Cuckoo

Waltz N’ All

Cuckoo
Directed by Tilman Singer
Germany/USA 2024
Neon
UK Secret Preview Screening

I don’t usually go to secret cinema screenings, to be honest. Unless I’m pretty sure of what they might be. So the last one I went to was at a FrightFest where I’d correctly guessed it was a preview of the first Sin City movie, way back when. But, I’m on my holidays at the moment and so went to the Secret Screaming strand of Cineworld secret screenings this week, mostly because I was sure it would be the new Alien movie. I’m pleased to say I was very wrong about that and, instead, got a real treat.

Tilman Singer’s new movie Cuckoo, I have to say, had me right from the get go, with a credits sequence full of arguing, shouting and shadow play and just an incredible atmosphere all its own. This is the tale of Gretchen, played by Hunter Schafer, who is moving to a resort in Switzerland, surrounded by forests, to join her father, step mother and younger, mute stepsister after her mother’s death (I’m pretty sure it had an opening marker up for somewhere in Switzerland at any rate, although it appears to have been shot in Germany). When she is there she is given a summer job at the local hotel by the resort owner, played by Dan Stevens but, is told to not try and travel home alone after dark.

Okay, I’m not going to say too much more about the plot but I think I summed up my initial reaction to the film pretty well on Twitter last night. Cuckoo is like if a young David Lynch and a young David Cronenberg had decided to collaborate on a new movie project inspired by Hammer’s The Reptile. And it’s an absolutely unsettling and ravishing assault on the senses... if I can say that without it sounding too much of a cliché. It’s also very quirky.

The tone also really shouldn’t work too well because you’ve got some very different things going on here. For example, Hunter Schafer’s grief ridden, angsty teen is given a very naturalistic performance. Whereas Dan Stevens, who is pretty much the ‘human villain’ of the piece, is playing it like absolutely every kind of mad scientist role you could think of... coming across as a very fun and funny caricature of a villainous stereotype and, yeah, you can tell he’s having a really good time in this role. As was this audience member.

The supporting cast are all great too, especially the young girl played by Mila Lieu, who handles very well a problematic shading to an infant who is totally innocent but, who could also be a killer in the midst (not to give anything away here, I promise).

But the sound design and editing are the real stars of this film. There is a lot of screeching happening in the movie and, with the cinema sound system turned up unbearably loud for this screening (for some reason... luckily it enhanced this particular film inadvertently), it was almost headache inducing and absolutely effective. That’s okay, my favourite Godard movie, Weekend, with it’s blaring, incessant car horns is also headache inducing but, it’s still my favourite by that director. Here though, it’s also coupled with some wonderful shots of pulsing throats and, again without trying to give too much away... well, let’s say weaponised (or at the very least disarming) time loops triggered by the sound of the characters from which the title of the film takes its name.

Now, I have to say that the final act of the film... which is an extended chase/struggle to escape/shoot out etc... felt just a little too long. I think it could have been maybe just five minutes shorter but, honestly, I’m really not complaining. I think it worked well enough and the absolute artist who directed this certainly knows what he’s doing (so I’m guessing it was just as long as it needed to be to feel right, anyway).

And that about wraps it up for me on Cuckoo. I believe this film is getting a release in about ten days time and, if you are fan of the horror genre then you need to go and see this one. It’s very surreal, fast paced and sets up an atmosphere that the silliness of its central premise can just about contain. It would make a lovely double bill with the German horror film Schlaf (aka Sleep, reviewed by me here) and if you liked that one, the feel of the two movies is not dissimilar for their first reels, it has to be said. I hope this one gets a proper Blu Ray release soon... I even liked the needle dropped songs used on the soundtrack.

Trap

Parent

Trap
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
UK/Yemen/USA 2024
Blinding Edge Productions
UK cinema cut.

Warning: Spoilers from the trailer.

I have to say that, the older I get, the more I am mellowing towards M. Night Shyamalan. He’s much easier to stomach when he’s not exploring stories which lead to an obviously telegraphed ending and, with a film like this, he really knows how to pull all the stops out and craft a tale of downright gripping suspense, it has to be said.

Trap is about a family man parent called Cooper, played by Josh Hartnett... an actor I’ve always liked and who is playing a little against type here (at least in terms of the other films I’ve seen with him). He’s attending a rock concert put on by Lady Raven, played by M. Night Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka Shyamalan (not his other daughter, who directed the excellent The Watched, reviewed here).* Turns out that Saleka is not just a talented actress as she demonstrates here (especially in the last act of the movie) but she also composed and performs the many songs she sings, plays and dances her way through as Lady Raven so, yeah, a Hollywood family to take note of.

Okay, so Cooper is there with his daughter, played by Ariel Donoghue but, he’s very worried about the high police presence in and around the building. So he talks to a merchandise stall person and it turns out that the whole concert is one big trap to catch a violent serial killer known as The Butcher, since the police know he likes this particular artist. And if you’re thinking of seeing this one and you haven’t seen the trailer then... don’t read on. Big spoiler. And if you have seen the trailer you’ll know that the set up for the movie is... Cooper is The Butcher. So the first two thirds of the movie are Cooper trying to figure out how to get out of the trap and see what lengths he’ll go to in order to escape.

Also present at the concert and spearheading the operation is criminal profiler Dr. Josephine Grant (I do wonder if that character name is a deliberate Doctor Who reference) and she’s played by none other than the great Hayley Mills. Yeah, that’s right... the star of The Parent Trap sets a trap for a serial killing parent. That has a nice sense of poetic career continuity.

And, for those of you who know Shyamalan’s work you’ll already know it’s well shot and, especially in the interior scenes that don’t take place at the concert, beautifully framed. But, if you want a good thing to recommend this movie to you... it’s that it doesn’t, quite, do what you expect it to. I mean, yeah, there’s no big twist in the tale (so to speak) but the basic set up of ‘man needs to get out of trap’ does not take up the whole movie. It does some other, sometimes surprising things which, actually, hinge on the credibility of Saleka Shyamalan’s Lady Raven character. This film kinda holds its credibility on whether, through that performance, you think the character is capable of reacting to the situation in the way she does and, I have to tell you, she pulls it off surprisingly well here. There are a few false endings popping up like Russian nesting dolls and I was happily convinced by it the whole time.

So, yeah, the only other thing worth mentioning about Trap, well... other than it’s a very Hitchcockian time at the cinema, is that I suspect, although it’s not verified in this particular film, that it could well be another stealth installment in the Unbreakable series of films by the same director. I mean, it’s definitely set up for a sequel and I can’t help but think Cooper might well meet one or two of the characters from Glass (reviewed here) before long. So time will tell on that one, I guess.

*And, yes, the director does put himself in a little role in the movie again. You really can’t miss him.

Borderlands

A Border
Understanding

Borderlands
Directed by Eli Roth
USA 2024
Lionsgate
UK cinema cut

Warning: Some insinuated spoilers.

Well now, I’ve not played the video game Borderlands, which this film is based on, so I really can’t tell you how close of an adaptation this movie is. Not that close is my guess. I also have a problem with the films of Eli Roth... I don/t like them (the few I’ve seen by him) so I went into this expecting to be disappointed.

You might then ask why I went to see this movie in the first place?

Two reasons. Firstly the trailer was bright, colourful, had some nice stabs at humour and with a lot going on. Secondly, one of the main protagonists, bounty hunter Lilith, is played by Cate Blanchett... who I think is one of the greatest actresses of her generation. Not to mention that Jamie Lee Curtis is also in the movie. So I was going on trust that if Blanchett had signed on for it, there must be something to the script.

Now, I’d like to be able to tell you I finally loved a movie that Eli Roth directed. However, as I was coming home I looked up the trivia on this title and found that he’d shot the movie in 2021 and finished a cut early 2022 which was all in keeping with the violence and bleakness of the video game on which it is based. However, the studio didn’t go for this so they held it over for two years and got another director to come in and shoot/reshoot a load of scenes to try and dumb the movie down to a lower certificate... what in the UK is a 12A (says it all about how rubbish studios are and how their executives make bad decisions).

