Monday, 27 January 2025

Presence



Wrapped Attention

Presence
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
USA 2024
Extension 765
UK cinema release print.


Warning: Very light suggestion of a spoiler.

I don’t know. You wait ages for a new Steven Soderbergh movie to come out and then two come along at once.

Now I find Soderbergh quite hit and miss as a director but he has done some excellent movies in the past. I was surprised, however, when I sat down in the cinema the other week, to find two back to back trailers advertising two new films directed by Soderbergh and also both written by David Koepp. Both looked, at the very least, pretty interesting. The second of the two, Black Bag, will presumably be upon me before I even know it but the first of these, Presence, was the one I was most looking forward to because it’s marketed, inevitably because of the vibe the camerawork gives off, as a horror movie.

Now Presence is not, technically,  a horror movie but it does have a strong supernatural content and although there is a certain lurking fear of the unknown as part and parcel of every shot of the picture, it’s ultimately more of a drama which happens to feature a ghost. And that ghost is… well it’s certainly someone but, for the majority of the film where the identity of said spirit is withheld, that ghost is you. The audience watching the movie. Because the Presence of the title is a point of view, roving camera representing the audience looking through the eyes of the ghost. And that’s every shot of the movie and those shots are composed of mostly long takes with lots of smooth, languorous, fluid camera movement.

The story of the film is about a family that moves into a house which, yeah, definitely has a spirit in it... lurking and waiting for this family (as it turns out, specifically this family) to buy the property and move in. The family consists of a mother, played by Lucy Liu, who has made a big mistake at work which could possibly get her in trouble. Then there’s the husband, played by Chris Sullivan, who is possibly involved with some kind of shady dealings which is hinted at (much to his regret). Then we have the two kids… the athletic, pain in the neck brother Tyler, played by Eddy Maday and his sister Chloe, played by Callina Liang, who has just lost her two friends from an unusual double drug overdose. And it’s the sister Chloe who is the main subject of the ghost’s attention, via the camera eye of the audience. Is the ghost in love with her? Is it the ghost of her dead best friend watching over her? Well, all I will say on that count is, the secret behind the death of the friend is actually very relevant to the drift of the story… just not in the way you may at first think.

And then Tyler’s new college friend, played by West Mulholland, comes into the picture and he also seems to have an interest in Chloe (much to the ghost’s outrage, expressed in one scene where he and Chloe are trying to have sex). And then there’s the character of a psychic, who eventually enters the picture once the family realise that there’s definitely something going on in the house… and she’s both the blessing and the curse of the film.

A blessing because she’s obviously there to lay a few ground rules about the nature of the ghost to the audience, so that there is a sense of understanding of what’s going on later… but also a curse because, once I’d gotten an angle on the… let’s call them temporal traits of the spirit in question… I was much less surprised by the ending. I figured the ghost could only be one person and, while I got the identity of the person slightly wrong… and only because I was expecting the writer to go the whole hog and pull off a complete ‘bootstrap paradox’ at the conclusion... I was pretty close in all the bits which are important to that ending. However, because the slight mistake I made on identity, I still got a kick out of the very last shot of the movie, where the ghost is revealed in a silver nitrate mirror, as made by the Victorians (and since it’s Soderbergh and Koepp, the other cinematic connotations of silver nitrate must also surely have been in the minds of the writer and director).

And the film is absolutely brilliant, as far as I’m concerned. My expectations were somewhat lowered by a review I’d heard and also some bad word of mouth on the film but, for me I think this is an early contender for one of the best movies of the year, to be honest. The cinematography is hypnotic and the real tension of the movie comes from various characters looking into the camera as they sense the ‘presence’ nearby. It’s nicely scored too and, due to the obvious format choices, certainly has a nice fly-on-the-wall, immersive feel to it. The actors were all great too, which helps a lot because the way they were written and performed (though I suspect there was maybe some improvisation going on too) means you really care about what happens to them (and something does happen to at least one of them, for sure).

So that’s me done with Presence and it’s a solid recommendation from me on this one. Bring on the Blu Ray.

Sunday, 26 January 2025

Sinister Serials












Killer Serials

Sinister Serials
of Boris Karloff,
Bela Lugosi and
Lon Chaney Jr

By Leonard J Kohl
Midnight Marquee Press Inc
ISBN: 9781887664318


You’ve got to hand it to Leonard J Kohl. Researching this book in the ‘VHS age’ must have been quite a challenge, certainly a little less easy than it would be these days but, this man has done as thorough a job as anyone could do and you have to admire the detective work involved in a tome of this nature.

Sinister Serials of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr pretty much does what it says on the tin, by examining the often neglected side of cinema, the serials (probably less books written about this part of the American cinematic legacy than any other aspect of the art, I suspect) and then applying it to three great actors who owe their fame to the Universal monster productions and, at least in the extent of two of these actors, who had their talent fostered by Universal, achieving mostly rewarding careers. So the book covers the serial productions of William Henry Pratt, Bela Blasko and Creighton Tull Chaney, better known as Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr.

What it doesn’t do is give much more than just a little of the personal history of each of these, instead choosing to focus just on their serial work, which is something a lot of people won’t know much about, I suspect. I didn’t realise until I read this that these three had made so few serials between them, truth be told. Karloff made twelve, Lugosi made five and Chaney Jr made seven. The book does, however, fill you in on where each actor was in his career at the time they came to make these serials. For Karloff the acting was sometimes his second job, for example... and it also looks at how Karloff and Lugosi both approached Hollywood by treading the boards on stage first. Which is interesting because it wasn’t until Lon Chaney Jr, coming out from his father’s shadow and working in films soon after his dad’s death, starred as Lennie in his well received stage production (and the subsequent movie version) of Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men, that the studios realised he could handle more interesting acting roles.

Of the three actors in question, it was Karloff who was the only one of the three to star in a few fair silent film serials before he made the transition into the talkies but many of the serials he was in didn’t survive and there is no documentation left either... but the author has tried to work out which ones he was in from evidence like a few surviving film stills. I suspect Karloff may have made more but Kohl has given his best educated guesses, so to speak... and there does seem to be some evidence to back up all of the included claims.

One particular serial in which Karloff had a minor role is certainly one which I would have loved to have seen but, alas, it is among the missing presumed destroyed list (the silver nitrate stock possibly melted down to extract the silver). I found it most interesting that he was included in an American chapter play remake of Louis Feuillade’s 1913 film serial adaptation of Fantômas. I had no idea the Americans were making stuff like this at the time and I have to wonder if the title character has the edge to him he did in both the original novels and the French film serial.

The book only runs for six big chapters (roughly half the length of a talkie serial) but Kohl manages to say a lot within them, even going so far as to give notes on the music used (and reused) in some of them... as well as getting first hand accounts from the sons and daughters of the actors in question, not to mention the heirs of various actors and directors who used to work with them... including the likes of Ford Beebe Jr, which is a name I’m sure a lot of serial enthusiasts would have time for. I also now know why there’s no first serial before Lugosi’s star turn in The Return Of Chandu... it was a sequel to a movie in which Lugosi played a different role entirely, it turns out.

And I think I’ve said most of what needs to be said here. Sinister Serials of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr is a fun tome and loving homage to the serial phenomenom itself, not to mention the three ‘horror’ personalities of the title. A well researched and enlightening book which every fan of the format will likely embrace. So if you’re a lover of such serials as The Hope Diamond Mystery, King Of The Kongo (technically the first talking serial), Shadow Over Chinatown, SOS Coastguard, The Phantom Creeps, The Three Musketeers (reviewed by me here) and Undersea Kingdom, then I reckon you will want to dip in between the covers of this particular tome sometime soon.

