New sounds from old movies - Pogo remixes ALICE IN WONDERLAND

When I'm not watching films, I'm always listening to music old and new. I was delighted to hear this artist who combines the old with the new. Pogo remixes and samples movie soundtracks to a modern chill-out vibe. It's a little off-topic, but most of his music is film-related and there are also tightly-edited, cut-up videos made from film clips.

Pogo's most popular work includes four tracks reworking Disney's psychedelic animated musical Alice In Wonderland (1951). Fans of the original can be reassured that this is an affectionate update rather than any sort of blasphemy. The familiar aural atmosphere is preserved but re-edited into a whole new song - the remaining lyrics of Alice (above) are now nonsensical, using only parts of words.

Other tracks are based on Harry Potter, Carry On films, Disney's The Sword in the Stone (1963), The King and I (1956) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968). This week, I was listening to music on the train to work while reading a biography of the late Richard Harris (Hellraisers by Robert Sellers). I was a little spooked when I realised I was also listening to his voice, as Dumbledore in Pogo's Harry Potter track.

The young musician also wants to make movies, according to this interview. He's already made a short film Out With It, which shows incredible promise - also on YouTube.

All his music videos are also here on YouTube, under the band's original name of Faggottron. 15 tracks by Pogo can heard and legally downloaded for free from LastFM.

A huge thanks to Frankie F. for leading me to these.

BRAIN DAMAGE (1988) - Henenlotter's most cerebral outing

BRAIN DAMAGE

(1988, USA)

Grindhouse pre-cursor to Requiem for a Dream

Funny, horrifying, tightly-plotted, unique. I love Brain Damage, but it's probably the director's least well-known film.

After enjoying Frank Henenlotter's first two Basket Case movies (reviewed here and here) and Frankenhooker, I was further rewarded by his next film, Brain Damage, which proved to be his best film in many respects. It actually has a meaning behind all the mauling. In fact, there's an awful lot of subtext going on here, but here's the story so far...


Brian is having trouble getting up one morning. He feels drained and dizzy and finds blood on his bedsheets. He discovers a weird-looking parasite has attached itself to his body. It looks like a turd, or maybe a large penis, and it talks! It persuades him to place it on his neck and injects a blue liquid into his brain, giving him powerful and colourful dreams. What Brian doesn't realise is that while he's dreaming, the parasite uses his body to carry him to its next meal... brains...


This would be grim material for a horror film, but Hennenlotter and his team use a large amount of humour, especially with the parasite glibly talking back to its host. The fairly basic special effects look a wacky as well, with Elmer the parasite looking a little like a cartoon character, especially the eyes. We get to see inside Brian's brain as the needle delivers its hallucinogenic load! I'd say that this is also the goriest of all his films and easily contains the most powerful shock moment, all in the same scene.

With Brian unable to resist further injections and his health and reliability rapidly declining, it's easy to see the parallel with drug addiction, but there's no preachy message, just a horrifying glimpse of a downward spiral, suitably portrayed against the backdrop of Manhattan.


The other subtext is more complex, as my 'gaydar' goes off the scale with this film. The two well-built brothers are always wearing tight white underwear. The parasite often looks and acts like a penis and even gets confusingly pulled into sexual activity. Brian appears to enjoy his drug like an orgasm, while his neck is being penetrated from behind (ahem). There's more male nudity than female (usually Hennenlotter balances the two) and while there are no explicitly gay characters, there are several possibles, and even a fantasy threesome. Again, like the drug parallel, this subtext isn't part of the story and there's no explicit message - quite an achievement considering AIDS hysteria was everywhere at the time.


Like his other films, the low budget means that the quality of acting is variable, which is a shame during the more maniacal moments. The limber parasite puppet, together with Zacharle's melodious voice, proves to be one of the best performances in the film. Though Rick Hearst does an incredible and difficult job in the lead as Brian.

My Synapse DVD (cover art pictured at top) restores the censored scenes that were missing from the UK and US versions of the film. It's presented in widescreen, which looks accurately framed, but the DVD is non-anamorphic (the black letterboxing is part of the picture). The extras are a trailer and a commentary track from Frank Hennenlotter. I'd guess that the more recent UK and US DVDs are anamorphic widescreen.

Right, now to track down Bad Biology, Frank's first film in years...

Not on DVD: JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (1967) - animated fun in 2D

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH
(1968, USA, TV)

Filmation Studios' animated movie spin-offs

In the sixties, a TV series that had me hooked was this Filmation cartoon. One image, that haunted me ever since, was the intrepid bunch surrounded by eerie giant moving slabs of stone. How were they going to get out of that one? Being really young, I was genuinely concerned that they would one day escape the bowels of the earth and return to the surface. According to this Wikipedia entry, I finally learnt that they never did!