The punchline to all this is that, in spite of really terrible reviews coming in for this film (presumably written by people who have played the game and been disappointed by the deviations from the tone the film takes), I actually really loved the movie and I will definitely be picking up the Blu Ray at some point, if and when it arrives on proper physical media. I just don’t know if the parts of the movie I’m responding to are Eli Roth, the original director, or the next guy along.

But I did really like it and I even found Jack Black, playing the voice of the irritating robot character, to be less irritating (in terms of me being able to put up with him) and fairly entertaining also.

Yeah, it feels like a typical, late 1980s/early 1990s sci-fi action flick and I generally had a good time with it (especially with the always watchable Gina Gershon playing a character who, I can only assume, is somewhat influenced by the style of Mae West, in a couple of scenes). It’s pacey, humourous, has some nicely edited action sequences and does most things right (even if the trailer maybe gives away too much, it has to be said). The rest of the cast are all great too, including Kevin Hart as an ex-soldier, Ariana Greenblatt as ‘the chosen one’ and Edgar Ramirez playing a nasty villain.

Having said all that, though, it does have a couple of tiny problems.

Firstly, there’s a scene where Kevin Hart’s character sacrifices himself against overwhelming odds as a gazillion psycho killers jump on him. Later on, he just gets up and extricates himself from a pile of dead bodies. Did I miss something here? My best guess on what the hell happened (it’s never explained) is that the character was supposed to die there but the studio brought him back for the reshoots and didn’t bother to explain things. That is just a guess, though.

Secondly, there’s a so called twist near the end (which I’m assuming is also in the game on which it’s based) involving the character played by Cate Blanchett and a certain deus ex machina moment at a crucial point. It’s badly telegraphed and I think anyone paying attention to her character’s back story will be able to figure things out from about 20 minutes into the film. You can see it a mile off and... my best guess is that it’s an element from the video game and that they didn’t want to lose it. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the moment and its implications but... I’d almost rather the writers had changed their minds about this because, honestly, it’s hard not to guess that this is coming from very early on in the film.

But, other than those two small things, I’m happy to report that I really liked Borderlands and will be recommending it to people for sure. A cinematic throwback, maybe but, a nicely done one, I think.

Caligula

Avoid Roman Charges

Caligula
Directed by Tinto Brass
Additional scenes by Bob Guccione
1979 Italy/USA
Penthouse Films

Warning: I guess this technically has spoilers.

So the first question you may ask yourself is... why am I reviewing a film like Caligula?

I have to confess, I never had much interest in seeing this particular movie, for sure. The thing is, Severin released a wonderful little boxed edition of two Caligsploitation movies a while back and, although I wasn’t that much interested in the subject matter, the way it had been packaged appealed to the graphic designer in me. A nice sturdy box with an inset Roman coin bearing Caligula’s head on one side and, on the other (once gently prized from the box), the Severin Films logo (apparently the packaging of this set was nominated for an award, at time of writing, which I’m guessing it probably won). So I wanted this but then figured, before I watched the actual exploitation films inside, perhaps I should finally get around to taking a look at the film which these were trying to bandwagon. So here we are...

Caligula is perhaps one of the top four or five most notorious movies ever made. Initially directed by the great, erotic movie director Tinto Brass, the film does not apparently represent his vision of it and he was effectively shut out from the editing process (quite literally locked out, from what I can tell) and the film was recut by Bob Guccione with new hardcore scenes inserted, fairly seamlessly it has to be said, within the re-ordered assembly of footage. Despite this, it’s not as much of a mess as you might think... just incredibly dull.

Many people have tried to distance themselves from this movie right from even before it got released. Famous writer Gore Vidal, for example, who made large contributions to the script and original screenplay, wanted his name removed (before he was given a princely sum for keeping it on there). The film stars various actors and actresses, the most notable being Malcolm McDowell as the titular roman, Peter O’ Toole as his grandfather Tiberius, Sir John Gielgud as Nerva (both he and O’Toole’s characters are dead way before the first hour is up) and Dame Helen Mirren as Caesonia, the most promiscuous woman in Rome and wife of Caligula. I think of them all, the only one who doesn’t really mind being associated with this movie is Helen Mirren (good for her). In fact, all the actors refused to loop their dialogue until the various hardcore sex scenes (and they are seriously, proper hardcore... I know because I imported the full length cut from Italy for this review*) had been excised. Guccione obliged and the actors re-recorded their lines... not realising Guccione would just reinsert the scenes back into the cut soon after.

The film follows the rise and eventual downfall of the famously mad Roman Emperor and it was a big hit in the playground when I was at school when I was 12. All the kids talked about it and described the scenes they remembered from watching illegal video pirates of the movie. I was never much interested but famous sequences such as the Roman guard being forced to drink huge amounts of wine only to have his bladder punctured by Tiberius’ sword, the lady getting a massage with freshly ejaculated semen, the various Romans buried up to their neck in sand while a slow moving platform consisting of whirling blades comes along to chop their heads off, the castration scene and copious amounts of male and female nudity etc... were all well known to me from my school days so, I think it would be safe to say there were no real surprises left for me when I finally came to watch this, rather disappointing movie, truth be told.

What I will say is that it’s not a terrible film on a technical level. In fact, it looks quite splendid. Tinto Brass knows how to design a movie and the cinematography combined with the surrealistic sets is very much like a constant dose of eye candy throughout. So, yeah, Caligula is nothing, if not a spectacular film.

And that extends to the acting too. Everyone does a fantastic job in this. McDowell is especially good as Caligula and seems to be almost channeling his Alex role from Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange for this... in a ‘highly stylised, grand sense of thuggery’ kind of way although, it has to be said, this film is not nearly as ‘Monty Python’ as Kubrick’s opus, for sure. Plus, the styles of acting on display by some of the cream of the UK’s talent does, bizarrely, give this Italian/American co-production a distinctly British flavour too.

On most other levels though, the film seems to fail and, unexpectedly, also fails to be in any way erotic, despite exactly what (and who) is on show here. 

Take the music for example. Most of the movie is left unscored, even though it had two composers write two different scores for it, which were both rejected. Instead, on the opening, pre-credits scene of Caligula frolicking and fornicating in the woods with his sister, Khatchaturian’s famous Spartacus music is heard loud and, profoundly out of place, on the score (indeed, the scene itself was chopped in half and relocated here, contrary to the use Tinto Brass filmed it for). Then a credits sequence follows with a background of a mashed Caligula coin (bleeding from the eye), which obviously inspired the Severin packaging for their beautiful ‘knock offs’ box set and, as the distinguished cast are heralded, the famous balcony music from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet plays. Then, when any music is needed during the rest of the film (not that often deemed worthy of music, it would seem), the Khatchaturian music keeps swelling up in the foreground... again, completely inappropriately. I can’t help but think that if the producers had stuck with a commissioned score, the film would be a lot more watchable... or at least considerably less yawn inducing.

And that’s more or less all I have to say about Caligula other than, the movie is still quite successful and popular and I’ve no idea why. I remember, as a schoolboy, walking past the poster for the movie at my local cinema for a considerable number of weeks. Also, it was quite influential right out the gate. The comic 2000AD loved to beat upcoming movies to the punch and this one, with all its hype and publicity, was a target... so they managed to get their fantastic (and much cooler) Caligula homage out in 1978-1979, in a long multi-part Judge Dredd serial entitled The Day The Law Died, which depicted the crumbling of the hierarchy of the Hall Of Justice after mad Judge Cal rose to power (even making his pet goldfish a Judge, Judge Fish, in one issue... I believe Caligula made his horse a high up ranking Roman at one point in his reign). Another thing influenced by the movie, I suspect, is Frank Miller’s comic 300, specifically in the scenes where the mutated, freakish humans are depicted (and in the subsequent movie adaptation), which seem almost ripped from the Tinto Brass film.

