D. Michael Anders
Colour
‘The Chrysalids’ is a fantastic novel which I’ve travelled too far in life without reading and, now I have, I whole-heartily recommend it. As such I really wanted to enjoy this obscure and barely released film adaptation. John Wyndham’s ‘The Day of the Triffids’ and ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’ are much more wired into the psyche of the British public, I think, because of the film versions (the latter, of course, as ‘The Village of the Damned’). I wanted this film then to right a wrong, so that even if it wasn’t as well known it may one day get a cinema re-release, or a big DVD push, and the reputation of both it and the book would rise. Unfortunately, even though it doesn’t shy away from ambition, there are performances here so ropey they could be used in rigging, dialogue so mouldy it’s like it’s been delivered from a petri dish, the kind of continuity errors that would get most film-editors beaten, whipped and then sacked, and a plot which even a casual observer would stare at and wonder where all those bloody great holes came from.
Set in a harsh puritan society of a post-apocalyptic world, we follow decidedly mature teens Ian Ogilvie and Jane Seymour, who like nuclear Romeo and Juliet fall in love despite the enmity of their families. When the pair’s passion is discovered, the arguments which ensure result in the two of them revealing hitherto hidden telekinetic powers that mark them both out as devil’s spawn in their world. Their only chance for survival is to flee into the badlands outside the civilised world, but such is the fear they’ve provoked, they are pursued relentlessly by the mad preacher who runs the town.
I can handle Seymour and Ogilvie not really looking like teenagers at all. I can handle that the moment they escape, they ditch their buttoned up puritan garbs for some battered and revealing swimwear, as clearly they’re now rebelling. I can handle that the telepathy in the book has become the far more visually pleasing telekinesis in the film. I can ever handle that both Seymour and Ogilvie’s performances are bland, particularly when compared with the ridiculously and enthusiastically evil turn Roy Dotrice gives as the town preacher – and Seymour’s dad.
But what I really can’t get a grip on is the way telekinesis is only used when the plot needs it. At points the film just forgets that its lead characters can move things with their mind – which we can all agree, would be a useful ability to have in a scrape – and just finds some other way to get them out of trouble. Similarly the unexploded nuclear bomb they find at the end feels like deus ex grande machina. The book’s different ending also has a similar charge against it, but here we have two people, hundreds of years after a nuclear war that’s ill-defined in their history, instantly clocking what this weapon is and figuring out how to use it to their advantage. It’s like watching a caveman have a flash of inspiration on how to programme a digital watch.
There are some scary moments en route, particularly for Seymour who is very much screaming peril monkey of the movie, but this is a film which rides its way through the pretty English countryside with only a faint grasp on its own plot, and so never captures Wyndham and fails even on its own terms.
Wednesday 30 July 2014
Sunday 27 July 2014
Skeleton Island (1971)
D. Don Chaffey
Colour
This is one of those epic swords and sorcery, men in short tunics (and let’s be fair more than slightly homo-erotic) movies which seems to have fallen through the net of our cultural memory. Perhaps because Ray Harryhausen himself didn’t do the effects (although when he saw it, even he must have been suspicious that he had done the effects – given how familiar they all are); or maybe it’s because it’s not actually based on some pre-existing myth or legend, and is in fact lovingly ripped off from ‘The Night of the Living Dead’. But even if this is a minor effort when compared to ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ or ‘The 7th Voyage of Sinbad’, it’s still rollicking entertainment that deserves to be better known.
In a premise lifted straight from Homer, a group of battle-scarred warriors sailing home get horribly lost on the high seas. In the break of a storm they espy an island, with a castle sat imperiously on top of a sheer cliff. Seeking sanctuary, and a much needed break from being tossed about on the waves, they make their way ashore. In bright sunlight they climb to the castle, finding it empty but seemingly idyllic. There is shelter, comfort, and even some food for them to eat. But then at nightfall something terrible happens: a huge army of skeletons rises from the earth and lays siege to the castle. Our brave warriors are forced to fight for their lives to keep them out. Their trouble intensified by the fact that if any of the men dies, his skeleton breaks loose of his body and suddenly the danger is inside the castle as well.
That’s basically it. It lacks the epic sweep of ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ and the political message and subtlety of ‘The Night of the Living Dead’, but it’s a hell of a fun ride. It’s full-on swords breaking skeleton bones, bony hands grabbing at flesh (and sometimes grabbing through flesh), skeletons popping out of shadows when you least expect it, skull-like faces looming from darkness. The stop-motion will no doubt be mocked by snooty people for whom old films are endless source of fun (basically because they’re idiots). But really, more troubling from an enjoyment point of view is the characterisation (or lack of characterisation) in the script and performances (or lack of differentiating performances) of the cast – all of whom are stocky men with beards dressed in brown leather tunics. It’s hard to actually give a damn about who survives and who doesn’t when you’re not really sure which character is which.
A film crying out for a Hollywood remake then, one with new computer effects, a better script and a stronger set of actors. That Hollywood version of ‘Troy’ never got the sequel its source material so clearly demanded. Let’s give Sean Bean a call and see if he wants to do this.
Colour
This is one of those epic swords and sorcery, men in short tunics (and let’s be fair more than slightly homo-erotic) movies which seems to have fallen through the net of our cultural memory. Perhaps because Ray Harryhausen himself didn’t do the effects (although when he saw it, even he must have been suspicious that he had done the effects – given how familiar they all are); or maybe it’s because it’s not actually based on some pre-existing myth or legend, and is in fact lovingly ripped off from ‘The Night of the Living Dead’. But even if this is a minor effort when compared to ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ or ‘The 7th Voyage of Sinbad’, it’s still rollicking entertainment that deserves to be better known.
