Split Second

‘til Death Do Us Heart

Split Second
UK 1992 Directed by  Tony Maylam
101 Films Blu Ray Zone B

I well remember the time of the shooting of the film Split Second in London in the early 1990s because the eight week shoot that Rutger Hauer was in London for meant that he made at least one public appearance. So, I and my friends went to see a double bill of Zabriskie Point (which Hauer had chosen himself) and Blade Runner (reviewed here) at the Everyman in Hampstead, both introduced by the man himself and with a Q&A session after. I remember waiting outside once the show had finished... I asked him to sign my copy of the illustrated Blade Runner screenplay, which he did, and them, because at this point he was surrounded by fans, I gave him my pen so it would be easier for him to get through them quicker, before I went on my way. I suspect the pen didn't last that long.

I waited for a number of years after that, for my local cinema in Enfield (which was an ABC or possibly taken over by Canon at that point) to screen Split Second, which he’d mentioned at the event, only to find it never got a local release. I’m guessing it was only playing in the centre of London because, looking at it now, I assume it must have had some kind of release in its own country.

So I never got to see it and it’s been one of that long list of films that ‘got away’... up until now, that is, when I found it quite by accident on Blu Ray in Fopp records, displaying all the signs of quality that I look for when I go shopping for movies... that is to say, it was knocked down to a fiver. Cheap and cheerful is always a good thing in my book.

So here we have a movie which is set in the far future of... 2008 (Why do they do this so often? It’s like they want these things to date quickly)... and set in London after a terrible rain of forty days and forty nights (yeah, really) has submerged most of the city underwater. Not that you’d know it because a lot of the long shots in this piece show London pretty much dry and above water but a number of the actual locations do have the main protagonists wading through water, to be fair.

The film starts off strong with suspended detective Harley Stone, played by Hauer, going after the serial killer who killed his former partner. The partner whose wife he was having an affair with... played by an immediately post Star Trek IV - The Undiscovered Country (reviewed here) incarnation of Kim Cattrall. He follows the killer into a strip club where the girls are, it has to be said, dressed up in so much leather fetish wear that you wonder if they are ever going to be able to successfully strip at all... after five or more minutes one finally goes topless but, you have to wonder, cool leather stuff aside, if this is the most boring strip club in the world. Here we see our first victim, who has her heart torn out before Stone realises said killer is there. After this scene, Stone is given a new partner called Dick Durkin - no, seriously - who is played by Alistair Duncan (but credited here as Neil Duncan) and the two go on a hunt for the serial killer together.

As the story unfolds, we find that the serial killer, whose MO is to tear the hearts out of it’s victims, has a psychic link to all the people it’s killed or wounded and is pretty much a giant supernatural beast creature... or possibly an alien... and is slaughtering people because of some ritualistic nonsense about the Chinese Year of the Rat and the Scorpio star sign. And... barring the fact that you wonder how a tall creature vaguely reminiscent of Giger’s Alien but ‘done on the cheap and looks it’ can blend in with its victims' environments long enough to get the jump on them... well, it’s a heck of a lot of fun actually.

The film has a surprising disregard for anything like appropriate or credible behaviour from pretty much most of the characters and the chaotic lack of common sense in the pursuit of justice give this film a trashy but entertaining vibe, as we watch Rutger Hauer playing a mentally unbalanced cop, obsessed with destroying the monster and restarting his old relationship with Kim Cattrall while breaking in his new Oxford trained partner to the point that Durkin slowly gets almost more insane than the lead protagonist by the end of the picture.

It’s pretty wild and crazy and the camera work shows this. Some of the shot design is not as spectacular as some of the sets themselves are but it doesn’t hurt the movie and there’s a lot on offer here. It’s got a nice load of character actors in for the ride too, such as Alun Armstrong as Stone’s boss, Pete Postlethwaite as a rival cop, Ian Dury as a nightclub owner, Tony Steedman as a police armourer (for when the hero’s decide they need some ‘big f***king guns’) and the always watchable Michael J. Pollard in a small role as a Rat Catcher.

