Yes, Madam!

Mad Men VS Madams

Yes, Madam!
aka Police Assassins
aka In The Line Of Duty 2
Directed by Corey Yuen
Hong Kong 1985
D & B Films  Co. Ltd/Eureka
Blu Ray Zone B

Okay, this gets really confusing... this is the first in a series of films that came to be known as the ‘In The Line Of Duty’ series but didn’t get that moniker until the filming of another movie, which also became known as In The Line Of Duty 2, in addition to its real name. But then this ‘first’ film known as Yes, Madam! was marketed internationally as, um, In The Line Of Duty 2 and... yeah, it gets even more complicated than that with the various titles and switched sequences... I have no idea which one I’m supposed to watch next. What do they think this is... a Caroll Baker giallo?

Anyway, Michelle Yeoh had only done two movies prior to this one and this was her first starring role. Meanwhile, the producers wanted to create a new male action hero to co-star in the movie to be ‘the new Bruce Lee’. Various people from a kung fu school in the USA were sent over to audition and some of the ladies went along too. When Corey Yuen and the producers saw what Cynthia Rothrock was able to do, they changed their ideas and rewrote the role for her... this was her first film and she is the first caucasian actress to headline Hong Kong movies.

The plot deals with Yeoh’s Inspector Ng trying to stop bad guys from finding some small time crooks who accidentally become embroiled with some microfilm (remember the days of microfilms in movies being a big deal?). To help her, because it all started when a high ranking police inspector from Scotland Yard is murdered for the microfilm... another ‘English’ police inspector is sent to give Ng a hand... which is Rothrock as Inspector Carrie Morris. After that it’s all comedy and bits and pieces of action (much less action than was shot due to running time constraints) as Yeoh and Rothrock’s characters try and keep tabs on three small time criminals - named Aspirin, Panadol and Strepsil - before they get themselves killed and the microfilm is destroyed.

The humour, like a lot of these Hong Kong films, is more than a little broad but the stunts and action sequences, most of which were performed by the actors themselves such as Yeoh and Rothrock (who got a lot of bruises for their seven month shoot... Rothrock got a torn inner ear for good measure, too), is pretty good and inventive. This was the first time Rothrock used her signature move ‘the scorpion kick’ in a movie... the choreographer asked her if she wanted to throw anything of herself into the mix and she showed him that move and he definitely wanted it in the film. I’m actually surprised by these two actresses having this as their first big roles because, I have to say, they both seem pretty confident in this and make it all look easy.

Despite not quite having as much action as I was expecting, the film still seems to hurtle along at a blistering pace... the comedy might be a bit too unsubtle at times but you certainly won’t get bored with this one. There are a couple of nice highlights too, such as, at the end of her first big action sequence in the film, Michelle Yeoh gets a Dirty Harry moment where she tells the villain she is pointing her shotgun at that she doesn’t know if there are any shells left in the gun and that he would maybe like to try his luck. Another nice moment in terms of editing is when Cynthia Rock saves the life of Panadol (played by famous director Hark Tsui) by shooting a rope from around his neck when he’s hanging off of a wall... the rope breaks and he lands in a chair at the police station, courtesy of a nicely placed edit and shot match. Good stuff.

One thing which felt a little off to me was the moment when a hitman digs his silencer into an apple and puts the apple in the mouth of his victim to stop him from calling out. When he shoots the guy point blank through the mouth, there seems to be absolutely no exit wound on the guys head, even when the camera shows the dead guy later. Just felt a bit odd... hardly any blood for such a close up piece of violence.

The other thing that felt way off was that, at the end of the day, the bad guy gets killed but only while he’s going quietly with the police, by one of the comic relief thieves. In fact, the two heroines and their accomplices are all under arrest for trespassing on the villain’s property and, if not for the murder, he would have gone scott free. The film then just stops and you assume all the good guys and gals go to prison for their actions... a really unusual ending for sure.

But, nevertheless, I found Yes, Madam! to be a pretty entertaining movie and Yeoh and Rothrock make a really good team here (I believe they also became fast friends in real life... Rothrock didn’t know the language when she came over to Hong Kong but Yeoh knew some English and they used to go out to dinner every night, is my understanding). It’s a shame the two didn’t do more of these films together, for sure.

The Satanic Rites Of Dracula

Rites Said Dead

The Satanic Rites Of Dracula
UK 1973
Directed by Alan Gibson
Hammer/Warner Archive Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: Spoilers for the inevitable outcome here.

The Satanic Rites Of Dracula is one of the more closely related of the Dracula follow ups. Although it’s set a few years after the events of the previous film, Dracula AD 1972 (which I reviewed here), it was actually released only one year after. It does have four running characters from that previous excursion in the contemporary adventures of Hammer’s flagship vampire, although only three actors returned to those roles.

The two obvious returners are Christopher Lee playing Dracula and Peter Cushing once again playing the modern descendent of the Van Helsing clan, Lorrimer. We also have Michael Coles returning as police Inspector Murray from the previous Dracula adventure, this time working in conjunction with a special government agency represented mostly by characters played by William Franklin and Richard Vernon. It should be noted that Coles is, apparently, the only person in Hammer film history other than Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing to play the same character in more than one Dracula movie.

Rounding out the more important cast members are Freddie Jones as a Nobel prize winning chemist and, to fill the boots of Stephanie Beacham, who was not available to reprise the role of Van Helsing’s granddaughter Jessica, we have Joanna Lumley who, it has to be said, doesn’t have an awful lot to do in this and plays the role, it seems to me, completely differently from her predecessor... but then again, that’s because the character seems differently written as, although it takes place in more or less the same times, there’s no sense of a swinging London vibe to this movie at all (even though it’s set there). I should probably also mention Pauline Peart’s brief role as a wordless vampire girl, one of a few chained in a basement, since she does cut a striking figure and she still goes to Film Fairs to sign photos from this film.

The film opens strongly with lots of location footage of London with a really annoying and distracting silhouette of Dracula superimposed over the whole credits sequence, slightly off centre at the bottom of the screen. However, John Cavacas’ excellent, funky 1970s score more than makes up for this annoying blemish on an otherwise interesting credits sequence.

This movie always seems to be better in my memories but, every time I sit down to watch it over the years, it always seems a little bland too. Dracula doesn’t even enter the picture until about half an hour into the thing. And when he does, there’s no real discussion as to how he was revived after his death at the end of the previous movie, this time around. However, there’s some distracting nudity, some occult practices and also cults like the Hellfire Club referenced to ensure the audience know that they’re in black mass kind of territory... and also mention that vampires also have a weakness in the grip of a Hawthorn bush, which they use here to help usher in Dracula’s latest death at the end of the tale.

The plot of this one involves Dracula’s attempt to kill off humanity with a new instant and more deadly version of a black plague. When it’s pointed out to him that the destruction of mankind would mean he’d leave himself without an adequate food supply he changes the subject but, the film very gently touches on the idea that Dracula may also be wanting to bring about his own downfall by this point.

So, yeah, it’s another contemporary adventure romp with a biker gang of hoodlums controlled by Dracula’s new corporation, to lend action scenes to the picture, all of them wearing sheepskin waistcoats just like the one I used to wear myself when I was two or three years old. There’s lots of shooting, chasing and punching... not to mention some quite nice frame designs where various uprights and horizontals are used to highlight different parts of the action. But for all this, somehow, the film seems curiously bland in places and, I think I’ve finally put my finger on why some of the film feels like this, finally...

I noticed, this time around, that in all the various shots of characters going about their business in London, there are never any people on the streets. Like everything had been locked off for filming but the production was too cheap to have extras. It’s a little off putting, to tell the truth. Like London has suddenly been emptied out in the aftermath of some great catastrophe. Oh... although there’s a shot inside Freddie Jones’ house where, you might notice a person extra, as one of the crew seems to be ducking behind a half open doorway at the rear of one shot, although there’s clearly meant to be nobody there apart from Freddie at this point.

