DEATH RACE 2000 (1975) another cult classic up for a remake

DEATH RACE 2000
(1975, USA)

Finally, a decent DVD release of this bloody black comedy

I thought this would be better known nowadays. But it seems that video games like Carmageddon have stolen its thunder without much respect. Even sitting in the car, I keep hearing passengers making jokes about pedestrians being worth different amounts of ‘points’, without knowing the film that started it all.

Over 30 years ago this was the first adult movie I ever sneaked into. I put on one of my Dad’s jackets to try and look old enough to get in – it worked! Back then, Death Race 2000 was seen as a cash-in on the big-budget Rollerball – another future vision of televised sport that incorporated onscreen murder to satiate the masses and somehow provide an alternative to warfare and civil unrest.

But where Rollerball was quite dry and downbeat, Death Race 2000 delivered sex and violence, while delivering a satirical black comedy with a cheeky anti-violent message!

The film portrays a future where the annual Death Race sends five cars coast-to-coast across America in search of first place or the highest score – points won for pedestrians killed, higher scores for those of least use to the State. Big scores for old folks and babies. Extra points for women!

The cars have blades, missile launchers and teeth, to maximise their killing potential, and are all themed to reflect the cartoony characters of the drivers. WWE meets Wacky Races. Besides a cowgirl (Calamity Jane) and a Nazi (Mathilda the Hun), there’s a Roman hero (Nero), a 1920s gangster (Machine Gun Joe Viterbo) and a sci-fi monster (Frankenstein), the latter a patchwork cyborg pieced together after previous car crashes.

But as soon as the race gets underway, saboteurs try to challenge the world president and bring down the institution of the Death Race. The film is presented by three characters that lampoon both sport and chat show hosts.

The racers continue to knock down the foolhardy citizens who venture onto the streets, while the organisers try and prevent the race itself getting wrecked.


A simple enough premise, but with interweaving stories running around all the competitors, the organisers and the saboteurs. Fast editing includes all the viewpoints and tries not to miss any of the improvisations or any last word from the witty script.

The cinematography for the action scenes is tight, with dynamic wide angles, and cameras bolted onto the cars to keep you in the action. There’s no back projection – the actors simply keep acting while they’re driving. There’s a fantastic wide-angle shot of David Carradine at the wheel while a micro-fighter-plane buzzes low over him in a perfectly symmetrical money shot.

Roger Corman, who produced this at the height of his creative powers, seems to have relaxed his usual tight purse strings on the budget, because there's actually plenty of stuntwork, car wrecks and explosions, without any stock footage. At the time, this film delivered just as much excitement as Hollywood A-movies, without appearing to be cheap.

The bizarre music - a mixture of synths like A Clockwork Orange, and rambling soul guitar solos - dates the film the most, along with the sub-psychedelic paintings of the opening title sequence. But the fast-paced action, humour, pathos and inventiveness of the script should still score a few points nowadays. The sharp satire and tongue-in-cheek atmosphere is set up early on when the director, the late Paul Bartel, cameos as Frankenstein’s mad surgeon.

The cast famously includes a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone, then in danger of being typecast as Italian hoodlums. But the star is David Carradine (Kung Fu, Carquake, Kill Bill) as Frankenstein who confidently carries the film. Essential Corman regular Mary Woronov again proves she can fight, act and lose her clothes at the drop of a direction. The film's nude scenes, an integral part of the Corman movie-making formula, still surprises today, now that actors and actresses no longer disrobe unless 'it's integral to the plot'.

According to the new DVD extras, Bartel was aiming to deliver a comedy, but the second unit team amped up enough gore to secure a controversy on the film’s release. Even with an X certificate in England, most of the bloody point-scoring kills were cut.

Home video releases of this film have always looked soft, making an excellent b-movie look far cheaper than it should. Even on DVD the film has only previously been available in 4:3 full frame.


The latest release has finally had a digital widescreen transfer. The film no longer looks like 16mm film via analogue video. The far sharper and brighter image now highlights the richly colourful green paintwork on Frankenstein’s car. The picture looks well-framed in 16:9 widescreen, and the audio is now clear enough for all the dialogue to be heard over the constant sound of revving engines.

