Red One

 

The Long
List Goodnight

Red One
USA/Canada 2024
Directed by Jake Kasdan
MGM

I actually wanted to see Red One when it came out at the cinema but, alas, it was released in November over here in the UK and I really try not to watch Christmas films out of season (aka, out of December!) so I waited a few weeks. Weeks in which my perception of the film was changed by word of mouth... both from audiences who had seen it on Twitter and, yeah, it took an equally bad pasting from the critics too. So it would be true to say that, by the time I got to see this movie for myself (aka, in December!), my expectations for the movie had plummeted way below zero.

But I did see it and, what can I say? Once again I am reminded why the opinions of both fellow audience members and a bunch of professional critics should sometimes be taken with a pinch of salt. Frankly, I loved Red One. It was everything I was expecting from a big budget Christmas movie plus, had the unexpected bonus of being cannily well thought through and a lot more clever than I think people realise.

So at the start of the film we are introduced to Jack O'Malley played by Chris Evans (I suspect taking on this role to further shed his squeaky clean Captain America image). He’s a somewhat criminal hacker known as The Wolf who is wanted by organisations like the FBI all over the world (in order to try and recruit him) and who, in his opening heist, shows that he would sink so low as to steal candy from a baby. At some point he is anonymously hired by someone to find the co-ordinates of an undisclosed location. Which he does, not realising he gives the villain of the film, played by Kiernan Shipka, the information required so her team can abduct Santa Claus, played by the always brilliant J. K. Simmons, for her own, world threatening and evil ends.

Meanwhile, Santa’s number one bodyguard Cal Drift, played by Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, part of E.L.F (Enforcement Logistics and Fortification) needs to get Santa back for his annual Christmas run in two days time. So, working with Zoe, who runs a kind of ‘mythical creatures police’ organisation, played by Lucy Liu, he recruits the cynical, world weary Jack to help him find where Santa has been taken.

Tolerating their differences before the expected male bonding, they follow the leads and punch their way through various adversaries to give a crowd pleasing conclusion to the film, aided by E.L.Fs technology such as a device which shrinks and grows toys and people to be used as equipment for the mission (such as toys like Hot Wheels cars for transport, Raving Bonkers robots... which I think were known as Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots in the USA... and so on). So yeah, you get some Ant-Man style shenanigans in the action sequences too but, apart from getting a nice joke around Jack, who upon seeing how the toys are enlarged and made practical immediately asks a shop owner if he has a Wonder Woman action figure... there actually is a really vital logic as to why Santa and E.L.F would actually have this specific technology in their arsenal in the first place (but I’m trying to do this without spoilers so, just keep a look out in the last sequence of the film to find just how this comes in handy if you are Santa).

And, as I said above, I loved it. It’s got its heart in the right place, has some great action scenes (like fighting giant sized killer snowman on a tropical beach), shoe horns in some nice moments with Krampus and, yeah, in my opinion has some good chemistry going between the leads. Added to this it’s got a great, dynamic score by the great Henry Jackman which keeps things going but, alas, is not issued on a CD at time of writing.

So yeah, sorry if it deflects any credibility on my part but, I had a really good time with Red One and I hope it gets a Blu Ray release at some point soon so I can show it to my folks next Christmas. An entertaining movie, I reckon.

Silent Bite

 





Nosferheistu

Silent Bite
Canada 2024
Directed by Taylor Martin
Blue Eyes Media

Okay, this one isn’t great but it’s certainly not too shabby compared to some Christmas horror movies I’ve seen over the years. Silent Bite is a ‘heist aftermath gone wrong’ movie with four bank robbers dressed in seasonal disguises, holing up in a motel (the Jolly Roger Inn) while they wait for their fifth gang member, who is decoying cops away from the scene of the bank robbery depicted at the start of the film, to double back and come get them with the getaway vehicle later.

Well, I say depicted... the film shows its low budget early on as the heist in question actually plays out as a series of motion graphics while the opening credits roll. Which is fine because they look pretty good and you get the idea easily enough. Then the four check in and wait for their friend but, unknown to them, the motel also has a family of female vampires calling the place home, who see the guys as a Christmas present.

Now there’s good and there’s bad on this one. Some of the acting is pretty good and two of the four especially, the leader codenamed Father Christmas played by Simon Phillips and ‘the rowdy one’ codenamed Snowman, played nicely over the top by Michael Swatton - do have a certain British charm and good chemistry to their characters. They kind of save the film in a way and it helps, for them and the rest of the cast, that a lot of the dialogue is quite humorous and smartly written. At least, for the male contingent in the film... the vampire gals are a different story with the credibility of the writing for their characters and the performances of them, well, just about scraping by.

That being said, although some of the dialogue is really nicely done, the story itself is not very original and it doesn’t really do much to rise above its initial premise. There are certainly questions about the use and misuse of vampire lore which one could maybe delve into if one were being picky (of the ‘why did that happen for one person but not that person’ variety) and the film does kinda drag in the last third because of it.

And some of the kills are off camera and don’t really work in a satisfying way... again, I suspect some of these scenes were a casualty of a comparatively low budget and I’m guessing certain things got axed during the shoot (I hope... or the writing really is a lot worse than I realised).

Then there’s the music. The opening animation also has a strong, electric guitar dominant version of Jingle Bells to set the mood which is helpful because, without some of the window dressing employed throughout, such as this music, then the film really didn’t need to be something set at Christmas... it’s not integral to the plot and could have taken place anytime. But Darren Morze’s score throughout the film is not as unsubtle as the opening titles might lead you to expect and it does a good job of supporting the action and keeping things buoyant.

All in all, I don’t have much more to say about Silent Bite. I thought the film was, for the most part, competently made and certainly entertaining enough. I suspect it could have been a much better film if the production company had thrown more money (and also time) at it but I don’t know what the pitch was like. If you like seasonal horror movies however, it fills it’s hour and a half running time nicely and most fans of this sub-genre shouldn’t feel too short changed by it. Definitely worth a look if you have nothing better to do.

Santa Claus Conquers The Martians

Martian Santa-Hunter

Santa Claus
Conquers The Martians
Directed by Nicholas Webster
USA 1964 (released 1966)
Public Domain

Wow, this is terrible. Cheaply made and badly written and... I dunno... somehow completely charming and captivating.

Santa Claus Conquers The Martians is a film I’ve been meaning to get around to seeing for a good four decades or more and, it’s really not what I was expecting. I mean, I was expecting more of a family film but it became apparent very quickly that this one is aimed squarely at the kiddies. Which is fine.

A quick summary of the plot. You have Santa, played really well and likeably by a guy named John Call, getting ready with his elves for Christmas but, something is happening to the kids on Mars, who are being all depressed and despondent, even as they watch television broadcasts from Earth and enjoy the documentary interviews with Santa by a news crew. The martian leader Kimar, played by Leonard Hicks, goes to see the surprisingly sinister (for a kids movie) elder martian who says they need to get their own Santa Claus to teach the kids of Mars how to play and have fun. So, with a few plot wrinkles, Kimar, along with some of his martians including bad guy Martian Voldar (played convincingly mean spiritedly by Vincent Beck) and atrocious comic relief martian Dropo (played by Bill McCutcheon), head to Earth where they kidnap a couple of children and also Santa Claus, to set up a toy factory on Mars (one of the martians seem particular enamoured of a toy they describe which is a Slinky, which was back in vogue at the time).

Despite Voldar trying to blast all three of them out into space, they survive the trip and help out the martians, also stopping Voldar’s uprising and, in the process, teaching Dropo how to dress up and play as Santa, so he can take over and they are free to return to Earth, just in time for Christmas Eve.

And it really is a cheap mess, all shot on interior sets (four days shooting in an airplane hangar, apparently)... while at the same time being bizarrely addictive.

Some things I found interesting are... well, for starters, the colours are going for bright greens and reds but the film stock isn’t exactly technicolour (okay, just looked it up, it’s Pathécolor apparently) and so it all looks incredibly muted, even though it’s trying to be bright. Like a dulled down pastel variant of Christmas which, I have to say, I really liked.

