OSS 117: LOST IN RIO (2009) - a very welcome sequel

OSS 117: LOST IN RIO
(2009, France, OSS 117: Rio Ne Repond Plus...)

France's most oblivious secret agent in the summer of love...

This is last year's sequel to the highly enjoyable OSS 117: Cairo - Nest of Spies (2006). OSS 117 was originally a serious character in books and films, a French secret agent who first appeared in 1949. These new films spoof the old OSS 117, James Bond films and, this time, even Hitchcock.


The year is 1968. Once again, France's best secret agent, (the best at vanity and pig-headedness) is on the case. Besides an important mission to Rio to deal with Nazi blackmailers, he's also being targeted by Chinese assassins. Going undercover to team up with the American and Israeli secret services, tracking the blackmailer leads him around some of Brazil's most spectacular tourist spots.


The fun begins from the very first second, with a spoof of the late 1960s use of complicated split screen images (think Grand Prix or The Thomas Crown Affair), filling the widescreen frame with a brilliantly co-ordinated overuse of parallel action. If you think you know split-screen from Brian De Palma films, when the image is neatly divided down the middle, prepare to be dazzled.

While I thought there wasn't quite enough action in the first film, there's no shortage of gun battles here. While the hail of bullets manage to miss our hero, he never, ever empties his clip.


OSS 117's ignorance of world politics and history missed the point of the entire Muslim nation while he was in Cairo. Now working with Israeli agents, it's similarly excruciating as he, gulp, only seems to remember the Nazis because of Hitler, rather than their treatment of Jewish people. Added to this are his complete insensitivity to the equality of women, the hippy revolution or innocent bystanders. There are very few back references to the first film and thankfully few repeated gags from the first film.

With advanced digital compositing, it's hard to say how much of Lost In Rio was actually shot there. But I recognised a few nods to the Bond film Moonraker (1979) which used some of the same Brazilian locations. Jean-Paul Belmondo's That Man From Rio (1964) may have been a reference too, which also visited Brasilia, while the city was still being built.

Thankfully OSS 117 gets to dance again. Once more, actor/comedian Jean DuJardin is effortlessly funny, and I'd like to see more of his films, comedy or otherwise, but none seem to be subtitled anywhere else in the world.

I also really liked the soundtrack, a very catchy mix of contemporary crooners and modern lounge pastiche, incorporating nods to John Barry, Henry Mancini and Bernard Herrmann. I can't find it on CD anywhere, but can be downloaded from iTunes and Amazon.

While a third film is supposed to be in production at the moment, OSS 117: Lost In Rio is out now on DVD in the UK from ICA Films, and coming soon to the US. The region 2 DVD only has English subtitles, with no dubbed audio track.


Here's the movie trailer on YouTube...

OSS 117: CAIRO, NEST OF SPIES (2006) - uncanny recreation of sixties' spy movies

OSS 117: CAIRO, NEST OF SPIES
(2006, France)

A retro spy spoof with modern targets
At first glance this looked like a revival release of a lost French spy film that I'd never heard of. It turned out to be a recent spoof that looks back affectionately at the 1960's spy scene. Sort of like Austin Powers, but with some humour lost in translation, so don't expect the same amount of comedy, broad or otherwise. It's still laugh-out-loud funny in places, but I'd liked to have understood more of the verbal gags and the ironic jokes about France's history.
The character of OSS 117 is actually from a long series of spy novels that started before Ian Fleming typed the number 007. They've been adapted (seriously) as movies in the fifties and sixties, with actors like John Gavin (Psycho) and Kerwin Matthews (Seventh Voyage of Sinbad) in the title role.

What makes this new incarnation definitely worth seeing are the standout performance of Jean Dujardin, and the meticulous recreation of the look of 1960s celluloid. While Austin Powers gave lip service to sixties pop culture, it mostly joked about the fashions and the technology, but never looking at all authentic. OSS 117 at times made me think I was looking at a lost Sean Connery Bond film.
Though rubber-faced, Dujardin even resembles Connery at times, helped by wearing copies of many of his early Bond outfits. I was also reminded that James Bond's 'eyebrow acting' began long before Roger Moore took the role. Dujardin is astonishingly good at portraying the swaggering, self-centred bighead who thinks he's irresistible to women. Connery's clothes, hair, and also 'catlike' movement are meticulously copied and spoofed.