There’s also a conscious effort, it seemed to me, to capture the baggage that Hauer brings to the role whenever possible. His most famous film in the UK at the time was Blade Runner and he was also popular over here at the time of the making of this movie for his Guiness adverts, for which he wore the same Blade Runner style trench coat... which he is also kitted out with here. The ‘futuristic’ debris of London isn’t, unfortunately, any match for the designer grime of Blade Runner but the music by Francis Haines and Stephen W. Parsons, does try and hit some of those moods in the rare, subtler moments of the score as Ridley Scott’s former classic, with the first few seconds of the opening music to the film definitely trying to evoke the opening of Vangelis’ score to the former movie quite blatantly, it would seem.

There are a few technical errors in the picture, to be fair, like a scene where Rutger Hauer squats down to dip his fingers in some blood and the long shot not matching up the blood on his finger tips (or the finger tips of whatever second unit actor was used for this pick up shot, at a guess, at any rate) and stuff like this is quite noticeable. Also, the idea of the origins and motives of the big monster creating havoc in an artistically pleasing and gory way are somewhat confused and not making complete sense, it has to be said. Nor, for the record, could it be hiding in the couch at one point when the couch was being sat on and it was down the street a few minutes before hand... and especially without damaging or disturbing the couch (or its occupant) as it did this.

That being said, there are some nice ideas in this movie, including something which possibly gets lost in translation but strongly hints that there are modified, intelligent dogs in this future (either that or it’s not quite made clear why Stone shows a dog his police ID) which could have been made a little more of but, ultimately, gets lost in the furthering of the plot, such as it is, and the action.

I have to say though that, for a b-movie, Split Second really pleased me and I had a good time with it. I wish Rutger could have done more of these kinds of pictures because I now, already, have a lot of love for this one. If you are into horror and science fiction and want to do an all-nighter with some drinking buddies then this gory, British thriller with a topless shower scene from Kim Cattrall and a big, clunky alien ripping people’s hearts out and decorating the walls and ceilings with their blood is not a bad place to start... jumps in story logic or not. I’d probably recommend this to a fair few of my friends and, for the price that Fopp is charging for the Blu Ray of this right now, you can’t go seriously wrong with this one. Really enjoyed this one.

Dario Argento's DRACULA

Tooth High To A Grasshopper

Dario Argento's Dracula
2012 USA
Directed by Dario Argento
Sony Italian BluRay Region A,B & C 

Dario Argento is a bit of a legend of a movie director these days... and rightly so, having stolen Mario Bava’s thunder somewhat when, in 1969, he repopularised (and how) the Italian giallo thriller single handedly with the first of many spectacular gialli which he made over the decades, The Bird With The Crystal Plumage. The director is mostly a practitioner of this form of cinema although, since people often find themselves confused between movies depicting serial killers and movies depicting monsters, he is often misconceived as being primarily a director of horror films.

It’s true, of course, that Argento has directed both films and TV episodes which fall into the horror genre, including one of his most famous films, Suspiria. However, his horror direction is only a small body of work compared to his giallo output and should never, I believe, be considered his primary voice... although he is obviously inspired by both a sense of the gothic (instilled in him by some of the writers he used to read when he was ill in bed as a child, if memory serves) and the famous cinematic forays of the past which encapsulated that very atmosphere as their primary focus (with offerings from Universal, RKO, Hammer and the like).

I first got into Argento at the dawn of DVDs when, after about a year or two of the machines being on the market, I finally bit the bullet and bought a player primarily because I found out you could get American DVDs of the Flash Gordon serials. This was important stuff. Of course, owning a multi-region DVD player, like pretty much anybody who is serious about film in my country would, opened up a wealth of possibilities and suddenly more controversial directors who were either not allowed to have films released in my country or were heavily censored over here (which amounts to the same thing... who wants to see a censored version of a movie?) were now instantly accessible to people in the UK properly for the first time. Which is why, I think, genres such as the giallo, the spaghetti western, sexploitaiton, blaxploitation, nunsploitation and pretty much every other kind of interesting genre around have found a big resurgence in popularity... people now have relatively easy access to these kinds of movies.

