BLACK HOLE REVIEWS

Classic 3-D horror films... not for sale in 3-D

2012-01-25T18:00:00.000Z

3-D movies I want to own, or, I've got a 3-D TV and I want to use it

3-D movies are back in the cinemas, having appeared in various incarnations for over a hundred years. But for the first time, a high quality 3-D experience is also available at home. Until this new wave of 3-D televisions were available, we've only been able to use cardboard red/blue or red/green glasses to watch DVDs and videotapes for a fairly poor 3-D experience. Watching a blurry VHS of Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare in 'Freddy Vision' wasn't an immersive experience. But now that there are new 3-D systems, in high definition, I think 3-D is here to stay, especially with the bonus uses for video games and computing applications...

I've always enjoyed 3-D cinema, after being so excited to discover that some classic horror movies had been made that way. I've hunted down special screenings over the years and have seen all my favourites in 3-D (the BFI ran several 3-D seasons in London, for instance).

I'm now enjoying this new wave of 3-D, especially the CGI animation, like Ice Age 3. The process has been used and abused in many action films where it's at odds with fast editing and disorientating camera movement. Even less effective are the 'faked' 3-D movies that post-produce dimensional effects from 2-D recordings. Though this 'post-produced' 3-D has been effectively revitalising older animated feature films. The first 'unflattened' Disney films I saw in the cinema was The Nightmare Before Christmas (now 3-D on Blu-ray) in 2008 (though it was first released in 2007), and it gave us false hope that all 'fake' 3-D was going to look as good.

Of the recent live-action films, 3-D works best for me with a slow-moving or static camera looking at deep sets. Joe Dante's The Hole (2009) is a lightweight horror for youngsters with some effective Japanese ghostly apparitions, but the constant and inventive 3-D visuals are wonderfully designed. I've yet to see Martin Scorsese's Hugo.

Hollywood studios seem to have reached an across-the-board agreement not to remind present audiences that visually, this isn't much different from the previous 3-D crazes that all faded away. They've not released any of the older 3-D movies using the new technology, no matter how good the 3-D effects were. Obviously, with two prints or negatives involved, twice the restoration work would be needed, but I thought they were short of product to justify us buying brand new 3-D TVs?

Normally I like to share my gripes about stuff 'Not on DVD'. But this new 3-D system only works with Blu-ray. So here's my pick of classic 3-D horror movies 'Not on Blu-ray'...

In the 1950's, the movie business was terrified by the erosion of audiences by that new gadget, TV. People could stay at home and watch movies, so why go to the cinema? So studios had to offer what TV couldn't. Wider screens, bigger screens, stereo sound and 3-D - all innovations that appeared at great expense to keep the industry thriving.

3-D movies were shot with two cameras (and still often are), presented on their first run in cinemas on two synchronised projectors, and viewed with polaroid spectacles. It's a myth that the first big audiences for 3-D wore red-and-green glasses in the 1950s - they were seeing sharp 3-D images using a very similar process as we get now.

Only on re-release would the single-strip red-and-green prints be distributed. Small cinemas and even colleges could then show the slightly inferior 'anaglyph' version of 3-D. I don't think I've ever seen a polaroid presentation - it's always been with two-coloured glasses. All the more reason that I'd like to see these films in HD 3-D.

Like now, not all 3-D movies are good, but The Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954) is still great fun, even when viewed 'flat'. But it uses some great grabs at the audience with huge razor claws, and some fantastic dimensional scenes underwater, that makes the 3-D very entertaining. It's also a classic monster movie with a fantastically well-designed creature suit. Though the underwater version didn't have an air supply. Diver Ricou Browning had to hold his breath for each take.

That was a roaring success, so the first sequel Revenge Of The Creature (1955) was also shot in 3-D. The second sequel, The Creature Walks Among Us, was made after the 3-D boom went bust, and was shot 'flat'.

An early close encounter, based on a Ray Bradbury story, is the frankly scary It Came From Outer Space (1953), which even hurls flaming meteors at the camera to make audiences duck and cover. All three of the above films were directed by Jack Arnold. This has an eerie 'body snatchers' plot with aliens victimising a remote town in the desert.

I must also mention The Maze (1953), even though it's yet to surface even on DVD. It stars Richard Carlson who's also in all three of the above movies! This is a mystery that takes place in a Scottish castle. The 3-D is effectively planned by legendary production designer-turned-director, William Cameron Menzies, who also made Invaders From Mars the same year. I first enjoyed this in one of the BBC's Saturday night horror double-bills in the 1970s and have been waiting for it to be rediscovered ever since. More about The Maze here.

So far, the movies I've mentioned are all black-and-white, but an expensive colour film really launched the 3-D format in America. The original House of Wax (1953) starred Vincent Price at the start of his horror career. It practically defined the rest of his movie roles. Charles Bronson (above) makes an early appearance as his mute assistant.

The 3-D highlights of the film include the hooded killer stalking the foggy streets, the camera prowling through the wax museum, and, ahem, the guy with the paddle and ball...

Even Alfred Hitchcock made a 3-D movie during this period, Dial M For Murder. Surprisingly, his use of the third dimension was quite restrained and the story suffers from obviously being based on the confined shenanigans of the stage play. Still, Grace Kelly in 3-D...

The bubble burst after only a few years, making 3-D a rare oddity for several decades. An exception was The Mask (1961). Most of the story is filmed flat, in more ways than one, but the 'dream sequences' are exceptionally well-filmed in 3-D, with trippy scary scenes revolving around a sacrificial netherworld. There was an anaglyph (red/blue) release recently on DVD. The film is black and white and cited as Canada's first horror film! More about The Mask here.

In the 1970s, it was still rare, though this is when one of the greatest 3-D horror movies was thrust into view. Andy Warhol's Flesh For Frankenstein (1973) was made in 3-D, presumably to add extra kitsch value. This benefited from the start of the next generation of 3-D filming, with a new film format that made it possible to halve the cost of shooting in 3-D, with both images shot on the same strip of film. Besides saving money by only needing one camera, this meant that older issues of alignment (two cameras having to be perfectly positioned) and synchronisation (film damage on one print might make it slightly out of synch with the other) were now also solved. This is also why the best 3-D that followed was 2.35 widescreen - both widescreen images were stacked in the space of where one 35mm image normally was.

Director Paul Morrissey gave us the first in excessive 3-D gore, which pre-empts and exceeds much of the blood-letting in the 3-D Friday the 13th movie that followed. Bad taste, bad acting, great 3-D. This outrageousness tops my wishlist for a proper 3-D release.

The 1980s enjoyed the next 3-D boom, using the over/under 2.35 process to great effect for Jaws 3-D and Friday the 13th Part 3 3D. While they're not the greatest movies, the 3-D is very sharply presented. This Friday really deserves a great 3-D release to show how good they could make it back then. It's also the only way to understand why everyone is firing stuff at the camera.

Freddy's Dead - The Final Nightmare cheated (in many ways) by only having a 3-D finale, by the time my eyes had adjusted, the scene was over! It looked even worse in 3-D on VHS (above). I'm mentioning this for Freddy fans, I don't actually want to see this again...

While I was preparing this article, the good news was that Friday the 13th Part 3 3D is getting a 3-D release on Blu-ray. The bad news is... it won't be using the new 3-D technology, but the old red/blue 'anaglyph' process. Therefore you won't need a 3-D television to enjoy it. Why is this?

Jaws 3-D has also been announced for a Blu-ray release later this year and again won't be using the new 3-D technology, the same as the Friday the 13th Part 3 3D release. Glasses will be provided with the Blu-ray. No artwork is available yet.

Basically, horror fans with a new 3-D TV have nothing old to watch!

JAWS filming locations, part 2 - South and West

2012-01-15T12:00:00.000Z

Continuing this look around Martha's Vineyard for filming locations for Jaws. (Part 1, a look around Edgartown, is here).

Day 2, we hired a car, because Jaws had been shot in all the farthest corners of the island. This part looks at the south and west of the island. In the map, you can see two roads forking down from Edgartown. We first headed south on the Katama Road down to Katama Point that juts out into Katama Bay. We then doubled back and took the other fork down to the easternmost end of South Beach. We then headed inland and crossed the island to Menemsha. Then we looped south around Menemsha 'pond' to get to the westernmost point of the island, the cliffs at Aquinnah...

KATAMA BAY

This stretch of water is almost a lagoon, there's a very narrow strait as it passes by Edgartown. The sand spit that once joined Martha's Vineyard to Chappaquiddick has also breached (not sure exactly where). But Katama Bay is almost completely protected from the sea, making it an ideal shooting location when the crew became exasperated by filming up at the State Beach in the sea.

Nothing here is recognisable from the film, but it gave us a good idea of how much easier it was to shoot on the water here. The main drawback was being surrounded by land. There's no problem for any angles looking straight down at the water, but Spielberg also reasoned that the Orca was getting close to home by the end, so a coastline would be visible in the distance. It's the shores of Katama Bay that can be glimpsed towards the end of the movie.

Looking north from Katama Point - the white houses around the bay can be seen in behind-the-scenes photos of the film's climax

Looking east at the southern tip of Chappaquiddick as it meets the sand spit. On the other side of the sand is the sea

Looking south - the Bay is very shallow (note the fisherman in the distance), allowing the crew to stage the complex boat-sinking and final duel, but minimise the danger

SOUTH BEACH

Again, no chance of any landmarks along this stretch of sand and sea, but this is the beach where the opening bonfire was shot and Chrissie runs off. It's also the location of the discovery of her body... (Chrissie in the water was shot over at Cow Bay).

Of course, we had to give it a look and luckily found some of that fencing.

Don't say cheese, say "Chrissie!"

You can't say she wasn't warned

Looking East along South Beach, in the distance, the coast curves around along the horizon

MENEMSHA

We drove north/inland and then west along the Edgartown - West Tisbury Road to the other side of the island. At the end of the road, we turned left into South Road and through Chilmark. We stopped off at the Abel Hill cemetery to pay our respects to John Belushi. South Road hits a crossroads called Beetlebung Corner where we headed north a short way to get to Menemsha.

Driving down into Menemsha ends with these two buildings on the right. The Galley restaurant and a store now bookmark either side of the site where Quint's shack was built for the film. It's still a vacant lot. The production team were ordered to dismantle the building immediately after filming. It only ever existed for less than two weeks. As I showed in the previous article, the art gallery in Edgartown inspired its look. All that's left is a patch of grass at the end of the dock. The restaurant (above left) was also a vacant lot when the film was made.

End of the dock - the grass in the middle is where Quint's 'shack' stood. The store is on the left, The Galley restaurant on the right is new

Side view of the empty lot, looking around the restaurant (at right)

From where Quint's shack stood, looking out to sea - as you can see at the end, the Orca would have to zigzag to the left to get out of the dock

The house behind my head is where the next two shots were taken from...

Looking down on the dock, approximately where we see the Orca set sail, travelling left to right

A little to the right - this downward view is quite restricted because of housing. Menemsha Pond is in the background

Other side of the dock, looking back towards the restaurant (next to the patch of grass), just to give you an idea that this place is still all about the fishing!

Menemsha has only a few buildings, but is a perfect natural harbour. The huge pond is also where the Orca and the huge flat barge used as a filming platform were initially laid to rest (until they were more recently relocated away from souvenir-hunters).

The open sea awaits, the narrow dock is off to the right of this pond

AQUINNAH

Driving south from Menemsha, we hit Beetlebung crossroads again, but took the South Road heading west. The road loops around the huge Menemsha Pond and heads northwest to the very tip of the island. This is a popular tourist destination for the scenic view of the cliffs and another of the island's five lighthouses. But that's not why we went...

The idyllic Gay Head cliffs at Aquinnah. Not sure where they got the name...

This is where the Mayor, Police Chief Brody and Hooper argue about keeping the beaches open, referencing the defaced 'Welcome To Amity' hoarding of the girl on a surfboard...

Down the road from the car park, these two benches are next to where the hoarding stood. The scene ends with Hooper sitting on a large rock

Using a portable DVD player, this is a location that David triangulated from the lighthouse, the telephone pole and that side-turning off the road

Looking towards where the hoarding stood. There are still two benches, but these have changed positions since the film.

We approximated this angle. Pretend I'm Murray Hamilton...

Perhaps this is the rock where Richard Dreyfuss sat? Down in the distance is a sandy beach referred to in the argument. It's a looooong way away.

There you have it, folks. A stretch of water, a beach, two patches of grass and a couple of benches. Doesn't look too exciting.

But this is all that's left. Usually filming locations are instantly recognisable, but as you can see, this isn't so easy with Jaws. It still gave me a far better understanding of how the film was made - what was actually there and what was faked for the film. Also the conditions they filmed in. Locations of the behind-the-scenes photos are certainly more recognisable knowing how the island is laid out.

For the last part of this three-part photo-tour of Martha's Vineyard, we look at the Jaws locations on the north and east coasts of the island, including a visit to the Brody residence...

Jaws filming locations - part one: Edgartown

The Making of Jaws: if you want to know more, here's where to look

Memories From Martha's Vineyard: jawesome book of islanders' photos taken during filming in 1974

THE WOMAN IN BLACK (1989) - the British TV adaption

2012-01-10T21:57:00.002Z

Daniel Radcliffe's new movie is hotly anticipated. The Woman in Black is presented by the new incarnation of Hammer Productions, opening in cinemas February in the UK, US and most of Europe. But this isn't the first adaption of the story by any means...

Susan Hill's original novel was first published in 1983, then adapted as a British TV movie in 1989. In that same year, the stage play based on the book arrived in London's West End. The play has been running ever since, popular as a guaranteed spooky evening and turned a little-known ghost story into a huge success and a now a major movie.

The Woman In Black at The Fortune Theatre, London - website.

In readiness, I've revisited the TV version, which was released on DVD in the US in 2000, but now out of print...

THE WOMAN IN BLACK

(1989, UK, TV)

Between the World Wars, a young lawyer travels to a remote seaside village to conclude the affairs of a recently deceased widow. But local people are afraid of the old lady's mansion and no-one else pays any attention to the distant figure in black that he sees everywhere...

ITV obviously wanted something pretty damned scary as their Christmas ghost story that year, it first played on Christmas Eve! It certainly has some genuine jolts, but not enough to sustain the feature-length running time. Many other scenes should really be scarier, but the haunting gets repetitive. The stranger's make-up doesn't work for me, either.

This is all despite a good cast headed by Adrian Rawlins (below) as the young lawyer. Considering that Daniel Radcliffe has taken this role in the new film, it's a strange coincidence that Rawlins has since been in several Harry Potter movies, as James Potter. Bernard Hepton is the biggest name but underused. I was delighted to see John Cater (Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter, The Abominable Phibes) in a short fraught role.

The script should have been a good one, from Nigel Kneale, whose previous TV adaptions made him the obvious choice for this. The Woman In Black also echoes aspects of the haunting in his superb original script for The Stone Tape (1970).

The use of locations is impressive enough and the period-feeling is fairly good for TV, helped by being completely shot on film. But the key locations of the mansion and the causeway weren't nearly daunting enough, the backstory not clear enough to maximise the creeping fear.

Therefore I'm optimistic enough to say that the remake has plenty of room to really improve on a filmed adaption of this story.

According to the Wikipedia entry (which has spoilers), the TV version was only shown twice before getting a limited VHS and DVD release. With a recent problem over licencing rights, this version is unlikely to be shown again or re-released.

That leaves the windblasted field completely clear for the Daniel Radcliffe version...

THE GOLEM (1920) - a must-see for horror historians

2012-01-01T16:00:00.000Z

THE GOLEM
(HOW HE CAME INTO THE WORLD)
(1920, Germany, Der Golem - Wie Er In Die Welt Kam)

A classic of German silent cinema and a highly influential early horror film, especially on James Whale's Frankenstein. The superhuman, lumbering, mute monster on the rampage owes more to this movie than Mary Shelley.

The Golem is activated by an old Rabbi to persuade the King to give the Jewish community a break. But while his intentions are good, the power of such a creature is tough to control... The Medieval age of this legend reminds us that Jewish people have been relegated to ghettos for centuries. The Golem movies served as a reminder that it was happening again.

Paul Wegener is one of the earliest icons of horror movies, also starring in The Student of Prague (1913) as The Devil, and in The Magician (1926) as an Aleister Crowley/Dr Frankenstein combo. Here Wegener appears as the Golem for the third time - the earlier films only survive in fragments (see my overview of the other early Golem movies). His portrayal is a prototype of 'the robot who develops human feelings'. The make-up looks convincingly like clay, even from a distance.

The Rabbi summons the Golem to life by invoking a demon with what looks suspiciously like black magic (can all Rabbis do this?). Other key players are his frisky daughter, the sorcerer's apprentice and the King's emissary, who does more than deliver messages...

I'd not been very impressed with this film after watching it on VHS, initially drawn in by evocative production photos. I foolishly assumed that there was a German village somewhere that actually looked like this! I hadn't counted on an old European silent movie really going to town on the construction of entire streets, towers, archways and a colossal main gate. It starts as a small fable but builds up into an epic!

Finally seeing a decent restoration, on DVD, I could more easily follow the complexity of the story and enjoy the detail of the production design. For instance, in the Rabbi's house, there's a staircase shaped like the inside of a huge seashell, that somehow doesn't look out of place.

The set design isn't as expressionistic as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, but there isn't a straight line in sight, recalling hand-sculpted, primitive architecture, but with a menacing edge. It could easily be a full-size corner of Halloweentown from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.

The cinematography is impressive, besides the visual effects (probably done in-camera). One static shot starts on a wide shot, then a character creeps right up to the camera to show us something hidden in his hands, only a few inches from the lens, and then returns to the back of the set. An impressive follow-focus just to avoid cutting to a close-up.

Comparing the Eureka DVD (at top) to the UK VHS release (above), the intertitles are certainly an improvement on simple electronic white captions. While they're now elaborate, gothic and suitably scratchy, they aren't original. This is probably unavoidable because of the age of the film, but a note to explain what is from 1920 and what isn't would have been appreciated. Especially as they use elaborate CGI tricks that place text into the action - on pages of old books, as letters and a fluttering parchment, all digitally constructed and animated, but not as strict recreations of the original shots. These new close-ups of text also crucially miss out the character's signatures so we don't know who they're from.

