us to that place... but it at least does so in a way which makes more logical sense than the first movie, which seemed to have a bleak ending just for the sake of bleakness. This one doesn’t do that and, in a way, sets up for a sequel which could be a very elevated version of the evil experiences in the first two movies. I won’t say too much more about that but the central logic of the premise is better served by the ending it gets here, for sure... although I can’t help but think that if a third movie is made, they might decide to ignore the ending of this one and do something different to save on potential budgetary requirements.

Suffice is to say, I thought Smile 2 was great and look forward to revisiting it again on Blu Ray at some point soon. If you liked the first one then you should have absolutely no problem with the second one and, if you didn’t... well this one is a more polished and well thought through movie so, maybe still give it a go.

Santosh

Caste Couch

Santosh
Directed by Sandhya Suri
UK/Germany/India/France 2024
BBC/BFI
London Film Festival 18/10/24

Either the films at this year’s London Film Festival are a really bad bunch or, I suspect more likely, the way they’ve been marketed in this year’s brochure is pretty underwhelming and not the push they needed. Especially if you don’t go for the big gala films, since they’re probably more likely to get a proper release somewhere down the line anyway. Either way, this is the only film I‘ve come to this year but, luckily for me it’s a real gem of a movie.

Santosh deals with the titular character, Santosh Saini, played by the brilliant Shahana Goswami. She has been widowed when her husband, a local police constable, is killed by some anonymous person in a riot. Rejected by her husband’s family, Santosh takes advantage of a system in India where you can be trained up for and inherit your spouse’s job after their death (called ‘compassionate appointment’). So it’s not long after washing the blood off her dead husband’s uniform that she’s similarly attired and learning how to police her designated region. And then, when a local girl is found raped, murdered and stuffed down a well, she becomes a kind of apprentice to a higher up police woman, Sharma, played by Sunita Rajwar, as they try to find the killer and bring him to justice. Or is that really what’s going on?

Okay, so this is not your standard police procedural. Santosh is a study of the police which takes the title character on a journey as she realises the true nature and consequences of the organisation she works for... a police force clearly hated by the people they are trying to govern. And perhaps rightly so.

Starting from a chaotic pre-title sequence as Santosh rushes into the aftermath of a riot, looking for her husband, rendered with jerky, hand held camera... the film then progresses into a slower, more controlled visual environment (for the most part) but this does nothing to still the pace of what is an unrelenting look at a milieu where all of the characters are unshakably rendered in shades of grey. There are no black and white demarcations of right and wrong represented in this picture... everything is flexible and blurry in that regard.

Take Santosh herself, for example. A little way into her career as a cop, she finds she’s accidentally taken a cash bribe, before she even knows that she’s done it. When she realises what’s just happened, she looks at her partner who smiles at her and she smiles back, happy to accept the cash. Later, her quite violent outburst during the interrogation of a prisoner leaves her confused about what she’s taken part in and, when she begins to revisit her detection work which brought her to this point, making her something of a local hero within her branch, her realisation of the events in the movie up to this point begin to unravel and she begins to seriously question the nature and hierarchy of the constabulary and, especially, her own place in it.

The film is absolutely gripping and the way in which director Suri shoots it is, perhaps, a sign of her previous career choices as a documentary film maker, with a real fly-on-the-wall attitude to her key protagonists. Indeed, contrasted to some beautiful shot compositions, framing people in vertical slabs of the screen, sometimes people won’t even be fully in a shot and Suri will instead concentrate on their feet only, for example, to bring the audience into the next scene... such as a moment where, instead of following a police officer in the normal manner, she will just make the bag of water bottles hanging from his hand from the waste down the main focus of a shot, taking you on that short journey in a way, with the jiggling of the bag, that acts as a contrast to the more serene camera movements before and after this sequence, for a bit. Similarly, when Santosh contributes to a violent assault on her suspect, the focus is the sound and fury of her arm swinging to meet her victim ‘off shot’, with the director making sure you really feel the violence, instead of merely seeing it.

A long undercover search of a nearby city where Santosh is alone and trying to track down said suspect is also very visceral in the way the camera keeps you on the edge of your seat, with a tension that is palpable and makes you wonder if the character will find her way safely out of the situation she so desperately seeks to find herself in... or if the film will take another turn.