In addition to the Hawthorn bush oddity and a number of in-the-moment, do it yourself crosses and stakes used throughout the movie, we have a nice scene where Peter Cushing’s character melts down a silver cross and casts it as a silver bullet (which he manages to miss Dracula with later) and a nice moment of running water demise, when Inspector Murray turns some sprinklers on the chained vampire gals in the basement, having learnt that this can be deadly to a vampire from the previous movie, invoking death by running water. That being said, it’s one of a few scenes where the action seems ever so slightly slowed down and a bit strange... this particular scene even more so because the director has chosen to switch to a posterised colour version of the shot to show the undead ladies writhing around on the floor. I’m not sure why this colour technique was used in just this one scene in the movie but, the cynic inside me suspects that something went wrong with the action of the shot which was only discovered later and they posterised the footage to disguise it. That’s my best guess on that one, anyway.

So that’s me finished with The Satanic Rites Of Dracula for a bit. The film is a little insipid in places and it’s certainly not as strong as the previous outing, Dracula AD 1972 but, it’s still quite entertaining and I appreciate the attempt to give the film a stronger link to the previous story through the characters and their learned knowledge from that film. And the John Cavacas score rocks and is worth picking up on CD if you don’t have it as it’s one of the few Hammer scores which has been released on CD still at this point. This was the last time that Christopher Lee played Dracula for Hammer but, not the last time Peter Cushing would play one of the Van Helsing clan... which would create continuity problems galore, as I’ll point out when I go on to watch that Hammer/Shaw Brothers collaboration as my next, final Hammer Dracula film review.

DarkFest 7

Dark Climes and
Tripped Up Climbs

DarkFest 7
Organised by Allan and Yanni Bryce

It was February 2021. I was just under a year into what would be two and a half years of working from home due to the Covid 19 pandemic. It was a surreal (but strangely much missed) time and I had two things which reignited my appreciation of the art of film and reminded me that, sometimes, life could be worth living, for a bit, during those unusual times. One of those things was Severin’s Al Adamson box set (written up with links to all the reviews here) and the other started with a friend telling me that the great Caroline Munro was on a nice cover painting in a magazine in my local W H Smith. Now, after washing my hands for the recommended 20 seconds, I rushed to my local news vendor - masked up and keeping my distance from everybody - and purchased said magazine, The Dark Side.

And I rekindled my declining relationship with magazines again. Not because I’d ever not liked them but, I just didn’t realise people were still doing these things in print (thankfully... I hate digital editions of anything and just don't bother reading them). And the magazine was great and I haven’t stopped buying both that and its sister magazine Infinity since. The editorials by Allan Bryce are so fun to read and I really appreciate these gems of printed materials as I grab them each month. But then I discovered that, as an annual event, the Bryce’s organised a thing called DarkFest at the Genesis cinema (around the Whitechapel area of London). I’d not been tempted before now but the quality of the guests this year such as Caroline Munro, Linzi Drew, Valerie Leon and Eileen Daly plus loads of good stalls and six mostly cool horror movies taking place over 12 hours (from 11am to 11pm), all for the ‘great value for money’ sum of £40, seemed too good to resist this year. So me and a friend braved the rain and went to check it out.

Now, I’ve often said in my years of going to FrightFest that the horror film fan community are among the friendliest in the world and this was exactly the case here. Which is very fortunate actually as the crowding of all those stalls and wonderful people somewhat resembled the ‘stateroom scene’ from the Marx Brothers movie A Night At The Opera (if you know, you know) and moving around the event was sluggish at best. I got the wonderful Ms. Munro to sign my Japanese At The Earth’s Core souvenir programme, had a word with Linzi Drew and also got a beautiful lingerie calendar signed by the charming Mrs. Moon, the organiser of the Misty Moon events. Alas, Eileen Daly left before I could get near to her which was a shame... this is the third time I’ve tried to see her and fate always conspires to keep me away.

Now I was worried about how my friend would take the first movie shown, Don’t Open ‘Til Christmas (reviewed by me here) since it’s... well it’s badly acted, badly written and badly directed. It’s also very fun but, luckily, my friend said it was her favourite film of the day. I then left her to the next movie so I could get a chance to visit some of the stalls and empty out my wallet (and also grab a hot dog) but when I rejoined her 20 minutes before the end of Scars Of Dracula (reviewed by me here only last week) I managed to trip over the stairs in the cinema in the dark and hugely exacerbated the pain in my knees after a perilous falling accident in 2019. As I type these words I am in total agony and can barely walk... which is not the best state to be in.

We then watched what is probably my favourite vampire movie of all time... the low budget, highly creative Razor Blade Smile starring Eileen Daly as Lilith Silver and directed by Jake West. It’s been restored and will be getting a proper Blu Ray release soon so I won’t do a full review yet but, if you’ve never seen this film, with Daly playing a Jerry Cornelius-like vampire turned assassin caught up in a deadly conspiracy... you’re missing out. It’s a wonderful film and deserves to be properly re-evaluated by modern audiences. I could never figure out why there wasn’t a string of Lilith Silver movies made after this one.

At this point I had a brief but nice chat with Rick Melton, the erotic artist whose magazine cover had caught my interest in the first place. He was a really nice chap and I am looking forward to a new book coming out, according to him, in about ten months time. Then, after this year’s ‘Slaughter Awards’, we saw one of Lucio Fulci’s best horror films, The Beyond (reviewed by me here). This was good fun but, surprisingly, had loads of walkouts. I’m guessing the audience was already very familiar with this movie and were somewhat jaded and needed refreshments by this point.

After that we were faced with two more films... Friday The 13th, which held no interest and, the mystery film which I’d correctly guessed was a screening of a new transfer of Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter. Alas, the screenings were already running around 20 minutes late and we knew that if we stayed past the advertised time we would both have trouble catching our last trains home from Liverpool Street station so, at this point, we decided to call it a day. Alas, this was when I’d found that Eileen Daly had just flown the coop and all the stalls were beginning to get packed away already.

So, apart from the overcrowding at DarkFest 7 (but hey, at least everybody was friendly) and the late running schedule, I had a blast at this year’s event and something tells me that my friend (who preferred it even to FrightFest) and I will be back again around this time next year for DarkFest 8, which I assume will happen. I’ll report back on that one as the opportunity arises.

The Bourne Identity

Bourne Again

The Bourne Identity
USA/Germany/Czech Republic 2002
Directed by Doug Liman
Universal Films Blu Ray Zone B

What a great film. 

It’s been around 15 years since I last revisited this version of The Bourne Identity but I remember still the very first time I saw it at my local multiplex back in September 2002. I wasn’t expecting much from the film and I hadn’t at that time read Robert Ludlum’s original novel (which probably helps... it’s a loose adaptation at best) and I also hadn’t seen the original version starring Richard Chamberlain in the title role. This one, co-produced by Ludlum himself, who died before post-production was finished, was something Liman had wanted to make and I think Ludlum was not happy with the Chamberlain version. Whether he would have been happy with this version is anybody’s guess but... I’m pretty sure he would have hated the sequels, which have almost nothing in common with the novels on which they purport to be based.

All I can say is, I remember being overwhelmed when, quite against my expectations, this first movie in the series turned out to be incredibly good cinema. The hand held responsive camera work, the standout performances by Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, Clive Owen and Julia Stiles, plus the somewhat aggressive editing style which, no matter how choppy it gets in certain sequences, doesn’t confuse the viewer as much as the sequels would later (I’ll get into that when I review those films for this blog... coming soon)... they all add up to a pacey film which doesn’t let huge action sequences get in the way of both the story and some incredibly good character work from the performers.