The documentary newscasts which come in are interesting in that, at no time is it suggested that anyone on Earth does not believe in Santa Claus, He’s a newsworthy celebrity and these opening segments where he and his wife, Mrs. Claus, are being interviewed, seem really unusual. By the way this is apparently the first movie to depict a Mrs. Claus... a shame she’s not called Mary... you know, like in Mary Christmas... but still, relatively early days, I guess. The newsreel footage is also used to provide a series of narratives on the martian ‘UFO’ and so stock footage of various military responses can be montaged in with this really bland but, again, likeable soundtrack... literally to help pad the movie running time out every now and again. Although, the last you hear of the military is when they are trying to trail the martian ship to Mars... then they simply drop out of the narrative with no explanation.

Also, there are not that many people seen on Mars, it has to be said. Maybe seven or eight including the only two children (of the apparently many) you’ll catch a glimpse of on Mars... one of them being played by a young Pia Zadora in her debut movie role. When I was a kid in the 1970s, Zadora seemed more well known for films with more erotic content, if memory recalls... but here she’s just another green painted kid with not much personality.

Now, the film is studio bound but it does spend hunks of time in fake, outdoor painted environments standing in for locations like the martian landscape and the North Pole. It looks okay though but... the special effects are something else. The big, fairly useless but aesthetically pleasing hunter robot Torg looks like it's straight out of a Japanese tin toy store but it’s likeable enough. As for the fierce polar bear that bothers the kids and scares a martian off, however, well it’s hilarious. Literally a man crawling around on his knees wearing a polar bear head with a furry sheet thrown over him. This was never going to convince anyone but, honestly, from this side of history, it all just adds to the charm of the thing as far as I’m concerned... as does the saccharine opening and closing credits song... Hooray For Santy Claus.

And that’s me done with Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, I think. It’s bloody awful and cheap looking and probably an embarrassment for most of the actors working on it but... I kinda loved it and would certainly not mind seeing it again. At the moment, the Blu Ray of this is pretty expensive but, maybe it’ll come down in price in a few years time. I can’t really, in all good conscience, recommend this one to most people but... all I’m saying is that it kept me smiling, possibly for a lot of the wrong reasons. And I’ll leave it at that.

Murder On The Christmas Express

Deeper Sleeper

Murder On The
Christmas Express
Written by Alexandra Benedict
Simon and Schuster
ISBN 9781398519824

Regular readers may remember that I don’t always have the best of luck when it comes to choosing December, Christmas themed reads to review on the blog. I usually go for either whodunnits or horror stories and, for some strange reason (since I do love a good ghost story), I usually have much better luck at this time of year with the old school crime stories. This year I’ve hedged my bets by going for, not one but two Christmas themed crime thrillers (by the same writer, too) and one ghost story. Hopefully I can get them all read and reviewed here before December the 25th is upon me.

Okay, so the first tome on the list is Alexandra (aka A. K.) Benedict’s novel Murder On The Christmas Express, which arrived from Amazon as a nice, handsome hardback, signed by the writer herself, no less (I hadn’t realised I was ordering a signed copy so that’s always a nice surprise). A really nice thing about this train bound story of murder is that the sides of the pages on this edition, are coloured red with white train track running through it... so, yeah, I’m a sucker for that kind of attention to graphic design features, for sure. There’s also a map of the main train carriage and the occupants of the various sleeper cabins, in case you need to refer back to it in the text, on the inside front and back covers.

And then the opening notes by the writer really pulled me in. It seems that the lady in question is a lover of all things quiz-like (I wonder how she’d do on my regular Annual Christmas Cryptic Film Quizzes? You can play this year’s edition right here). Case in point, she gives us a list of some of her favourite Christmas prose and poetry and says that all of the titles are hidden as anagrams in the book. Furthermore, she says that there is a pub quiz at the end of the book to reward the reader and, yeah, there are indeed three rounds of Christmas themed questions at the end. And finally... and this one really got me... there was a prize to the first reader to contact her with six of the names of the many Kate Bush songs hidden in the text.

Now, I have to say, I got none of the anagrams (I was too busy concentrating on the story to play along, to be honest) and only a few of the songs from one of my all time favourite pop artists (I mostly listen to film scores... as some of my readers may remember) but it’s a really nice idea and it made me happy that someone with this devious kink in their brain is writing mystery fiction.

The story itself tells of the ‘just retired’ former police inspector, Roz, who is going home for Christmas on the last sleeper train out of London, to be with her daughter in Scotland for the birth of her grand-daughter. Or so she hopes. It’s all caught up in a story of a killer on the train, the death of a social media influencer (I still don’t understand that modern phenomena, I’m obviously very old fashioned) and her horrible boyfriend and.... yeah, so much more, including shadows of Roz’s troubled past (or should that be Roz’ past?) coming back to haunt her as she tries to find the culprit on a train which has derailed in the Scottish wilderness, with no help from the authorities for a good long while that can reach them. Oh... and did I mention that Roz is supposed to look like Kate Bush? Another plus in my book although, due to the various quirks of the human mind, even when presented with that information right from the start, I still imagined Roz as looking somehow quite different. But there you go, that’s just me.

And that’s all I’m saying about the plot but I will say that this Christmas I got really lucky on at least one of my choices... it’s an excellent and enthralling read from start to finish, that’s for sure. It opens like an old 1960s Marvel comic, structurally, in that it starts with one of the key incidents (yeah, always open on a slice of action in the ‘Mighty Marvel Manner’) to grab the reader and pull them in, before flashing back, setting up all the characters and then catching up to that sequence somewhere later ‘down the line’ (no pun intended but now that I’ve written it I’ll just go and flag that one up with inverted commas as a token gesture to the God of serendipity).

From then on it’s a cracking read with some nice turns of phrases, some of them highlighting the writer’s love of film... “If someone had drugged or poisoned the dates, Mary would be their Indiana Jones monkey.” and an obvious love of film scores too. Amongst the various musical references. I was loving the fact that the music Roz’s daughter was listening to in labour included the Goblin scores for Profondo Rosso and Suspiria although, a point deducted for spelling the Italian title of Deep Red wrong (although, maybe it was a deliberate typo and this was one of her cunning anagrams... I should go and check).

So, all in all, my first Christmas book of the year, Murder On The Christmas Express, was a very positive experience for me and lovers of the old ‘cosy whodunnit’ might want to give this one a try. I also learned a couple of new words/phrases too... I now know what Casein is and also what ‘Blood Eagle’ means, although, in the case of the latter, I kinda wish I hadn’t googled that one (although lovers of the movie Midsommer might want to familiarise themselves with this particular form of viking torture)... so maybe not so ‘cosy’ after all. Fantastic read though, couldn’t put it down.. although, I kinda had to otherwise the shower would have made the pages go all soggy on me, for sure.

The It's A Wonderful Life Book

George Lassos Book

The It's A
Wonderful Life Book
by Jeanine Basinger
Knopf Books
ISBN: 0394747194

It’s been over twenty years since I first borrowed this book from a library and read it... but I was never able to afford a copy and, well I think it’s come back into print now but, this October, I managed to stumble on the exact same, first edition I read all those years ago for the less than princely sum of £2.12... an opportunity I immediately took advantage of. It’s A Wonderful Life (reviewed here), of course, is not just a much loved Christmas movie but, also, one of the all time greats. So I was pretty surprised when I revisited this tome to find that some of the stories about its production and reception were things I’d managed to forget over the years.

If you’ve not read this one and, like me, you have a passion for the film, then I would definitely recommend it. It covers the film from its infancy to its initially disappointing reception and then goes into the life it gained for itself afterwards (the nearest modern equivalent I can think of, of this phenomenon, would be Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner... reviewed here). It’s a very interesting look at the classic movie and it’s done with the aid of key witnesses and participants of the production... as well as by referencing some interesting visual artefacts surrounding the movie.