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1967) is another series that I've wanted to revisit out of nostalgia, that hasn't been released on VHS or DVD. Unsurprisingly, I guess, I'm finding more and more rare items are easier to find on YouTube, Google Video, VEOH etc. Only a few moments after remembering something I've not seen in decades, I can watch it online.

Now that my memory has been refreshed, I was surprised that the cartoon series of 17 episodes was a follow-on from the colourful, epic movie from 1959. The linking character being Gertrude the Duck! I'd like to know how she survived the film. She's trapped under the earth along with Professor Lindenbrook, two kids and a guide who are being chased by an evil-doer and his sidekick. They meet a lot of giant monsters and a multitude of subterranean civilisations, mostly hostile!

With exciting cliffhangers before each ad break, this is still fun, if you can get used to Filmation's 'limited animation' techniques. These similar the cost-saving devices used in anime, but at the time, it looked like a step backward from the dynamic action of Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry and of course Disney. But a weekly half-hour of TV animation had a far lower budget.

Here's a few more Filmation productions that I remember playing on TV here in the UK. Fantastic Voyage (1968) extended the 1966 movie into regular missions of the Combined Miniature Defence Force. The traitor among them has been wisely weeded out and replaced with a Spock-like Indian psychic. The memorably catchy soundtrack is the main reason I'd like to see these again. Here's the zingy theme tune on YouTube with the incredibly shouty voiceover...

The animated Star Trek (1973) series even made peak-time Saturday night on the BBC, as an alternative to the endless re-runs of the classic live-action show. Having most of the original cast doing the voices really helped. This site about animated Star Trek includes a guide to the other Filmation shows on DVD.


Filmation also made two animated Batman series in 1968 and 1977. The 1968 version is much more watchable, despite not having Adam West's voice. Mainly because the annoying Bat-Mite (Batman's very own Scrappy Doo) was added to the 1977 series. Annoyingly, this is the series available on DVD. The earlier show is immediately notable for it's epilepsy-unfriendly title sequence that uses the same flashing colours that triggered the infamous Pokemon mass-fainting phenomenon in Japan. Dozens of these short 1968 episodes (segments of The Batman/Superman Hour) are on YouTube. Love the Bat-ejector seats in the Batmobile!

I think Filmation's Flash Gordon (1979) was also widely seen, especially when the series was condensed into an animated feature-length version. The first 16 episodes roughly follow Flash's first adventures on the planet Mongo, just pre-dating the famous Dino De Laurentiis movie of 1980.

I'd recommend the wonderful Saturday Morning Blog - a treasure trove of cartoon episodes from this era, that are viewable online.

If you want to know more, Wikipedia has a long, thorough entry on the short, prolific life of Filmation productions.

RED SHADOW (2001) - from the director of SAMURAI FICTION

RED SHADOW

(2001, Japan, Akakage)

Tragi-comedy ninja action in this homage to the beloved Toei series

I only started watching samurai movies relatively recently. After overdosing on Asian horror, I dipped my toe into a few other genres. I tried some Akira Kurosawa classics, like The Seven Samurai, but struggled to appreciate them. I found the more recent, realistic dramas The Hidden Blade and The Twilight Samurai more accessible and impressive. I loved the sword-swinging action hits Princess Blade and Azumi. Hong Kong's House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower are full of truly impossible feats, and tremendous eye candy, but I don't feel the need to catch every epic. The same goes for the huge backlog of samurai and Chinese martial arts films through the decades. I'm looking for the more offbeat movies. The same way I prefer the westerns of Sergio Leone over John Ford. So I was very pleased to stumble upon Red Shadow.

It's a modern spin on a ninja hero. Based on a popular TV and film series produced by Toei Studios, who celebrated their 50th anniversary with this irreverent homage. The ninja heroes' ultra-athletic abilities are sent up with light, but not slapstick, comedy. While die-hard Red Shadow fans might not welcome this, there's also plenty of action and drama. The approach is much the same as director Hiroyuki Nakano's acclaimed Samurai Fiction (1998), also a modern update of the samurai genre.

Red Shadow focuses on three young ninja students who are part of a secret movement who use their special abilities to prevent civil war and unnecessary bloodshed. They can camouflage themselves in darkness, scale impossible walls, and defend themselves from any weapon. Red Shadow, Blue Shadow and female ninja buddy Asuka are given a mission to keep two clans from going to war. The three friends are in constant peril, and in danger of falling into a love triangle, in defiance of their ninja code.


If you liked Samurai Fiction, this is most definitely for you. Red Shadow is all-round entertaining and accessible. Jarringly, the soundtrack is techno music (which works for me), a technique Nakano also used in Samurai Fiction.

Composer/actor/pop star Hotei Tomoyasu makes an early cameo appearance and provides the magnificent electric guitar solo over the closing credits. I wish Tomoyasu was as famous in the west as his music - he wrote and performed one of the most famous tracks in Tarantino's Kill Bill: Vol 1.