One reservation I had is Matt Damon. He’s always been a great actor but he seems somewhat too young for the role. Or rather, he actually isn’t too young for the part... he just looks it. However, he does such a credible job and handles himself so well during the fight scenes (some of which were apparently done without a stuntman), that he totally manages to sell the movie. And, of course, the always marvellous Franka Potente, star of the phenomenal Run Lola Run, is so much more an interesting version of the character she plays and seems to bring more depth to the role than what a cookie cutter American actress might have done with it, it seems to me.

About that camerawork, some of it was handled by Liman himself (and I really wish this director had stayed around for the sequels) and some of it was by Oliver Wood, who was deliberately left out of some of the rehearsals so he could actually respond with the camera to where the action goes, rather than know where he was going. It’s an interesting idea and, since the camera is sometimes late to make a movement because of this, it does give the film a certain feeling which puts the audience right there in the events, as if they were responding to what was going on around them, in a different way to how some other films manage it.

The way the story is handled is great too... although it could have done with more of Marie (Franka Potente) in it, in terms of the importance of her character in the books. We start off totally in the dark as to who or what Bourne is, just like the character... although Liman does put in the odd scene or two early on of the CIA who are trying to track and kill their own operative, not knowing why Bourne has ‘gone rogue’. In the early appearances of the CIA manhunt scenes, they’re literally there to keep the audience warm as to the fact that something ‘fighty-punchy’ will eventually happen. Another scene early on where Bourne casually takes down two policeman, not knowing how he’s doing it, serves as a similar reminder to the audience that the slower pacing (for an American film) is going to get more action oriented as the movie progresses.

Lastly, I should probably mention John Powell’s absolutely brilliant score. The main title music and it’s use in the film plus other wonderful themes including the Treadstone theme (sadly and mysteriously absent from Powell’s own revisiting of the score in a composer’s cut, decades later) are absolutely top notch and the modern, almost techno style orchestrations really help carry the load, especially the strings section going into overdrive with repeat motifs to build suspense in certain scenes. Actually, that’s the one constant in four of the five films starring Matt Damon’s interpretation of Jason Bourne (both the character and actor are absent for the fourth off the five movies which, ironically, seems to me to be the best of the sequels)... no matter what you may think of those sequels, Powell’s scores for these are a powerhouse and also a great listen away from the images they were written to accompany. I’ve had the CDs for these movies on many spins over the years.

And that’s my take on this version of The Bourne Identity (and I will get around to the Chamberlain version, which I bought over twelve years ago but still haven’t reached that point where I need to watch it as yet). Despite the seeming age of the lead actor, this is truly one of the great modern spy films... normally I’d stick to the sixties classics in terms of that genre but, yeah, this one is a great movie and it certainly deserved the success it got. If you’ve never seen this one, seek it out and give it a go.

Scars Of Dracula

 

Bloody Mess

Scars Of Dracula
UK 1970
Directed by Roy Ward Baker  
Hammer/Studio Canal
Blu Ray Zone B

Wow. I wish I could say this Dracula film was as bad as I remember but, truth be told, while I remember thinking how bad it was last time I watched it, I didn’t remember any of the plot details at all. I think it’s so bad I just blanked them out of my mind somehow. Many people believe this is where the decline of the Hammer Dracula films started, with each one being steadily worse as they were released onto an unsuspecting public. Frankly, I think those people are crazy, considering the next film in the series was easily the jewel in Hammer’s Dracula crown and was, itself, followed by two very interesting Dracula movies too.

Now, you could be forgiven for looking at various elements of Scars Of Dracula on paper and thinking, wow, this one looks really interesting and, yeah, it does look interesting and I will go on to call out those points of interest in a minute. Also, it has a very strong cast with Christopher Lee reprising his signature role and with Jenny Hanley as the ‘final girl’ he has to bite. Playing her boyfriend and main minder is a young Dennis Waterman, a role many have said was miscast but, honestly, I think he does just as good a job with his lines and actions as any of the other actors in the cast and he’s certainly not why the film fails to engage. We also have the great Patrick Troughton playing Dracula’s human slave in this one... a part which I still think is beneath him but he does a good turn here. And, of course, Hammer regular Michael Ripper turns up in his third consecutive Dracula movie, with a much more expanded role than he usually gets, I would say.

So it’s still a great surprise, considering all the things it’s got going for it, that it’s a dull as ditchwater, almost plotless affair which even the impeccable acting and James Bernard’s score cannot rescue. The storyline just involves Hanley and Waterman ending up in Castle Dracula looking for his lost brother and bringing on various vampire troubles for themselves. Everything leading up to their confrontations with Dracula and his helper seem to be just so much terrible story padding and, none of it really works. There are though, as I said, a few points of interest but lets get the elephant in the room out of the way first...

The film starts off with Dracula reviving, from powdered blood on his cloak, by a very fake looking (and much used throughout the course of the movie) vampire bat flying over it and dropping fresh blood onto the ‘Dracula residue’. Yes, Dracula is brought back to life by a complete lack of imagination leading into his demise in the previous film, Taste The Blood Of Dracula (reviewed by me here) being played in reverse and, well, the location of his death, which took place in a cathedral of sorts if memory serves, has somehow been relocated to Castle Dracula... don’t ask me how. Since this film was released the same year as the previous entry, they must have thought audiences have a really short memory.

There’s an interesting scene, probably not the first movie to deal with this and the goriness is mostly kept below shot, where Patrick Troughton is seen clearing up after his master’s latest blood feast by sawing up a young lady’s body for easy burial. This was a nice touch and certainly showed something the producers may not have gotten away with in an earlier entry in the franchise (although I'm sure their Frankenstein films must contain something similar).

Another point of interest is the scene where Dracula, who is mostly played more like an English gentleman in this by Lee (probably his most interesting stab at the role, in which he brings a certain parallel humanity to the character), scales the sheer wall of his castle in much the same way that Spider-Man might do it. Although the scene shows his progress up the wall at high speed, it’s a moment which is taken directly from Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel, albeit with Lee’s incarnation of the un-dead Count looking a lot different from the one that Stoker wrote about.

Finally, Dracula’s death in this is also quite novel... although somehow still quite dull looking in execution. Dennis Waterman pulls a bar of iron off of the top of the castle and throws it into Dracula’s torso like a spear, staking him. However, maybe in this version the stake has to be wooden to be effective because, Dracula just pulls it out again. He then raises the makeshift spear in order to do unto Waterman what has been done to him, when a stray lightning bolt from the raging storm is attracted to the stake in Dracula’s hand as it would be to a lightning rod and, before you know it, Dracula is up in flames and his burning corpse falls from the walls of the castle. So, yeah, an interesting death at least, if poorly realised when away from the page.

And that’s me really done with Scars Of Dracula now. It’s a real mess but, of course, the series would soon redeem itself, at least in my eyes, with the truly wonderful Dracula AD 1972, which I’ve already reviewed on this blog and which you can read just here.

The Devil’s Hour Series 2

Loop Dreams

The Devil’s Hour Series 2
Directed by various
UK October 2024
Five Episodes

Warning: Very light spoilers for series one.

Okay, so when I reviewed the excellent first series of The Devil’s Hour (right here) I rightly praised it but was forced to conclude that it’s a bit of a one trick pony in terms of any future iterations. But, just to prove me wrong (and they really did), here comes Series Two. I wasn’t expecting much from it after the conclusion of the first series but, I certainly got more than enough here to keep me happy. This second season is easily the equal of the first... although it’s one episode shorter than the 2022 season.