It starts with both the director, Frank Capra and star James Stewart both returning from active duty in the Second World War... both wanting to get back into their previously successful careers and both very nervous about it. Capra set up an independent film company, Liberty Films, with a few people like director William Wyler but only this and Wyler’s The Best Years Of Our Lives were, I believe, released by them. My understanding, or at least it’s strongly hinted at, is that the perceived box office failure of It’s A Wonderful Life (bearing in mind it was still one of the top ten grossing box office films of the year of its release), lead to the premature downfall and liquidation of Liberty Films.

The tale begins properly when a property bought by RKO for their star Cary Grant proved to be something that they just couldn’t figure out how to make work. They had already made three script attempts by three writers, all of them quite different and based on The Greatest Gift, a short story by Philip Van Doren Stern. This was a story which Stern couldn’t get published so, in frustration, he had it printed up as 200 Christmas cards to give to his friends. Someone at RKO saw it, liked it enough to develop a film about it and bought the rights. But, yeah, they couldn’t make a go of it so it was sold to Capra, who also took custody of the three prior scripts (none of which he ended up using other than a few similar scenes, for his rewrites).

The book then goes through the production process with various artefacts presented such as alternate casting ideas jotted down by Capra and also ideas about the various characters. For instance, for the wonderful Violet, played brilliantly by Gloria Grahame in her first big break, he wrote “She doesn’t count sheep to go to sleep, she counts men.” And there are a lot of stories told, many of them by first hand witnesses as the author of this book researched her tome, where she sorts out the truth from the publicity to the best of her knowledge. There were stories which I did remember from the last time I read it... such as the snow developed especially for the film (shot on an exterior set through a very long hot summer) and the fact that the special effects team who developed this new, more realistic snow for the film received a Motion Picture Academy Class III Certificate of Honourable Mention for this invention. Also, when Donna Reed has to throw a stone a good long distance and break one of the windows in the old, abandoned house which would eventually become Mary and George Bailey’s home, her experiences growing up as a farm girl with plenty of brothers meant that she was able to pitch the pebble and break the far off window first go, without resorting to the sniper Capra had standing by to shoot the window out.

Then there’s the story about the loud clatter of objects as drunk Uncle Billy walks off screen at one point in the movie... the tale going that this was recorded by accident as an electrician accidentally knocked over a stack of props during the take and, with the voice of Uncle Billy improvising against it, a new ending to the scene was born (for which Capra rewarded the electrician with 10 dollars for improving his film).

And there’s also the occasional behind the scenes info I’d forgotten recounted in here, such as Lionel Barrymore being too well associated with nice guy roles so, as the villainous Potter, he was fitted with a prosthetic to change the shape of his forehead to make him look less sympathetic (something I still never notice to this day... I’ll have to remember to look out for it again next time I watch it).

In addition, there are lots of dates and facts about the production, such as when Capra was forced to give the cast and crew the day off due to extreme heat and, also, lots of talk about the picnic party he and Stewart threw for everybody, not long after the picture had wrapped production.

The first hundred or so pages of this book detail all this stuff and the press reaction to it, followed by a look at the modern day renaissance of the film through television showings throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s, interviews with James Stewart and Jospeh Biroc (one of the three cinematographers on the film) and even a reprint of the original story, The Greatest Gift, which started the ball rolling. This last is a very interesting read because the essence is there to a degree but Capra and his people sure did more than just add a heap of window dressing. This is all followed by a reprint of the final shooting script, again heavily illustrated by production stills... which was again changed, of course, as it was being filmed with improvised and improved replacement lines and actions directly on set (so yeah, that’s a pretty interesting read too). The last item before a few appendices of more documentation and artefacts is a transcript of a Q&A session with Frank Capra at a College screening of the film he attended in the 1960s. Which certainly gives an insight into how this much celebrated director worked with his casts and crews.

And that’s me done, for another couple of decades (at least) with Jeanine Basinger’s pretty great The It’s A Wonderful Life Book. Certainly a recommendation to lovers of the cinema as an insight into the production of a well loved motion picture and, of course, an absolute must read for those who have discovered and loved the film over the years. One of the more interesting film books you can buy.

Silent Night

It’s Beginning To Look
A Lot Like Apocalypse

Silent Night
Written & Directed by Camille Griffin
UK 2021
Marv Films

Warning: Yeah, I think to do this incredible film justice, this one’s going to have all the spoilers in it. So do yourself a favour if you’ve not seen this one... don’t read this, go into the film blind and then, if you feel like it, give it a read after.

Silent Night is a film I think I might have heard recommended on the All The Colours Of The Dark podcast at some point but, I don’t think I knew it was a Christmas movie. When I was looking at festive movies to watch this year I stumbled upon it and, yeah, I do have vague recollections of it being recommended on that show/cast. I have to say, I was absolutely blown away by Silent Night (why it’s yet another film with this title, I don’t know).

It starts off all jolly and fun as a mother and father played by Keira Knightley and Matthew Goode are getting ready for Christmas guests, their college friends, on Christmas Eve. Their children are all being given the usual, ‘get ready and this is not what to do’ talks and these three kids, just like everybody else, are absolutely amazing in this... and they’re also the sons of the writer/director Camille Griffin. A special shout out to the lead son Art, played by Roman Griffin Davis, who really hammers home the social messages of the film. And then all the guests begin to arrive, played by various actors and actresses who are all absolutely brilliant in this movie... including (and this is by no means an exhaustive list of the incredible talent in this) Annabelle Wallis, Lily-Rose Depp, the extraordinary Lucy Punch and the incredible Kirby Howell-Baptiste (Death herself, from The Sandman, reviewed by me here).

And, as the night of the party gets going, little clues which support the premise of what’s really going on here, start to come into play. It’s an incredibly subtle movie (in some ways... some of the characters are, themselves, far from subtle) and it slowly unfolds the truly horrifying concept. So, for instance, everyone, including the various kids in the movie, are all swearing like sailors as their parents are now allowing it. And the chickens who live in the grounds of the beautiful country manor, where the party is being held, are let loose because... and this is the first real hint... it’s kinder to let them get killed by foxes than the alternative. Another sign that things are not quite right... when the parents forgot to get the sticky toffee pudding in for one of the kids... is that one of the guests goes to the shop to get some. Never mind that the shops are all closed now... just smash through one of the windows and take what you want with, apparently, no real consequence.

Then, things really get spelled out, when everybody is eating Christmas dinner and the kids are discussing whether the Queen will be giving a speech on telly this year (yeah, it’s unfortunate but, this really dates the film) or taking shelter in a bunker somewhere. And so, if you hadn’t somehow already figured it out, we get to the main premise of the movie...

And I tell you now this is not just one of the most awesome Christmas movies I’ve ever seen, it’s also by far the grimmest and downright horrifying... although it’s not really a horror film. The quick summary I read had it pegged out as a horror comedy but, although there are a lot of laugh out loud comedic moments in the movie, right through to the bitter end, it’s not really that either. I’d plump nearer to black comedy but, no, it’s premise and the magnificent way the director, cast and crew manage to hold the tone of the idea, puts it far away from the humourous shenanigans which lightly sprinkle and season this festive feast of despair.

Okay, last chance to stop reading before the big spoiler...

So the central premise is... well it’s technically global warming, in a new form. People have been abusing the earth for so long now that the earth has struck back, with mini twisters which are slowly unveiling a poisonous gas, eventually covering the entire planet. And not just any old poison gas either... one which has you choking up your own guts and bleeding to death in spasms of agony. So, in their wisdom, the governments of the world (most of them) have issued painless suicide pills to everyone who they recognise as being citizens of their lands, to take just before the mini, swirly air currents of doom hit their region. Everyone in the house knows this is their final night before they all take their 'exit pill' and, yeah, its grimness incarnate. As Art says at some point, when everybody is opening their Christmas presents... “The batteries are going to last longer than us.”

