D.
Otto Von De Mille
Colour
Even at the time it seemed incredibly unlikely that the
1990s was crying out for its own Russ Meyer. That seemed an aesthetic which had
been lost to the age of Mondo movies, written up in psychotronic guidebooks,
but really not part of a relevant cinema going forward. This was the 1990s
after all and feminism had come a long way. Yes, Meyer’s women were strong and
feisty independent ladies, but equally they were ludicrously busty sex symbols
whom the camera just drooled over. They were soft-porn icons for the more
discerning viewer, but still soft porn icons. That whole thing may have been
the scene in the late 1960s, but definitely wasn’t the case in the more
inclusive 1990s. And yet, the ‘Sexy Goth Girls’ films exist. They only had a
limited cinema release, true, but they do have a cult following and I bet there’s
a whole generation of people who revere these films but have barely even heard
of Russ Meyer. They are loved, these sexy goth girls.
Part of that is down to the influence of another auteur
whose fingerprints are as smeared over every frame of these films as Meyer’s grubby
and calloused paws – the big Q himself, Quentin Tarantino. That is less
surprising. Every independent film of the late 1990s seemed to have sucked hard
at Quentin’s teet, trying to drink in the magic which took him from the
ultimate cinema geek to a major force of cinema. Probably more than any
filmmaker, his style was unmistakably and (for the most part) unashamedly ripped
off, copied and homaged in the years after his breakthrough. Even now there are
films which barely creep out where you see the love of dialogue about everyday
things, the cool pop references and sudden bursts of violence. If the only
films you ever watched were indie films that were released straight to the
video store, you’d believe that Quentin was everywhere.
So a strange cinematic marriage of Russ Meyer and Quentin
Tarantino, but how else could I describe this film? First and foremost it’s a
chance to hang out with sexy goth girls, actually it’s an opportunity to hang
out with some very sexy goth girls.
There are lots of lingering shots of lovely curvaceous ladies spilling out of
black and intense looking corsets, of shapely thighs in dark and torn
stockings, of full lips plumped up by shiny black lipstick. Arresting,
striking, dark and erotic images abound, and let’s be fair many of them are
somewhat pervy. It’s hanging out with gorgeous women while they sit virtually in
their underwear and don’t mind you trying to look up their (very) short skirts.
But that’s where the essence of Quentin saves the day. We are hanging out with
these girls and they are chatting away and these conversations are hilarious.
The script is genuinely verbose and clever, with a great appreciation of the
cadences of the Los Angeles accent, and so it’s a pleasure to listen in to the
rhythms of the chat. Particular favourites include the top ten possible reasons
as to how some baked beans could have possibly ended up down the back of the couch
(none of them involve actually eating baked beans, well not in any traditional
sense anyway), why sex shops don’t employ seniors to offer advice and wisdom in
the bedroom “those old dudes must have literally seen EVERYTHING” and how
supportive a boyfriend Freddy Krueger would actually be. It all crackles, it’s
all immensely fun and that makes any watching man feel like he can dispense
with the dirty brown raincoat and just enjoy this openly.
It’d be fair to say that since these girls were members of
the LA goth scene, rather than actual actresses, the performances are variable.
But in Liddy D’Eath (helpfully playing a character named Liddy) a fey blonde
with incredibly long legs and the widest grey eyes, we do have what looks like a star
in the making. Yes the whole thing is clearly filmed cheaply, and the murder
plot that takes over the last half hour comes from nowhere and deserves the
response ‘Huh’ – but what could be a very pervy film, becomes a somewhat guilty
pleasure that shouldn’t make you feel too seedy.
Wednesday 27 November 2013
Sunday 24 November 2013
Jarndyce vs Jarndyce (2002)
D.
Emil Bron
Colour/B&W
Sheets of white paper with indistinguishable, but official looking, writing tumble out of a large industrial printer. Swiftly ink-stained hands move in to attach stickers to them, some have red stickers, some have blue, some have yellow. Some of these papers are left unadorned and there’s a sense that these are the most important documents. They are the ones we follow anyway. They’re placed on a rackety old conveyer belt and make their way through a warren of dingy, poky offices. These documents do not remain unadorned for long, they are stamped and counter stamped. Some of them clearly have problems (although since what’s on them remains a total mystery, so do their problems) and stern, hard faced men send them back with an expression that doesn’t offer even a glimmer of hope that the problem will be fixed. The unmistakable deadness in these men’s eyes says that they know the document will come back exactly the same way again and again for the rest of their lives. Still these documents wind on and on, making their way through the system, presumably to some end point but the longer the film continues, the less sure the viewer is that this is some kind of circle. Perhaps this process doesn’t have a beginning, a middle, an end; maybe it’s just one endless odyssey and these papers will always stay in the system and their import will never be known or recognised.
It seems appropriate that it’s the country of Kafka which produced this love letter to administration, this ode to bureaucracy. As the papers move through the system, followed by the film beyond the point where surely sanity ends, then this stops being a mindless (government?) machine and becomes something oddly alive and wonderful. Watching papers flutter by, watching these sheets be sent back and forth, becoming more crumpled and stained by their passage through the system, becomes an almost compulsive sight. I mean that, this is a film about paperwork which is not infuriatingly tedious but is in fact pretty engrossing. And that’s an incredible feat, particularly as the human characters we meet are fleeting and only important in as far as they are dealing with the papers.
How is that done? How with no Joseph K figure, how with no heirs of Jarndyce, is it possible to create a functional and interesting film just out of paperwork alone? The answer is to throw the kitchen sink, the taps and all the fittings at it. This is a film with segments in colour and black and white; there are scenes which are animated – not only in a harsh Eastern European all angles and black lines way, but also in a cutesy Disney style and one segment in Manga. There is even more than one puppet sequence, with the film suggesting that at least one room in every large bureaucracy is staffed entirely by excited socks with swivel eyes. It takes a dull subject matter, purposefully makes it harder for itself by banning any real human characters, and then attacks it with huge amounts of vim and brio. It’s an extraordinary film and well worth seeking out. Although I can’t guarantee it will make you any less angry the next time your borough loses your council tax form.