This US DVD should be the last time I have to buy this film – I’ve triple dipped for it on DVD now! This new transfer will be on DVD in the UK shortly.

Naturally, there’ll be a remake released this year, with Jason Statham in the driver’s seat. His hard-nosed but humorous touch will make for a different kind of film, but it should be fun, if only Paul Anderson can muster comedy. It’ll be hard to better the original for invention and economy.

Pity it won't be called Death Race 2008.

JUNK (2000) gory Japanese oldschool zombies

JUNK

(2000, Japan, IMDB: Shiryô-gari)

I like the way you move...

Region 2 PAL DVD (Artsmagic)

I love zombie movies, but nowadays find that classic ones are hard to, um, find. I like my zombies slow, creepy, and hungry for the flesh of the living. I'm fed up with zombie comedies (like Bio-Zombie), shot-on-video first-timers, or stuff that fails to remember the rules (like Undead forgetting how to shoot them in the head).

I’ll also include fast-moving zombies as a pet hate, the exception being the Dawn of the Dead remake which I enjoyed. But this 28 Days Later sub-genre should really be put in a Rabid category, not a zombie category. David Cronenberg’s Rabid (1977) visualised a city of humans that had caught rabies and turned into mindless psychopathic animals. An action-packed horror, but still not a zombie movie.

In short, the last slow-moving, staggering, flesh-eating zombie film that I enjoyed was from Japan. There they strictly stick to the George Romero-zombie rules. Their zombie movies are still a mixed bag, but Junk is well-acted, professionally produced and faithfully recaptures the atmosphere of the seventies zombie genre.


It’s given a gangster twist as jewel thieves meet up with the yakuza to trade their stash for cash. Little do they know, the disused factory chosen for the rendezvous was the site of a military experiment that has gone very wrong.

Soon there’s a three-way stand off between the thieves, the gangsters and the living dead…


This is low budget, but at least not shot by first-timers. The film-makers previously made the gangster actioners Score and Score 2. Junk is expertly and energetically put together, with agile, taut photography, and a more than able cast, (apart from the Americans). Like Romero's films, a woman takes centrestage in the battle for survival.

The gory shootouts and zombie dinnertime scenes are on a par with the original Zombie Flesh Eaters and the original Dawn of the Dead. Indeed, many of the early scenes have been recreated from those movies shot-for-shot! For instance the first zombie incident is framed and blocked like the 'banquet scene' from Zombie Flesh Eaters. Further into the film they get creative with some new zombie action. You won’t forget Kyoko, queen of the zombies in a hurry. There's good ensemble zombie acting and make-up, grisly gore, and lively splattery gunfights (albeit where no-one gets hit if they duck).


The opening robbery scene looks a little unimpressive, using one of those little wobbly white vans for the getaway, but the film looks convincing when everyone reaches the abandoned factory. The major drawback in the film are the scenes involving the American military – once again cast members have been recruited for their ability to speak English rather than any acting skills. The actor playing a Japanese scientist also joins in with some particularly cracked English.

Versus may have scored highly with critics, on a similar story premise, but I enjoyed Junk much much more.


The UK DVD is standards converted from NTSC so badly that it looks more like video than film. It's further compromised by a bad aspect ratio conversion (making a full-height anamorphic image out of a letterboxed image), but cropping off the base of the picture it also chops the original Japanese subtitles in half! This DVD also stupidly subtitles all the spoken English.


But any DVD of this is not too easy to find now. The US DVD isn't anamorphic widescreen, but obviously hasn't been standards converted. The US DVD is the best release out there at the moment, until the film is remastered anamorphically. Ironically the UK DVD is the only one still available, and at rather high prices.

I still have no idea what the title refers to! It’s been overused for recent film titles, (there are seven different entries on IMDB), so be careful when you’re DVD-hunting by Google.

Bon appetit!

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AIRPORT 1975 - the good, the bad and the parody

AIRPORT 75

(1975, US)

The rise of the franchise...