So, yeah, that’s me done on Caligula. I wouldn’t recommend this to pretty much anyone. It’s not a terrible movie and there’s a lot of talent behind it... it’s just not very good and, perhaps, doesn’t even quite live up to its notoriety. A bit meh!

 *Please note, this is not the new Director's Cut which was released in cinemas yesterday (and already disowned by said director, it seems, who had nothing to do with it).

Taste The Blood Of Dracula

Offspring Breakers

Taste The Blood Of Dracula
UK 1970
Directed by Peter Sasdy
Hammer/Warner Archive Blu Ray Zone A

Okay, so the time has come for me to revisit the very first of the Hammer Dracula films I saw as a kid. I think I was about six years old when Taste The Blood Of Dracula got it’s first TV screening in the UK but it was a big deal as I think I’d only seen the Bela Lugosi version of Dracula before this. I remember it was one of two films (the other being Dr. No) where we actually walked up one night to the next street from where we lived back in those days, to my uncle’s house... as he was one of the few family members who actually possessed a colour television set as opposed to our black and white model. I really liked this film then and, as a consequence, despite being somewhat less thrilled by it this time around, it’s always going to be the Hammer Dracula movie that holds a special place in my heart for this reason. Not my favourite (that would get a release in 1972, I review it here) but certainly the one that most brings with it a strong sense of nostalgia.

And though it is actually quite a ploddy film in a way, I have to say that the way the story evolves over the course of the picture is yet a slightly different angle into the various ‘Dracula killing sprees’ which are the prime ingredient of the movie.

The film actually opens just before the end of the last movie, Dracula Has Risen From The Grave (reviewed here), with a travelling salesman, played by British comedian Roy Kinnear, being knocked unconscious and abandoned on the road following a somewhat traditional Hammer opening of a stage coach filmed in the local forest. When he awakens, he stumbles into Christopher Lee’s Dracula’s death scene from the last movie and, it transpires later, collects the amulet, the cloak and some of the powdered remains of his blood for their ‘resale value’.

We then switch to the plot proper, as three disloyal fathers, played by Geoffrey Keen, Peter (It’s cheese, Gromit!) Sallis and John Carson meet on the last Sunday of every month in their little three man secret circle, to while away the rest of the evening in the company of the charming ladies of a bordello (including the young Madeline Smith in her first role for Hammer), run by Russell Hunter (who played ‘Lonely’ in TV’s hit show Callan, opposite Edward Woodward). As importantly, we meet their respective children played by Linda Hayden (from Blood On Satan’s Claw, reviewed here), Isla Blair and Lucy Paxton. And also Anthony Higgins as Ms Hayden’s worried and disapproved of boyfriend.

We then get into some business where the three brothel boys fall in with the son of a lord played by Ralph Bates, in the first of his films for Hammer. He dabbles in black magic and gains the aid of the three, in the guise of providing them with thrills beyond what their now jaded minds can think of. In this case, he urges them to purchase Dracula’s cloak, amulet and powdered blood at great expense so they can sell their soul to the devil but, when things take a dark turn and only he drinks Draculas blood mingled with his own, before being beaten to death by the others, he is abandoned at the site of the ritual.

However, because of his loyalty to Dracula, his body is suddenly covered with some special spooky dust, which forms a kind of shroud around him, before he rips free of the shroud and is revealed to be a reborn Christopher Lee as Dracula. Now, I suspect Bates must have felt a little hard done by at this point because he was originally supposed to be playing the lead role after Lee’s reluctance to return to the character but, the distribution deal with Warners Seven Arts would go up in smoke without Lee in the part so he was, eventually, lured back to the role and the story rewritten for the return of the original Dracula.

After that, the film becomes a simple cat and mouse game as Dracula takes revenge on the three who beat his ‘servant’ to death by mind controlling their offspring to kill their relevant fathers, before Ms. Hayden’s boyfriend finally rescues her from his clutches and somehow kills Dracula in a bizarre moment which I had to look to Wikipedia to explain to me and, well I’m still not really sure why he dies here but it is spectacular, despite not really being reliant on the forces of logic. It’s a bit of an unsatisfying ending, to be honest but, I liked it well enough when I was six years old so I’m not going to start knocking it now.

The film is, as I said, a little bit ploddy... for instance, it’s over a third of the way in before the characters and supernatural elements are set up enough to be able to credibly bring Dracula back from the dead for the audience. However, there’s some nice photography in this to keep the visual interest up throughout. Sasdy manages to deal with crowded frames quite well... for instance, when the three fathers are all crammed into a shot with Bates and Kinnear, Sasdy positions them so the three fathers are vertically aligned in terms of height in the frame on the left of shot with the other two more to the right of the shot... which gives it a nice sense of balance.

This is also the first Hammer Dracula film in my memory (I might be wrong in this so please hit me up in the comments if I am) to feature a solitary, bare female breast for a few seconds in the bordello scene... so that’s kind of interesting. I was a little disappointed that the fathers are more or less marked as ‘bad people’ for two timing their wives to visit their monthly fix of scrumptious harlots... thus making their later murders morally acceptable to an audience... but I guess they weren’t quite there yet when it came to completely innocent bystanders being killed (although, certainly, one of the daughters meets an untimely demise at the hands... well, at the teeth... of Dracula himself).

The film is significantly bolstered by a score from James Bernard, who wrote the original Dracula (aka Horror Of Dracula) score for Hammer, so he uses his three note motif for Lee’s vampire all over the show, to great effect.

And there’s not much more for me to say about this Proustian rush of a movie that is Taste The Blood Of Dracula. A bit dull in places but ultimately an entertaining entry in the series and, while not one of the best it’s certainly not the least of them either. The film has a great title too, ushering in a tag line parodying the British milk adverts of the time... Drink A Pint Of Blood A Day... so, yeah, it’s a nice little slice of Hammer Dracula, make no mistake. I’m not looking forward to the next one in the series so much though, from what I remember of it.

Behind The Sofa - Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who

Sofa, So Good

Behind The Sofa -
Celebrity Memories
of Doctor Who
Edited by Steve Beery
Foreword by Terry Pratchett
Gollancz
Isbn 9780575129450

Just a very short review but a big shout out to my cousin Steve in Australia, who saw two copies of this book we’d never heard of on sale in a shop over there and was nice enough to send one to me.

Behind The Sofa - Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who is a small but many paged tome that does exactly what you think it does. The proceedings of the sales of the book all go into Alzheimers research and so, quite appropriately, it has a foreword by the late, great Terry Pratchett (it must have been one of the last things he wrote, I reckon). Each entry of a Doctor Who remembrance from various celebrity fans of the show is accompanied by a small black and white illustration but, I confess, I could make no rhyme or reason as to why some were of the celebrity in question, some were monsters and characters related to the anecdote and, also in large part, pictures of completely unrelated Doctor Who iconography (or so it seemed to me)... so in terms of the illustrations, it’s a bit ‘all over the place’. But they’re very good though and some are featured on the front cover design, making up the roundels of the TARDIS.

Something else which has the same quality of general higgledy piggledyness is the order of the anecdotes themselves. One might think the entries would be alphabetical but, no, that’s not a convention which has been employed by the editor here either.

Now, the range of remembrances go from recollections of the apparently not urban mythical ‘hiding behind the sofa’ from various Doctors over the years, starting with William Hartnell (who pop star Toyah lists as her favourite here). Other kinds of anecdotes are mostly from people who have worked, in some capacity, with either the production of the show or with an offshoot from the show (such as writing books about it etc). For instance, Michael Moorcock says some things about the scheduling of the show where he lives and it certainly explains a few things about the weaknesses of the Doctor Who novel he wrote, I suspect (which I reviewed here).