Colour/B&W
Sheets of white paper with indistinguishable, but official looking, writing tumble out of a large industrial printer. Swiftly ink-stained hands move in to attach stickers to them, some have red stickers, some have blue, some have yellow. Some of these papers are left unadorned and there’s a sense that these are the most important documents. They are the ones we follow anyway. They’re placed on a rackety old conveyer belt and make their way through a warren of dingy, poky offices. These documents do not remain unadorned for long, they are stamped and counter stamped. Some of them clearly have problems (although since what’s on them remains a total mystery, so do their problems) and stern, hard faced men send them back with an expression that doesn’t offer even a glimmer of hope that the problem will be fixed. The unmistakable deadness in these men’s eyes says that they know the document will come back exactly the same way again and again for the rest of their lives. Still these documents wind on and on, making their way through the system, presumably to some end point but the longer the film continues, the less sure the viewer is that this is some kind of circle. Perhaps this process doesn’t have a beginning, a middle, an end; maybe it’s just one endless odyssey and these papers will always stay in the system and their import will never be known or recognised.
It seems appropriate that it’s the country of Kafka which produced this love letter to administration, this ode to bureaucracy. As the papers move through the system, followed by the film beyond the point where surely sanity ends, then this stops being a mindless (government?) machine and becomes something oddly alive and wonderful. Watching papers flutter by, watching these sheets be sent back and forth, becoming more crumpled and stained by their passage through the system, becomes an almost compulsive sight. I mean that, this is a film about paperwork which is not infuriatingly tedious but is in fact pretty engrossing. And that’s an incredible feat, particularly as the human characters we meet are fleeting and only important in as far as they are dealing with the papers.
How is that done? How with no Joseph K figure, how with no heirs of Jarndyce, is it possible to create a functional and interesting film just out of paperwork alone? The answer is to throw the kitchen sink, the taps and all the fittings at it. This is a film with segments in colour and black and white; there are scenes which are animated – not only in a harsh Eastern European all angles and black lines way, but also in a cutesy Disney style and one segment in Manga. There is even more than one puppet sequence, with the film suggesting that at least one room in every large bureaucracy is staffed entirely by excited socks with swivel eyes. It takes a dull subject matter, purposefully makes it harder for itself by banning any real human characters, and then attacks it with huge amounts of vim and brio. It’s an extraordinary film and well worth seeking out. Although I can’t guarantee it will make you any less angry the next time your borough loses your council tax form.
Wednesday 20 November 2013
Wuthering Heights (1961)
D.
Don Siegel
B&W
This is called learning from your mistakes. This is called poring over the smouldering wreckage of what went before, having the humility to admit that that particular journey was started with the brake wires cut and a rubber toy in place of the steering wheel, and then correcting those massive errors going forward. This is called not crashing the same car into the same wall all over again; or more appropriately this is called not just churning out any old crap for a cheap buck. This is the way things should have been.
Yes, Elvis in ‘Wuthering Heights’ is fantastic!
As an Elvis obsessed little boy who became an Elvis obsessed man, I take great pleasure in bringing these neglected gems of his much maligned film-work forward. And it gives me particular joy to polish up, buff until its gloriously shiny and then present this gem – with a wide soup-bowl shaped grin on my face – for your perusal. The last time Elvis tackled a classic, you might remember, it was ‘Hamlet’ and the results can be politely described as not good. There was Elvis in a doublet and hose, trying to master iambic pentameter with that Memphis drawl and singing whole soliloquies whilst ridiculous ghostly bongo players kept rhythm over his shoulder.
There is nothing so ludicrous on display here, this one is playing to Elvis’s strengths. I have no idea whether there was ever a plan to set this in Victorian Yorkshire, with Elvis giving us his best “Ecky thump, it be right perishing out moor”; but if there was, then it was thankfully scrapped. (Seeing Elvis trying to speak like Sean Bean is no more appetising than imagining Sean Bean quiffed up and trying to play Elvis.) Instead the action of this film is set in Wuthering Heights, a suburb of Nashville.
It’s a brilliant conceit. Here we have the cute as several dozen buttons Tuesday Weld as Cathy (the same year in which she met Elvis in the far less inspiring, and indeed wild, ‘Wild in The Country’), an aspiring and truly headstrong country and western singer who has got herself engaged to a Pat Boone-esque crooner, Edward Litton (played with appropriate lack of charisma by someone called Dave Fellows – quite, me neither), but who’s that smouldering his way back into town? Why it’s Elvis as Heathcliff , the boy she grew up with and the great romance of her life.
Even for a modern day version of the story, it’s one which deserves the description ‘inspired by’ rather than ‘adapted from’ Emily Bronte’s novel. Indeed it can be more accurately described as a musical remake of the Laurence Olivier/Merle Oberon version – as both films leave out the second and more interesting part of the book. But in the end fidelity doesn’t matter, as this is brilliant. Siegel (helming Elvis for the second rime) shoots for and gets a beautiful, noir soaked black & white; Elvis’s role requires little more than to just show up and be broody and soulful, and he does more of that with one look than most actors can manage in a career; and Weld is suitably intense and passionate, as well as utterly convincing as a lifelong object of desire. While if Fellows is as uninteresting as a sheep farmer in 1800’s Yorkshire, well he’s supposed to be.
Okay, if the film was perfect the songs would be a lot better – such numbers as ‘The Boy Heathcliff (Back in Town)’, ‘Don’t Run Away, Cathy’ and ‘It Ain’t the Wind That’s Wuthering;’ are never going to show up on any Elvis ‘best of’, no matter how many volumes it stretches to. But then this is the rare thing, a musical where the music isn’t that important. No, ‘Wuthering Heights’ isn’t about the songs, it’s about sheer sex appeal, it’s about pouting and rebellious youth, it’s about giving up everything for passion, it’s about personifying cool – and in that regard it succeeds on every measure.
B&W
This is called learning from your mistakes. This is called poring over the smouldering wreckage of what went before, having the humility to admit that that particular journey was started with the brake wires cut and a rubber toy in place of the steering wheel, and then correcting those massive errors going forward. This is called not crashing the same car into the same wall all over again; or more appropriately this is called not just churning out any old crap for a cheap buck. This is the way things should have been.
Yes, Elvis in ‘Wuthering Heights’ is fantastic!