Saturday, 25 January 2025

Fisherman’s Friends 1 & 2












Shanties Inferno

Fisherman’s Friends
UK 2019
Directed by Chris Foggin
Fred Films Blu Ray Zone B

and

Fisherman’s Friends 2 -
One And All

UK 2022
Directed by Meg Leonard & Nick Moorcroft
Fred Films Blu Ray Zone B


These two films were Christmas presents for my dad but I was quite interested in seeing them for myself, as I like this low budget kind of British humour film. It’s based on the story of the real group of Sea Shanty singing fishermen, known as the Fisherman’s Friends, and their meteoric rise to fame. The lead singer, the grump middle-aged man known as Jim, is played by an actor I usually associate with more heroic roles, that being James Purefoy. Playing his singing dad Jago is David Hayman and another prominent band mate is Rowan, played by Sam Swainsbury.

When Danny, a record producer and promoter, played by Daniel Mays pitches up in their home town of Port Isaac in Cornwall for a friend’s stag weekend, he is egged on by his somewhat villainous boss (Noel Clarke) to sign the group, who they see singing in the harbour. Not realising he’s being wound up and also ‘talent spotting’ Jim’s daughter played by Tuppence Middleton, he does actually manage to sign them but, when he is told off by his boss and told to drop it, he realises he believes in their music and puts his job on the line to land the band their first record deal.

It hits all the usual boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy makes good and gets girl again stuff, while simultaneously hitting all the ‘band don’t want to be famous, give it a try, not so sure, oh alright then lets make an album’ marks and ultimately delivers an entertaining movie. It’s a light touch and all the main characters and their co-stars (such as Jim’s mum and grand-daughter) are all people you care about, which always helps enormously in this kind of film.

Covid and other delays to filming scuppered Fisherman’s Friends 2 - One And All for a while and I can only assuming juggling the various actors’ schedules was a nightmare and so this is probably what resulted in the absence of both Danny and Jim’s daughter for the second film (they’re on holiday in Australia for the duration and only mentioned in passing).

This second movie is not just a pale imitation of the first, surprisingly... and has a lot more drama including Jim’s prejudice towards farmers (they need a new singer in the band due to the death of a major character in the first film... a much missed character who is back as a ghost in this installment), his descent into alcoholism and a new girlfriend who has been through the whole fame and public meltdown thing that he also goes through in this story. Plus a high stakes rescue sequence and a really funny section where the band are forced to take lessons in how to be politically correct, courtesy of their record label (who promptly drop them).

It all leads to various sing songs and ‘label invasions’ (just like the first movie) before culminating in a sequence where, as in real life, the band get to support some pop singer called Beyonce at the Glastonbury Festival.

I’d have to say that, as much as I enjoyed the first one and especially the presence of May and Middleton, I actually preferred the second one a little more and I might even be coerced into watching these things again some day. Purefoy shines in them both, too. A great couple of ‘nice films’ that the British seem to have a knack for turning out... half way between drama and half way to comedy but, as always, with a real heart and soul to them. Fisherman’s Friends and Fisherman’s Friends 2 - One And All both get a recommendation from me and, if you’re in the mood for something typically English, then these are a nice way to pass the time.

Monday, 20 January 2025

Wolf Man










Daddyshack

Wolf Man
Directed by Leigh Whannell
USA 2025
Universal Pictures/Blumhouse
UK Cinema Release Print.


Wolf Man is yet another attempt to reboot one of the classic Universal horror properties of the 1930s and 40s. Something which I feel the company has been very successful with on a creative level for the last ten years or so but, alas, the box office mostly tells a different story. Now I had high hopes for this latest take on The Wolfman (the original 1941 version plus the remake reviewed by me here) because this director had made a very interesting spin on The Invisible Man not so long ago (reviewed here) but two things made me drastically lower my expectations.

Firstly, from the look of the trailer, the new wolfman really isn’t all that hairy and, yeah, he really isn’t in the film either, truth be told. Secondly, the film has been getting bad reviews so far (apart from some people I overheard leaving the cinema who absolutely loved it... it wasn’t a well attended screening but you could hear a pin drop in that room for the majority of the movie) and I wasn’t expecting too much by the time I walked down to my local Cineworld to see it. As it turns out, though, this movie had me gripped from pretty much the start. There are a few minor problems such as the pacing (which I’ll get to in a minute) but all in all I was absolutely under the spell of the film, it has to be said.

Now, it also has to be said, if you are going to go in there expecting a loving homage to the original Universal monsters movie then you are going to be somewhat let down. There are no Maria Ouspenskaya references. There are no Lawrence Talbot jokes... not even his iconic cane is in this one (even though that’s reared its silver head a few times in movies in recent years). There is one small reference to legendary Universal monster make-up man Jack Pearce, who of course did the iconic make up on the 1941 original and, possibly one other small reference to that movie which I’ll get to in a little while. So don’t go in expecting something which includes the original because, this movie isn’t it.

It is, however, well shot, beautifully framed in places, all done with practical effects other than CGI (which I honestly didn’t notice so, yeah, it looks great) and the acting is strong... although a little out of kilter...

Okay, a family consisting of Blake (played by Christopher Abbott), his wife Charlotte (played by Julia Garner) and their young daughter Ginger (played by Matilda Firth) - an obvious Ginger Snaps reference - go to clear out a shack in a remote forest location after Blake’s dad is finally, after many years, declared dead. They then confront, head on, the werewolf legend of the area (although I don’t think it’s ever once referred to as a werewolf) and they have to survive to the end of the movie if they can (it’s easy to guess who does, from not very far in).

Now, there’s all the clichés set up such as Ginger being very much a daddy’s girl, leaving the movie to bring in the idea that she bonds more with the mother during the trauma of the story... and the thing about Blake’s father giving him a very strict upbringing which he tries to never spill down onto his daughter, which gets challenged later on. The film starts with a really great, somewhat extended cold opening of the young Blake and his father confronting a creature in the woods and then jumping 30 years forward to the present, where the first twenty or so minutes sets up the stuff I’ve outlined in the sentence before. And then a curious thing happens where, much like a modern Patricia Cornwell novel, the whole rest of the movie takes place in just a small period of time amounting to hours rather than days.

So it’s all set in the night of the evening the family arrive at the father’s old house. Everything therefore feels a little compressed and a slight weakness of the film means it all feels rushed and the various, calamitous story beats and the characters’ reactions to them will almost certainly prompt an audience response of... “well that escalated quickly”. 

 The other thing which seems a little odd is Julia Garner’s performance as the mother. She’s playing the character in a very... well, muffled way. Everything is very understated and almost emotionless. It’s good though in the fact that she isn’t completely going insane, externally at least, to the events that follow and it serves the purpose of giving the ‘survival mode’ elements of the characters a certain credibility... but I think people may find it odd (even though it’s an excellent performance, just an unconventional choice).

However, the film is certainly fast and furious and has some really nice ideas. Such as the sound and vision moments from the point of view of the main werewolf character as the changes take place in his body... not being able to understand the rest of the family (nor they him) and with a wonderful visual change which, amazingly, the director was able to achieve in camera on set (the film switches seamlessly within the same shot as the camera moves to give some quite innovative visual viewpoint changes done in real time). Added to this we have some revved up sound design which really helps maintain the sense of urgency and fright in the movie and, to top it off, a very loud and cacophonous score by Benjamin Wallfisch which is absolutely terrifying in its own right and, man am I angry this thing has not been given a proper CD release (I don’t go with buying digital air so it means I won’t get to listen to it away fro the movie at any point... unless some bright spark decides to put an isolated score on the Blu Ray).