In a premise lifted straight from Homer, a group of battle-scarred warriors sailing home get horribly lost on the high seas. In the break of a storm they espy an island, with a castle sat imperiously on top of a sheer cliff. Seeking sanctuary, and a much needed break from being tossed about on the waves, they make their way ashore. In bright sunlight they climb to the castle, finding it empty but seemingly idyllic. There is shelter, comfort, and even some food for them to eat. But then at nightfall something terrible happens: a huge army of skeletons rises from the earth and lays siege to the castle. Our brave warriors are forced to fight for their lives to keep them out. Their trouble intensified by the fact that if any of the men dies, his skeleton breaks loose of his body and suddenly the danger is inside the castle as well.
That’s basically it. It lacks the epic sweep of ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ and the political message and subtlety of ‘The Night of the Living Dead’, but it’s a hell of a fun ride. It’s full-on swords breaking skeleton bones, bony hands grabbing at flesh (and sometimes grabbing through flesh), skeletons popping out of shadows when you least expect it, skull-like faces looming from darkness. The stop-motion will no doubt be mocked by snooty people for whom old films are endless source of fun (basically because they’re idiots). But really, more troubling from an enjoyment point of view is the characterisation (or lack of characterisation) in the script and performances (or lack of differentiating performances) of the cast – all of whom are stocky men with beards dressed in brown leather tunics. It’s hard to actually give a damn about who survives and who doesn’t when you’re not really sure which character is which.
A film crying out for a Hollywood remake then, one with new computer effects, a better script and a stronger set of actors. That Hollywood version of ‘Troy’ never got the sequel its source material so clearly demanded. Let’s give Sean Bean a call and see if he wants to do this.
Wednesday 23 July 2014
Gransel & Hetel (1958)
D. Jago Mirelles
B&W
Much like ‘The Third Man’, a film in which Orson Welles only really makes a brief appearance, but which looks from every lop-sided camera-shot and stark black and white image like your actual Orson Welles movie; this is another film in which Welles does little more than cameo, but which seems like Orson Welles directing at his most menacing. Of course ‘Gransel & Hetel’ is a lot more obscure and nowhere near as good as ‘The Third Man’ (that’s fine though, it’s hardly a badge of shame to be less good than ‘The Third Man’), but one which in its Grimm Brothers gothic stands out as being possibly the most Welles films the great Orson never directed.
A boy named Gransel and a girl named Hetel wander too far into the woods one day where they meet a wicked witch who makes no secret of the fact she’d like to eat them. Actually this is one damned scary witch. Imagine the bleached face of a worm with the razor-like teeth of a tiger shark, then picture that looming out of black & white darkness and we have here the kind of evil queen Alvy Singer is never ever going to fall in love with. The plucky kids make their escape, but are trapped in the increasingly dark wood with their would-be devourer in pursuit. A terrified elf tells them that the only way they can save themselves is to head to the ogre’s castle at the centre of the woods.
The ogre is, of course, Orson Welles, shot constantly from low angles to make him look twice as big and three times as menacing. He looms into frame, dominates it, his big and bushy beard seems to jut right out of the screen, he laughs twice as loud as any other sound in the film. Of course this opens up a lot of fat jokes at poor Orson’s expense (he after all looks more likely to eat the kids than the scrawny witch), but I’m going to (mostly) rise above that and just say how great his performance is: ‘The Wizard of Oz’ played not as a kindly charlatan, but as a malevolent and changeable monster who can help you on a whim, but easily destroy you too.
(It amuses me to do this film right next to Peter Sellers in ‘Mr Hargreaves’, as part of the reason production on the original ‘Casino Royale’ went so badly awry was the spectacular falling out between the two men. In these films each seems to be playing versions of their public personas. Sellers is outwardly affable and witty, but underneath something distinctly more unpleasant; while Welles is a quixotic, occasionally charming, walking appetite. If I had to pick, I think I’d rather have an evening out with Orson.)
Like an earlier, less well-formed ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, this is a movie which takes European fairy tales and decides not to downplay the horror elements Disney-style, but instead ramp them up so each of the ogres, witches and fairies is screaming at you. What we have is an Orson Welles’s children’s film – one that’s a compendium of creepy old books, scary backdrops, horrible monsters with horrible appetites, and a sense of doom that doesn’t really let up.
B&W
Much like ‘The Third Man’, a film in which Orson Welles only really makes a brief appearance, but which looks from every lop-sided camera-shot and stark black and white image like your actual Orson Welles movie; this is another film in which Welles does little more than cameo, but which seems like Orson Welles directing at his most menacing. Of course ‘Gransel & Hetel’ is a lot more obscure and nowhere near as good as ‘The Third Man’ (that’s fine though, it’s hardly a badge of shame to be less good than ‘The Third Man’), but one which in its Grimm Brothers gothic stands out as being possibly the most Welles films the great Orson never directed.
A boy named Gransel and a girl named Hetel wander too far into the woods one day where they meet a wicked witch who makes no secret of the fact she’d like to eat them. Actually this is one damned scary witch. Imagine the bleached face of a worm with the razor-like teeth of a tiger shark, then picture that looming out of black & white darkness and we have here the kind of evil queen Alvy Singer is never ever going to fall in love with. The plucky kids make their escape, but are trapped in the increasingly dark wood with their would-be devourer in pursuit. A terrified elf tells them that the only way they can save themselves is to head to the ogre’s castle at the centre of the woods.