As an Elvis obsessed little boy who became an Elvis obsessed man, I take great pleasure in bringing these neglected gems of his much maligned film-work forward. And it gives me particular joy to polish up, buff until its gloriously shiny and then present this gem – with a wide soup-bowl shaped grin on my face – for your perusal. The last time Elvis tackled a classic, you might remember, it was ‘Hamlet’ and the results can be politely described as not good. There was Elvis in a doublet and hose, trying to master iambic pentameter with that Memphis drawl and singing whole soliloquies whilst ridiculous ghostly bongo players kept rhythm over his shoulder.
There is nothing so ludicrous on display here, this one is playing to Elvis’s strengths. I have no idea whether there was ever a plan to set this in Victorian Yorkshire, with Elvis giving us his best “Ecky thump, it be right perishing out moor”; but if there was, then it was thankfully scrapped. (Seeing Elvis trying to speak like Sean Bean is no more appetising than imagining Sean Bean quiffed up and trying to play Elvis.) Instead the action of this film is set in Wuthering Heights, a suburb of Nashville.
It’s a brilliant conceit. Here we have the cute as several dozen buttons Tuesday Weld as Cathy (the same year in which she met Elvis in the far less inspiring, and indeed wild, ‘Wild in The Country’), an aspiring and truly headstrong country and western singer who has got herself engaged to a Pat Boone-esque crooner, Edward Litton (played with appropriate lack of charisma by someone called Dave Fellows – quite, me neither), but who’s that smouldering his way back into town? Why it’s Elvis as Heathcliff , the boy she grew up with and the great romance of her life.
Even for a modern day version of the story, it’s one which deserves the description ‘inspired by’ rather than ‘adapted from’ Emily Bronte’s novel. Indeed it can be more accurately described as a musical remake of the Laurence Olivier/Merle Oberon version – as both films leave out the second and more interesting part of the book. But in the end fidelity doesn’t matter, as this is brilliant. Siegel (helming Elvis for the second rime) shoots for and gets a beautiful, noir soaked black & white; Elvis’s role requires little more than to just show up and be broody and soulful, and he does more of that with one look than most actors can manage in a career; and Weld is suitably intense and passionate, as well as utterly convincing as a lifelong object of desire. While if Fellows is as uninteresting as a sheep farmer in 1800’s Yorkshire, well he’s supposed to be.
Okay, if the film was perfect the songs would be a lot better – such numbers as ‘The Boy Heathcliff (Back in Town)’, ‘Don’t Run Away, Cathy’ and ‘It Ain’t the Wind That’s Wuthering;’ are never going to show up on any Elvis ‘best of’, no matter how many volumes it stretches to. But then this is the rare thing, a musical where the music isn’t that important. No, ‘Wuthering Heights’ isn’t about the songs, it’s about sheer sex appeal, it’s about pouting and rebellious youth, it’s about giving up everything for passion, it’s about personifying cool – and in that regard it succeeds on every measure.
Sunday 17 November 2013
Advertisement (1981)
D.
Malcolm McClaren
Colour and B&W
I suppose it’s easy to see the attraction Orson Welles and Malcolm McClaren must have felt for each other. Have there ever been two more arch pranksters? Have two men ever greeted failure with a more knowing smile and a glint in the eye which suggested it was all actually planned? A collaboration, when you stop to think about it, seems obvious. But if they were to make a film together, who’d have put money on Malcolm McClaren handling the directing?
This is a genuine curio, an oddity even stranger than Welles’ own ‘F for Fake’. Clearly inspired by Welles’ tribulations when hawking frozen peas a few years prior, ‘Advertisement’ finds him pushing a vast array of different products. Here he is stood in a bowling alley, marching up from the pins and extolling Pepsi Cola in that honeyed voice of his; while there he is explaining his lovely waistline with reference to Big Macs, while a mime artist dressed as Ronald McDonald is beaten up behind him.
Yes, these are real products and the idea seems to have been that the film would be part funded by having the companies themselves take their little segments and screen them as part of an advertising campaign.
That, of course, never happened – hence why this film remains so lost and neglected (but this blog exists for neglected films). Surely the two of them could have guessed that a portly washed up Hollywood trouble maker, no matter how fascinating and charismatic he remained, was not the best pitch person for a bunch of random products. Particularly as a great many of these items are provincially British based, thus limiting the market of potential buyers even further. While McClaren’s offbeat visual style, and the need both of them seem to have to subvert these products even whilst selling them, means that it’s unlikely that any gaudy braces sporting Don Draper would have snapped these promos up.
Oddest moment? I think that’s a choice between Welles posing in a giant nappy and waving a rattle, telling us how much he adores Farley’s Rusks; or Welles standing side by side with Sid Vicious – in a segment filmed in 1978 – waxing lyrically about the virtues of Mars bars while young Sid stuffs his sneering face full.
It’s a small monument to how much Welles adored Europe and how that adoration led him down lots of odd little (sometimes completely blind) alleyways. He’s never a boring watch and it’s another example of how his talents are never truly wasted, even when the film around him is clearly and utterly not worthy of him. And it’s once again Orson Welles (and Malcolm McClaren too) going off on a mad adventure of his own and not caring about the consequences.
‘Advertisement’ is definitely not without interest, but a 78 minute string of commercials is tough to watch in one go, no matter who the pitchman is.
Colour and B&W
I suppose it’s easy to see the attraction Orson Welles and Malcolm McClaren must have felt for each other. Have there ever been two more arch pranksters? Have two men ever greeted failure with a more knowing smile and a glint in the eye which suggested it was all actually planned? A collaboration, when you stop to think about it, seems obvious. But if they were to make a film together, who’d have put money on Malcolm McClaren handling the directing?
This is a genuine curio, an oddity even stranger than Welles’ own ‘F for Fake’. Clearly inspired by Welles’ tribulations when hawking frozen peas a few years prior, ‘Advertisement’ finds him pushing a vast array of different products. Here he is stood in a bowling alley, marching up from the pins and extolling Pepsi Cola in that honeyed voice of his; while there he is explaining his lovely waistline with reference to Big Macs, while a mime artist dressed as Ronald McDonald is beaten up behind him.
Yes, these are real products and the idea seems to have been that the film would be part funded by having the companies themselves take their little segments and screen them as part of an advertising campaign.