Then there’s the conclusion of the movie, such as it is. Every time I thought I was witnessing the last scene, something else would happen and it would continue for a few minutes more minutes again, like a series of Matryoshka dolls slowly revealing another incident or idea. Now, it would be easy for me to just say that the ending of the film is something the audience will bring their own baggage to but, I suspect, it’s more conclusive than I thought and I perhaps didn’t quite understand the last few minutes... like the symbolism of Santosh giving a particular item to a child in payment of a packet of biscuits (although I think I’ve got more of a handle on that now, as I’ve slept and had 12 hours distance from the film).

What I can say is that there’s an absolutely fascinating shot near the end where Santosh is waiting on a crowded train platform at night. She is watching a young couple on the opposite platform when, what must be one heck of a long train obscures the view from both her and the audience. We see the rushing pitch darkness of the speeding train directly in front of the camera, punctuated by short, half second bursts of the changing image of the young couple in the gaps between carriages as the train whizzes past. It’s somewhat entrancing and the reverse shot of this, when it comes, is probably to be expected but... well... what Santosh does next is something which I certainly have my own interpretation of... a kind of acceptance to swim with the tide for the greater good in the face of the corruption inherent in the caste system and the real powers of the police (if I’m understanding this correctly... I know nothing of Indian culture really other than what I’ve seen in this film).

And I think this is where I leave this one other than to say, Santosh is an absolute corker of a movie and I hope it does well enough (I believe it’s been submitted as best foreign film in the 2025 Oscars... I didn’t realise this when I booked the ticket or was sitting in the cinema watching it) to get a lot of eyes on it. Brilliantly written and directed by Suri, with absolutely stand out performances by Goswami and Rajwar and a kind of hard edged look at both the corruption stemming from the hierarchy of the Indian culture and also more than a passing nod to the place of ‘the female’ in that specific society. I hope there’s a Blu Ray release in this film’s future because I’d definitely like to see this one again.

Dressed To Kill

No Chime To Die

Dressed To Kill
USA 1946
Directed by Roy William Neill
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Dressed To Kill is the third of five movies that I know of, to bear the exact same title as each other. However, for our purposes here, it’s the fourteenth and final of the Sherlock Holmes films made by first 20th Century Fox and then Universal, starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as the faithful Dr. Watson (I’ll get into why it was the last a little further down the page). It also, once again, features Mary Gordon as Holmes housekeeper/landlady Mrs. Hudson, although the interior room of 2212B Baker Street seems to have grown considerably in size again for this one. Inspector Lestrade as played by the incomparable Dennis Hoey does not make any appearance here, he already had his series swansong on the previous film, Terror By Night (reviewed here) but he is mentioned in it at least. Actually, I’m guessing he must have already been engaged in shooting another movie because this one is firmly set in London and features a large police presence.

The plot is similar in some ways to The Pearl Of Death (reviewed here), which was loosely based on The Adventure Of The Six Napoleons. In this one it’s three music boxes made by a prisoner and sold off at auction which are the things everyone is looking for. Holmes has a photographic memory for the tune that’s played on one of the three when an old friend of Watson, a music box collector who has bought one of them, is showing off his collection. It’s a good job Holmes can remember it note for note because he’s suddenly also trying to track down the music boxes when Watson’s friend is murdered by a henchman of lady antagonist Hilda Courtney (played by Patricia Morison), the super-villainess of the story who needs the boxes because they contain the key to the whereabouts of some forged Bank of London plates for five pound notes (the proper, big old five pound notes of yesteryear, I might add).

Holmes figures out, from his music box and a remembrance of the other, that a few notes have been changed on each rendition of the tune, Once A Jolly Swagman... so he consults with a criminal who he cleared of murder by proving he was cracking a safe somewhere else, who he knows is an expert on music. Eventually he figures out the coded messages in the tune variations and it’s one of those films where the villains are racing to get there first and murdering people as they go. Holmes himself eludes a deathtrap just in time while Watson is being duped by the lady in question. It’s been a while since Rathbone’s character went in disguise in the movies and, he doesn’t on this occasion either, but Patricia Morison does to steal one music box right from under the noses of Holmes and Watson.