Another difference from the VHS version was a scene during the invocation ritual - lightning flashes are now visible (reminiscent of the arcing electricity in Frankenstein's lab). Also, a crucial close-up of the Golem smelling a flower has been changed to a frontal angle that catches the action better. A fly lands on him in both of the angles, indicating that two cameras were used in filming (usually one negative for Europe, one for overseas markets). The DVD restoration also adds a welcome coloured tint that changes with every scene.

The UK region 2 DVD from Eureka also includes an impressive overview on expressionism in silent German cinema, illustrated with wall-to-wall clips. Overall it's an impressive-looking restoration, but I'd have wished for some pointers as to what had been reconstructed and what was original, especially as the film is a touchstone for film study.

JAWS filming locations, part 1 - Edgartown

2011-12-29T15:32:00.000Z

Knowing that we were going on holiday in the area and that a detour to Martha's Vineyard was easy enough, we absolutely had to go location-hunting for Jaws. Most of the film had been shot there, interiors and exteriors.

Martha's Vineyard is of course different from how Amity Island appears. It's quite large, with several towns. It's history is in whaling, not sharks, with the island of Nantucket just to the east - the opening location for the events of Moby Dick. Ferries, large and small, arrive from all directions from the mainland to several different docks. Amity appears to be quite isolated, but the fast ferry from Hyannis took us less than an hour.

In preparation for a home-made tour, we watched the film and read the paperbacks (see this previous article about the making of Jaws). We were only there two full days - Day 1 was spent in Edgartown, where we stayed. I picked up a copy of Memories of Martha's Vineyard - a map inside confirmed additional locations that we could visit next day. We hired a car for Day 2 and visited all compass points of the island. For those with more time on their hands, there are bus routes over most of the island, as well as coach tours.

Edgartown was used as the hub of the fictional Amity Island. This is where most of the buildings and street scenes were shot. The dock area has been heavily remodelled since the movie, but the tiny car ferry where Police Chief Brody locks horns with the mayor is still operational. This is also where Jaws had a production office. All these locations are only a few minutes away from each other, on foot.

AMITY TOWN HALL

Edgartown Town Hall stood in for Amity Town Hall.

In the meeting room farthest from the street, the big clock and the curved desk were in the film

Just inside the Town Hall main entrance - note the corridor and floor tiles

The delicatessen is between the Town Hall and the crossroads

An original prop from the movie inside the delicatessen

AMITY MAIN STREET

Amity 'Main Street' - the crossroads where Chief Brody gets caught up with the marching band - turn left here to get to the Town Hall

This bank at the crossroads is good for getting your bearings

Turn around and go uphill from the crossroads
- this road leads to the 'Amity Police House'

The gatepost (bottom left) was in the shot where Brody leaves the police house from this side entrance and walks (left to right) on a mission to get sign-making supplies

Street view of the Amity Police House (now a private residence)

Across the road from the Amity Police House
is this impressive tree, there at the time of filming

The bike shop in between the Police House and the crossroads

Also on this street - this house stood in for the Amity newspaper office

Back at the crossroads, turn right to go to the docks, or straight ahead to see the 'office'.
The shop you see on the left is where they run the Jaws Walking Tours

The trees behind the crossroads (seen behind the marching band) - leads towards the Jaws Production Office

Jaws production office - front door

Production office - front door

Production office - side entrance

DOCKSIDE

Sheriff, you're going to need a much bigger boat...

Edgartown harbour as it is now

The Edgartown Gallery building influenced the design of Quint's fishing shack (built on the other side of the island)

The gallery is just behind the car ferry
- they avoid showing it clearly in the film

Side view of gallery - as seen from the ferry

CAR FERRY

Pricey for such a short ride, but the road's washed out

You can just see the Edgartown lighthouse in the background

Getting on the ferry - gallery building in the background

Perhaps Spielberg sat here...

On the Chappaquiddick side - Edgartown docks and ferry in the background

Edgartown lighthouse on Chappaquiddick
- one of five lighthouses on the island

These photos probably appear meaningless to anyone who hasn't seen the movie, and also fairly meaningless even if you have. The memorable action in the film takes place on beaches, no longer recognisable, and at sea, with only the horizon visible in the background. But the visit gave me a great appreciation of how much was done with so little. Of course it means a lot personally to visit the location of a movie that made such a lasting impression 35 years earlier. But really, for anyone to connect with the story, all you have to do is find a beach and be brave enough to enter the water.

On the next part of this tour of Amity Island we'll head south, to the beach, and west to where Quint lived...

A Jaws-themed Walking Tour is run from Edgartown, click here for details.
This website has a simple hitlist of the best locations - on Movie-Locations.com

This site on IGN was invaluable for before and after pictures.

A Merry Christmas to mall!

2011-12-24T00:30:00.000Z

I've heard of shopping malls with zombies,
but this is ridiculous.

How did I not know about this? A giant Godzilla Christmas tree set up in the Aqua City Mall in Odaiba, Tokyo Bay, back in 2006. Click here for more seasonal Japanese kaiju decorations.

Is that snow? No wait! Aaaaaah!

Wishing you all a Happy Christmas, and a Happier New Year in 2012...

The making of JAWS (1975) - books and documentaries

2011-12-18T12:00:00.000Z

Jaws is a movie that just keeps on giving. A huge new book and yet another documentary are still unravelling its mysteries. There's a fascination about almost every aspect of the film's production - the script, the acting, the music, the special effects, the cinematography, the logistics...

In September of this year we went on holiday to Massachusetts, staying in Boston and Provincetown, with a deliberate detour to Martha's Vineyard. The latter is the island that stood in for Amity, the fictional location of the community with a shark problem. In 1974, the island had the very real problem of a huge Hollywood film crew that invaded for five months to shoot Jaws.

To try and get the most of this out-of-the-way destination, I went through everything I had on the making of Jaws to pinpoint the main filming locations. What's left to see? Someone must have done an exhaustive location tour of the island by now, but darned if I could find a complete guide online. I will of course share our photos of what we found with you, but first, here's what's out there about behind-the-scenes of Jaws.

BOOKS

I went back to the two books originally published in 1975 about the making of the film. These helped form a rough guide to where everything was shot.

At the time of release, photographs of the making of the film were very restricted - you'd more likely see photos of a real shark than the mechanical ones. 'The Making Of The Movie Jaws - On Location On Martha's Vineyard' was written by islander Edith Blake, who took publicity photographs and followed the crew around. This is all from the islanders' perspective and particularly good at naming when and where locations were used.

Scriptwriter Carl Gottlieb wrote the view from inside the production team - 'The Jaws Log'. He candidly talks about how the production scraped through by the skin of its pointy teeth. Starting shooting without a complete script, with unproven special effects, on a project that hadn't been attempted before - a story of the sea that was going to be shot at sea, instead of in a studio tank. Over schedule, over budget, with many physical special effects proving so impossible that they had to be 'shot around' and 'written around' until they simply had to work or there wouldn't have been a movie!

Shooting downwards, the camera angle didn't give away that they're in a lagoon

The bays around the island are shallow enough to enable the crew to set up the underwater tracks level for the shark to run on. They could also rig lights, sink boats in the relative safety of shallow water while appearing to be far out to sea. The bays were also wide enough to offer a clear horizon. Shot from the right angle, there would be no coastline visible. It was like the largest studio tank ever. The shape and depth of the bays was the crucial reason why the island was initially chosen.

Having chosen this as a key location, the production then looked over the island for every other building and beach needed for the story, for interiors and exteriors. The town hall, police house, Brody's house, docks, ferries, beaches were all on the island.

Both those books have since been revised and republished in slightly larger paperbacks. But now the best ever book on Jaws is 'Memories From Martha's Vineyard' which has exhaustively checked around for all the photos taken at the time by the islanders. A hefty coffee table book awash with behind-the-scenes photos.

The islanders who found themselves cast in the movie are also all tracked down, interviewed and presented as they are now! Even if they just had one line in the movie... "Pippit! Pippit!"

A large map helped pinpoint some more locations, but it also reveals some scenes that weren't shot at Martha's Vineyard at all. I've been duped again! Turns out that the Jaws ride at Universal Studio in Hollywood was actually a location - for instance, the reshoot of the discovery of Ben Gardner's boat (a scene originally shot at sea, far less effectively in broad daylight) as well as a lot of underwater footage, like the prop shark attacking the cage, and the upwards shots of kicking legs.

But the book is mainly about the epic island shoot, sifted from hundreds of photos taken by islanders who found that there was little preventing them from getting close up to the action, even unwittingly photographing scenes that never made the final cut, or were reshot later. If you got the deluxe version of the book, there's also a DVD of 8mm footage, like the 'Teddy attack' that was rejected by Spielberg as too much...

But the multitude of rare photographs are more revealing than the documentaries, especially about the technical trickery used for many classic sequences. Like revealed is the rig used for the 'shark entering the pond', the elementary woodwork used to support the camera for so many recognisable scenes.

An astonishing book, from fans who didn't even get to see it in the cinema first time round.
Interview with the author of Memories From Martha's Vineyard here

I bought this on the island but didn't have time to read it there. There's a very useful map in it though.

This website was the best guide to how the locations had changed in 35 years, and got us to the best sights. The guide, in two parts, is unfortunately incomplete, only covering the East side of the island.

DOCUMENTARIES

They've little information on locations, but while I'm on the subject, here's a starter guide to the best Jaws documentaries.

The very best ever is the jawesome two-and-a-half hour documentary spread over three sides of the 1995 Signature Collection laserdisc box set. This was subsequently shortened for the 30th Anniversary DVD release. Laurent Bouzereau's epic programme included a few tantalising clips of deleted FX scenes - including a glimpse of that Teddy scene (the guy in the rowing boat - "You guys all right?"). I guess that the relatively small amount of behind-the-scenes footage indicates that Spielberg is still reluctant to demystify the movie too much.

The interviews, including plenty of Spielberg, are the main meat and extremely entertaining, mainly because Richard Dreyfuss is so much fun in it.

In The Teeth Of Jaws (1997) was made for a Jaws evening on the BBC. An hour long, it featured new interviews with Edith Blake, Peter Benchley, Richard Dreyfuss, Zanuck and Brown, though the Spielberg footage is taken from the laserdisc documentary. It offers contemporary footage of the surviving Orca and the film barge at rest in Menemsha (both have since been moved to a less public location). Plus there's a great account of all the writers who tackled the pivotal USS Indianapolis monologue, leaving Robert Shaw, himself a writer, to take all the versions of the scene and nail the final version the night before it was filmed.

The Shark Is Still Working (2009) is an independent production which includes a raft of new interviews designed to supplement what was covered in the 1995 documentary. But it stalled short of a release, presumably because of rights issues. The above artwork is how it would have appeared. A shame because it includes more recent footage of many involved in the production who are sadly no longer with us. Even after everything I've seen on the film, I'm still hungry for more and would love to see what they've done. The documentary has a page on Facebook.

Check out this interview with the producers of The Shark Is Still Working here on Cinema Retro...

http://www.cinemaretro.com/index.php?/archives/68-Major-New-Documentary-on-Jaws-Exclusive-Interview!.html

MAGAZINES

I didn't see many serious articles about the making of Jaws in the UK. The usual sources that I'd normally rely on failed to reveal very much. The only detailed coverage I'd expect were Cinefantastique (which reviewed it) and American Cinematographer which did a small piece on it. Hard information about the special effects had to wait for the much later documentaries.

Here's one article that I have from 1976, for the UK release. They actually went and interviewed Spielberg! Because Jaws stayed in UK cinemas for months longer than expected, Film Review presumably ran out of 'puff piece' press releases and had to come up with new material!

It also talks at length about how the film avoided a more restrictive rating. In the UK, Jaws had an 'A' certificate. Anything harsher would have barred anyone under the age of 14 - if it had an 'AA' certificate. James Ferman, then head of the BBFC, is said to have considered the decision carefully, but thought that the second half of the film was an epic adventure film that 10 and 11 year-old boys would enjoy. Worried that younger viewers would get nightmares, Ferman arranged a special screening for children and consulted child psychiatrists. In the end the 'A' certificate was "reinforced" with an extra warning - on the poster is (a fairly small) tagline "May be particularly disturbing to younger unaccompanied children." Strange that the censors will bend over backwards for a blockbuster...

The same article mentions that Spielberg got three percent of the profits! Ker-ching!

A ton of US magazine coverage can be found here at JawsCollector.com.
My review of Jaws is here - having seen it on its first run in the cinema and on every format since.

The first part of my photo-guide to Amity Island will surface shortly...

THE TRACK (1975) and more from Mimsy Farmer

2011-12-10T21:00:00.000Z

My Mimsy mini-marathon

Perhaps I'm too used to variable acting in horror films, because once in a while a presence or performance leaps out and reminds me what quality looks like.

Seeing Mimsy Farmer in Dario Argento's Four Flies On Grey Velvet, I think it was at a screening in the Scala, King's Cross, that she first really impressed me. While a serious and versatile actress, she was stuck in a Euro-horror rut in the 1970s, with the emphasis on rut. Her characters were repeatedly ravaged, brutally or otherwise, and she also became known as an actress who was 'okay' with nude scenes. This was a consequence of some 'hippy chick' roles she'd done where she was genuinely comfortable being nude in front of the camera.

I only know this because Video Watchdog magazine did what they do best and tracked her down for a recent interview (cover art at top). It was fantastic to see her again (see the last photo below) and willing to talk about her movie work - good and bad. The lengthy career interview also pointed out several films that I hadn't tried, one in particular that she thought was her best. She's absolutely right. It's very good indeed...

To me Mimsy's characters are at their most interesting in a fix, cornered. The fragile wispy blonde then gains a steely quality. When stressed, she doesn't panic, and the tension in her face, and her anger, is all very real. It's not the same quality as Meiko Kaji burning with revenge, but someone psyching themselves up for danger and refusing to crumble. Her fair hair would normally mark her as the first victim in a horror film. But her trademark short hairstyle suggests that she's not like those other women. She's the least 'blonde' blonde in horror. That's why I like her.

So, after a trawl through my archives, I had a bigger pile of Mimsy than I thought. I watched everything of hers that I had...

FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET

(1971, Italy / France, 4 mosche di velluto grigio)

Luckily. this was how I first saw Mimsy, playing the victimised hero's girlfriend. She gets caught up in the chaos as he's blackmailed for murder then cruelly victimised while trying to unveil his tormentor.

This isn't as tightly plotted as Dario Argento's first two thrillers - it looks like he was more interested in the intricate camerawork of the stalking scenes than the complexity of the story. Like Cat O' Nine Tails, it's a whodunit with a bucket of red herrings and too few clues. But for fans of early Argento, this is a must-see, despite spending an age as the most unavailable of his thrillers.

Unusually for Argento, the killer isn't unseen but wears an extremely creepy rubber mask. There's still plenty of hypnotic, bravura camerawork from the point-of-view of the murderer. As in the rest of the 'animal trilogy', the murders have an intricate build-up, but not as vicious as his horror films that followed. Despite the serial killings, there's also too much comedy relief, with eccentric characters and even a shitty little car before the one in Deep Red.

Besides Mimsy, it stars Michael Brandon (Dempsey and Makepeace) and Bud Spencer (star of many spaghetti westerns and Terence Hill buddy movies).

This Argento film only officially appeared on DVD in the US in 2009, and not in the greatest of condition (from a scratched, splicey print). I'm hoping for a much better presentation on Blu-ray, due out in the UK in January 2012 from Shameless Screen Entertainment.

THE TRACK
(1975, France / Italy, La Traque)

Mimsy reckons this is the best film she's been in, though it's not a big showcase role for her. She's excellent in it, central to it, but not the star. It's an ensemble piece with a uniformly good cast. Although 1970s French films aren't my specialty, I still recognised Michael Lonsdale (before he was the Bond-baddie in Moonraker) and Jean-Pierre Marielle who coincidentally played the gay detective in Four Flies On Grey Velvet. Here, Mimsy speaks French fluently, though her character is English.

She's a teacher getting away from it all in a French country cottage, who attracts the unwanted attentions of a group of amateur boar hunters. While this is tough to watch, it's not exploitative like some of her earlier 'victim' roles. This might be a derivation of Straw Dogs, but not so much about the victim or her revenge. However it starts off with the familiar 'duel of the cars' that greets her arrival in the country, just like in Death Weekend and The Shuttered Room. It's also a little like The Most Dangerous Game, but set in a very recognisable world.

The all-male hunting party is made up of every strata of society. Each of them is faced with the decision, should they go to the police...

This is made even more real by the wilderness location and the absence of background music. The cinematography from Claude Renoir (French Connection II, Barbarella) is beautifully judged, in fact, the whole production is. I've not seen such a well-made, slow-burning thriller in a long time. Made in 1975, it still feels quite modern.

I'd never heard of The Track before the Video Watchdog interview. It's not even on DVD in France. While not the same brand of survival horror that we get now, for anyone wanting something intelligent along the lines of Deliverance, this should really be more available.

MORE

(1969, West Germany / France / Luxembourg)

I'll add this as an example of Mimsy's interesting non-horror work, though this is certainly in cult territory. After her initial time in mainstream movies, she was in a string of biker-rebel flicks before this acid-influenced arthouse drama. What begins as a trendy freewheeling romantic drama slowly and subtly moves into darker territory, constantly distracted by many trippy interludes.

Again Mimsy is perfect as the object of affection for an offbeat hipster, with more to her than meets the eye. She seems completely unfazed by her nude scenes, as befits her character. But I'm guessing this role set a precedent for some less scrupulous directors of her subsequent horror films.

With occasional backing music by none other than Pink Floyd, this is an interesting mystery tour, with much modern resonance (the island of Ibiza has since gained a much druggier reputation for huge dance parties since acid 'rave' culture). The slow, observational pace dates it, but the story could easily be happening right now. Oblique direction and sharp cinematography make it an unusual change from the sensationalism of drug-exploitation movies of the time. I also can't imagine that everything that's on show (sex, drugs, flesh) made it all into cinemas for its original release.