Searching around for new disaster movie ideas, Hollywood made a sequel to the original template for the genre - Airport (reviewed recently here) - at a time when sequels were rare.

To identify it closely with the disaster trend, Earthquake stars Charlton Heston and George Kennedy (who also appeared in all four Airport movies) are drafted in to head the cast. The promise of the title is cast aside as the action moves up and away from the airport and firmly into the air. It set a high benchmark for mid-air diasaster movies, before TV movies milked the genre for ideas.

A packed passenger Boeing 747 collides with a private plane, piloted ironically by Dana Andrews the star of Zero Hour. (Airport 75 and Zero Hour together form the butt of most of the gags in AIRPLANE.) With the crew incapacitated, an unlucky stewardess (Karen Black) is left to fly the plane. But she has no piloting experience and certainly doesn’t know how to land it…

Obviously no travel company wants their markings on a crashing plane, even if it’s only a movie. So the producers hired a real 747, painted it up in the fictitious markings of a fake airline, dressed the exterior up to look like it’s been in a collision, and took off. There’s some spectacular shots of it flying low through snow-capped mountain ranges, below the height of the peaks – it’s certainly better than the fakey model shots used elsewhere in the series, but obviously an expensive alternative to special effects – do it for real!


The highlight is the scene with formation-flying of the 747, an air force jet and a jet helicopter with a stuntman being lowered out the back! Exceptionally exciting, but the sequence is sabotaged by intercutting it with grainy back-projection footage of the stars scrambling around among the movie sets. This rescue method was earlier seen in as a plot point in a couple of episodes of Thunderbirds, notably the pilot episode Trapped in the Sky. The highly dangerous air-to-air transfer was again attempted for real in a stunt-sequence in Sylvester Stallone’s Cliffhanger (1993).

Airport 75 is seriously compromised by the underwritten script. Unlike the intricate interwoven story strands of the original Airport, the subplots here are feeble and barely connected. The action comes to a deadening halt as a singing nun grabs a guitar and summons a truly unmemorable song to comfort a sick little girl - it makes you realise how far popular music has come. Linda Blair has to smile in appreciation, here inbetween The Exorcist and Exorcist II, she’s in danger of being typecast as permanently bedridden.

Karen Black helps keeps the movie afloat, single-handedly tidying up wreckage in the cockpit, flying the plane, talking to traffic control on what’s left of the radio, and keeping her hair out of her eyes. Despite starring in Alfred Hitchcock’s last ever film, Family Plot (1976), and Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975), this remains her most iconic role. She famously returned to horror films recently in House of a 1000 Corpses.

Charlton Heston had been a leading man, square-jawed hero and star of many biblical epics since the fifties (Ben Hur, El Cid, The Ten Commandments, Touch of Evil), but still hung onto starring roles in the seventies with some unusual choices, like disaster movies and science-fiction. After doing one sci-fi film, Planet of the Apes, he appeared in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man, and Soylent Green.

But aside from Heston and Karen Black, the viewer is stranded with a mixture of ancient Hollywood stars and TV regulars - their characters are so poorly sketched that they look like they are playing themselves and improvising their dialogue. Slack editing of these interior scenes almost puts the hard work of the second unit to waste.


The high-danger scenario, mixed with the lazy melodramatics provide dozens of opportunities and even indentical camera set-ups for the Airplane parodies (1980 and 1982). This is now the core pleasure of watching the Airport films. There are many awful moments, but you can enjoy that they were rightfully later exploited.

Even before that, all of the best aerial footage was recycled for a TV episode of The Incredible Hulk only three years later. What a rip-off!

Despite its many shortcomings, Airport 75 lead to two more sequels, neither of which I can sanely recommend.

The movie deserves to be watched in full 2.35 widescreen - it's on DVD either singly, or as part of the Airport 'Terminal' collection. Enjoy!