And, yeah, it’s another entertaining, Holmesian romp with the added extra, if it’s your thing, of Nigel Bruce doing a Donal Duck impression. It doesn’t go down well with the young girl he’s trying to cheer up, for sure. It’s interesting to see the racially targeted humour of the day has stood the test of time and continued over the years too, nicely preserved here. For example, when Holmes is querying the price each music box sold for with the owner of the auction house, he asks why such a low price was paid for the third. Was there something wrong with it. The answer was, of course, that Mr. Kilgore, the man who bought it so cheaply, was a Scotsman. Yeah, alright then. if you say so.

Another point of interest, although it’s been mentioned in the films before, is Watson’s role as Holmes’ sensationalist biographer. In the short stories, originally published serially for many years in The Strand Magazine, it’s known to Holmes that Watson publishes lurid accounts of their adventures in that very magazine. In this film... and much more than a passing reference this time, much is made of Watson’s stories published in The Strand which, was just about still going when this film was made and set contemporary to its time... the magazine was going from late 1890 (with a January 1891 cover date) until it ceased publication in March of 1950 with Issue 711. Much is also made of the famous, ‘The Woman’ from the Arthur Conan Doyle story A Scandal In Bohemia, aka Holmes’ female nemesis Miss Irene Adler (who, although only actually appearing in one of Conan Doyle’s stories, has been used in various forms by many writers and in many films since).

As usual, Rathbone and Bruce are absolutely brilliant and everyone does very well. Indeed Miss Morison was so convincing in her disguise as a lowly housekeeper that, when she went to eat lunch in the studio canteen still in costume, she was told to get out and eat with the rest of the extras as she wasn’t supposed to go near the stars. She must have been delighted that her disguise on this day’s shoot was so good it even fooled the canteen staff.

But things were troubled with Rathbone and he decided to quit the role, both in the films and on the radio (although he would occasionally play Holmes on stage and was, in other ways, dogged by the role throughout his career). He felt that, since his first film for Fox, The Hound Of The Baskervilles (reviewed here), the role had been like a cookie cutter template producing repetitive impressions. I’d myself argue that Rathbone was so good in the role in every one of his fourteen Holmes films (all made between 1939 and 1946 with a two year break in between the Fox and Universal periods... so they were really knocking these things out quickly, to be fair) that it was criminal to leave a role which was evidently so popular with cinema goers internationally and, to this day, I’d argue that, despite the obvious intentional differences to the original stories, he was the one, definitive Holmes. On the radio, they recast Tom Conway in the Holmes role opposite Nigel Bruce’s Watson for a while... and having seen him in a fair number of Falcon movies and a few other things... that might not have been a bad choice. They also considered recasting the films with him in them and continuing the series but... well, I don’t know why that didn’t happen but, perhaps it possibly had something to do with the fact that the producer/director of the majority of the series, Roy William Neill, dropped dead of a heart attack seven months after the release of this film. I don’t know.

All I do know for sure is that Dressed To Kill is another high point in the series and that Rathbone and Bruce certainly went out on a good one. Heavily recommended and a fitting, if early end, to one of the greatest film sequences in cinematic history. And that's me finished with the Rathbone Holmes reviews but, fear not, more Sherlock Holmes reviews will be coming to this very blog in the not too distant future.

Nightsleeper

Carry On Up
The Cyber

Nightsleeper
UK BBC September 2024
6 episodes

You know, I barely watch many British TV shows outside of, well, Doctor Who, these days because I’m not that enamoured of them. Heck, I don’t watch many TV shows period, truth be told. But there have been a couple over the last year and this one, Nightsleeper, is something I caught about a minute or two of when my parents were watching it. It looked pretty well put together and so I thought I’d try the first episode and, frankly, I was hooked right away. This is a truly high quality thriller from the BBC and I was so impressed with it. Even though, yeah okay, it’s not that original and it feels a little like half the plot of The Cassandra Crossing and The Taking Of Pelham 123 mixed in with Bird Of Prey (which is a TV show I’ve not seen since the 1970s or early 80s… wish they’d repeat that one again).