I watched a blurry DVD from Hong Kong, which lost a lot of detail in the many night scenes, but there must be a better Japanese or US DVD edition out there for me to upgrade to for my next viewing.

For a taste of the action, here's a French trailer for Red Shadow on YouTube...

Also check out this promo for the 1960s Toei TV series, it has giant monsters!

OTAKUS IN LOVE (2004) - a manga maniacs rom-com

OTAKUS IN LOVE

(2004, Japan, Koi no mon)

First faltering romance for a pair of anime/manga/cosplay geeks

I'm not big on romantic comedies, but here's one devoid of cliches. It's in the world of anime geeks (or otaku), where fictional characters and their inventors attract an obsessive fandom of Star Trekian proportions. But while anime and manga are widely seen to be all giant robots and schoolgirls, in Japan they're about absolutely anything (tennis, cats, cooking) with just as many female fans.

Koino (Wakana Sakai) loves singing along with anime theme tunes, collecting manga, and dressing up as her favourite characters. Mon (Ryuhei Matsuda) is an aspiring manga artist with a radical take on the artform. The two meet by accident. Well. In an accident. Both twenty-something, lonely virgins, with something in common. A love of manga. She's particularly impressed that he's a manga artist. That is, until she sees his work...

The scenario is set for a bizarre courtship involving cosplay dating, ani-singers, and manga conventions... Mon stumbles into a manga bar and even the owner, Marimoda, gets tangled up in the budding relationship... The embarrassments of early sexual connections pale into comparison with their respective obsessions.


This is the first film directed by Suzuki Matsuo, an experienced actor who also stars as the deadpan bar manager. He's adept at handling this quickfire comedy with a sharp sense of visuals. Matsuo has also rallied an extensive set of cameos. Among the real-life manga artists and anime singers, there are also movie directors. I didn't get all the in-jokes (though the humour doesn't rely heavily on them), but I wasn't expecting to see Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo, Nightmare Detective) and Takashi Miike in all the chaos.

Acclaimed, cult actor Ryuhei Matsuda (the star of Nightmare Detective 1 and 2, and Gohatto) proves adept at deadpan comedy. He's also unafraid to flash his leopardskin bulge, though this is still very tame for a sex comedy. The less well-known Wakana Sakai proves to be his match for comic timing as well as drama.

I'd assumed that, by now, Otakus in Love would have been released on DVD in the UK or US, but no. With the widespread cosplay and anime conventions, I thought that this film could be an easy sell.


Luckily, the Japanese DVD was subtitled in English, under the title Koi no Mon. There's also a Korean special edition which has good subtitles and even subtitled extras on a second disc. Both editions are out of print, but they're out there, somewhere.


The official website for the film is still here.

For a flavour of the visual style, here's an unsubtitled trailer on YouTube...

GUARD POST / GP506 (2008) - from the director of R-POINT

GUARD POST / GP 506
(2008, South Korea)

Su-Chang Kong wrote and directed both this and R-Point (2004) - both are horror films set in the army. I was impressed and scared by R-Point and wondered if this soldier's tale was going to be similar. The strengths of both films are that you're not sure which particular horror genre you're heading into. A slasher movie? Zombies? Ghosts?

Guard Point begins at the end of a massacre, at a remote concrete complex near the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea. A military investigation team arrives to discover a sole survivor drenched in blood, holding an axe. They're given 24 hours to determine what happened. Did everyone kill each other, or did one man do it all? Is he mad, or possessed?


But as the scares began, I was disappointed to see a few overly familiar horror cliches, especially after the originality of the surprises in R-Point. The plot was certainly clever, but maybe too convoluted, because I started to get lost as the story moved between timelines before and after the massacre.


When explanations finally arrived, they didn't quite answer everything, and I was left sorting out red herrings from loose ends. The narrative was hard-going and requires concentration - with many sudden flashbacks, it's not always easy to follow. Also, with a cast of four dozen characters, all soldiers, variously covered in blood and camouflage make-up, it wasn't easy to make out who's who.


But it's a handsome looking film, with a convincing cast and solid, steadily-increasing shocks. It's certainly far more eventful than R-Point, and far gorier. Maybe I'll understand it better second time around. If it was from Thailand I'd be very impressed. But from Korea, I'd expect to be more satisfied. Boy, am I hard to please sometimes.


Guard Post was released last year on DVD and Blu-Ray in the UK by Cine-East.

Here's the trailer on YouTube, without subtitles though.

ENCHANTING SHADOW (1960) - inspiring A CHINESE GHOST STORY

ENCHANTING SHADOW
(1960, Hong Kong, Ching nu yu hun)

A beautiful film which inspired the internationally famous A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), which in turn revitalised the flying swords genre, as well as many more Hong Kong ghost stories. Recently restored on DVD, the 1960 Shaw Brothers version holds up as a favourable alternative to the better known Tsui Hark remake.