Argento, it has to be said, has been producing films which have been less than popular with his fans of recent years, although I have no problem with most of them... my one caveat being his awful version of The Phantom Of The Opera (which isn’t a recent one, as it happens). I remember being in a packed Fright Fest screening of his previous film Giallo and the audience, in which there were undoubtedly a lot of Argento fans, was howling with collective laughter at some of the execution of the movie. Now I saw no real problem with, most, of it... but I’ve always thought of Argento as primarily a visual and aural stylist, which makes sense seeing as he comes from a background of churning out very successful gialli. These films are not about acting or their ludicrous scripts... they’re about visual style and great music. So I really don’t have the same kinds of issues as some people do with his later stuff (like The Card Player, for example, which I loved).

His version of Dracula, of course, is obviously a horror story but, although it has a certain sense of a thread of adaptation running through it, it changes things around sufficiently from both Stoker’s original novel and stage play versions (and, of course, the later stage adaptations which Universal studios culled their original version from) to be different enough for even the most jaded fans to find something fresh in the story. I suspect the location budget also had something to do with that (it’s all set in one village) but even so, there are some interesting things going on here. Carfax Abbey is mentioned as Carfax Sanitorium, for example, which was formerly run by Dr. Abraham Van Helsing (Dr. Seward is completely written out).

Does this make for a good movie then?

Well... yes and no. I think it’s all down to how much certain outrageous ingredients spoil the main course for you. There was one point about a quarter of an hour before the end, for example, when I started laughing out loud.

Now then, the acting by a lot of the cast is not up to scratch. You expect that from an Argento movie and it shouldn’t, in itself, be a problem if you are already used to this director’s work. However, surprisingly, there is also some pretty good acting in this one too. The director’s daughter, Asia Argento, can always be relied on to give a great performance (and on the strength of the one movie I saw that she directed, I suspect she might even be a better director than her old man... the talent runs in the family) but we also have Thomas Kretschmann giving a really great performance as Dracula and Rutger Hauer making a more than competent Van Helsing... although Dracula’s nemesis doesn’t actually turn up until the last part of the film.

Added to this you have Dario Argento’s trademark visual splendour and the shot design and camera motion through those shots is absolutely superb in this one. The striking use of Bavaesque colour is again pushed to the fore and the outrageously saturated pools of red and yellow light sharing the same frame and the greener than green forest in the moonlight are all things of beauty. If nothing else... this film is quite spectacular. There are also a few good doses of female nudity too, which is unusual for this director and, I think, is probably more on show here (albeit briefly) than all of his other movies combined. That, of course, adds its own kind of spectacle into the proceedings... especially lit and shot as well as it is.

That being said... there’s quite a lot of bad stuff here too. One of which is Argento’s fascination with style over substance. I remember, decades ago, Argento was asked in a documentary if, when faced with the insertion of a cool and beautiful shot in his movie as opposed to a shot which would be more appropriate and make total sense within a story, which he would choose. Argento said he would always take the cool shot over logic any day. Dracula is full of “the cool shot” which is a trademark of Argento, to be sure, including one where you see the course of a bullet as it travels from the base of a man’s jaw and up and out through the top of his head... not as audacious as the notorious “bullet scene” from Argento’s movie Opera but certainly an echo throughout the years. However, you also have one scene near the end, the one I started laughing at, where the movie totally “jumps-the-shark” as it were, in modern pop culture parlance...

Dracula, it seems, can transform himself into any kind of beast he wants. One would think he would be fairly subtle in his choice perhaps but, no, he decides to go and kidnap Mina Harker transformed as a giant sized, bright green CGI grasshopper which, while certainly giving the movie a sudden and fierce injection of 1950s B-movie atmosphere... seemed perhaps a fair bit inappropriate given the sombre tone of the rest of the movie and its leanings towards the gothic. This was a fairly unfortunate choice, it has to be said, but taken out of context it looks pretty cool, at least.

But there’s more.