It's an international production, but all performed in English language. More is on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK.

Director Barbet Schroeder also directed Single White Female (1992) and an early episode of Mad Men! More about More on Barbet Schroeders' website - includes an extensive picture gallery.

THE PERFUME OF THE LADY IN BLACK

(1974, Italy, Il profumo della signora in nero)

Mimsy is again the star, as a young woman coming to terms with her past (who isn't?). It plays a double game between whether she's insane or being driven mad. The ghosts that haunt her seem awfully real. And her friends are talking of voodoo rituals. Hmm.

Really well shot, with an evocative soundtrack, the story meanders for far too long, before a completely crazy ending that I didn't fully understand. But the climax is what puts this on the map and means I'll have to watch it again. Another point of interest was seeing Nike Arrighi again, after her standout role as the 'sensitive' in Hammer's The Devil Rides Out (1968).
Mimsy is ideal for the story, but the pacing let's it all. This has recently been released on DVD in the US (see cover art above).

AUTOPSY

(1974, Italy)

Autopsy pairs Mimsy up with Ray Lovelock (the star of The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue) and once again she's used and abused. Besides being surrounded by murders and dead bodies, (she works in a pathology lab), there's yet more lingering nude scenes, stranger sex scenes than usual, hints of necrophilia, and some nasty photos of corpses that I suspect are real. All this sensationalism would normally make an Italian horror a must-see, yet it's sabotaged by the dull pace of each scene, from the director of the even duller The Dead Are Alive. While it starts off posing as an apocalypse movie, it finally falls back into a far more predictable storyline.

The boredom and the queasy mix of large-breasted corpses, disfigurement and sex are presumably aimed at the Ed Geins and Dennis Nilsons in the audience. Despite once being called The Magician, it's currently available on DVD as Autopsy.

THE BLACK CAT
(1981, Italy)

In every Lucio Fulci film there's usually one scene that spoils it. Like upright burning dummies that are supposed to be zombies, or clockwork flesh-eating spiders in the library. But The Black Cat is chock full o' silly scenes, Fulci using the frankly silly Argento subplot where a character can control the actions of an animal in order to commit murders. Here we get a killer cat. Not a lion. A small black cat. There are some increasingly far-fetched cat murders which desperately needed to be better staged, like the animal attacks in The Omen films, where you might believe a raven can kill.

Rubber bats on strings aren't scary. You should also not point cameras at them for too long. I'd not even previously registered that Mimsy was in this. Fighting off rubber bats isn't going to win her any new fans.

This is so silly, it loops it's own loopiness and becomes very watchable, helped by one of the best casts Fulci ever had, full of Euro-horror regulars. Besides Mimsy, there's Al Cliver (Zombie Flesh Eaters), Patrick Magee (Tales From The Crypt, A Clockwork Orange) taking it all very seriously, and David Warbeck (The Beyond) not taking it at all seriously - he acts and sounds like Roger Moore! But with daft dialogue and a plot like this, who could blame him? The English country locations and Pino Donaggio score also ease the pain.

Paradoxically, this one is widely available on DVD.

So. Autopsy is for gorehounds, The Perfume of the Lady In Black is arty Italian horror, The Black Cat is for Lucio Fulci completists, Four Flies On Grey Velvet is an early classic Dario Argento, More is arthouse with a plot. But if you want to see Mimsy at her best, track down La Traque.

Her filmography is rich with relatively unknown cult flicks. I'm particularly keen to see her four late 1960s biker/teen rebel movies. What other Mimsy's do you think I shouldn't miss?

Mimsy and one of her latest creations

Mimsy Farmer has her own website devoted to her painting and sculpture (in French but easy to navigate)

Once again, Video Watchdog has pointed me to where the gold is. The Video Watchdog website is here - for subscriptions and back issues.

THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1973) and THE FOUR MUSKETEERS (1974)

2011-11-26T14:55:00.000Z

THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1973)
THE FOUR MUSKETEERS (1974)
(UK, USA, Spain, Panama co-production)

Now that's what I call swashbuckling...

After many versions of Alexander Dumas' classic adventure The Three Musketeers, I'm only really impressed by this adaption that divided the story over two movies, Hobbit-style. The cast, comedy, adventure and quirky humour are somehow never at odds with the original story, using spectacular locations, lush cinematography, and historical accuracy.

Dumas wove fact and fiction together around historical events and characters. This story makes the most of existing locations (mainly around Toledo in Spain) to evoke the period and settings of 17th century France and England. The director of photography is David Watkin who'd filmed The Devils two years earlier. I think Ken Russell's approach informed the look, approach and even casting of the two musketeers films, which re-use Oliver Reed and Michael Gothard (also the vampire villain in Scream and Scream Again).

While the photography isn't as dark as the candlelit realism soon to be lavished on Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975), the lighting still evokes the period long before electricity, but with the slightly more romantic look of a Dutch master. Together with the astonishing costumes and palaces on display, this definitely deserves its new digitally restored Blu-ray release. The two films were popular hits perfect for the British summer school holidays of 1974 and 1975.

The movies raised a benchmark for realism by adding blood and exhaustion to the swordfights. Some are played for laughs, but you always know that the swords and sabres are deadly and that the bloody wounds hurt. Here, all the history is kept quirky because of the well-researched scriptwriter George MacDonald Fraser, author of the still-cherished Flashman books. (They too inspired a lavish location-rich movie starring Alan Bates and Malcolm McDowell, Royal Flash in 1975). Fraser also wrote a cutting book rounding up Hollywood's greatest historical inaccuracies.

The cast is an impressive mixture of European, British and American stars, but all convincingly cast. Watching it digitally for the first time, it was very apparent that the entire dialogue track had been re-recorded afterwards ('looped'). Even at the time, we could tell that some of the extras had had humorous dialogue added in later, such as the sedan chair carriers complaining about Faye Dunaway, ("She's put on weight..."), and passers-by commenting on Raquel Welch running around the streets in her nightgown at night, "Put some clothes on, you saucy bitch!". Also Jean-Pierre Cassel (actor Vincent Cassel's dad) as the confused French king, appears to be performing in English but sounds more like Richard Briers.

Producers, the Salkind Brothers, made news by filming The Three and The Four Musketeers back-to-back, with the cast under the impression it was one epic film. So despite the story being released as two movies, they'd only received one fee. Christopher Lee points out in The Authorised Screen History that the small print mentioned they were being paid for a 'project', not a movie. The producers tried the same manoeuvre five years later with the first two big-budget Superman movies. This time less successfully - director Richard Lester having to complete Superman II after the production lost actor Gene Hackman (a stand-in is used in many scenes) and director Richard Donner (who recently released his own more serious version).

The musketeers movies were apparently an easier coup, but listening carefully it sounds to me like the American cast didn't return to loop their characters' voices. Charlton Heston, Faye Dunaway, Raquel Welch and Geraldine Chaplin don't sound like themselves in The Four Musketeers.

While Three is an outright funny adventure with almost non-stop action, Four has far more dramatic weight. No less brilliant, the many downbeat moments are worthy of any major historical drama of the time. While there's just as much action, I was initially disappointed (at the age of thirteen) that it wasn't as funny. But the shocks and dramatic turns still left a lasting impression. For both films to show such range, makes them all-round entertainment for all ages, without compromising on the source material or characterisations.

Each swordfight has a unique twist to keep them fresh, without being unbelievable. For example, set in a royal laundry, amongst a firework display, a convent, or even on ice, fight arranger William Hobbs choreographs it all impressively. He later worked on Ridley Scott's The Duellists, Flash Gordon, John Boorman's Excalibur and Terry Gilliam's Brazil among many others. He appears in the film and, like all the main cast, does his own swordfighting. He's best known to horror fans for the climactic duel in Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter. Christopher Lee and Oliver Reed had previously crossed swords in Hammer Films' pirate and civil war swashbucklers. Good practice, but that didn't protect them both from suffering injuries, Reed even impaling his wrist on a blade.

These are my favourite band of Musketeer actors. Michael York has never been less annoying and well cast as an over-enthusiastic, floundering upstart. Frank Finlay is excellent comedy relief, both physically and verbally, and rarely so well used despite the relatively small part. Richard Chamberlain is distinctive as an effete ladies' man. But Oliver Reed gets to deliver a sterling performance, somehow keeping his scenes deadly serious through most of the shenanigans, especially the heart-breaking showdowns in The Four Musketeers.

It's rewarding to see Charlton Heston back in period costume, effortlessly menacing as a behind-the-scenes villain, though still a fleshed-out character, Cardinal Richelieu. Note how aged he appears to be, knowing that this is inbetween his 'action man' roles of The Omega Man and Earthquake.

His brief sparrings with Christopher Lee are electric. An important role for Lee, as he tried hard to escape his Dracula typecasting, demonstrating he can act with the best of them, swordfight like a pro, and effortlessly play a drole, romantic baddie with Faye Dunaway as his lover.

Dunaway is at the top of her game, underplaying the villainess Milady. While Richelieu is the mastermind, the head of church trying to depose the king, Lee and Dunaway's characters do the Cardinal's very dirty work. Her touching performance rounds out her character so much that it makes it hard to fully condemn her. Her very next film would be one of her greatest - Polanski's Chinatown.

Raquel Welch plays the pivotal role of Constance the Queen's dressmaker as an accident-prone simpleton so well, that I initially thought she was indeed a bimbo. After seeing more of her films, I learned she was not just voluptuous but an excellent comedy actress. In Britain she was seen as the sexiest of Hollywood female stars. As luck would have it, Hollywood were keen to make movies in the UK at the time, meaning Welch appeared in many British comedies at the time, spoofing her image of a sex goddess. Hence she played Lillian Lust in Bedazzled offering two lumps with a cup of tea to Dudley Moore, and whipping half-naked slave girls in The Magic Christian.

Roy Kinnear almost steals The Three Musketeers as the hapless, maltreated sidekick Planchet, the workhorse of the many musketeers, often getting the last laugh in the comedy scenes. One of the biggest laughs in the first film is his character failing to steer his galloping horse around a tree. Although the gag is done by a stuntman, it's now no longer funny knowing that Kinnear would die following a horse stunt during the filming of latter day sequel The Return of the Musketeers (1989), which reunited many of the cast and crew from these two films, and again directed by Lester. I've not been able to face watching it, knowing that it cost Kinnear his life.

Richard Lester re-used many more British comedy actors from his time with The Goons and from The Beatles' movies A Hard Day's Night and Help!, like Graham Stark and Bob Todd. But best of all, Goons' writer Spike Milligan shares scenes with Charlton Heston (!) and a bed with Raquel Welch, who plays his wife! That's funny in itself, but Spike builds up his scenes, as well as showing a flair for more serious acting.

While the first movie maybe tries a little too hard to milk amusement out of every last onscreen character, there's little else to fault in these two gems.

Optimum has released both remastered films for DVD and Blu-ray (the sleeve says region A and B compatible). They're available either separately or in double-disc sets. While there are no extras, I'm very happy that these are in circulation in such great presentations. The lush soundtracks, by Michel Legrand and Lalo Schifrin respectively are both on CD.

ZARDOZ lands in the UK - March 1974

2011-11-23T13:50:00.001Z

ZARDOZ arrives!
Films and Filming, March 1974

Preceded by a lengthy career interview with Sean Connery, Films and Filming magazine devoted a hefty four-page spread of publicity photos from John Boorman's sci-fi parable timed with its UK debut. Zardoz seems to be more popular now than it ever was, but as a benchmark for bad seventies' sci-fi. I think there's far worse out there, but not nearly as entertaining. I thought you might like this peek at it's original presentation.

In the reviews section, we're reminded that also on release in the UK that month, Zardoz was up against Enter The Dragon, Electra Glide In Blue, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (which I saw at the time), Magnum Force and Swallows and Amazons. Being too young to see Zardoz with its 'X' certificate, I had to settle for reading John Boorman's novelisation - which is pictured in my review of the movie.

QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (1967) - invades Blu-ray

2011-11-20T12:26:00.000Z

QUATERMASS AND THE PIT

(1967, UK, Five Million Years To Earth)

A unified theory that explains pretty much everything that's wrong with the world...

For Halloween, we watched all three Hammer films featuring that unlikely sci-fi hero Professor Bernard Quatermass, prompted by the arrival of the new Blu-ray release of Quatermass and the Pit (above).

Although it's the third of the films and adapted from a BBC TV series, this low-budget movie pushes ideas that rival and even mingle with the extra-terrestrial plot of 2001: A Space Odyssey. As alien visitations go, it looks small scale, not showing the global reaction but just a few streets and buildings in the centre of London. Even so, its claustrophobic approach is still largely effective today, mixing up apocalypse, sci-fi and horror into a unique, fantastic story.

With three hours of TV scripts to cut down into a fairly short film, the story rips along, throwing up some very grand ideas along the way. An Underground subway extension project hits a wall when a large metal object is found buried in the clay. A huge futuristic missile that appears to have landed before the Stone Age. Archaeologists and military experts can only guess what it might be. The more clues they get, the less sense it makes. Only Quatermass's wild theories can explain it all. But while he tries to warn everyone away, curiosity and the need for public transport unleashes forces that threaten to destroy the whole city.

Thankfully, Nigel Kneale gets to adapt his best story for the big screen (unlike Hammer's The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass II). Besides original scripts, Kneale was excellent at adapting other people's work for the screen, such as 1984 and The Woman In Black for TV, and HG Wells' First Men In The Moon for the Ray Harryhausen movie.

Andrew Keir (Dracula - Prince of Darkness) provides Quatermass's most rounded characterisation, better I think than even Sir John Mills in The Quatermass Conclusion. Besides his usual bullish attitude, the rocket scientist here shows warmth and even vulnerability. He's teamed up with a pair of experts as inquisitive and open-minded as himself, James Donald (The Bridge On The River Kwai, The Great Escape) and Barbara Shelley (also Dracula - Prince of Darkness, Village of the Damned), both of whom steal several scenes when it's their turn.

After her startling transformation from prim and proper wife into a ravening vampire, it was hard to imagine Shelley could top that. But she convinces us that she's possessed in several scary scenes that purely work due to her performance. A telekinetic troublemaker, years before Carrie.

In another brief scene that gives me the chills, a timid victim is cut down by the uncaring power of the silent majority. As chaos spreads through the city, blank-faced crowds mindlessly kill any 'others' with their telekinetic powers. It's like the Children of the Damned have all grown up and gone on a rampage.

Admittedly, the special effects are stretched to their limits, considering it's a low Hammer budget trying to put on a Lifeforce city-wide catastrophe. Some of the exterior sets look too much like a backlot, but the London Underground station interior at the core of the story still looks excellent. On Blu-ray you can now check out all the Hammer movie posters lining the walls! It's clever the way that so much happens on the same street - every house, door and alleyway outside the station entrance gets its own scene.

Wires are occasionally visible, you can see them if you look for them, but not if you're following the story. Barbara's 'vision' is the lowpoint of the film in an over-ambitious scene.

After a lifetime of immediately unravelling every single movie special effect that has fooled my eyes, I now avoid certain 'making of' reveals. I want the creatures of The Mist and Monsters to continue to mystify me. I like to think of Teddy in A.I. as a character rather an effect, so I've avoided any behind-the-scenes footage or articles. I want to remember them the way they were in the story. Similarly, the final ethereal apparition in Quatermass and The Pit. I've no idea quite what I'm looking at - it might as well be real. I don't want to know how they did it - to me I'm looking at the thing from the pit.

While it was regularly shown on late night TV throughout the seventies and eighties, Quatermass and the Pit gathered a growing hive of fans through the years and its continuing popularity has inspired well-produced editions on every home video format.

The new Blu-ray, from Optimum UK, looks superb - it's never looked so sharp, so clean and colourful. The aspect ratio refrains from cropping the original 1.66 image down to the standard Blu-ray 1.77:1 (16:9) shape. So with the 1.66 ratio, there are thin black 'pillars' at the sides of the image, but these might not even be visible on a screen set to 'overscan'. I'd have liked even a little more headroom, but this is the best aspect ratio presentation for the film that I've seen in a long time.

In the extras (only on the Blu-ray) there's sadly no archive footage behind the scenes, but there is a commentary track from the late writer Nigel Kneale and the late director Roy Ward Baker. Plus a group of insightful and often funny new reflections on the Quatermass phenomenon, with The Pit being everyone's favourite. There are valuable stories from Kneale's widow Judith Kerr, some set recollections from star Julian Glover (Colonel Breen), reminiscences from expert horror fans Kim Newman and Mark Gatiss, (who made me laugh out loud with their descriptions of Brian Donlevy's acting), Hammer expert Marcus Hearn and an American perspective from Joe Dante. The US didn't get the TV series so the name Quatermass didn't mean anything, so it was renamed Five Million Years to Earth (a title which I still confuse with Harryhausen's Twenty Million Miles to Earth).

Several of the commentators tease the idea that Arthur C. Clarke's 1954 novel Childhood's End (to which I'd also add his 1951 short story The Sentinel) may have influenced this Quatermass story. There are several echoes and parallels between The Pit and 2001: A Space Odyssey, but as Newman observes, Kneale deals with the immense ideas a lot less pretentiously!

SPOILER-FRENZY: AVOID THE U.S. TRAILER IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FILM BEFORE! It's also included in the extras.

All six episodes of the original BBC TV series (from 1958) are also out on DVD - a low-budget TV production recorded as it went out live on air! The surviving episodes of The Quatermass Experiment and all of Quatermass II is also in this DVD set. The series expand on many of the ideas and scenes in the films. It maybe less distracting to read the TV scripts, which have also been re-published through the years (like the editions below).

Tristram Cary's scary electronic soundtrack offered in many scenes instead of an orchestral score were released on a couple of CDs (the best is pictured below, and includes a couple of surviving tracks from the first two films). The haunting closing track provides a fantastic end to the story, but was in fact a library track.

