This movie has outlasted the scathing critics and endures as an admiral attempt at an adult sco fi film. In that respect, I'd argue it's among a vanishngly small number. With it's fabulous stylisation, dark and twisted psychology, intimations of a bleak existence, sex-fixation, omnipresent threat (and gore!), this resembles nothing so much as a Giallo In Space. Contrary to popular belief, the acting is fine, and Keitel, in particular, gives a committed performance - even transcending the fact that he has been dubbed (by Roy Dotrice). Other major pluses - sensational set design, a great Elmer Bernstein score. Yes, the model work is dodgy, but so what, the film doesn't rest to heavily on them. After Star Wars, there was a feeling that there might be a renaissance in SF movies - it's a shame that films like this were so poorly received and sent producers flocking for the safety of tried-and-tested formulas. The critical mauling it received from writers well versed in genre cinema, like Paul M Sammon, now seem disproportionate. The message of the film could be said to be that whereever we go, whatever we build, we will find the imprint of our own neuroses. Not a popular thought in a genre dominated by indestructable supermen, fantasies of bland escapism, or Kirk and Spock get dewy-eyed over each other. Here those fantasies of omnipotence are decisively punctured. Saturn 3 is not perfect but it's pretty damn good, and deserves a cult following and flashy 4K disc reissue with all the whistles and bells. It's like Jodorowsky's Dune (on a more intimate (and therefore, possibly more interesting?) scale), only it actually got made! Anyone who gets hooked, check out the saturn3makingof wordpress page, with lots of info about the films troubled and fascinating production.
Reviews
28 Reviews
The Deer Hunter
(1978)
Handsome, must-see, epic fudge
4 April 2023
Warning: Spoilers
It's got a lot going for it. Cimino made interesting films, but he was not in the league of his peers ...
It's a handsomely mounted sham ... the characters are brilliantly acted cyphers ... One never really believes in them ...
The wedding sequence, audaciously languid and photographed like Stephen Shore is sumptuously real - it sells itself like a commercial - but it also feels like an attempt to outdo Coppola's first Godfather ... The spectral GI who the boys brag to ... is Cimino suggesting these callow 'youths' (the youngest being 30) will be made men of by their war experience? Ultimately, the strongest will survive?
Or is he being vague deliberately, refusing to take a position. At this stage, the rationale seems to be, 'Vietnam was bad, the reason being the Vietcong refused to lose like they should've. Didn't they know who they were fighting?'.
This is the original war-weepy ... Viet Nam as America betrayed ... the VietCong are as alien here as anything in Starship Troopers ... This is step one on the path toward Rambo ... It's best to just 'bite the bullet' and accept the (lazily) racist portrayal, common with most US Nam films of the period, rather than disingenuously claim 'it could be about any war!'
This last point is pertinent however: the genesis of the film was in a screenplay about gamblers meeting in Vegas to play Russian Roulette. The Vietnam stuff was a later add-on, to give the idea more gravitas. Cimino was keen to drop the russian roulette material completely, but was persuaded to retain it. It's a good job because it is unquestionably rivetting, and gives balance and structure to a film that might otherwise be as unwieldly as his other pictures.
If anything, the deer hunting scenes seem a bit extraneous ... the interactions between the boys on the hunting party, and DeNiro's interactions with Cazale are crucial, of course, but DeNiro's failure to shoot a stag seems a motif too far for me. Cimino could drift into pomposity, and cloying mawkishness, worthy of a daytime TV movie.
'Cavatina' - if I'm in the right mood, I like it ... but can find it a bit too on the nose ... heavily telegraphing 'This Is A Sad Film' in an obvious way ...
I feel tha russian roulette should have been integrated even more into the core of the film - like, Nick should have been seen doing it even before he enlists - but this would open up a seem of psychology the picture is uninterested in. The three leads are a trinity of three different character traits - so why not a reckless belief in one's own immortality, or a suicidal tendency?
This PR gunge about Nick being a 'symbol' of this or that. Nonsense. It's patronising to assume these were simply nice boys who were just going to settle down to dull wifes and slippers until those slanty eyed fiends got hold of them. Why would Nick remin in Saigon, like an organ grinder's monkey, just to play out bullet roulette? And how come his luck held til white-suited Mike came to the rescue? A bit contrived? What is the bond between Mike and Nick that makes them risk suicide together? And don't say 'they are buddies' or they were tortured together. Think what Peckinpah or John Huston would've made of this.
But it undeniably makes for a great bit of operatic staging. It could and perhaps should have been a western. Maybe it is, really. The final scenes in Saigon are some of the best. It's where it's heart is: adventure. At heart this is an adventure movies with oodles of self-importance and baloney about pretended-feelings piled on.
Cimino was almost the prototype 80s director, but was too out of control: an ad-man's ability to sell you on everything; to induce in the viewer feelings of realism, significance, sustenance, power ... only you check the ingredients and find it's just sugared water in very expensive packaging. That doesn't make it a bad movie, but it sure don't make it great!
It's a handsomely mounted sham ... the characters are brilliantly acted cyphers ... One never really believes in them ...
The wedding sequence, audaciously languid and photographed like Stephen Shore is sumptuously real - it sells itself like a commercial - but it also feels like an attempt to outdo Coppola's first Godfather ... The spectral GI who the boys brag to ... is Cimino suggesting these callow 'youths' (the youngest being 30) will be made men of by their war experience? Ultimately, the strongest will survive?
Or is he being vague deliberately, refusing to take a position. At this stage, the rationale seems to be, 'Vietnam was bad, the reason being the Vietcong refused to lose like they should've. Didn't they know who they were fighting?'.