So, a cybercrimes worker called Abby, played startlingly believably by Alexandra Roach, in the Victoria Station area of London, is called back from her holiday (she was about to get underway) because a train has been hijacked… hack-jacked, in fact. The sleeper train going from, initially, Glasgow to Euston (the route is changed over many plot twists) is sabotaged with a computer device plugged into it’s workings and it’s on a direct collision course for London, unless an anonymous terrorist group are paid so many gazillions in bitcoin. With the cybercrime chief of staff away on holidays, Abby is the one trusted to try and stop this calamity. So it’s up to her and her, somewhat dodgy (who can she trust?) team and an ex-copper on the run (due to crimes he may or may not have committed) on the train, Joe, played by Joe Roan, to try and stop the train before it takes out the London terminus.

And it’s a great little cracker of a show, for sure. It’s fast paced and, you’d wonder how a cybercrime show about stopping a train could run for six 45 minute episodes but, it does go at a fair lick with a high number of twists and mini revelations which means, well, it never gets dull. I watched the whole show in two sittings and I could have easily watched another six right after.

Now, all this being said, in terms of writing… it’s a game of two halves. On the one hand the characterisation and dialogue is phenomenally well written… everyone seems fleshed out in their shorthand kind of way and you will be caring a lot about most of the characters. On the other hand… it does run every cliché and set up in the book but, even while you can predict what is going to happen a lot of the time (including the reveal of the identity of the main antagonist, so to speak, in the last episode), it doesn’t really matter because it’s all put together so beautifully (the editing is fantastic too) and it whizzes along in quite an addictive fashion.

So, yeah, you have the resigned top cybercrime guy brought in to help out (played here by David Threlfall), the opening bag snatcher chase used as a diversion to plant the device, the miscommunications and the rival unit who end up making the situation worse than it already is, the ex-rail guy who you just know is going to have a heart attack before the end of the show (played brilliantly by the always watchable James Cosmo), the top hierarchy making decisions about sacrificing the lives on the train and not telling their operatives (as in Abby and the majority of her team), the person inside the train who knows more than they’re letting on, the one working satellite phone (everything else blocked by phone jammers), the passenger who isn’t supposed to be on the train… all that stuff and more. But I didn’t mind it one bit because it was all done in such a way that all the clichés seemed like the best logical choices for the situation.

Also... some nice camera work and, as I said, the editing is all top notch. For instance, there’s a lovely moment when the camera zooms into the black and white CCTV screen which then turns into colour and becomes the next shot. And, yes, I know we’ve all seen that done before but it was done here with such throwaway panache that you can’t help but marvel at it. Another nice thing is the first episode opened with a shot of the piano at a station in Scotland being played by a passenger and the diegetic musical notes become the non-diegetic score of the scene.

So it’s six episodes of cat and mouse with an unknown antagonist and the few deaths in it are handled in such a way that the audience really feels them (there’s no body count element at work here) and a nice finale where Abby herself is in clear and present danger from the train which is hurtling towards her at increasing speeds. I can’t see a sequel to Nightsleeper being easy to market (although I’d absolutely love to see the continuing adventures of Abby, for sure) but as a stand alone mini-series this one was pretty great. A thorough recommendation from me.

Message From Space

Prince Hans, No Solo

Message From Space
aka Uchu kara no messeji
Japan 1978 Directed by Kinji Fukasaku
Toei/Eureka Masters Of Cinema
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Small spoilers about the final outcome of the movie... as if there was any doubt.

I’d not seen Message From Space before but I believe I do have a bootleg of this tucked away somewhere with the title Japanese Star Wars and, to be fair, that’s actually a more accurate title, in some ways, than its real one and, again in some ways, that does also sum up the movie too. And I don’t mean that to detract from what is, in actual fact, a quite entertaining and historically contextually impressive film.

Kinji Fukasaku, who some of my readers may remember from classic films like Battle Royale and the, perhaps, not quite so classic The Green Slime, directed this for release in 1978. It was a year after George Lucas’ magnum opus first hit cinemas in the US (and eventually, right at the end of the same year, in the UK) and the eyes of the world were eyeing up that box office take. Just as in America, many countries rushed to release their own, half rip off Star Wars* bandwagon films... some of which hadn’t been able to get a green light until the Lucas film had every producer on the planet scrambling to develop whatever science fiction properties they could get their hands on. And Japan was no exception although, while I’m sure many studio heads and film industry people had been able to see Star Wars in 1977, it actually didn’t get a release in Japan until a couple of months after this movie was already in cinemas (there’s a certain irony there, I guess).