One thing which I’m very happy about is that, after hearing a short interview with the main co-star Peter Capaldi (who plays the serial killer but on the side of righteousness, as far as we know) is that the story arc obviously has a very clear beginning, middle and end because the second and third seasons have been shot back to back and the third series will definitely be the final one (although I suspect it won’t actually get a release until October 2025 or 2026).

All the cast return here, including Capaldi as Gideon, the always brilliant Jessica Raine as Lucy (in at least two different iterations of her character and their respective occupations), Nikesh Patel as Ravi (who is a detective in both of his ‘versions’, so to speak), Benjamin Chivers as Isaac and Meera Syal as Isaac’s psychiatrist. They’re all absolutely fantastic in this, as are all their co-stars.

This one starts off with the Detective version of Lucy we were introduced to right at the end of the last series... we see her life post-Gideon and, I think (it gets confusing at first), we find that the future version of her character is the one who is talking to the ‘far future’ version of Gideon in this particular multiversal loop, which we saw towards the end of the last season. It all points to this second version of Lucy we know as living a life taking place before the main Lucy of last season... because when she dies, Gideon has her blessing to ‘wake her up’ in the next life (if I’ve got this correctly), which is what the first series was all about, it turns out.

The show continues after this following both Detective Lucy and the later (or previous, depending on your point of view) iteration of Lucy after the events of the first six episodes, crosscutting between the two and also the various versions of the other actors’ characters in their respective versions of their reality. Where this one gets interesting is that Gideon seems to be building, possibly by accident, a network of people who seem to be ‘awoken’ (sometimes tragically so) to their plight in the universe. This could possibly be a small group utilised in future loops of themselves, I suspect.

So the focus on this one is the explosion in the toy shop which kills so many children... primarily to find the identity of the bomber in the yellow hoodie. Now, we’ve not been shown his/her face as yet but it kind of seems obvious to me just who this person must be and, maybe it’s a bit obvious from the start (although I’m still hoping series three will be able to surprise me on that score... fingers crossed).
 
A couple of things of note though... they’re still hiding people in the background of shots on occasion. There’s a brilliant moment in the early stages of the second episode here where Lucy and Isaac are with their psychiatrist and, in one long shot only, another version of Isaac peeking out at them from behind the curtains is clearly visible in a ‘blink and you’ll miss him’ appearance. And it’s not just things like this which keep me watching because the show is just so gripping on its own but, heck, this is pretty good icing on the cake as far as I’m concerned.

Two minor gripes though... and they really are minor.

We still don’t know why the show is called The Devil’s Hour. The waking up at 3.33am is still a feature for at least one of the characters but there’s no significance attached to this at any point, it seems to me.

Secondly, when one of the Lucy characters is going through a lot of pregnancy test kits over a ‘time passing’ montage, we see her throwing each dud into her bathroom bin as each negative result comes to light. Alas, the dud kits are piling up on top of each other in the bin to suggest the passage of time but... yeah, honestly that’s ridiculous. I mean, I know, visual shorthand and all that but are they really expecting us to believe that this woman doesn’t ever empty her bin over a number of months? Or even let other rubbish pile up on top of it?

Other than that though... I was gripped and thrilled and, asides from feeling smug at least about the identity of the yellow jacketed bomber (to an extent), The Devil’s Hour continues to surprise me, certainly with the twists the story takes but, not least of all in that it actually manages to hold its own with the previous series. I’m absolutely, once again, flagging this show up as one to watch and... I just hope there’s a Blu Ray version coming up at some point down the line.*

*Got sick of waiting to show this one to my folks so I just ordered a ‘Korean Blu Ray’ of the first two.

Gladiator II

Maximus Carnage

Gladiator II
aka GladIIator
Directed by Ridley Scott
UK/USA 2024
Paramount Pictures
UK Cinema Release Print.

Warning: Very small spoilers.

I really wasn’t expecting much from Gladiator II (or GLADIIATOR, as the actual film print reads) as I didn’t think too much of the first movie when it hit cinemas. For me, the first Gladiator had some nicely staged battles and a fantastic score by Hans Zimmer. Those were the two standouts for me... other than that, it was an okay movie, not a great one. So I really wasn’t expecting much from this sequel which, honestly... did anyone want a sequel to a movie where the title character, Maximus, died at the end... thus going a good way to negating any attempt at a possible follow on.

Well, I have to say that, although Gladiator II is a completely unnecessary follow up, I actually preferred it a lot more to the first film. I mean, it’s still not a great film but, yeah, it kept me entertained for much longer and, despite running for two and a half hours, it didn’t really drag either (I thought the first one did drag, somewhat, it has to be said).

This one is, in terms of story content, a kind of toned down remake of the first movie where, this time, it’s Lucius, the grown up son of Maximus, played here by Paul Mescal, who is captured after his wife is killed by his mother’s new husband. Said husband, Marcus Acacius, is played by Pedro Pascal but he’s not really a villain and he plays the character sympathetically. Lucius goes about conquering the new games devised by two Caligula-like ruling emperors (who are essentially the main villains, for a bit), with the intention of taking his revenge on Acacius but there’s more to it than that. Denzel Washington plays the guy in charge of the Gladiatorial school, so to speak and he wants to use Lucius to rise up for his own political ends. Washington is amazing in this, as is the returning Connie Nielson as Lucilla.

There are political conspiracies paced with, frankly, somewhat over the top Colosseum games which include... I dunno... some kind of genetically altered killer ape/dog creatures and a flooded arena filled with sharks. Um, I assume there are going to be one or two accusations levelled at director Ridley Scott that he’s jumped the shark with this movie, for sure. That being said, although the action sequences are maybe not quite as consistently engaging as the first film, they still work very well and the quieter scenes where violence suddenly intrudes into the narrative have positively Japanese levels of arterial spray (well, more like arterial floods) and certainly liven up those moments considerably.

But, I don’t really care, as escapist fantasy it’s fast moving and, well it’s Ridley Scott so, whatever you may think of his movies post-1982 (after his three masterworks The Duellists, A L I E N and Blade Runner, reviewed here), you know that the cinematography is going to be nothing less than stunning so, yeah, no surprises there (and he seems to be using the different qualities of image tone between the two films for the flashbacks as the very thing which makes them feel like a window to the past). What did surprise me was the last combat scene in the film as I didn’t expect to see a certain character turning out to be the real villian until about half an hour before the end (I thought he would become an ally)

And as an added bonus, we get a score by one of Zimmer’s stable, the great Harry Gregson-Williams, who of course gave us the incredible score to Wonder Woman. And yes, Gladiator II is on CD and this was the real motivating factor that dragged me into cinemas to see (well, hear) this thing and, on the music front, I was not disappointed. I can’t wait to hear this thing as a stand alone listen, for sure. It does have a fair few nods to Zimmer’s leitmotif on occasion (although not the Holst derivative, from what I could hear) but it does its own thing and has some nice orchestration.

So yeah, I think that’s me done with Gladiator II other than to acknowledge that Derek Jacobi’s returning character feels somewhat wasted, Connie Nielson is the absolute glue which holds the film (and the story, to an extent) together and I didn’t even mind the tongue-in-cheek ‘I Am Spartacus’ moment after the Coliseum sea battle scene. Definitely worth seeing this one at a cinema if you can spare the time.

The Black Widow

Along Came
A Spider Woman

The Black Widow
USA 1947
Directed by
Spencer Gordon Bennet & Fred C. Brannon
Republic Pictures

I really love the old cinema serials... starting right back from my passion for Feuillade’s silent French serials and with more than much love for the American talkie serials, which met their ultimate demise at some point in the 1950s. I mean Universal, Republic, Columbia... they all had their own, distinct style of serial making and I could watch these things forever. So it brings me no joy to say that The Black Widow, a theatrical serial I wanted to see so much I had to look for it as a non-commercial release (if you catch my drift), is probably my least favourite of them all... although it’s still quite watchable and has at least a little entertainment value for sure.