More great publicity photos and posters from the film are over at Coming Attractions Of The Past.

VIDEO NASTIES - THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE (2011) - when slashers were slashed

2011-11-15T13:00:00.000Z

VIDEO NASTIES - THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE

(2011, UK)

A monumental entry point into the VHS era of extreme movies

As you may have seen from the earlier post on my many encounters with Lucio Fulci's Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979), I survived being a horror fan in the era of the 'Video Nasty'.

But even after reading many articles and books on the phenomenon, this new documentary is the ideal guide to it all. Unpleasant memories, new revelations, expert reminiscences and a lot of laughs! This is all assuming you have a stomach for the excesses of 1970s and 1980s exploitation, which pushed the boundaries of taste as far as they could. It's fascinating to see which classics got sucked into the debate and what pushed society's buttons then, compared to now.

The documentary (72 minutes) on the first of three DVDs in the set, begins with the most outrageous, bloodiest montage I've ever seen. A joyous parade of the most notorious censored footage of the time, all in one glorious extended sequence, a celebration of most of it now being legally available. It's like one of those respectful sequences you get in Oscar ceremonies, but with boobs, blood and, ahem, swastikas.

Kim Newman - author of Nightmare Movies

The style settles down a little after that, and we're guided by many of the movie experts who were out there on the front line watching and writing. We also hear from new horror directors inspired by the era, and meet the defiant opponents of nastiness, concerned viewers who speak for the masses, film censors and even MPs involved at the time. Media professor Julian Petley emerges as an unlikely hero, bravely slating censorship in a TV debate at a time when newspapers were attacking video dealers with the same level of venom now reserved for child-murderers. A voice of reason then and now, he signals the more underhand aspects of the whole affair.

One of the faked Faces of Death

Today, talking about swearing, sex and zombies might seem silly in retrospect, but this was all taken very seriously, with hefty fines, imprisonment and press hysteria driving dozens of the named 'nasty' movies underground. The madness is described and illustrated, as well as the tortured and underhand passage of the law getting through Parliament. I'm of the opinion that government and press enjoy these issues that distract the public from more important and complex societal problems (war, unemployment, corruption). They can scapegoat something (video games are copping it at the moment), demonise it, then be seen to solve it. BAN IT! Once banned, many of the films weren't legally available for the next ten years or more.

Watching the whole story in one hit, I was appalled by the lack of research sought by Parliament ministers, the arbitrary application of the law and the carelessness with which it was passed. It occurred to me that this was an example of maybe how all laws in this country are slapped together. It also implies a wider question on what other information is censored.

Dr Patricia MacCormack adding an Australian feminist perspective with a sense of humour

But it's not nearly that heavy and mostly debauched fun, with dismay and shock at the ridiculousness of the phenomenon. Though these horror experts occasionally appear unable to defend the scenes of rape, evisceration, and zombie pest control in their entertainment, and rarely talk seriously about the relation to nastier subjects in the real world.

Movie censorship is now relatively relaxed, and modern horror has moved up a notch to challenge what's acceptable. This remains is a thorough guide to the excessive censorship of the 1980s, its specific obsessions, and the key exploitation hits of the era.

In the rush to prosecute, classics by George Romero, Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci and Sam Raimi were also on the banned list. Completely obscure movies that were included got given a boost in notoriety. Kim Newman observes that the behind-the-scenes story of their censor cuts are often more interesting than some of the movies themselves.

I didn't enjoy the opening assassination of the VHS format, accompanied by a digital approximation of what faults looked like. I was surprised at director Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent) berating videotapes at such length. The many faults highlighted were mostly the results of bootlegging, caused by incompetent copying and tape damage. It's an outburst at odds with the rising current nostalgia for the format. Other horror directors like Chris Smith (Creep, Black Death) also remember the influence of these films on theirs.

Alan Jones - is that his lounge or the Psychotronic video store?

Despite the controversies, writer and author Kim Newman always manages to find a humorous angle to the proceedings, keeping it in perspective. He's also far more enthusiastic about his favourites than fellow reviewer and Argento-biographer Alan Jones, who seems to assume that everyone's seen them all by now. Allan Bryce is similarly laidback but occasionally amusing, though I'm surprised he's actually involved here, considering the controversy that shut down publication of his magazine The Dark Side for six years.

My main quibble is that it's too short. I'd happily watch them all talk for longer, especially about something I've devoted so much time, money and energy on - collecting my favourite movies.

Many movies were judged by their covers

One aspect I'd like to have heard more about were the video covers. They briefly theorise that's why some films were banned (we aren't allowed to know the actual legal reasons for being on the list). But the covers were a key part of the problem and no-one mentions they ended up having to be approved as well as the content. If the sleeves had simply been cleaned up, more films might have escaped banishment. The industry even tried to pre-empt trouble by offering the famous double-sided insert sleeves for each video box, leaving the dealers the dilemma of which way to display each film.

Discs 2 and 3 impressively collects a trailer for every last film that was on 'the list', together with an optional informed introduction from the experts who appear in the documentary. All lovingly presented in anamorphic 16:9, in line with the rest of the set. These two discs are much longer than the documentary itself.

The term 'video nasties' always made them sound like a tempting challenge. This lengthy experience helps sort out which were dull, unscary, zero-budget or genuinely tasteless. Do you really want to see that?

Hours of entertainment, a very adult Halloween party tape, a cautionary tale, and a great round-up of what to pursue and what to avoid with a wide bargepole.

Video Nasties - The Definitive Guide is on DVD in the UK, region 2 PAL.

An extended interview with director Jake West about the project, here on Cinemart.

Very thorough review of the boxset and its extra contents, here on DVD Outsider.

A brief review that lists all of the movie trailers in this collection, on MyReviewer.

Ken Russell's THE DEVILS gets DVD special edition (next March)

2011-11-14T15:52:00.000Z

I actually never thought this was ever going to happen. Ken Russell's The Devils is coming to DVD in March 2012. (See the official BFI news item here).

Three years ago I wrote this article about The Devils (1971). After appearing on VHS in the UK (cropped and strangely squeezed to 1.33), there have been no other home video releases. Mark Kermode showed many of the controversial sequences on TV in a revelatory documentary that should have sparked a DVD release, the same way that his programme on The Exorcist inspired an expanded re-release in cinemas. But even after the news that Warner Brothers had remastered an uncut version of The Devils, it never arrived. It briefly surfaced for a couple of days on iTunes, which was presumably a mistake.

But now, after several screenings of the fully restored version in London, one with the director himself in attendance, it looks like the film will finally debut on DVD in the UK, released by the BFI. But they've also confirmed that the controversial 'rape of Christ' scene cannot be used because it hasn't been licenced to them by Warner Brothers.

The DVD special edition will instead feature the original 'X' certificate version released in UK cinemas back in 1971, as well as commentary and many extras featuring both the director and superfan Mark Kermode. The TV documentary 'Hell On Earth' presented by Mark Kermode could be included but will presumably lose it's glimpse of the missing scene as well. BFI haven't officially confirmed all the extra features as yet.

Despite this not being 'the director's cut' fans were hoping for, this is still a magnificent film, spectacular in scale, subject and bravado. If you thought the exorcism in The Exorcist was shocking (made two years later), you ain't seen nothing yet. Like Russell's biographies of classical composers, The Devils is an exaggerated version of actual events (based on the heavily researched book by Aldous Huxley).

Terrific news, but you'll have to be patient until March of next year. Until then, ignore any other DVDs for sale online, they're not official releases and some have been 'bumped up' from VHS.

Of course there's always the hope that if this sells well, Warner Brothers will relent and release the missing scene, which has already been digitally restored. At the moment there are no plans for a Blu-ray release either.

Thanks to Jonny Sambuca for getting my facts right! (Entry corrected on 16th November...)

Details of the DVD extras are here at the ZetaMinor forum.

My extended look at the movie The Devils is here.

For news and updates on the release, follow this Facebook page.

ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS cost me an arm and a leg...

2011-11-07T01:51:00.001Z

We are going to fleece you...

The awesome documentary Video Nasties: A Definitive Guide (2011) lives up to its name. But as I started to review it, I could only think of all the time and money I've spent on horror films over this period. For example, a case in point...

UK release poster

It's also called Zombie or Zombie 2, but I saw Lucio Fulci's first zombie epic as Zombie Flesh Eaters in 1979 in my local cinema in London's suburbia, four times in a fortnight. Despite being an 'X' certificate (no one under 18), it was censored for UK cinemas by over two minutes. The eye scene, the 'banquet' and all the throat-ripping was missing (and more). Some cuts were fairly obvious: on film, the image runs in front of the lens at a different point from the audio pick-up. If a shot is cut from a print, the sound that is removed on that section doesn't exactly match the images that remain. You still hear part of the removed scene! A split-second of screams and gory sound effects would tip off the audience that something was missing. These faults could also be heard on the VHS releases.

Yes, the next time I'd see Zombie Flesh Eaters was on an uncertificated VHS, rented from the local video shop. The first release (above, from 1980) was the same version that I'd seen in the cinema, though of course I'd hoped that it would be less cut. Once I knew a film was censored, I'd always hope that the next time it would be more complete. Maybe the next incarnation...

In 1981 there was a special 'strong uncut' edition. Another VHS rental and, yes, a little more gore in the eye scene and the banquet. But still cut. Maybe this was the original cinema version that was submitted to the UK censor.

Then in 1983 the government banned the film altogether. "Video nasties" had been singled out, even though this film had been legally shown in the cinema. Now it couldn't be sold or rented any more, even if it was cut. At the same time, every movie in the UK would have to be checked by the censorship board for its home video release. Even the sleeve art had to be approved, by a separate organisation.

It would be ten more years before Zombie Flesh Eaters was again legally allowed on VHS in the UK. In the meantime, many of the banned copies that had been available in the video rental shops hit the black market at high prices - the only way to see it, unless you risked a bootlegged copy. If a VHS was copied down several generations, you'd maybe see what you were missing without seeing it too clearly.

This widescreen version was released by Vipco in 1996. The film had been brutally panned-and-scanned from 2.35 down to 1.33 for the early VHS releases. My first official copy, a 17-year wait. Not the three months you have to wait for a DVD. And it was still far from being complete.

Wormfaced laserdisc

By this time, horror fans were looking abroad to countries where there was less censorship. American videotape was even poorer quality than the UK system, but laserdiscs offered better picture and sound, as well as widescreen. Zombie Flesh Eaters almost uncut, was available on this US laserdisc in 1998.

Fans would scour the world - finding which country had censored which scenes. US censorship was sometimes more, sometimes less than the UK cinema release. Japanese versions added subtitles, fuzzed out nudity but kept more gore. Take your pick. American laserdiscs were also about $30, Japanese at least double that. But an uncut bootleg VHS might cost just the same.

In this chaotic time (pre-internet) accurate information was scarce. One of the few guides to the many versions out there was Video Watchdog magazine. It saved me money because the obsessive writers had checked through everything. It cost me money by highlighting many wonderful and obscure horror films I'd not heard of. Video Watchdog became a bible for me for the next two decades.

Finally - uncut on DVD

James Ferman, the head of the censorship board who'd presided over movie classification in the UK, passed over the reins in 1999. There was finally a change in attitude, an acceptance that the internet had raised the bar far higher than what was on home video. Finally, many of the video nasties could be released uncut on DVD (and of course then again as a special edition). I had my complete version of Zombie Flesh Eaters after a twenty-five year wait (on DVD in the US in 2004, 2005 in the UK).

Special edition DVD

I'll soon get it on blu-ray, for the carefully restored version, in better condition than the scratchy print I saw in the cinema.

But this is just one horror film and all the versions that I can remember seeing and buying (yes, all of the above). All the while, taking seriously the many issues surrounding violence and sexualisation in movies, TV, and video games. The press and even the government have thrown a barrage of psychologists and urban myths to muddy the debates, even linking movies to murders. I've followed many of the arguments through the years, read way too much research, all to justify me seeing a bloody zombie movie!

While improved quality and DVD extras now entice us into buying duplicate editions of a movie, it was the censor cuts that fuelled most of my expensive 'double-dips' in a variety of formats. At least the trail of tape, laserdisc and DVD makes it easy to track the evolution of releases, a 'paper' trail that will soon be lost in the digital world.

TV showings are no longer archived, movies are streamed or downloaded. Working out which version of a classic film you own is going to be hard. Without packaging or release dates - how will you know you've got a director's cut or an original? Which is which, which was first, which is the best?

Journey's end - me with two stars of Zombie Flesh Eaters -
Al Cliver and stuntman Ottaviano Dell'Acqua (Wormeye!)

Thanks for all the hard work done by Melon Farmers, for tracking the many censored incarnations of, well, everything through the years. I'd never have remembered all those release dates.

Next up will be my actual review of Video Nasties: A Definitive Guide which got me into this rant in the first place...

APPROPRIATE ADULT (2011) - Dominic West as Fred West

2011-11-02T16:55:00.001Z

APPROPRIATE ADULT

(2011, UK, TV)

A horrendous true story that keeps on getting worse...

The horrifying crimes of Fred and Rosemary West threatened to eclipse those of all previous British serial killers, with ghastly excesses that fuelled tabloid headlines for years. The Moors Murders, a couple that abducted and murdered children, still haunt England from the distant mists of the mid-1960s. These crimes at 25, Cromwell Street, uncovered in the mid-1990s, started with assault and murder in the family home...

The case set a new low benchmark for inhumanity reported in this country. Not in a war zone. Not on the other side of the world. But in an ordinary street, that could easily have been next door.

The idea of adapting the Wests' story as a TV drama, even fifteen years later, sounded impossible. The amount of sexual violence would be hard to work around on mainstream TV.

I wasn't even going to watch Appropriate Adult until it was announced that Dominic West, star of the acclaimed TV series The Wire, was to play Fred West. This indicated a more serious approach than a lurid reconstruction. For the actor, it was potentially a gamble to play one of the most hated men of recent years.

There's a huge disparity in taste between approaches to true crime on TV. I was surprised by an ITV documentary about the Moors Murders which suffered indifferent acting and poor taste crime recreations. Yet the Channel 4 drama Longford (2006) found an intriguing angle to dramatise part of the story, pitting Jim Broadbent (Brazil) as Lord Longford against Samantha Morton (A.I.) as Myra Hindley. But I wasn't expecting such an intelligent drama about Fred and Rosemary from the more mainstream ITV.

The script cleverly follows an appropriate adult, a civilian (Emily Watson) invited into the case when Fred is arrested to ensure he's being understood by the police, as he's suspected of being mentally vulnerable (there's irony for you). Each time they discover a crime has been committed, the more victims there turn out to be. Sitting in on police interviews with Fred West (Dominic West), she also accompanies him and the police in the hunt for where he might have hidden the bodies. Without his cooperation, there'll be no evidence.

As an investigation, this isn't a barrage of flashy technology cracking the case, like in CSI. It's not built around violent flashbacks, like a horror film. We're simply faced with the suspect, trying to discover what and why he did. Is he as stupid as he looks? Is he lying? It starts with a missing person, but the more the police dig, the more crimes they unearth.

Emily Watson (soon to be seen in War Horse) is excellent as the 'appropriate adult' brought in without any preparation to hear West's interrogations and confessions. Unfortunately, Fred starts confiding in her, placing her in increasingly difficult quandaries.

Dominic West is frighteningly convincing, all the more chilling because we're hearing some of the words and motivations of the original murderer in an eerie impersonation of him. The distinction between murders that he does or doesn't find upsetting, the casual way he admits to further crimes. Particularly chilling is the way the victims 'speak to him' as he gets closer to where they were buried.

Rosemary West (Monica Dolan) is a frightening figure who's mostly in the background, with an unconcealed violent attitude towards everyone around her. In contrast, the calm and usually relaxed Fred insists she has nothing to do with all of it.

Shown as two feature-length parts, the first was very tight dramatically, showing the short claustrophobic period of his early interrogations. The second part was less satisfying, because it had to match real events, her sporadic involvement struggles to keep the viewpoint inside the investigation to the end.
The whole story can't be told as completely as a work of fiction would, because of the lack of evidence and the labyrinthine legal process. But I wish the programme had been a little clearer about how some of obstacles to the case had been overcome.

This serves as a restrained reminder of what this pair did, without showing the gory details. But also focuses on how hard it is to establish the truth, even with so much circumstantial evidence and the criminals in custody.

It's not just a situation where an ordinary person is in the same room with someone describing horror, but one where she gets the confidence of and insight into the mind of a psychotic multiple murderer. This took me as close as I wanted to get, and in as much detail as I could take. There are also hints that there were further, even nastier crimes...

It's available on region 2 DVD in the UK (pictured at the top).

HALLOWEEN 2002 - a trip to Haddonfield, California

2011-10-31T00:30:00.000Z

I keep falling for it. The caption near the start of John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) says 'Haddonfield, Illinois' and I believed it. In the cinema, on TV, multiple viewings and I kept falling for it. Yes, it looks like it was shot in a small town in middle America. Then Carpenter himself pointed out in a TV documentary the palm trees visible at the end of the road, in one scene where Jamie Lee Curtis is walking around. It was all filmed around Los Angeles! So, always assume Hollywood movies and TV series are either filmed at the studios or very close by. Until proven otherwise.

On a holiday in LA in 2002, I then couldn't believe how very close to 'Hollywood' the two main locations were. Directly off Sunset Boulevard! While the daylight scenes were shot around South Pasadena, giving it a convincing smalltown vibe, the nighttime scenes of the houses where the teenagers are babysitting are in West Hollywood.

Here's me in front of the house where Jamie Lee Curtis' character Laurie Strode was babysitting and where the final showdown takes place. Below is the house opposite where she first meets The Shape. These houses actually stand diagonally opposite each other, as they appear to be placed in the film.

Disappointingly, this house, where Annie (Nancy Loomis) was babysitting, has since changed its iconic appearance. The chilling scene where The Shape stands beside the corner of the porch can no longer be recreated - the house has been extended on that (the left) side. Michael Myers can no longer carry a body around that corner and into the front door! We were too late in to see it unchanged as I believe the house had been renovated only months before.

