DAY OF THE ANIMALS (1978) - Leslie Nielsen in the follow-up to GRIZZLY

DAY OF THE ANIMALS

(1977, USA)

When animals attack... and keep on attacking!

A large group of happy campers prepare for a long trek in California's High Sierras. But after they're dropped off high on a mountain by helicopter, a warning goes out that an anomaly in the ozone layer could alter animal behaviour, and even be dangerous for humans. As the evacuation begins of all the towns at high altitude, the campers aren't expecting it when the many wild animals start behaving strangely...

This wouldn't have been made if it wasn't for Jaws, but like Joe Dante, director William Girdler knows his audience and tries to add surprises to the horror genre, rather than relying on cliche. With the theme of atmospheric damage, this also has a strong dose of sci-fi. It has a grindhouse vibe, but is too well made to be labelled as such.

Director William Girdler started off making really cheap horror films (like Three on a Meathook and Asylum of Satan) but rapidly progressed to mainstream releases. He rarely strayed from horror films, but maintained a fun creative sense, injecting what are now known as 'WTF moments' that make his later films must-sees. I looked forward to them, and was saddened when he died accidentally at the ridiculously young age of 30.

Day of the Animals, Grizzly and The Manitou deserve to be remastered on blu-ray. At the moment there's only a blu-ray of Grizzly in France and Day of the Animals has just had a special edition blu-ray in the USA, from Scorpion Releasing.

When I first saw this, on a double-bill with The Car, it didn't impress me nearly as much (see my review of The Car here). Watching it again on DVD did little to improve my opinion, but it was a really terrible presentation. Now, seeing it again in 2.35 widescreen, superbly restored, has elevated Day of the Animals to a worthy support feature for Grizzly, which I rate very highly. It could be argued that there's some continuity between the two stories. Day of the Animals could be a prequel, explaining why Grizzly ran amok. The animal attack theme certainly binds these two films together, made in consecutive years. It's certainly a better partner than The Car.

The new blu-ray showcases the production from the opening shots. Even the title sequence looks good, with so many wild animals sitting, waiting patiently in frame for their prey to arrive. The many wild animals on show are impressive because none of them are stock footage. The excessive lens flares and slightly 'hot' overexposure, with some additional filters, cleverly transmit that there's something not quite right about the sunlight. 

When the animals start to attack, it looks convincingly fierce. Girdler and his team must have met up with the right people during the making of Grizzly, to be able to film so many different co-operative animals. 

While the stuntwork is still very convincing, The budget can't extend to ambitious visual effects, some of which haven't aged well. It's also hard to take the film too seriously with Leslie Nielsen playing a racist bully, shortly before he appeared in Airplane! 

Both Christopher George (City of the Living Dead) and Richard Jaeckel (The Green Slime) return fresh from Grizzly, but as quite different characters. Girdler certainly hangs on to the actors he likes. Similarly, Michael Ansara later appeared in The Manitou.

Susan Backlinie was most famous for being the first victim in Jaws, and here he uses her both as stunt performer and an actress. Bobby Porter also performed stunts, but being under five feet tall, he usually doubled children. He also acts and plays a child in this, even though he was 25 at the time! Porter also had a major role as the young chimp in Battle for the Planet of the Apes and memorably a child zombie in Night of the Comet.

Andrew Stevens has a small role in this, just before he landed a major role in Brian De Palma's The Fury. There's also Paul Mantee, star of George Pal's Robinson Crusoe On Mars. He and Jon Cedar are interviewed on the blu-ray edition, adding considerable background to the making of the film and William Girdler's way of working.

As I mentioned, the US DVD of Day of the Animals is ghastly, a blurry, pan-and-scan 1.33 crop from a 2.35 widescreen image.

The new blu-ray shows off the how good the production actually looked, especially it's scenic cinematography, digitally mastered from the interpositive. There's a new 5.1 audio mix of the original elements and a unique isolated soundtrack of Lalo Schifrin's music. All this and reversible cover art.

An action-packed 'animal attack' movie at the height of that craze, and a predictive tale of eco-disaster, I finally loved watching this again. 



To see how Day of the Animals looks on blu-ray, visit DVD Beaver for their review and gallery of screengrabs.

GRIZZLY - my look at the superfun 1976 Jaws rip-off, nick-named - 'Jaws on land'

For much more about the films of William Girdler, go to fan site WilliamGirdler.com

WHO? (1973) - released as THE MAN IN THE STEEL MASK on UK DVD

I've updated my review of Who? to include this new region 2 Pal DVD release for the UK. It's probably a repackaged version of the 2010 US release, but without any of the extras (namely commentary tracks). Don't quite know why they've changed the title. It always ran as Who? on British TV, years ago.