And it’s a sweetened pill for the audience too with, like I said, some very funny moments and a wonderful Christmassy score by Lorne Balfe which... well, I wish they’d have put it out on CD rather than just some useless electronic download. It also has a very satirical edge to it too. I’m writing this review just a few days after the death of Irene Cara but it’s a tragic irony that there’s a scene in this where all the party guests are dancing to Fame but with none of them noticing that they’re singing “I'm gonna live forever”. Plus some wonderfully healthy side swipes at the current UK government, particularly and quite blatantly the Tory party, who in their infinite wisdom have decided that no homeless people or illegal immigrants will be allowed the painless death of the ‘exit pill’. I find it amazing that this movie actually started filming before the Covid pandemic hit (and picked up filming after the end of the first lockdown, from what I understand) since it’s very much a prophetic parallel of just how the idiots in power respond to something which they can’t stop or monetise.

The only thing I will say is that the end of the movie is pretty easy to predict... in fact, I’d already figured out what the last shot of the movie would surely be so, when the camera started panning on that particular reveal (you’re bound to get there too, I suspect) then I already knew I was watching the final shot of the film and just what would happen. But, honestly, it’s not a let down of a final moment by any means. I’d rate it right up there with the ending of the movie version of Stephen King’s The Mist for all time downbeat endings, although it’s a little more subtle until you start thinking of the implications of the final two seconds of the movie. So, yeah, I wouldn’t have wanted any other ending on this and the director was right to roll the credits exactly when she did, I think.

And that’s me about done with Silent Night and, I can’t stress enough how much of a recommendation I’m going to give this one to my friends and just what a stupendous movie this is... especially since it’s Camille Griffin’s debut in directing a feature length film. Why hasn’t this woman written and directed more movies already? This is amazing stuff and it’s completely criminal that this has been under seen in this country (as far as I can tell) and that if I want a Blu Ray of this one... and I certainly do... then I’m going to have to import one in from Germany (which I certainly will).  So, yeah, can’t endorse this movie enough. Definitely grab this one for your grimmest Christmas viewing ever.... with the caveat that, although the child actors in this are truly wonderful, I wouldn’t necessarily condone watching this with children present in the room. You have been warned.

Violent Night

Slay Ride

Violent Night
USA 2022
Directed by Tommy Wirkola
87 North

Warning: Very slight scene detail spoilers.

Violent Night is the latest movie from Tommy Wirkola, the director behind three of my favourite, gory films of the last 13 years, namely Dead Snow, Hansel & Gretel - Witch Hunters (reviewed here) and Dead Snow 2 - Red Vs Dead (reviewed here). This film sees David Harbour from Stranger Things... see various series review links in the TV section of the index... the third Hellboy movie (reviewed here) and Black Widow (reviewed here) take on the role of Santa Claus... the real Santa Claus.

The film starts off with Santa hanging out and getting drunk in a bar on Christmas Eve, disillusioned with what the spirit of Christmas has come to mean and thinking that this might be the last year he does this. However, one of the houses he visits, a rich mansion belonging to the multi-billionaire grandmother of a little girl on his ‘nice list’, Trudy (played by Leah Brady), is having a Christmas gathering attended by the whole family, including Trudy and her estranged parents. However, a villain played by John Leguizamo (who’s always great as a villain but I wish they’d give him some proper ‘nice guy’ roles for a change), kills the security team in the mansion and his team hold the family while they break into the main safe. Santa gets caught up in the events and, before you know it, he becomes a brutal ‘action Santa’, intent on saving the little girl from harm and, due to various things that happen, as you kind of know will transpire, he ends up believing in the spirit of Christmas again and, of course, his important role in it.

And it’s a great movie, it has to be said. The whole thing plays out just like a 1980s action movie, it would be fair to say, with Dominic Lewis’ Christmas music infused score sounding a little like one of Michael Kamen’s old action scores for a movie like Die Hard (reviewed here) or Lethal Weapon. The only difference between this and an 80s action movie would be the ramped up brutality of the violence, which fully keeps up with Wirkola’s earlier movies, in terms of the goriness on offer, including the inventiveness behind it. For example, when Santa attempts to take out a thug with a Christmas Tree star through the eyeball and he’s still coming for him, there’s a definite nod to the face off between Odd Job and James Bond in Goldfinger (reviewed here). Looking for a way out of his situation, Santa notices the star is still plugged into the tree lights and flips the switch, electrocuting the guy and setting his head on fire.

There’s also some nice stuff, just a couple of moments, where this version of Santa’s backstory is explored from many centuries ago. Let’s just say that, if such a thing were around then, he would definitely have been on the ‘naughty list’, with the aid of his favourite hammer skull crusher. What’s more important though, is the beating heart of the movie in both the relationship between Santa and the little girl and, also, the hard side swipes at the greed driven commercialism that Santa is, in fact, aiding... in his delivery of the Christmas spirit. Also, although I’ve not seen the Home Alone films myself, there’s a nice homage to these in one sequence in the movie which I think will resonate with people who liked those flicks.

I have two things which are less easy to forgive but they certainly aren’t deal breakers. One is the ‘science’ behind Santa’s supernatural magic not being exactly consistent in places. However, Harbour delivers a certain ‘get out of jail free’ line in regards to the ‘Christmas magic’ which just about manages to cover the inconsistencies in the script and, since it’s such a joyous movie... I’m gonna go with it. What’s more worrying though is the sound mix. One of the more enjoyable lines of the movie, one which featured heavily in the trailer, in fact, is so overwhelmed by the Christmas song playing in the foreground that it’s barely audible. I mean, I guess it could have been the sound system at the cinema I was watching it in but... yeah, I suspect not.

Still, all that being said, fans of 1980s/90s action movies and those still happy enough to maintain the myth of Santa and the spirit of Christmas should find a lot to love in Violent Night which, in spite of the obvious, unorthodox surface detail of the genre, actually buys into the spirit of the season a lot more than it detracts from it... which is what I was hoping for when I saw the trailer and, fortunately, that’s exactly what I got. I hope this one does well at the box office and, yeah, I can’t see this one doing badly at all. This one’s a definite crowd-pleaser and has all the earmarks of being a franchise starter. I’d be surprised if a sequel to this one wasn’t already being prepped and I hope we see David Harbour back in this role again soon. Well worth a visit to your local cinema, for sure.

The Advent Calendar

Slay Ride

The Advent Calendar
aka Le Calendrier
France/Belgium 2021
Directed by Patrick Ridremont
Universal

Warning: Plot set up spoilers.

Although not having too many Christmas trappings to it other than the titular element, The Advent Calendar is a remarkable slice of Christmas horror cake. A horror movie for the season which is actually really well made and that keeps you enthralled to the very end.

The story involves Eva (played by Eugénie Derouand), who lives alone and who has been wheelchair bound since a car accident, which happened when she was travelling with her best friend Sophie (played by Honorine Magnier), left her paralysed from the waste down. She has a terrible job working for a nightmare of a boss and a grim attitude to the life she has been left living. Then, on her birthday in early December, Sophie gives her an old fashioned, elabourately carved Advent Calendar, with various drawers and concealed compartments (as it turns out), which she acquired from a market in Germany. Carved in the back is a warning which is also the third of three rules written when the first door is unlocked... and the first of a daily special candy and instruction or saying are both revealed. When Eve unlocks and opens the first door, something menacing is awakened in the calendar.
 
The first three rules are as follows... written in German but, luckily, Sophie can read and speak the language.

Rule 1: If you eat one, eat them all... or I’ll kill you.

Rule 2: Respect all rules until you open the last door... or I’ll kill you.

Rule 3: Dump it... and I’ll kill you.

So, of course, Eva pops the first candy into her mouth and various different sweets and rules are revealed as she goes, such as “Destroy what hurt you!” and with an angel piece of confectionery which appears a few times in the course of the sequence with the words “Jesus said to the cripple, arise and walk.” And every day Eva eats a candy and each time she does, it has real world consequences... with the sinister spirit residing within the Advent Calendar both protecting her (such as when a guy tries to rape Eva and then leaves her stranded on a road... I won’t tell you what the calendar does to him) but also making Eva kill certain people (and an animal) in her life for fear of death. As a taster, one specific piece of candy shaped like a clock causes Eva to instantly lose four days of her life, which itself has consequences. And the white, angelic sweets, well... they give her the use of her legs back for a period of time. Another candy gets her a boyfriend but, that also has a sting in the tail later in the movie. And as the days go by until the 24th December, Eva starts to piece the clues together and work out the rules of the game... as well as realising she has a decision to make when it comes to the very last piece of candy.