Okay, so yes, despite the staunch defence of the movie against comparisons in the booklet included in the Eureka Blu Ray, this film certainly does have a lot of Star Wars injected straight into its DNA. I mean, if you want ot watch it on a surface level, you can’t help but laugh and be entertained by some of the ‘bend over backwards’ attempts to shoe horn as many resemblances as possible into the story and a fair few other production elements, it has to be said. However, there’s also a lot of other impressive stuff here which, perhaps, went on to inspire some of those Hollywood bandwagon movies in much the same way... I suspect.

A brief rundown of the plot set up is that Princess Emeralida, played by Etsuko Shihomi of the Sister Streetfighter films (reviews coming as soon as I get around to watching them) is charged with a mission by her father, the elder of the rag tag band of space hippies who are the lone survivors of the planet Jillucia. The war shredded planet has been occupied by the inhabitants of the evil, silver skinned Gavanas Empire, who have set up their main fortress there. So the tribal elder sends the eight magic Liaba seeds (snicker... Liaba minora perhaps... but they look just like Walnut shells to me) out into space to seek the eight brave warriors who are prophesised to save them. Emeralida and her humble bodyguard must follow them and find the eight worthy warriors, scattered in various places in the galaxy... and raise them to come to their aid. These include General Garuda played by Vic Morrow, his R2D2/C3PO half bleeping/half talking, dome headed android Beba Two, Kamikazi Mei (played wonderfully by a severely underused actress called Peggy Lee Brennan) and even the legendry Sonny Chiba as Prince Hans. They and some of the other ‘heroes’ are all pretty good in this and help carry what is a far more entertaining film than we should expect of the story. There’s even an appearance by the president of Earth, played by Tetsurô Tanba, who played in stuff like Three Outlaw Samurai (review will eventually be coming) and You Only Live Twice (reviewed by me here).

Okay, enough of the plot. The film has lots of key notes from Star Wars that it hits. The space ship flying overhead shot mimicking the Star Destroyer at the start of the Lucas film, the laser beams shot from pistols and dogfighting space ships (often making sounds more reminiscent of automatic pistols) plus many other familiar elements, such as the final attack run on the Gavanas fortress which looks suspiciously like the final attack on the Death Star, except in this case, instead of trying to hit a thermal exhaust port 3 metres in diameter, our brave and fearless heroes are trying to hit a reactor core 10 metres in diameter. Of course, in order to save the people of the planet, they also have to end up destroying said planet but, hey, at least they won, right? Right?

Certainly, one of the biggest influences felt from Star Wars here is the ‘golden age Hollywood score’ by composer Ken'ichirô Morioka. It’s like he studied John Williams seminal score to the ‘n’th detail and there are many call backs to some of the musical passages in the American film. Not least of which is the theme in the leitmotif for the Liaba seeds, which bears a striking resemblance (perhaps a couple of notes changed or missing) to the Obi Wan/Force theme from Williams’ Star Wars scores.

All this aside though, there are also some elements which Hollywood movies, including future Star Wars movies, might also have been taking notice of in this one. The lightning style forks of laser power emitted by the spaceships of the bad guys foreshadows the similar VGer effects used in Star Trek The Motion Picture of the following year (and I’m pretty sure one of the Gamera movies used it even before this... you’ll find it mentioned, I’m sure, in one of my Gamera reviews)... although, I guess it’s kind of an expansion of the same kind of visual effect used when R2D2 gets zapped by the Jawas, in some measure. Also, the interior sets of the Gavanas fortress, while tipping the head to the interiors of the Death Star in some ways, also has windows and decor which wasn’t seen in the Star Wars franchise until the second film, The Empire Strikes Back, was released in cinemas two years later than this. So, yeah, a kind of post modern Ouroboros kind of cannibalism between this and the Star Wars films, perhaps.