The spy's occasional detective work is offset by his obsession with his appearance and... his chickens. My favourite moment is when his glamorous accomplice has to drag him off the dancefloor to do some work because he's enjoying himself too much.

The story is crucially set in Cairo in 1955. Agent OSS 117 has been sent to solve the murder of his best friend (whose very name sends him into flashbacks to happier times), as well as sort out the problems of the Middle East (just as the 'Suez crisis' threatened to ignite another World War). He easily gets sidetracked by everything unimportant, even taking more time over his cover, the chicken-breeding business, than the job in hand. In the style of incompetent detectives, he still accidentally impresses his superiors.

His complete ignorance of life outside France makes him completely unsuitable as an international secret agent. His mission needs him to be knowledgeable about local customs and blend in with the mostly Muslim population. This of course highlights how little has changed with attitudes and indeed foreign policies.

The absolutely authentic look of course includes fashion and music, but with an obsessive amount of paddleball, depicted as a fad of the same popularity as skateboarding!

I'd liked to have seen more action, more fighting and maybe a car chase - all par for the genre. But the pleasant surprise that I didn't expect was a skeleton graveyard - a beautifully creepy scene that seemed to reference the 1968 Japanese horror The Living Skeleton! Am I reaching?

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, was popular enough to spawn a sequel, OSS 117: Lost In Rio (2009), with yet another in the works. The bare-bones UK DVD (from ICA) is nicely presented in 2.35 anamorphic widescreen but the English subtitles are rather large for the job. But they're the only translation - there's no dubbed Enlgish audio track.

English release trailer on YouTube...

This next trailer, for a 1964 OSS 117 movie (starring Kerwin Matthews), appears to be a direct influence on Jean-Paul Belmondo's superb spy spoof Le Magnifique (1973).

(Jean DuJardin returned in an OSS 177 sequel in 2009 - review here!)

LE MAGNIFIQUE (1973) super spy spoof... with splatter!

LE MAGNIFIQUE
or HOW TO DESTROY THE REPUTATION OF THE GREATEST SECRET AGENT
(1973, France/Italy)

I was and am a fan of the pulp novels of Doc Savage - Kenneth Robeson's 200-novel odyssey. I was and am a fan of the films of George Pal - having been awed and amazed by The Time Machine (1960), War of the Worlds (1953) and When Worlds Collide (1950) on TV in the 1970s. So when Doc Savage - The Man of Bronze was released, produced by Pal, I had to see it! (I'm talking London, in 1975.)

Astutely tuned in to the tongue-in-cheek nature of this whiter-than-white hero movie, the British distributor paired the film with this French spoof of James Bond movies. I’d seen the star, Jean-Paul Belmondo in thrillers on TV (like The Burglars) and knew that he was an actor who performed many of his own stunts, from library books on the history of stuntwork. It was because of Belmondo’s range as a both a dramatic actor and a comedian, a glamorous star and a stuntman, that made him huge in France and even some of his movies were even dubbed for international release.

Le Magnifique, ambitiously retitled How To Destroy the Reputation of the Greatest Secret Agent, is a real treat - there's nothing else like it. Besides spoofing the smugness of the Bond image (the guy's so vain he carries a comb in his swimsuit), the gadgets, the casual violence, the way he woos women… it’s also one of those films that shows the fictional creation at the mercy of its author - as we cut from super-smooth Bob Saint-Clair enjoying the sun (and Jacqueline Bisset), to the struggling writer Francois in his tiny Paris apartment, trapped only by pouring rain. His alter-ego can shoot four men out of a tree with a single bullet, while he can’t even get his electricity fixed. But as a hapless author, at least he can write the people he hates into his story, and then despatch them however he likes.

Like Billy Liar (1963), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) and Tarsem Singh's The Fall (2006), we watch the fantasist and the fantasy. The characters’ stories start to run a close parallel as we discover that the heroine of his latest book is also his upstairs neighbour. But will she be as impressed with a middle-aged hack in a cardigan...

The story is a delight, the many scenes of Bond spoofs are spectacular, funny and astonishingly bloody, as director Philippe de Broca also targets Sam Peckinpah’s exaggerated slow-motion death scenes. These were obviously heavily cut in the cinema, to suit a children’s double-bill, but the DVD has everything intact, including a head shot that pre-dates Scanners… The excessively bloody take on the Odessa Steps scene from Battleship Potemkin has to be seen to be believed…

The comedy sub-plot of the author vs his boss is quite broad, as is the depiction of 'pulp novels versus literature' subplot, from a time when even paperbacks were frowned upon. But it's very different from the movie spoofs which happily cashed in with their version of Bond (like the Derek Flint and Matt Helm films) rather than this very savage lampoon on spies and movie violence.