Based on the same source as A Chinese Ghost Story (Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling, written in the 17th century) it has the same basic structure of a rent collector who can't find a place to stay in a small town, resorting to staying in a deserted temple that the locals say is haunted.


Exploring the grounds, he meets an attractive young woman in the splendid back garden, where she lives with her aunts and grandma. While she is initially annoyed at his nosiness, she starts to fall for the handsome young man. But courting has many strict rules and when she gets too amorous, he's in danger of getting into deep trouble with her family. Worse than that, there's a horrible murder at the temple, and a body has been drained of blood...

Shot completely in a studio, this early example of colour film from Hong Kong rivals its remake. It's a far more sedate version, but is as typical of the early 1960s as A Chinese Ghost Story is of the late 1980s. The characters, the lush sets and costumes, and especially the story are it's strength. There's almost no fighting and a restrained use of special effects, just enough to serve the story, but with enough shock value.


The remake now almost looks more dated, with fast cutting, wide-angle swish pans, OTT wirework, saturated blue lighting and backlit smoke. The special effects have aged too - the skeletons make Army of Darkness look good. Don't get me wrong, it's still a great martial arts comedy, with inventive routines as good as classic Jackie Chan, and the cast look perfect, Leslie Cheung almost as beautiful as Joey Wang...

But if it's a more serious ghost story you want, I'd certainly recommend Enchanting Shadow. It has a relatively slow start, but I was impressed at how gripping it became. It appears to have been influenced by Hammer Horror, that made an international impression at the end of the 1950s, enough to film in Eastman colour and use startling blood and make-up effects.


There's a short documentary about the director Li Hanxiang included on the DVD (pictured at top), thankfully with English subtitles. As well as a trailer, which is so scratchy and faded, it's a reminder of how miraculous the restoration has been of this fifty-year old movie. The packaging states the film is 2.35 widescreen, but after watching it, that must be a typo. It's presented 4:3, which looks correct.

There's another favourable review of Enchanting Shadow here on Illuminated Lantern, and the DVD is available at HK Flix here.


Meanwhile, there are now remastered editions of all three Chinese Ghost Story films, like this Hong Kong DVD boxset available at YesAsia. Tsui Hark also remade the first film as an animation, and 24framespersecond has news that a live-action remake is now in the works.

GRIZZLY (1976) - with the emphasis on grisly

GRIZZLY
(1976, USA)

Finally, I get to see an uncut version of Grizzly. This was the first to cash in on the bloody wake of Jaws. Cinemas were then deluged by a carnival of killer animal movies, mostly aquatic (Tentacles, Orca The Killer Whale, Piranha, Alligator...), but also landlubbers (Prophecy, The Swarm...). Although Grizzly was first out of the gate, it's one of the best in the genre.

The version we saw in UK cinemas in 1976 had most of the blood (and flying limbs) censored. Despite the amount of gore that was allowed in Jaws, the censor wasn't nearly as lenient with Grizzly. The wonderful Shriek Show 30th anniversary DVD has been my first chance to see the film in its entirety. Getting a 'guilty pleasure' like this, widescreen, uncut, with a commentary track, behind-the-scenes footage, and new interviews, make the Special Edition extra special.

Campers start dying in a state national park. When I say dying, I mean 'getting torn apart'. The ranger thinks a bear is to blame, but no one believes him when he reckons an abnormally large grizzly is responsible - it's just too far south. As the hunters become the hunted, he enlists the help of a helicopter pilot and an eccentric bear expert to try and end the carnage.

Director William Girdler's background was in low-budget horror movies, and Grizzly closely resembles an early slasher film, with the emphasis on slash. The intensity of the bear attacks puts Jason Vorhees to shame, using gore and close-ups of screaming victims backing away from the camera, in a way that recalls Italian giallo. There's as much blood in the uncut version of Grizzly than many Friday the 13th movies, and there's that familiar forest ambiance too. All this and helicopter action. Hey, I happen to like helicopters. So did 1970s action cinema. Had to have a helicopter.


Part of it's continuing watchability today is due to the extensive use of a real-life, full-size grizzly bear running around. (The DVD extras mention the solitary electrified wire that separated it from the cast and crew).

If this were made today, the scriptwriter would have to work hard to avoid the bear being simply anaesthetised and lovingly relocated. But this is a monster movie made in Texas, so the only solutions considered are strictly guns and ammo.


As a bonus, the cast are very good, adding convincing drama to a simple story, but are more familiar from TV. You may have seen Christopher George (the park ranger) star in Lucio Fulci's zombie classic City of the Living Dead (1979), vigilante slasher The Exterminator (1980), or even Girdler's next nature-revenge movie Day of the Animals. Richard Jaeckel (the eccentric tracker) for me is forever the star of Kinji (Battle Royale) Fukasaku's delirious The Green Slime (1968), as a military astronaut defending a space station from, um, alien monsters from the green slime...