So, yeah, all I can say is, even though I’m a big admirer of the original Universal monster movies, I really loved this much different take on the idea and, if people can get over their expectations and let their guard down on that stuff, I think they will have a pretty good time of it. Oh, and that one other thing it possibly has in common with the original 1941 production? Well, despite its reliance on the full moon, the original doesn’t contain one shot of the moon in it, if memory serves and, unless I missed it somehow in this new version, this one doesn’t either (although it’s clearly on the poster so maybe I missed it)... which makes more sense since the lycanthropic state in this one is passed purely through a viral infection and not bound to changes between human and wolf like status on cycles of the moon like the original (once you’re a beast you stay a beast, in other words). But yeah, don’t take my word for it... go see Wolf Man, It needs some better word-of-mouth to combat the words of the critics, I fear.

Sunday, 19 January 2025

Mr. Ballen Presents Strange, Dark and Mysterious - The Graphic Stories










Ballentology

Mr Ballen presents
Strange, Dark and Mysterious -
The Graphic Stories

Stories by Mr. Ballen
Illustrations by Andrea Mutti
Ten Speed Press
ISBN 9781984863423


I first discovered Mr. Ballen about six months ago on YouTube. At work nowadays, my lunch hour has been filled with YouTube wonders such as the Criterion Closet, Kermode And Mayo’s Take, Eleanor Morton, The Severin Cellar and, more often than those others now... the YouTube stories of Mr. Ballen. I stumbled upon him quite by accident when I was looking for sinister, real life mysteries and found his channel, which is an off shoot of his Strange, Dark and Mysterious podcast and, I have to say, I really like the guy and the way he weaves his stories.

I know very little about him other than he’s actually an ex-Navy Seal who, after leaving the service due to some kind of undisclosed injury, got very depressed and his wife got him to seek help (this is relevant, bear with me) and he started doing his podcast, taking real life mysteries... be they twisted murder or crime stories, strange stalkers, alien beings, UFOs, monstrous creatures, ghosts, demonic possessions or various small and sometimes large scale disasters (all from real life reports) and then doing the modern equivalent of sitting around a camp fire telling stories about them. And they’re really great. Sometimes they are quite scary, they often have a twist... and the potency of that twist is often due to Mr. Ballen’s skill at dramatising the facts and knowing when and how to approach the kernel of the tale... and they’re always entertaining and, more often than not, quite haunting for a few days.

Now, he started off uploading YouTube videos of things from his podcast 4-5 times a weeks but now, a few years down the line, he only uploads once a week. Why? Because he’s become so successful and therefore a lot busier. Related to his personal history I mentioned above, he has set up the Ballen Foundation to help survivors of traumatic events and he runs Ballen Studios, which now has six successful podcasts under that banner, which has fingers in other media pies (I believe TV and film are in the works). He gets worthwhile sponsors who the man obviously believes in, often giving offers in between his stories with discounts for things like mental health care, financial advice and other worthwhile products.

And I have a lot of time for him, actually. I’d urge you to go to YouTube and type his name in and take pot luck at whatever stories come up. He’s just finished his first tour of live shows across America (fingers crossed he comes over here to London, England one day) and also recently published the subject of today’s review... Mr. Ballen Presents Strange, Dark and Mysterious - The Graphic Stories. It basically takes nine of his true stories and they’re rewritten and turned into a graphic novel (that’s a book of comic strips to the likes of people my age) and adapts them into that format.

The book has artwork by Andrea Mutti which is quite stunning and matches the story choices well. Starting off with an introduction by Ballen himself, telling how his mum used to mail him chapters cut out of Jack Reacher novels while he was in active service with the Navy Seals, which got him into appreciating the craft of storytelling. It then goes on to tell nine stories, two of which I hadn’t yet stumbled on myself (the two which involve the narrator himself more than the others do). The stories included here, if you already know them, are The Valley Of The Headless Men, Thorns, What I Saw In My Room Still Haunts Me, La Mussara, Bells Canyon, The Beast of Gévaudan, Make It Rain, The Kandahar Giant and Cat And Mouse.

Now, I was expecting the book to be a good ride but things which struck me about it was how different the graphic novel experience was to the YouTube videos I am used to watching. The writing is stripped down quite a lot from the original story versions, letting the imagery carry some of the weight but also giving more drama in shorter bursts, like a 1960s/1970s Marvel comic might have treated the same material. Which is a skill in itself and one wonders how long it took the writer to retool his storytelling abilities to fit the medium. And sometimes he does that thing (which to be fair, he sometimes does on the streaming videos themselves) where, again like an old Marvel comic, the story will start at a very dramatic moment as a cold opening and then flashback until the narrative catches back up to itself some way into the tale. So, for example, if you turn to the opening three pages of Make It Rain, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. And Mutti’s artwork as he captures the main protagonist of the story in a specific aspect is quite brilliant too.

So do I recommend the book? Yes I do. I thought it was wonderful and I hope it sells well enough that it becomes like an annual with further volumes every year. Would I recommend it as your first exposure to Mr. Ballen? Not sure... it’s a very different experience. But you can remedy that by either downloading his completely free podcast or watching, as I do every week, some of his YouTube content (right here). Whatever format he’s working in, it has to be said he’s quite brilliant and there’s obviously a lot of humour to the man as well... but I don’t want to spoil the myriad abuse of the ‘like button’ before you get a chance to experience a few of the shows for yourself. Either way, though, Mr. Ballen Presents Strange, Dark and Mysterious - The Graphic Stories gets a big ten out of ten from me and I look forward to any possible future volumes in the offing. The guy seems to be a genuinely nice person and I’ve got a lot of time for his product, for sure.

Saturday, 18 January 2025

Coherence










Schrödinger’s
Collision


Coherence
USA/UK 2013
Directed by James Ward Byrkit
101 Films


Warning: Some spoilerage... would suggest going in blind if you want to watch this.

Coherence is one of those movies I saw mentioned on my Twitter feed by someone and it looked kind of intriguing. So I thought I’d check it out and found that, yeah, this is one of those movies I wish I’d seen at the cinema. It’s great... and I’m glad I really didn’t know anything about it when I went in.

The whole film, aside from some brief outside locations scattered throughout, all takes place on one evening in one house. Eight friends played by Emily Foxler, Maury Sterling, Nicholas Brendon, Elizabeth Gracen, Lorene Scafaria, Hugo Armstrong, Alex Manugian and Lauren Maher are gathered at a dinner. It’s also the same night that a strange comet is supposed to be passing us but the brother of the character played by Hugo Armstrong, being a physicist, has told him to stay in the house and just try to contact him if anything strange should happen when the comet passes over.

Sure enough, the comet starts its voyage through the sky but even before this, things seem a little off. People’s phone screens, for example, are shattering for no apparent reasons and very soon, the house is left without power or any outside communication. And it looks like it’s the same for almost everyone, not that there are any people or cars on the streets (other than those the guests arrived in)... except for a house a few blocks over where all the lights have come on. So two of the group go out to see what’s going on. When they do, a bang is heard as someone is knocking to get into the house where the dinner party is being held. 

However, when the two return, one has sustained an injury and the other is carrying a mysterious box which they absconded with from the other house. The box has everyone’s photo in it with a number written on the back. Not only that, the injured party says he looked into the windows of the other house, which is identical to their own... and saw this dinner party. Wanting to solve the situation, one of the characters writes a note asking if they can borrow the landline from the other house but, as he finishes writing it, there’s some commotion out by the front door and when they check, the exact same note he has just written has been left outside this house.