This is the original war-weepy ... Viet Nam as America betrayed ... the VietCong are as alien here as anything in Starship Troopers ... This is step one on the path toward Rambo ... It's best to just 'bite the bullet' and accept the (lazily) racist portrayal, common with most US Nam films of the period, rather than disingenuously claim 'it could be about any war!'
This last point is pertinent however: the genesis of the film was in a screenplay about gamblers meeting in Vegas to play Russian Roulette. The Vietnam stuff was a later add-on, to give the idea more gravitas. Cimino was keen to drop the russian roulette material completely, but was persuaded to retain it. It's a good job because it is unquestionably rivetting, and gives balance and structure to a film that might otherwise be as unwieldly as his other pictures.
If anything, the deer hunting scenes seem a bit extraneous ... the interactions between the boys on the hunting party, and DeNiro's interactions with Cazale are crucial, of course, but DeNiro's failure to shoot a stag seems a motif too far for me. Cimino could drift into pomposity, and cloying mawkishness, worthy of a daytime TV movie.
'Cavatina' - if I'm in the right mood, I like it ... but can find it a bit too on the nose ... heavily telegraphing 'This Is A Sad Film' in an obvious way ...
I feel tha russian roulette should have been integrated even more into the core of the film - like, Nick should have been seen doing it even before he enlists - but this would open up a seem of psychology the picture is uninterested in. The three leads are a trinity of three different character traits - so why not a reckless belief in one's own immortality, or a suicidal tendency?
This PR gunge about Nick being a 'symbol' of this or that. Nonsense. It's patronising to assume these were simply nice boys who were just going to settle down to dull wifes and slippers until those slanty eyed fiends got hold of them. Why would Nick remin in Saigon, like an organ grinder's monkey, just to play out bullet roulette? And how come his luck held til white-suited Mike came to the rescue? A bit contrived? What is the bond between Mike and Nick that makes them risk suicide together? And don't say 'they are buddies' or they were tortured together. Think what Peckinpah or John Huston would've made of this.
But it undeniably makes for a great bit of operatic staging. It could and perhaps should have been a western. Maybe it is, really. The final scenes in Saigon are some of the best. It's where it's heart is: adventure. At heart this is an adventure movies with oodles of self-importance and baloney about pretended-feelings piled on.
Cimino was almost the prototype 80s director, but was too out of control: an ad-man's ability to sell you on everything; to induce in the viewer feelings of realism, significance, sustenance, power ... only you check the ingredients and find it's just sugared water in very expensive packaging. That doesn't make it a bad movie, but it sure don't make it great!
How I Won the War
(1967)
What Is Wrong With You People????
12 January 2023
This film is a masterpiece, one of the best of the 1960s, one of the best ever made. Richard Lester is a giant of cinema. I didn't watch this film for years, expecting some frothy confection. How wrong, etc. Where to begin? Funny and wise. Michaels Crawford and Hordern. Production design glorious. No George Lucas without Lester - mark my words. Apocalypse Now is simply How I Won The War with surfing in place of cricket. I don't know why I go on living in a world where a magnificent film like this is not held aloft on shoulders. Because there is scant alternative, no doubt. God bless all involved. 'Full Metal Jacket' is simply HIWTW drawn with a ruler. The '60s - some very sharp pencils stretched out - but the blubber won out, hence the present coagulation.
A barrel of stinky red herrings
21 December 2022
Warning: Spoilers
It is one of the weaker episodes, because of rather ham-fisted execution. Compare with the peerless 'The Glass Eye'. That story uses a framing device and misdirection to superb effect. The narrative has a strong central spine. Importantly, in a short time information is conveyed economically and concisely. This story, by contrast, is unfocused and confused. A middle-aged woman who worked as a babysitter for a wealthy couple witnesses the murder of the wife. The babysitter harboured fantasies about the husband, who was cuckolded and ridiculed by the wife. We see in flashback the babysitter's recollections and projections. Strangely, the murder of the wife is omitted entirely, The husband is a mute cipher, a fantasy object, which makes sense, but feels half-formed. The wife has been having an affair with a young man, who shows up just before the commercial break to threaten the babysitter. Presumably, he is prime suspect in the murder of the wife, though this is left for us to infer rather than being spelled out, which turns out to be a red herring. There needs to be some smoking gun which would give the young man reason to fear being arrested which could also be resolved at the conclusion. This lack of consistency is conveyed by the title - it is irrelevant that the title character is a 'Babysitter'. She could just as easily be a cook or maid, for all the bearing it has on the plot. No 'baby' was apparent to me on viewing. Also, what is the crux of the story? The Babysitter's propensity for fantasizing? Or her unfulfilled desire for the man of the house? Her daughter and neighbour being skeptical of her daydreaming gossip and stories ought to be turned on it's head in the climax. It isn't, which leaves an unsatisfying paucity. Red herrings are fine so long as the payoff justifies the onfuscation. The wife is less the one-dimensional - sure, she's the object of the babysitter's envy. We see her through a jaundiced spyglass. There's not enough there to convince the viewer of any substance there at all. In fact, the whole affair might be more profitably read as a complee fabrication, dreamed up by a bored woman with a mediocre imagination. Not wishing to harp on about 'The Glass Eye' but consider this: the motif of the glass eye is introduced at the outset. The relevance of same does not become clear until the very end, and it has a satisfying relevance. The lack of a strong motif, and the feeling of aimless meandering rather than a mystery tour, that is all the while drawing one inexorably and unknowingly into the centre of a vortex of horror, leaves this one between floors. All in all, a carelessly constructed episode. Thelma Ritter is a good actress, but it's up to her to carry the whole show, and she comes across as shrill and annoying.