PAPRIKA (2006) a dazzling animated fantasy for adults

PAPRIKA
(2006, Japan)

Director, Satashi Kon - a Miyazaki for grown-ups

The following review also appears on the 24framespersecond website

Paprika has justifiably been gaining glowing reviews after appearing at film festivals around the world. Personally, I think it’s the most internationally accessible anime feature film since Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away. It retains a very Japanese identity, but is easily understandable by western audiences. The film is brimful with imagination, attempting to visualise the impossible. While many Japanese anime focus on portraying schoolrooms and street scenes realistically, why not just try and push the narrative medium to the limit?


The eye-boggling portrayal of dreams and dream-logic is a crazy challenge for most directors, but Satoshi Kon has been rehearsing for this in his previous animated projects. Particularly the anime series Paranoia Agent (2004), which also pushed the limits of narrative by presenting puzzling scenes and allowing the viewer time to try and deduce what's going on. The wonderful Millennium Actress (2001) also has a pivotal female character who constantly rushes across the screen in search of an answer.

Paprika is about some (fairly fantastical) technology built to enable psychologists to access the worlds of patients’ dreams. Some unexplained and dangerous incidents then spark an investigation – what is going wrong with this new technology, and where will it end? Luckily, a young woman called Paprika acts like a ‘spirit guide’ within the worlds of the new device.


We then flip between the investigation and the dreams of various characters, fantasy worlds where they envisage themselves as fictional secret agents, or even Tarzan. Kon has a hard time avoiding various copyright issues while trying to show the popular fictional characters that many people's dreams are influenced by. Tarzan isn’t recognisable from any of his screen portrayals, but as a generic figure from the old stories. The secret agent fantasy resembles a fight from an old James Bond film (specifically the train scene in From Russia With Love) – suggesting it without copying it. Another dream/fantasy is of the Asian god Monkey – an ancient legend rather than the specific TV series.

It's quite an achievement that the animators have populated the film with so many characters, and there are an awful lot… the screen eventually overflows with the non-existent, in a barmy parade of the impossible.

This is huge fun, not hard to follow at all, despite having a complicated narrative if you try to think about it too hard! There are certainly extra layers to be explored in the film, examining the relationship between film-maker’s dreams and their films, and how they invade audiences’ fantasies.

Paprika is based on a novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui (whose Girl Who Leapt Through Time has also been animated recently). Interestingly, both the author and the director voice a pair of pivotal characters in the film.


While the story is a fantasy, it’s not really for children. I’d put an age limit of 14 on this at least. Some of the sexual violence may be impossible, but it’s still pretty nasty. Some of the gender-obsessed torture reminded me of the extremes of his first film Perfect Blue (1998), the story of a murderous stalker of young pop stars, which actually made me avoid Satoshi Kon’s work for several years. I'll have to reassess that film to see if I was missing something - as I now really love all his other works.

The animators also ensure we get a peek up Paprika's skirt (a tradition in anime with all female characters, no matter how young). There are also several nude scenes, though the film ducks the issue of exposing male nudity – women’s genitalia can be successfully smoothed off stylistically, but not men’s. Male genitalia is still very much taboo in Japan, even in adult entertainment.

But it’s still the best animated film that I saw last year. I’m annoyed that it didn’t get a release comparable to the recent Miyazaki films. This is just as inventive, and better suited for an adult audience. It's a better film than many recent live-action ones from any country. It’s a film that, like Akira, could help an older, western audience overcome the stigma of watching ‘cartoons’ and enjoy what anime has to offer.

The almost no-frills DVD (well, there’s a commentary track) is out in the US and UK. There is now also a Blu-Ray disc available in the US, with also has numerous featurettes and interviews. It’s good news to see such new Japanese anime titles coming out so promptly – Tekkonkinkreet has also wasted no time in reaching our shores, also from the Sony Entertainment label.


As with Satoshi Kon’s Paranoia Agent and Millennium Actress, composer/performer Susumu Hirasawa has provided the soundtrack for Paprika. The title music is enervating and emotional, perfect for the opening sequence, as she flits between dozens of possible incarnations and media.