From then on in, due to the characters not acting sensibly in any way (a much used trope of the horror genre but, in this case it’s bleeding over into a science fiction film instead), things start getting wilder and wilder and, at some point, someone realises that the various people she is with all started off in different versions of the houses... from myriad parallel dimensions.

And it’s a rich text with references to a 1923 comet in Finland (which I don’t totally trust), the Tunguska event, Schrödinger’s cat and even one of the characters playing an actor from the Roswell TV series... when he clearly didn’t in real life so... yeah, it’s a film which makes much play of the flip side of reality and versions of realities, even down to some of the stories the characters tell at the dinner party before things start getting... well... multiversal.

The film has a nice style to it, too... with very much a ‘fly on the wall’ type of hand held camera being used, almost at odds with the well lit, richly coloured widescreen frames favoured by the director. It’s also got a nice editing style where the scenes will segue by literally just cutting to a second or two of blacknesss before folding back into another conversation. And the reason for that is, I suspect, because it turns out the film was shot in only five nights and uses a lot of ‘on the spot’, improvised dialogue. Indeed, it turns out that the whole film’s dialogue was improvised by the actors who were each given personal objectives by the director, which they had to try and fulfil as they shot, scene by scene, in the order of the story itself. It says much about the skill of the actors, of course, that I didn’t realise the film was not properly scripted for dialogue and it’s this modus operandi which, naturally, serendipitously leads to the way dangling conversations are just cut short and then rejoined somewhere else... because whole chunks of 45 minute improvisations were cut if the direction the writers needed to fulfil was either not quite going where they needed it to or, indeed, were just taking too long to get there.

And bearing in mind the small, improvisational, very talky script, you have to hand it to composer Kristin Øhrn Dyrud for providing a score which, not only is often somewhat minimalistic while still able to compete easily with the dense rush of the conversation pieces... but, somehow also able to give some slow burn, unsettling moments which act almost as musical stingers to underline each minor revelation as characters discover that different layers of perceived reality are beginning to bleed into each other’s universe. Such a shame, then, that there isn’t a proper CD release of the score... just an electronic download.

So there you have it. Coherence is... well it is a somewhat intelligent movie but it’s also ferociously entertaining (not that intelligence should exclude that) and features some good, solid acting from the key performers. It also, once you start thinking back about certain things which happen or are revealed, doesn’t quite make sense unless something was already going on before the narrative even opens. I thought this one was pretty good and I shall certainly be recommending it to some of my friends at some point soon.

Monday, 13 January 2025

Häxan








Häx Med Room

Häxan
aka Häxan - Witchcraft
Through The Ages

Sweden/Denmark 1922
Directed by Benjamin Christensen
Radiance Films
Blu Ray Zone B


I was very happy to receive, this Christmas, the new Radiance Films ‘bells and whistles’ limited edition of Benjamin Christensens’ 1922 masterpiece Häxan aka Witchcraft Through The Ages (as the cut down William Burroughs narrated version is often known as). Alongside the many interesting extras and a beautiful 80 page booklet of essays on the film and its legacy, the package also includes five ways to watch the movie, with different cuts and many different scores and optional narrative choices. I chose to watch, for this review, the fully restored, tinted original version (uncut, so it’s technically a fair bit longer than the original release in Sweden and other countries, where censor cuts were originally imposed) with a score by Matti Bye (which is in itself quite an extraordinary work, it turns out, I’ve just ordered one of the last CD copies of the soundtrack I could find on the internet).

It’s been a long time since I watched a print of Häxan and, I have to say, I think I appreciated it a lot more even than the last time I saw it. The film, which has the director pictured in the opening... he also plays the devil throughout in quite a jolly manner (and even Christ, very briefly)... poses itself as a seven part essay on the history of witchcraft, with dramatisations of events (many obviously bordering on fictional) and it takes you from a quick history of how the world perceived itself from the times of Ancient Egypt and into, for the most part, the middle ages. Showing things like the witches sabbath, various potion preparations and a full on witch trial conducted by the Inquisition with accusations coerced, under torture, to name other innocents around a village until even the young lady who first brought the ‘witch’ to the attention of the church is herself accused and burned for her troubles.

Other sections look at, for example, instruments of torture and, although there are certainly horrors which are still very powerful within the film, there’s also a strong sense of tongue-in-cheek humour detectable throughout. When the narrator’s intertitles talk of one of the actresses wanting to try out the thumbscrews for herself, for instance, the director dangles the idea of the confessions he got out of her in ten minutes. Another sequence in the movie depicts the devil’s corruption of a nun and how it infects the whole monastery of nuns who are subsequently caught up in the hysteria (yeah, the director claims all of the film is derived from scholarly and historical accounts and, I’m pretty sure the incident with the nuns was based on a real life case). So, in a way, I guess that makes Häxan one of the early (if not the earliest?) nunsploitation movies.

As the film pushes its agenda with superimpositions and some genuinely wonderful (and often quite intentionally funny) special effects scenarios... some of which may make you think of the early cinema of pioneering film maker Georges Méliès... it also counterpoints the modern form of reacting to witchcraft, showing how women of today (aka 1922) may be diagnosed with hysteria. The thing is, though, when you start looking at all the things that the director/writer is showing and looking at the common agendas between, say, the monks of the Inquisition and doctors contemporary to the release of the film in their medical rooms, it becomes very clear that this film is very much about the way the female has been subjugated, controlled and disposed of in various different ways throughout history. So, the film can have its exploitation cake and eat it at the same time but it’s nonetheless, as far as I’m concerned, a feminist text first and foremost.

One of a few notable things found in the movie would be when two priests are trying to obtain a confession from a suspected witch (aka, already condemned woman) and the scenario of the woman between a kindly, coaxing monk and an angry one must honestly be one of the best depictions of the old ‘good cop/bad cop’ interrogation scene I have seen depicted on film. Another sequence of interest is the mechanical automaton, presumably clockwork, with its richly layered depiction of hell, obviously based on one of the woodcuts the director highlights a little earlier in the picture.

And that Matti Bye score is great, mixing traditional instruments with weird sonics and atonal, unsettling sounds and I really thought it was a first class accompaniment to the film. There’s even a scene, where a monk is scourging another monk, where Bye borrows a time honoured page from Bernard Herrmann’s playbook for Hitchcock’s Psycho, with slightly slower, high pitched notes mickey mousing the movements of the scourge.

All in all, then, the recent Radiance Films Blu Ray set of Häxan - Witchcraft Through The Ages is pretty spectacular and the most thorough coverage of the film I’ve seen to date. An easy recommendation from me and one which lovers of silent cinema should relish.

Sunday, 12 January 2025

Running Up That Hill - 50 Visions Of Kate Bush











Cuppy Tea And
A Book Sat
In Your Lap


Running Up That Hill -
50 Visions Of Kate Bush

by Tom Doyle
Nine Eight Books
ISBN 9781788707794


Well this was a nice surprise, spotted on a shelf at the somewhat disappointing, ‘not a patch on the old incarnation’, rebirth version of HMV at it’s old flagship location in London. I noticed this biographical work called Running Up That Hill - 50 Visions Of Kate Bush and knew it had to go on my Christmas list. I duly received said desired item from Santa’s sack and, I have to say, it’s a very well written tome with lots of good information.

I first discovered Kate Bush back in 1985. Even as a kid and into my teens I mostly only listened to instrumental music but, in the mid 1980s I also started listening to some of that ‘popular music’ too and, though I still mostly only listen to movie soundtracks these days, some of those much loved artists I latched onto never left me. So I got into Simon and Garfunkel first, then progressed onto The Beatles, Donovan, Blondie, The Who... and then I somehow heard a single from a new album, Running Up That Hill. With money from a part-time job I had through 8 years of ‘Saturday working’ my way through school and then college, I bought the album and then, over a space of a few weeks, bought the other four in her (then) back catalogue... and admittedly got pretty obsessed with her music the way a teenager can. Especially when it came to The Dreaming, which became my favourite of her albums. So, as the years have rolled by (and rolled on some more, I am now officially in my late 50s) I’ve always been there for each of her new albums (alas, I wasn’t able to procure a ticket for her concert... such a shame).