There’s even a gag that reappeared in Top Secret (1984), of someone crushed in a car into a metal cube, but still alive. Top Secret takes it further (a spoof spoofing a spoof?) but Le Magnifique has a car-crusher built into the back of a lorry! Impressive, if such a vehicle really existed.

Lobby card image from the Cinedelica website

Belmondo is superb, looking the part of a super-sexy super-spy, as well as the author struggling with his deadlines and smoker's cough. I’d love to see more of his thrillers and comedies – of course, he’s still acting today. As is Jacqueline Bisset, who was soon to be mega-famous as eye candy in danger in The Deep. She'd already been in the notable Airport, Truffaut's Day For Night and Bullitt.

An international cast in a French/Italian co-production ineviatbly means that there's no version of this film where one of the major characters isn’t dubbed! Much like the spaghetti westerns. Belmondo talks French, Bisset English and Vittorio Caprioli (as his bullying boss) is Italian. The French DVD, from Studio Canal, has a choice of English or French audio, and though I’m not a fan of dubbing, the English dub is still very funny, Bisset’s voice is her own, and the actor voicing Belmondo is a treat.

Inevitably, Doc Savage couldn't really match the antics of Bob Saint-Clair, but it was certainly a top-value double-bill.


I’d still like to see the film in French, but only the out-of-print American DVD from Image Entertainment, had subtitles for the French audio version. If you just want the English dub, all of the current European DVD releases appear to include it.

Respect also for Claude Bolling's witty soundtrack, which was released on CD in Italy a few years ago.

For a taster, the French trailer is currently on YouTube...

EMPIRE OF THE WOLVES (2005) - Jean Reno in action

EMPIRE OF THE WOLVES
(2005, France, L'Empire des Loups)

Partnership with the devil

This recent thriller was directed by Chris Nahon, who’s currently finishing work on the live-action Blood: The Last Vampire. I only recognised Jean Reno in the cast, but isn't that enough? Certainly it's an indication of something interesting, at least in French-language movies.


The movie starts off with two parallel storylines: Anna, a Parisian housewife, is suffering such a massive memory loss that she can't even recognise her husband's face. As her experimental therapy fails to get results, she secretly goes to an analyst, Mathilde, to try and unlock her past.


Meanwhile a young detective is investigating some very, very nasty serial murders of young Turkish 'illegals'. Because these rank as low priority with the homicide division, he resorts to consulting disgraced cop 'Shifty' Le Shiffre (Jean Reno), an expert on the Turkish underworld operating in France. Joining forces, the closer they get to the truth, the more danger they find themselves in. Shootouts, mystery assassins, exploding bath-houses... can they handle the truth, and what does it all have to do with the amnesiac Anna?


Reminiscent of The Bourne Identity, this is a rewarding, twisty thriller which gradually reveals its many mysteries. It's hard-edged too - as Anna tries to regain her memory we see horrific images of disfigured faces, better suited to a horror movie, and the serial killer sub-plot is similarly nasty.

Set in a Paris that's forever in the rain, the lush visuals and locations never overpower the story. The cast are uniformly excellent, and help sell the more ludicrous action. But what's with French films and women trapped on ledges in their underwear? Is it compulsory?


Although fast-moving and stylish, some scenes are undermined by an inappropriate choice of hardcore club tracks used for the score. The effect seems to be aiming just for excitement, even though the action is supposed to be shocking or dramatic.

Empire of the Wolves is recommended, and available in the UK and US on DVD, with English-dubbed dialogue as an option.

INNOCENCE (2004) a beautiful mystery

INNOCENCE

(2004, France/Belgium, L'Ecole)

One of several films called Innocence, this was rather fascinating.

Iris, an infant, gradually learns the rules of her new school when she arrives in a beautiful walled garden. As she is let out of a coffin and greeted by the other girls, she’s given a specifically coded colour ribbon for her hair, which means she is one of the youngest pupils. Inside the huge garden is a schoolhouse and five dormitories – this is now her new home.