Upon first hearing his theme music for the anime series Paranoia Agent I was by a thunderbolt – it was such a different sound. I was compelled to hear more of his music, finding that he’d made over a dozen albums since the eighties. He occasionally wrote soundtracks for anime series, but usually released albums like any other musician. Only recently has he been working with Kon, but their professional relationship continues to be as powerful as it is complementary.

I suspect his music is an acquired taste for most, but I just can't get enough. Some of Hirasawa’s music can easily be heard on the many pop promos on YouTube. Most of his music, including some free downloads, are all available from his website, which has plenty of English text on it.

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AIRPORT (1969) the mother of all disaster movies

AIRPORT

(1970, USA)

The story so far… ex-RAF pilot Arthur Hailey becomes an author and scripts a hit film in 1957 about a mid-air crisis where the pilots of a passenger plane all get food-poisoning - Zero Hour. When his (very thick) hit novel Hotel turns into a huge smash hit movie in 1967, he re-uses the formula of multiple storylines and a huge cast of characters (long before Stephen King) for another very thick book, an airplane disaster novel. A sort of airbourne Hotel.

The movie of Airport spawned not only three sequels, but set the pattern for the disaster movie cycle of the seventies. Big casts, big names, big disasters, big posters full of big stars...

Unwittingly, the other legacy of Zero Hour, Airport and Airport ’75 was to provide the raw material for the Airplane movies. So it’s now difficult to watch them and take them totally seriously – they often work dramatically, but are constantly sabotaged by occasional stupid characters, dialogue or an excess of melodrama. Rewatching the Airport movies, I was just as impressed by the technical achievements of the films, with actual passenger jets being used for stuntwork.

In Airport, a Boeing 707 drives off the runway into the mud during a snowstorm. It doesn’t look faked at all – they do it for real! The only discernible model shots are the exterior shots of planes in flight, with dry ice unsuccessfully doubling for clouds – making it a perfect double for the opening shot of Airplane!
The script of the first Airport is actually carefully constructed, interweaving multiple storylines that makes all later disaster movie scripts look very lazy. Also, a minimum of peril goes a long way, with very little disaster, but a suspenseful threat of danger tackled not sensationally, but practically. This mostly works thanks to an impressive cast.

Burt Lancaster holds the film together, slowly revealing his affection for assistant Jean Seberg (star of the original Breathless). The charming Jaqueline Bisset has an early starring role, opposite Dean Martin who appears to be reading his lines from offscreen. The fact that most of his TV shows centred around his love of cocktails, must have made his casting as a co-pilot raise a few eyebrows – indeed he’s the least convincing in the cast, despite his star power.


Maureen Stapleton, as the bomber’s wife, acts most of the cast off the screen, but it was Helen Hayes comedy turn as a sweet little old serial stowaway that won an Oscar.

George Kennedy (right) assured his place in later disaster movies, most notably Earthquake, and all the Airport sequels, with his no-nonsense portrayal of teeth-gnashing aviation engineer Joe Patroni.

Apart from a couple of really stupid “there’s a bomb on board!” lines, the technical accuracy of the dialogue really holds up – what may have been too much jargon at the time, is now a fascinating insight into the behind-the-scenes operations of an international airport, back when tickets were expensive and flying was a treat rather than a chore. I felt that audiences in 1969 were being reassured about flying for the first time and being told what it would involve.

The 2.35 widescreen frame is constantly filled with flashy split-screen effects, used for phone calls and three-way radio hook-ups. It’s a bit gimmicky, but it effectively tells the story.

The action focusses on the airport rather than the airplane, because clearing the blocked runway may be the only way to save a passenger flight with a mad bomber on board. The airport manager and his team are made up of characters that you’d certainly wish were on duty if you were ever in the same situation on a plane. Making tough cigar-chomping decisions quickly and acting on them promptly. Cutting through red tape, rules and regulations to get the job done.

I must mention the opening title music by Alfred Newman – possibly the most exciting start to any movie, despite nothing actually going on!


Airport should definitely be seen widescreen, and is available in a single-disc edition, or as part of the entire franchise collection of four films.