I don’t know what went wrong with this one though. It’s got all the ingredients of being another fast and furious serial from Republic which, if you know their serials, means the odd car chase and lots of fist fights where everything at a location or interior set which isn’t nailed down will, within the course of a few minutes, get thrown or used as a breakable weapon by protagonists and antagonists alike. And The Black Widow looked like a real good one... not only that but it’s directed by the team of Spencer Gordon Bennet & Fred C. Brannon, who both had a very good track record with directing exciting serials. And it’s even got special effects by Howard and Theodore Lydecker, who did absolutely fantastic work in many a Republic serial. Think of the cave melting effects of the decimator in King Of The Rocket Men (a serial I hope to revisit in a high definition restoration very soon) or their work on getting the title characters in that and The Adventures Of Captain Marvel (reviewed here) to fly to their destinations in various shots.

Okay, so this one is about Sombra, aka The Black Widow... a fortune teller who is a female spy working in the USA, under the instructions of her father who will sometimes teleport to her headquarters in a puff of smoke, instructing her in which secret gadgets and inventions to try and steal from the American authorities to hinder their war effort and help their own. Now it’s not really said which foreign power she’s working for but the implication is that she’s supposed to be Japanese, I think... although the ‘yellow face’ make up job is pretty unfathomable most of the time and she just seems like the US girl she is... played here by all American gal Carol Forman (who made a name for herself playing leading villainesses in similar productions and who would, of course, go on to play the lead villain, The Spider Lady, in the first Superman serial a year later).

Anyway, the big flies in her ointment here are the two main protagonists, detective fiction writer Steve Colt, played by Bruce Edwards and his ‘side kick cum damsel in distress’, lady reporter Joyce Winters, played by Virginia Lee. These two, week after week, put themselves in danger trying to thwart The Black Widow’s plans for world domination. Except, there’s no chemistry between the two at all, it seems to me and not much interaction besides the odd argument as Steve tries to stop Joyce from going along with him on dangerous missions. It just all feels kinda limp and there’s not even a hint of romantic interest suggested between the two leads either so... yeah, these two are not helping the serial much, it has to be said.

And that’s even with the inclusion of a number of neat gadgets and ideas littered throughout the ‘13 exciting chapters’ of this one. Such as the fact that Sombra can disguise herself as anyone via a mask and impersonating their speech, making for many shenanigans and plot twists reminiscent of the modern Mission Impossible films. This obviously wasn’t a new idea then, of course... Fantômas was doing the same thing back in the 1913 serial and the books which pre-date that but, this may well have been one of the earlier American examples of the ‘mask madness’ which we’re all so familiar with today... the impossibility of which is always overlooked by whichever film maker is going with it.

Other interesting novelty features for the serial are a fake looking black widow spider that pops out from a compartment in a chair and bites Sombra’s victims to death and also a drug which feigns death by slowing the victims heart so it looks like they’ve passed on. Sombra uses this heart stopping pill to escape from jail at one point. There’s even that neat trick which I’ve seen used in a couple of other serials (such as Batman in 1943) where, at the flick of a button, the fleeing enemy car changes its colour so the good guys miss it... but even that is badly done here on two occasions, where it looks nowhere near as good in this serial as I’ve seen done elsewhere... I was surprised at how this turned out for the Lydeckers, to be honest.

And, yeah... not much more for me to say in this one. It’s got the usual quota of fights and chases (none of which were that exciting here, it seemed to me) and it’s got plenty of cliffhangers where the director has to reveal a slightly different sequence of events the next chapter, to allow our hero or heroine to survive the certain death we’d witnessed the week before). So, yeah, The Black Widow is certainly still fun but, I dunno, I prefer the other 20 to 30 serials I’ve previously seen to this one so... it was okay. I’m not done with the serials though... I’ve just bought a nice Australian Blu Ray set of seven restored Republic serials, five of which I’ll be revisiting and, with the other two, I’ll be making my acquaintance with them for the first time. So there will definitely be more serial reviews coming to the blog at some point... but I will be watching them an episode a week so, there will be gaps between the reviews, for sure.

Holy Spider

Murder She Saeed

Holy Spider
Directed by Ali Abbasi
Denmark/Germany/
France/Sweden/
Jordan/Italy 2022
Mubi Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Spider spoilers within.

Well this is a stunning film. I think it may be a bit political too but I’m not the best person to pick up on stuff like that.

Holy Spider is based on a real life incident which happened in Mashhad in Iran and it starts off, for the first ten or fifteen minutes, following a sex worker who works the streets of the area to support herself and her young child when said child is asleep. We see the bruises on her naked back as she dresses up to go out in the search for clients. And we follow her on her routine as she works a couple of tricks, has a break to do some drugs and then gets on a potential client’s motorcycle as he takes her back to his home (on the regular night he knows his family stays over at his mother in law’s home). The director then pulls a ‘Marion Crane’ on the audience and this person who you thought was the lead protagonist is strangled by the guy, wrapped in a scarf and then driven and dumped some distance away. When the camera moves up and away from the killer’s speeding motorcycle, we take in a view of this beautiful city at night and the many lights make it look a little like a spider’s web, as the main title of the film appears.

Okay, so from here on in we meet the real main protagonist, a young journalist called Arezoo Rahimi, played brilliantly by Zar Amir Ebrahimi,... a character who was fired from her last job for refusing the affections of her boss. We see exactly how things are in this culture and religion right from the get go, as she is refused a room at the local hotel she has booked because of a technical error (that error being that the manager didn’t realise she was a single woman and not accompanied by a husband). She changes the man’s mind when she shows him her journalist’s ID and, suddenly the error is magically fixed. He asks her to cover her hair more with her head scarf but she refuses. And, yeah, this sets the tone for the whole film where… and it always amazes me how women in these kinds of countries tolerate this… stupid religion and beliefs are used as a way to control women and ‘keep them in their place’. It never fails to anger me.

So Arezoo has seen what a mess the police are doing of catching this ‘spider killer’ (not sure why he’s called that, it’s never really made clear other than he leaves some mark on them… something which I either misunderstood or we don’t see) and wants to break the story and catch him herself. But she faces all this discrimination because of her sex and even the local police chief just wants her to sleep with him rather than do the job. The police do not come out of this whole thing well, it has to be said and, I suspect... rightly so.

After a street walker who Arezoo was trying to help the night before becomes the killer’s umpteenth victim (with an MO so ridiculous that it’s implied the police should have been able to catch him fairly quickly), she goes undercover as bait and works the streets with a colleague watching over her, nearly getting herself killed in the process by the killer.

There’s no mystery maintained past the post credits sequence about just who the killer is either. He’s  a family man and ex-military guy Saeed, played equally skilfully by Mehdi Bajestani, who turns in a blisteringly good performance of a man a little mentally unstable but who believes himself to be doing the work of God, cleansing the streets of the immoral women who hire their bodies to a willing crowd. It’s not a one dimensional performance here… it’s not a film about too many black and white issues of morality and Bajestani gives the character a certain nuance and subtlety that serial killers in other movies often don’t receive.

And the whole film crosscuts between Arezoo and Saeed’s worlds, as we wait for their paths to intersect. And then, just when you think it’s all over and she manages to turn in the spider killer to the police, after surviving his brutal attack… the film has a fairly long end game and, it’s a little disturbing because, like I said at the start, this film is based on true events that happened in the city in the early 2000s.