Confused, I paid close attention to every comment from the older girls, and the reactions of the two teachers, as I tried to work out was going on in this elaborate, enclosed community of very young girls. Paying strict attention, I was slowly fed clues about the possible fate of these children, and largely left in the dark so as to fear the worst…


Film students well-versed in unravelling elaborate sub-texts may make completely different conclusions than me, but I took the story at face value and found it intriguing. When is it set? What is outside the garden walls? Have they been kidnapped? What’s going to happen to them all? Why are the adults worried? Where does Bianca go in the middle of the night? Teased by views of mysterious rooms and a stone cellar, I was ready for this to turn into gothic horror at any moment.

The idyllic location in the huge walled forest is beautifully observed, and portrayed as full of vivid colour and alive with nature. But there are rules and warnings about going into the woods at night, straying off the garden path or ever trying to escape.

Not until the end did I realise that this was intended as more of an allegory than a coherent mystery. The oblique ending isn't really a climax, and the mystery-riddled story reminded me of Hotel (2004, Germany), also a beautiful and gloomy film, with more questions than answers.

Seeing innocent young children playing together in a protected environment is rather unusual in cinema. Often schools are only shown when there’s danger or mischief. The girls appear to be carefree and protected from the worries of the world, totally unlike children in Hollywood comedies, where 'kids' are wise before their time, interested in growing up too fast, violent, cynical, greedy or prematurely obsessed with sex.

Because of the idyllic lifestyle inside the school garden, the girls are carefree and unbothered about occasionally being half-naked. While the camera and the direction is unexploitative of the situation, some critics have been overly concerned about these scenes. This hasn’t been diffused by the rather coy poster focussing on a girl’s legs in a very short skirt. The poster is unrepresentative of the tone, themes and imagery in the film. Though the viewer is certainly lead to worry that some dark reality is going to interrupt at any moment.


A far clumsier take on the story came the following year with a film using the author’s more ungainly original title, The Fine Art Of Love - Mine Ha-Ha. This raised the schoolgirls’ ages and added a lesbian storyline, but is apparently a less subtle, far less successful film.

Director Lucile Hadzihalilovic has cleverly adapted this story by Frank Wedekind, better known for writing Pandora’s Box, which was made into one of the finest silent films in 1927. She’s presented innocence as a fascinating all-woman society of mostly young girls, all years away from impending puberty. I was also reminded of Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves (1984), which also used fantasy to explore the interests and behaviour of young girls in a simplified world.

Marion Cotillard plays one of the few adults in the school, a rather sensitive teacher. She has since become world-famous as an Oscar winner (for La Vie en Rose), though you might also have seen her in Luc Besson’s Taxi, Taxi 2, Taxi 3 or Tim Burton’s Big Fish.

Innocence is available on DVD in the UK.

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TAXI 4 (2007) Luc Besson's fast-moving comedy

TAXI 4
(2007, France)

Luc Besson - Producer
Ever since The Big Blue in 1989, we used to track down every Luc Besson film out there. We were rewarded with a string of classics: La Femme Nikita, Leon (aka The Professional), the underwater travelogue Atlantis, The Fifth Element… But after The Messenger (1999), he stepped out of directing and into producing.

But Besson’s name in the credits kept leading us to entertaining films. More mainstream perhaps, and usually in French. A new gamut of Luc Besson movies that were less well known in the big wide world of English-speakers.

Many of them are a fusion of East/West action. In Wasabi (2001) and in The Transporter, a young woman from the Far East is teamed up with an older gun-toting action man. Wasabi was also interesting to me for being set in Japan. Unleashed (aka Danny the Dog) cast Jet Li with Morgan Freeman and Bob Hoskins!

I thought Besson’s name would also guarantee cult status for the Taxi series, which started off in 1998 as an action/comedy heavy with jaw-dropping stunt-driving from the superb Remy Julienne troupe (still going strong since The Italian Job in 1968). Despite the sequels and the obligatory awful US remake, the Taxi films are still relatively unknown but easily accessible off-beat entertainment.

Taxi 4
...or more accurately T4xi, (but just try asking for it by name), is the latest. Although it starts off with a football hook, sport isn’t central to the plot. The familiar faces are back, with the local police from the French Riviera put in charge of a scheming and dangerous crimelord. As usual it takes a local taxi driver to save the police from themselves.

This is quite a break from the Taxi formula, with far less complex auto action. Taxi’s tricks are demoted to just high-speed driving and weaving through traffic. The accent here is on comedy, specifically aiming for an audience that enjoys jokes about policemen smoking grass, a base-thumping soundtrack, and stereotyped baddies that you could spot from a satellite.