Some of these are even from the actors playing companions in the show (although, I don’t remember seeing any from any of the Doctors themselves here). So we have anecdotes like Richard Briers telling how he played his part in the Sylvester McCoy story he did as an over-the-top Hitler and Janet Fielding, who played Tegan Jovanka opposite Tom Baker and Peter Davidson (returning to the role decades later for Jodie Whittaker’s last story), tells of a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ she had which was instigated by Peter Davidson, no less.

Actually, some of the stories actors tell are exactly what you are expecting them to be but that makes them no less special. So we get Katy Manning’s remembrances of working with Jon Pertwee and the late Bernard Cribbins talks about his two times fighting Daleks, decades apart. Once as a companion to Peter Cushing (where they both got the giggles) in the second cinema adventure Dalek Invasion Earth 2150AD (reviewed here) and then during his regular stint on the show, as the grandfather of one of the companions, during David Tennant’s era.

Chris Tarrant says maybe too much about his friend Sylvester McCoy and his penchant for practical jokes and, in one of the more moving sections in the book, composer Sam Watts talks about accompanying actress Elisabeth Sladen on an episode of the spin off show The Sarah Jane Adventures... and how she found it great fun but it was getting quite tiring. Of course, with hindsight, we all know now just why she was finding it tough going towards the end of her short life so, yeah, it’s a very sad moment in the book. As it was in her autobiography (reviewed here), finished by her husband and daughter.

And I think that’s where I want to finish this review of Behind The Sofa - Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who. Not a book I knew about and it’s always nice to receive a gift. A fond set of remembrances for avid fans of the show and even casual viewers such as myself.

Invaders Of The Lost Gold

Gemser And Makepeace

Invaders Of The Lost Gold
aka Horror Safari
aka Safari Cannibale
aka Greed
Directed by Alan Birkinshaw
Hong Kong 1982 
Severin Films Blu Ray Zone A

Wow. This is the kind of movie where you really have to wonder how it exists and why it was ever made. Answer... because it was financed by notorious, low budget ‘opportunity seizer’ Dick Randall (who produced and sometimes acted in such films as Pieces, The French Sex Murders and even Bava’s Four Times That Night). He was kind of a green light and a red light for movies both at the same time but, yeah, nobody could deny his passion for cinema, for sure.

This quickie, Invaders Of The Lost Gold, which was made in the Philippines, appealed to me mostly because of the two main actresses. It has Laura Gemser, famous for Black Emanuelle* and a whole host of other ‘single M’ Emanuelle movies (I think she even had a part in one of the ‘double M’ Emmanuelle movies at some point too) and, in the main lead with an ‘introducing’credit, we have Glynis Barber (replacing Britt Ekland who wisely dropped out before shooting started). Remember her? She played, among other things, Soolin in Blake’s Seven (in the later seasons when Blake wasn’t even in it), Jane (in the serialised BBC adaptation of the saucy World War two newspaper strip of the same name) and, of course, Makepeace in Dempsey And Makepeace (going on to marry her co-star Michael Brandon). This wasn’t her first role. I think she was doing Blake’s Seven before this... but I guess it’s her first feature film role, to justify the credit Dick Randall gave her. Either way, she’s probably the most competent of the performers in this movie... which given the big name cast, I think says more about her enthusiasm than anything else. I get the feeling from watching this that the rest of the cast are not exactly treating this film like it’s ‘A material’... which to be fair it decidedly isn’t... but whatever, she comes off as one of the most credible in the cast (as does Laura Gemser actually).

So I teased a big name cast and here it is... we have Stuart Whitman playing the male lead Mark Forrest (he’s twenty seven years older than Barber but she’s supposed to be his love interest), Edmund Purdom as Rex Larson (the villain of the piece), Woody Strode as the bodyguard/butler of the financier of the expedition in the movie (Barber plays the money man’s daughter) and Harold Sakata, who played Odd Job in Goldfinger, reviewed here) as a former officer in the Japanese army.

The film starts off in 1945, when an offshoot of the Japanese army, based in the Philippines, are attacked and almost completely wiped out by headhunters... but not before they hide their chests of gold in a cave to be collected years later when it’s safe to do so. Then, 36 years later, the villain of the piece... after killing one of the officers for non-compliance and then being cheated from collaborating with a second who kills himself... grabs Sakata to help on an expedition to find the lost gold. Much to his dismay, the financier hires Whitman, who Purdom’s character has treacherous history with, to lead the team and he also goes along, bringing his daughter and various other helpers.

And the rest of the film is watching almost the whole team get picked off one by one by, sometimes mysterious, attacks by wildlife or... well I’m not always sure... until we get a stand off between Whitman and Purdom with Barber looking on. The end... really nothing much to see here folks. That being said, the director has gone on record as being rightfully proud of pulling off a... mostly... cohesive adventure yarn under terrible circumstances and with a special Dick Randall budget (aka excessively low) while also rewriting the script day by day as the film shot.

It’s dreadful and not quite exploitative, apart from one scene near the end where Gemser sheds her clothes and goes swimming before dropping out of the picture in the most puzzling manner... and it has the occasional piece of ‘practical effects violence’, which they sometimes get away with but often don’t, in my opinion.

Whenever a major character dies, the film goes into a bizarre slow motion effect so you know something bad is happening... even though the details of that are not really present on screen. For example, a slow motion crocodile attack doesn’t have any shots of the crocodile or victim sharing the screen (and the crocodile in certain moments looks like it might even have been tracked in from another movie) but we’re somehow supposed to surmise that a character has been eaten. Of the slow motion deaths on display though, Laura Gemser’s swimming death is the most perplexing. One minute she’s swimming around backstroke to show some of the movie’s sexy assets... the next she is keeling over in slow motion in the water and, when her body is found, even the other characters can’t figure out how or why she died. I dunno... it’s as much of a puzzle to the audience... maybe a heart attack?

The music is bizarre too. Francesco De Masi provided the score but it feels wholly inappropriate to the images and I’d have said it was just needle dropped in from another movie. But the director mentions ‘doing the music’ so I can only assume it’s an original composition. I’d say it harms the film somewhat but, with the amount of harm it does itself anyway, it’s already kind of bulletproof.

I’d have to say though that, even though the film is kinda trashy... and not in a sleazy way, worse luck, just seeming like it’s cobbled together from air (no disrespect to the director, who obviously managed to make a lot more of it than many might)... I somehow really enjoyed this one and don’t regret my purchase in any way. I don’t know why but, I had a smile on my face from beginning to end throughout this one... possibly because of the juxtaposition of the various ‘unlikely bedfellows’ in terms of the acting talent. Severin’s Blu Ray transfer is beautiful (although the state of the slow motion sequences is, I suspect, not something they would possibly have been able to fix) and there are a couple of nice extras on here too. One where the director talks about the filming and we hear stories about the reluctant crocodile and the bizarre, eccentric and aggressive sense of competitiveness between Whitman and Purdom... and another which is two long interviews with the both the director and Dick Randall’s widow (she always has good stories) which are both outtakes from the documentary movie Machete Maidens Unleased (which I reviewed here).

And there you have it... Invaders Of The Lost Gold is not a film I’d recommend to anyone but saying that, it found a warm place in my heart and it’s the perfect film to programme in the middle of an all nighter moviethon to give the audience a bit of a pause before getting their second wind, I reckon. One I’m pleased to have on the shelf. 

*There should be a whole raft of Black Emanuelle reviews coming soon to the blog within the next twelve months or so. I'm eight fims into the box set at time of writing.

Thelma

Scam, Bam,
Thank You Ma’am

Thelma
Directed by Josh Margolin
Switzerland/USA 2024

Not to be confused with the famous identically titled Nordic horror infused sci-fi movie from 2017 (reviewed here), Thelma is a movie starring 95 year old actress June Squibb as the 93 year old title character, Thelma Post. She’s actually based on the director’s grandmother, also Thelma Post, who is currently 103 and who is also seen in the movie in a mid-end credits scene. Thelma Post is the widow of Ted Post, the famous Hollywood director, who is in family photos in the movie. Which would make sense because the location used for Thelma’s apartment in the movie is actually the real Thelma’s actual apartment.