And it’s brilliant. I love French cinema and the director really does a pretty great job of weaving a credible tail from incredible subject matter. The film has a lot of imaginative elements in it, such as when the boyfriend sees a message being scratched backward in a compartment of the calendar and the reveal of that moment from a different perspective a little later in the movie. The cinematography is awesome too. They do some wonderful stuff with the colour palette here. For example, Eva’s father has Alzheimer’s and he doesn’t recognise or speak to anybody... apart from... okay, that’s something else you will discover. However, when we first see him, the way the rooms are lit in a shot, places the step-mother in a warm room with warm coloured light bouncing off her whereas, the pale husk of a man sitting in the foreground of the shot in another room... is all white and pale neutral colours, like the blood has drained from his body and soul. Great stuff. Or a shot where Clare is beneath the surface of a swimming pool with her boyfriend... I can’t tell you the context under which this happens for fear of more spoilers but the sequence is beautiful, with just their bodies highlighted and purple tones lighting and accentuating them within the shot.

The acting is really wonderful too. Magnier’s performance as Eva’s happy-go-lucky, flirty best friend Sophie is pretty great and Derouand’s turn as Eva herself is absolutely brilliant. She plays the character at times with a bitter attitude towards life in general and, at other times, going a little out of her mind at the things which are happening to her since she started opening the drawers/doors of the calendar. She really knocks it out the park here and it certainly gives the film a big, solid anchor around which the director can get away with floating the various supernatural ideas. I need to see what else she’s been in, I think.

It’s also clear that, should it come to it, there are a whole bunch of opportunities for sequels, as the double ending of the movie makes clear. I say double ending, there’s the ending which brings Eva to a point where... well, it’s just perfect where they end it with her. Also, though... and I wasn’t expecting this... there’s a little ‘One Year Later’ moment in the movie which really opens up the possibility of this becoming some kind of horror franchise if a studio so desires and, frankly, of all the horror franchises out there, this one seems much more worthy of exploring in future films due to the calendar creating a slightly different kind of relationship with each person it’s gifted to, exploring what’s behind the doors.

So, yeah, that’s my take on The Advent Calendar and, I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. This is exactly the kind of movie I would rush out and buy on Blu Ray if I was able to so, hopefully I’ll get that opportunity at some point. A truly gripping, suspenseful and, above all, interesting seasonal horror movie, for sure.

The Stupidest Angel

Dark, The Herald
Angel’s Sting

The Stupidest Angel
A Heart-Warming Tale
Of Christmas Terror
by Christopher Moore
Orbit Books
ISBN: 9781841496184

Warning: Well, I guess you can’t help a few spoilers.

So once again Christmas time is upon us and, also once again, I scrabble around and struggle to find a book to read in December to review. I’ve gotten pretty tired of the Christmas murder mysteries and Christmas horror books I’ve been reading in recent years... mostly because they have a track record of being disappointing. So instead, I stumbled upon a second hand ex-library copy of a book that sounded kinda off-beat and fun called The Stupidest Angel, by a writer I’d not heard of called Christopher Moore. Well, I can tell you that after I read this, I’ve made it my personal mission to read various others of this guys books because, this accidentally became an occurrence of an incident which is becoming frequently rarer as I get older and less accepting of what passes for writing these days... I found a newish fiction writer I actually like a lot.

Subtitled A Heart-Warming Tale Of Christmas Terror, the novel starts off with a mostly accurate Author’s Warning to the reader... “If you’re buying this book as a gift for your grandma or a kid, you should be aware that it contains cusswords as well as tasteful depictions of cannibalism and people in their forties having sex. Don’t blame me, I told you.” So that’s pretty much a good advertisement or recommendation for a book in itself, I reckon.

After the opening warning, just the first part of the first sentence... “Christmas crept into Pine Cove like a creeping Christmas thing...” woke me up to the fact that I might be in the hands of a literary genius and as the story and, more importantly, the breezy and insanely witty writing style of the author began to take a hold of me, I was even surer that this was, indeed, the case.

I mean, there are some real gems of sentences in here like... “searching for a truly meaningful moment of Christmas commerce” or “They rang their bells like they were going for dog-spit gold at the Pavlov Olympics.” This was really good stuff and all these examples were just from the first few pages so, yeah, pretty soon I realised I couldn’t just keep reaching for the notepad on my iPhone every time one of these word gems appeared... or I would be at it until the New Year (which New Year, I’m not guessing).

The setting of the novel is a fictional Californian town called Pine Cove and it tells the story of some of the inhabitants... a local cop named Theo, his large chested ‘off-her-meds’ Barbarian Queen of an ex-exploitation B movie actress called Molly, a nice gal called Lena, a pilot called Tucker, his talking Fruit Bat Roberto and a whole host of others... some of whom we’ve apparently met in other books from the same author as minor or major characters, making up a shared Chris Moore universe (so yeah, I’m practically forced at gunpoint now to go back and read his other works... bugger).

And, of course, there’s a kid called Joshua and the titular character Raziel, the unstoppable, unkillable Terminator-like stupidest angel who has been given the task of finding a kid and performing this year’s Christmas miracle, if he can work out a good one to do.

And that’s where it all goes wrong for everyone, after Joshua sees Lena accidentally kill her nasty ex-husband, dressed in a Santa suit, with a badly timed shovel through the throat. Joshua, of course, assumes that Santa is dead and so, when Raziel decides he’s the kid he’s going to help, Joshua wishes Santa alive again. However, instead of raising just ‘Santa’, his lack of clarification on where the body is buried means that, without Raziel realising until much later in the book, he accidentally raises all the dead in the nearby area. And when I say raise the dead, I’m talking about brain eating zombies who have a plan to feast on the living before all heading off to visit the new IKEA store because, as Mr. Moore explains in the book, “No one knows why but, second only to eating the brains of the living, the dead love affordable prefab furniture.”

And it’s an absolute blast. I don’t want to reveal too much more about the contents of the book but I had a real good time with it and grew to love the characters... especially crazy lady Molly, ‘Warrior Babe Of The Outland’, who is a dab hand with a katana and her wonderful ‘narrator’, who only comes out when she’s not sticking to her medication, apparently. If I had one complaint about the book, it’s that it finished too early... I would have loved it to be an absolute doorstop and carry on for another few hundred pages but, I guess the humour and cleverness of the writer’s phrasing is epic enough and probably works better in slightly smaller portions.

Apparently, there was a reissue of this book suffixed with the title Version 2.0 which includes an additional short story at the end... so I guess I’ll be reading that version next Christmas in addition to whatever else I can find for the 2022 Christmas read. In the meantime, all I can say is The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore is absolutely fantastic and I will (and have already, as it happens) recommend it to all my friends. Absolutely give this one a go.

Deathcember

Christmas
Advent-ures

Deathcember
Germany 2019
Directed by Various Artists
Shout! Factory

Warning: Yeah, some spoilerage.

A fairly quick shout out for a 2019 Christmas movie called Deathcember. It’s basically a bit like The ABCs Of Death movies in that it’s a collection of short films based around Christmas death (and sometimes horror) by a variety of international directors, some of them quite famous such as Ruggero Deodato, Andreas Marschall, Lucky McKee and Pollyanna McIntosh. The film is advertised as being 24 films but there are actually 26 short movies in this one, as there are also two additional movies mid and post end credits.