It’s nice to read a book by an interviewer who had, at one stage, a lot of access to her time over a four or five hour session at her home, augmented with other first hand and second hand commenters. Now, if you are thinking this book is going to be an exhaustive ‘making of’ tour of her music (nice as that would possibly be... or possibly not, it might get a bit plodding) then you might consider yourself out of luck. Similarly, if you think this book will bring you closer to knowing the mindset of the real Kate Bush... think again, why would it? Although I suspect it does have a fair stab at getting a closer look at her in a few places.

It does, however, give a whirlwind tour of her early life (stifling catholic school, the real learning and artistic growth to be found on the grounds of her own home) and chapters devoted to each of her albums and musical triumphs. Not to mention collected wanderings through contemporary reactions to her beautiful sonic creations and even some of her promotional appearances.

There were lots of things I didn’t know about before going past the dustcovers of this book... such as her wardrobe malfunction in front of Prince Charles and asking for an autograph on meeting the Queen... and there’s lots of fun stuff captured in here. It also charts stuff which even a casual listener would maybe pick up on after pouring over those sleeve notes and record credits as each album came out... such as when she starts to really take control and produces her own recordings and eventually builds her own studio for herself. There’s even a handy guide to the hidden KT symbol on her various album artworks.

And this is one of my shorter reviews so I’ll just say that the book is a breeze as written by Tom Doyle... he’s obviously someone who understands music but, more than that, he writes about his subject matter in a very entertaining manner. Just by the nature of the writing it’s a pacey affair, the fifty chapters giving insight and taking a common sense approach when, on occasion, it drifts into suggesting judgement calls on things observed (and heard, I guess). I don’t know if this biography is authorised by Kate herself (there are no photos in it, for example, other than the one used on the cover design) but I can’t imagine the lady herself being disagreeable to it as it’s very much a love letter to her music and personae as anything I’ve read. It’s certainly the easiest book about a musical artist I’ve personally rocketed through too so, it you are a fan or admirer of Kate Bush and want to read a joyous celebration of her career then, yeah, Running Up That Hill - 50 Visions Of Kate Bush is certainly a book I’d recommend to anyone wishing for an impression or sketch of that world, for sure. Definitely worth a read.

Saturday, 11 January 2025

Cryptic Movie Quiz 2024 Answers

 












Quizwoz 2024 - The Solution


Hi all. Thanks very much for playing this year. We have a few winners.

First up is... LEN SIMMONS from Cheshunt, who impressively got back all the correct answers to me within about four hours of this year’s quiz going up, so congratulations to him.

Also, taking a fair bit longer but getting there in the end, the collaborative pairing of ROSS JACKSON and CHRIS BURKE from Manchester, also coming up with top marks.

Here then, is how you work out the answers to get the movie titles...


THE ANSWERS

1. A place where the deities of armed conflict can go to build sandcastles.
Somewhere you can build a sandcastle is a beach. And armed conflict could be a war. Deities are Gods so... Beach Of The War Gods.

2. Two donkeys in this killer.
Another name for a donkey is an ass. Two donkeys in would be Ass Ass In so... The Assassin.

3. Taking a long and distinct period of history along for a surgical operation.
A distinct period of history could be an era. A surgical operation is often referred to as an Op. So we have Dario Argento’s awesome movie... Opera.

4. Arachnid dedicated to God.
Something dedicated to God could be said to be Holy. A spider is an arachnid. So we get the brilliant movie... Holy Spider.

5. New Musical Express but extracted from its initials.
So the New Musical Express magazine was always known by it’s initials...NME. Extract a word from those initials and you get... Enemy.

6. Assassins perilous to dark nylons everywhere.
Dark nylons are black tights. An assassin is a killer. If you are assassins going around with the intention of killing them, you must be... Black Tight Killers.

7. Kubrick’s black slabs metamorphose into frightening, imaginary creatures.
Each black slab found in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey is generally known as a monolith. Frightening, imaginary creatures are monsters. So classic Universal sci-fi/horror... The Monolith Monsters.

8. Jazz legend Fitzgerald goes to see a men’s hair stylist.
A men’s hair stylist is a barber. The jazz legend is Ella Fitzgerald so, put them together and you get... Barberella.

9. Red Cheeked, male offspring of Richard sends health care worker to the dark period following day.
Red cheeked could be Rosy. Another name for Richard is Dick. His son might be Dickson. A health care worker could be a nurse. A dark period following day is night. And so you get... Rosie Dixon Night Nurse.

10. Amorous untruths losing blood from the circulatory system.
Untruths would be lies. Amorous untruths would be love lies. if you are losing blood from your circulatory system then you are probably bleeding so... Love Lies Bleeding.

11. Whirled around like a spinning top to the left of the compass.
Left of the compass is West. Whirled around is literally whirled... so West whirled... or rather... Westworld.

12. Three kisses in King’s New England state of the US.
Stephen King usually sets his novels somewhere in the New England state of Maine. A sign for a card or letter to indicate a kiss would be an X. So three kisses would be XXX. So drop these into the word Maine and you get... MaXXXine.

13. Daniel on the bridge on the river.
That would be the Bridge On The River Kwai. Daniel can be shortened to Dan so... Kwaidan. 

14. An Englishman’s home is the fluid of his circulatory system.
The fluid in your circulatory system is blood. An Englishman’s home is his castle, or so the saying goes. So... Castle Of Blood.

Again, thanks all for playing and I’ll try and keep the tradition alive for December 2025.

Monday, 6 January 2025

The Lost Continent










Balloon Buddies

The Lost Continent
UK 1968 Directed by Michael Carreras
Shout Factory/Hammer
Blu Ray Zone A


The Lost Continent, not to be confused with the 1950s monster movie of the same name (which I rather suspect Hammer had the rights to use and remake at that time, if they wanted) is actually based on a novel by Dennis Wheatley called Uncharted Seas (I would imagine loosely, it’s not one of his I’ve read). These days and, certainly in my youth in the 1970s, Wheatley was perhaps best well known for a short string of supernatural based horror tales such as The Haunting Of Toby Jugg, The Devil Rides Out and To The Devil A Daughter (to name what are probably his three best known works) but he also wrote a load of adventure novels and mysteries over the years, which he is perhaps a little less remembered for these days (indeed, I seem to remember discovering from rummaging around second hand book stalls a couple of decades ago, that The Devil Rides Out was only the second of a string of Duke de Richleau novels, only a few of which were concerned with occult themes).

Anyway, Hammer did three adaptations of Wheatley’s works to varying success but, of the three they did, this one is probably the most interesting in terms of it being a very strange mix of elements blended together. Flashing back from a burial at sea sequence from the end of the film, the first hour of the movie, following a trippy opening credits accompanied by a completely out of place (and better for it) title song by The Peddlers, sees a group of passengers on a steam ship journey to foreign shores. As we meet the totally twisted characters who comprise crew and passengers, played by such actors as Eric Porter, Hildegard Knef, Suzanna Leigh, Nigel Stock, Jimmy Hanley, Victor Maddern and, seeing as it’s a Hammer movie, Michael Ripper... we learn various things as thier personal dramas play out, including a captain who is trying to save his career by smuggling an illegal cargo of volatile explosives (which, to paraphrase the title of an Esther Williams movie, get dangerous when wet) and ignoring a hurricane warning.