As a prime example of bad-taste, low-budget, exploitation cinema gone mainstream, Grizzly is hard to beat. Girdler would try and match it's success with Day of the Animals (1977), but his last film was my favourite, The Manitou (1978), which I reviewed here.


Check out more abut William Girdler's 'Texploitation' movies here.



In the UK, Grizzly topped a double-bill with Drive-In, a good-natured Texan teen comedy. It was like American Graffiti, but in 1970s Dallas. It includes a movie-within-a-movie playing at the drive-in, Disaster '76, an early satire of catastrophe movies, made before Airplane. It's not on DVD, but Drive-In can be seen in its entirety here on GoogleVideo.

ULTRA-Q (1966) - Japanese monster TV series, before ULTRAMAN

ULTRA-Q(1966, Japan, TV)

I first heard of this TV series as I was tracing back to the first of the Ultraman series, and assumed this was another show about 'a man in a suit fighting monsters'. But while Ultra-Q lead up to the first, classic Ultraman of 1966, it's a very different format. A trio of young investigators who face outbreaks of the unknown, usually involving giant monsters. This entertaining black-and-white series has now been reissued in Japan on DVD, crucially at a new lower price per disc.

It was dreamt up by the special effects mastermind behind the Godzilla films, Eiji Tsuburaya, as he was trying to find a format for his special effects techniques in a TV show. He was aiming for the same mixture of fantasy and mystery as the US hit The Twilight Zone, but because of his visual effects for Toho sci-fi films, like the Godzilla series, and possibly because they knew he owned all the monster suits, each episode of Ultra-Q usually has a giant monster in it.

In much the same way the producers of The Outer Limits insisted on a 'bear' every week, a scary monster or alien that would add a visual hook, Tsuburaya ended up switching formats to Ultraman, where his giant humanoid alien would fight a different monster every week. This UItra-format has been popular ever since, involving hundreds of live-action TV series and movies. The rights to the superhero were even sold internationally to the US, Australia and Thailand who shot their own versions.

But I really wanted to see Ultra-Q, to see more of Tsuburaya's special effects and unique monsters, some of whom have reappeared in later Ultraman series. There was even a recent update of Ultra-Q called Dark Fantasy, but it was a fairly cheap tribute, shot on video, and didn't look as nearly as impressive as the 1966 show, when the special effects rival his film work.


Ultra-Q episodes can either be mini-monster movies, short disaster epics, or surreal childhood fantasies. But the imagination and extensive special effects, not to mention the lively camerawork, fast editing and jazzy score, make it enjoyable even without subtitles. The series was made in black-and-white, unlike Ultraman, which helps makes the composite visual effects and back projection look more convincing, which adds to the charm.

While the series ended up being aimed at children, the high production values, adult cast and scary weirdness makes it as interesting to adult fans as sixties Godzilla movies, for instance.

Indeed, watch out for guest appearances from movie monsters Godzilla, King Kong, Manda and the gang, sometimes dressed up in disguise, and marvel at the new creations such as a giant snail with glowing eyes - a ridiculous and unique creature that still manages to creep me out. How'd you like to see that staring through your window at night?


I baulked at paying for the Japanese boxset that was issued in 2005, but in 2008 the same DVDs were reissued at a far more affordable price. There are seven volumes, each with four episodes on. CD Japan and YesAsia sell them, but be careful not to order the recent remake Ultra Q - Dark Fantasy, or the 2005 editions (they have black and white covers) as they cost twice as much as the new issues. Japanese DVDs are all NTSC, but coded region 2. There are no English subtitles on either release.

For more about the life and works of visual effects mastermind Eiji Tsuburaya, August Ragone's extensive and superbly illustrated biography is still in the shops.

Update November 2013
Shout Factory have released the entire series with English subtitles for English-speaking fans to finally enjoy this unique series. Despite Japan releasing the series yet again, but colorised, it was relief to see this American boxset presents all episodes in the original black-and-white, over five discs.

BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN (1967) - Ken Russell's offbeat cold war epic

BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN
(1967, UK)

This was the third Harry Palmer film, based on the books of Len Deighton, following the adaptions of The Ipcress File and Funeral in Berlin, and helped to confirm Michael Caine as an international star.

This was also Ken Russell's first feature, and seems restrained compared to his later outrageousness in The Devils, Mahler, Women In Love, Lizstomania... But the director's love of classical music and silent cinema is evident here, with several key sequences playing over orchestral music with minimal sound effects. I noticed an advanced echo of the visuals of Tommy, when a hundred soldiers in shiny silver helmets funnel through a narrow archway. It looked very much like pinball imagery to me.