That, of course, never happened – hence why this film remains so lost and neglected (but this blog exists for neglected films). Surely the two of them could have guessed that a portly washed up Hollywood trouble maker, no matter how fascinating and charismatic he remained, was not the best pitch person for a bunch of random products. Particularly as a great many of these items are provincially British based, thus limiting the market of potential buyers even further. While McClaren’s offbeat visual style, and the need both of them seem to have to subvert these products even whilst selling them, means that it’s unlikely that any gaudy braces sporting Don Draper would have snapped these promos up.
Oddest moment? I think that’s a choice between Welles posing in a giant nappy and waving a rattle, telling us how much he adores Farley’s Rusks; or Welles standing side by side with Sid Vicious – in a segment filmed in 1978 – waxing lyrically about the virtues of Mars bars while young Sid stuffs his sneering face full.
It’s a small monument to how much Welles adored Europe and how that adoration led him down lots of odd little (sometimes completely blind) alleyways. He’s never a boring watch and it’s another example of how his talents are never truly wasted, even when the film around him is clearly and utterly not worthy of him. And it’s once again Orson Welles (and Malcolm McClaren too) going off on a mad adventure of his own and not caring about the consequences.
‘Advertisement’ is definitely not without interest, but a 78 minute string of commercials is tough to watch in one go, no matter who the pitchman is.
Wednesday 13 November 2013
The Stainless Steel Rat (1970)
D.
Gerry Anderson
Colour
In many ways it should have been the perfect coming together. The first ‘Stainless Steel Rat’ book is great fiction for kids, it moves along at a fine clip, doesn’t aim for too much depth and isn’t concerned about painting the planets it visits in anything other than the broadest strokes. World building and complex plots are not what ‘The Stainless Steel Rat’ is about, what it’s about is colourful adventure. Therefore Gerry Anderson must have seemed the ideal choice to film the adaptation. He had after all spent most of the 1960s making uncomplex and undemanding adventure series. If anything he created more depth for the worlds he encountered and so should have been great at filling in the blanks. His metier – as it was seen at this point by the general public and the industry itself – was puppets. And if anything was created to be filmed in Supermarionation, it was ‘The Stainless Steel Rat’.
This feature length pilot for a proposed series should have been a success then. Unfortunately, by 1970, it was becoming increasingly obvious that Gerry Anderson really fucking hated puppets.
It’s odd that the man most associated with Supermarionation, who coined the word even, was the man who became the biggest critic of it. Anderson wanted to work with real actors, he wanted to make films (he was involved in the development of ‘Moonraker’) and felt that puppets were a cul de sac. Unfortunately, as his later ‘UFO’, ‘The Protectors’, ‘Space 1999’ career proved, he wasn’t good at working with live actors. Indeed he had an odd habit of making actual actors give performances reminiscent of puppets. That was all in the future though, at this time he was still the man with the puppets, but the fact he was so desperate not to be the man with the puppets explains why ‘The Stainless Steel Rat’ fails so badly.
‘Slippery’ Jim Bolivar diGriz is a rogue, a crook in a world where crime has largely been abolished. He is a high-tech, futuristic gentleman thief, like a Raffles with a ray-gun. We open as he successfully carries out a heist, before moving confidently onto his next crime. Unfortunately the next crime brings him into contact with Inskipp, a thief even more legendary than himself, but one who is now working as an investigator for the state. (Inskipp is a glorious puppet by the way, so squat and rotund and sweaty. It looks as if he’s been left in front of the radiator for a couple of days). He recruits Slippery Jim, much against his will, but soon our stainless steel rat gets the righteous scent of the hunt in his nostrils. He finds himself in pursuit of Angelina, the great femme fatale of the galaxy.
Firstly, the things this adaptation does right. The puppets are excellent, a far improvement on what Anderson had been working with at the start of the decade. One wouldn’t go as far as to say lifelike, as they’re still puppets after all, but these puppets are clearly at the more expressive end of puppet performers. The story is well paced, with the script placing exciting set-piece after exciting set-piece. And it corrects the biggest problem of the book, which is that the relationship between Jim and Angelina is so ill defined. Here Anderson aims for chemistry between his puppets, giving them witty dialogue that makes them sizzle like Bogart and Bacall with strings. Indeed it appears at points as if Anderson doesn’t want to restrain himself to just kisses. No doubt when he watched the sex scene in ‘Team America: World Police’ he saw realised a load of images which had flooded through his mind when making this film.
But where it doesn’t work is that Anderson is clearly straining with all his might against the form he did so much to develop. He clearly fucking hates puppets, and that has bad consequences for this film. Even when it’s puppets in brave new worlds, he still directs it in the most pedestrian way, with none of the verve of his earlier work. As such the exciting set pieces following exciting set pieces are not really that exciting at all.
What’s more, no matter how expressive the puppet, they’re clearly not enough for him anymore. When it comes to one of his characters giving a real serious emotion, then the vague features of a real person are superimposed onto their faces (superimposition on top of supermarionation). No doubt it was supposed to add depth, but it comes across looking weird, spooky even. Here we have a man who is working with puppets and wants to work with actors and so decides to do both, but doing so adds zero of the qualities you generally get from live actors and just ends up making his puppets look even more fake and stranger than before.
Such is his contempt for the materials he’s working with, that the viewer begins to imagine that he might truly shatter the illusion by running onto screen before the final shot and snipping all the strings while cackling manically into the camera. No doubt he was delighted that this wasn’t picked up as series. Even though ‘Slippery’ Jim Bolivar diGriz was a more nuanced and interesting character than Anderson had had before (maybe even the most nuanced and interesting character Anderson ever had) he was still – in this form – a fucking puppet. Underwhelming live action would follow for Anderson now, as for diGriz his wait for a proper film goes on – but I can’t help thinking that his puppet self is staking somewhere out right now.
Colour
In many ways it should have been the perfect coming together. The first ‘Stainless Steel Rat’ book is great fiction for kids, it moves along at a fine clip, doesn’t aim for too much depth and isn’t concerned about painting the planets it visits in anything other than the broadest strokes. World building and complex plots are not what ‘The Stainless Steel Rat’ is about, what it’s about is colourful adventure. Therefore Gerry Anderson must have seemed the ideal choice to film the adaptation. He had after all spent most of the 1960s making uncomplex and undemanding adventure series. If anything he created more depth for the worlds he encountered and so should have been great at filling in the blanks. His metier – as it was seen at this point by the general public and the industry itself – was puppets. And if anything was created to be filmed in Supermarionation, it was ‘The Stainless Steel Rat’.