Joining the actress in the film are her character's grandson Daniel (played by Fred Hechinger) who she has a very good relationship with... and his parents played by the wonderful Clark Gregg and the always brilliant Parker Posey (is she still regarded as the queen of indie film-making these days?). One day, Thelma gets a phone call with someone pretending to be her grandson in jail, who puts her onto a ‘lawyer’, and she falls for the scam, posting ten thousand dollars of bail money to the PO box given. The rest of the family, apart from her brilliant grandson, think she should be put in a home but, while they are procrastinating on stuff like this, she makes up her mind to track down the scammers and get her money back... inspired by Tom Cruise in the Mission Impossible films she watches with her grandson.

So she goes to collect an old friend, Ben, played by the late, great Richard Roundtree in his final film (he died a few months before the premiere and it has an ‘in loving memory’ tag to him at the end of the credits). He has a new, two seater scooter and the two go a long way to find the scammer, after collecting a loaded pistol from another of Thelma’s old friends.

The film also has a nice touch where the main scammer at the end of their quest is also an elderly guy and, in some ways, much worse off than they are. He’s played here pretty well by the fantastic Malcolm McDowell (wow... Roundtree and McDowell, two 1970s cinematic icons in the same movie).

And it’s a nice, gentle comedy which explores what it means to be very old and the differences between people and the way they accept ageing, or don’t. Ben, for example, is perfectly happy in his elderly residence, where he is playing Daddy Warbucks in a version of Annie they’re putting on for the other residents... but, since the death of her husband two years prior, Thelma is more of a loner. In one scene, which I thought was a really nice touch, her grandson asks her what her plans for the day are... and we next see her sorting out all her pills for the next week and putting them into their respective compartments. Sadly, I am now at the age where I can totally sympathise and understand that... and not just from watching my folks do the same thing, alas.

Now, the film isn’t as pacey as I thought it would be but it is quite heartwarming and I think it also doesn’t make the kinds of turns I thought it would, so there’s a lot to keep things entertaining and surprising. The music by Nick Chuba is pretty good too... leaning into the action themes from the kind of movies which inspire Thelma but with a more modern take. Sadly, Schifrin’s Mission Impossible theme was, presumably, too rich for the budget but the score has a nice vibe to it and, at some point, I’m sure I heard one of my favourite musical instruments, the cimbalom, on one of the cues.

By the end of the film, everything seems to be maintaining the status quo of the central character (I thought it would go down a different route) and, my only real criticism is that Thelma, as old as she is, maybe doesn’t seem to learn too much from her experiences in the movie (or at least not unless certain things were left on the cutting room floor). But it’s a nice enough ending and, as I said, the real life Thelma pops up halfway through the end credits. This one is nothing spectacular but it is a heart warming and fun time at the movies so, yeah, definitely worth a watch.

The Jetty

Dragons In Ember

The Jetty
4 Episodes
Airdate: July 15th 2024
BBC

I can’t remember what it was that I was reading, a couple of months ago, about Jenna Coleman’s new BBC mini series The Jetty. But it had Coleman promoting it big time and I really liked her both in Doctor Who (although I thought her character arc in her last season was a bit ropey) and in The Sandman (reviewed here). And I wanted to see her in something else and... yeah... The Jetty is not bad.

It features Jenna Coleman as Ember Manning (a detective in the Lancashire police force), Ruby Stokes as her teenage daughter Hannah, Archie Renaux as her police partner Hitch, Amelia Bullmore as her mother Sylvia and Tom Glynn-Carney as her husband Mack... who has been dead for just under a year when the series starts. Ember is working a case where a place from her past is burned down but, it soon intersects with a ‘missing believed dead’ case of a young girl from years before, which a pod caster played by Weruche Opia is investigating.

And it’s quite good but also has some week spots, I reckon. Some of the episode cliffhangers are pretty great... such as when you think they have found the body of someone they are looking for in a lake but it then turns out to be one of the other regular characters you didn't realise was dead. But the writing seems kinda... I dunno... like it’s shifting. I think it may have been recut from the original order of the edit too, probably for reasons of pacing, because it occasionally suffers from that thing where one character is in on something they shouldn’t have known about yet and then, at other times, covering old ground about something they have already been seen to be knowing about.

Let’s cover the good stuff first. The performances are great. Jenna Coleman is, as always, totally brilliant in the role and, also, a big shout out to Ruby Stokes who does really well as her daughter, struggling with big emotions and getting herself into more trouble. And the chemistry between them is also really cool... a second series of this would be nice, although it may not be in the pipeline.

And it looks good too, with some nice sweeping landscapes and some nice rich colours in the night sequences. The music, which I think is composed by someone called Tim Morrish (although I’m not sure... the IMDB is being pretty bashful around that subject) is quite nice and minimalistic, reminding me a little of Hans Zimmer in places. Alas, there’s no commercial release of the score that I can see.

The one annoying thing is the old giallo trope about there being too many suspects. As Ember realises there are more and more connections to her own past, I was pretty sure there was going to be an end twist but, because there are so many characters and I had about four suspects in it, the solution became a bit hit and miss. I suspect this is the case of the writers throwing as many people into the mix as possible to try and hide the truth.

As it happens... and without giving anything away... there’s a double ending with not one but, two killers involved and, I have to say, the two people were both two of my possible suspects. So I was kinda disappointed that it went down those routes, to be honest. And, believe me, it’s really not as much of a twist ending as people are making out... most people will get there way before, I think. But that’s my only real issue with it... well, that and the question of... why is there suddenly a common thread in both this and films I’ve bought in the last year that features women ‘jacking off’ horses? Is this some kind of trending theme? And on the BBC no less.

But yeah, the show was absolutely riveting, for the most part and, I ploughed through the four episodes quicker than I thought I would. Jenna Coleman is also one of the show’s producers and I think she helped develop the role and the story (the original ending would have had someone not on my list of suspects doing the first murder)... so she’s obviously put a lot of work in on this and, certainly, she does carry the show considerably, playing a much more ‘world weary’ character than I’ve personally seen her pull off before (and when I say pull off... no, she’s not the one pulling off the horse in this). I have to say that I’ve got even more respect for her as an actress than I used to... so hopefully that’s the reaction many people will be having. I certainly think this was a good role for her and hope she continues to do some more genre work in future. The Jetty is a pretty good watch and certainly one I’d recommend.

Deadpool & Wolverine

Penny Deadpool

Deadpool & Wolverine
Directed by Shawn Levy
USA/Canada/Australia/
New Zealand 2024
Marvel
UK cinema cut.

Warning: Some very slight spoilers.

Well, Deadpool & Wolverine isn’t terrible.

Sadly, that’s one of the most complimentary things I can say about it. Discounting the appearance of Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (reviewed by me here), for me this new one if the weakest of the Deadpool films. It has its problems but, it moves so fast that a lot of people probably won’t notice and I’d be surprised if this wasn’t one of the biggest box office openings of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films (yeah, I’m sure this one will be quite popular with people).

Okay, positive things first because, as much as there are negatives there are good things to say too. So Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman as the title characters have great chemistry and the film is filled with great actors and also some interesting cameo appearances from past Marvel characters (not all of them from the MCU versions of the movies). And there are some funny one liners dotted around which Reynolds delivers in his usual Bug Bunnyish manner and it’s all good fun, to a point.

It’s got a very strong opening... and a very strong first half hour it has to be said, including a title sequence battle royale where, after digging up Wolverine’s rotting corpse from the grave left after his death in Logan (reviewed here) and finding he hasn’t regenerated, he gets into a fight with a weird time agency (I think the same one from the Loki TV show) and kills many of them in very gory ways using various bones from the skeleton of Logan as weapons.