While much of the film is a cold war spy thriller, Russell's style is in evidence whenever characters get tight close-ups and look straight at the camera, or when action is shot with wild hand-held camerawork.

This is in line with the surreal cinematography of The Ipcress File, where Sidney Furie used deep focus and wide-angles to make London look more sinister. Although the Harry Palmer films were made by many of the same production crew as the 1960s James Bond films, they took pains to distance the two series. This is initially an unglamorous depiction of spying - Palmer has to cook for himself, argue about pay with his boss (Guy Doleman, also a star of Thunderball), he doesn't have any gadgets, and he wears glasses... Bloody hell!But the last of the trilogy is veering nearer to Bond territory, with its tale of world domination, silvery sci-fi settings and larger-than-life baddie (Ed Begley Sr at his most grotesquely frightening). The title sequence is also designed by Maurice Binder, verging on Matt Helm goofiness, with its repetitive, looped animation.

Harry gets a weird phone call from a faltering, monotone voice telling him to deliver a package... to Finland. There he meets Leo, an old friend who offers him work in a secret organisation supporting a revolution in Latvia that will threaten the stability of the USSR. Leo is also getting his orders from the same computerised voice and recruits Harry for assassinations and other dirty work. The trail, or in this case wiring, leads all the way to Texas, where a communist-hating oil-billionaire has designs on the fall of Russia...

The super-computer central to the plot also reminds us how hacking used to be done in the 1960s, by changing reel-to-reel tapes and shuffling punch cards. Computing is presented as a new threat to the world, just before Hal 9000 threatened 2001: A Space Odyssey. The science-fictional technology predicts retinal scans, voice-activated computers and bio-weapons, which still looks a little futuristic, if it wasn't for the punch cards...

The extensive location photography makes the most of the unusual frozen lakes, churches and castles of Finland, contrasted by the shiny petrol tankers and cutting-edge skidoos.

The soundtrack music is another reason I keep revisiting Billion Dollar Brain. Richard Rodney Bennett's score accompanies the snowbound landscapes with the surreal ondes martenot, a keyboard adaption of the theramin (famously used in The Day The Earth Stood Still). Barry Gray was also a fan of the martenot, using it to accompany the loneliness of space travel in Journey to the Far Side of the Sun. Bennett's cascading piano theme couldn't be more dramatic, but the most serious scenes use adaptions of Russian classical symphonies, in line with the Soviet sub-plot.

Michael Caine's character prompted his appearance as Austin Powers's dad in Goldmember, as well as Myers' choice of glasses. Karl Malden plays the slippery Leo, years before he raced The Streets of San Francisco with Michael Douglas. The enchanting Francoise Dorleac (Polanski's Cul-de-sac) was en route to being as big a star as her sister, Catherine Deneuve. The jovial Oscar Homolka (Mr Sardonicus) makes a welcome return as Colonel Stok, reprising his role from Funeral in Berlin.This was a latecomer to DVD, now available 2.35 widescreen by MGM. The delay was presumably because of the music rights to a Beatles track. Unfortunately, the solution has been to remove a short scene, but you might still catch that on TV.

The Harry Palmer Movie Site has much more on all three films, and boasts rare behind-the -scenes footage.

The soundtrack liner notes (from a huge and expensive MGM boxset) are full of insight into the production, including the sad news that Francoise Dorleac died at 25, shortly after the film's release.

DOC SAVAGE - MAN OF BRONZE (1975) - on DVD with other WB rarities

Warner Bros. is offering a new service that could lead the way for film fans to see rarities hidden in the studio archives. Movies that might not make their money back in a standard DVD release, are being released in limited numbers, depending on demand. There's also the option to 'download to own'. Whoever is interested can now see these older movies, and the studio doesn't waste money on over-production. The online store is linked here.

There've been two 'waves' of releases so far. The downside is that this is only available in the USA at the moment. Here's what initially caught my eye...


I can now officially take Doc Savage - Man of Bronze off my 'not on DVD' list. The 1975 adaption, of the long-running 1930s pulp action hero adventures, isn't popular with every fans of the bronze giant, but it still deserves to be out there. I reviewed the movie, fondly, here.

Want to see Francis Ford Coppola's 1969 'existential road movie'? Now you can - a youthful James Caan, Robert Duvall and Shirley Knight starred. I shouldn't be surprised when films by important directors aren't available, but I am.


Looking for information on early 'flight panic' movie Zero Hour, (the movie that largely inspired Airplane!), I heard about The Crowded Sky and it's close links with the genre. It's based on an Arthur Hailey book that was adapted before he had the huge hit with Airport (the template for 70s disaster movies). The Crowded Sky also pre-dates Dana Andrews mid-air collision in Airport 1975. Now if only I lived in America, I could get to see it...