The ogre is, of course, Orson Welles, shot constantly from low angles to make him look twice as big and three times as menacing. He looms into frame, dominates it, his big and bushy beard seems to jut right out of the screen, he laughs twice as loud as any other sound in the film. Of course this opens up a lot of fat jokes at poor Orson’s expense (he after all looks more likely to eat the kids than the scrawny witch), but I’m going to (mostly) rise above that and just say how great his performance is: ‘The Wizard of Oz’ played not as a kindly charlatan, but as a malevolent and changeable monster who can help you on a whim, but easily destroy you too.
(It amuses me to do this film right next to Peter Sellers in ‘Mr Hargreaves’, as part of the reason production on the original ‘Casino Royale’ went so badly awry was the spectacular falling out between the two men. In these films each seems to be playing versions of their public personas. Sellers is outwardly affable and witty, but underneath something distinctly more unpleasant; while Welles is a quixotic, occasionally charming, walking appetite. If I had to pick, I think I’d rather have an evening out with Orson.)
Like an earlier, less well-formed ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, this is a movie which takes European fairy tales and decides not to downplay the horror elements Disney-style, but instead ramp them up so each of the ogres, witches and fairies is screaming at you. What we have is an Orson Welles’s children’s film – one that’s a compendium of creepy old books, scary backdrops, horrible monsters with horrible appetites, and a sense of doom that doesn’t really let up.
Sunday 20 July 2014
Mr Hargreaves (1959)
D. John Guillermin
B&W
If ‘Mr Hargreaves’ was green-lit today, it would be as “’Lucky Jim’ meets ‘The Manchurian Candidate’”. Whether that’d work as a pitch today I don’t know, it does rather assume that your average film executive is not only savvy enough to have come across Kingsley Amis, but also capable of dismissing warnings that he isn’t a big draw with the 18-25 demographic. I’m glad though that in 1959 Kingsley was a big enough name to get it into production. ‘Lucky Jim’ is clearly hard-wired into its DNA, right there to the smudges on its fingers. To be fair, ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ was still a couple of years from reaching the box office (the book had been written however); but the fact that Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury were still waiting and playing solitaire doesn’t matter. Few places knew as much about cold war paranoia as Great Britain and it’s with sweaty, nervous and anxious palms that the Brits go to the well here.
In an unnamed provincial university a lecturer arrives, he is very polite and ingratiating, but there’s just something not right about him. Gradually fellow faculty members and students become suspicious and after some snooping evidence emerges suggesting that he is in fact a Soviet spy, there to assassinate the Prime Minister on an upcoming visit.
This is a cracklingly tense movie, all shot in the small poky rooms of a regional English town – but those box-like, cell-like spaces edited together to be edgy and claustrophobic. But what really makes this film great is the identity of the mysterious, suspicious professor, as we have here Peter Sellers at the height of his powers.
Still in his chubby phase and not quite as old as his character should be, Sellers excels at creating a great blankness. He later joked that he was all mask, that there had been a real him but he’d had it removed. This is the film which shows that aspect more than any other, presenting a character who is all façade, a moral nothingness hidden by good manners. Yes Mr Hargreaves is polite, yes he’s outwardly pleasant, yes he’s obsequious – but there’s always something absent behind his eyes. It’s a performance of great skill: creating a man who seems to be an inoffensive two dimensional human being, then slowly revealing a moral void underneath.
(Later on, when he was lost to broad comedies, did Sellers not look back and think how brilliant he once was and that he should try and make movies like this again?)
Richard Todd and Janette Scott (as fellow lecturer and student respectively) are the team which work together to expose him, and they’re both perfectly serviceable in their stock roles. But in the background we have Beryl Reid as a soused French professor who seems barely able to speak French; Bill Kerr as the sports mad, loutish, Aussie poetry professor; and William Hartnell looking old and smiling genially as the professor of a subject so ancient it’s been forgotten. It ensures that there’s some colour and comedy in the staffroom in what would otherwise be a very serious, taut and paranoid black & white film.
At the forefront though is Sellers, taking on the kind of role money, fame and madness would soon snatch him away from, and if you’ve ever seen ‘The Party’ or ‘After the Fox’ you’ll know what a damned, crying shame that was.
B&W
If ‘Mr Hargreaves’ was green-lit today, it would be as “’Lucky Jim’ meets ‘The Manchurian Candidate’”. Whether that’d work as a pitch today I don’t know, it does rather assume that your average film executive is not only savvy enough to have come across Kingsley Amis, but also capable of dismissing warnings that he isn’t a big draw with the 18-25 demographic. I’m glad though that in 1959 Kingsley was a big enough name to get it into production. ‘Lucky Jim’ is clearly hard-wired into its DNA, right there to the smudges on its fingers. To be fair, ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ was still a couple of years from reaching the box office (the book had been written however); but the fact that Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury were still waiting and playing solitaire doesn’t matter. Few places knew as much about cold war paranoia as Great Britain and it’s with sweaty, nervous and anxious palms that the Brits go to the well here.
In an unnamed provincial university a lecturer arrives, he is very polite and ingratiating, but there’s just something not right about him. Gradually fellow faculty members and students become suspicious and after some snooping evidence emerges suggesting that he is in fact a Soviet spy, there to assassinate the Prime Minister on an upcoming visit.