Crucible of Horror
(1971)
A macabre gem
26 October 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Much better than it's lukewarm reputation suggests, this (somewhat) arty (don't let that put you off), highly atmospheric variation on Les Diaboliques is eminently worthy of your attention.
Michael Gough is on top form, as a despicable character. The lovely Sharon Gurney, who I am certain you will remember from Death Line, also appears in a lead role.
Spoiler: some viewers do not understand the ending. Watch the film and return to this review if this is you and I will explain all.
You're back? Very well. The conclusion is chilling and sad. The foregoing has been a fantasy on the part of the abused Jane Eastwood. In truth, roles were reversed - Walter Eastwood brutalised Jane's mother to death - she now sits at the breakfast table as a helpless ghost. Possibly, toadying son Rupert assisted his father. The final shot of a rose being pruned enigmatically implies the daughter is broken by the father's treatment, or perhaps the situation has reached critical mass.
Michael Gough is on top form, as a despicable character. The lovely Sharon Gurney, who I am certain you will remember from Death Line, also appears in a lead role.
Spoiler: some viewers do not understand the ending. Watch the film and return to this review if this is you and I will explain all.
You're back? Very well. The conclusion is chilling and sad. The foregoing has been a fantasy on the part of the abused Jane Eastwood. In truth, roles were reversed - Walter Eastwood brutalised Jane's mother to death - she now sits at the breakfast table as a helpless ghost. Possibly, toadying son Rupert assisted his father. The final shot of a rose being pruned enigmatically implies the daughter is broken by the father's treatment, or perhaps the situation has reached critical mass.
A great episode
3 September 2022
To me, an expertly crafted episode. Garfield morgan's steely intensity makes him a worthy adversary. Lonely's integration into the main plot could seem contrived, but his scenes are substantial enough to pull it together. They also provide a humourous counterpoint. Lonely's character is developed, with his vehement disapproval of spies being voiced. Patrick Mower deserves credit for making a character who could have been simply a substitute for Anthony Valentine's Meers distinct. Plenty of action propels the narrative. And William Squire is my favourite Hunter. His wild-eyed appearance suggesting mania just beneath the controlled and proper surface, a symbol for the very elastic morality of the world he and Callan inhabit, he was surely born to play The Mad Hatter, what a shame he didn't.
Good
17 August 2022
Not seen this for many years, but memory tells me this is a predictable but well done and enjoyably creepy tale - all being rotten in suburbia - with a literally Diabolical (and I mean that as a compliment) performance from Patrick Allen being the main attraction. Why hasn't this show had a DVD release, or even a repeat on one of the 'heritage' or horror themed channels?
Play for Tomorrow
(1982)
Misfiring but perversely fascinating oddity
12 August 2022
Six serious-minded, though at times satirical, science fiction plays, none of which are very good. Varying degrees of heavyhandedness scupper most of them; they land with a thud. Also tonally uncertain and inconsistent, with cringeworthy earnestness rubbing up against would-be 2000AD style overstatement, in the same episode. There seems to have been indecision over whether to treat the terrible problems the evolving technological society would unleash with utmost seriousness or laugh in the face of such (frequently ironic) hopelessness, blackly and insanely. The best of the bunch (just) to my mind is 'The Nuclear Family', which resembles Peter Watkins awkward, less celebrated effort 'The Trap', only with a sense of humour. That said, I have a sneaking admiration for the attempt at 'serious' sci-fi, and find it perversely watchable, once a blue moon. I'd be surprised if the series ever gains much in the way of retrospective appreciation, but deserves at least an iota of recognition, and it is certainly interesting enough, if only in a time capsule sense, to warrant a small run bluray reissue (maybe as part of miscellany of similar items of the same vintage?).
Ocean's Thirteen
(2007)
not very good
30 July 2022
A dreadful, uninvolving stew of cliches, with an impenetrable, contrivance stuffed plot. Indistinguishable from advertising, both the epitome of 21st century Hollywood film and an example of many of it's failings. Soderbergh filches stylistic tics from all over the place and employs them injudiciously. So flat and affectless is this endeavour, like a moebius-strip tour of a food court, one has to award more than one star, since the director may have found the perfect medium for expressing the banality of the luxury consumerism it depicts.
That said, I would point the viewer to better efforts in a similar vein; Scorsese's 'Casino', which is much plagiarised here, hamfistedly, 'Grand Slam', from 1967, for an example of how exciting heist movies ought to be, any random episode of 'Hustle', which do what his ought to with more economy, or even the latest KFC or PokerStars advert!
That said, I would point the viewer to better efforts in a similar vein; Scorsese's 'Casino', which is much plagiarised here, hamfistedly, 'Grand Slam', from 1967, for an example of how exciting heist movies ought to be, any random episode of 'Hustle', which do what his ought to with more economy, or even the latest KFC or PokerStars advert!
The Silent Partner
(1978)
Sublime. 'One for you, one for me...'
19 July 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Bored bank teller played by Elliot Gould is the only one who twigs that a foiled bank robber will make another attempt. With this in mind, he hatches a scheme to use the opportunity to snaffle some loot for himself, and let the robber take the blame. But he has reckoned without Christopher Plummer's resourceful, sadistic, magnificently scenery chewing theif, and the two men are locked into a battle of wits and wills. Another from the 'why-don't they-make'em-like-that-anymore?' stable (that they never made enough of in the first place), The Silent Partner is at times nasty, at times as far-fetched as much of the best noir, at all times gripping, dominated by a grand-standing Plummer performance, nicely counterpointed by Gould's journey from mundane drudge to morally dubiousness. Great score by Oscar Peterson, York and Lomez great and quite gorgeous.