Hammer films were all made by the same British studio but distributed by many different American distributors. Tracking them all down has become a lifetime quest. But Hammer fans can now see the psycho-thriller Crescendo (1970) starring Stefanie Powers (Hart to Hart, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.) and James Olsen (The Andromeda Strain, Moon Zero Two).

Many of the movies on offer are early black-and-white film. Rasputin and the Empress (1932) impressed me greatly when I caught on late-night TV. A grand recreation of the legendary puppet master and his friendship with the Russian royal family. This is the only time the three heavyweights of the Barrymore acting dynasty starred together. Drew's grandad John has a terrifying showdown with Lionel, as Rasputin, where they beat bloody hell out of each other, in a violent approximation of real-life events. This movie being 'pre-code', it's a still shocking scene today.

Hopefully, this will be a success and Warners will continue to dust off more treasures from their vaults, and maybe other studios will follow on.

THE SKY CRAWLERS (2008) - new anime from Mamoru Oshii

THE SKY CRAWLERS
(2008, Japan)

While I'm in awe of Mamoru Oshii's achievements, especially the Ghost in the Shell movies, I've yet to enjoy any other films he's directed. Red Spectacles (1987), Avalon (2001) and now The Sky Crawlers all left me cold, and confused. I'd highly recommend other projects which he's an important creative force behind, like Jin-Roh (1998) and Blood - The Last Vampire.

Unfairly perhaps, I watched The Sky Crawlers with sub-standard subtitles (on this Malaysian DVD, pictured below) which fails to introduce the rules of 'the war' or translate the more complex dialogue adequately. But this is also how I first watched Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, and it instantly became a favourite film.

On a near-future Earth, young people fight wars so that no-one else has to (it's explained a little more fully than that). A new fighter pilot arrives at an airfield, but is trying to unravel the mysteries surrounding his (pretty, young, female) commander. As fewer of his comrades return from their regular hazardous missions, the truth slowly emerges...

The flying sequences are exceptionally dynamic, the 3D animation almost photo-real. The action is almost too fast to follow, in complete contrast to the slowly developing plot. The fluid and intricately detailed animation of the aerial scenes is also in jarring contrast to the simply-rendered 2D characters, still moving at a jerky eight times a second (the customary speed for Japanese animation). The designwork is exciting, but limited to only a few different types of aircraft.

On the ground, most of the story takes place in dull, muted interiors, reminiscent of wooden-panelled houses of WW2 England - far removed from the sci-fi scenarios anime fans might expect. The drama, basically a two-handed struggle, lost my interest completely. I'm no action junkie, but I just couldn't get involved.

While Innocence was also heavy on philosophy, I at least had a handle on the issues he was exploring, from my knowledge of the Ghost in the Shell universe. I could also enjoy Oshii's very visual imagining of the near future, without fully understanding what was going on. The weighty dialogue was compensated with intricately predicted cities, computers, robots, vehicles...


This isn't the sort of film I can recommend to anyone other than Oshii fans. The aerial scenes are stunning, but unlike Hollywood action films where the effects are special but the plots aren't, the difference here is that the story is not lowbrow, but too highbrow.

The Sky Crawlers will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on May 26th in the US (cover art at top). I wouldn't recommend anyone jumps the gun with the Malaysian DVD, because the transfer makes the action look juddery. The subtitles are poorly translated and often only flash up for a fraction of a second.

ALLIGATOR (1980) - great monster movie, with sewer humour

ALLIGATOR
(1980, USA)

Trailing the animal attack genre of the 1970s, witty dialogue, constant action, and great character actors keep Alligator afloat to the very end. Added to this, modest outbursts of gore, building on the bloodier moments of Jaws (1975), makes this latter-day b-movie very watchable for genre fans today. I remember it was a huge hit on VHS. I also miss the days when John Sayles (now a top director) just wrote low-budget and exploitation films. His script for Piranha (1978) also helped elevate it to cult status.

The story builds up the urban myth about alligators breeding in the sewers into an (almost) believable tale about growth hormone experiments gone wrong (like Food of the Gods). The police investigation keeps the film rooted in reality, opening with the discovery of body parts in the sewers. This is all too commonplace in the news nowadays, but felt really unlikely when I saw it back in the day. As the cops find more victims, they eventually realise they have a big problem down under.


Clever, but low-tech special FX make the most of real alligators in scaled-down sets. But my favourite scenes involve a tremendous-looking full-scale prop, used to crunch on stunt performers and actors alike. There's also some bad-taste use of amputees to show alligator attack aftermaths.

Director Lewis Teague (Cat's Eye, Cujo) follows in Spielberg's footsteps with a marvellous night-time episode in a swimming pool. But full credit to him though for making a Jaws rip-off that actually entertains. Similarly, the story starts by not showing too much too early, while keeping the bodycount steadily rising. The ridiculous car crashes and explosions are slotted in to pump up the trailer - a regular device in the straight-to-video market.