This is a cracklingly tense movie, all shot in the small poky rooms of a regional English town – but those box-like, cell-like spaces edited together to be edgy and claustrophobic. But what really makes this film great is the identity of the mysterious, suspicious professor, as we have here Peter Sellers at the height of his powers.
Still in his chubby phase and not quite as old as his character should be, Sellers excels at creating a great blankness. He later joked that he was all mask, that there had been a real him but he’d had it removed. This is the film which shows that aspect more than any other, presenting a character who is all façade, a moral nothingness hidden by good manners. Yes Mr Hargreaves is polite, yes he’s outwardly pleasant, yes he’s obsequious – but there’s always something absent behind his eyes. It’s a performance of great skill: creating a man who seems to be an inoffensive two dimensional human being, then slowly revealing a moral void underneath.
(Later on, when he was lost to broad comedies, did Sellers not look back and think how brilliant he once was and that he should try and make movies like this again?)
Richard Todd and Janette Scott (as fellow lecturer and student respectively) are the team which work together to expose him, and they’re both perfectly serviceable in their stock roles. But in the background we have Beryl Reid as a soused French professor who seems barely able to speak French; Bill Kerr as the sports mad, loutish, Aussie poetry professor; and William Hartnell looking old and smiling genially as the professor of a subject so ancient it’s been forgotten. It ensures that there’s some colour and comedy in the staffroom in what would otherwise be a very serious, taut and paranoid black & white film.
At the forefront though is Sellers, taking on the kind of role money, fame and madness would soon snatch him away from, and if you’ve ever seen ‘The Party’ or ‘After the Fox’ you’ll know what a damned, crying shame that was.
Wednesday 16 July 2014
The Guest in Room 313 (1968)
D. Giles Malay
B&W
Here’s a genuine curio of a movie which intrigues me every time I see it. ‘The Guest in Room 313’ is a shadowy and obtuse film, one that aims for a narrow focus but also tries to be many things at once, and as a consequence so much remains wonderfully elusive within it. I don’t think there’s another movie quite like it.
The set up is thus: Laurence Harvey, putting that uniquely frigid style of his to good use (this is his best film outside of ‘The Manchurian Candidate’) is a burnt-out spy holed up in the room 313 of a Las Vegas hotel. (Hence the title, I guess.) Clearly something went awry on his last mission as Harvey has terror dreams even when awake; obviously he knows a lot of stuff he doesn’t want to know and it’s burning through his brain. But more than that, more than just being an ex-spy with a drink problem and mental health issues who has cut himself off from society, Harvey also believes that he’s a werewolf. And that belief takes hold even before young women start being murdered in Las Vegas at full moon.
This is a movie which drips with nervous sweat, which reeks of desperate paranoia. You almost suspect that the director and screenwriter and most of the crew made it while wearing little tinfoil hats to stop the government reading their minds. Harvey sits in the hotel room, he drinks whisky, he broods, he has panicked dreams that don’t seem to make any sense within the context of the film – but are undeniably compulsive and fit in totally with the feel of the film. Janet Leigh (another throwback to ‘The Manchurian Candidate’) is a hotel employee in a smart suit who officiously tries to deal with his needs, flirting with him and mothering him, and generally being far more attentive than any normal hotel employee. (Think of that description and then think of the usual impersonal personal service of hotel staff, your suspicions are immediately raised, aren’t they?) Jack Nicholson is another visitor, a fellow agent or perhaps Harvey’s handler, who speaks in bizarre, drawling riddles and makes each of his three scenes decidedly edgy in the way only Jack can. Then there’s Charlotte Rampling, sweet and affecting as a call girl Harvey calls in daylight and who might, just like everyone else, know a lot more than she seems. These are performances which seem to come full of secrets, and around the immobile centre of Harvey – who somehow lets his stiff stillness radiate insanity – they create a movie where you obviously can’t even trust the walls.
The atmosphere of paranoia builds and builds, and never lets up. The ending might be to some people a damp squib, but I find it gloriously and remorselessly unsettling. Yes, little is resolved, most is still left up in the air, but this is a film which wants you to walk away thinking that they really are out to get you.
B&W
Here’s a genuine curio of a movie which intrigues me every time I see it. ‘The Guest in Room 313’ is a shadowy and obtuse film, one that aims for a narrow focus but also tries to be many things at once, and as a consequence so much remains wonderfully elusive within it. I don’t think there’s another movie quite like it.
The set up is thus: Laurence Harvey, putting that uniquely frigid style of his to good use (this is his best film outside of ‘The Manchurian Candidate’) is a burnt-out spy holed up in the room 313 of a Las Vegas hotel. (Hence the title, I guess.) Clearly something went awry on his last mission as Harvey has terror dreams even when awake; obviously he knows a lot of stuff he doesn’t want to know and it’s burning through his brain. But more than that, more than just being an ex-spy with a drink problem and mental health issues who has cut himself off from society, Harvey also believes that he’s a werewolf. And that belief takes hold even before young women start being murdered in Las Vegas at full moon.