This feature length pilot for a proposed series should have been a success then. Unfortunately, by 1970, it was becoming increasingly obvious that Gerry Anderson really fucking hated puppets.
It’s odd that the man most associated with Supermarionation, who coined the word even, was the man who became the biggest critic of it. Anderson wanted to work with real actors, he wanted to make films (he was involved in the development of ‘Moonraker’) and felt that puppets were a cul de sac. Unfortunately, as his later ‘UFO’, ‘The Protectors’, ‘Space 1999’ career proved, he wasn’t good at working with live actors. Indeed he had an odd habit of making actual actors give performances reminiscent of puppets. That was all in the future though, at this time he was still the man with the puppets, but the fact he was so desperate not to be the man with the puppets explains why ‘The Stainless Steel Rat’ fails so badly.
‘Slippery’ Jim Bolivar diGriz is a rogue, a crook in a world where crime has largely been abolished. He is a high-tech, futuristic gentleman thief, like a Raffles with a ray-gun. We open as he successfully carries out a heist, before moving confidently onto his next crime. Unfortunately the next crime brings him into contact with Inskipp, a thief even more legendary than himself, but one who is now working as an investigator for the state. (Inskipp is a glorious puppet by the way, so squat and rotund and sweaty. It looks as if he’s been left in front of the radiator for a couple of days). He recruits Slippery Jim, much against his will, but soon our stainless steel rat gets the righteous scent of the hunt in his nostrils. He finds himself in pursuit of Angelina, the great femme fatale of the galaxy.
Firstly, the things this adaptation does right. The puppets are excellent, a far improvement on what Anderson had been working with at the start of the decade. One wouldn’t go as far as to say lifelike, as they’re still puppets after all, but these puppets are clearly at the more expressive end of puppet performers. The story is well paced, with the script placing exciting set-piece after exciting set-piece. And it corrects the biggest problem of the book, which is that the relationship between Jim and Angelina is so ill defined. Here Anderson aims for chemistry between his puppets, giving them witty dialogue that makes them sizzle like Bogart and Bacall with strings. Indeed it appears at points as if Anderson doesn’t want to restrain himself to just kisses. No doubt when he watched the sex scene in ‘Team America: World Police’ he saw realised a load of images which had flooded through his mind when making this film.
But where it doesn’t work is that Anderson is clearly straining with all his might against the form he did so much to develop. He clearly fucking hates puppets, and that has bad consequences for this film. Even when it’s puppets in brave new worlds, he still directs it in the most pedestrian way, with none of the verve of his earlier work. As such the exciting set pieces following exciting set pieces are not really that exciting at all.
What’s more, no matter how expressive the puppet, they’re clearly not enough for him anymore. When it comes to one of his characters giving a real serious emotion, then the vague features of a real person are superimposed onto their faces (superimposition on top of supermarionation). No doubt it was supposed to add depth, but it comes across looking weird, spooky even. Here we have a man who is working with puppets and wants to work with actors and so decides to do both, but doing so adds zero of the qualities you generally get from live actors and just ends up making his puppets look even more fake and stranger than before.
Such is his contempt for the materials he’s working with, that the viewer begins to imagine that he might truly shatter the illusion by running onto screen before the final shot and snipping all the strings while cackling manically into the camera. No doubt he was delighted that this wasn’t picked up as series. Even though ‘Slippery’ Jim Bolivar diGriz was a more nuanced and interesting character than Anderson had had before (maybe even the most nuanced and interesting character Anderson ever had) he was still – in this form – a fucking puppet. Underwhelming live action would follow for Anderson now, as for diGriz his wait for a proper film goes on – but I can’t help thinking that his puppet self is staking somewhere out right now.
Sunday 10 November 2013
The Tall Tower (1958)
D.
Otto Preminger
B&W
There are so few ideas in the world that it’s unsurprising some overlap. It’s unsurprising that some films look basically the same as later much more famous films, almost as if the latter was an unofficial remake. We shouldn’t be suspicious though, we shouldn’t accuse – some films just fade from the collective memory, while others crash down on bloodied feet before smirking laconically to ensure you can never forget them.
As I’ve said before, this blog is for the neglected orphans of cinema.
See if this scenario sounds familiar: a New York detective calls into a tower block and finds himself caught in a battle of wills with suave European criminal who has taken hostages as he and his gang attempt to rob a vault in the basement.
Ah, I can see you nodding now. It’s ‘Die Hard’, isn’t it? That great classic of macho blockbuster cinema. We’ve all seen ‘Die Hard’. In fact my dad insists on watching it every single Christmas Eve. But imagine it’s ‘Die Hard’ in black & White, ‘Die Hard’ without explosions, ‘Die Hard’ with James Stewart as the cop and George Sanders as the criminal – and then you realise you’re actually watching ‘The Tall Tower’.
The difference between films of the 40s/50s/60s, where Hitchcock was the biggest and most mischievous boy in the sandpit, and the later blockbusting age is largely a matter of volume. Whereas it was the case that entertainment was provided by the taut dragged out tension and some truly startling moments, it became the norm for thrills to come by the way of bigger and bigger things blowing up. Indie films are understated, low budget horror can be understated (although more often is just tediously crap); but if you want a big tent-pole film with a major Hollywood star, then you want to rank up the volume and make things go ‘Bang!’ Now in terms of quality ‘Die Hard’ is one of the absolute best examples of this loud things go ‘Bang!’ genre (for the flip-side of the coin, see the ‘Transformers’ films), but it’s still a film where things go ‘Bang’. And the fact that it’s so loud and exciting and thrilling and there are loads of ‘bang-bang-bang’ explosions, makes the really subdued and understated style of ‘The Tall Tower’ look weirdly unthrilling.
No doubt an Alfred Hitchcock would have ramped up the suspense with this material, but Preminger has chosen his theme here as sweat. As the film progresses and the situation becomes more and more dangerous, Stewart is almost having flop sweats. He is dripping. Seriously, he looks quite unwell and one keeps expecting a kindly nurse to wander into shot and plug a drip into his arm. Sanders, on the other hand, prefers to glisten. Even at his most menacing, most in control (and with that voice, he was born to play sinister control), there’s still a sheen of moisture on his brow to illustrate the danger of the situation. Even suave European crooks feel nervous.