The various “myths” of the vampire are neither adhered to faithfully nor ignored. One or the other or the popular tactic of establishing which of the various trappings are being used would have been a way to go. Set up your ground rules for the audience first. Here, it’s contradictory and, well... all over the shop to be honest. One minute, Jonathan Harker (very much tapping into the pretty boy Keanu Reeves vibe of Coppola’s version of the story) is bitten and is instantly allergic to deadly sunlight... the next we are introduced to the “Renfield” character stand-in, who is also obviously a vampire, but who has no problem with strolling around in sunlight at all. Similarly, Lucy (beautifully played by Asia) is committing her undead crimes at night and sleeping in her tomb by day (just as her master Dracula is sleeping in his protective coffin) but why then is it, when the count himself turns into another creature, he’s perfectly fine running around in the sunlight? None of this makes much sense and neither does the fact that a bitten Jonathan Harker needs to feel the sharp end of Van Helsing’s stake but the equally vamped up Mina Harker doesn’t. None of it makes much sense... which is a big shame, to be honest.

Also, there is a dreadful reliance on CGI blood effects for the trademark Argento gore in this movie and, to me, this just looks awful when compared to a plain, in camera, practical effect. Maybe Argento’s resorted to this finally because of something to do with the 3D process... I don’t know. However, it looks very fake and unsatisfying and I hope he doesn’t continue to go down this route.

However, I let none of this detract from my enjoyment of the film, to be sure. And there are some nice nods both to the original Stoker novel (Kretschmann crawling up the outside of the castle wall) and to Todd Browning’s 1931 version, with both a large spider’s web and the full Lugosi treatment as Kretschmann digs in to the well worn “children of the night" dialogue. And, of course, Rutger Hauer’s impromtu holy cross assembly will bring back fond memories of Peter Cushing’s more succesful attempt in the old Hammer version. So some nice stuff too, including the music...

After the problems Argento had convincing the studio to retain his regularly composer, and once figurehead of Goblin, Claudio Simonetti on the previous project (the final score to Giallo was by Marco Werba), Simonetti has returned to Argento’s side with a brilliant, theremin tinged score which is quite remarkable in tone, although one of the sub-themes did remind me a little of the theme which the group Toto allegedly pilfered for their score for Dune, namely Ronald Stein’s score for Roger Corman’s Haunted Palace. That minor gripe aside though, I’ve been enjoying the score for a year or so now on CD and am pleased to finally be able to hear it in the context of the movie for which it was written. This includes the end title song which is performed by Simonetti’s current progressive rock group Daemonia.

Dario Argento’s Dracula, when all is said and done, is a film which I am more than happy to have in my possession and will definitely get a few spins as the years go by. Perhaps it may be a bit anticlimactic for some to realise that such a legendary director tackling such a legendary story is not without its problems but I, for one, am happy with the result (grasshopper aside) and, to be honest, it’s a lot better than I’d hoped it would be after the feedback I got from some. It looks, like usual for this country, I won’t get a chance to see it in any kind of cinema release over here in its 3D version but I’m still keeping my fingers crossed.

Oh yeah. About the 3D. If you are buying the Italian Blu Ray of the film (which is shot and presented in the English language anyway, by the way) then you will be shelling out a lot more for the 3D version of the movie than the 2D version, if you have a 3D player. Not to worry though... as the stall holder who I bought this from pointed out to me, the 3D print of the movie is also on the 2D disc, they’ve just repackaged the same disc for the more expensive version to get some extra cash. So if you buy the Blu Ray standard edition, at least on the version I have, you’ll get both versions. Watch out for those large, heaving bosoms in the 3D version though! You might get a wallop.

Hobo With A Shotgun

The Bloodiest Hobo

Hobo With A Shotgun Canada 2011

Directed by Jason Eisener

Momentum Region 2

Like the brilliant Machete, Hobo With A Shotgun started life as a fake trailer in the Rodriguez and Tarantino joint Grindhouse venture... although I understand it only played as that trailer in the Canadian release of the movie (apparently it was a competition winner). I’d read a lot of feedback to it on places like Twitter and it had some pretty positive reviews... all except one person who really seemed to hate it (my only guess is it’s a generation thing).

Like Planet Terror, Death Proof and Machete before it, there’s a definite knack to getting these kinds of movies right for a modern audience and a lot of that has to do with the “nostalgia haze” that comes with movies of a certain age and the ability to look back at things through a certain, almost hyper-real attitude which gives the movie a degree self-awareness which would have been, by its very nature, totally absent on the original, definitive articles which these movies are paying homage to.