The film starts off with the camera swooping over a computer generated snowscape which finds a cemetery with borders that are shaped like the Star of David. The camera wanders around from various gravestones on which credits for the movie are found before moving up and out of the cemetery to take in the film’s title and then going into a cabin. Inside the cabin, which includes an upside down Christmas Tree (the anti-Christmas?) the camera starts moving around a room and then it will stop on an object. The outline of an advent calendar door will then appear around that section of the screen before opening and allowing the camera to swoop inside the door to access each segment.

As you would expect from this kind of portmanteau movie, it’s a hit and miss affair but, I’d have to say on this one that most of the segments are at least interesting and it’s never a dull affair. I’d say more hit than miss but, at the same time, don’t expect too many of them to really knock your socks off. There are some nice ideas though, such as a greedy, advent calendar chocolate binging child finding himself suddenly turned to chocolate and inside an advent calendar himself, as his sister then eats him. There were some definite highlights for me too...

All Sales Fatal by Michael Varrati was a nice one of an unsatisfied customer trying to return her Christmas purchase because she’s changed her mind but the store won’t refund her without a receipt. Anger wells up and she and the sales guy get suddenly involved in a brutal fight to the death before the, admittedly obvious, punchline moment of that particular story. X-Mas On Fire by Florian Frerichs is not such a great idea but it is quite entertaining, depicting a heist gone wrong. It also has a nice few moments of Reservoir Dogs parody in it. Bob Pipe’s door, The Hunchback of Burg Hayn is a black and white silent movie and nicely captures the style, albeit with a big dollop of humour, of a 1920s Hollywood production. Andreas Marschall’s door Pig is probably going to be big with the strange modern brand of feminists. When a man is marked up with a big P on his jacket, mimicking Fritz Lang’s movie M, a brutal retribution is visited on a guy by a group of vengeful women. However, when he is unmasked and one of them exclaims to the others that it’s the wrong guy... the brutality continues under the guise of “There are no wrong ones.”

There were some wrong ones for me though and, one of the segments, a spectacular looking science fiction piece called 3rd December 2389AD, mainly failed for me because I just didn’t understand what the heck was going on in it at all. But that’s probably more to do with me than the quality of the actual film. Probably my three favourites in this collection were Crappy Christmas (terrible title) by Juergen Kling, December The 19th by Milan Todorovic and Five Deaths In Blood Red by Ama Lea.

Crappy Christmas is an animated short in the style of a claymation movie. It includes what is certainly the most inventive death of the film (and of most movies, I suspect) which I will only describe as the ‘viagra catapult cock through the head’ death, involving a Bishop... and I’ll leave that there but, yeah, you need to see it. December The Nineteenth is a short tale about two girls about to embark on a lesbian relationship, who have their first date, as it were, by going ice skating together at night. However, the first time skater is so bad at it that she ends up causing the other to first break one finger before she accidentally slices off the fingers of her other hand with her skates, eventually ending up with her ice skate accidentally embedded in the other girl’s face before meeting her own accidental death. It’s stylish and funny. Five Deaths In Blood Red is exactly as it sounds, a mini giallo parody and it really captures the style of the early to mid-1970s gialli by the likes of Sergio Martino in its too short running time. There is some nice music in this segment too by Eduardo Daniel Victoria, which hovers between slightly out of kilter, 1970s US slasher mode but also some lovely giallo homages in its make-up which really help push the comparison.

And that’s me pretty much done on Deathcember. I think  the notes I took while watching this one were longer than the review this time but looking at them, there’s not much else I’d want to elabourate on, I think. The movie is exactly what you’d expect from these kind of ‘film collective’ movies and it doesn’t scrimp on the violence/goriness and even adds some very occasional nudity. It’s not fantastic but it’s certainly entertaining enough to ensure that the nearly two and a half hour running time breezes by and it continues to hold the interest. Definitely not a bad film to watch if you want something both violent and funny to check out over the Christmas period.

It's A Wonderful Life

 


Mary Christmas

It's A Wonderful Life
USA 1946 Directed by Frank Capra
Liberty Films/Paramount
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Small spoilers... like the ending.

Well, I’m not even sure how to start a review of what is, frankly, one of the best known and most loved films in the history of cinema (and rightly so). I mean, is there much I can say that hasn’t been said about It's A Wonderful Life a million times by others before me in a much more interesting and eloquent way than I? Well, possibly not but I do have the odd observation to add and some of the stories behind the production can never be repeated enough, I think.

The film, the first directed by the very successful Frank Capra to be shot at RKO studios under his own co-partnered company Liberty Films (after a string of hits directing for other producers), is most definitely the greatest Christmas movie ever made, even though the plot of the movie is not actually dependent on it being Christmas at all and, indeed, much of the film is not set during Christmas.
The basic plot, which I’ll explain very quickly, involves the great James Stewart as George Bailey. The film has a very dark prologue and a very brave one, after a load of despairing voices heard over establishing shots of the film’s sole setting, Bedford Falls, are heard praying to God to help out George in his hour of need. The audio of one of his young daughters crying out “Please God, something’s the matter with daddy!” within the first minute or so is all it takes nowadays to start the tear ducts flowing and turn me into a blubbery mess for the remainder of the film’s quite lengthy (for it’s time) 130 minute running time.

We then get that incredibly brave shot of just a static image of stars lighting up whenever one of them ‘speaks’... representing God and his chief angel, talking... which lasts almost two minutes (turn the sound off and you’ll see why that’s incredibly brave... but the dialogue is riveting and saves it). Another angel, Clarence (AS2, Angel Second Class, who hasn’t won his wings yet), played by Henry Travers, is assigned with the task of helping out George Bailey and then he (and the audience) are shown stories from George’s life from when he was a kid and rescued his little brother (losing the hearing in his left ear for his trouble) and right up until the events to which Clarence is needed to act as his Guardian Angel (which doesn’t come until an astonishing hour and 40 minutes into the substantial running time).

After an absolutely brilliant movie up until this point, George considers taking his own life by jumping off a bridge into an icy river so his family and the Bailey Buildings And Loan Company, which he has been trying to hold together for all these years and which is in big trouble, can benefit from the life insurance policy that he has in his pocket. Okay, there’s all kinds of things wrong with that but, assuming the death is taken as accidental, then that policy would be no good anyway, surely, because it would go and get all soggy and unreadable in the river after the deed is done? Well, despite this, Clarence jumps in the river instead so George can rescue him and get an introduction. He then acts as a kind of ‘Ghost of Christmas That Could Have Been’ when he introduces a scenario where George Bailey was never born and how bad things in the world would be if this common man, trapped in the town of Bedford Falls all his life without being able to travel the world as he intended, hadn’t touched so many lives.

The final straw is when he sees his wife Mary, played by Donna Reed, shunning him, having grown up an old maid who runs the library (now the Pottersville Library after the films chief villain Mr. Potter, played by Lionel Barrymore). This is hardly a ‘Mary Christmas’. He prays to God to live again and then things get fixed, ending with a, perhaps uncomfortable, resolution where the sudden procurement of individual financial wealth is lionised within the ending of the movie.

Rounding out the cast of amazing actors in the film are Thomas Mitchell as Uncle Billy, Ward Bond as Bert the cop, Frank Faylen as Ernie the cab driver (husband of Carol Hughes, who played Dale Arden in the third Flash Gordon serial, reviewed here) and the amazing Gloria Grahame as Violet, the local, um... local bad gal (check out the brilliant, recent movie Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool for an account of the last year or so of her life... reviewed by me here). Alongside too many actors to name and they’re all good in this, every single one of them.

And the script is absolutely pitch perfect and manages to flesh out a lot of those supporting characters very quickly and with small sketches so that you believe in every one of them and can fill in their back story, to a degree, with the little shorthand, throwaway dialogue worked into the screenplay.
It had a lot of development in the script stages too, with the original short story on which it’s based distributed as Christmas cards to a small number of people, written by Philip Van Doren Stern, re-crafted as an absolute epic movie...