These are of course both private residences, one had a sign up about a security firm protecting the grounds, so we didn't stay very long. It looks like an unremarkable suburban street - amazing how lighting and cinematography can make it all look so large, spread out, and scary. Also, how they managed to shoot around the huge trees outside both properties.

A guide to filming locations in the Halloween series can be found here.

Happy Halloween!

GORGO (1961) - happy 50th birthday!

2011-10-27T00:30:00.000+01:00

GORGO

(1961, UK)

Every country should have its own Godzilla...

Released in the UK fifty years ago today, Gorgo remains Britain's closest thing to a kaiju eiga, a giant suitmation monster movie. If vintage dinosaur movies are your thing, or if you love seeing London in even more chaos than usual, this is absolutely for you. It was fantastic to see a clip from the film recently appear in Joe Dante's 3D teen-chiller The Hole (2009). Gorgo lives!

In 1961, Godzilla had yet to appear in colour (in King Kong vs Godzilla the following year). Director Eugene Lourié recycled the plot of his The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and the London setting of Behemoth the Sea Monster (1959), but this time used a man in a monster suit rather than stop-motion animation.

Photo-montage with a shadowy demonic monster. Like the Japanese Godzilla, Gorgo doesn't walk around buildings...

In fact it was Lourié's The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, together with a re-release of King Kong (1933), that inspired Toho Studios to make the very first Godzilla movie. So I'm reluctant to label Gorgo as a rip-off of Godzilla. Lourié got there earlier, along with Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animation and Ray Bradbury's story, of course.

Two salvage experts limp into harbour on a remote Irish island after a volcanic eruption damages their freighter. Before they can make repairs, a dinosaur emerges from the sea terrifying the local fisherman. They decide to capture the creature, load it onboard and sail it to London to make their fortune. After a few fatal accidents, Gorgo is installed as an attraction in Battersea Funfair (just next to the famous power station).

Hand-tinted lobby card - Tower Bridge is falling down...

But just as it's making a huge splash with London's thrillseekers, a gigantic and angry mother Gorgo emerges from the sea looking for her baby. She heads for London and nothing's going to get in her way, though the army, navy and air force are going to try...

Gorgo attacks a rollercoaster in Battersea Funfair, just like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms at Coney Island

Gorgo is made very like an early Godzilla movie, (a man in a suit amongst detailed miniatures) making it a peculiarly unique British monster film. The modelwork and special effects are from some of the finest technicians of the time, some of whom went onto work on 2001: A Space Odyssey, but obviously with a much bigger budget. Gorgo's special effects are hit and miss, but easily on a par with the Japanese monsters of the time. The almost excessive use of Technicolor borders on the surreal, especially when the night sky is lit up with red smoke as London burns. I particularly love this great optical composite of Gorgo stomping through Soho towards (and through) Piccadilly Circus.

Screengrab: Gorgo enjoys a night on the town

The monster suit looks fantastic on film, the creature's actions are suitably 'undercranked' to make it look huge (a technique often underused in the Japanese films), and the modelwork is just as detailed, laid out as a huge cityscape of central London. They even use a fullscale Gorgo to transport around London on a flatbed lorry, (to publicise the new attraction) with a full-size prop of its claw to smash unwary fishermen in their boats.

The head is quite animated, with a convincing jaw movement, glowing red eyes and wiggling ears! The feet and claws are huge and look lethal. The only weak point of the suit is the belly which looks and acts like wrinkled material. However, unlike the heavy latex Godzilla suits, this allows the stuntman inside to twist dramatically, to pose and move more dynamically. The suit also had to move in the water and not catch fire too easily - pity the poor guys inside, including jockeys-turned-stuntmen Dave Wilding and Mick Dillon.

The story has humans too. The stars are William Sylvester (2001: A Space Odyssey, The Hand of Night) and Bill Travers (Born Free, Ring of Bright Water, The Smallest Show on Earth) as the two greedy bastards who cause all the trouble in the first place. They sort of a adopt a boy from the island, which is rather progressive for the time. He's played by Vincent Winter, an Oscar-winning child star who went on to work as production manager on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Color Purple and Superman II.

Gorgo certainly isn't low-budget, with some impressive sets (like the war room and the flooded London Underground) and with extensive crowd work to show London's citizens fleeing in panic. Indeed, cinematographer Freddie Young's next picture would be Lawrence of Arabia. He certainly knew how to make flamethrowers look good.

But it's not high budget either, relying too heavily on a mish-mash of stock footage of destroyers and jets before Gorgo hits London. While the modelwork holds up well during the night-time, the early daytime scenes of the boat in a tidal wave are unconvincing. There was certainly enough to fuel a particularly funny Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K season 10, 1998).

I enthused about Gorgo in an extensive article for G-Fan magazine (issue 49, January 2001). I still think it's entertaining as an action-packed monster movie, or as a far-fetched tale with nutty logic and oldschool special effects. It's also an evocative trip around London in 1960. So I'm annoyed that Gorgo still isn't on DVD in the country where it was made.

The sexed-up Monarch novelisation

So far, the DVD and laserdisc releases have been disappointing because of the quality of their source materials - a lot of visible film damage and washed-out colours. The DVD compression has also struggled with the grain, darkness, sea spray and smoke. I've seen it look far better, with vivid technicolor on British TV, transferred from a clean print with a sharp image. That's the version that I'd like to see represent Gorgo worldwide.

The more recent Japanese DVD (pictured) appears to be a close duplicate of the American VCI DVD and has the same extras. The quality of the film transfer is again slightly soft and the edges of block colours are blurry. It's accurately presented in 1.66 aspect, non-anamorphic.

Director Eugene Lourié later provided the extensive special effects for Crack In The World which recently warranted a Blu-ray release. Gorgo is jealous!

Here's a faded trailer for Gorgo...

Happily, a short sequel was made recently, Waiting For Gorgo. Here's the trailer...

(This is a hugely expanded rewrite of my earlier review from 2009.)

Some interesting thoughts on Gorgo's production from WTF Film.

A review and screengrabs of a German DVD release from a WTF review.

VAULT OF HORROR (1973) - missing a few zombies

2011-10-23T14:14:00.001+01:00

Unfinished business in the graveyard

Not a review, but a mystery that's puzzled me for decades. At the end of each Amicus 'portmanteau' horror movie, there's a twist in the tale - the punchline to the framing story. A photo in Alan Frank's book Horror Movies of Vault of Horror (1973) promised that the main characters (Tom Baker, Michael Craig, Terry Thomas and Daniel Massey) would somehow appear as the undead.

But at the end of the film, this ghoulish apparition is missing. The actors leave the same vault (seen in the picture below) but lumber off, unchanged, into a graveyard. The undead version was shown in lobby cards and publicity photos, (though that's never been a guarantee of anything in the finished film). What I'm saying is that it's a lot of hard work for something that wasn't used, and would've been a greater 'kick' to end the movie with.

So is this a censor cut? Or did it never make the final film? Has anyone ever seen these make-ups appear onscreen? Maybe in a trailer? All we see in the film is the back of them as they walk away...

Like Tales From The Crypt (1972), this corpse make-up was by Roy Ashton, but unlike his brilliant transformation of Peter Cushing as Grimsdyke, he used a complete facemask for each actor. Ironically, at least one of these appliances still survives. Made for Tom Baker, it was sold to the Bradford National Museum of Photography, Film and Television as part of Roy Ashton's collection. This website, with a photo of the mask, gives the impression that it was worn in the film. So, we can see the mask and the publicity photos, but not in any version of the film I've seen.

Admittedly, Vault of Horror still has a legacy of its censorship problems - the US region 1 DVD double-bill with Tales From The Crypt is a cut version, especially distracting for its toned-down finale of the vampire segment. So this gives me hope that the full graveyard scene is only temporarily missing? I'm appealing to your collective memories for the answer.

Apart from the photos, there's this description at the end of the Jack Oleck novelisation from 1973. After they've swapped stories in the comfy 'men's club' surroundings, the room transforms into a stone vault. The door opens not into a lift, but a graveyard. Critchit (Curt Jurgens) pauses outside as they slowly leave. He lifts his arm to wave goodbye... "and when they turned to wave back at him their faces were no longer as they had been. Their lips and noses had vanished. Their eyes were empty holes. Their skin hung in rotting ribbons and a stench of decaying flesh drifted back to him as they turned again and went on and then halted, each beside his own grave, and disappeared like puffs of smoke". Critchit then goes back inside to return to his waiting coffin...

In the film, the four men head off in different directions, but the reverse shot (pictured) shows them all on the same pathway, fading away at slightly different places. I'd never made the intended connection that each of them were returning to their graves, merely that they'd disappeared on the path.

The colour shot appeared as a lobby card and in Monster Mag #3

These photos (the colour is different to the black-and-white) might have been staged for publicity, rather than shot during an actual take (note that behind them Curt Jurgens appears to have been replaced with a stand-in with longer hair). But they could show an alternate take of them setting out into the graveyard? Or maybe, all that we were supposed to see was during the long shot, their undead faces revealed as they turn back and wave? Perhaps the waving looked wrong? The 'walking away' shot is complicated as each actor would have to 'freeze' on the set for the three cross-dissolves.

Like I said, I'm hoping that someone reading this has the answer, or at least some more clues...

TARZAN (1966) - Ron Ely TV series - not on DVD

2011-10-18T21:59:00.001+01:00

TARZAN

(1966-68, TV, USA)

Edgar Rice Burroughs invented several popular fictional characters. His John Carter of Mars will be a 2012 blockbuster as well as Pixar's first live-action production.

But next year is the centenary of Burroughs' far more famous creation, a great opportunity to release every Tarzan adaption from the archives. I'm thinking of the 1966 Ron Ely Tarzan TV series. That was the same year of another hit TV show that refuses to hit home video. I've talked about Adam West's Batman and could happily talk about every last one of the 120 episodes Tarzan appeared for two seasons of one hour adventures (57 in all). Unlike many of the early movies, it wasn't shot on a Hollywood studio backlot, but out in the actual jungle. Except, not in Africa.

Shot in Brazil, and later Mexico, the lush jungle locations, village-sized sets, waterfalls, mountains and rivers made this look a million dollars. With interesting, twisty adventure-laden stories and solid casts, the series was repeated for many years on British TV, eventually headlining the Saturday morning line-up into the 1970s. Like Batman, this was so popular and repeatable that it's now imprinted in many young memories, perfectly primed to revisit it on DVD. But this Tarzan is nowhere to be found, except for some double-episodes released as movies that eventually made it to VHS.

Despite a gap of thirty years or more, I can still remember Tarzan's battle against a big game hunter. Hand grenades are lobbed into a river where Tarzan is hiding underwater. He eventually hauls himself out of the water, bleeding from the ears, only to discover that he's wounded, defenceless and deaf (Tarzan's Deadly Silence)... As for his encounter with a dinosaur, I've yet to see the next episode of that two-parter and learn the secret of that shadowy cave. I recently unearthed a scrawled comic strip I drew as a kid, an extensive 'adaption' of that episode. I think I remember a few scenes from the episode, or maybe they're just from the nightmares I had...

The key to the show's success was Tarzan himself. Actor Ron Ely embodies Tarzan for a certain generation. Of the many previous Tarzans, the best Johnny Weissmuller films (Tarzan - The Ape Man, Tarzan and his Mate) were too violent to be shown on TV for many years, eventually surfacing on Channel Four late night in the 80s. I remember the later sequels getting played as seasons on BBC 2, together with the Gordon Scott movies. They're good, but weren't on nearly as often as TV Tarzan.

Ron Ely's incarnation is impressive in many ways. Imposingly well-built, wearing one of the briefest loincloths of any Tarzan, it's hard not to be distracted by his physique every time he's onscreen, which is most of the episode. He can also act, swim, and fight with both men and animals. He's reputed to have done his own stunts and racked up the injuries to prove it. Just running around everywhere barefoot without flinching is quite a feat (sorry).

Aiming at a family audience that kept adults engaged, the episodes often had a tough edge. Fistfights, gunfights, knife fights, constant peril and occasionally deaths! A young boy (Manuel Padilla Jr, later seen all grown up in American Graffiti) is the only other regular cast member (as well as Cheetah the cheeky chimp), but otherwise the stories don't pander to a young audience.

The main reason I think the series hasn't stayed in circulation is the portrayal of black Africans. While it's set 'in the now' with the latest vehicles, firearms and fashions, Africans are still portrayed as they were in the original stories, as tribal communities living in small villages of primitive huts, wearing animal skins and war paint. This may have been acceptable in the movies of the 1930s, but was entirely misleading by 1966, as if it had been researched from a travel brochure.

The approach is duly counterweighted by a few 'modern' black characters like the local game warden (Rockne Tarkington of Daktari and Danger Island), who regularly appeared in the early episodes, as well as guest appearances from other American actors like the formidable Woody Strode (Spartacus) and Bernie Hamilton (Starsky & Hutch).

The mid-sixties roster of ever-changing guest stars adds to the nostalgia, including James Earl Jones, Nichelle Nichols (Star Trek), Maurice Evans (Planet of the Apes), William Marshall (Blacula) and Julie Harris (The Haunting)... With high production values and the frankly awesome Ron Ely, the series is notably missing from circulation.

Afterwards, Ron Ely's most famous role was that of Doc Savage - Man of Bronze (1975), the only movie incarnation of that pulp detective action hero.

Cinema Retro has also bemoaned the serious lack of DVD...

Here's the series title sequence...

SUCKER PUNCH (2011)

2011-10-15T09:11:00.000+01:00

SUCKER PUNCH

(2011, USA)

Fantasy action epic with a killer soundtrack

At the moment, I'm not watching nearly as many new films as old. I guess the point of collecting movies is to watch some of them occasionally. But the mention of an army of zombie soldiers and giant samurai warriors caught my interest. Then I heard that this isn't a fantasy action film so much as a fantasy drama which lapses into fantasies of action... Even more interesting. Directed by Zack Snyder whose movies I've all enjoyed - 300, Watchmen and the Dawn of the Dead remake. That's enough to warrant a watch.

Like 300, it's real actors set in a largely CGI world, which I currently associate favourably with graphic novel adaptions (though this is an original story from the director). CGI worlds suit fantasy very well, though sensibly, sets are used for the indoor scenes. An early example of this approach, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) made things far too complex for itself by building everything in the computer, using very few sets or props.

A fatal accident sends a teenage girl into a corrupt private asylum where the inmates have to 'dance' for paying visitors. But when BabyDoll dances she daydreams of escape, her fantasies inspiring her and her new friends to attempt to escape captivity...

I kept seeing elements of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, like the fight with the giant Japanese armoured warrior, an identical opponent to one of Sam Lowry's heroic fantasies who also used a heavy-duty spear. The theme of searching for an escape from guilt also struck me as a similarity. One early scene also reminded me of the ballet school from Suspiria - something about the colours used in the set.

The real life interludes slotted between the elaborate and varied action scenes were just as entertaining, owing to the stylised look and strong performances from Carla Gugino and Oscar Isaac (intense enough to make a great Scarface). Good to see Scott Glenn onscreen again (Backdraft, The Right Stuff, and last week's review The Keep).

Key scenes are backed with some extraordinarily reworked cover versions of the Eurythmics, Björk, Jefferson Airplane and other offbeat tracks that immediately impress.

While Zack Snyder's 300 presented men as sexy heroic fantasy, Sucker Punch does the same for women, with a female-heavy cast that appeals to both sexes in a different way to the more obvious 'chick flick' comedies. Admittedly, the incendiary use of the name BabyDoll for the lead character (Emily Browning) keys the audience into its brand of humour. But I was surprised that the film was only rated 12 (on UK home video) considering the amount of sexual content in the story (alluded to, ever present, but never explicit). Japanese anime/movies/TV have their young female characters sexualised, often with shorter skirts, less confidence or self-determination. Yet they largely escape the criticism that Sucker Punch has drawn.

I've also been disappointed by far more exploitational 'schoolgirl action hero' Japanese movies, especially recent direct-to-video offerings made on low budgets that are on offer at the same price. This offers similar action but on a huge scale, set to maximum thrillpower. If Sucker Punch had been Japanese, it would have been the success it deserves.

Available everywhere on DVD and Blu-ray, with an option to watch the longer director's cut, though I was perfectly satisfied with the theatrical version.

THE KEEP (1983) - Michael Mann's monster movie

2011-10-09T11:47:00.001+01:00

THE KEEP

(1983, UK)

A Michael Mann movie that's not on DVD...

I enjoyed The Keep in the cinema, though it didn't all make total sense at the time. Watching it again after a long break, I understand it better and still enjoy it, especially the dreamlike quality. Admittedly, it's a very dark dream.

In 1983, Michael Mann wasn't a 'name' yet and had only directed TV shows and one other movie. Looking back, The Keep doesn't snugly fit in with his body of work, and perhaps this is why it hasn't been released on home video in nearly twenty years...

But before I'd even seen it, I was already sold on the premise and some of the startling photos. German soldiers tangling with a monstrous evil in an ancient castle keep - it was a story I wanted to see. Hints of the Dracula legend being reimagined, Nazis versus monsters, were all very promising. The coverage in Fantastic Films, Fangoria and Starburst magazines all had cover stories. This looked to be a new kind of monster altogether. The cast looked good, so for me it didn't need a big name director to warrant seeing it.

World War II. A German army commander (Jürgen Prochnow, inbetween Das Boot and Dune) rolls into a remote Romanian village and houses his soldiers in a mysterious old stone fortress. Despite warnings not to tamper with the strange crosses embedded in the walls, his soldiers start to die, blown apart by an unseen force. An SS officer (Gabriel Byrne, inbetween Excalibur and Gothic) arrives to solve the murders, instantly blaming the villagers. He pressures an old Jewish professor (Ian McKellen, in an early leading role) to translate the writing inside the keep and unravel its mysteries. Meanwhile, a lone traveller (Scott Glenn of The Right Stuff, Backdraft) is on his way to the village, somehow alerted the very moment the keep was breached...