We then get embroiled in a story where Deadpool is tasked with helping to kill off his dwindling timeline (which is decaying because of the death of Logan, who is apparently that timeline’s ‘anchor being’ )... but instead he grabs a Wolverine from another timeline to save is own universe and friends while trying to fight off the film’s two villains... played for laughs by Matthew Macfadyen as Mr. Paradox and played startlingly seriously, by the scene stealing Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova.

Right from the outset the film is loaded with constant swear words and lots and lots of Marvel and non-Marvel pop culture references... and sometimes these hit really well and other times they don’t. But here’s the thing... while the film starts off as charming and it certainly has its heart in the right place, all the endless allusions to other movies and the constant fighting seem to be there to distract from the simplicity of the story and... well... it all felt like padding, to be honest. The first three quarters of an hour or so of this kind of thing is great but, yeah, after that initial set up it just gets, um, kind of dull. And while there are a lot of characters from the previous two films (along side some other notable appearances), my favourite character from the second movie, Domino, is curiously absent.

So, spectacular for sure and there’s certainly a lot of CGI blood spilled... yeah, I prefer practical effects myself but with a film with this much gory action, the alternative would have taken far too long and really hurt the budget (is my guess)... but, no.

Also, there are a lot of needle drop songs in this (and also melodic references to scores like Silvestri’s one for The Avengers) but it would have helped me personally if I’d have recognised more than just a couple of them, I think. I mean, I recognised Jimmy Durante and I think one of them maybe Madonna. That's kinda it on the song references for me.

And, truth be told, although I certainly liked the film, I did find myself checking my watch long before the end. Now, the film didn’t turn out to be the big ‘MCU reset button’ I was expecting it to be and part of me is glad and part of me isn’t. I mean, okay, we now have a variation of Wolverine that can be recalled when the big tentpole Marvel features start coming again (which is not necessary now we have the concept of a multiverse carried into the movies anyway) but ultimately, despite lots of rumblings that this would change the shape of the MCU, it really does seem to be a movie with no real stakes or consequences. This coupled with the fact that Deadpool’s regenerative powers seem to work in an entirely different manner to how they worked in the last two movies really left me cold, if not a little confused.

The trailer campaign didn’t help it much either. When I was watching it I felt like I’d already seen most of the scenes referenced in the last few months. So there were some surprises but... not so many of them. Where the trailers really let it down, though, is in the big, climactic scene where two of the lead characters (look, I’m trying to skirt around the danger zone with this in terms of spoilers, okay) appear to have met their matter/anti-matter end and died. However, in the trailer there are scenes where they appear together in it which haven’t turned up yet so you know... you kinda do know... that these two are going to make it out alive and kicking. So they kinda killed that one themselves.

And, yeah, that’s me done with this one, I think. Deadpool & Wolverine is going to hit big and will make a lot of people happy. Sadly, I didn’t get on with it nearly as much as I thought I would but, there’s always a chance that it might grow on me at some point in the future, for sure (I might find it easier to process the second time around). So, yeah, I’ll try it again when it comes out on Blu Ray (and goes into the sales), I think.

The Vigil

Viy-gil and
Sado Mazzik-ism

The Vigil
USA 2019
Directed by Keith Thomas
Vertigo Releasing

The Vigil is another one of those great feature debuts, this one by director Keith Thomas. It’s based around the Jewish faith and features a character who is less religious and no longer serious about that aspect of his life. That is to say, Yakov, the film’s main protagonist played by Dave Davis, is somewhat lapsed due to an incident in his recent past when he was unable to prevent the death of his little brother while he was in his care.

The film starts with flashbacks of another character in the second World War, where a young boy is forced by the Nazis to shoot one of his friends or family members, in a muted, blue dominated colour palette. We then meet young Yakov, who is attending a regular discussion group for, I think, Jewish people who have either stepped aside from their faith or had tragic events impact their lives... it’s never really made clear. Yakov is struggling to make ends meet and he makes the point that some weeks he has to choose between buying food and his medication (for a psychological condition which causes hallucinations and is probably related to his recent trauma, I would guess).

On his way out of his weekly meeting, he is approached by a deeply Religious member of the Jewish community who hires him, due to his past experience, to be a shomer for the night. A shomer is somebody who holds a vigil over a recently deceased person to stay up with him/her all night, recite prayers and generally protect the corpse from evil spirits. So he gets to the house of the dead gentleman, who was obviously the boy from World War Two at the start of the movie... and starts to watch over the body. The only other inhabitant in the house is the old man’s widow, Mrs. Litvak, played by Lynn Cohen. She goes upstairs to sleep and the guy who recruited Yakov tells her she suffers from senility (she doesn’t but, it’s easy to see why people think that because of elements of the story which become apparent) and that she’ll probably sleep through the night.

And then the story begins proper as Yakov is left alone with the corpse and, as you would expect, starts hearing and seeing things which lead to psychological attacks by The Mazzik. A demon spirit who has kept the reclusive Litvaks more or less confined to the house for decades and who now decides it wants the ‘broken man’ Yakov as his next permanent ‘haunt’. The attacks come in many forms and often incorporate modern technology like a cine projector or Yakov’s new smart phone... which gives the film a particularly creepy moment at a couple of points in the narrative. And, of course, it takes Yakov a while to realise that he’s not actually having his normal hallucinations and is, instead, experiencing a genuine, supernatural terror. The very kind of terror that he, as a shomer, should be concerned about. Things get even more serious when he finds he can’t leave the house and get more than half a block before cramping up completely and getting somewhat damaged... The Mazzik won’t let him.

And it’s really nicely put together, is genuinely unsettling in places (always good for a horror movie) and the story, such as it is, never really goes into the most expected territory I thought it would. The ending of the film, for example, took a completely different direction to where I assumed it would go.

The acting is great by the two leads (Yakov and Mrs. Litvak) as they find their place in the Mazzik narrative and the way the film is shot is wonderful. The house is lit by muted pastel colours which are a kind of off-brown orange for most of the rooms with the various dark areas pitched in a green hue which instantly gives a kind of neutral or unsafe feel to anyone when they are in those darker areas.

The director and cinematographer use this kind of juxtaposition of darks and colour to their full advantage here as well. It obviously pushes the depth visually but it also helps with the shot composition having this kind of two tone dominance to the rest of the colours. For instance, there are some lovely shots where we see the body from another room looking into it. So we have the dark greens of the walls coming in slightly to the left and right and the room behind with the corpse, in oranges but, because of the little projections of walls coming in from either side of the opening, it gives a kind of 4:3 aspect ratio pitched into the middle of the shot, which Yakov then sits in... facing camera, just slightly off centre. It’s a really simple but startling composition. 

And the director will similarly push the contrast of the rooms, often putting the camera at various junction points within the house so that you can see three or four areas of the house at the same time... so, for example, the front room on the left, the hallway on the right with the kitchen behind the hallway and the stairs leading up to the landing on the left. And, of course, with a horror film, that can be used to the director’s advantage by showing the audience things happening in one part of the screen, in a different room, which another character will be unaware of. So, yeah, there are a lot of shots where they kind of section off the space on screen to delineate different things they want to highlight.

The other big star of the movie is Michael Yezerski, who provides a truly great modern horror score (sadly unavailable as a proper CD release, so I guess I won’t get to hear it as a stand alone) which is absolutely stunning and really helps the tone of the movie. I first noticed it in an early conversation between two characters and it started building behind them, almost but not quite to the point where it felt either over scored or mixed in too much to the forefront. But, it never quite crosses the line and it’s not just a ‘modern horror atonal’ style score, although it does occasionally have elements of that. It genuinely comes in to signal things are about to get very spooky, for example, even when you’d have no clue that something was wrong just from the beautiful imagery. And although a fair amount of the scary atmosphere comes from the brilliant sound design as various noises come in and out of the soundtrack, the score is never overwhelmed by this as it might be in some films and it even takes an unconventional route, in one of the big scare scenes, where it gets really loud and becomes almost a ‘techno horror’ style track... almost like a modern ‘beats’ version of what Argento was trying to achieve with his Goblin scores but still anchored into punctuating the scares of the film rather than just playing through. It’s quite an achievement and I think this composer is definitely someone that some of the big companies, like Marvel, should maybe have a listen to. The score becomes an amazing, positive addition to this movie and I’m going to have to listen out for this guy’s name again.