Some of the various versions of some of those alternate scripts have left little clues to their intent in the final product. For instance, Uncle Billy was originally a larger role and much use was apparently made of his affinity with animals and his curiously large assortment of pets. Indeed in at least one scene you’ll see his pet Raven on the loose and in the scene where tragedy has struck and he’s left crying at his desk by an infuriated and desperate George Bailey, you’ll see mice, various birds and, at the end of the shot, a squirrel which jumps onto the desk to try and comfort him... which must all have been a hangover from one of the previous versions of the screenplay.

Other variations are not obviously present in any shape or form in the final product... for example, there’s no evidence in this that there was once an ending where George Bailey had to fight the corrupt Government doppelgänger of himself and kill him to end the alternate reality. Yeah. that would have been a much different film.

Something I noticed this time around, in a truly gorgeous Blu Ray restoration job from Paramount (please people, don’t ever purchase or watch the silly colourised version... that is an object of evil put on the Earth as an ultimate crime against filmanity) was that the villain of the piece, Mr. Potter, has a little, ornate, precious metal skull on the desk in his office. Oh, and those set dressings are worth looking at... you’ll see a lot of things in the details. Such as a whole raft of pre-production publicity stills of the cast used as photographs in the little office space George has created for himself in his and Mary’s home.

Another thing of note... apart from a grown up Alfalfa from The Little Rascals having a bit of a moment in the film’s early scenes with the dance hall/swimming pool... would be that Donna Reed actually managed to knock out the window of the old house that Mary and George would make their home by herself with her first shot (which is pretty amazing considering the distance). Also, the big crash just after drunk Uncle Billy exits screen right was a sound guy accidentally dropping some equipment leading to James Stewart’s laugh and Thomas Mitchell’s off-screen ad lib of “I’m alright... I’m all-right!” earned the perpetrator a $10 bonus from the director for improving the film.

And a big thing which may well ruin the movie for you if you let it... the film was shot on big sets at RKO in June. A blazing summer and, indeed, in the middle of a heatwave which was so hot Capra sent the cast home to recuperate one day. However, it looks just like Winter and the effects team created, for the first time ever, a special snow compound, earning a Class III Scientific or Technical Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for their efforts. Indeed, it’s more or less the same way snow in films is done today and is much better than the dyed cornflakes or asbestos used prior to this.

Dimitri Tiomkin’s score is special too (what survives of it in the finished film, there were a lot of additional needle drops here) and, since I don’t know for sure which bits were his and which bits were borrowed, I won’t say too much about it. But it does more than just illustrate the scenes, providing immediate foreshadowing to the next scene, for instance, when George hears the news his father has had a stroke and you suddenly hear the Funeral March woven into the score. Great cinematography too, considering the number of cinematographers who worked on it and how consistent it looks. Capra has some wonderful shot set ups. For example, the washing line which Clarence and George use to dry their clothes on after the bridge jump scene forms a diagonal which is used to compartmentalise the actors within the shot.

One last thing... I mentioned about the brave static shot at the start of the movie, pulled off with just winking lights and great audio... well another extremely unusual moment for a 1940s movie (possibly the first time this was done, I’m hearing) is when James Stewart first enters the picture as the adult version of George Bailey. When his face is clearly visible and turns to the camera, Capra freezes the frame for a good long while as the various angels talk about Bailey’s face. Again, it’s kinda bold for the time to just stop the picture like this (I bet Godard loved this film, I need to find out) and, once again, the brilliant dialogue and voice acting covers up the sudden lack of flow and doesn’t really pop you out of the picture. Another wonderful moment in a film full of them.

And that’s as much as I’ll say on It’s A Wonderful Life for just a short review but I’d urge you to both read up on it in various books and, above all, watch this movie because it’s amazing. As is the new Blu Ray transfer which also includes a nice featurette about the restoration process, another one on various ‘secrets’ (I never realised how many matte painting plates were used to help flesh out the backdrops in the film) and a rare piece of ‘home movie’ footage of the final wrap up picnic with the cast and crew. So yeah, a wonderful film made better and preserved with modern restoration techniques. I’ve never seen it looking so good (even at the cinema, over the years). This is one for the ages and, despite it’s failure on its original release (helping seal the fate of Capra’s short lived Liberty Films), its reputation has grown over the years and it’s now recognised, as it should be, as one of the pinnacles of the art of American cinema. Not much comes close to this one, for sure.

The Santa Klaus Murder

Red Christmas

The Santa Klaus Murder
by Mavis Doriel Hay.
British Library Publications
ISBN: 9780712556305

I don’t know why the title of this book spells Santa Claus as Santa Klaus... there is something in there about the English upper class wanting to do right by the Germans in the wake of the first World War but, yeah, I didn’t quite understand the bigoted view of the murder victim in this tome. I’m just addressing this issue here because... I don’t want everyone Direct Messaging me and saying I can’t spell. Apparently it’s one of the versions of this name in common use so that’s good enough for me.

Anyway, my second choice of Christmas book for the season is The Santa Klaus Murder by Mavis Doriel Hay. It dates from 1936, is the last of three mystery novels written by the author in the 1930s and it’s very much in the Agatha Christie mode of whodunnit fiction. In fact, it’s probably a bad choice for me in some ways because, dealing as it does with a large upper class family in a huge country house squabbling about family politics and ‘how father has divided his fortune in the will’, I have to say I found myself less than sympathetic with any of the characters and, frankly, I didn’t care who did it because they were not the kind of people I would want to spend any time with in the first place.

This also goes, in some ways, for the friend-of-the-family police inspector who is put in charge of the case of the murdered father, who had been found shot in the head in the study during a party on Christmas Day by, it would seem, a man in a Santa Claus... sorry... Santa Klaus, suit. The problem with the Inspector is, although he’s a little more sympathetic than the family, he suffers from the same lack of mental acuity and reasoning which seems to be a curse of a great deal of detectives in novels such as these. That is to say, while he isn’t completely stupid, he does take a long time to recognise clues and opportunities and, in this case, has to be assisted by an amateur detective type, another friend of the family, who is curiously in the back seat when it comes to the ‘main protagonist’ nature of this kind of person in such fiction. Apart from one chapter near the end, we only hear of him from the Inspector, Colonel Halstock, so he’s alluded to more than anything.

When I opened the book I was confronted by a floor plan of the house which, I have to say, I didn’t really need to refer to at all and also a huge great ‘dramatis personae’ (it’s a quite large family Christmas get together) which actually is something which could have come in more useful had I bothered to check it. There are so many names in here to remember but, honestly, I wasn’t that bothered who was who by a little way in.

The story is imparted to the reader in the first person mode but the structure of this one is a little different from some of the usual whodunnit fodder in that the first five chapters are each told by a different character and each deal with a different day’s events, leading up to the last of the five telling the events of Christmas Day, when the central murder takes place. My problem with this portion of the book is that each character seems to assume that the person reading this has acquired accumulated knowledge of events and people from each previous chapter even though, as is revealed later, each character told their story without any knowledge of what anyone else wrote. I’m sorry but in real life you would expect details like nick names etc repeated from person to person, to be explained more than once to the intended reader. All but two of the remaining chapters of the book are told from Colonel Halstock’s point of view and it becomes apparent that the first five chapters are reports from some of the family members which he has asked them to write for him... so my problem about implied knowledge stands... this makes no sense.

A trick the author uses at this point is to make it clear that, when Halstock is giving his reports to the reader over many chapters, he actually hasn’t read the contents of these five chapters himself until a point much later in the book. Which is crazy because, hello, there are a lot of clues, very obvious ones, laid out in those early pages. In fact, most of the book seems to be about people telling the inspector one thing and then coming back in a later chapter to tell him they lied just a little to protect someone else’s honour or dignity (what have you) and the real truth of the matter is... etc. So it does get a bit dull and formulaic for the most part, it has to be said. However, in two chapters near the end, two other characters are given a chapter each but, by this point, it makes no sense that they are talking to the reader and there’s no longer any context given by the author as to why this should be happening.