And if this wasn’t already a powder keg of a disasterous plot device, when things go awry and they all end up in that mythological area of the Sargasso Sea where old ships and seaweed float forever in uncharted waters (it’s been used as a plot device on a number of occasions, I first came across it in the Doc Savage novel The Sargasso Ogre), they are then tormented by a deadly grippy seaweed waiting to pull people to their doom, a giant octopuss, a giant crab, a giant scorpion (who, indeed, comes along to fight the giant crab) and, ultimately, two factions of people who have lived in this uncharted region for centuries as kind of ‘lost’ generations.... including a bunch of Spanish conquistadors ruled by a boy king/self proclaimed God, who feeds his enemies to the big chompy sea monster he keeps in his pit.

And yeah, it a mad mix, but somehow, when the crew team up with the tribal girl from one of the factions, played by Dana Gillespie, they manage to get free of the majority of the dangers and are ready to try and find their way back to civilisation by the end of the picture. Dana Gillespie is of special note here as she has one of the most amazing, eye catching costumes in Hammer film history, thrusting her not inconsiderable cleavage into the public eye in a way which distracts totally from the two helium balloons strapped onto her and a pair of pizza plate shoes... these being the costume accessories which allow her and the others to be able to walk on top of the seaweed without dropping below into the sea.

And it’s such a volatile mix of elements that, honestly, this is a hard film not to love. It starts off almost like a World War II drama on board the ship, where the various character back stories are trotted out... and ends in some kind of hallucinogenic trip where, in the Sargasso sections of the movie, all the shots are kind of lit or filtered so that they are almost completely made up out of dull orange and pink hues. The story, as way out as it gets, doesn’t deviate from its through line, however and, it all kind of makes sense... although some of those story elements obviously lack in realism. And all the way through we have Gerard Schurmann’s (and an uncredited Carlo Martelli’s) score trying to glue it all together in a kind of hodge podge of suitably tonally dissonant elements, as traditional orchestra pieces are mixed in with disquieting Hammond Organ, in sequences which stick out like a sore thumb but, because of the weird mix of story elements, seems almost like it’s totally appropriate to the on-screen craziness.

And, yeah, I don’t have much more to add on The Lost Continent. I think this would be up there somewhere in my top ten Hammer movies and it’s a film I tend to come back to every five or ten years. The version issued by Shout Factory on their 2020 Blu Ray release is, apparently, an extended edition which is ten minutes longer than the theatrical edition, although I believe that’s more or less the same version that’s been on home video for a while in the UK. Having said that, it does also include the shorter, theatrical cut of the film finally, if anyone wants to see what the cut down version looks like. So, yeah, I still love The Lost Continent and, at time of writing, the Shout Factory release is probably the best way to see this one.

Sunday, 5 January 2025

Terminal










End Of The Line

Terminal
Ireland/UK/Hong Kong/Hungary/USA 2018
Directed by Vaughn Stein
Arrow Films Blu Ray Zone B


Well this could have been a lot better... I’m just not sure how because it manages to press a lot of the right buttons while still seeming to be completely dull, somehow.

Terminal is a movie I saw trailered back in 2018 at my local cinema and the trailer looked pretty intriguing so... I waited and I waited and... it just didn’t arrive. Turns out... and I only just recently found this out... it only played for a limited engagement at the Prince Charles cinema in London. I don’t know why since it has lots of the kind of elements modern cinema audiences like to see, not least a star studded cast with such luminaries as Margot Robbie, Simon Pegg and Michael Myers. However, it wasn’t until I spotted it on the bargain bucket racks at Fopp for a fiver that I realised that it had ‘come and gone’, as it were.

So, I’ve remedied that situation now and, frankly, I wish I had seen it at the cinema so I would have known not to buy a copy. The problem I have with conveying just how disappointed with it I was, however, is that it’s one of those movies that has so many great things going for it and it still, somehow, manages to fail at holding the interest throughout. Trying to pin down just why that is, though, is something I can only take a less than educated guess on. Given the obvious talent in front of and behind the camera, it seems very hard to manage to make a film like this fail on some level.

Now, I’ve gone on record saying I don’t like gangster movies and it would be true to say that most of the characters that inhabit this bizarre underworld are not people I could ever sympathise with so... I dunno that could be it, I guess. That does seem too obvious an excuse though, especially since I quite like a lot of the main players performing in the film.

Okay... so let’s start with what you are going to realise as soon as you spin the film up. It’s honestly one of the most gorgeous looking films you are going to see... both in terms of the constantly contrasted, neon coloured lighting which should contradict but perpetuates the solid, film noir atmosphere from the picture. I knew I was going to be in for a good ride visually from very early on, where the director has a third of a shot on the left lit with a green alleyway and everything else black. Then a door opens on the right so that the frame is lit in the opposite third with a totally different colour with another character different to the one who was previously in the left hand third of the frame. So we have a frame split into three colours... if you count the middle, black section as a colour... and the effect is quite beautiful...

And the whole film is like this. It’s a visually rich feast for the eyes and, frankly, this in itself should be more than enough for me. Couple this with some nicely written dialogue involving some sharp and witty conversations performed by actors who really know what they are doing, well... by 20 minutes in my mind should have been well engaged with the content.

Alas, the convoluted story, while not exactly that surprising or unfathomable, doesn’t really hold the interest in its execution and, I have to wonder if this is because of some kind of pacing issue, perhaps with the way the film was edited, as to why I just wanted it to be over as quickly as possible. I mean, it’s an hour and a half movie but, honestly, it feels like three hours.

One of the problems I can put my finger on is the lack of surprise on certain of the many ‘twist reveals’ in the film. For instance, the identity of a Mr. Big villain character is so obvious that, when the person took some prosthetics and make-up off near the end, rather than be surprised I was thinking that, actually, with all the make up effects removed the actor looked less like what the actor usually looks like than when he was in disguise. So no real reveal there, then. Especially when, by the time that character reveal is seen on screen, pretty much all the other candidates viable as the identity of this key role are pretty much dead.

Similarly, when another main character is revealed to be playing... how can I put this... a dual role, it really is no surprise. There have been at least two very telling moments where this is kind of hinted at earlier in the film and the choices are... either the editing of the chronology of the movie is really bad and some stupid mistakes were made or... there’s more than one of that character, so to speak. So, yeah, no surprises there, either, I’m afraid.

What was surprising, actually, was the motivation behind the actions of this dual role, as revealed in the last twenty minutes or so of the film in a... it has to be said... thoroughly nasty revenge movie kind of denouement. The real reason for the main protagonist(s) actions throughout the film are not that easy to predict, I would have to say although, by this point in the film, it does seem to be a case of too little, too late. At least in terms of finally wringing out any kind of entertainment value from the script. It’s also, possibly, a little hard to watch for the more squeamish audience members, even though the final... shall we say ‘blow’... is actually off camera and implied.

And that’s me done with Terminal, I guess. A beautiful piece of eye candy with some cracking dialogue, smart performances and, in all honesty, not much going for it despite all of these factors. I know this is a short review but I really have nothing much more to say about this one. If you are a viewer who loves the visual aesthetics of cinema then... you probably need to check this out for just the shot design alone. I can’t say I’d recommend it to anyone else though because, somehow, it’s just plain dull and fails to hold the interest. Not one I’d happily sit through again.