But The Keep didn't appear in the usual local cinemas near me but the BFI repertory cinema instead, meaning that it hadn't had a wide release and had been relegated to the arthouse circuit, which suited it very well. The studio were presumably annoyed they hadn't got a straightforward monster movie (though it wasn't much more different approach than Alien, which also had careful art direction and a slowly measured pace). There'd already been news that the film had been extensively recut before release.

Michael Mann directed this after Violent Streets (a gritty heist story, made in 1981, also known as Thief) and wanted to avoid "another street picture" and "another cops and robbers picture" (which he's mostly been stuck with ever since). "It had to be original and unique", "like no other movie with supernatural entities", (Mann quoted in Fantastic Films #38). Instead he was aiming high, at a horror story, a fairy tale, a fable about evil, with stylised visuals, but not gothic like the novel. Watching it again, I think he largely succeeded.

The soundtrack is crucial to the mood, and Tangerine Dream doesn't work for everyone, especially when the synth-heavy score is illustrating a wartime period piece. For me this very 1980s music may be an anachronism, but makes it feel more like it's happening in the now. It adds hugely to a dreamlike experience set against the surreal story and setting.

The visuals are also very 80s, but is that because the look of Mann's work influenced the decade? Carefully colour-coordinated production design, symmetrical camera compositions, backlighting, slow-motion montage, heavy filters and floods of dry ice are consistent with Mann's following few films. His next film was Manhunter, a wait of three years presumably because of The Keep's box-office failure. Meanwhile, he made his name producing the mega-hit TV series Miami Vice.

At the centre of The Keep is a monster. Mann wanted something original but had to compete with the impressive work done on Alien and The Thing. Experimenting with visual mechanical effects, the production was delayed and the budget crept up. Constrained by what was possible at the time, I wonder what he would have imagined with CGI?

The violence is bloodless because he was "not interested in gore", feeling he couldn't outdo John Carpenter, "The Thing was the ultimate prosthetic movie", (Mann quoted in Starburst #58). He did however have visual effects by Wally Veevers (Superman - The Movie) and mechanical effects from Nick Allder (Alien, The Empire Strikes Back), plus some spectacular prosthetic suits made by Nick Maley. Though the 'muscles on the outside' approach had been prefigured by the climax of Altered States. Unfortunately, Cinefex magazine didn't write up the visual effects in detail at the time (probably because it was produced in Britain and not Hollywood), but Fangoria #33 had a well-illustrated look at the suits.

I was disappointed that some of the visual effects hadn't made the final cut, and that the wild-looking photos of various stages of the creature weren't showcased in the film. But it's hard to say why that is. Was that cut out by the director or the studio? There's footage on YouTube of an unseen alternate ending and it's certainly a short film for Mann. Also several minor characters (like William Morgan Shepherd) disappear completely after being dramatically introduced, (more about the deleted scenes here).

The 'less is more' glimpses of the creature work to its advantage. It looks impressively huge, an outsized humanoid like the Golem legend, which is mentioned in passing as the soldiers flee. One unique apparition of the figure enshrouded in a cloud of self-circulating smoke is astounding, mainly because some poor devil had to build it all and make it work!

But the mystery of The Keep is intensified by both the surrounding story and locale. Cinematography that's allowed to breathe, with some very long shots that allow us to relax and enjoy the view. Magnificent sets, particularly the village exterior built in a spectacular slate quarry in North Wales. Mann wanted a steep-sided valley with black walls, and there it is in the Glyn Rhonwy Quarry, Llanberis (before and after photos here), together with a full-sized exterior of the keep and half a Romanian village. I remember visiting a scary open slate quarry in the area on a school trip (we were at the top of the quarry cliff looking over the edge) - we were only camped a few miles away, so there's a very good chance it was this one.

In terms of production, with a British crew and an auteur director striving for atmosphere rather than pace, this bears close comparison to Ridley Scott's Alien (1979). As ambitious maybe, though not as effective. I still find it fascinating and the initial build-up of lurking horror is hard to beat. When the soldiers break inside the inner keep, there's a single mindblowing 'pullback' shot that just keeps on going. It totally worked in the cinema, but the visual 'trick' is more obvious on the laserdisc. With careful grading for a digital presentation, I'm still hoping that this scene will regain it's initial power.

The complete removal of language barriers between all the characters is too convenient, and there's an uneven variety of accents on offer. Ian McKellen is supposedly Eastern European but sounds strangely American (just as strange that his film career was so very slow to take off). Gabriel Byrne (Stigmata, Ghost Ship, Miller's Crossing) plays German without an accent, but Jürgen Prochnow can't help himself. Incidentally it was fun seeing Scott Glenn again in Sucker Punch. Looking good, but with more furrowed wrinkles...

But the performances are excellent, with Alberta Watson (White of the Eye, The Lookout) in a difficult but standout role against all the heavyweights. Also a rare horror-role for Robert Prosky, who I first saw as a regular in Hill Street Blues.

The Keep has a carefully-composed 2.35 widescreen aspect, like all Michael Mann's movies, and was really badly cropped down to 1.33 for the videotape release. Anyone watching the VHS will have trouble following what the hell is going on. After being so impressed by it in the cinema, I was delighted when The Keep had an early widescreen release on laserdisc in the US (one of the main reasons I got into the format was the likelihood of widescreen).

The film is becoming increasingly famous as a 'missing film' on home video, last seen on that Paramount laserdisc in 1993. But there's still no DVD on the horizon. It notably appeared on Netflix recently, in the US.

Here's an original trailer on YouTube, (but cropped to 4:3 for home video...)

Sir Ian 'Gandalf' McKellen wrote a little about his involvement on his own website, including a few photographs...

http://www.mckellen.com/cinema/keep/notes.htm

French special effects artist Stéphane Piter has a huge fansite about his obsession with The Keep. The picture-heavy website, English version, begins here...
http://the.keep.free.fr/default_en.htm

John Belushi - resting in peace

2011-10-08T14:12:00.001+01:00

While we were visiting Martha's Vineyard last month, we learnt that John Belushi was buried on the island. Couldn't just pass him by and not pay our respects...

The cemetery on Abel Hill has no signpost, but if you head along South Road going through Chilmark, you'll see the cemetery next to the road. As you turn off into the car park, John's memorial is right next to it. A poignant, unfussy reminder of a comic genius who left us nearly thirty years ago.

The traditional headstone (placed there by his family) faces a larger, simpler, shapeless memorial stone chosen by his wife from a beach on the island. But apparently he's not actually laid to rest at this exact spot, but at an unmarked location elsewhere in the cemetery.

A very sad little visit, in contrast with the lovely location and the sunny day.

WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT? (1965) - Woody Allen, Peters O'Toole and Sellers

2011-09-29T15:35:00.001+01:00

WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT?

(1965, USA/France)

(To camera) "As a man's life passes before his eyes, you are there."

A sex comedy of yesteryear that's such a tame romp it's almost kid-friendly today. No nudity, no swearing, but that doesn't make it any less funny, with a cast put to far better use here than in the similarly mad, but really very expensive Bond-spoof Casino Royale (1967).

Michael (Peter O'Toole) has a dilemma. Should he give up his lifetime habit of sleeping around with every beautiful woman who gives him a second glance, or should he commit to just one woman, his girlfriend (Romy Schneider)? He can no longer rely on the advice of friends (like Woody Allen), the problem warrants a trip to a psychologist with some radical methods (Peter Sellers), who himself has fixation for one of his clients (Capucine). Michael then has to resist the temptations of the most beautiful stripper (Paula Prentiss) at his favourite club in Paris, and any other 'pussycat' who happens to drop by (like Ursula Andress)...

It's sometimes silly, sometimes breaking the fourth wall, slightly kinky ("please send up six French loaves and a boy scout's uniform"). Despite being set in swinging Paris in the sixties (and being filmed there), the advent of the permissive society is only gently hinted at, as are Freudian psychology, orgies and other 'deviations'. Nothing more daring than a wryly cheeky comedy for adults, but with fuller characters than the one-joke boob, knob and toilet-obsessives in the Carry On films.

It's portrays a still very recognisable struggle of someone resisting settling down and marrying when they're having so much fun. Also, like many later Woody Allen scripts, despite the central character being a man with a sex habit, there's a range of female characters with a variety of their own sexual appetites. Romy Schneider as Michael's fiancee is also a realistic character who's beautiful, complex and fun.

This is Woody Allen's first movie screenplay and first big screen appearance. His script is at it's best when everyone in the cast sticks to it, less funny when there's madcap improvisation and farcical running around between bedrooms. It's almost a pity that it descends into (French) farce because the dialogue and interplay between all the characters achieve comic brilliance, like an early Clouseau movie written by, well, Woody Allen.

One of the main draws here are the top members of the cast at the top of their game - a rare but effortless comedy turn from Peter O'Toole shortly after Lawrence of Arabia in his most gorgeous decade. Peter Sellers, hot off his second Clouseau film, A Shot In The Dark, as Dr Fritz Fassbender, the neurotic psychiatrist who hates his wife and kids.

Sellers hones his scenes to pack in every last gag, all while staying firmly in character. Even his hair is funny. While his accent is a typical Austrian psychiatrist, he appears wrapped in a Norwegian flag in one scene. The voice could be a discarded idea from his far more warped German madman, Dr Strangelove.

Woody Allen plays the desperate nerd who can't land a woman for himself, very different from his later scripts where he always gets the girl. A big success, this led to a stupidly expensive James Bond spoof in a similar madcap vein. There's even a strangely anticipatory Bond joke, which mirrors a couple of throwaway Pussycat in-jokes that later appear in Casino Royale. Both films had Woody in a scene-stealing supporting role, but only Pussycat has the unique chance for Allen to share scenes with Peter Sellers.

Capucine had previously played Clouseau's long-suffering wife in The Pink Panther and again maintains an icy composure in her scenes with Sellers (which must have been hard). Also inherited from Pink Panther are animated titles by Richard Williams, who eventually brought to life the title character of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

In bit parts, watch out for a young Daniel Emilfork - he later played the obsessed inventor in Jeunet and Caro's The City of Lost Children (1995), and Howard Vernon, the awful Dr Orloff himself! Also watch out for a lightning cameo from one of the, then, most famous actors on the planet...

Add to this the catchy Burt Bacharach score, topped with a top ten title song from the powerfully sexy Tom Jones, plus background music from Manfred Mann and Dionne Warwick and the whole film practically epitomises the decade.

Released by MGM in 2004, the current DVD is very disappointing. I don't often notice audio faults, but the mono audio sounded thin, almost tinny in some scenes, with no other audio option. The widescreen anamorphic picture also annoys by cropping off action on all sides - particularly noticeable during the opening credits. Any English subtitles have been removed in order for the DVD to be subtitled in any language, which ruins the "Author's Message" gag (pictured above), an animation obviously added by Richard Williams. No extras either. Grrrr...

DEMON WITH A GLASS HAND (1964) - a monochrome BLADE RUNNER

2011-09-16T10:58:00.003+01:00

I can't stay away from The Outer Limits for very long and return to them more often than The Twilight Zone. The stories are more detailed, less predictable, less fanciful, usually scary and often cosmically mind-expanding. The original 1963-1965 run is easily in my top ten TV series. Beautifully directed and photographed in black and white, with familiar and surprising faces in the cast (Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Bruce Dern, Donald Pleasence...). The stand-alone stories sometimes pack enough ideas into a TV hour to blow away most sci-fi B-movies and many A-list productions as well. Sometimes, not all.

I first watched them on late night TV at the end of the 1970s (Friday nights on BBC2), primed by monster magazines that there'd be weekly creatures and aliens - outlandish man-in-a-mask creations, but also shapeless entities, things made only of energy, beings from different dimensions... each with their own very different story, challenging the scientific status quo.

The Control Voice alone, setting up and summing up each episode, through a broken TV transmission, authoritatively prepared us for the wonders and dangers of the future, and to appreciate better the size of the Universe and the potential variety within. Even the worst monsters and outlandish stories get high marks for at least taking themselves seriously, an approach which could still easily convince me, watching on my own, slightly wasted, sometime way after midnight.

Many years ago, my initial response to Demon With A Glass Hand was muted, the scary 'bear' of the week was disappointing - a guy with a transparent hand and some cheap-looking aliens. I wish they hadn't worn those rubber caps, but the 'ghoul' make-up is effective enough. A lone human (Culp) is trying to evade the murderous aliens and complete his mission. His hand has been replaced by fingerless glass, missing a few fingers but full of electronics issuing him instructions. In a classic script ploy, he has no memory before the story started, putting him in the same position as the audience as to what the bloody hell is going on.

Why are they all trying to kill him? What is his mission? While working his way up the building, getting closer to the truth, he encounters a young woman who's horrified by his transparent hand. Her reaction partially explains the episode title, but it's a cheat.

It's a gripping episode, the hero using tough tactics from the very start to get to the truth. It's exciting because he's outnumbered, it's fascinating because of the mysteries piling up from the clues from his talking hand... Unlike much sci-fi, the seemingly bizarre story elements converge and conclude logically, while still leaving the viewer a few implications to mull over.

There are two editions of the appreciative and informative series companion, introducing the many creative minds behind the series, script decisions, special effects and a critical analysis of each episode - not the kind of scrutiny most TV series can justify in such detail. The more recent publication (on the right) has been revised, expanded and printed on less pulpy paper. I didn't initially appreciate the cult status of this particular episode, compared to my many other favourites. But watching through the second series again, I relaxed and really enjoyed it, particularly it's premonitions of Blade Runner...

I'm not just talking about the main location for the episode - most of it takes place inside the Bradbury Building, the scene of Rick Deckard's main confrontation in the film. Demon also has the protagonists working their way up the Bradbury, and even chasing out the window... An astonishing piece of parallel action with the film.

This time around I was also struck by the naked shoproom dummies in the dressmaking shop. Female dummies also appear in Blade Runner, stood outside J.F. Sebastian's apartment, also filmed in the Bradbury Building. The location, the symbolism, the themes of both stories overlapping, possibly intentionally, making this the closest you can get to Blade Runner if it was shot in black-and-white and twenty years earlier.

The story is packed with so many ideas, the episode could easily have expanded to feature-length. The fact that they're crammed into a TV hour makes it rich enough for fans of serious science fiction. Some elements of the story prefigure Blade Runner as well as The Terminator - Harlan Ellison wrote this and the episode Soldier, later suing James Cameron for lifting too many ideas from these scripts. Spoilerage prevents me from elaborating on which particular elements of the plot.

I had thought of cherrypicking my top ten episodes of the original Outer Limits as must-see, but it's too good a show to divide up. Watch them all. Pick your own favourites. They're all available on DVD in the US and UK.

A thorough (though spoilery) guide to the series, with plenty of screengrabs and some rare stills, plus a review of every single episode, all on this blog in collaboration with the David J. Schow, the author of The Outer Limits Companion, We Are Controlling Transmission...

BARBARELLA soundtrack CD - new release!

2011-09-07T16:45:00.000+01:00

Transport yourself over to Barbarella's Shagpile Cockpit to see how the new CD soundtrack compares to the original 2002 release...

BAREFOOT GEN (1983) - he saw the bombing of Hiroshima

2011-09-03T19:57:00.346+01:00

BAREFOOT GEN

(1983, Japan, Hadashi no Gen)

A terrifying account of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, for children...

Disaster movies are currently all about meteor collisions and climate change. But for decades, the most likely apocalypse was nuclear war. In the 1980s, I was seriously worried it might become a reality, with Ronald Reagan constantly talking tough with the Russians. For all I knew, they all had their fingers on big shiny red buttons ready to launch hundreds of missiles at each other. It was hard to imagine what might happen.

Post-apocalyptic movies portrayed nuclear-ravaged worlds (usually as desert, as in Damnation Alley and Mad Max 2) and sidestepped showing the disaster itself, except for increasingly familiar stock footage of nuclear test explosions. But what was it like to be in a city at ground zero? This wasn't shown - the effects of radiation had only been hinted at with deformed humanoid monsters and giant animal mutations. (The original Godzilla (1954) had carefully portrayed the many effects of a nuclear blast in a work of fiction, but I didn't get to see that until the mid-1990s).

Despite being decried as anti-government propaganda, realistic depictions of what a nuclear war could look like crept onto TV in the 1980s. The first that I saw was a short, shocking clip from Peter Watkins' The War Game (1965) made by the BBC but too realistic to be transmitted for several decades. The BBC however produced and transmitted the dramatic imagining of a nuclear strike on England in Threads (1984), just after America saw The Day After (1983), also made for TV. Both made sobering viewing - any country launching nuclear weapons would also automatically become a target. The fates of the USA and the UK would have been the same. Raymond Briggs' (The Snowman, Fungus The Bogeyman) graphic novel When The Wind Blows was then adapted as an animated film in 1986, describing how a suburban couple might cope with a nearby nuclear explosion if they follow the official government information booklet.

But I still had little idea of what the people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had actually experienced during and after the nuclear blasts in 1945. The only depiction in a movie I saw in the 90s was a brief scene in Black Rain (Japan, 1989), shown on TV.

Eventually there was Barefoot Gen. I first saw a clip from the anime movie on Japanorama, a 2002 Jonathan Ross TV show about Japanese pop culture. The moment the bomb detonates over Hiroshima was incredibly shocking. It was simply-drawn animation, but depicted horrendous and graphic events. A nightmare on Earth. It's even more horrifying because the author had personally witnessed it all. To see the film I bought a secondhand VHS from the US, where it had been originally released.

Keiji Nakazawa was six years old when the bomb dropped, as he was on his way to school in the centre of Hiroshima. A split-second quirk of fate saved his life. In an instant, everything around him changed. The city was levelled, there were very few buildings with foundations of steel and stone. Anyone who wasn't instantly vaporised had been hit by the explosive blast and then a firestorm. The survivors could then die from the effects of radiation in the next few minutes, months or years... Keiji stayed on the outskirts of Hiroshima as it started to rebuild itself.