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MUSHISHI - anime series vs. live-action movie

MUSHISHI

Anime series, NTSC region 1 DVD (Artland)

Live-action movie, PAL region 2 DVD (Revolver Entertainment)


Mushishi - the anime

I’m rewatching the 2005 anime series as it’s slowly released on DVD, volume by volume, in the US. I previewed the series here. The packaging is impressive, with artwork postcards and detailed, illustrated booklets inside. The aspect ratio is correct at 16:9 anamorphic. I’d even be tempted if this was released HD, and I’d eventually hope for an update on the albeit lush stereo mix (the original Japanese release is listed on CDjapan as stereo there too), but I’d hope for a future 5.1 remix. Triple-dipping... it's gonna happen sometime.

I've also just discovered a medium-format book of artwork, production sketches, including a well-illustrated episode guide. Available here on the Anime Artworks eBay store. Of course, the book is all in Japanese, but the high quality layouts are rewarding enough.

The anime episodes are eminently rewatchable, beautiful to look at, full of mood and colour and music, detailed animation, delicately constructed stories full of twists surprises, with occasional shocks and creep-outs.


The very first episode is uncharacteristic, trying to show the full range of what mushi can be, showing them as everything from energy to human in form. Some of these complicated mushi apparitions don’t reoccur in the series and it's far from a typical episode.

After the first one, I still wasn't entirely sure what mushi typically looked like. The second introduces the format of what usually happens - with a problem introduced, Ginko sensing/summoned to the problem, then tackling the mushi. Alternately spectacular, horrific, funny and beautiful. It's a difficult series to label.



Mushishi - the movie (2006)

Loving the series so much, I approached the live-action version rather warily. It reworks incidents from 4 or 5 stories. Even though new manga stories are still being produced, the movie uses events that have already been visualised in the anime.

After a gripping opening, the story meanders between fairly unconnected events, occasionally matching the enchanting visuals of the anime, but usually telling the same stories less magically. The other strength of the series is the music, but the movie uses very little.


There’s a strong central performance from Joe Odagiri (Shinobi), even though his hairstyle looks more like Gegege No Kitarou rather than the spikier one in the manga.

The visual Fx often makes the mushi look more like smoke or liquid rather than creatures. Some mystified critics who are taking the film at face value, are mistaking them for a kind of plague, rather than a part of the fabric of life. It’s almost impossible for lightning to strike twice for both the anime and live-action adaptions. I think it’s interesting to see the stories acted out, but only of interest to fans of the anime. Followers of the director, Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira, Steamboy) may have their expectations set way too high if they are expecting a dazzling epic..

Ideally it will intrigue moviegoers to sample the anime, but if they don’t enjoy it, they may be put off one of the best anime series of the decade.


Mushishi - the movie gets a UK release in February (note that the original western title of Bugmaster has been dropped in order to tie in with the anime and manga releases that are already underway).

Have a Happy New Year!

Take care on New Year's Eve...

...and I wish you all the best for 2008

(hope it's not too strange... in a bad way).

Not on DVD: WILLARD (1971)

WILLARD

(US, 1971)

Recommending seventies horror films to a modern audience isn't easy, even harder when it's one of hundreds of films not on DVD. I’m fond of this one because I saw it on TV when I first started watching horror movies, but I’d still only recommend it here if I think it can still interest or entertain.

Ironically, half of the films available in horror sections in stores, I wouldn’t recommend to my worst enemy (if I had one). The selection on sale aren’t the best horrors ever made, they simply want you to buy them.


Willard was an early ‘animal attack’ movie, which used to be a very small genre before Jaws swam along shortly after. Beforehand, I can only think of Eye of the Cat, Frogs, Black Zoo, Moby Dick, and Naked Jungle off the top of my head. But rats on the attack are a little more plausible and certainly more horrifying than trying to make pussycats look like killers.