And that’s me pretty much done with The Vigil. It’s not the scariest horror movie ever, obviously... but it’s genuinely got some great horror vibes, unsettling atmosphere and it definitely has its moments... a kind of Jewish ‘tooling up’ sequence had me smiling too. All in all, I think most horror enthusiasts will have a good time with this one and I definitely recommend it as one to watch.  It obviously shares elements of Viy (reviewed here) but more like a compressed version for a modern age and though the initial timidness of the central character shares some commonality with various iterations of the central protagonist in adaptations of Gogol’s Viy, he doesn’t bring any of this down on himself and it’s really not the same kind of story, mostly. Give this one a go.

Republic Horrors - The Serial Studio’s Chillers

Eagle Eyed Horror

Republic Horrors -
The Serial Studio’s Chillers
By Brian McFadden
Kohner, Madison & Danforth
ISBN: 9780615920986

Just a very quick shout out of a review for Brian McFadden’s quite valuable little tome Republic Horrors - The Serial Studio’s Chillers. Now Republic weren’t exactly known for their horror output, most people would, I’m sure, mostly associate them with serial chapter plays and westerns. My running joke with my father, every time we sit down to watch a serial made by Republic, is that as soon as a good guy and bad guy enter an interior set, most anything not nailed down is going to get tossed at each other in a brawl... which is pretty much correct. I don’t think I’ve seen a Republic horror but I’m aiming to fix that at some point. Judging from this book though, there weren’t that many of them made.

The book highlights what, according to the author, are the ten Republic horror films... a subject he became interested in because he was trying to chase down a memory of a scene from one which had haunted him since childhood and then the subject became something of an obsession, as he went through studio by studio trying to find the film... until, to paraphrase Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous sleuth, whatever studio remained, no matter how improbable, must be the truth... the film in question was a Republic movie (which I believe he’s written about in another book which I need to track down, as it was a mystery movie).

Now, I have to say my definition of what makes a horror film differs from what the writer thinks... so there are a few mystery films tinged with the cinematic vernacular of a horror film rather than being the genuine article, as far as I can see... but some of these definitely are. The ten movies covered here are London Blackout Murders (1943), The Lady And The Monster (1944), The Girl Who Dared (1944), The Vampire’s Ghost (1945), The Phantom Speaks (1944), The Fatal Witness (1945), The Woman Who Came Back (1945), The Madonna’s Secret (1946), The Catman of Paris (1946) and Valley of the Zombies (1946). Of those ten there’s also at least one mystery... The Woman Who Came Back, where the explanation as to the scientific reasons behind the manifestations are so badly thought out and unconvincing in light of the shenanigans afoot, that it probably does turn out to be a horror movie after all.

Each chapter has a summary of one film which includes little, useful asides about key actors and character actors in the film. And then a behind the scenes section with more of the same and notes about sets and special effects (the Lydecker Brothers are obviously mentioned a fair bit and, with good reason... I remember their melting cave sequence from King Of The Rocketmen when I was a kid and I’m still amazed when I watch it these days). So there’s lots of interesting shout outs to stars like the original screen Superman, Kirk Alyn or, say, future Perry White (opposite George Reeves’ version of the man of steel) John Hamilton. And also Republic’s sometime failure to really cash in on an actor to the degree they might have done, such as Universal horror regular Evelyn Ankers.

There’s lots of stuff I didn’t know here too... such as actress Peggy Stewart, who became so tied in to Republic Westerns that she had a deliberate career change for a few years as a casting agent to shake the image with the plan to then restart her acting career when she wasn’t so typecast. Then, when she went back into acting on TV in the 1950s, well... anyone who knows American TV in the 1950s knows that most of her opportunities would have been westerns, which were pretty much the main staple of the tube at that time.

I also didn’t know that Maxine Whitney, wife of serial director William Whitney who helmed some of the studio’s best serials, went into acting for the studio to keep the paychecks coming in while her husband was serving his country in the war. Or the real downfall of Republic studios being largely due to the studio head insisting on casting his girlfriend, ice skater Vera Hruba (later Vera Ralston) as a leading actress in films... she was not a great actor, was mostly in flops and the shareholders had had enough, it turns out. I never knew that story until now.

Another thing the book is useful for is confirming various street sets and interiors reused and redressed for other productions... and what stock footage was re-used and so on... which is something my father and I are always on the lookout for too, whenever we watch one of these Republic serials. So a Spanish and Cantina street set location redressed as an African village for The Vampire’s Ghost etc. And even the way Western stuntmen would turn a Western bar brawl choreography into a brawl in a Paris pub or a Western stage coach chase into a big city carriage chase... using the skills they had on the former for the less westerny assignments.

All in all, I’d have to say that Republic Horrors - The Serial Studio’s Chillers was a delight to read and I got a lot out of it. That being said, the book was written a while ago now. That’s a double edged sword it turns out because, for example, if I want to grab the book on the Lydecker Brothers the writer recommends, well... it’s out of print and fetches three figure sums now. So no chance of that. On the other hand, just recently, these films have started to get restored and reissued so, I’m probably going to try and nab that new Blu Ray set of Republic horrors at some point, I think. So there you have it, a valuable tome and a guide to what were then some hard to find movies. Definitely worth your time if you are a lover of Republic, for sure.

Dirty Ho

Fine Art Prince

Dirty Ho
aka Lan tou He
Hong Kong 1979
Directed by Chia-Liang Liu
Shaw Brothers/Celestial Pictures
Arrow Blu Ray Zone B

Dirty Ho starts off with an opening credits sequence depicting the two main protagonists, Wang Tsun Hsin played by Gordon Liu and ‘Dirty’ Ho played by Yue Wong, fighting an abstract battle against many people against a white studio background, as the two fight side by side and protect themselves from hordes of combatants who mean them harm... serving as a metaphor for various action sequences much later in the movie. Unfortunately, it’s also scored with some excruciatingly inappropriate De Wolf library needle drop which, yeah, kind of put me off a little, it has to be said.

Then we get dropped into the story, as black market jewel trader Ho and upmarket, generally honest but ‘cunning and hiding something very important’ Wang, come into rivalry on a pleasure boat, as they each try to one up the other with the number of girls they can retain at their tables with various high value bribes. When it all ends badly for Ho and he is cheated out of his own ill gotten gains, he tracks down Wang but always seems to come a cropper of bad luck. Whether it’s a big fight with ‘The Handicapped Four’, all who turn out to be quite able bodied after all, in a parody sequence poking fun at Crippled Avengers (reviewed here) or one of many spectacular set pieces where Wang pretends he’s hired one of the escorts, Crimson, as his body guard, manipulating her arms and legs (and lute) as he pretends she is fighting Ho, coming out on top when s/he splits his forehead with a venom filled sword cut... it’s all quite fun stuff.

When Ho can’t find a cure for the big, ugly thing brewing on his head as a result of that fight, he eventually ends up becoming Wang’s disciple/slave so he receives a daily antidote which will eventually cure his condition. However, after a number of reveals, Ho slowly falls in with what’s going on and realises Wang is the eleventh of fourteen princes who is supposed to return to the palace at some point so the emperor can announce who will inherit his throne. The princes are trying to stop each other from being there, especially Wang, who does need to be there but is only really interested in living a life outside with fine art, good wine and the pursuit of martial arts. Ho falls in with him and, when Wang is wounded in one leg, allows Wang to train him and develop his kung fu skills so he can be a better bodyguard and help him return to the palace at the required time.