But there’s also intricate physical comedy, sharp dialogue, and a faithful continuation of the character storylines from movies 1 2 and 3. The humour is easily accessible, despite numerous jokes about different regions of France, and beaucoup de Belgian-bashing. There’s also far more screentime for the demented Inspector Gibert, than Daniel the taxi driver, again steering the film away from the usual formula. But it’s still a strong entry, the third to be directed by Gérard Krawczyk.


The Marseilles Police Force must squirm as they hand out filming permits to the crew, only to see themselves portrayed onscreen as uniformly dimmer than Inspector Clouseau (which reminds me that Jean Reno is doing Pink Panther 2, ooch!)

With minimal car carnage, the climax is instead a handsomely mounted pastiche of Pacino’s Scarface. So relax, lower your expectations of a car chase finale, and you’ll enjoy Taxi 4 all the more.


At the moment you have to search around for Taxi 4 with English subtitles. I found a no-frills release from Thailand, in 16:9 anamorphic widescreen. The subtitles miss out a few lines of dialogue, but they are clear and well-translated. Canada is also a good place to look. Meanwhile Taxi, Taxi 2 and Taxi 3 are all out on DVD in the UK.

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THEM (2006) - French horror filmed in Romania

THEM
(2006, France, aka 'ILS')

On region 3 PAL DVD from Thailand (PMEG)

There haven't been many French horror films until recently. This is one of the 'new wave' of hard-hitting and effective genre movies from France, like Switchblade Romance (aka Haute Tension), The Ordeal (Calvaire) and even Brotherhood of the Wolf. It’s received quite a decent release worldwide, considering it’s a low-budget movie shot on video, and has been reviewed extensively, but I'd like to add the following...


A French couple have settled down in a large remote house on the outskirts of Bucharest, while teaching French in a Romanian high school. Little do they know, there's been a mysterious murder nearby, and at night it’s their turn to be victimised, frightened, then hunted…

The opening scene, of a car breaking down on a forest road, builds nicely to a somewhat cliched climax. The story then starts properly with Clementine (played by Olivia Bonamy, the star of offbeat comedy horror Bloody Mallory) returning home from work. After she goes to bed with her boyfriend, Lucas, the trouble begins. The movie builds atmosphere and panic pretty effectively from this early point in the film, all the way to the climax in a sustained barrage of suspense.

While the menace at first appears to be invisible and supernatural, as it's slowly revealed, the film takes on a different complexion, as much social comment as horror.

Purporting to be inspired by real events, this is most probably a ruse, overused by so many horror films that I now assume that they’re all lying. I can only trace the vaguest of links between the events described here and any actual ones. The viewer is therefore being needlessly encouraged to fear the same easy targets in society that the trashier newspapers also favour. Like any movie, the horror genre can be subversive or establishment – Them is definitely the latter.


While Hostel also chose to portray an actual village (this time in Slovakia) as a well-orchestrated killing machine, Them portrays Romania in a way completely at odds with the true horrors that the country has endured. All while getting a cheaper deal for shooting in Eastern Europe – very cheeky. Nowhere in Europe seems safe now, as even rural Ireland came off far worse in Shrooms, than the deep south did in John Boorman's infamous Deliverance (1972).

Any country is fair game for a horror movie location, but if Them is the only film you see that's been set in Romania, then that could easily shade your opinion of it. It's a very different matter for someone to make a horror film set in their own country. Similarly, this could easily have been shot in Romania while pretending to be in France.

But it’s an expertly made film. Indeed, the directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud have already been whisked to Hollywood to remake the Pang brothers’ classic The Eye. As an experience, I enjoyed Them to the last drop. But like many movies with twisted endings, it’s probably not one that can be enjoyed twice.

I bought this on DVD in Thailand early last year. It suffers from muddy compression in the shadows and a fairly soft picture, but has good English subs. It’s presented in 16:9, whereas elsewhere the film is detailed as being 2.35 widescreen (presumably looking more like the screengrab above). The Thai disc is completely no frills.


Them is also available on region 2 DVD in the UK, and will be released region 1 in the US in February.

THE EMPEROR'S BAKER (1951) and more GOLEM movies

The hunt for another good Golem movie

THE GERMAN GOLEMS
Based on an ancient Jewish legend, the Golem is a creature modelled from clay and brought to life to protect the oppressed in a medieval ghetto. The German silent classic film The Golem (1920), reviewed here, influenced both the story and the look of Universal Studios’ classic Frankenstein (1931), where the creature was similarly man-made. Besides lifting several scenes, like the creature meeting a little girl, Frankenstein also used The Golem’s cinematographer, Karl Freund, who later directed his own horror films, The Mummy (1932) and Mad Love (1935).