Money Movers
(1978)
Rivetting
19 July 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Twisty plot that is hard to summarise without revealing spoilers - best to go into this with few expectations - basically a perfectly pitched crime thriller based around a private security firm - great performances, great dialogue and expertly judged touches of comedy - all served up with that grimy realism some of us love so much. A well observed workplace milieu makes it instantly relatable. I'd go so far as to call this the Australian Reservoir Dogs - but it's even better - since power of a diabolically inventive plot gives the film the narrative momentum of a falling guillotine blade!! This is what grown-ups call a good time.
A Child's Guide to Blowing Up a Motor Car
(1965 TV Short)
wonderful curio for OO7 fans
23 May 2022
I have the Thunderball DVD but don't remember this entertaining and informative curio being included in the bonus features - but then, I've found the Bond DVDs to be very user-unfriendly to navigate. Anyway, it should definitely be included on a future bluray or similar. Comedian and TV personality Denis Norden accompanies a young boy to a racetrack (haven't identified which, I missed the very start), where the chase sequence involving the '57 Ford Fairlane pursuing OO7 and subsequently being destroyed by Fiona Volpe's rocket-firing motorbike is being filmed. The footage is silent and Norden provides a humorous narration and there is much jokey mischief, but in addition there is plenty of priceless behind the scenes footage. Terence Young, riding in a camera car, and Cubby Broccoli are present for numerous takes. A fire engine and crew is on standby as the boot of the car is loaded with a plastic bag filled with petrol soaked rags, to be detonated by the stunt driver via a dashboard-mounted switch. Numerous car boots are in evidence, since one is destroyed with each take. Sean Connery is not in attendance, but a deck chair is shown sporting his name, and a lifesize stand-in dummy of the star - very lifelike, but to me resembled Kenneth Moore - was a bit of recycling going on? Having observed these events, the finished sequence is played back - then in a coda, Norden is seemingly blown up by a car bomb. The schoolboy duly doffs his OO7 merchandise hat in solemn tribute - but it's OK, Denis is shown recovering in a hospital bed with nothing worse than an arm in a sling, his nose pressed into an Ian Fleming, a signed photo of the delectable Claudine Auger at his bedside.
All in all, a joy - not simply an essential piece of Bond behnd the scenes trivia, but an artifact that exemplifies the thrill of filmmaking. I am extremely grateful to the Talking Pictures TV channel, and to the hosts of the superb Footage Detectives show, Mike Reid and Noel Cronin, for broadcasting this gem.
All in all, a joy - not simply an essential piece of Bond behnd the scenes trivia, but an artifact that exemplifies the thrill of filmmaking. I am extremely grateful to the Talking Pictures TV channel, and to the hosts of the superb Footage Detectives show, Mike Reid and Noel Cronin, for broadcasting this gem.
Mister Kingstreet's War
(1971)
underrated adventure
11 May 2022
Warning: Spoilers
I enjoyed this adventure which features an admirable hero laudably holding out against encroaching Italian and English armies as WW2 breaks out. The advance parties of both nations are hoping to secure the wells Kingstreet has established on his nature reserve, which also serve a local village. Thrown into the mix is a poacher who is a continual thorn in Kingstreet's side. Refusing to take a life, Kingstreet resists the aggressive Italians and more convivial but equally rapacious English by means of sabotage and bombs dropped from his biplane, the only aircraft in the area.
It's quite an interesting mix of the Wildlife movie such as Born Free, colourful, adventure oriented WW2 pix like Hannibal Brooks, with a rebellious individualist ethos sympatico with the counterculture of the time - though the conclusion here is that such resistance is doomed to failure. In a surprising ending, everybody is gunned down, in a sub-Peckinpah/Bonnie and Clyde sequence.
There are some surprising Marnie-esque flashbacks to childhood trauma, with nastiness involving scissors.
Tippi Hedren gets to overpower Italian army and wields a gun.
One absurdity - I can accept it with a smile - two brothers are supposed to be English according to dialogue, yet one is American the other Australian?
It's quite an interesting mix of the Wildlife movie such as Born Free, colourful, adventure oriented WW2 pix like Hannibal Brooks, with a rebellious individualist ethos sympatico with the counterculture of the time - though the conclusion here is that such resistance is doomed to failure. In a surprising ending, everybody is gunned down, in a sub-Peckinpah/Bonnie and Clyde sequence.
There are some surprising Marnie-esque flashbacks to childhood trauma, with nastiness involving scissors.
Tippi Hedren gets to overpower Italian army and wields a gun.
One absurdity - I can accept it with a smile - two brothers are supposed to be English according to dialogue, yet one is American the other Australian?
disappointment
11 May 2022
Sadly disappointing effort from usually excellent Calum Waddell. Runs out of steam after twenty mins. Very superficial and unfocused. Perhaps it was the intention to stay away from film historian analysis to try to hook a younger audience - if so, it fails on that level too. A lack of major movers and shakers on camera, many of those interviewed spout pretty banal stuff, often in an affected tone, as if they were uttering something profound, rather than sequences that run: tits out, 'eek!', household implement rammed thru latex, red spewing, etc. This would make a passable, if compromised bonus feature on a bluray. It's far too weak to stand alone as a documentary feature, and is far from the definitive work on the subject, or even a fun tribute to the appeal of the genre. While I'm here, they are a major part of the slasher cycle and deserve discussion, but I hate the Scream films. They are extremely unterrifying, tedious and smug. As such, absolutely classic 1990s American pop-culture artifacts. The smooth contours of the ghostface killer mask speak volumes.