And it’s a fun film filled with elaborate set pieces. There are a couple of scenes where various people try to kill Wang in social situations without Wang or his opponent letting on that they know. What are best described as battles of social manners when, for instance, the tasting of eleven fine wines becomes a low key but no less spectacular acrobatic affair where wines are served and tasted by each as they dodge each other’s killing hands and feet, keeping up the pretence of a social situation. Similarly, there’s more of the same where the study of some fine art prints and scrolls turns into a battle against people wearing ‘Rosa Klebb’ style shoes with retracting blades (note to a regular reader... not blades retracting from George Lucas' butt though, okay?).

There’s also a great scene where, with Wang being wheeled through the land by Ho on a pushcart, the two manage to survive an attack by a battalion (including many archers) in a long action scene not unlike the kind you would get in the Lone Wolf And Cub movies (which I need to revisit again on Blu Ray real soon, I think). There’s also the inevitable training sequence with a ‘revert to type’ set of scenes where Ho is taught how to improve his kung fu skills by kicking targets while balancing little candles in small bowls on his shoulders, burning himself with wax whenever he gets something wrong to train his body. So yeah, while the film does kinda poke fun, tongue-in-cheek style, at some of the conventions of the genre up until this point, it also uses those very conventions and genre tropes to do it... which I guess would make sense.

Once again, just like in Heroes Of The East (reviewed here) and a few others, the director allows the moving camera to get right into the action with the cast, making for a dynamic series of combat sequences (not to mention lengthy ones), which pull you into the centre of things and, well, it’s an alternate way of doing it and I guess it does allow you to cheat a little in terms of breaking the fight down into shorter sequences rather than pull back and do longer takes from a static shot set up, but the technique works well and the skill and expertise of the performers... all of whom perhaps belong in a circus, as is the nature of the characters in these films... is such that you certainly don’t think any less of the brilliant fight choreography and the enthusiasm with which it is brought to life.

And that’s me done with both Dirty Ho, another of these movies I would gladly recommend but, also, with Arrow’s ShawScope Volume 1 Blu Ray set, of which this is the twelfth and final movie in the box, followed by two CD compilations of the soundtracks from six of them, all of them needle drop tracks from the De Wolff music library. However, if you are liking some of my Shaw Brothers movie reviews, fear not, I still have a few stand alone titles to watch and there’s also a second Shaw Scope volume being released* of these fairly soon (and which will surely have been released by the time this review makes it onto this blog so, yeah, more to come soon, I would say).

*Actually, since writing the first draft of this review a year or more ago, I have the second Shawscope set and four additional Shout Factory Shaw Brothers Classics box sets to watch and review too (so somewhere around 60 moives) plus, as of a couple of weeks ago, the announcement of ShawScope Vol 3 on the horizon. So, yeah, although there may not be as many Shaw Brothers reviews on here in the next month or so, there will be a fair few Golden Harvest reviews coming too (if you like early MIchelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock movies, keep an eye out) and, you can rest assured, the Shaw Brothers will certainly be returning to this blog at some point in the near future... at least that's the plan.

Pursuit To Algiers

Clues On Cruise

Pursuit To Algiers
Directed by Roy William Neill
USA 1945
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Just two of the regular characters are in this, the 12th of the ongoing Sherlock Holmes series, those of Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson although, saying that, a lot of the recurring actors who have been popping up in several different roles as part of the repertory company which populates these movies are still on hand. No Mary Gordon though, since none of the action takes place near Baker Street. Nor indeed is Dennis Hoey on hand to have Lestrade give any of his dubious but entertaining assistance.

Pursuit To Algiers starts off with Holmes and Watson being recruited by a foreign government to escort the son of an assassinated king back to his homeland in a bizarrely convoluted manner, in which Holmes has to solve clues both in the street and in a local fish and chip shop in order to piece together the information that he is wanted at a certain address at a certain time. It’s all good secret agent style stuff and lots of fun although, in the context used here, it very much seems like unnecessary overkill, to be honest.

Once they are on the case, Holmes takes Nikolas, the heir to an empire (if Holmes can get him to said empire unscathed) with him on a three manned plane while Watson is sent to their destination in Algiers by cruise ship, to act as a decoy. Alas, after only a short while Watson is faced with the knowledge that the plane Holmes and his client were on was shot down above treacherous mountains by unscrupulous villains. It’s not long, however, before Holmes and Nikolas are found waiting for Watson in the adjoining cabin, as Watson had been used as more than a dupe than he thought, in order that the two could take a safer but slower way of travel and avoid the plane tragedy that Holmes expected to happen all along.

After that it’s a joyous affair, as the three stay on the cruise ship for the remainder of the film and try to ward off various assassination attempts while Holmes indulges in verbal jousting with his would be assassins... in a strictly gentlemanly way, of course, since everybody knows he knows but, they don’t want to say it out loud.

Well I say gentlemanly but, when Holmes figures out that one of the assassins is recruited from a circus act where he uses his skills at throwing knives, he not only avoids being a pin cushion himself but manages to break the gentleman’s hand as it comes through the cabin porthole to make the kill. Which is unusual for Holmes but it’s good stuff and certainly Holmes character doesn’t lose any of his credibility pursuing such quick justice in a certain scene.

This is what I call a comfy film. For some reason I feel relaxed when watching movies that take place on a cruise ship and this one follows the old Agatha Christie method of populating the cast of characters with a number of possible suspects who all look like they’ve got something on their minds and could be a possible threat to the main protagonists. This proves to be the film’s undoing on a certain twist near the end (which I won’t spoil here) as one of the more twitchy fellows in this, one of the stewards, is acting too suspiciously to be a neutral member of the cast and, since the director almost goes out of his way to make you assume he’s a villain, he’s obviously not and, by a certain point in the film, you realise that there’s only one person who this person could now be revealed as. There’s more than one dupe on the ship, for sure.

One of the characters in this is a singer who seems to be in a state of distress whenever she is near Holmes but who makes friends with Dr. Watson. What this means practically is that, for the first time since the second film in the series by 20th Century Fox, The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes (reviewed by me here), there are a fair few musical numbers but producer/director Neill doesn’t allow them to slow the film down and often concentrates on the histrionic tension of some of the characters watching and listening, as he allows the audience to wonder who is friend or foe. It also means we get a chance to hear Watson sing. Now, the dub as he warbles Loch Lomond is so intensely different in terms of the background ambience and clarity of the sound, I was convinced this was a comical overdub from a professional singer but, according to a couple of sources, this was Bruce singing himself. Now, I’m not so sure of that but can’t disprove it either so... hmm.

Bruce’s Watson is the usual tip top comic performance that mixes the characters less smarter aspects with alert caution... caution enough to save the life of one character, in fact, when he spots something wrong with a person’s coffee. He throws salt over his left shoulder as he should when some salt is spilled and, since this necessary custom to ward off bad luck has, I suspect, fallen by the wayside in recent years, one wonders what the younger section of modern audiences might make of this moment in the film.

And talking of things which have fallen by the wayside, one thing which I loved is that Watson reminded me of a phrase I’d not heard in a long time... ‘to sleep like a top.’ However, when I looked up the derivation of the word, first known to be introduced in a Shakespeare play, the deduction that a spinning top appears completely still when it’s spinning seems to me to be somewhat stretched as an explanation. I suspect that there was once a more satisfactory explanation for the phrase but, alas, that it’s been lost in the mists of time.

And that’s me done on Pursuit to Algiers... not based on an Arthur Conan Doyle story and stretching the characters to a point where, I believe, Rathbone was now getting very tired of playing the role (the role, of course, for which he will probably always be best remembered). I think this is just another wonderful film in the series and, although the restoration of the print doesn’t seem to be as brilliant as most of the others in this set, it’s still better than it’s been in the past and another worthy addition to the series. Two more left to go.