Ultimately, no matter how much of it is pure rip off (and there is a lot of that in this) and how much of it is original to this film (but probably also eclectically borrowed, perhaps), glowing space whips aside, Message From Space is a very entertaining piece of cinema starring some Japanese screen legends and I’m really glad that Eureka have decided to put out a fantastic looking Blu Ray disc of it. A definite recommendation from me, for sure. Maybe they’ll issue the TV series continuation next?

* And don’t forget, the Star Wars films themselves ransacked many different story elements from various sources (some, of course, from Japanese cinema) and so one can understand a lack of reluctance to copy the film by other people... it’s all fair game and Star Wars certainly wears its influences on its sleeve.

Delicatessen

Butcher Self
In My Position

Delicatessen
Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
and Marc Caro
France 1991
Studio Canal
Blu Ray Zone B

I remember when Delicatessen got released in the UK... it was early January 1992 and one of two absolutely amazing French movies released within a week of each other over here. It was around the time of my 24th birthday so both these movies, the other being Bertrand Blier’s astonishing Merci La Vie, were films I went to see in celebration of said birthday, being as I was a student in London at the time. The mid 1980s to the mid 1990s were an absolutely golden era for foreign language films at the cinema in the UK and three places I could regularly keep up with these wonderful, first run foreign language releases were the magnificent Lumiere cinema on St. Martin’s Lane, the Metro on Rupert Street and, as a last resort because their screens were much smaller but, they always had the films on at the tail end of the run in case you missed any, the Swiss Centre just off Leicester Square. None of these three cinemas are still in existence, in case you are wondering. I think I first saw Delicatessen at the Metro but both this one and Merci La Vie were seen by me a few times at different cinemas. Unfortunately an English subtitled Blu Ray of Blier’s film is not yet forthcoming... bit annoyed about that as the DVD release wasn’t as good an English translation on the subtitles as the cinema prints and VHS tape.

Delicatessen was a surprise, sleeper smash (more prints were quickly struck for the UK market) and was filmed by a duo of film makers billed as Jeunet and Caro. The former would, of course, continue to make cinematic history, especially with his other big smash hit ten years later, Amélie (aka Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain review coming soon).

And it’s a bizarre, surreal film which plays like a black comedy involving some kind of post-war event where a small delicatessen and the people who live in the flats which are part of it, are struggling to survive. It could easily be the 1940s because the visual aesthetic of the film (and various audio and visual references) certainly fit in with that period... or it could be the far future. The time setting is deliberately left vague but there’s definitely a post-war vibe to the whole thing.

The film follows the arrival of a new handyman at the flats, Louison, played by the always watchable Dominique Pinon. He is an ex-circus performer trying to make ends meet after his partner, Livingstone the monkey, was eaten by hungry survivors of... whatever has happened. He falls in love with the butcher’s daughter Julie, played by Marie-Laure Dougnac, who tries to warn him, unsuccessfully until he’s being attacked with a meat cleaver, that her father... played in a wonderfully comic book style by Jean-Claude Dreyfus... murders newcomers in the night so the tenants of the flats, played by a wonderful and diverse cast of actors giving laugh out loud funny and surreal performances, can eat the new tenants who come their way, rather than sacrifice one of their own. Everything is payed for in corn and lentils, the currency of this struggling world.

It’s a film which plays like a kind of Heath Robinson contraption of comical moments and vignettes edited together into unlikely sequences... which, I think it would be fair to say of pretty much most of this writer/director’s filmography and it is, it has to be said, an absolute joy to watch. Who can forget the sight of Julie playing her cello with Louison accompanying her on his musical saw. Or the lovemaking scene where the sound of the straining springs on a bed set the rhythm for a raucous sexual metaphor of a montage of various tenants accompanying them with comical antics of increasing pace. Or the comical and elabourate suicide attempts of one of the neighbours, who keeps getting accidentally saved by her own incompetence. Or the wonderful dance with bubbles which Louison performs for the kids on the stairway landing. Or the faction of vegetarian ‘troglodytes’, waging war against those who live above the surface. Or even... well let’s just call him ‘the frog man’ and leave it at that.

The films is witty, enchanting and has a style which absolutely draws you in to this magical world the directors have created. That this was a debut feature is remarkable... the film is so risky and confident... with its ‘dark fairytale’ vibe, where everything is played for comedy value but with a warm, beating heart at its centre.