I try and keep all the information about one film in the same post, so please follow this link...

Elliott Gould in WHO? (1973) - cold war spy game with a splash of dated sci-fi...

THE ANTICHRIST (1974) - you may now kiss the goat

  

THE ANTICHRIST

(1974, Italy, a.k.a. L'anticristo, The Tempter)

A delirious Italian riff on both The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby!

After a road accident, a young woman resents her wheelchair and rejects God, allowing herself to be possessed by a witch from a past life and attracting the sexual attentions of the Devil himself...

Now that I've seen an uncut version of The Antichrist, it not only makes (much more) sense, but is now hugely enjoyable. When originally shown in UK cinemas, it had many of the shock moments (and swearing) cut out of it, that left me thinking it was badly made because it made so little sense, and seemed badly edited. The loose English dubbing of the Italian cast drew laughs from the audience, especially during any swearing. Of course, it would have taken time and money to send the censored version back to Italy so that they could tidy it up, so what we saw was a patchwork of what we were allowed to. 

Despite this being my second ever 'X' film experience, I've hardly revisited it, remembering only its lack of impact. I saw it, The Omen and Exorcist II before seeing The Exorcist on its five-year reissue. The Antichrist was also overshadowed by the supporting feature, a reissue of The Legend of Hell House. I saw this double-bill in a South London cinema in July 1976, two years after The Antichrist debuted in Italy, making me think that it might even have been a re-run. More likely, I did see it on its first run, but it had been delayed by censorship problems.

To their credit, the filmmakers had done their best to deliver shocks similar to The Exorcist, assuming that they would be also allowed to show anything that William Friedkin had already. I remember the vomit, but not much swearing. The scene with the Devil I remember very little of, and that was certainly the most likely to be censored down - with sex acts, extensive nudity and, um, a goat... Only on this recent rewatch, on the UK DVD, did the story finally make sense to me.

Besides borrowing shock moments, the filmmakers had to avoid being sued, evoking visual elements and story ideas from The Exorcist while giving them a lawsuit-avoiding twist. This has been creatively done, and adds to the enjoyment. Rather than Washington D.C., The Antichrist is set in Rome - a much more picturesque capital. They include a spinning head, white eyes, lots of moving funiture, and even a stair fall... 

Rather than have the story dominated by a priest tackling a possession, the story delays any religious intervention by having a psychiatrist try to cure her. This still favours a supernatural angle because the regression therapy leads her to a series of spectacular witch flashbacks! 

A story of a woman rather than a young girl being possessed, means that the story can go much further with the bad behaviour of the character - an astonishing and convincingly devilish performance by Carla Gravina - who can be shown as far more sexual and foul-mouthed. 

At the same time, it seems influenced by The Devils, in that the witchy flashbacks take place in a past where medieval modernism looks smarter than the stuffy 'townhouse' where they live. Full of grand rooms, dripping in historical art to the point of excess, their dining room has a ridiculous number of gigantic paintings on the wall, too grand even for a museum.

The visual approach points towards Suspiria. Besides the story of a modern witch, the big house has baroque, overly-grandiose rooms inside a steep-sided stone house. Some of the walls are painted in block red. The presence of Alida Valli, here in a sympathetic role, also hints at a connection. 

The cross-cutting, seventies styles and dated special effects will amuse as much as they convince. Sometimes it all evokes surreal dreams, other times just presents awful effects. The fake toad and snake anticipate similarly unsuccessful moments in Lucio Fulci horrors. The variable optical compositing often fails to convince, but a bold use of back (front?) projection is still effective, especially when all the colours are distorted. 

Entertaining in many ways, The Antichrist includes some great moments of W.T.F.! My favourite being the volleys of low-flying vinyl during the exorcism. 

I've recently seen this called 'low-budget', but that's not my impression. The location work in and around Rome, and the huge complex sets are lush by comparison with many other Italian horrors. The director was regularly entrusted with films that were aimed at international success, like his Bond spoof OK Connery, starring Sean's brother Neil! More notably, Alberto De Martino soon delivered a riff on The Omen. Holocaust 2000 had lavish location work and a solid cast headed by Kirk Douglas.

Apart from the star, most of the cast speak English. Familar faces include Arthur Kennedy in a dog collar (good practice for his role in The Sentinel), George Coulouris (The Skull, Tower of Evil, Citizen Kane) as a mysterious monk and Mel Ferrer (The Hands of Orlac, 1960) as Ippolita's guilty Dad.