Arezoo is convinced that this man’s world in the justice system is going to side with Saeed and let him ago and, to be fair, this is almost what happens. By the people in the streets, Saeed is seen as a hero for his murders of ‘corrupt women’, not a killer and, as he says himself, that his hands are clean. There are massive protests outside what passes for halls of justice in Mashhad and right until nearly the end of the picture, the director will have those not familiar with the facts guessing as to Saeed’s final fate. Spoilers here though because, I want to discuss the last scene of the movie so… look away, go somewhere else while I say…

Saeed is executed for his crimes, midst massive protest and friendly faces. At the end of the film Arezoo returns to where she came via a bus and, on that bus ride, she watches a video news item. It’s a video of Saeed’s young son demonstrating, with the aid of his even younger sister, just how his dad, ‘the hero’ would creep up on the girls and cleanse them, showing how his father might stand on their necks if they weren’t yet dead. A chip off the old block, so to speak. It’s a grim coda for a film which already is full of the terrible cultural malaise which lets these kinds of attitudes thrive. It’s a film full of equally grim moments too, such as when Saeed’s wife comes home a day early and he’s making love to her on the floor next to a rolled up carpet containing the body of his latest victim from ten minutes before… pounding into his wife as he notices the toes of the woman sticking out from the end of the carpet.

And as I said, it’s not a one dimensional movie. Nearly all of the girls working the streets are shown to be there, excepting possibly one, not by choice but by circumstance and, though they are not trafficked women, they are in this line of work due to necessity. Now I don’t believe that’s the full picture for that industry at all but the writer/director does take time to contemplate the women and show something of their circumstances in this regard. And, indeed, when one fights back and nearly escapes, one who seems to be there by choice rather than what she’s been forced to become, she comes alive again in Saeed’s head and he has to kill her again. And later on, when his defence is trying to get him off the hook, he refuses to recognise in front of the court that he is crazy… which might well have helped him escape the death sentence.

Now, as I said, the film looks absolutely spectacular. Mashhad is nothing, if not a beautiful looking city and the cinematography and different kinds of shots employed to capture it and certain details (such as a cam strapped on an actress so that her head is completely still as she rides the back of Saeed’s motorbike towards her death) are nothing short of spectacular. And it’s such a jarring clash when you think about the prevalent attitudes of the culture and religion represented by the film. In various Star Trek shows and movies they had the Prime Directive of non interference in cultures and beliefs to stop the characters acting on moral judgements and interfering with the development of the specific world they were on but, in real life it seems to me that something similar to this must be coming into play, when the outside world looks on.  

And just to drive that message home, as I finish up on the brilliance of Holy Spider (which I would whole-heartedly recommend to most people), the lead actress herself,  Zar Amir Ebrahimi, was only supposed to be the casting director. However, at the eleventh hour, the actress they had chosen dropped out as she didn’t want to run the risk of being seen on film without her head coverings. And so, Ebrahimi took the role and won the best actress Oscar at Cannes for doing so. However, here’s the thing… the film is pretty much condemned in Iran (presumably for showing the truth) and she and many of the cast and crew have had multiple death threats for their involvement with this one. All I can say, aside from noting the troublesome and obvious condemnation of a dominating religion that lets this kind of attitude survive, is you really need to take a look at Holy Spider if you want to see the women of the Iranian culture shown in a fairer and, perhaps more accurate, way.

Paddington In Peru

Dear Peru Dance

Paddington In Peru
Directed by Dougal Wilson
UK/France/Japan/USA 2024
Columbia
UK Cinema Release Print.

Paddington In Peru is the third in the staggeringly successful and popular series of films based on Michael Bond’s eponymous bear and let me say up front that, as far as I’m concerned... yes, this is perhaps ‘the least’ of the big screen Paddington adventures. And I think there are some very specific reasons for that, which I’ll probably get into in a minute but, it would also be remiss of me to not say that this is by no means a bad film. Like the previous installments it’s fun, entertaining and has a lot going on for it. It just pales slightly in comparison to those first two but, what other family films don’t these days?

The majority of the former cast are all present and correct, with people like Ben Wishaw doing the voice of Paddington, Hugh Bonneville as Mr. Brown and Julie Walters as Mrs. Bird. That being said, I did really miss one of my favourite modern British actresses, Sally Hawkins, in the role of Mrs. Brown. Alas, my understanding is that she has a medical condition which prevents her from filming overseas at the moment so... yeah, it’s a damn shame because she was my favourite thing about the Paddington movies, to be honest. Having said that though, this is not to detract from her replacement, Emily Mortimer, who steps into her shoes really well and still manages to hold the family unit together as they embark on their adventures.

And it’s a fair old romp. Olivia Colman plays the nun in Peru in charge of the Home For Retired Bears but, as she writes to Paddington, Aunt Lucy has gone missing. So Paddington and the Browns (and Mrs. Bird) all fly off to ‘Darkest Peru’, as it was always known in the books, to find her... accidentally getting involved in a quest to find the lost gold of El Dorado with ‘interested parties’ turning up and coming out of the woodwork, including the captain of a river boat they charter, played by Antonio Banderas. The game is afoot, so to speak and Paddington is off on new adventures, of course.

So, yeah, it’s all very good but I have to say, this one makes a little mistake, I think, in terms of the idea of what makes the Paddington franchise tick. It’s not, I believe, the fault of the new director, who absolutely does an excellent job here... it’s more the fault of the writing or, more specifically, the story idea. You see, Paddington is from Peru and the comedy hijinks he gets involved in are often of the fish out of water variety (or should that be bear out of forest), relying on the bear’s unfamiliarity with the trappings and rituals of British life, it seems to me. However, we don’t really have that charming part of the equation here for this one... the opening of the movie (asides from yet another flashback to Paddington’s childhood) is once again set in London but it really isn’t long before the family have upped stakes and transported themselves to Peru. Consequently, some of the comedy and, I would say, some of the wonderfully creative ideas of its cinematic forebears (pun absolutely intended) are not in abundance in this installment either. It all seems to run out of steam fairly early, once the novelty wears off.

But, honestly, it’s just a minor gripe and I still had a fairly good time with it, it has to be said. And it’s not creatively dead by a long shot. For instance, Banderas’ character speaks to his various ghostly ancestors and the way one of them suddenly appears to him as a 3D version of his painting is masterfully done. I also, truth be told, shed more than a tear at some of the more moving scenes towards the end of the movie which, it’s fair to say, is not unusual in a Paddington movie, for sure.

People who are fans of the previous movies will want to hang around for the post credits and mid-post credits sequences too, where a much loved character from the previous installment appears in two mini scenes, although the actor is only billed as the character name ‘playing himself’ in the end credits.

And that’s me done with Paddington in Peru, I think. Not the best of the series but good enough to keep me entertained and I certainly hope there will be another one in a few years time. Hopefully located firmly in the British Isles this time. If you’re a fan of the previous two then you’re certainly not going to hate it... just don’t raise your expectations too high, I would say.

Man Made Monster

The Elec-Strickfaden Man

Man Made Monster
aka The Electric Man
aka The Atomic Monster
USA 1941
Directed by George Waggner
Universal/Eureka Masters Of Cinema
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Slight spoilers.

Man Made Monster, directed by George Waggner, was adapted from a short story, The Electric Man, by Harry Essex, Sid Schwartz and Len Golos and was originally intended to be a vehicle for Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi before being put on hold for a little while. It stars Lon Chaney Jr as Dan, the titular horror and, well, it was a very important movie, despite it not being one of the best remembered horrors from Univeral at the time. Not only was it important to the careers of Chaney and director Waggner... it also was important, ultimately, to a famous comedy team of the 1940s and 1950s... I’ll get to all that in a minute.