The colours, too, are absolutely amazing. Hard to describe but like pastel tones which have been given extra colour saturation to achieve a warm, rich look. My one gripe being that I’m not totally sure I trust this new Blu Ray master by Studio Canal (a company who I dislike these days more than I used to... the 1990s was a time when I welcomed their logo at the start of a film). In the blurb at the front of the Blu Ray, one of the restoration features it lists is that they’ve ‘harmonised the grain’. I dunno, maybe that’s why, on Blu Ray, the exterior location looks like what I now realise was just a big, internal set. I mean, the ersatz is always a problem on Blu Ray restorations anyway but this sounds like something which maybe could be taking things a little too far... I need to find out what this is all about, for sure.

Either way though, Delicatessen is one of the greats of French cinema, that much is certain. It’s an absolute treat for anybody who appreciates the cinematic arts and, frankly, an essential film in my book. If you’ve not seen this you might want to run, rather than walk, to your earliest opportunity to get some eyeball time with this wonderful movie. I saw it multiple times when it came out at the cinema and, if it weren’t for the fact that I have to keep watching different things to keep this blog going, I would be watching it multiple times on Blu Ray still. This is, after all, the third format on which I’ve owned this film... anybody remember the superb Electric Picture VHS box set back in the 1990s? Still got mine!

Never Let Go

Rope Burns

Never Let Go
Directed by Alexandre Aja
USA 2024
Lionsgate (thought they’d
pulled out of UK distribution)
UK Cinema Release Print.

I was going to say I have a bit of a hit and miss relationship with the films of Alexandre Aja but, then I refamiliarised myself with his filmography and it would be fair to say, I think, that it’s more of a miss and miss track record. I have this idea in my head that he starts off each film really well, setting things up for an intense ride which tends to peter out around halfway through and, yeah, that’s kind of what he does here but... I’ll get back to that in a little while.

Never Let Go does have a great idea behind it. Surviving, it’s implied, some apocalyptic influx of evil into the world, a mother played by Halle Berry and her two young boys, played absolutely gob-smackingly amazingly by Percy Daggs IV and Anthony B. Jenkins live in a remote cabin in the woods. They cannot leave the house, however, because it has magical religious properties protecting them from evil. So they have to wear these long ropes around their waste when they go out of the house scavenging for grubs and squirrels to eat. However, as these kids, who are maybe just pre-teen or early teen aged, start to question their mother’s wisdom about the evil that only her and the audience can see... things start to go pear shaped.

And yeah, that’s a nice set up for the plot and it’s mostly all I’m saying about the story here. Other than... not all the three main protagonists survive until two thirds of the way into the movie... so the tension does keep ratcheting up.

What I will say is that the performances by all three of those actors are absolutely amazing and that they manage to carry the film quite nicely. Added to this, the make-up job and CGI work on the ‘evil’ snake tongued people is excellent. And, of course, since it’s the main hook, a good deal of the tension and drama of the story comes from... you know... letting go of the rope.

However, once again the director fails to land a good, solid ending for this film. There’s a set up revolving around what is possibly ‘the last polaroid camera on Earth’ with one shot left in it which, when used towards the conclusion, really contributes to making no sense of just what has been going on by the end of the movie. I mean, it’s like, without giving away anything, it’s an ‘is it or isn’t it?’ kind of deal with the mechanics of the story and how it plays out and, by the end, the director maybe didn’t want to commit to either one of them... instead favouring the idea of having his cake and eating it at the same time. Which, for me, negates and drains all the tension and good work he’s been consistently running with up until around the last ten minutes. I was left there sitting in the mostly empty cinema (it was a Sunday evening) thinking... this makes absolutely no sense.

So, yeah, whether the fact that he managed to keep the tension and be really scary up until that point counts as a good time at the cinema or not is something I can’t really judge. It just feels like Never Let Go really fumbles the ball at the end and takes the ‘lazy story writers’ way out (there’s even one of the actors promoting it in interviews as a strong point, I think, where the audience brings their own baggage as to the ending, so to speak). Nope. This movie clearly doesn’t work for me and it’s a shame because it is quite intense, atmospheric and has some great photography. But, no, I won’t be recommending this one to anybody when all is said and done so... yeah... still waiting to see that great Alexandre Aja movie, I reckon. It’s got to be coming one day. This one just seems like Aja trying to channel M. Night Shyamalan with, sadly, similar results.