The Optimum region 2 UK DVD from 2009 (above) has no extras, but the print is in great shape, with rich colours and an anamorphic widescreen 16:9 aspect. It appears to be the longest, original version (in the USA, not only was it delayed until 1978, it was cut down by nearly 15 minutes and renamed The Tempter. 

The main difference is that most of the prologue has gone, where Ippolita queues up amongst assorted freakouts hoping for a miracle cure, and witnesses an exorcism going wrong).

The long version was also released by Anchor Bay in 2002 (above). It also includes some short interviews as extras.

I'm really glad to have seen this uncensored, full-length presentation of The Antichrist, it's raised my respect for a film I'd dismissed several times before.

THE WHITE BUS (1967) - a prologue to Lindsay Anderson's trilogy

THE WHITE BUS

(1967, UK)

After the gritty drama of This Sporting Life (1963) director Lindsay Anderson's approach to films about British society turned slightly surreal, in both content and acting style. His next three feature films all starred Malcolm McDowell as the hapless Mick Travis, in if.... (1968), O Lucky Man! (1973) and Britannia Hospital (1982). All three are enjoyable for their ensemble casts, weirdness, humour and savage criticism of monolithic establishments.

But I was wrong to think that those three are all there is. The White Bus is a fitting prologue to the mannered acting and increasingly acid satire used in the 'Mick Travis trilogy'.

This short film, 45 minutes long, was intended as part of a longer collaboration with other directors. But I hadn't realised that it was so similar to the trilogy. The distant cinematography, a drifter caught up in a tour of Britain (like O Lucky Man), a cross-section of society (like all three)... I also was delighted to see this black and white film occasionally burst into colour, which I thought was unique to if..... No surprise that Miroslav Ondrícek was the director of photography on both. There's even a substantial part for Arthur Lowe - an actor and a character who appeared in the three later films.

The White Bus follows a young typist (possibly being driven to despair by her job) as she leaves London and travels north to an unspecified city (which looks to me like Manchester). There she accidentally joins a bus tour on which international delegates are being sold modern society by the mayor.

It's less pointed, even less structured than the other films, but an interesting predecessor. There are treats in the cast, such as Anthony Hopkins' debut on film (singing Brecht!) and Stephen Moore (Marvin The Paranoid Android) as a besotted businessman.

Patricia Healey plays the young woman who's our entry point into the meandering non-narrative. It made me realise that the character of Mick Travis is also more of an observer than a protagonist in the trilogy. Even in if.... where he stands up to challenge the system, could be interpreted as a fantasy of his character.

A more concrete link with the longer films is the style of acting, which I'd not really considered until reading Erik Hedline's 'Lindsay Anderson: Maverick Film Maker'. He describes how Anderson, who also directed many plays, developed this uniform style of 'non-acting' - naturalistic, unblinking performances, where an elephant in the room is completely ignored - taken to an extreme with the school chaplain in the chest of drawers, in if..... The same blank reactions as the diplomats and mercenaries while they view film of war atrocities, in the process of purchasing illegal weapons in O Lucky Man!.

Stand alone, it'd probably leave viewers cold, but if you like Anderson's work, or oblique, absurdist British cinema of the 1960s, this could be for you.

The White Bus is currently available from Warner Archive as a made-on-demand DVD-R (cover art at top).

NEXT OF KIN (1982) - a unique Australian horror

 

NEXT OF KIN

(1982, Australia)

2008 Documentary Not Quite Hollywood is a funny and informative clip-packed story of Australia's exploitation cinema, which rose to infamy and success in the 1970s. While the nation's arthouse films like The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith and Picnic At Hanging Rock gained international attention, less well-known filmmakers aimed for easier markets with sex comedies, horror movies and insane stunt-heavy actioners.

While first watching it, I fast-forwarded through the clips of films I hadn't seen yet, including Next of Kin. I've since seen Race for the Yankee Zephyr and Long Weekend. So after Wake In Fright, I'll be able to watch it properly. Not Quite Hollywood is made up of laid back interviews with the actors, producers and directors of the classics of this genre, plus unexpected fan Quentin Tarantino as enthusiastic as ever. It's very entertaining in itself, but also trails dozens of fairly unknown, wonderful movies for you to pursue.

Next of Kin, like The Survivor and Thirst, isn't exploitation except that it's in the horror genre. Beautifully made, it mostly shuns cliche (apart from a leaping cat and a hand-on-the-shoulder scare) to offer something ambitious and unique, almost halfway to arthouse.