And that’s the difference, in my mind, between enjoying these films and embracing them on a fun level or standing back from the action a little bit and admiring the artistry of the brush strokes in comparison with the original archetypes of this sub-genre. This is why, to me, Tarantino’s Death Proof section of Grindhouse is not anywhere near as successful as either Planet Terror or the later produced Machete. Death Proof was far more like the product it was actually trying to emulate. Everything felt just right for that style of cheap, exploitative American moviemaking that, asides from obvious indicators such as the “out of their time” cast list, the movie is almost indiscernible from the original product. Trouble is... I’ve seen the original product and those experiences are usually frustrating and not something I’d care to repeat. Those movies, the US variety anyway, were ugly and uninspiring and, fairly often, quite bland. So I guess what I’m saying here about Death Proof is, for once, Tarantino made an uninspiring and bland movie.

Planet Terror and Machete, on the other hand, are both major triumphs of the genre because, well they’re giving it a bit more than what you would have seen in the original versions of these kinds of movies. Certainly they’re made in the style of those grungy, violent, seventies B-movies... but they are much more fun and certainly a lot wilder with their set pieces than a lot of the directors and producers of those 70s movies would have been brave enough to release.

So how did I find Hobo With A Shotgun? Well, for starters this movie doesn’t really seem to be parodying 70s “grindhouse” at all... except for in the choice of typography, which is brilliantly tied to that period. No, this is a movie that looks and feels much more like it belongs within the realm of the cheesy, straight-to-video market of the early to mid 80s. That’s probably a better viewpoint to approach this movie with. As the “straight to VHS or BETA” secondary market... that should give you some idea of the tone and feel of the movie.

But how does it do in comparison to its modern predecessors? Just fine. Actually, more than just fine.

For starters, getting Rutger Hauer to play the lead hobo is casting genius... and giving him a character who moves along to another town to beg for money so he can save up to... buy a lawnmower is just an odd enough premise to keep you rooting for him. However, the town he’s ended up with is run by a boss and his sons who hold the towns population in a grip of terror and who have the police in their pockets. They really are quite appallingly bad in the way that only direct-to-video villains were back in the 80s and after not too much time you really want these guys and their minions to die a long drawn out and overtly gratuitous death... each and every one of them. And of course, because this is an over the top and rose tinted glasses echo of these kinds of movies... that’s exactly what you get.

And when I say rose-tinted, I’m not that far off from describing the movie in a literal sense also. The colours in this movie absolutely jump out at you from the screen, kiss you, slap you around the face a little and then jump back into shot and wave at you for a while. Everything about the colouring and lighting on this movie is almost hallucinogenic... it’s like what would happen of Mario Bava and Dario Argento had got together to paint a fence and found a couple of gallons of fluorescent paint to do the job with... and this movie is that fence. In other words... this movie is a visual powerhouse of beauty and, just to give you an absolute contradiction to the beauty of the images... it’s also one of the most violent and bloodiest movies I’ve seen in quite some time. Really gory here folks. Over the top, perhaps, but certainly enough to really put off people with a nervous disposition.

But the most important thing about this movie, with its mean spirited villains who have created a town of absolute despair, is that the central hero character played by Rutger Hauer, even with his “love interest” subplot which works really well, is not your typical 80s antihero. He is not an antihero in any sense of the word in fact. What we have here in Hobo With A Shotgun is a bona fide all American, righteous, Roy Rogers meets James Stewart doing Destry, full blooded hero. A man of high morals and standards who is ready to stand up for what is right and just... even if it means he has to give up on his dream of buying a lawnmower to be able to afford a shotgun and some shells. A hobo’s gotta do what a hobo’s gotta do... it won’t be pleasant and the ending won’t be particularly happy either... but it has to be done and at least the ending is a good one... and you can’t ask much more than that.

Hobo With A Shotgun, ladies and gentlemen... not a film for the squeamish to be sure but certainly a big recommendation from me. Well, with that kind of combination of technical brilliance and a high moral centre.. it was hardly likely to get any other verdict, if truth be told. Take a look and see for yourself.