He became a manga writer, but wasn't able to publish the first volume of his most famous work until 1973 when Japan started to talk about Hiroshima and Nagasaki again. The stories of Barefoot Gen are dramatised versions of reality, but were "70 percent" (his words) based on Keiji's actual childhood experiences. Immediately popular, they soon inspired three live-action films at the end of the decade. But the manga proved a better way to spread the story overseas, being translated into many languages. An anime adaption was a logical extension.

However the animated film (produced by Madhouse) is strangely aimed at children, the title music is fiercely corny and upbeat. It even starts like a Ghibli movie following boisterous six-year old Gen (pronounced with a hard 'g', as in 'begin') and his younger brother trying to scrape fun and food out of the rural war-torn Japanese countryside. Gen's father struggles to feed his family and decries the rulers of Japan for not surrendering. But the boys still have fun together and little mischievous adventures - the children even look like typical Ghibli creations, the youngest child has a huge mouth and a big grin. The animation is fairly simple but well-observed. Occasionally, there's a brief voiceover about the state of the war and the bomb being prepared.

The first half of the movie takes time to set up what life was like around the city in 1945, and then the bomb drops.

In an instant, 80,000 civilians die instantly. Gen accidentally survives, finding himself in the middle of a nightmare. Some of the walking wounded are partially melted, many of them are better off dead. It looks like hell on Earth. Corpses are everywhere and the rubble is still on fire.

The next scene is just as upsetting as the explosion, as Gen discovers what has happened to his family.

In the days that follow, as Gen is struggling to find food and shelter, people are still slowly and painfully dying of the effects of radiation. (Decades later, that exposure to radiation is still killing the survivors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Keiji Nakazawa himself is currently battling cancer).

The story continues to follow Gen through the initial dark days after the bomb, until he starts a new life, staying in Hiroshima, making his way anyway he can, with nothing. Against all odds, Keiji wants the story to be an optimistic one. This is where the perspective of a six-year old actually helps, when nothing is impossible and humour can be found in the simplest things in life.

It's an extraordinary film, with a deceptively comic start. I've not seen such an explicit, realistic vision of what it was like on that day. It's horrific, even depicted with simple drawings. I still don't think it's possible for a live-action equivalent of the same sequence. A recent Japanese TV adaption expanded the story to three hours, spending more time with Gen's family, but the scene of the bombing is quite short, treated in a similar way to The Day After.

Gen's story continued in another animated movie set three years later. Barefoot Gen 2 (1986) shows Hiroshima slowly recovering, but with orphans roaming the streets and the black market thriving. It's similar to other post-war stories, but with the characters dealing with the continuing effects of radiation. The doctors are trying to deal with radiation sickness, when no research or treatment yet exists. Understandably, with all the dead still not buried, there's resentment of the occupying American forces.

Again, the story strives for optimism and the chirpy opening title song seems inappropriate, but the story is gritty and memorable, still refusing to pull punches. The sequel is included as a double-bill on the DVDs.

The atomic dome in modern Hiroshima
(photo by Hirotsugu Mori, 2006)

Barefoot Gen prepared me for my own visit to Hiroshima in 2004. A day trip included a visit to the iconic 'atomic dome', one of the only recognisable landmarks left standing close to the centre of the blast. Rubble lies around the skeletal building as if it had been destroyed the day before. A short walk through the memorial park took us to the huge museum which traces the events of how the bomb came to be dropped on Hiroshima and the devastation it caused. There are two huge scale models of the city as it looked before and after the explosion. An exhibit of photographs of the effect of radiation burns was simply too much to look at.

In the anime, as Gen runs to school just before the blast, there's a series of seemingly inconsequential images that resonate with some of the artifacts in the museum. He passes a pile of bottles and a woman sitting on a doorstep. You can see these bottles all fused together from the heat of the blast, as well as the shadow of the woman vaporised into the stonework of the wall she was sitting in front of. The grim events are of course in complete contrast to the vibrant modern city that Hiroshima is again today. My most vivid memory of the day was the tribute of hundreds of fresh flowers still being laid out at the memorial arch.

In 2005, Barefoot Gen and the sequel were released in the UK on DVD from Optimum Asia (at top), in Japanese with English subtitles. The 4:3 aspect ratio looks accurate. They're now on DVD in the USA as well, from Geneon (above). Through the efforts of Project Gen, the manga has also been widely translated and published. More about the original manga, and some pages from it, here, with spoilers.

I've not seen the three live-action Japanese films made in the 1970s (directed by Tengo Yamada), but here are some screengrabs from the first film, made in 1976 .

The 2007 two-part TV series expands on the events portrayed in the anime, including more about Gen's older brother joining the army. Only available with English subtitles on this Hong Kong DVD (from Amazon USA here).

Of course now the Japanese nightmare of deadly invisible radiation is no longer confined to World War 2. The recent earthquake damage to the nuclear power station at Fukushima has again spread radioactivity into the ground, the sea and the air, with little information as to where it is and what the effects can be, short term or long term. It's like a slow-motion replay of the aftermath of Hiroshima.

Keiji Nakazawa is finding a new audience as he attempts to dispel the myths about the effects of radiation. After a lifetime of campaigning against the use of nuclear power and weapons, he's also currently participating in a new documentary. News article and a recent photo of Keiji.

DAMNATION ALLEY (1977) - now on DVD and Blu-ray

2011-08-27T11:44:00.003+01:00

DAMNATION ALLEY

(1977, USA)

Daft but very watchable post-nuclear road movie...

Finally this apocalyptic sci-fi adventure gets a proper home video release. It's new to DVD and Blu-ray. I last reviewed this in 2008 after watching a pan-and-scan VHS to refresh my memory of the original cinema experience... This updated review now reflects the 2.35 widescreen Blu-ray from Shout! Factory.

The story opens with a frankly upsetting vision of how easy and brief a nuclear apocalypse could be. A rather realistic depiction from the viewpoint of a nuclear missile bunker, the major cities of America are wiped off a huge viewscreen one by one. America is blitzed into a desert wasteland - using footage of actual test launchings and explosions. In amongst the military is a speechless Murray Hamilton (the mayor in Jaws), strangely uncredited. The entire Earth atmosphere is sabotaged and the survivors eventually emerge into a desert-ravaged landscape where the skies are cosmically confused.

After another rather unnecessary disaster (reliant on even more stock footage), four men are left to try and reach other survivors. The only radio signal they can find is in Albany, New York (what made them so bomb-proof?). The only obstacles are giant insects, mutant hillbillies and a touch of bad weather...

These hazards are no more convincing than you'd find in 1950s' B-movies, especially the giant scorpions. This was released after Star Wars, so the special effects already looked inferior in the cinema. But watching it now, with a world of beserk weather, it somehow rings true today, depicting violent electrical storms, massive twisters and a sky that’s all wrong.

They travel in specially-fitted trucks which have impressive all-terrain triple-wheel assemblies and plenty of firepower. (But the stretchy bit in the middle looks less than radiation proof). They cross the continent via a radiation-free corridor through Las Vegas, Detroit and Salt Lake City.

I really enjoyed seeing this again, it was certainly memorable (as the DVD cover promises) while I'd completely forgotten the supporting feature I saw with it in the UK, Thunder and Lightning, a car crash comedy starring David Carradine and Kate Jackson.

It's good to see Jan-Michael Vincent when his movie career was peaking. He looks even hotter than token female co-star Dominique Sanda (1900, Steppenwolf). Top-billed and about to appear in Hooper and Big Wednesday the following year, he of course returned to TV with the hit series Airwolf.

George Peppard’s career was halfway between two hit TV series Banacek and The A-Team and yes, he has his trademark big fat cigar, as well as an ungainly southern state accent and a Nazi moustache.

Vincent’s drop-out sidekick (above) is the late Paul Winfield, who scored many major sci-fi movies in his long acting career – Star Trek II, The Terminator, and Mars Attacks! Not to mention the Haiti zombie movie, The Serpent and the Rainbow.

While watching the excellent Little Children (2006), I realised that I hadn't seen Jackie Earle Haley in a film since Damnation Alley, thirty years earlier. After he’d given up on acting for a spell, he landed and nailed an award-winning performance, opposite Kate Winslet, as a sex offender trying to return to suburban society. His career is now completely back on track. In 1978, I didn’t know who he was, having deliberately missed the three Bad News Bears films that had briefly made him a child star.

The novel was drastically revamped for the screen - the producer himself admits to being over-ambitious for the budget. In Roger Zelazny’s original story, the mission was to get radiation medication to Boston, like a futuristic Wages of Fear. Only law-breaker, ex-biker Hell Tanner knows the passable, less-radiated routes. He sets off in a radiation-proof truck and encounters giant bats, snakes, gila monsters, butterflies and biker warriors of the wasteland. So when I first saw the film in a UK cinema in 1978, my hopes of seeing some giant monsters were high. Instead, I got rather unconvincing scorpions and hungry cockroaches (dialogue, “the town has been infested with killer cockroaches”).

The scorpion and cockroach scenes were handled by micro-photography expert Ken Middleham, on whose work the 'insect-attack' movies Bug (1975) and Phase IV depended. The poorest effects are the use of floating models, which looked poor at the time, in 1978.

More successful are the extensive and complex optical effects used to replace every view of the sky in the many exterior scenes. Tracking the laser-lit fluorescent FX to the long, loose camera moves is very impressive for the time, and unsurprisingly not perfect.

Best of all is the full-size Landmaster truck built by Dean Jeffries, who’s not had enough credit for his work. It's really good to see him interviewed in new Shout! Factory DVD extras (also on their Death Race 2000). Besides behind-the-wheel stuntwork, he built movie vehicles like the James Bond’s moon buggy in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and helped design the Monkeemobile and the iconic Adam West TV Batmobile. His name is spelt two ways on IMDB (also as Dean Jefferies) halving and seperating his list of credits.

The bombastic, synthesizer-heavy soundtrack was composed by Jerry Goldsmith, a plus to any film, but was never released as an album. This is teased around the menus and featurettes on the Blu-ray so it must still exist somewhere in very good condition.

With huge holes in logic, this isn’t a movie to take too seriously after the intial catastrophe. But it’s enjoyable for many reasons and an early post-apocalypse road movie, just before Mad Max inspired so many others.

Damnation Alley looked lousy and confusing on VHS. Only 2.35 widescreen will do any viewing justice. The desert photography of the Landmaster trucking across the desert (including a glimpse of Meteor Crater) are standout visuals.

It was originally released in so-called ‘Sound 360’, which equated to a 6-channel stereo surround system for selected movie theatres. I'm guessing these tracks were still available to create Blu-ray's optional 5.1 and 7.1 remixes.

As always, DVD Beaver have the best Blu-Ray review and (ahem) screengrabs of what high quality to expect.

The star of the show, the amazing Landmaster vehicle, has its own webpage...

(This is the updated version of my 2008 review).

THE BLACK HOLE (1979) expanded soundtrack debuts on CD

2011-08-25T15:34:00.003+01:00

Intrada are about to release a special edition of the late John Barry's soundtrack to the outer space adventure The Black Hole (1979). Remastered from the original master tapes, this also promises to be the entire score, adding an extra twenty minutes of unreleased music. This is also the score's official debut on CD, see Soundtrack Collector for details.

Music samples, more details and CD ordering information on Intrada's website here.

I only wrote about John Barry's music for outer space a few weeks ago, a recurring and favourite theme of mine in all his work. The score for The Black Hole is some of John Barry's best work, regardless of what you think of the movie. Personally, the music has helped transport me into the dark, futuristic adventure. It's fun to see Disney taking some risks, killing off characters (that aren't parents) and even getting metaphysical...

My full review of The Black Hole is here.

Hopefully someone will remaster the movie soon. It looks very poor on "Disney DVD"...

(The above Japanese poster was teleported from the supreme sci-fi nostalgists' blog... Space: 1970.)

ONE MILLION B.C. (1940) - the original Tumak and Luana

2011-08-19T06:13:00.006+01:00

ONE MILLION B.C.

(1940, USA, MAN AND HIS MATE)

Trend-setting rarity not on DVD, later remade by Hammer Films

I've always enjoyed dinosaur movies, but ones with good dinosaur effects are hard to find. This mixes great special effects with rubbish ones. It also set a blueprint for caveman movies for decades to come. The script was closely remade by Hammer Films in 1966, the format repeated by When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth.

King Kong (1933) and The Lost World (1925) mixed humans and dinosaurs by having the animals survive for millions of years. This story reverses the format by pushing humans back into the same timeframe as dinosaurs, a huge historical inaccuracy that the film makers ignored, mixing in mammoths and other large mammals as well.

Until Jurassic Park, the most convincing dinosaurs had always been realised with stop-motion animation. But One Million BC ignores this approach, making it a weak link between King Kong (1933) and the remake One Million Years BC (1966) which had special effects by animation giants Willis O'Brien and his protegee Ray Harryhausen respectively. The special effects are still strong enough to make it worth seeing. The modelwork for the earthquakes and erupting volcano are exceptional. Some ingenious composite work also provides some shocks.

'Paste-up' composite publicity photo of a giant iguana somehow walking on two legs

The 'dinosaurs' are depicted with every visual effect that has never ever realistically worked. One Million BC has a crocodile with a dimetrodon sail fin stuck on its back, and a pig dressed up as a triceratops! Oh, and a pangolin with some rubber horns on its head - little more than a visit to a pets' fancy dress store. This looks silly, but the technique endured into the 1960s. Irwin Allen used dress-up animals extensively for his 1960 remake of The Lost World. Harryhausen even used one at the start of One Million Years BC. Visual effects like these made the basic animatronics in The Land That Time Forgot (1975) look like an improvement.

But it gets worse - the animals are filmed fighting each other. There are some very nasty scenes of a crocodile and a gila monster chomping on each other and trying to twist off limbs. Exotic lizards are tipped through crumbling sets, buried in rubble, and surrounded by fire. There's a bear killing a snake and an almost dead gila monster pumping blood. Plus an astonishing shot of a cave/stuntman braining a charging bull with a staff. It's not quite Cannibal Holocaust but it's halfway there. This animal cruelty is apparently the main reason that this film has disappeared from home video. It used to play occasionally on British TV, sometimes under the alternate title Man and his Mate.

Least convincing is a disastrous 'man in a T Rex suit' which again looks like fancy dress. They knew it wasn't going to work and the suit is only seen in distant long-shots or hidden by really thick foliage. It's the scene in the remake where Tumak saves the girl up a tree in the village of the shell people. I've seen worse 'man in a T Rex suit' movies, but the best is easily The Land Unknown (1957).

The story, characters and dialogue were closely copied for the Hammer remake, though there's more soppiness here as the cave people all learn how to get along. A major difference is that the volcano eruption isn't the climax in the original. Victor Mature and Carole Landis seem to playing to a pre-teen audience, while Lon Chaney Jr milks pathos out of the deposed chief of the rock tribe, in a rare, disfigured make-up.

Without Harryhausen's dinosaurs and Raquel Welch's everything, this is a dry-run for a great remake with better dinosaurs.

Never on DVD, but it's all on YouTube, in segments...

DOWNFALL (2004) - the horror of Hitler

2011-08-13T19:53:00.003+01:00

DOWNFALL

(2004, Germany, DER UNTERGANG)

Who knew Hitler could be a YouTube hit? The stream of variations of 'Hitler is angry' and 'Hitler is informed...' recycles movie clips, but rewrites the English subtitles so that the Dictator appears to vent about lightweight grievances of modern life, ranging from iPads to football transfers. These are actually scenes from the 2004 film Downfall, usually when Hitler blames his staff for not informing him how much his troops have lost ground to the Allied forces.

I was prompted to see Downfall when I realised that producer/writer Bernd Eichinger and actor Bruno Ganz had worked together on this before The Baader-Meinhof Complex (2008). I also wanted to see if the YouTube phenomenon might affect newcomers to the movie. I found it engrossing, but also a doom-laden, claustrophobic experience. While I've always sought out horror movies, recently I'm finding well-made reality-based dramas far more horrifying than fiction.

It's not the first portrayal of Hitler's final days. There's been Hitler: The Last Ten Days starring Alec Guinness, and The Bunker starring Anthony Hopkins. It's a temptingly dramatic story. The dictator's death signalled the end of the Third Reich, Nazi Germany and World War II in Europe (Japan held out a little longer). Downfall is the latest version, and the first to be made by Germany, with the added benefit of a new and thorough eyewitness account from Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge.

The story uses her as a central thread to the narrative, from when she first joins Hitler's staff in his reinforced concrete bunker. Crucially, Junge worked with him as the Russian forces finally approached the hideout, and were simultaneously closing in on Berlin. As commander of Germany's forces, Hitler refuses to surrender even though it means the continuing deaths of his outnumbered troops, as well as the civilians left in the city. Despite the desperate situation, his loyalty to his own extreme ideals threaten to drag everyone down with him.

Hitler is undeniably a complex role to portray in any depth, with the added challenge of having to distance the portrayal from every comedian's manic impression. Previous adaptions usually had actors speaking English with a German accent. But Downfall benefits from everyone speaking German. Bruno Ganz (Harker in Herzog's Nosferatu, lead angel in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire) even had access to a rare recording of Hitler in conversation, in order to accurately mimic his ordinary speaking voice.

Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge, had remained silent about the events she witnessed for much of her life. In her last years she helped write an account and appear in a documentary about her time with Hitler, when she was living and working in close quarters with him and transcribing his thoughts, right until his final testimonies.

The publicity emphasised this new account, though Downfall uses several other accounts, adding perspectives on what was happening elsewhere, particularly in Berlin. The production was controversial because the German people were still very afraid that any realistic portrayal of Hitler would show him as a human being, and therefore sympathetically.

But of course he was human, and Downfall dares to show the Hitler we don't usually see. Not grainy footage of of him shouting and gesticulating his speeches to the troops. Here he can be quiet, considerate, good with children and animals... But it's carefully presented as a paradox, showing that he was capable of compassion, even though he abhorred it as a weakness in anyone else. Under increasing pressure, his beliefs look like insanity to even his most trusted believers.

Downfall isn't just about historical events, but also an insight into the mentality of the Nazi leadership, and the strength of loyalty that enabled them to commit their crimes. Their lack of compassion extended to German civilians and their own families. The last nightmarish events in the bunker, on Chancellor and Frau Goebbels' final day, are even more as horrifying than the carnage on the streets of Berlin.