So the film starts out with a bus crashing into an electrical pylon, killing the driver and five of the six passengers. That surviving passenger is Dan, played as I said by Lon Chaney Jr in what was pretty much his first starring role in a Universal picture, although he gets second billing behind the mad scientist character Dr. Rigas, played by Lionel Atwill. Anyway, Dan survives the crash and is invited by kindly Dr. Lawrence, played by Samuel S. Hinds (who played George Bailey’s dad in It’s A Wonderful Life, reviewed here), to stay with him at his laboratory/home for pay and food so he can study the condition that Dan seems to have. Dan had a sideshow carny act involving electricity... or rather electrickery, much like the shows I suspect Ken Strickfaden was involved with in real life, many years before. And, certainly, Stirckfaden’s marvellous machines feature prominently in this movie (you can read my review of a biography of Strickfaden and find out his importance to mad science movies everywhere here).

However, while Dr. Lawrence is away for a science conference, Rigas starts experimenting with Dan and gives him daily charges of superhuman amounts of energy. Eventually Dan becomes a shadow of his former self because he comes to depend on the electric treatment for his strength. Of course, a side effect is he can shoot electricity from his fingers and so on... so another movie which I’m sure comic book gurus Stan Lee and Steve Ditko would have seen and been influenced by back in the day. Of course, when Lawrence twigs what’s been going on, with a little insight from his daughter played by Anne Nagel and her newspaper man boyfriend Mark, played by Frank Albertson (who would go on to play... Hee Haaaw... Sam Wainwright in It’s A Wonderful Life), things turn sour and Rigas gets Dan to kill Frank and uses hypnotic powers over him, to make him confess to the killing (and forget everything else about it). But, when he is given the electric chair for his perceived crimes, of course, thing take the expected turn, leading to one of those ‘Just’ but, tragic endings that Universal did so well with some of their horror pictures.

And it’s great. A really nicely put together slice of ridiculous pseudo-scientific gobbledy gook played for drama and a cautionary tale (the Second World War had just started and Rigas wants to build an army of such electric supermen). It’s well acted by all the principal cast but the outstanding actor in the crowd is Corky... as Corky The Dog. He’s Lawrence’s canine who takes a shine to Dan and does funny, doggy things throughout the movie, including some clever tricks. He’s the one character I was most afraid might come to harm but, spoiler, he survives the movie to give a touching performance as he rests his arms and head on the lifeless body of Dan at the finale. The only problem with his performance was that you can occasionally catch him looking off screen to see what his owner wants him to do next but, this is something many porn actresses have also been caught doing on camera over the years in many productions so, I think I can cut the four legged thespian some slack here.

It’s an entertaining film and clocks in at just under an hour. It also has some nice shot compositions in it too, which is something I always find astonishing considering the 4:3 aspect ratio of these pictures. For instance, there’s a scene where Lionel Atwill is standing over Lon Chaney Jr’s body on a medical table, using his stethoscope to figure out if he’s accidentally killed him or just made him faint. A loop of wire from one of Strickfaden’s marvellous machines loops down from above into the foreground of the shot just above Chaney’s horizontal slab and, of course, Atwill is perfectly framed within the loop. Some nice noirish moments too, where the shadow of the police guard is seen only as a bold silhouette against the wall, as it approaches the lever for the electric chair. Yeah, there’s some nice stuff in the movie, for sure.

And, like I said, it’s also important. In that it was well liked enough that it gave director George Waggner and star Lon Chaney Jr their next picture together, released later that same year. That picture was, of course, The Wolf Man (reviewed by me here) and without it, the Universal werewolf movies that followed (if there had been any at all), would certainly have turned out a little differently. Would they have contributed to the later ‘monster rally’ movies and therefore, at the end of the 40s, have contributed significantly to saving the career of two comedy stars on the wane, Bud Abbot and Lou Costello, when their combined project Abbot And Costello Meet Frankenstein (which included Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster and The Wolf Man, reviewed by me here) took in big bucks at the box office? Who knows what would have happened if this director and actor hadn’t done this picture together.

Man Made Monster is part of Eureka Masters Of Cinema’s recent(ish) Blu Ray set Three Monster Tales Of Sci Fi Terror, alongside The Monolith Monsters and Monster On The Campus. It’s treated as well as all the other sets they’ve recently been releasing in a similar vein, which means it has some nice commentaries and, frankly, is about as good a transfer and print as you’re ever going to see it in. So, yeah, lovers of Universal Horror might want to check this set out and I’m very pleased to now have these wonderful films on the shelf, so to speak.

Halloween FrightFest 2024

Bull’s Eye

Halloween FrightFest 2024
ODEON Luxe 1st and 2nd November 2024

Well that rolled around quickly again... as the years frequently do when you get to my age. The Halloween edition of this year's FrightFest was held over two days again, the first day starting around 6pm and finishing just after midnight and the second starting at 11pm and finishing around the same time as the first day. So three new movies on the first day and six on the second. As usual, these were all either UK premieres or world premieres of the films in question and some of them are still waiting for distribution deals to be inked out (or whatever the digital equivalent of that is these days). And, also as usual, this is going to be a series of very short capsule reviews (not really even reviews, probably, more quick sketches) of the films in question, just to give a flavour of the tone of the festival (which I’m glad to say was, once again. all over the place... good for them). If I revisit any of these at a later date, I’ll review them properly then.


DAY ONE

Magpie
Directed by Sam Yates
UK/USA
First up was Magpie, starring Daisy Ridley (and based on her story which was written as a screenplay by her husband, Tom Bateman), Shazad Latif and the absolutely brilliant Matilda Lutz (who top-lined Revenge, reviewed here). This is a somewhat dark tale of marital erosion as Ridley plays the housewife looking after one of the kids while her writer husband takes the other kid to work, shooting a major movie. It’s pretty intense and features a lot of close ups of Ridley as we study the emotional turmoil within her (which is a good thing, she’s always worth a watch). It reminded me a just a tad of Polanski’s Repulsion, to be honest. It’s not really a horror movie, more a thriller but it’s got beautiful cinematography and is only let down a little, perhaps, by the obvious twist which I suspect most people will see coming from about a third of the way into the picture. But a pretty good movie, nonetheless. It was nice seeing Ridley and a few others in person too... almost all the screenings had cast and crew intros and Q & A sessions this year. 

Parvulos
Directed by Isaac Ezban
Mexico
Directed by Isaac Ezban, the incredible Mexican genre director behind the likes of The Incident (reviewed by me here) and The Similars, Parvulos was one of the two really stand out films of the festival this year, for me. A post-apocalyptic zombie tale about three brothers (two of them very young) trying to get food to survive after everything has ended while keeping alive two zombies in the basement, for reasons which will be made clear as you get into the narrative. Visually, the colour palette is so knocked back that most of the time it feels like you are watching a monochrome movie, apart from the odd smudge of strong colour deliberately placed here and there. As usual, Ezban pulls no punches and you won’t see every beat coming as the tale develops.  Another outstanding film from this director. 

 

Advent
aka The Krampus Calendar
Directed by Airell Anthony Hayles
UK
This movie has a similar central idea to the far superior French movie The Advent Calendar (reviewed here) and is told in a fake documentary using ‘found footage’ style. Alas, although a couple of the main performances are nice, the film seemed a little badly executed and, I dunno, just felt like it could have used a lot more money pumped into it to make the central idea work better. Kinda cheap and tacky, I thought. I hate typing that because I know these movies are hard to make and there are some nice moments but... it just didn’t work too well for me, I guess.