Willard doesn’t have a cast of teenagers - there are old people, some very old, lots of them. The action isn’t non-stop, but slowly and carefully staged, gradually unfolding. Similarly, the violence doesn’t hit you in the face, it serves the story - and doesn’t involve much blood at all. But, you don’t need blood to make a horror film work, just fill a cellar with hundreds of rats…


Based on Stephen Gilbert’s novel, Ratman’s Notebooks, this used to be a well-known horror tale. Young Willard has dreary life full of problems. His ailing mother is practically bed-ridden, he has no friends because he works so hard, he hates his boss and the feeling is mutual… His life is getting worse and worse until a young pretty temp starts working at the office, and he makes a new friend in his back garden – a large brown rat. Feeding and training the rat, who he names Socrates, he discovers that he can effectively communicate with it and it’s growing number of friends.


If you like films in pigeon-holes, you could call this a rat-attack movie, but it’s secondary to it’s value as a psychological thriller. The pressures mount on Willard till he cracks, notably from bullying by his boss. But instead of going spree-killing with automatic weapons, he uses the rats to cause trouble, steal, and then attack… all without having to appear in person, almost a perfect crime. The book went one step further than the film by having Willard disguise himself as a giant rat for his night attacks. A headline in the film alludes to this subplot from the novel.

Bruce Davison’s performance is the reason for seeing this now. Davison (who more recently starred in X-Men and X2) is excellent as the nervous mother's boy, resembling a lost teenager rather than a 27 year-old. Usually when actors talk to themselves onscreen it’s because it’s the only way we can hear their thoughts, but Davison realistically portrays someone stomping round a big empty house, ranting to themself.

His mother is played by Elsa Lanchester, then still famous as a ‘horror star’ for having been the monster’s mate in Bride of Frankenstein back in 1935. Ernest Borgnine, halfway between The Wild Bunch and The Poseidon Adventure, believably plays the scheming bully who is Willard’s boss. Sondra Locke is suitably innocent as the temp, but she was soon to make more of an impression in many of Clint Eastwood early movies.


On a sour note, the musical score by Alex North (Spartacus), schizophrenically veers between menacing and cute. As Willard trains the rats, the music sounds more like a Disney real-life adventure. An almost romantic theme over the opening shots of the steel mill (where Willard works in the office), I thought I was watching an advert for the US steel industry.

There’s no real sudden shocks, but even knowing that rats don’t normally attack people and are shy and highly intelligent, seeing lots and lots of rats make me feel very uneasy. There’s no trick photography, just a lot of rats. But they are well-trained, Moe and Nora Di Sesso are credited as the trainers. They also worked on the sequel and trained the dogs in The Hills Have Eyes (1977)! The Humane Association were also on hand to monitor the faked rat cruelty (but where were they on Food of the Gods?), which is just as distressing to watch as the suffering of the human cast.


But why else would this film disappear so efficiently for so long, not even getting a DVD release when the remake arrived. All you can get now a dark, crushed transfer on VHS if you’re lucky.

Willard successfully lead to a sequel the following year, Ben (which I’ll watch again soon). Recently there was the remake with Crispin Glover which is worth a look, but not nearly as memorable. CGI rats…

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BLADE RUNNER - THE FINAL CUT (1982/2007)

BLADE RUNNER
(US, 1982)

Now available on DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray

Five-film boxsets include the original US version, the International version, the Workprint (all 1982), the Director's Cut (1992), and the new Final Cut (2007).



Well, wow. It’s about time I talked a little about my favourite film. The perfect opportunity has arisen with the new boxset releases that include a new Final Cut of the film. It's not a review of the film, but thoughts on the new version.

After a delay of five years for legal haggling, the 20th anniversary release has become a 25th anniversary. While the wait has been unbearable, hopefully the extras have had time to be almost perfect! But I was expecting more of a fanfare, aside from all the advertising. The tenth anniversary gained a wide theatrical release, and this version is much more different than the so-called 'Director’s Cut'.

For years I’ve been fuming about the Director’s Cut eclipsing the original International Version that I first saw in 1982 (a much more violent version than was seen in the States). The Director’s Cut lost the violence, the narration and the happy ending. But it was little more than an intermediate edit for the new Final Cut and deserves to be ditched in the scheme of things as little more than a castrated reissue. Of course, it’s now had a shelf life of 15 years and been the only version ever available on DVD, versus the original’s 10 year reign which only made it to VHS panned and scanned, only ever widescreen on laserdisc. The Director’s Cut has been the most seen, but least interesting version. The unicorn shot was the only additional footage, lifted from out-takes from Legend (which was filmed after Blade Runner, fuelling rumours that Ridley had made up the scene afterwards).