I started watching with a sense of dread, that reminded me of Titanic. I knew roughly what was going to happen eventually, and dreaded when and what I was going to see. The two and a half hours running time was a fascinating education and a haunting experience. The grim siege atmosphere where people coldly contemplate suicide over dinner. The horrible tension that the killing will continue as long as he's alive.

It's useful to know a little about the end of World War II beforehand, as there's little historical context included for newcomers. Knowing a little from a few documentaries didn't ready me for how powerful it was as a drama, rather than simply summarised in a voiceover.

The YouTube spoofs didn't spoil the film as I feared. I was already completely drawn into the story by the time that scene appeared. Don't get me wrong, I find them very funny. But I'm conscious that we only see Hitler played for laughs now - like when he pops up in Family Guy. He shouldn't just be a comedy character. Inglorious Basterds was a welcome change, to see a more visceral and emotional response to him.

The narrative is careful to show pivotal events from the perspectives of people we know survived the war to tell their story. In most scenes, it's carefully established which witness was around. I'm in awe of Bernd Eichinger's script having to distilling so much information, while including so much detail. It was a shock back in January when Eichinger passed away at the age of 61. Check out his production credits, you might be surprised at how many of his films you know.

Bruno Ganz's performance as Hitler is easily a career best. But there are many exceptional performances, especially from the women: Juliane Köhler as Eva Braun, and Corinna Harfouch as Magda Goebbels have extremely difficult scenes, but are utterly convincing. Alexandra Maria Lara, as Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge, has the central role, though is maybe a little too wise in some of her reactions.

The UK blu-ray from Momentum shows up a lot of film grain, but the 5.1 soundtrack adds to the feeling of being surrounded by a constant enemy bombardment. There are commentary tracks, making-of featurettes, some very interesting interviews with the main cast and an insightful summary from Traudl Junge's biographer of how her full story came to light.

I then watched the documentary Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary (2002) as a test of Downfall's accuracy. It consists solely of filmed interviews with Junge, shortly before she passed away. It was a surprise to see a couple of contradictions between her accounts and some of the events in Downfall, like how she escapes, which proved that it had exercised some dramatic license. But I was very impressed at how the accurately the film portrayed the atmosphere that Junge describes in the final days in the bunker.

Junge talks about her life after the war, apparently dismayed how she was so close to Hitler for so long, while ignorant of what he'd been implementing. Her testimony is fascinating and not all of her stories are dramatised in Downfall, including an account of how his own men tried to kill Hitler (dramatised in Valkyrie) which actually ends up as funny.

Publicity for Downfall says this was the first dramatisation of Hitler in a German film. But interestingly there was another German-language portrayal, which Traudl Junge also advised on, in 1955. Der Letzte Akt (The Last Ten Days) was directed by the G.W. Pabst (Pandora's Box), but made in Austria. I can't find this available anywhere though.

Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary was shown as part of BBC's Storyville documentary strand, and has been on DVD in the UK and US. Melissa Muller's book, written with Traudl Junge, is still widely available.

John Barry's soundtracks - atmosphere for outer space

2011-07-31T22:56:00.002+01:00

My life in space with the music of John Barry

I've regularly listened to John Barry's soundtracks for many years, but when I'd heard he'd died, on January 30th, I stopped listening to his music. The news was a shock, out of the blue. I didn't want to be reminded that there'd be no more of the music I've grown up with. It's taken a few months for me to start again and I just wanted to talk a little about my very favourite of his tracks.

He scored outer space like no-one else. Previous sci-fi movies set in space famously used classical music (2001: A Space Odyssey) or electronic atmospherics (Forbidden Planet), but John Barry's take was more about awe, mystery and trepidation, retaining the danger of humanity living outside the atmosphere.

As long as I can remember going to the cinema, we're talking mid-1960s, I remembered his music. My Mum took me to see a re-release of You Only Live Twice (1967) in 1968. At the start of the story, a US space rocket is followed by another. The surprise of it opening up, then swallowing the other, never left me. The track 'Capsule In Space' describes danger approaching during a space walk. The score accompanies the action perfectly, but also works as a stand-alone piece. The experience in the cinema was enough to put me off space travel, the same way Jaws put me off swimming in the sea.

I was then old enough to see Bond films in the cinema during their first run. I especially loved the exciting music to the ski chases in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). So much so that I'd concentrate on carrying the music away with me in my head. I did this for years until I could afford or find the soundtracks.

I was delighted there was another scene set in space in Diamonds Are Forever(1971), during the launch of a killer satellite. After several stage separations, the beautiful weapon deploys, then begins picking off targets around the world. The tempo of the space march '007 and Counting' matches its graceful motion, alternated with the horrendous power it unleashes.

The theme tune to Diamonds Are Forever really imprinted on me. The impact of Barry's James Bond theme songs were combined in the cinema with the most lavish, widescreen 'pop videos'. Tom Jones, Nancy Sinatra and Shirley Bassey singing top ten hits with huge, naked, pop art visuals by Maurice Binder. The music and the images were also associated with the anticipation of two hours of the most exciting films of the time. For many years after their release, Bond movies weren't seen outside of cinemas, being continually re-released until TV eventually paid huge sums to show them, Dr No (1962) wasn't shown on TV in the UK until 1975. I had the chance to see each one several times in the cinema - the music was part of the attraction of seeing them again.

The soundtracks never stayed in circulation on vinyl for very long. If you were lucky, they'd maybe appear when a new format, like music cassettes, were introduced. The search for the albums missing from my paltry collection kept me hunting through record shops looking for secondhand records or cassettes. For many years, this James Bond Collection double-album (above) was the only Bond music to be reissued. A life-saving compilation of cues from the original soundtracks, at a time when there were dozens of weedy soundalike albums. Geoff Love cover versions weren't a sufficient alternative to the real deal.

I'd even record my favourite sections off the TV, when no soundtrack was available. I waited decades for many missing cues to finally appear when the expanded James Bond soundtracks were released in 2003.

But meanwhile, John Barry made more space music. After Star Wars (1977)became a big box office hit, he composed for three more outer space movies, around 1979. But he remained true to his earlier approach of danger and mystery.

Moonraker put James Bond in his very own Space Shuttle. 'Flight Into Space' describes the tension of the launch in the familiar march motif. Again Barry describes the wonder of being in space and the surprises revealed out there.

Another track 'Space Lazer Battle' anticipated some of the aural effects he'd use in The Black Hole. The scene of astronauts fighting in zero gravity is far more convincingly done than the one in The Green Slime. While Moonraker is far from the best Bond movie, I've enjoyed the soundtrack literally hundred of times.

The main title to The Black Hole (1979) makes it sound almost like a sea-going adventure. Again there's a foreboding tone accenting the hazards, particularly from the black hole itself. This time, the whole album accompanies deep space. Barry's music has to carry the entire climax of the film with the track 'Into The Hole', using increasingly mysterioso effects.

Lastly, I'll even mention Starcrash (1978). John Barry sometimes scored movies he later regretted. It may be embarrassingly (though enjoyably) awful, but tracks like 'Launch Adrift' are particularly beautiful. While the album isn't as consistent as the other two, it's still John Barry in his prime.

Among his many soundtracks, I notice a few tracks that seem out of step with the rest of the score - otherworldly moments reminding me of his 'space music'. In Beat Girl (1960) the track '2000 AD', in Midnight Cowboy (1969) there's 'Science Fiction'. In the superb score to King Kong (1976), the haunting 'Full Moon Domain'. And in Dances With Wolves (1990), 'Stands With A Fist remembers'.

Barry's last non-soundtrack albums The Beyondness of Things (1999) and Eternal Echoes (2001) continued with echoes of the lost 'wild' west from Dances With Wolves. In both, there's a sense that he's summing up his life and saying farewell. But I had no idea that it was going to be so soon.

Of course there's much more to his music, and no matter what you think of the movies, here are my favourite John Barry soundtracks to recommend to you:

Some exceptional James Bond soundtracks I haven't mentioned, From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965) and The Living Daylights (1987). They set high standards for how to make action even more exciting.

The Ipcress File (1965) accompanied the low-key flipside of spying in the Cold War. This soundtrack propelled Barry into the A-list of soundtrack composers.

Deadfall (1968) woke me up to his being superb music, not just a backing track. The fourteen minute 'Romance for Guitar and Orchestra' at the heart of Deadfall is one of Barry's greatest achievements. Working with director Bryan Forbes, the track had to be woven into the film, being performed in front of the camera, as well as scoring the action of the robbery scene that intercuts with the concert hall footage.

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland (1972) is a rare musical from Barry. With songs as beautiful as they are strange.

King Kong (1976) is one of his very best scores, again to be enjoyed many more times than the movie.

My playlists of his music are made up of my very favourite tracks, cherry-picked from his albums. In all, they're still over 14 hours long. Some of it represents forty years of listening... and counting.

STAR WARS (1977) vs THE DAM BUSTERS (1955) - raiders of the movie archives

2011-07-24T13:09:00.004+01:00

The extensive inspiration for Star Wars' first Death Star mission...

I've just re-watched two WWII movies, 633 Squadron (1964) and The Dam Busters (1955), much-loved in the UK after regular TV showings for years of Saturday nights during the 1970s and 80s. It's now an easy observation that the finales for both films provided inspiration for the climax of the first Star Wars (1977), which should really make them more popular now. But looking around in books, magazines and websites dedicated to Star Wars, there's little or no mention of them.

I loved Star Wars when it came out, and pounced on anything written about it at the time. I was surprised that the 1977 Star Wars 'Official Collectors Edition' magazine started with 16 pages of acknowledged influences on the themes and designs of the first Star Wars film. There are photos from the original Flash Gordon serials, The Mark of Zorro, True Grit, Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan and dozens more American productions, plus the robot Maria from Germany's Metropolis. I didn't realise how many films hadn't been mentioned.

I've rewatched The Making of Star Wars ...as told by C-3PO and R2-D2 documentary (released on VHS and laserdisc, and coming soon to the Blu-ray special edition), free TV publicity for the initial movie release. It briefly shows airplane footage from a black-and-white American movie (Jet Pilot?). The voiceover is, "The adventure into which Luke Skywalker is thrust is derived from World War II dogfights as shown in Hollywood films...". My gripe now is that half the movies actually referenced for the outer space battles weren't made in Hollywood, but in Britain (as was much of Star Wars). Like the magazine, this documentary parades clips from similar American movies of the 1940s, of swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks, swordfighting Zorro and cliffhanging Flash Gordon.

This casual mention of dogfights, often abbreviated to 'World War II footage' fails to describe an extensive echoing of scenes from a few specific movies, re-using visual composition of unique shots, their blocking, lighting, and even dialogue. While many directors would screen movies to their crew before a production to establish mood or tone, here we have other people's movies being cut up and used as moving storyboards. Not just black-and-white war movies, but big-budget, widescreen colour classics. Of course, this 'referencing' didn't happen in isolation.

The Dam Busters targeting computer is made of wood.

The young directors who ruled Hollywood in the 1970s, 'The Movie Brats', all came from film schools. They'd studied and dissected classic cinema, sometimes shot-by-shot, heralding an era of movie-making full of intensive homage. Spielberg used camera techniques he'd watched, famously using Hitchcock's 'reverse zoom' from Vertigo for a very different use in Jaws. Brian De Palma would riff on Hitchcock's plots (Obsession, also derived from Vertigo), as well as camera technique.

The Brats weren't above remakes, like Scorsese's Cape Fear, De Palma's Scarface and Spielberg's Always. Earlier on, George Lucas wanted to adapt Flash Gordon (previously filmed as three cliffhanger serials in 1936, 1938, 1940) but discovered the rights had already been purchased (and eventually used for De Laurentiis' 1980 movie). Instead, he wrote Star Wars in the same vein, exploring the same inspirations as Alex Raymond's original comic strip. But that story only explains the space fantasy setting.

The extended climax of the first Star Wars was a dazzling technical and emotional achievement, key to the box-office success of the film and ensuring the birth of a franchise. Despite the assault on the Death Star being in outer space, the X-Wings and TIE fighters glide like airplanes, grouping in battle formations like WWII fighter planes. The mission is to fly into and along the Death Star trench for a remote chance at hitting a well-defended target. This was also the climax of The Dam Busters (1955) and 633 Squadron (1964). The squadrons in The Dam Busters have to fly low over a mountain reservoir to hit a specifically pinpointed weak spot on a dam (to flood enemy factories). 633 Squadron fly low along a narrow, high-sided, heavily-defended fjord to target a specialised fuel factory. Both targets are far more logical than the gaping flaw in the design of the Death Star. The suspense and excitement generated by these scenes are the reason so many elements have been re-used in the climax of Star Wars.

But scarce mention has been made of these movies or how they were used. Here's the best I could find. Joe Johnston (director of The Rocketeer and Captain America) was a visual effects illustrator for Industrial Light & Magic, interviewed in Cinefantastique. He talks about storyboarding the final battle for Star Wars in 1975, using 16mm footage that Lucas had compiled "from World War II dogfights". "A lot of it was from Battle of Britain. Some of it was from Bridges At Toko-Ri, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Jet Pilot, 633 Squadron and some of it was actual combat footage. Quite a bit of footage came from the movie Dam Busters." (1978 Cinefantastique double issue - vol 6. no. 4/vol. 7 no. 1, p.78),

In American Cinematographer magazine (July 1977), there's an example of a storyboard 'conversion' on page 744 - a sketch of a shot of two planes diving(which looks like it's from Tora! Tora! Tora!) shown next to the equivalent sketch of an X-wing and a TIE fighter in the same positions, same shot composition, the horizon mapped onto the edge of the Death Star. This would then be the storyboard for the visual effects department.

Usually there are only few movies that get name-checks when the subject is raised, even in the weightiest books on the making of the film. In the George Lucas Interviews (edited by Sally Kline), Lucas refers to a few of the same movies as Joe Johnston "plus about 45 other movies". To me that's a very poor tribute to the film-makers who unwittingly provided blueprints for one of the most famous scenes in movie history.

Common knowledge is now that "World War II footage" was used, when it should be 'World War II movie footage'. Personally, the impression I'd always had was that they'd just used combat footage. But I hadn't realised there's more than a logistical similarity between the missions in The Dam Busters and 633 Squadron and the Death Star run. Using combat footage as technical reference material would add to the realism. Using other movies' special effects shots and set-ups is unimaginative.

Now I'm not going to micro-analyse all the similarities for you, and I'm surprised no-one else has put a slew of parallel shot breakdowns of the Death Star trench scene online, with a ton of screen captures best-guessing how these films were used. (Not to mention the dialogue also lifted from The Dam Busters). It's obviously extensive, and just as innovative as it is cheeky. But I'm not going to devote any more time proving the point.

The three directors of Airplane! (1980) Jim Abrahams, Jerry and David Zucker, all referred to Zero Hour! (1957) because they'd never directed a movie before. Besides spoofing the plot and the dialogue, they even looked at the film to choose camera see-ups. The difference here is that they got nervous and bought the rights to Zero Hour! in case they were later accused of plagiarism (they tell this story on the Airplane! DVD commentary track).

Cinema is rife with homage, but it seems that Spielberg and Scorsese talk about their influences and 'quotes' freely and often. Quentin Tarantino energetically diverts fans back to his beloved grindhouse classics. But no-one is leading Star Wars followers to all of its major inspirations.

The proof is in the referenced films themselves. I'd encourage you to watch a few in Joe Johnston's list and play spot-the-homage for yourself! If you're going to steal, steal from the best.

THE DAM BUSTERS

(1955, UK)

I'm looking forward to seeing Tora! Tora! Tora! and Battle of Britain again on Blu-ray, in search of further quotations, but it was The Dam Busters and 633 Squadron that reminded me of all this. In both films, the whole story is devoted to the final mission.

The Dam Busters aims for historical accuracy, describing inventor Barnes Wallis' own determination to persuade the military that his eccentric-looking 'bouncing bomb' could successfully be deployed. It's a story of perseverance and also a tribute to the airmen who practised for and flew the final mission. Especially those who didn't return. Of course it's not a thrill-machine like Star Wars, but a dramatic story heightened by the fact that it happened for real. Slightly surprising that a major film of the era was made in black-and-white and aspected 1.33, but probably because it wanted to intercut actual wartime footage of the bombing test runs.

It stars Michael Redgrave (Vanessa's dad), probably better known to you from Dead Of Night (1945) and Richard Todd (Asylum, House of the Long Shadows). Fun to see a young Robert Shaw (Jaws, From Russia With Love) so early in his career. Director Michael Anderson later made Logan's Run and Orca - The Killer Whale!

See also DVD Beaver for a thorough and informative review of The Dam Busters on Blu-ray, with their persuasive DVD/Blu comparison screenshots.

633 SQUADRON

(1964, UK)

633 Squadron has a fast-paced, action-oriented story, but felt like a pumped-up remake of The Dam Busters in widescreen and colour. There's gun battles, nasty Nazis and much more aerial action. Their target, at the end of a long sea inlet (flat base of the water, high steep mountains to the sides) is as close to a natural double for the Death Star trench as you could wish for (until Firefox came along). There's less drama, more melodrama. Less emotion, more shouting. It's an exciting, easy watch, but the modelwork is unbelievably small in scale, something that barely registered when I used to watch it on a small TV. Cliff Robertson (Obsession, Spider-man) and George Chakiris (West Side Story) star.

These films, Tora! Tora! Tora! (an epic reconstruction of the attack on Pearl Harbor) and Battle of Britain were all made when there were still enough operational aircraft around not to have to rely on special effects. They all have really impressive scenes of restored World War II airplanes taking off and in flight. Battle of Britain even hazardously recreated aerial dogfights between swarms of British and German planes.

I'm now wondering if Peter Jackson's upcoming remake of The Dam Busters will bring us full circle and look like Star Wars...

Finally, please check out the hairstyle of actress Ursula Jeans, who plays Barnes Wallis' wife in The Dam Busters. Nice buns!