DAY TWO

The Bitter Taste
Directed by Guido Tölke
Germany
Well this was kinda interesting. A well made action adventure, sc-fi, horror movie that was well shot, had some great performances and went along at a fair lick. It was certainly a rich and diverse movie but, yeah, that’s a double edged sword for this production, I reckon. It felt like everything and the kitchen sink had been thrown into the film to make a very dense narrative which I feel isn’t easy to process in one go. I honestly felt that this story would have been better served as either a serialised comic or a TV mini series. I also thought the score could have been dialled down in the sound mix just a little in a couple of places. However, it was certainly an ambitious project and you have to admire a lot about the end result, even if it doesn’t all jell well in one installment.


Alien Country
Directed by Boston McConnaughey
USA
Directed by Boston McConnaughey and starring his wife Renny Grames and K.C. Clyde, this one is a comedy ‘aliens in the desert town’ movie as a bunch of people are thrown together trying to stop an alien invasion force consisting mostly of big, insect like predators. This was pretty entertaining, had some good jokes and some nice visuals. Can’t fault this one... would play well as part of an all-nighter with your mates with liberal doses of alcohol on a Saturday night.

The Draft!
aka Setan Alas!
Directed by Yusron Fuadi
Indonesia
Five students go to a remote location from which they can’t escape while they slowly get picked off by a killer. I won’t reveal too much about this because they don’t want spoilers going out ahead of its release but this didn’t quite make it for me. When I noticed a large, seeming ‘continuity error’ involving a suddenly appearing bunch of tea cups early in the picture, I got kinda interested because I knew it must be there deliberately. Unfortunately, the film tips its hand too early on in the process and, again without giving too much away, sometimes a joke can go on forever and lose its power completely. Not a good one for me.


Time Travel Is Dangerous
Directed by Chris Reading
UK
This is another one which didn’t really work for me. A ‘fun comedy’ with two leads who get next to last billing because they’re shop owners and not actresses and are essentially playing themselves (and doing a very good job of it) this one has a huge support by British comedy A listers. About two ‘retro store’ ladies who go back in time to get brand new historical artefacts to sell, it kinda falls flat and dull fairly early on, I think. I know I’m not alone in thinking (the guy sitting next to me reacted similarly) that it just went on too long and, to paraphrase him, fun should not be this much hard work. Would have made a great short film though... which apparently it was at some stage.


Catch A Killer
Directed by Teddy Grennan
USA
This was a kind of fun one for fans of American horror and also slasher movies, with lots of references which are actually built into the DNA of the thing and which an ex-police inspector uses to try and catch the killer. It’s a bit obvious (really no surprises here) but it’s a solid, consistent movie which is rather well made and lands its ending nicely. Not a bad little thriller... very entertaining.


Animale
Directed by Emma Benestan
France
Animale was the other outstanding movie of the festival. Absolutely brilliant with a knockout performance by Oulaya Amamra as Nejma, the film’s central protagonist who wants to work with bulls. Now, it was the last film of the festival and I was exhausted and sleepy but this one transported me, dream-like, to another level. I definitely need to research and pay more attention to both the lead actress and director. A real high to end this year’s festival with.

Heretic

Die Agnostic
Evaluation

Heretic
Directed by Scott Beck
and Bryan Woods
USA/Canada 2024
A24
UK Cinema Release Print.

There are a couple of things that bother me about the new movie Heretic and I’m going to mention those first to stop them getting in the way of what should be a, mostly, very positive review.

Firstly, well... regular readers will probably remember I have quite rigid ideas about what makes a horror genre movie and so... I don’t appreciate going out on Halloween night to see a preview of a new horror movie (I would be at FrightFest for the next two days so it was the only day I could fit it in) only to find out by the end that it wasn’t a horror movie at all... just a thriller (albeit a very good one).

Secondly, the title is a bit of a nonsense because a ‘heretic’ is, by dictionary definition, somebody who disagrees with beliefs that are generally accepted, in this case religion but, honestly, the beliefs of the main antagonist, played brilliantly by Hugh Grant, do not define him as a heretic because, well, I think a large amount of people on the planet would probably have come to the same conclusion about just what organised religion is from an early age. And to just underline my own conclusion of these things, which pretty much mirrors Grant’s in the movie but I won’t reveal what his ‘one true religion’ is in case it’s a spoiler... I’ll just acknowledge that, religion doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the belief in God (whatever that is for you), it’s something else very much man made... so it’s possible to believe in God without being in any way religious, I suspect.

Anyway, other than those two points... Heretic is a mostly cracking movie with, perhaps, just a little of a disappointing denouement but it was still an okay enough ending. It’s not, as I said, really a horror movie, although various genre trappings are brought into play because, right from the offset, the directors certainly seem to want you to think it is.

It opens strongly with two mormons, Sister Paxton (played by Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (played by Sophie Thatcher, who was so good as the young version of Juliette Lewis’ character in Yellowjackets) talking about an amateur porn film. Around them... and this is the best part of the film for me... is some superb typography showing the title, cast and crew etc, creeping around the edges of the frame as the two talk. They then go on with their chores which involves checking their list and going around town, knocking on the doors of people who have expressed an interest in joining their religion and trying to convert them. The last stop on their journey tonight is the house of Mr. Reed, played by Hugh Grant.

Once they’re inside his home, however, it soon becomes clear that he’s a religious scholar and that he has them there for a purpose... he’s not letting them go anytime soon. And the majority of the film is fairly slow paced but that’s okay, it’s pretty riveting dialogue and the discussions around religions and Reed’s metaphors likening the various religions as a series of boards games is all pretty great (and I seriously have to check up on the origins of Monopoly now... that’s just so wrong). As the girls are taken down a winding, conversational path, it isn’t too long before they find themselves in the first of a series of lower levels to the house, as they try and find a way out of their situation (I’m pretty sure something important about the layout of this area may have been cut which was in one of the original trailers but I think I’ll need to revisit those trailers again to make sure).

And that’s where I’m leaving the story dangling... like I said, I don’t want to get into any spoilers past what you know from the trailer. But I will say that the movie is less like the horror film it’s trying to fool the audience into thinking it is and much more like one of those small scale, two hander plays/movies such as Sleuth and Deathtrap, albeit this involves a few more characters at various stages. Now, the cinematography is great and I’ve mentioned the strong, typographically excellent opening (which feels more like something Wes Anderson might use). There are also some outstanding shots such as the way the directors play with the syntax of the visual language by, at one point, showing one of the girls running through a scale model of the house from above in a room as a short hand metaphor and, when she reaches that specific room with the model in it, the camera just pans up to show her arriving in that room.

However, the film’s power comes from a well written script and the powerful performances of the three central characters, all of whom work really well together. Especially Grant... I’ve seen him playing comic villains before such as in films like Dungeons And Dragons - Honour Among Thieves (reviewed here) but he really does have a chance here to remind the audience about just how good an actor he can be and he certainly seizes the opportunity.

Now, the ending, which I will try and discuss but not spoil, does seem to me like it’s totally not horror but, it has to be said, there is more than a hint that something supernatural does occur by the movie’s end but, it’s more of a choice on the behalf of the particular viewer, I believe... and could be interpreted a number of ways. It could be argued, for example, that a certain ‘deus ex machina’ moment in the movie is just exactly that, in the literal translation of the phrase but, I personally didn’t necessarily plump for this ‘is it or isn’t it a miracle?’ moment myself... especially considering the aftermath of the moment. But it doesn’t matter because, I’m sure some people will take certain things as a positive message about religious faith and others will, I suspect, not even realise that it’s built into the DNA of the movie as a possible ingredient.

Either way, although I felt the ending was a little lacking I certainly enjoyed the journey and, despite it not really being a horror movie, I think fans of that genre will still certainly get a kick out of Heretic. So, yeah, I’d happily recommend this one to people although, I’m not sure I’d buy it on Blu Ray because I don’t know if I could sit through it a second time. Very good movie though.