Widely available on DVD, the silent 1920 version stars the imposing Paul Wegener as the creature. But this is by no means the only Golem movie, and I’ve tried to see them all. One has just emerged on DVD in France, The Emperor's Baker.

Two of the earliest versions of the legend also starred Paul Wegener, The Golem (1915) and its sequel The Golem and the Dancer (1917), but both are now believed to be lost films (some fragments can be viewed on this site, in The Nitrate Vault). Note the slimmer look of Wegener's monster suit, above.

THE GOLEM - THE LEGEND OF PRAGUE (1936)

The first version with sound was a French/Czech co-production. Photos of the creature show a very modern make-up design, that makes this Golem look more like a classic stylized bronze statue. The impressive stills make me still want to track this version down. It was last seen on French VHS, reviewed on SciFilm here.

The plot is fairly similar to The Emperor's Baker, but is harder-edged and less humorous. It's a period costume drama, mostly revolving around the Emperor and his paranoid fear of the Golem and the Jewish elders who control it. While struggling to keep hold of his own sanity, he viciously tortures one to find the statue's hiding place. In the climax, the Golem finally awakes and saves the day, destroying major chunks of the palace in the process. The lions used to eat prisoners in the dungeons are set free on the palace subjects and justice is served. The Golem looks impressively scary and inflicts major damage on his rampage of revenge, even stomping someone's head flat!

This is the best of the Golem movies made with sound. Though the Emperor gains a fair amount of sympathy due to the complex performance of Harry Baur, completely overshadowing the rather pious, one-dimensional goodies. The most glamorous of the women plays the rabbi's wife - looking inappropriately like Marlene Dietrich. The sets are huge and are slightly expressionistic, in a nod to the silent versions.

Veteran director Julien Duvivier later had a brief run in Hollywood, directing the lush portmanteau Flesh and Fantasy (1946) among others.

THE EMPEROR’S BAKER (1951)
The next version of the Golem also came from Czechoslovakia and has just been released in France on DVD by Artus Films (I bought it here). This time, the Golem is in colour. I saw a photo, of this creature piling through a wall, in a Sunday magazine back in the seventies and have wanted to see it in action ever since. It looked huge and terrifying, with a unique monster design…

Actually two shorter films shot back to back – The Emperor’s Baker and The Baker’s Emperor – both appear on this new 2-DVD set from France. But unfortunately it’s not a horror, but a big budget comedy costume drama, one of the most handsomely mounted films made in Eastern Europe at the time. Huge elaborate sets, hundreds of extras, lavish costumes – it’s a rambling comedy about an eccentric Emperor who switches places with a baker (both played by Jan Werich). He’s searching his kingdom for the Golem (making this a sequel to the silent versions) but his ministers are more interested in using it as weapon of war… Most of the humour comes from the dialogue, only included as Czech language or French subtitles. The picture looks good, but the colour has faded a little, and the print is quite heavily scratched near the reel changes.

The Golem eventually makes a relatively minor appearance in both films and is doubly disappointing because it’s a solid prop. When it walks, it’s merely pushed forwards, twisting it’s body without moving it’s legs.

It only looks good when standing still. It’s stature is imposing, towering above the cast, and when activated the eyes (nostrils?) glow red and smoke pours out.

An impressive production, beloved in Eastern Europe (where you can still see statues of this version on the streets), it’s good to finally see it, but the 1920 version remains unbeaten in the realms of fantastic cinema, for its focus on the supernatural aspect to the legend.

IT! (1966)
Lastly, a rather melted-looking Golem appeared in a low-budget British horror film that starred Roddy McDowall (star of many Planet of the Apes) and a young Jill Haworth (Tower of Evil, The Haunted House of Horror). IT! (1966) has the Golem committing robberies and minor havoc around modern-day London, much like the treacherous penguin in The Wrong Trousers. McDowall has a psychotic mother-fixation and sees the benefits of using such a monster to rule the world! I keep going back to It! and I'm finally warming to it... Updated review of IT! here.

UPDATE 2008: IT! premiered on DVD in the US on a double-bill with The Shuttered Room.

My 2012 review of THE GOLEM (1920) is here.