Joker - Folie à Deux

Great Fleckspectations

Joker - Folie à Deux
Directed by Todd Phillips
Canada USA 2024
DC/Warner Brothers
UK Cinema Release Print.

Well this was an unexpected, surprisingly brilliant movie. I admit I was going in with pretty low expectations but Joker - Folie à Deux, the sequel to the same director’s Joker (reviewed here) is a pretty marvellous film and far superior to the flawed and derivative first movie. Now, that being said, I had one big problem with this movie and it’s the exact same one as I had with the prior film. But also having said that, it really is the only problem I have with this one because, it’s one of those rare, damn near perfect concoctions that Hollywood manages to pitch up every now and again.

So that particular problem... and it is admittedly a huge one... is this: What the heck does this character and movie have to do with the DC character The Joker? Answer, like the first one, almost absolutely nothing. The Joker personae is very different, shares no similarity to the character’s background in the comics and doesn’t even have the tenuous connection to Bruce Wayne that the first film has (indeed, the Wayne family don’t even appear in this one except as a blink and you’ll miss it presence on a billboard). And frankly, name checking Harley Quinn and Harvey Dent as main characters and then having a set prop pushing the idea of Arkham Asylum... that does not a Joker movie make. So to say this is in the same universe as the characters which it exploits to get people into cinemas is a little cynical and misleading, at best, I would say. To their credit, DC are labelling this as an Elseworlds movie (in line with their very bold comic book strand of the same name) but they could have easily have called these two movies something else entirely and not had the links to the comic book universe clumsily used as a marketing proposition at all.

All that being said... I don’t really care because this film is an absolutely magical time at the cinema and is easily, at this point in the year, one of 2024s best movies. Not the best, certainly but, it’s on that list.

This one, once again, top lines Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck (aka The Joker) and he’s joined in this one by Lady Gaga as Lee Quinzel (aka Harley Quinn) who also, it has to be said, has very tenuous links to her comic book alter ego. They are also joined by such luminaries as Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener and, briefly, Steve Coogan too. And if you’re expecting more of the same of the first film I’m delighted to be able to say, you may be disappointed. I’m not the biggest fan of Phoenix but I’ve warmed to him in roles like this the last few years and his tender portrait of Arthur once again makes this a memorable movie. And, honestly, Lady Gaga is right there matching him with an equally solid performance all the way. Their respective characters’ love holds the movie together and, alas, I can’t comment on that too much for fear of spoilers but, it’s an interesting dynamic, for sure.

And, as I said, it’s not like the first movie... especially in terms of story. This just covers Arthur’s lead in to and eventual appearance at his trial for five of the six murders he committed in the last movie. But this is also an example of what has come to be known, over the last decade or so, as a Jukebox Musical. There are loads of songs, some of which even I could sing along too (mostly from the 1960s) and some of these transpire in what are the naturalistic settings of the movie and, others of them take place inside Arthur Fleck’s head, where the colours are wild and the glamour comes to the fore. And it’s good stuff. I loved Lady Gaga’s rendition of If They Could See Me Now from Sweet Charity (the Gwen Verdon stage show flagged, as opposed to the Shirley MacLaine movie version of Fosse’s remake of Fellini’s Nights Of Cabiria, both of which I talk about here) and, well, all I will say is, even if it’s just a clip from The Bandwagon, seeing Oscar Levant on the big screen again is awesome. That’s certainly entertainment, if you catch my drift.

Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score once again keeps the visual images and the musical interludes effectively threaded together and the cinematography is all levels of gorgeous, especially when utilising the MGMified colours of the 1950s and 60s musical palette. Plus, the brand new Joker themed Looney Toons short which starts off the movie is a wonderful piece of work too, it has to be said. So, yeah, that’s me pretty much done on Joker - Folie à Deux other than to say, I was genuinely impressed and riveted by the whole film as it slowly played out and I can’t wait to grab this one on Blu Ray when it gets a release. Definitely see this one on a big screen if you can.