important but flawed
1 May 2022
Beautiful to look at - the films under discussion are a beguiling bunch and there is some killer montage. I am the proverbial viewer who is happy to sit through 3 hrs plus on his subject. Unfortunately, those hours don't fly by. It is overlong and badly paced. The commentators seem heavy handed, pompous and humourless. Really this film would have been better served as several seperate features - one on British Folk horror, one or more others on the legacies of the colonial past, voodoo, etc. Lacks a tangible central thesis - Candyman, with it's urban setting surely the antithesis of folk horror, is included, with the justification that it is rooted in 'urban legend'. Why not include Alligator then? Why not The Fog? Almost any Dracula movie could be valid, with it's old country curses and whatnot. More relevant, Straw Dogs and The Shout are passed over - neither obscure and extensively covered elsewhere, so not a great loss, but suggestive of the filmmakers wandering interest. At times pedantic (scouring back issues of film journals for fleeting refernces to folk horror, Jonathan Rigby claiming he coined the term) and undisciplined. The interpretations are valid, but expressed in atmosphere of suffocating academic waffling. This is hardly conducive to the mystic weirdness the films themselves exude. The old Linda Blair routine, 'fear-of-female-sexuality' is trotted out. Fear, yes, but thrilling fear! What else is a Horror film supposed to do? Blood On Satan's Claw pretends to decry mob hysteria - but the girls are unambiguously under the influence of a devil, and commit evil and cruel acts - not the best example if one is looking for well thought out social critique. Michael Hordern in 'Whistle and I'll Come, My Lad' is 'almost a symbol of the patriarchy', rather than a pompous and bumbling eccentric. His having encountered a ghost is here presumably secondary to his imagined abuses of power under his professorship. In a way, the assorted commentators resemble the academic protagonists of several films under discussion here - unable to let go and believe, fearful of their own voyeuristic fascinations and clothing them in the respectable manners of the day, unwilling to perceive the true nature of the object of their study until it is to late. It is crucial viewing for those with an interest in the subject because of the many excellent or interesting films covered, but the relentless, one-sided and heavy handed commentary really is wearying - regardless of whether one agrees or not. That said, prepare to add countless titles to your watch list - visually stunning examples from around the world. At heart the appeal of folk horror is the same as the fairy tales and legends culture springs from - the rigidity of modern society makes escape into a bucolic idyll ever more attractive - though for all the talk of matriarchial societies, it's likely that modern living has improved the lot of women considerably. A lot of those tales carried the cautionary message: 'don't stray from the well-worn path', at heart most of these films reiterate this message - unless they are revenge plots. And why do ghosts wait several generations before taking out their ire on the descendants of those who wronged them? Where's the justice in that?
Villa Rides
(1968)
Great
24 April 2022
I love this film. I dont see any reason to pad out this review with at least 150 characters, but since the federale has a gun to my head, here goes. One of the classics of the Mex Revolution films. Screenplay by Peckinpah and Bob Towne! Stars Mitchum, Brynner and Bronson. Viva Mexico!
Hands of the Ripper
(1971)
magnificent
11 April 2022
Stunning 70s Hammer - visually a knockout, withthe Victorian setting well rendered, the acting is superior and the blend of the paranormal with the psychological deftly accomplished. The climactic scene is worthy of Hitchcock!
Death Proof
(2007)
Infuriating but audacious, and somewhat underrated
19 March 2022
Warning: Spoilers
I admire this film for ploughing it's own furrow so unaplogetically. Whats more, I really like 99% of it. I see this film as being the last stand of Tarantino Unchained, as it were. It's mediocre reception was probably final proof that he was human after all, and if he wanted to avoid shrinking into the margins, he better make eye contact at least with accepted mainstream standards. Or pretend to.
The first half is great, T conjures his world and we all want to live in it. It's sort of like the world you find in 70s exploitation pics, how he makes downtown LA or an airport look mesmerising and romantic, fullalove, a joy. He has girl characters who are eminently lovable. This might by QT's take oin the slasher movie though, and they get deaded in a way that is more palpably nasty and immediate to most or all of us than Jason Voorhees weilding a pitchfork.
The second half arrives, and it seems that history repeats itself, in the time-honoured 'urban myth' set up of many slashers - only here tragedy is replaced with comedy. The killer is shown as a pathetic man, and it all culminates in lengthy stunt driving - and here's the rub ... the second half dissipates all the tension of the first like whoopee cushion. Tarantino approaches this with total authority and confidence, you feel sure you are in expert hands and this is some clever art movies shit (here is out of time, either behind it or ahead ...)
No other filmmaker occupies the position Tarantino does, and it's because of his talent and audacity. He carved out his own niche, equally able to communicate with the sophisto arthouse viewer and the beer swilling ungawa psychotronic/kung fu/TV goggling/video shop nut. I fret that younger viewers will underestimate his achievements. Raising Travolta from the Look Who's Talkings was truly miraculous.
No one else can do what T has done, and this is why I bang the drum for this flick. But I would admit that the climax is mere empty stunt spectacle. On occassion he has wrongfooted like this. The Crazy 88 fight in Kill Bill is almost (almost!) as cold. It's as if he has something to prove - that he can direct action, and what is more he is one of THE BEST action directors. But chest thumping not make one great. Excess upon excess is simply excess. He forsakes his faculty with dialogue in such sequences. The reason for this, I think, lies with his weak plotting abilities. He prefers to improvise a riff with dialogue and let scenes grow than labour elaborately over characters motivations and the hidden machinations that bring them together. His finely tooled, or organically grown dialogue comes to standstill for the 'BIG SPECTACLE HERE' scenes. So Stuntman Mike is simply a bad man who ultimately gets his comeuppance. Thats the film in a nutshell. There is nothing wrong with the shaggy dog story, when the teller of the tale does so with consummate skill. Similarly, the virtuoso can afford to leave the viewer trailing in a slip stream of loose ends. Here Tarantino reminds me of DePalma, at times, when both on occasion walk a very fine line between indulgence and artistic expression - but with the latter in such limited supply in contemporary cinema - and when we do see it is actually pretension misidentified - I cautiously welcome it.