This is a movie which drips with nervous sweat, which reeks of desperate paranoia. You almost suspect that the director and screenwriter and most of the crew made it while wearing little tinfoil hats to stop the government reading their minds. Harvey sits in the hotel room, he drinks whisky, he broods, he has panicked dreams that don’t seem to make any sense within the context of the film – but are undeniably compulsive and fit in totally with the feel of the film. Janet Leigh (another throwback to ‘The Manchurian Candidate’) is a hotel employee in a smart suit who officiously tries to deal with his needs, flirting with him and mothering him, and generally being far more attentive than any normal hotel employee. (Think of that description and then think of the usual impersonal personal service of hotel staff, your suspicions are immediately raised, aren’t they?) Jack Nicholson is another visitor, a fellow agent or perhaps Harvey’s handler, who speaks in bizarre, drawling riddles and makes each of his three scenes decidedly edgy in the way only Jack can. Then there’s Charlotte Rampling, sweet and affecting as a call girl Harvey calls in daylight and who might, just like everyone else, know a lot more than she seems. These are performances which seem to come full of secrets, and around the immobile centre of Harvey – who somehow lets his stiff stillness radiate insanity – they create a movie where you obviously can’t even trust the walls.
The atmosphere of paranoia builds and builds, and never lets up. The ending might be to some people a damp squib, but I find it gloriously and remorselessly unsettling. Yes, little is resolved, most is still left up in the air, but this is a film which wants you to walk away thinking that they really are out to get you.
Sunday 13 July 2014
The Dracula Twins (1965)
D. Norman Taurog
Colour
I remember as a small child being fascinated by the Hammer Horror film ‘Twins of Evil’. I hadn’t actually seen the movie, but it had been adapted as a comic strip in a horror annual I owned. For those who don’t know it, it’s a gothic set tale of twin raven-haired beauties who become vampires and attack their community. I didn’t realise as a small child that the twins were Mary Collinson and Madeleine Collinson, the first identical twins to appear in a Playboy centre-fold. Nor did I realise until I actually saw the film quite how much nudity there was (although a lot of the violence was included in this comic version for kids). Certainly I didn’t realise how bad the actual film was. The acting is poor, the sets are cheap, the script abysmal and not even the great Peter Cushing can save it.
All in all a bit of a disappointment then, but as an adult I heard about a film called ‘The Dracula Twins’ and for a moment my heart skipped a beat as I thought that maybe – just maybe – I’d found the great twin-centric vampire film I’d been hunting for most of my life.
Made six years before ‘Twins of Evil’, this movie sees another seemingly cut-off community where two young twin sisters, at their most attractively ripe, are turned suddenly into vampires and terrorise those around them. There’s probably even more gore in this than there is ‘Twins of Evil’, certainly lot of that bright red stuff that used to pass for blood in 1960s movies. But oddly, rather than an oppressive European atmosphere, this actually tries for a lighter tone; including comedy, jokes and even a musical number. You see the whole thing is set in Malibu and plays like one of those old Annette/Frankie beach movies, but one where – amidst the Pina Coladas – gruesome, painful death is never far away. That’s a little jarring in itself, but what made my excited heart sink further was the realisation of who is playing the twins.
Yes, it’s Raquel Welch.
Yes, she’s playing both of them.
That really was a blow to the stomach, as Ms Welch is frequently unconvincing in films where she’s called upon to play just one person, let alone two. And somehow, a film about vampires at the beach, didn’t seem like it would be one that would tap into hitherto unseen thespian skills. She plays Margo and Chantel, two gorgeous (although suspiciously mature) teenagers who look great in bikinis. One wears a blue bikini and one wears a red; while one has her hair over her left shoulder and the other favours the right. This isn’t Jeremy Irons in ‘Dead Ringers’ though, even the most perceptive viewer will have difficulty telling the two Raquels apart. After being attacked one night, they became predators in the beach community, both heading out after dark to kill their prey.
This truly is a mess of a movie, too gory to be funny and not funny enough on its own terms anyway. Welch’s favourite pose is to stare with her eyes wide and her lips slightly apart, but that isn’t enough to look truly seductive or truly sexy, and certainly not enough to differentiate one character let alone two.
Another disappointment then, but at least people like me who are hunting down bloodsucking twins films, can cross it off the list.
Colour
I remember as a small child being fascinated by the Hammer Horror film ‘Twins of Evil’. I hadn’t actually seen the movie, but it had been adapted as a comic strip in a horror annual I owned. For those who don’t know it, it’s a gothic set tale of twin raven-haired beauties who become vampires and attack their community. I didn’t realise as a small child that the twins were Mary Collinson and Madeleine Collinson, the first identical twins to appear in a Playboy centre-fold. Nor did I realise until I actually saw the film quite how much nudity there was (although a lot of the violence was included in this comic version for kids). Certainly I didn’t realise how bad the actual film was. The acting is poor, the sets are cheap, the script abysmal and not even the great Peter Cushing can save it.
All in all a bit of a disappointment then, but as an adult I heard about a film called ‘The Dracula Twins’ and for a moment my heart skipped a beat as I thought that maybe – just maybe – I’d found the great twin-centric vampire film I’d been hunting for most of my life.
Made six years before ‘Twins of Evil’, this movie sees another seemingly cut-off community where two young twin sisters, at their most attractively ripe, are turned suddenly into vampires and terrorise those around them. There’s probably even more gore in this than there is ‘Twins of Evil’, certainly lot of that bright red stuff that used to pass for blood in 1960s movies. But oddly, rather than an oppressive European atmosphere, this actually tries for a lighter tone; including comedy, jokes and even a musical number. You see the whole thing is set in Malibu and plays like one of those old Annette/Frankie beach movies, but one where – amidst the Pina Coladas – gruesome, painful death is never far away. That’s a little jarring in itself, but what made my excited heart sink further was the realisation of who is playing the twins.