But the odd thing is that sense of danger is never as keen as it should be. This is a film which moves at a glacial pace, one which doesn’t so much draw out the tension as strap it to a rack and slowly and idly turn the handle, before popping off to have tea and biscuits. It’s a film which for a modern audience, having seen ‘Die Hard’, lacks much in the way of real urgency and thrills. Although that’s maybe unfair to modern audiences; if you compare it to a ‘Rear Window’ or a ‘North or Northwest’, then this film seems weirdly unengaging. It’s a movie which is happier staring in at the classy actors, than giving momentum to its plot. Indeed (SPOILER ALERT) it doesn’t even hint at things going ‘Bang’. As a sign of how understated and subdued it is, the villain isn’t even killed at the end. He is merely shot in the stomach and taken into custody. Job well done for the NYPD.
And yet for all its slowness and lack of drama, I would still prefer to watch this rather than something like ‘Transformers’. Obviously ‘Die Hard’ is miles better, but despite that we clearly lost something when we decided that things going ‘Bang’ was the be all and end all.
B&W
There are so few ideas in the world that it’s unsurprising some overlap. It’s unsurprising that some films look basically the same as later much more famous films, almost as if the latter was an unofficial remake. We shouldn’t be suspicious though, we shouldn’t accuse – some films just fade from the collective memory, while others crash down on bloodied feet before smirking laconically to ensure you can never forget them.
As I’ve said before, this blog is for the neglected orphans of cinema.
See if this scenario sounds familiar: a New York detective calls into a tower block and finds himself caught in a battle of wills with suave European criminal who has taken hostages as he and his gang attempt to rob a vault in the basement.
Ah, I can see you nodding now. It’s ‘Die Hard’, isn’t it? That great classic of macho blockbuster cinema. We’ve all seen ‘Die Hard’. In fact my dad insists on watching it every single Christmas Eve. But imagine it’s ‘Die Hard’ in black & White, ‘Die Hard’ without explosions, ‘Die Hard’ with James Stewart as the cop and George Sanders as the criminal – and then you realise you’re actually watching ‘The Tall Tower’.
The difference between films of the 40s/50s/60s, where Hitchcock was the biggest and most mischievous boy in the sandpit, and the later blockbusting age is largely a matter of volume. Whereas it was the case that entertainment was provided by the taut dragged out tension and some truly startling moments, it became the norm for thrills to come by the way of bigger and bigger things blowing up. Indie films are understated, low budget horror can be understated (although more often is just tediously crap); but if you want a big tent-pole film with a major Hollywood star, then you want to rank up the volume and make things go ‘Bang!’ Now in terms of quality ‘Die Hard’ is one of the absolute best examples of this loud things go ‘Bang!’ genre (for the flip-side of the coin, see the ‘Transformers’ films), but it’s still a film where things go ‘Bang’. And the fact that it’s so loud and exciting and thrilling and there are loads of ‘bang-bang-bang’ explosions, makes the really subdued and understated style of ‘The Tall Tower’ look weirdly unthrilling.
No doubt an Alfred Hitchcock would have ramped up the suspense with this material, but Preminger has chosen his theme here as sweat. As the film progresses and the situation becomes more and more dangerous, Stewart is almost having flop sweats. He is dripping. Seriously, he looks quite unwell and one keeps expecting a kindly nurse to wander into shot and plug a drip into his arm. Sanders, on the other hand, prefers to glisten. Even at his most menacing, most in control (and with that voice, he was born to play sinister control), there’s still a sheen of moisture on his brow to illustrate the danger of the situation. Even suave European crooks feel nervous.
But the odd thing is that sense of danger is never as keen as it should be. This is a film which moves at a glacial pace, one which doesn’t so much draw out the tension as strap it to a rack and slowly and idly turn the handle, before popping off to have tea and biscuits. It’s a film which for a modern audience, having seen ‘Die Hard’, lacks much in the way of real urgency and thrills. Although that’s maybe unfair to modern audiences; if you compare it to a ‘Rear Window’ or a ‘North or Northwest’, then this film seems weirdly unengaging. It’s a movie which is happier staring in at the classy actors, than giving momentum to its plot. Indeed (SPOILER ALERT) it doesn’t even hint at things going ‘Bang’. As a sign of how understated and subdued it is, the villain isn’t even killed at the end. He is merely shot in the stomach and taken into custody. Job well done for the NYPD.
And yet for all its slowness and lack of drama, I would still prefer to watch this rather than something like ‘Transformers’. Obviously ‘Die Hard’ is miles better, but despite that we clearly lost something when we decided that things going ‘Bang’ was the be all and end all.
Wednesday 6 November 2013
Remember, Remember (1985)
D.
Tom Warmby
Colour
Maybe the casting notes got muddled up, or maybe the actors names were fed into a tombola and the roles were allocated by simple chance. Or perhaps this was the director’s attempt to take something that had ‘bog-standard thriller’ stamped right the way through it, and turn it into a film slightly more interesting. As let’s be fair, if this film was cast the way it should be cast, there’s no way that this blog would give it a moment’s glance. It would just be another generic 80s British thriller with tough cops and brassy birds, all predictably culminating in a shoot-out in the building site that was then the London Docklands. It would have shown up in video stores with scowling men on the front cover, posing in front of explosions. Okay, that’s almost exactly how the cover appeared when it was leaked out like a bad smell, but if you took a moment to read the blurb then you’d have realised it was pushing with all its might against its assigned box.
‘Remember, Remember’ is a duel between two complete opposites. In our corner we have the suave, sexy, super-agent who is working for British interests. In the other we have the asexual, sinister foreign saboteur, looking to succeed where Guy Fawkes failed and blow up The Houses of Parliament. It’s a tense race against time, a high-wire game of guns and explosions which only one man can win. And if I told you that our two leads were Donald Pleasence and Martin Shaw, you’d know exactly who was playing whom. It’s so obvious, scribble the script down on the back of an envelope, shoot it in the most formulaic style possible and consider the job done. Next!
But, of course, as you’ve no doubt guessed by now, Martin Shaw is here cast as the villain and Donald Pleasence is the charming and handsome good guy.