I think audiences would have warmed to this film if he had not disposed of all the girls in so callous a fashion, but allowed one to return for revenge - though perhaps he felt he had already done this with Kill Bill.
Tarantino has suggested he will quit after a film or two. If so, may I suggest he make his next one a sprawling, leisurely epic, maybe a day long in uncut form! With disparate characters, genres and plotlines being slow-w-w-l-ly drawn together, with the works, flashbacks, flashforwards, multiple perspectives, the same incident rashomoned, epic scale, slow, fast ...
The first half is great, T conjures his world and we all want to live in it. It's sort of like the world you find in 70s exploitation pics, how he makes downtown LA or an airport look mesmerising and romantic, fullalove, a joy. He has girl characters who are eminently lovable. This might by QT's take oin the slasher movie though, and they get deaded in a way that is more palpably nasty and immediate to most or all of us than Jason Voorhees weilding a pitchfork.
The second half arrives, and it seems that history repeats itself, in the time-honoured 'urban myth' set up of many slashers - only here tragedy is replaced with comedy. The killer is shown as a pathetic man, and it all culminates in lengthy stunt driving - and here's the rub ... the second half dissipates all the tension of the first like whoopee cushion. Tarantino approaches this with total authority and confidence, you feel sure you are in expert hands and this is some clever art movies shit (here is out of time, either behind it or ahead ...)
No other filmmaker occupies the position Tarantino does, and it's because of his talent and audacity. He carved out his own niche, equally able to communicate with the sophisto arthouse viewer and the beer swilling ungawa psychotronic/kung fu/TV goggling/video shop nut. I fret that younger viewers will underestimate his achievements. Raising Travolta from the Look Who's Talkings was truly miraculous.
No one else can do what T has done, and this is why I bang the drum for this flick. But I would admit that the climax is mere empty stunt spectacle. On occassion he has wrongfooted like this. The Crazy 88 fight in Kill Bill is almost (almost!) as cold. It's as if he has something to prove - that he can direct action, and what is more he is one of THE BEST action directors. But chest thumping not make one great. Excess upon excess is simply excess. He forsakes his faculty with dialogue in such sequences. The reason for this, I think, lies with his weak plotting abilities. He prefers to improvise a riff with dialogue and let scenes grow than labour elaborately over characters motivations and the hidden machinations that bring them together. His finely tooled, or organically grown dialogue comes to standstill for the 'BIG SPECTACLE HERE' scenes. So Stuntman Mike is simply a bad man who ultimately gets his comeuppance. Thats the film in a nutshell. There is nothing wrong with the shaggy dog story, when the teller of the tale does so with consummate skill. Similarly, the virtuoso can afford to leave the viewer trailing in a slip stream of loose ends. Here Tarantino reminds me of DePalma, at times, when both on occasion walk a very fine line between indulgence and artistic expression - but with the latter in such limited supply in contemporary cinema - and when we do see it is actually pretension misidentified - I cautiously welcome it.
I think audiences would have warmed to this film if he had not disposed of all the girls in so callous a fashion, but allowed one to return for revenge - though perhaps he felt he had already done this with Kill Bill.
Tarantino has suggested he will quit after a film or two. If so, may I suggest he make his next one a sprawling, leisurely epic, maybe a day long in uncut form! With disparate characters, genres and plotlines being slow-w-w-l-ly drawn together, with the works, flashbacks, flashforwards, multiple perspectives, the same incident rashomoned, epic scale, slow, fast ...
Django Unchained
(2012)
Disappointing, Tarantino's weakest effort to date
19 March 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Though the 2 and a half hour running time flies by at a click, this unwieldly film deals mainly in disappointment. By the perfunctory climax, one does not long for more Django adventures, or feel that the character has been born anew, but that the 'franchise' (forgive my use of that wretched term) has been decisively cremated.
One senses this started out strong on the page, or certainly threatened strength, but got watered down and ultimately succumbed to Tarantino's inability to focus. The latter could be a strength, if he were to make a sprawling burlesque like Fellini's Amarcord, but he really needs the rigid conventions of genre cinema to act as structural elements for him to simultaneously push against and be reigned in by.
Here we have a blaxploitation film in spaghetti western clothes. Mostly - Jamie Foxx dons some pimped out gear more appropriate to the 1970s than the 1870s at some points. I feel these scenes should have got a big laugh, but Foxx's uber-serious, broken-glass-clenched-in-the-buttocks performance undermines the laughs. Uncertainty of tone is so endemic in Tarantino's films that i think he employs it as a deliberate stylistic device. Here it's fatal. I wonder if Foxx had opposite ideas as to how Django should be played to his director, because he never seems comfortable in the role.
It can't have helped that some of the films Tarantino drew upon for this film, the likes of Drum and Mandingo, are probably even more taboo today than they ever were. The invocation of the 'Django' name is a red herring, Franco Nero cameo notwithstanding. But as most readers probably know, in 'trash' cinema the 'Django' name transcended everything as a generic signifier - even being attached to the Nero Jaws knockoff The Last Shark Hunter.
Such limitations as pandering to contemporary social mores deal a crippling blow to Tarantino, who excels at being as uninhibited as possible. Django should have been the personification of the exploited African-in-America's rage - the poster ought to have been Foxx bodily hurling DiCaprio's foppish villain, a la The Slams - why then is Christoph Waltz's King given most of the heavy lifting? An unconvincing sensei for the perturbed Django, who doesn't get much of a hero's journey, Instead, he is unfortunately mere physicality - stripped and strung up, or strutting in his finery - surely the kind of one dimensional black character we want to avoid.