Now, there are a lot of problems with the story, as I see it, but there are a couple of nice, positive things I can say about it before I get into those. Number one is that the ‘voices’ in which each character speaks to the reader are not completely sharing common traits. They don’t all seem like a mouthpiece for one controlling author, which is a good thing and it’s a mistake so many writers make in their novels when it come to all the characters speaking in the same way. So, while there are similarities, it’s not something which blows the credibility of them as separate characters out of the water. It was refreshing that this was the case.

The other nice thing is the writer occasionally has some very interesting phrasing and uses implication rather than outright stating things sometimes. For instance, this appraisal by Halstock of one of the female characters... “There was something impersonal in her expression, and a tightness of the lips, a recklessness of make-up resulting in crudity, which would have justified a description of her as middle-aged and embittered.” So I found that to be interesting... the way the detective wouldn’t necessarily describe the lady in question by making a judgement on her character, more implying that he could see how people might reach that conclusion themselves. So, yeah, nicely done.

What’s not nicely done is stuff like, for example, after the police surgeon has finished talking to the Inspector about the probable cause of death (in this case a bullet to the head is ruled out as suicide straight away), he then adds “Here’s the report in all the correct language.” As if the writer hadn’t bothered to do the required research herself and tell us what the report says in more thorough terms. I found this a bit odd but, then again, I’m used to reading writers like Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs so maybe I’m a bit spoiled in that kind of area.

Another big problem, well kind of, was the usual thing in a murder mystery with this many characters. The reader has no real way of effectively working out who did it from the clues because, frankly, it could have been almost any of the suspects, who almost all have a motive. It’s a bit like a 1970s Italian giallo movie in that respect... an abundance of suspects and no real way of unraveling the puzzle credibly. And, once the murderer has been revealed, it turns out the homicide is both stupidly timed and doesn’t actually gain the perpetrator anything, much to that person’s surprise. However, I was rather taken aback that it’s a minor character we rarely hear of and, frankly, one of only a few characters whose guilt would not inevitably cause a rift in the family relations in any way, shape or form. So the status quo is preserved which, frankly, seems disappointingly tidy and a bit of a cop out. And, yes, I did suspect the murderer early on but then. pretty much every chapter, somebody else seems to be equally culpable for the crime so... well... by that point I didn’t care much at any rate.

The Santa Klaus Murder wouldn’t be my first choice of a good Christmas themed mystery yarn but it is at least an easy, light and somewhat fluffy read and, well, that’s always a welcome thing at Christmas time. I wouldn’t particularly go out of my way to recommend it to anyone except those who thrive on exactly this kind of English, upper class social milieu but, I wouldn’t say don’t bother either because, well, it’s not familiar ground to me so somebody who is more receptive to that stuff might find it delightful. I found it a bit like drinking an under sugared cup of tea in some ways... a quick drink but somebody please get to the biscuits. And I think I’ll leave it at that.

Crimson Snow

Snowdunnit!

Crimson Snow - Winter Mysteries 
Edited by Martin Edwards
The British Library Press
ISBN: 978-0712356657
So this is my fourth year of reading a book in December which has a Christmas setting and then reviewing it on here and... I have to say that if I didn’t know better it would not be unreasonable for me to conclude, after the previous two years, that I just don’t like short stories. The first year I tried what is now becoming something of a tradition, I read the novel Mystery In White (you can read that review here) and I really enjoyed it. Alas, when I followed it up the next two years with Christmas short horror story collections, I was less than impressed. So this year I’ve tried a selection of mystery stories and I have to say that, for the most part, I am somewhat less than enthusiastic about a great deal of the fiction I was reading in this tome.

However, before I hastily concur that the short story format is not for me.... let me add that I love the short stories of such writers as Philip K. Dick, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Edgar Allan Poe. So maybe, I might resign myself to the fact that I don’t like collections of stories by a variety of writers where, to be fair, the hit and miss nature of that proposition might be a deciding factor in whether it’s something I can get behind or not. However, I am then reminded that I loved the selection of Christmas stories from The New Yorker magazine which they published a decade or so ago and, every year, I enjoy at least one Tales Of The Shadowmen collection (I really must get around to reviewing one of those sometime soon) and so, perhaps, I should be a little less hard on myself when it comes to my overall reaction to these things and just chalk it up to experience, once more.

The collection known as Crimson Snow and subtitled Winter Mysteries is a case in point where once again I feel victim to the hit and miss nature of the volume in which I have decided to spend time with on the run up to the Christmas festivities.

In the introduction to the collection he has put together here, Mr. Edwards highlights the benefits of curling up with a book over the Christmas period, rather than spending all one's time with online shopping or parties of a varied nature and, I have to say, this is a matter in which I am in whole hearted agreement with... or would be once the online shopping is done. Alas, if it had been a different curling companion other than this particular volume I chose, I might have had a more beneficial experience here than what I ended up with.

I’d have to say that while the majority of stories in this collection are fairly well written, they were certainly less than entertaining and, in a fair few cases, easy mysteries to solve. The opening story, The Ghost’s Touch is something I’ve already forgotten the details of (and pretty much most of the broad strokes too, it has to be said) but I do remember it starts off trying to pass itself off as a traditional Christmas ghost story before, inevitably, heading into territory more familiar to those who would embark on an endeavour boldly subtitled Winter Mysteries. It has some nice foreshadowing... “Had I been absent, the catastrophe might have been greater...” but, overall I have to say that I was mostly ambivalent towards this short and it didn’t really give me anything I wasn’t expecting.

There were a few of these stories written by famous names such as Edgar Wallace which, I have to say, didn’t really take me by surprise when... spoiler alert... it turned out the narrator who was following the investigation of a murder turned out to be the guilty party. Another seasonal tale called The Man With The Sack, written by Margery Allingham and starring her famous detective Campion, was similarly disappointing.

As was a script for a Sherlock Homes spin off play by S.C. Roberts, which actually had me wondering what the writer was thinking attempting it and, furthermore, why it was included here. There are much better Sherlock Holmes parodies out in the world and this one didn’t really seem to add anything new into the mix.

Most of the volume is just small puzzle solving and nothing, at least for this reader, to get excited about. There were a couple of standouts but for every little real gem here there seems to be at least two stories worth of paste. One of the stories included is all about a woman getting pushed off a roof and, quite honestly, I couldn’t find one single reason as to why it had been included in a book which has such a clearly descriptive and functional title as this.

But there are a couple of stories here worth reading...

Mr. Cork’s Secret by McDonald Hastings is a fast moving murder caper set in a hotel over Christmas and, like the original printing of the magazine it first appeared in... an extra solution to the mystery is given as a last chapter at the end of the book which was originally published in another issue, along with the two pages by the competition winners who had guessed just what Mr. Cork’s secret was (it’s really not that hard, to be honest). The dialogue and atmosphere is straight out of a 1930s or 1940s detective movie and fairly sparkles on the page.

By far my favourite tale, however, was Death In December by Victor Gunn, which featured that author’s running police detective character, Ironsides Cromwell and which was culled from a collection of stories featuring the detective set during various holiday periods. This one has some nice stuff in it and, again, takes the guise of a Christmas ghost story before revealing the inevitable human hands behind the seemingly supernatural shenanigans. Nice stuff though and a shadowy figure chased by the detectives that leaves no footprints in the snow has a nice explanation for this phenomenon. Easily the most entertaining gem of the collection and also, I think, the longest.

There’s one or two other nice things in this selection too but even a story which relies on a poisoned napkin which the victim rubs over his lips at various points during a Christmas dinner kind of loses its sting when you’ve already figured out who the killer really was when he was introduced fairly early on in the story. And another tale where a detective tries to solve the presence of a mystery owner at a house is nice in the fact that it turns out the mystery element of the story is entirely in the policeman’s head and he’s just gotten the wrong end of the stick.

All in all though... yeah, I’m not that happy with my choice this year and so I need to maybe find a more substantial Christmas adventure which doesn’t comprise of just short stories for next December, methinks. As for Crimson Snow... there are some things to like in it and the editor writes a page of prologue to each story to explain who each writer is but... I would only recommend it for die hard mystery fans. Not my cup of tea.