How this happened I have no idea (the film is too obscure to have any behind the scenes featurettes). Maybe Shaw thought that the hero as written was too close to Brodie in ‘The Professionals’, perhaps this was his attempt to stretch his acting muscles. Clearly he enjoying himself, adding a demonic glow to his eyes and speaking every line with vague Germanic relish. He’s entertaining in a part which is unlike anything else he’s ever played.
Imagine though, waking up one morning and looking like Donald Pleasence – bald, tubby and now over the hill, yet cast as a charismatic sex symbol. He must have danced his way to the set each and every morning. And to be fair he does mostly sell it, there’s an aura to him, an invincibility, a definite twinkle. He can almost pass as man of action with a plan for every eventuality. It nearly works. The place it falls apart is in his desirability to the opposite sex. No matter how good an actor (and Donald Pleasence was a really good actor), he cannot sell the notion that he is cat-nip to the ladies. It seems incredible unlikely that he and the svelte and lovely Fiona Fullerton would be in an intense on/off relationship; it’s equally absurd that sexy foreign spy, the tantalising Glynis Barber, would lick her lips so excitedly in his presence and change sides to be with him; just as the notion that busty and perky Nicola Bryant would willingly play his Moneypenny and flirt so outrageously is really rather odd and disturbing. Even the most generously minded Donald Pleasence fan will think it looks ridiculous, the kind of thing that happens to Woody Allen in later Woody Allen films, but to no one else. Of course Pleasence enjoys himself, it must be highly flattering to him, but there’s nothing he can do to make himself sexier. If bald, overweight and aging men were actually considered the height of attractiveness, Eric Pickles would be one of the biggest stars in the world right now. They’re not and he isn’t.
And so we have a film which should be dull, and to be honest often is dull, but is enlivened by the casting. The sad problem is that a pedestrian script and bog-standard action scenes cannot be spruced up no matter how ludicrous your leading man. It’s well worth watching just for the performances, but don’t expect any more depth than one would associate with the modern day straight to video equivalent – the Vinnie Jones film.
Pleasence and Shaw are both great: Shaw enjoying his time as a Blofeld knock-off; Pleasence delighted not to be doing Blofeld again. And if you’re wondering who the actress playing Martin Shaw’s ultra-loyal secretary is – then, yes, that is John Hurt in drag. Inspiration did strike more than once while making this film then, but if only it had been more fulsome.
Colour
Maybe the casting notes got muddled up, or maybe the actors names were fed into a tombola and the roles were allocated by simple chance. Or perhaps this was the director’s attempt to take something that had ‘bog-standard thriller’ stamped right the way through it, and turn it into a film slightly more interesting. As let’s be fair, if this film was cast the way it should be cast, there’s no way that this blog would give it a moment’s glance. It would just be another generic 80s British thriller with tough cops and brassy birds, all predictably culminating in a shoot-out in the building site that was then the London Docklands. It would have shown up in video stores with scowling men on the front cover, posing in front of explosions. Okay, that’s almost exactly how the cover appeared when it was leaked out like a bad smell, but if you took a moment to read the blurb then you’d have realised it was pushing with all its might against its assigned box.
‘Remember, Remember’ is a duel between two complete opposites. In our corner we have the suave, sexy, super-agent who is working for British interests. In the other we have the asexual, sinister foreign saboteur, looking to succeed where Guy Fawkes failed and blow up The Houses of Parliament. It’s a tense race against time, a high-wire game of guns and explosions which only one man can win. And if I told you that our two leads were Donald Pleasence and Martin Shaw, you’d know exactly who was playing whom. It’s so obvious, scribble the script down on the back of an envelope, shoot it in the most formulaic style possible and consider the job done. Next!
But, of course, as you’ve no doubt guessed by now, Martin Shaw is here cast as the villain and Donald Pleasence is the charming and handsome good guy.
How this happened I have no idea (the film is too obscure to have any behind the scenes featurettes). Maybe Shaw thought that the hero as written was too close to Brodie in ‘The Professionals’, perhaps this was his attempt to stretch his acting muscles. Clearly he enjoying himself, adding a demonic glow to his eyes and speaking every line with vague Germanic relish. He’s entertaining in a part which is unlike anything else he’s ever played.
Imagine though, waking up one morning and looking like Donald Pleasence – bald, tubby and now over the hill, yet cast as a charismatic sex symbol. He must have danced his way to the set each and every morning. And to be fair he does mostly sell it, there’s an aura to him, an invincibility, a definite twinkle. He can almost pass as man of action with a plan for every eventuality. It nearly works. The place it falls apart is in his desirability to the opposite sex. No matter how good an actor (and Donald Pleasence was a really good actor), he cannot sell the notion that he is cat-nip to the ladies. It seems incredible unlikely that he and the svelte and lovely Fiona Fullerton would be in an intense on/off relationship; it’s equally absurd that sexy foreign spy, the tantalising Glynis Barber, would lick her lips so excitedly in his presence and change sides to be with him; just as the notion that busty and perky Nicola Bryant would willingly play his Moneypenny and flirt so outrageously is really rather odd and disturbing. Even the most generously minded Donald Pleasence fan will think it looks ridiculous, the kind of thing that happens to Woody Allen in later Woody Allen films, but to no one else. Of course Pleasence enjoys himself, it must be highly flattering to him, but there’s nothing he can do to make himself sexier. If bald, overweight and aging men were actually considered the height of attractiveness, Eric Pickles would be one of the biggest stars in the world right now. They’re not and he isn’t.
And so we have a film which should be dull, and to be honest often is dull, but is enlivened by the casting. The sad problem is that a pedestrian script and bog-standard action scenes cannot be spruced up no matter how ludicrous your leading man. It’s well worth watching just for the performances, but don’t expect any more depth than one would associate with the modern day straight to video equivalent – the Vinnie Jones film.
Pleasence and Shaw are both great: Shaw enjoying his time as a Blofeld knock-off; Pleasence delighted not to be doing Blofeld again. And if you’re wondering who the actress playing Martin Shaw’s ultra-loyal secretary is – then, yes, that is John Hurt in drag. Inspiration did strike more than once while making this film then, but if only it had been more fulsome.
Sunday 3 November 2013
Bonfire Bill (1964)
D.