Django gets to blow away a bunch of people at the end, in a way that seems simply brutal and inhuman. Compare this with the climax of Corbucci's Django, who endures suffering, loses everything, even the fingers that gifted him with sharpshooting skills, but manages to revenge himself on his tormentors. He survives, but is disfigured by his experiences - the kind of operatic pathos that is sorely missing here. Tarantino was concerned with honour in Reservoir Dogs, but he subsequently seems to invest his pictures with all the morality of a drunken parking lot brawl, with no blow too low.
With it's compromised and unwilling hero figure the picture is fatally uncentred, and it's ambitions as commentary on a genre curtailed, Tarantino compensates by trying to reach the fifteen year old boy audience through the violent excesses his critics rung their hands about.
There are several other stenchers. A ghastly sermon against racism hinges on the argument that Alexander Dumas wasn't white. I know social media has made it so we have to all talk on the level of the least intelligent people in the room but this clunker should've been cut at the script stage. Tarantino appears in a dire cameo as a vile slaver - who for some reason is 'Australian' (I think).
It's ultimately a rather middling, inconsequential Western adventure. Enjoyable enough, but the unwillingness to commit and really get to grips with in a fearless way the disfiguring, dehumanising abhorrence of slavery and racism, which a younger Tarantino would have done, makes you wonder, why bother at all.
The only one who really does go for it and deserved an Oscar, is Sam Jackson - he is brave and brilliant enough to make his character a truly complex man, adjusted to a situation almost beyond the imagining of todays audiences, rather than the contemptible and pathetic straw man it would have been easy to make him.
One senses this started out strong on the page, or certainly threatened strength, but got watered down and ultimately succumbed to Tarantino's inability to focus. The latter could be a strength, if he were to make a sprawling burlesque like Fellini's Amarcord, but he really needs the rigid conventions of genre cinema to act as structural elements for him to simultaneously push against and be reigned in by.
Here we have a blaxploitation film in spaghetti western clothes. Mostly - Jamie Foxx dons some pimped out gear more appropriate to the 1970s than the 1870s at some points. I feel these scenes should have got a big laugh, but Foxx's uber-serious, broken-glass-clenched-in-the-buttocks performance undermines the laughs. Uncertainty of tone is so endemic in Tarantino's films that i think he employs it as a deliberate stylistic device. Here it's fatal. I wonder if Foxx had opposite ideas as to how Django should be played to his director, because he never seems comfortable in the role.
It can't have helped that some of the films Tarantino drew upon for this film, the likes of Drum and Mandingo, are probably even more taboo today than they ever were. The invocation of the 'Django' name is a red herring, Franco Nero cameo notwithstanding. But as most readers probably know, in 'trash' cinema the 'Django' name transcended everything as a generic signifier - even being attached to the Nero Jaws knockoff The Last Shark Hunter.
Such limitations as pandering to contemporary social mores deal a crippling blow to Tarantino, who excels at being as uninhibited as possible. Django should have been the personification of the exploited African-in-America's rage - the poster ought to have been Foxx bodily hurling DiCaprio's foppish villain, a la The Slams - why then is Christoph Waltz's King given most of the heavy lifting? An unconvincing sensei for the perturbed Django, who doesn't get much of a hero's journey, Instead, he is unfortunately mere physicality - stripped and strung up, or strutting in his finery - surely the kind of one dimensional black character we want to avoid.
Django gets to blow away a bunch of people at the end, in a way that seems simply brutal and inhuman. Compare this with the climax of Corbucci's Django, who endures suffering, loses everything, even the fingers that gifted him with sharpshooting skills, but manages to revenge himself on his tormentors. He survives, but is disfigured by his experiences - the kind of operatic pathos that is sorely missing here. Tarantino was concerned with honour in Reservoir Dogs, but he subsequently seems to invest his pictures with all the morality of a drunken parking lot brawl, with no blow too low.
With it's compromised and unwilling hero figure the picture is fatally uncentred, and it's ambitions as commentary on a genre curtailed, Tarantino compensates by trying to reach the fifteen year old boy audience through the violent excesses his critics rung their hands about.
There are several other stenchers. A ghastly sermon against racism hinges on the argument that Alexander Dumas wasn't white. I know social media has made it so we have to all talk on the level of the least intelligent people in the room but this clunker should've been cut at the script stage. Tarantino appears in a dire cameo as a vile slaver - who for some reason is 'Australian' (I think).
It's ultimately a rather middling, inconsequential Western adventure. Enjoyable enough, but the unwillingness to commit and really get to grips with in a fearless way the disfiguring, dehumanising abhorrence of slavery and racism, which a younger Tarantino would have done, makes you wonder, why bother at all.
The only one who really does go for it and deserved an Oscar, is Sam Jackson - he is brave and brilliant enough to make his character a truly complex man, adjusted to a situation almost beyond the imagining of todays audiences, rather than the contemptible and pathetic straw man it would have been easy to make him.
I Bury the Living
(1958)
Underrated
18 March 2022
Warning: Spoilers
I think this is abrilliant little film, with a very eerie premise, a great setting (very few horror films set in a cemetary when you think about it), and is technically very accomplished, even having some groovy experimental touches.
For me personally, the main part of the film, as the mystery unfolds, evokes a fantastic atmosphere - a sense of the uncanny that is rare in any medium, and something I crave.
Spoiler: some viewers are disappointed that the wrap up explains everything rationally. But this can hardly be used as a criticism of the film per se. In fact one could admire the film for sticking to a rationlist outlook. It must've been tempting to put a spooky coda on the end that would pace a question mark over events, but Albert Band chose instead to favour intelligence.
For me personally, the main part of the film, as the mystery unfolds, evokes a fantastic atmosphere - a sense of the uncanny that is rare in any medium, and something I crave.