I’m obsessed with many films, but this one has preoccupied me the most. It’s so dense, layered in meaning, visuals, music... I love the production design of the film, the cast, the special effects, the accurate-looking future, the emotions, the richness of the cinematography… I could go on.


It was released at a time when journalism was starting to provide accurate behind-the-scenes coverage about film production, and here was a subject that deserved to be written about, most notably the Cinefantastique double issue and the Cinefex issue dedicated to the special effects. When the Directors Cut was released, the crucial Video Watchdog article listed the differences between all versions and highlighted the Workprint as being far more interesting – finally we can see that too in the 5-disc disc release.

Entire books have been devoted to the film, best of which was an authoritative expansion of the CFQ article written by Paul Sammon – Future Noir. Though it's likely to have been pillaged for all the best anecdotes to go into the extensive documentary and DVD extras.


Added to this, along the years, several indepth websites continued to update props whereabouts, interview the cast members, log alternate early scripts, and even post missing chapters from the Sammon book.

So after pouring over images of lost scenes, sounds and anecdotes, we finally get to see an update of the film, with the most annoying special effects and continuity errors of the film corrected digtially. Wire removal now makes the full-size Spinner car fly, a stunt woman in a bad wig has now morphed back into Joanna Cassidy, Deckard’s tell-tale bruise has been removed (it appeared beofre his fight with Leon because a dialogue scene got the number of surviving replicants wrong). Countless other dialogue tweaks in the soundtrack explain the unexplained, yet the much talked about narration remains missing, leaving the film treading water in places. I liked the narration – I miss it’s poignancy as well as background exposition – it still echoes in my memory as the new versions of the film play without it.


Anyway, hopefully there’ll be no more variants. Besides the fixes, there is little additional footage - three scenes are very different, jarring to someone who’s seen it many times – the unicorn, the dove, the hockey masks...

The whole debate about Harrison Ford’s character, Rick Deckard, being an artificial replicant like the ones he’s hunting down, is a complete red herring, but it's the storypoint that everyone now talks about. Scott fixed it in the Director’s Cut to lead us towards that conclusion (why didn’t he do that originally?). He’s now nailed it in interviews, but in the film the unicorn scene and it's pay-off are oblique references open to interpretation. To me, Deckard is more human than the replicants, he loses every single fight with them, even the pleasure model! The story has him teaching a non-human to love – that scene is meaningless if he too is artificial.


One scene has his eyes subtly ‘glow’ the same way as the replicants – I always thought that was a clever red herring placed halfway through the story to send the audience in the wrong direction. Harrison Ford didn’t play Deckard as artificial, while the other actors take great pains to portray something child-like and different in the replicants. Zhora’s killing machine anger and strength, Pris’s four-year old vulnerability, Leon’s twitchy ignorance, Roy’s race against the clock – all masterly performances of replicants, very different from Ford’s.

The film for me is about the contrast between human and artificial human. The irony, the humour and even the plot falls falls down if he’s one of them too. It’s a cheap twist ending, more abrupt and “huh?” than the original ‘happy ending’ which I prefer. In the Channel 4 documentary, many other members of the cast and crew were equally divided about this point – it should be open to opinion, not ‘fixed in post’.

But now on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, an impeccable futureproof 4K telecine transfer now gives us a glorious new version to be studied, rendering far more background detail – sometimes too much. Spinners can now be seen flying around in the far distance of the cityscape – an astonishing detail.


To me there’s little that dates the film. The themes of genetic replication, overpopulation, artificial intelligence, fucked weather, are all as relevant as ever. The vision of a future that will be mucky, wet, and dangerous and that humans will escape and discard the dying planet to look for new ones seems more likely than ever.

For me, the future hasn't arrived until we get flying cars.

Now for the other four discs...

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