Yes, it’s Raquel Welch.
Yes, she’s playing both of them.
That really was a blow to the stomach, as Ms Welch is frequently unconvincing in films where she’s called upon to play just one person, let alone two. And somehow, a film about vampires at the beach, didn’t seem like it would be one that would tap into hitherto unseen thespian skills. She plays Margo and Chantel, two gorgeous (although suspiciously mature) teenagers who look great in bikinis. One wears a blue bikini and one wears a red; while one has her hair over her left shoulder and the other favours the right. This isn’t Jeremy Irons in ‘Dead Ringers’ though, even the most perceptive viewer will have difficulty telling the two Raquels apart. After being attacked one night, they became predators in the beach community, both heading out after dark to kill their prey.
This truly is a mess of a movie, too gory to be funny and not funny enough on its own terms anyway. Welch’s favourite pose is to stare with her eyes wide and her lips slightly apart, but that isn’t enough to look truly seductive or truly sexy, and certainly not enough to differentiate one character let alone two.
Another disappointment then, but at least people like me who are hunting down bloodsucking twins films, can cross it off the list.
Wednesday 9 July 2014
Marie Antoinette (1985)
D. David Spartan
Colour
Having started the week with Paul Muni inventing fire, we now come to another strange supposedly historical movie where actual history is totally unimportant. Those of you who’ve read deeply into the life of Marie Antoinette, or know something of the French revolution, avert your eyes now. As what we have is not strictly a portrayal of life in the court of Versailles, one that looks at the ins and outs of the bloody events of the 1790s, but instead Toyah Wilcox as ‘Marie Antoinette – Demon Bloodsucker’.
In the days of ‘Abraham Lincoln – Vampire Hunter’, this probably makes a lot more sense. Back in the 1980s, though, it must have been a shock to see a pop star as a French queen stalking through the streets of Paris to suck the necks of children. What makes it more surprising is that there’s zero context for this. We start with what looks to be a standard historical biopic (well as standard an historical biopic as you can get with Toyah Wilcox as the lead), all stately homes, bodices and BBC accents; but before long we’re nicking ideas from old Universal and Hammer movies and she’s out on the grimy Parisian backstreets as the arch nocturnal huntress. Other musical luminaries – Adam Ant, Richard O’Brien, Lulu – appear with their tongues firmly placed firmly in their cheeks to either aid her or try to stop her, as this Austrian-French Queen (she was actually Austrian, but Toyah insists on playing her with a wandering accent that’s just this side of Inspector Clouseau) goes all Countess Bathory while wearing tight, heaving corsets. Then the French revolution comes along; the masses, tired of being oppressed and no doubt livid at having their blood sucked, rise up. It initially seems that the chaos will aid this vampire Queen but her fall isn’t far away.
In the background of this bright and shiny pop video, which for some reason has been stretched to feature length and inexplicably had all the songs left out, is – of course – the evil of Margaret Thatcher. At one point Toyah even tells her lady in waiting, who is concerned about the Queen’s nightly expeditions that “this lady is not for turning”. (It’s a pity that Thatcher didn’t say “There’s no such thing as society” until later, as the filmmakers would have salivated right down their chins at a line like that.) Obviously this is a project its makers felt passionate about, but in their passion and over-whelming hatred for the British Prime-Minister, what they’ve lost is any sense of subtlety. It’s a film which doesn’t just want to dislike Thatcher, it wants to state loud and proud that she actually feasts on the blood of the poor and the blood of their children. This is a literal demonization and that makes it – even if you’re broadly sympathetic to where the film is coming from – easy to not take seriously. Often within the echo chamber of the left or right, people just lose all sense of the wider world and convince themselves that all that exists is their passion and beliefs. Toyah Wilcox as Marie Antoinette sounds very, very silly and – even with a shouted political agenda – it is very, very silly.
Colour
Having started the week with Paul Muni inventing fire, we now come to another strange supposedly historical movie where actual history is totally unimportant. Those of you who’ve read deeply into the life of Marie Antoinette, or know something of the French revolution, avert your eyes now. As what we have is not strictly a portrayal of life in the court of Versailles, one that looks at the ins and outs of the bloody events of the 1790s, but instead Toyah Wilcox as ‘Marie Antoinette – Demon Bloodsucker’.
In the days of ‘Abraham Lincoln – Vampire Hunter’, this probably makes a lot more sense. Back in the 1980s, though, it must have been a shock to see a pop star as a French queen stalking through the streets of Paris to suck the necks of children. What makes it more surprising is that there’s zero context for this. We start with what looks to be a standard historical biopic (well as standard an historical biopic as you can get with Toyah Wilcox as the lead), all stately homes, bodices and BBC accents; but before long we’re nicking ideas from old Universal and Hammer movies and she’s out on the grimy Parisian backstreets as the arch nocturnal huntress. Other musical luminaries – Adam Ant, Richard O’Brien, Lulu – appear with their tongues firmly placed firmly in their cheeks to either aid her or try to stop her, as this Austrian-French Queen (she was actually Austrian, but Toyah insists on playing her with a wandering accent that’s just this side of Inspector Clouseau) goes all Countess Bathory while wearing tight, heaving corsets. Then the French revolution comes along; the masses, tired of being oppressed and no doubt livid at having their blood sucked, rise up. It initially seems that the chaos will aid this vampire Queen but her fall isn’t far away.