Spoiler: some viewers are disappointed that the wrap up explains everything rationally. But this can hardly be used as a criticism of the film per se. In fact one could admire the film for sticking to a rationlist outlook. It must've been tempting to put a spooky coda on the end that would pace a question mark over events, but Albert Band chose instead to favour intelligence.
Bernard Hill is excellent
17 March 2022
For some reason, the director remade the not very good to begin with short film 'Vengeance' almost exactly, then expanded it with a lot of gangster hokum. Throw in Norman Wisdom playing it straight (as if guest starring in The Bill), an overheated plot like a teetering Jenga stack of cliches, and on first viewing you have the kind of stinker that negated the very idea of a British film. Having seen it multiple times, however, it's virtues become apparent - top of the list being Bernard Hill, having fun as the villainous Iggy. Every actor here seems to be acting in a different film of their own. There's an ever shifting inconsistency of tone throughout - like it was written in total seriousness but the absurdity of the material made it impossible for the cast to play it straight. In fact I think most of it was made up on the spot. It's not sleazy or violent enough to be a trash classic, but is still far better and more credible than anything Guy Ritchie ever did.
One of the creepiest 'Tales' ...
3 March 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Unlike many episodes of TOTE, this one really does deliver a bitter jolt. A bit like 'The Landlady', without the black humour of that episode. There's a sense of impending, unavoidable doom from the off, which is I think what makes this one so oppressively unpleasant. I applaud that, since too few episodes pack such a charge, but there again this isn't an episode I've rewatched too many times. Which is a shame, because apart from being beautifully filmed, performances are excellent - particularly the great Alfred Burke. It's jarring to see the actor who played Frank Marker, one of the most admirable of screen heros, in the role of a predatory monster. In one word - creepy. But genuinely so, unnerving. The world is a rotten place, it says - bear this in mind if this is not what you want from your entertainment!
Morons from Outer Space
(1985)
Where is the BluRay? The revival starts here
27 February 2022
I remember this being trashed at the time of release; catching up years later, at first it seemed to live down to the disaster of memory. However, a few sparkles among the crud and a generally very pleasing look kept me watching. I found I had to admit to myself, 'this ain't half bad'!
Very much like an extended Comic Strip spoof - but, here's the rub - actually far funnier than 90% of the Comic Strip's patchy output.
Beautifully evocative photography - 1980s London that will make some swoon nostalgically. There is a shot of Mel Smith in spacesuit in dimly lit spaceship, illuminated by earthlight that is magical.
The four aliens are mundane humanoids - that's the main 'joke', which I recall some sneering at but seems perfectly reasonable to me. The whole point is to puncture the pomposity of alien arrival movies. Consequently, there is a dearth of weird, special effects rendered aliens, which I suppose would be beside the point. I am disappointed they couldn't have found room for an alien 'pet', as in Dark Star. There is a truly excellent creepy alien on the lookout for hitch-hikers of the galaxy, thought
The aliens are played by Mel Smith, Jimmy Nail, Joanna Pearce and Paul Bown (who some will remember as Malcolm from Watching). Griff Rhys Jones plays straight man to their antics, but he does a lovely job of going from put-upon introvert to 80s big shot. He delivers a great punchline to a scene wherein the gang are pulled up for having stolen loads of stuff from their hotel.
That the aliens become fashion trend setters and pop stars is yer commentary on celeb culcher, etc. Yes, but why not? It certainly looks like fun, with their excellent costumes and un-selfconscious comedy. Joanna Pearce's character sings half remembered songs badly, but, my she's as comely and charming as can be. Jimmy Nail's puking cosmic punk is also my idea of entertainment.
Look back and see, those were the days!
Very much like an extended Comic Strip spoof - but, here's the rub - actually far funnier than 90% of the Comic Strip's patchy output.
Beautifully evocative photography - 1980s London that will make some swoon nostalgically. There is a shot of Mel Smith in spacesuit in dimly lit spaceship, illuminated by earthlight that is magical.
The four aliens are mundane humanoids - that's the main 'joke', which I recall some sneering at but seems perfectly reasonable to me. The whole point is to puncture the pomposity of alien arrival movies. Consequently, there is a dearth of weird, special effects rendered aliens, which I suppose would be beside the point. I am disappointed they couldn't have found room for an alien 'pet', as in Dark Star. There is a truly excellent creepy alien on the lookout for hitch-hikers of the galaxy, thought
The aliens are played by Mel Smith, Jimmy Nail, Joanna Pearce and Paul Bown (who some will remember as Malcolm from Watching). Griff Rhys Jones plays straight man to their antics, but he does a lovely job of going from put-upon introvert to 80s big shot. He delivers a great punchline to a scene wherein the gang are pulled up for having stolen loads of stuff from their hotel.
That the aliens become fashion trend setters and pop stars is yer commentary on celeb culcher, etc. Yes, but why not? It certainly looks like fun, with their excellent costumes and un-selfconscious comedy. Joanna Pearce's character sings half remembered songs badly, but, my she's as comely and charming as can be. Jimmy Nail's puking cosmic punk is also my idea of entertainment.
Look back and see, those were the days!
Marker Cuts The Mustard As Usual
20 February 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Keeping surveillance on a serial philanderer, Marker inadvertantly uncovers a convoluted web of deceit, and bumps heads with new partner Ron Gash over his working methods.
A fun episode of this excellent series. Peter Childs delivers the classic 1970s line: 'it won't do much for your macho image, will it? Being done over by a pair of lezzers'.
A fun episode of this excellent series. Peter Childs delivers the classic 1970s line: 'it won't do much for your macho image, will it? Being done over by a pair of lezzers'.
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