Saturday, 4 January 2025

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms






Full Fathom Thrive

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
USA 1953 Directed by Eugène Lourié
Warner Brothers/HMV UK Exclusive
Blu Ray Zone B


I think I must have been four or five when I last watched The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms... which would have been a TV broadcast in the early 1970s. So it’s good to finally revisit this classic film on a nice Blu Ray edition because, frankly, I remembered absolutely nothing about it. At the time I first saw it, I certainly wouldn’t have been that aware of the pedigree of the movie. I may have associated the spectacular stop motion animation with the great Ray Harryhausen as something similar to what I might have seen in a Sinbad movie. This was only the second feature length film on which he’d worked, after his uncredited contributions to the great Mighty Joe Young. I’d certainly not yet quite heard of (I suspect) his friend on whose short story the film was cribbed as a starting point, the great writer Ray Bradbury. But I’m pretty sure I would have enjoyed it at the time, although I might well have gotten it mixed up with Gorgo in my head, to some extent... which I’ve just myself found out was directed by the same guy.

Okay, so the plot is simple... a giant dinosaur is awakened from hibernation due to a test nuclear explosion overseen by some scientists in the arctic. Two of the people who go out onto the snow to bring back some post explosion readings, see the dinosaur but, one is killed and the other injured. That other being the film’s main male protagonist, Professor Tom Nesbitt, played by Swiss actor Paul Hubschmid. Everyone thinks he’s crazy... even his friend Col. Jack Evans, played by Kenneth Tobey, the star of 1951’s sci-fi/horror classic, The Thing From Another World (reviewed by me here). However, after meeting a paleontologist played by Cecil Kellaway (who you may remember from The Mummy’s Hand, reviewed by me here) and his gorgeous assistant Lee Hunter, he finds the dinosaur in some sketches and gets corroboration from a witness who has also seen the ‘sea serpent’. Hunter is played by Paula Raymond, who eventually ended up in Al Adamson’s movies Blood Of Dracula’s Castle (reviewed here) and Five Bloody Graves (reviewed here)... not to mention playing Margot Lane in an unsuccessful 1954 TV pilot of The Shadow.

Eventually, the creature makes its way to New York but the army have trouble dealing with it because, in a detail which is not usual with these kinds of movies (at least it seems that way to me), exposure to the blood and general vicinity of the monster leads to catching a debilitating virus. Luckily, Nesbitt is a nuclear physicist and suggests shooting the creature with a radioactive isotope into an open wound caused by a bazooka earlier in the film. I’m not very scientific myself but I can only assume this is a good cure for destroying both the creature and the virus... which is what they eventually do, killing the creature as it demolishes a rollercoaster in Long Island, standing in for Coney Island.

So yeah, simple plot but an entertaining film... if not one you have to keep your brain turned on for. Other actors of note in the film are the wonderful King Vidor from such movies as Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (reviewed here) and Singin’ In The Rain (turning up as the psychiatrist asked to diagnose Nesbitt after his crazy dinosaur sighting) and the youngish, unknown actor portraying the army sharpshooter who is none other than the legendary Lee Van Cleef, who would go on to ‘appear’ in such westerns as High Noon (reviewed here) before finding his star in a variety of classic spaghetti westerns (For A Few Dollars More, The Big Gundown, Days Of Anger and The Good, The Bad And The Ugly... among many such oaters) and, of course, in his wonderful turn in John Carpenter’s Escape From New York.

And while the film is simple, it does have some nice touches to it, such as a wonderful shot of a whirlpool on which the title card is superimposed and, some pretty good and thoughtful animation by Harryhausen of the titular beast, it has to be said. Okay, so maybe on occasion the lines where the live action footage is matched up to the stop motion animation footage can be a little blurry at times but, it’s mostly pretty good stuff with a lot of attention to detail, I would say. I mentioned the inclusion of Kenneth Tobey from The Thing From Another World in the cast but, it’s interesting to note that when they first bring in Nesbitt to the arctic camp infirmary, they are reusing a set from that film. 

And like I said, the movie has a few things which you wouldn’t expect from a relatively formulaic monster movie, such as the inclusion of a virus subplot... not explored in detail but it’s certainly there and relevant to the plot mechanics, for sure. But another unusual thing it does is keep up the bluff of people not believing various eye witness reports (including that of Nesbitt) for a good deal of the way through the movie, focussing on the professor going to great lengths to get people to believe him, with odd punctuations of the dinosaur attacking more people who won’t be believed until the dinosaur finally pitches up in New York city.

One last thing though. If you are a lover of 1930s Hollywood Screwball comedies (and frankly, why wouldn’t you be?), you might want to take note that the big fake, prop dinosaur skeleton seen in Cecil Kellaway’s work area is actually the same model used in the truly great 1938 Katherine Hepburn/Cary Grant movie Bringing Up Baby. So, yeah, now you know... a good prop not wasted.

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
was made in response to the massive success of a re-release of the 1933 version of King Kong (reviewed here) from the year before (that must have been the slightly censored version of the film) and this movie was also a runaway success at the box office. So much so that Toho studios in Japan turned their gaze westward to come up with their own beast, which would of course materialise the very next year in the form of Godzilla (which I reviewed here). That being said, although the film is vastly entertaining and probably better written than many of the other 1950s behemoth movies, this isn’t up near the top of them for me. I prefer a whole host of others before I get to this one but, regardless, I would still recommend it to anyone who likes their giant monster movies and it would certainly be a great one to include in a marathon viewing session of such creature features for sure. Worth having a look at if you’ve not seen this one before.

Friday, 3 January 2025

Nosferatu (2024)









Nos Quite Feratu

Nosferatu (2024)
Directed by Robert Eggers
UK/USA/Hungary 2024
Focus Features
UK Cinema Release Print.


Wow, okay then. Robert Eggers’ new remake of Nosferatu is actually a pretty good movie. Alas, it’s doesn’t quite fall far into the great category for me due to one specific creative decision but, yeah, it’s a wonderful study in ‘gothic horror’ in all senses and people who are drawn to that certain kind of atmosphere should find much to enjoy in it. Alas, it falls just a little short of the first of the many versions of Nosferatu, specifically the 1922 W. F. Murnau film Nosferatu - A Symphony Of Horror but, as a powerful and somewhat feral piece of modern cinema, I think it’s nothing short of spectacular.

Now I’ll mention this in my reviews of both the original and other remakes/influenced works later on at this blog (hopefully this year... I’ve been post-Christmas sales shopping so I can revisit some of the key works) but, a quick and dirty history of the story behind the original goes something like this. Murnau wanted to make an adaptation of Dracula and Bram Stoker’s widow was against it. So he went and adapted the story anyway, changing all of the names and locations and still, I suspect, basing a lot of it on Stoker’s stage adaptation of his own work. When the film was finished and released, Stoker’s widow sued and a court ordered that all prints of the film be destroyed. However, at least one print must have escaped this fate otherwise we wouldn’t still know of this celebrated film now and the various works influenced by it wouldn’t obviously exist either.

This new version stars Nicholas Hoult as Thomas, the Jonathan Harker substitute for the story. Now, I’m not the biggest fan of Hoult, to be sure but, the kind of timidity in which he infuses most of the roles I’ve seen him in is certainly a good bit of casting because in the silent version he was a bit of a pasty, overacting milquetoast and so Hoult is able to do an incredible job here. Lily-Rose Depp (daughter of Johnny) plays his wife Ellen (the equivalent of Mina Harker in the book) and she is a very powerful force in the movie... although, is it me or is there a trend in actresses this last year or so to try and outdo Isabelle Adjani's performance in Zuawski's Possession (reviewed by me here)? However, she's almost, I would say, more powerful than Bill Skarsgård, who gives an absolutely amazing performance as Count Orlock, the Nosferatu of the title... I’ll come back to him though because, as good as he is, he’s also the problem here to some small degree.