In the background of this bright and shiny pop video, which for some reason has been stretched to feature length and inexplicably had all the songs left out, is – of course – the evil of Margaret Thatcher. At one point Toyah even tells her lady in waiting, who is concerned about the Queen’s nightly expeditions that “this lady is not for turning”. (It’s a pity that Thatcher didn’t say “There’s no such thing as society” until later, as the filmmakers would have salivated right down their chins at a line like that.) Obviously this is a project its makers felt passionate about, but in their passion and over-whelming hatred for the British Prime-Minister, what they’ve lost is any sense of subtlety. It’s a film which doesn’t just want to dislike Thatcher, it wants to state loud and proud that she actually feasts on the blood of the poor and the blood of their children. This is a literal demonization and that makes it – even if you’re broadly sympathetic to where the film is coming from – easy to not take seriously. Often within the echo chamber of the left or right, people just lose all sense of the wider world and convince themselves that all that exists is their passion and beliefs. Toyah Wilcox as Marie Antoinette sounds very, very silly and – even with a shouted political agenda – it is very, very silly.
Sunday 6 July 2014
The Story of Fire (1937)
D. Wilhelm Dieterle
B&W
In-between playing Louis Pasteur and Emile Zola, Paul Muni had time to appear in another 'historical' movie playing another 'historical' character. The veracity of this particular history is a lot more up in the air though, as here Muni is - for want of a better phrase – ‘that bloke who invented fire’. Yes, the 1930's favourite go-to actor for big and worthy roles, straps on some animal skins and a fake beard and pretends to be the man who first clocked the notion that if you rub two sticks together you might just get results. This is bizarre notion and one that should be a Eureka moment in a comedy sketch, rather than the basis of a whole movie; so to drag the story out the filmmakers make these particular cavemen the most verbose and articulate troglodytes this side of the Parthenon. As rather than grunting around in the dark, these cave dwellers make speeches with the passion and grace of Aristotle as they determine whether they should harness the destructive power of this new-fangled fire stuff.
We are with the Garl tribe (they may be more advanced than you’d expect your standard man, who’s just this moment evolved from chimps, but they still haven’t got around to pretty names) who are having troubles from a rival tribe called the Theraks. One night in a great storm a lightening-strike is witnessed and a tree bursts into flames. The power of this new phenomenon, which they swiftly call ‘fire’ - thus revealing themselves as the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons – is one desired to help them in their battle against the Theraks. But how to capture it? The young warrior leader takes the problem to their wise man (Muni), the one person likely to be able to work out how to create fire, but also the one most likely to see the ethical and moral dilemmas of doing so.
Basically ‘The Story of Fire’ is an unholy mess. Primitive caveman who are as eloquent and verbose as any faeces and Neanderthal-blood smeared Shakespearian king, trying to decide whether it’s right to harness one of the fundamentals of human existence. It plays like a Mel Brooks or Monty Python sketch that has been stretched to an abnormal length and unaccountably had all the jokes removed. (That’s until the final scene, when Muni stares at something round and brings his hand to his chin to ponder. The same man inventing fire and the wheel, truly he was the Edison of his day). The drama is so ridiculous and artificial and the speeches so over the top and pompous that it keeps you watching with a kind of hypnotic fascination as to how bad it can get. Muni and the other actors try their best, but it’s written on their furry faces that they know they’re beating a dead mammoth.
What I like about this film though is that it actually bloody exists. These were the days when biblical movies were still big business at the box office, so it’s truly fantastic to have this film out there, pushing the envelope and showing that even in the 1930s American cinema was thinking of other origin stories for man – even if the story they came up with was utterly preposterous.
B&W
In-between playing Louis Pasteur and Emile Zola, Paul Muni had time to appear in another 'historical' movie playing another 'historical' character. The veracity of this particular history is a lot more up in the air though, as here Muni is - for want of a better phrase – ‘that bloke who invented fire’. Yes, the 1930's favourite go-to actor for big and worthy roles, straps on some animal skins and a fake beard and pretends to be the man who first clocked the notion that if you rub two sticks together you might just get results. This is bizarre notion and one that should be a Eureka moment in a comedy sketch, rather than the basis of a whole movie; so to drag the story out the filmmakers make these particular cavemen the most verbose and articulate troglodytes this side of the Parthenon. As rather than grunting around in the dark, these cave dwellers make speeches with the passion and grace of Aristotle as they determine whether they should harness the destructive power of this new-fangled fire stuff.
We are with the Garl tribe (they may be more advanced than you’d expect your standard man, who’s just this moment evolved from chimps, but they still haven’t got around to pretty names) who are having troubles from a rival tribe called the Theraks. One night in a great storm a lightening-strike is witnessed and a tree bursts into flames. The power of this new phenomenon, which they swiftly call ‘fire’ - thus revealing themselves as the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons – is one desired to help them in their battle against the Theraks. But how to capture it? The young warrior leader takes the problem to their wise man (Muni), the one person likely to be able to work out how to create fire, but also the one most likely to see the ethical and moral dilemmas of doing so.
Basically ‘The Story of Fire’ is an unholy mess. Primitive caveman who are as eloquent and verbose as any faeces and Neanderthal-blood smeared Shakespearian king, trying to decide whether it’s right to harness one of the fundamentals of human existence. It plays like a Mel Brooks or Monty Python sketch that has been stretched to an abnormal length and unaccountably had all the jokes removed. (That’s until the final scene, when Muni stares at something round and brings his hand to his chin to ponder. The same man inventing fire and the wheel, truly he was the Edison of his day). The drama is so ridiculous and artificial and the speeches so over the top and pompous that it keeps you watching with a kind of hypnotic fascination as to how bad it can get. Muni and the other actors try their best, but it’s written on their furry faces that they know they’re beating a dead mammoth.