The alternately dramatic/ghastly/humorous tone reminded me of the recent Korean hit The Host, as well as the 'Gnaws' episode of The New Avengers, which also crept around the sewers after some growth hormone had been dumped down there, hmm.

Robert Forster (Jackie Brown, Dragon Wars, The Black Hole) suffers a running joke about going bald, but his hair has magically looked the same ever since. His A-list performance is almost too good for a monster movie, but the rest of the cast also play it straight, to the movie's benefit. I was surprised to see Dean Jagger again, so long after he was the quasi-Quatermass character of X - The Unknown (1956).

Anchor Bay's 16:9 widescreen transfer loses picture information on all sides, compared to the VHS and 4:3 DVD releases, but nothing too important. The big plus is a sharper picture and a welcome commentary track.

For screengrabs and another review, see DVD Active here. For the lousy UK poster that played up the comedy way too much, see Cinema Is Dope here.


All I can say about the belated sequel Alligator 2: The Mutation (included on the UK set) is that even the trailer is dull, despite having Dee Wallace Stone (The Howling, Cujo, The Frighteners) and Steve Railsback (Helter Skelter, The Stuntman).

THE FALL (2006) - when, will it, will it be famous?

THE FALL
(2006, India/UK/USA)

It’s possible to fall in love with new Hollywood movies that cost millions of dollars but no-one has heard of. These can be box-office flops that were killed by word of mouth and/or negative critical reaction. I think The Fall just never got a good enough launch. Looking at the reviews and reactions of anyone who's seen it, there's a potentially large audience out there. An audience that is having to discover the film for themselves. Logically, this is a bizarre phenomenon for an epic film. Sort of similarly, another film slowly gaining an audience is last year's Speed Racer, which had a huge marketing push that somehow failed to attract an adult audience. Speed Racer was special effects-heavy, as in every single scene, while The Fall is also spectacularly beautiful, but naturally so.

Last year, after a telling delay, it was finally released in the UK. I was very interested because of director Tarsem Singh’s previous film The Cell (2000), a mixture of imaginatively lush visuals and dark subject matter - a journey into the mind of a serial killer. I suspect that more people would have gotten to see The Fall if the story hadn’t taken such a late hairpin turn into the dark side, because it's almost a children's film... for all ages.


It's Hollywood, 1915. A stuntman is recovering in hospital from a broken leg. Another patient, a little girl, happens to visit him one day and he starts making up a story for her. A swashbuckling tale full of colourful characters in even more colourful, fantastic locations. The little girl has to imagine it all, but we see everything as he describes it. A band of skilled adventurers from far-flung lands, teaming up against a common foe in a mysterious desert kingdom. The little girl visits him every day for a little more of the story. But as the stuntman’s luck goes bad in real life, he evokes his troubles on the characters in his story, much to the distress of the little girl. Will there be a happy ending to his story?


The Fall starts off as a good-natured, multi-cultural adventure intercut with the light-hearted friendship of the stuntman and the little girl, a slightly unusual and different-looking family film. But towards the end, the tone shifts and gets very dark very quickly, making the film rough for young children and adults expecting to chill out. This leaves the film in a niche category of adult-biased dark fairytales. Presumably this made the film too hard a sell but shouldn't have sunk it completely. It's hopefully being discovered on DVD and, especially, Blu-Ray which is perfect for spectaculars like this.


Director Tarsem (as he now calls himself) has carefully picked beautiful and astonishing locations that I’ve not seen before, though I suspect that some may have already appeared in Indian cinema. Of the many other countries used in the film, he's also revisited a few choice locations from Baraka (1992), a mix of startling images and music from the cinematographer of Koyaanisqatsi (1982). With Tarsem's flair for cinematographic splendour and outlandish fashions, the movie regularly looks surreal, though the marvellous vistas actually exist.


The international cast is led by the charismatic Lee Pace (star of Pushing Daisies). Whenever I see an actor successfully play two entirely different roles, I’m very impressed. Pace impresses as the attractive romantic action hero, but he was also totally convincing as a male-to-female transsexual in A Soldier’s Story! Anyone who can succeed in polar-opposite roles can surely play a whole range between.

While the climax is problematic, The Fall is still the most sumptuous, FX-lite, eye candy of last year, and likely to fuel holiday ideas for decades to come.

DVD Beaver has more screengrabs here, and the promotional website is still live.

After a clue in the end credits, it turned out that the story has been filmed before, on a much lower budget. Yo Ho Ho (1981) is a Bulgarian film that's provided the inspiration here. Though Tarsem has made The Fall very much his own, it would be interesting to compare it. There's a plot description and some useful screengrabs here at Gotterdammerung.