Sidney Hayers
Colour
Equally there’s something quite terrifying about the being known as Cliff Richard. It’s the fact that he’s so perky and smiling, and yet so absolutely sexless. He should have – as the first British rock star – been a figure of snarling, rebellious, unfettered libido. Instead he was a eunuch type character who maiden aunts thought would be quite nice for cuddle. Of course we mock him for having sung ‘Bachelor Boy’ and then never marrying. But I think we should take it more seriously than just a joke. I think Cliff Richard has taken the word ‘bachelor’ and absolutely ruined it. Back in the day your ‘confirmed bachelor’ was a swinging and happening ladies’ man, a proto Don Draper. Now it’s a euphemism for a man who is a bit creepy and odd, but – hey – is okay with that. Thanks a lot, Sir Cliff. And it’s amazing how early in his career this happened, how young a man he was when he truly embraced this oddball image. Here he is in 1964, totally anodyne and as unthreatening as a corner table. Elvis is similarly declared to be neutered post-Army, but this is the same year he had ‘Viva Las Vegas’ (with ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘The Great Gatsby’ not long behind him). Cliff however is already your granny’s favourite, and not a very discerning granny at that.
Here we have an oddball children’s film which shows how utterly irrelevant these original British rock stars had become in the mid-sixties. All the cool kids are screaming at The Beatles and The Stones, while Tommy and Cliff sing to their younger brothers and sisters while idly remembering how nice it was to have testicles. Cliff is the eponymous Bonfire Bill, the man who brings bonfires to all communities every November the fifth. He’s a spectral and other worldly being, but one with boyish charm and a great singing voice. We get to watch him sing songs like ‘Party Every Year’ and ‘November the Fifth – The Day for Fire’ which are every bit as boring and pedestrian as those titles suggest. More impressively, he performs Peggy Lee’s ‘Fever’ with so little heat it wouldn’t even singe the thinnest slice of bacon. On the other side is Tommy Steele as Councilman Ciljoy, wearing a grimace which has served him well in dozens of revivals of ‘The Christmas Carol’. He's a sour-faced misery who doesn’t want bonfires in his town this year, thank you very much, and so bans them.
I think we all know who will win this battle of the out of time 50s’ singers though.
What’s truly depressing about this film is not how toothless (and it is quite a feat to make a toothless film starring Tommy Steele) and sexless these pop stars were by 1964, but how this film exists having torn the guts out of its own setting. There is no mention of Guy Fawkes, there is no mention of the actual roots of bonfire night. That is a story which involves oppression and brutality, one which ends with hanging, drawing and quartering. All of those details are ignored. Instead we get bonfire night as the gift of this impish Easter Bunny-eque character, albeit one with less sex-drive than any rabbit ever born. It’s a dispiriting watch, and the audience can only wish that the chief antagonist – instead of just glowering – would make good use of those teeth and eat Cliff instead.
Colour
There’s something quite terrifying about Tommy Steele’s
teeth. They loom out of his face at you, seeming to lurk and then leap forward,
far further than could humanly be possible. They’re floating white obelisks which
will hide in the dark determined to gnash at you when your weakest moment
arrives. They are not just too big for his mouth, they’re too big for his head,
too big for his entire flipping body. They are horrifying teeth, monstrous
teeth, the kind of teeth great white sharks would be intimidated by. I have
written a lot of horror in my time, but I can think of no more terrifying image
than Tommy Steele’s teeth in 3D cinemascope. Can you imagine those giant, shiny
whites thirty foot high and reaching out to you? It’s the kind of sight which
would make the toughest strong man wet himself with fear.
Equally there’s something quite terrifying about the being known as Cliff Richard. It’s the fact that he’s so perky and smiling, and yet so absolutely sexless. He should have – as the first British rock star – been a figure of snarling, rebellious, unfettered libido. Instead he was a eunuch type character who maiden aunts thought would be quite nice for cuddle. Of course we mock him for having sung ‘Bachelor Boy’ and then never marrying. But I think we should take it more seriously than just a joke. I think Cliff Richard has taken the word ‘bachelor’ and absolutely ruined it. Back in the day your ‘confirmed bachelor’ was a swinging and happening ladies’ man, a proto Don Draper. Now it’s a euphemism for a man who is a bit creepy and odd, but – hey – is okay with that. Thanks a lot, Sir Cliff. And it’s amazing how early in his career this happened, how young a man he was when he truly embraced this oddball image. Here he is in 1964, totally anodyne and as unthreatening as a corner table. Elvis is similarly declared to be neutered post-Army, but this is the same year he had ‘Viva Las Vegas’ (with ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘The Great Gatsby’ not long behind him). Cliff however is already your granny’s favourite, and not a very discerning granny at that.
Here we have an oddball children’s film which shows how utterly irrelevant these original British rock stars had become in the mid-sixties. All the cool kids are screaming at The Beatles and The Stones, while Tommy and Cliff sing to their younger brothers and sisters while idly remembering how nice it was to have testicles. Cliff is the eponymous Bonfire Bill, the man who brings bonfires to all communities every November the fifth. He’s a spectral and other worldly being, but one with boyish charm and a great singing voice. We get to watch him sing songs like ‘Party Every Year’ and ‘November the Fifth – The Day for Fire’ which are every bit as boring and pedestrian as those titles suggest. More impressively, he performs Peggy Lee’s ‘Fever’ with so little heat it wouldn’t even singe the thinnest slice of bacon. On the other side is Tommy Steele as Councilman Ciljoy, wearing a grimace which has served him well in dozens of revivals of ‘The Christmas Carol’. He's a sour-faced misery who doesn’t want bonfires in his town this year, thank you very much, and so bans them.
I think we all know who will win this battle of the out of time 50s’ singers though.
What’s truly depressing about this film is not how toothless (and it is quite a feat to make a toothless film starring Tommy Steele) and sexless these pop stars were by 1964, but how this film exists having torn the guts out of its own setting. There is no mention of Guy Fawkes, there is no mention of the actual roots of bonfire night. That is a story which involves oppression and brutality, one which ends with hanging, drawing and quartering. All of those details are ignored. Instead we get bonfire night as the gift of this impish Easter Bunny-eque character, albeit one with less sex-drive than any rabbit ever born. It’s a dispiriting watch, and the audience can only wish that the chief antagonist – instead of just glowering – would make good use of those teeth and eat Cliff instead.
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