Backing up these actors are Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney and the always brilliant Willem Dafoe (playing a wonderfully enthusiastic version of the Van Helsing equivalent character). The film has a somewhat haunting atmosphere with some beautiful framing (check out the last shot of the film with Dafoe’s head highlighted in the mirror by the side of him) and some very pacey editing which, combined with the excellent sound design and a wonderful score by Robin Carolan, really gives a kind of adrenalin rush to the precedings, for sure.

I find Egger’s cinema a bit hit and miss but this is certainly my second favourite of his films (trailing slightly behind The VVitch, reviewed by me here). This is almost, as I said, a truly great movie but it doesn’t quite make it. Or rather, it is a great movie but it’s not the best adaptation in terms of visual interpretation and, okay, no holding it off any longer, this is where I get to what is, for me, the bloody, risen from the grave, elephant in the room...

The problem with doing a movie based on Nosferatu is... you really should keep the iconic look of the central monster. I mean, that original creature make-up has had a heavy influence on countless visual works based on vampire lore, just think of things like the TV mini-series of ‘Salem’s Lot (reviewed by me here) or the fairly recent film The Last Voyage Of The Demeter (reviewed by me here). The bald head and the double pronged, exaggerated incisors coming down from the top of the mouth but much closer together than in a traditional vampire story make the Nosferatu vampire instantly recognisable. However, although Skarsgård absolutely nails the ferocity and power of the creature here, the filmmakers have chosen to give him a big moustache, a bit more hair on his bonce and completely taken away the double prongs protuding from below his upper lip.

In short, they’ve completely changed the look. Now, I know the look they’ve gone for here is way closer to the original Dracula as described by Bram Stoker in his original novel (so that’s possibly a mitigating factor here because it’s rare anyone even comes close) but it’s a huge loss to this particular film, I reckon.

Now, the film-makers have done their best to hide their creature behind shadow for about three quarters of the movie and kept him, more or less, in silhouette throughout and, to be fair to them, that obscured vision of the creature does at least invoke the original creature design in memory. Alas, it only helps to increase the disappointment when you get a clear look at the creature later and realise that they’ve reimagined him... what a shame.

So, yeah, that’s heavily influenced my verdict of the new Nosferatu movie, truth be told. It’s fantastically well acted, brings the Sturm und Drang of the cinematic and literary sources and is a genuinely entertaining piece of cinema... shame about that creature design though. It doesn’t quite make it.

Thursday, 2 January 2025

Top Guns













Gunning To Glory

Top Gun
Directed by Tony Scott
USA 1986
Paramount Pictures Blu Ray Zone B


and

Top Gun: Maverick
Directed by Joseph Kosinski
USA 2022
Paramount Pictures Blu Ray Zone B


The first of an occasional series of double, triple and quadruple bills, mostly because I don’t have much to say about any of them as a single movie, truth be told.

Warning: Some spoilers.

I’ve never watched any of the Top Gun films before now. I wasn’t a fan of the young Tom Cruise (and think he’s absolutely great in his later career) and I really didn’t want to watch what amounts to a dressed up Navy recruitment movie. Added to this, I used to work in a record store on Saturdays at the time of the first film, while I was going through college and, honestly, that rubbishy best selling songtrack album was horrible to have to endure week after week.

However, my mother accidentally caught the recent sequel on telly last year and liked it a lot and so, as one of her Christmas presents this year, I got her the double Blu Ray pack of both movies. So, yeah, guess what I had to watch over Christmas this year?

Okay, so both movies are pretty much the same but they are different in the way they do it. Of the two, I think the first one by uber director Tony Scott is the less interesting. It’s not a great movie but it’s not downright terrible either. Just a film about Tom Cruise playing Maverick, a best of the best trainee pilot at the Top Gun flight school in the Navy. His co-pilot is Goose, played by Anthony Edwards (and Goose’s wife is played by Meg Ryan) and Maverick’s high profile rival is Iceman (played by Val Kilmer). Maverick’s love interest is played by Kelly McGillis.

The story is just toned down Porkys humour coupled with fast flying, naval cadets not doing what they’re told, a tragic loss to add a dash of drama and the obvious combat scene at the end. I’m guessing it must have somehow caught a mood at that point in the 1980s which I just wasn’t a part of.

However, it is directed by Tony Scott so there is some great photography and a few moments when he goes ‘full Bava’ on the colour palette, such as when Maverick is cradling Goose’s head (who promptly dies) as they float in the sea waiting for rescue. Harold Faltermeyer’s score is okayish (not as brilliant as Beverly Hills Cop and Fletch) but it didn’t really make much of an impact on me until it was extensively re-used by Hans Zimmer in the sequel, to be honest. Or maybe the mix in the second one was just kinder to it.

Top Gun Maverick hits all the same beats more or less. A still arrogant Maverick is called in to teach a bunch of Top Gun graduates how to pull off an almost impossible mission in a limited timeline. Miles Teller is playing Rooster, son of Goose, so that Maverick has a dramatic arc of survivor’s guilt via the offspring of his old co-pilot. The always watchable Jennifer Connolly plays his new love interest but, yeah, it’s not too hard to pick up on the fact that this is an old and troublesome flame who is mentioned by name a few times in the first film (just never seen until now). Val Kilmer is back as Iceman, suffering from the same illness as the actor did in real life.

The sequel is pretty much the same thing but it seems more interesting and I suspect that’s more to do with the contemporary language and the attitudes in this one, even though they’re employed to tell a similar story. And not just a similar story to Top Gun either... you’ll recognise many aspects of the final mission they are working towards as being exactly the same as the Death Star run in the original Star Wars (later retitled Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope and reviewed by me here). They even have a Top Gun equivalent of Yoda’s “Do or do not, there is no try.” added into the mix.

Zimmer’s score, which highlights Faltermeyer’s old themes, seems much more epic and useful to the film as a whole (I liked it when I saw him do it in concert at one of his live shows too) and, all in all, Top Gun Maverick is a less bitter pill to swallow. I also trust the older version of Tom Cruise more and find him eminently more watchable than he was as a youngster.

All in all, then, I didn’t have a terrible time with either Top Gun or Top Gun Maverick... I can appreciate the second one more. Neither of them are great films but I can understand, I think, why people gravitate to them. You might well be one of those people so, yeah, please don’t take my word for it.

Wednesday, 1 January 2025

Happy New Year 2025







Happy New Year to you all!

Hope you have a good one.

Traditionally at this time of year I let you know what should be coming up on the blog but, every year I do that, it sometimes takes a few years for those reviews to materialise. So this is a shorter blog entry this year and I’ll only tell you what I know for sure.

Firstly, there will definitely be reviews of various 1980s Hong Kong Martial Arts movies very soon. There will also be review series devoted to Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films and also some non-Bond secret agent movies, including five of the OSS117 movies, the two theatrical Flint movies, the four Matt Helm films and some Shaw Brothers spy yarns. In addition, a slew of Tom Selleck’s Jesse Stone TV specials will be reviewed, along with the Indiana Jones films plus some classic era Doctor Who.

I now have more Shaw Brothers kung fu movies than you can comfortably shake a nunchuck at and I would hope I get around to watching some of those over the next year too. I’m hoping also to finally finish off the first of Severin’s All The Haunts Be Ours sets and to get the reviews of that up (especially since volume 2 has now been released). And at some point soon I want to take a proper look at the Hammer Frankenstein movies too.

Anyway, hopefully at least some of this will materialise during 2025. Other than that though, have a better year than your last at the very least. Oh... and while I remember, it’s not too late to enter this year’s Annual Cryptic Movie Quiz... you have until the end of January 9th and can play here.