What I like about this film though is that it actually bloody exists. These were the days when biblical movies were still big business at the box office, so it’s truly fantastic to have this film out there, pushing the envelope and showing that even in the 1930s American cinema was thinking of other origin stories for man – even if the story they came up with was utterly preposterous.
Wednesday 2 July 2014
The World Cup and Saucer (1967)
D. Spike Milliga (and apparently an uncredited Richard Lester)
B&W
No doubt this would have been more successful and better known if it had been released actually during the World Cup in 1966, but since it was made on the fly during the tournament itself by two friends primarily concerned with amusing themselves, then commercial prospects weren’t high on anyone’s agenda. Working with no script and seemingly no idea what to do at the start of each day, the two friends ad-lib their way through the entire 64 minute running length of the film, making silly jokes, putting on ridiculous accents and appearing in ludicrously hit and miss (mainly miss) sketches. It all sounds incredibly tedious, doesn’t it? The kind of movie that would now appear on Youtube, the braying laughter of the cameraman accompanying every moment that’s supposed to be remotely funny. It sounds like the kind of thing most people would rather poke their eyes out with sharpened sticks rather than watch; but then given the old friends in question are Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers, even self-indulgence is not going totally devoid of comedy.
Some of it is, to be fair, almost inspired. The ongoing travails of World Cup Willy – the lion which served as a mascot for the whole tournament – who at various points finds himself stuck outside a palace with his tail caught in the door, attacked by poodles and propositioned by an overly-amorous gay lion, did make me laugh. The highlight though is the insert of a long piece of stock footage of a bus caught in traffic with Sellers dubbed over bus driver trying to explain to the Argentinian team that they are not lost, all the time it being clear they are very, very lost. (“This is the Norwich district of London.”) I also enjoyed Spike Milligan’s Swedish man who clearly is only using the World Cup as an excuse to eat in every restaurant in London. Fifteen years later that character would be called Mr Creosote.
Unfortunately we also get the other side of the Sellers/Milligan dynamic, which is what we would call ‘ethnic humour’. The presence of so many people of different nationalities, of different skin colours, just lets these two white boys crack out the make-up and funny accents. Some of it isn’t bad, I suppose: Milligan’s Mexican footballer and Seller’s Spanish footballer meeting up and just being totally unable to understand each other, for instance. But then elsewhere we have Nazi West Germans and overly lazy Portuguese in skits that don’t start well and don’t get better the longer they go on. Most distressingly though is Milligan’s Pakistani meeting Sellers’ Indian both under the impression that this is a cricket tournament, and the comic misunderstandings that occur as they try to find the game with the bats. Milligan grew up in India and denied that any of this was meant in a racist fashion, but even if we take that at face value it’s incredibly regressive, more than a little unfortunate and a sign that sometimes even comic geniuses have feet of clay.
B&W
No doubt this would have been more successful and better known if it had been released actually during the World Cup in 1966, but since it was made on the fly during the tournament itself by two friends primarily concerned with amusing themselves, then commercial prospects weren’t high on anyone’s agenda. Working with no script and seemingly no idea what to do at the start of each day, the two friends ad-lib their way through the entire 64 minute running length of the film, making silly jokes, putting on ridiculous accents and appearing in ludicrously hit and miss (mainly miss) sketches. It all sounds incredibly tedious, doesn’t it? The kind of movie that would now appear on Youtube, the braying laughter of the cameraman accompanying every moment that’s supposed to be remotely funny. It sounds like the kind of thing most people would rather poke their eyes out with sharpened sticks rather than watch; but then given the old friends in question are Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers, even self-indulgence is not going totally devoid of comedy.
Some of it is, to be fair, almost inspired. The ongoing travails of World Cup Willy – the lion which served as a mascot for the whole tournament – who at various points finds himself stuck outside a palace with his tail caught in the door, attacked by poodles and propositioned by an overly-amorous gay lion, did make me laugh. The highlight though is the insert of a long piece of stock footage of a bus caught in traffic with Sellers dubbed over bus driver trying to explain to the Argentinian team that they are not lost, all the time it being clear they are very, very lost. (“This is the Norwich district of London.”) I also enjoyed Spike Milligan’s Swedish man who clearly is only using the World Cup as an excuse to eat in every restaurant in London. Fifteen years later that character would be called Mr Creosote.
Unfortunately we also get the other side of the Sellers/Milligan dynamic, which is what we would call ‘ethnic humour’. The presence of so many people of different nationalities, of different skin colours, just lets these two white boys crack out the make-up and funny accents. Some of it isn’t bad, I suppose: Milligan’s Mexican footballer and Seller’s Spanish footballer meeting up and just being totally unable to understand each other, for instance. But then elsewhere we have Nazi West Germans and overly lazy Portuguese in skits that don’t start well and don’t get better the longer they go on. Most distressingly though is Milligan’s Pakistani meeting Sellers’ Indian both under the impression that this is a cricket tournament, and the comic misunderstandings that occur as they try to find the game with the bats. Milligan grew up in India and denied that any of this was meant in a racist fashion, but even if we take that at face value it’s incredibly regressive, more than a little unfortunate and a sign that sometimes even comic geniuses have feet of clay.
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