Linda inherits Montclare, a huge old people's home, but is reluctant to shut it down and sell it off for the money. She gets attached to the residents and even takes in new guests. 

But life in this huge mansion starts getting to her. A figure lurking outside her window at night and the sudden death of one of the residents puts her on edge, despite the reassurances of her boyfriend. 

For at least half the story, I enjoyed not knowing what kind of film this was going to be. A ghost story? A slasher? It cleverly hints at several horror sub-genres while racking up the mysteries and scares. When a stranger hassles her car on a dirt road, I was delighted that it might even swerve into Road Games territory. 

There's impressive, tour de force camerawork at pivotal moments, and an electronic score from Klaus Schulze (of Tangerine Dream). I know their music isn't everyone's idea of a soundtrack, but it's not as overpowering as other 1980s' films like, say, The Keep. The music effectively boosts the creepy atmosphere to another level and floats in a carefully-crafted sound design.

I'd not seen Jacki Kerrin before, but she ably carries the film. The only member of the cast I recognised was Alex Scott, one of many Australian actors who found plenty of work in British TV and movies in the 1960s, but returned home in the seventies, when the Australian film industry was in a better state. I knew him as one of the victims of The Abominable Dr Phibes. Here again he plays a doctor.

Linda's boyfriend is played by John Jarratt whose career spans the entire era of 'Ozsploitation'. He appeared in Picnic At Hanging Rock and has continued working into the current resurgence of Australian horror, appearing in Rogue and starring as bushman Mick in Wolf Creek and Wolf Creek 2. 

Despite Quentin Tarantino giving Next of Kin glowing reviews, this is currently out of print on DVD, except in Germany where the cover art (above) is awful and misleading. 

Another review of Next of Kin, with screengrabs and spoilers at Moon In The Gutter...

FIRE IN THE SKY (1993) - based on a true story of alien abduction

A night to remember...

A small team of Arizona loggers come home late one night looking very shaky. They report one of their crew as a missing person. Questioned by the police, they all tell the same story, that Travis Walton had disappeared after been struck down by a UFO. The police and the townspeople find it easier to believe that they've murdered him and buried him in the woods...

Based on events in 1975, it would have been timely to adapt Walton's 1978 book of his experiences while audiences were still high from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). But it took until 1993 before a film was made, possibly mistimed by being released several months before The X-Files debuted on TV. 

Fire In The Sky boldly starts with the caption 'Based on a true story'. While this makes us uneasy that all this actually happened, true stories don't necessarily make good plots for movies. In close parallel to Communion (1989), once we've seen the recreation of the abduction, the story has to end before Walton gets his book deal and sells the film rights.

I enjoy this and Communion because a little part of me wants to believe. I also a enjoy a good nightmare, and Fire In The Sky delivers a wonderfully scary abduction. With Walton exploring an organic spacecraft in zero gravity and being treated like a lab rat. Excellent practical visual effects, disorientating camerawork and a nagging sense that this is how aliens would look like and behave, make this the obvious highlight.

The very watchable cast has too little to do, but it's wonderful to see James Garner playing a detective again. The crew of witnesses are mostly made up of sci-fi stars. D.B. Sweeney is convincing as the shell-shocked Travis Walton. Robert Patrick plays his best friend, years before joining The X-Files, in his first major role after Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Sweaty, ripped Craig Sheffer, who starred in Nightbreed, here plays the renegade of the group. Henry Thomas was ten years older than when he met the very different extra-terrestrial of E.T.. Peter Berg had starred in Shocker and was decades away from directing the alien war story Battleship (2012).

There's also fun in trying to figure out the holes in this 'true story', through the thick veil of a Hollywood adaption. My suspicions are fired by the fact that this all took place only two weeks after The UFO Incident first aired on TV. The hugely successful TV movie dramatised the first alien abduction story to be taken at all seriously by the mainstream. 

I watched the 2004 region 1 Paramount DVD (pictured at top), which is 2.35 letterbox and anamorphic widescreen. Last year it was again released on DVD by Warner Archive (above).

Flashback 1980 - APOCALYPSE NOW, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK...

My selection of movie magazine pages from 1980 is much shorter than 1979's. I was seeing just as many films, at the University film society (three different films a week) and the local BFI cinema, the newly-opened Cinema City.

But I was buying fewer Film Review and Photoplay magazines that make up the bulk of these flashback articles. The photo layouts had become overlapped wonky collages, with the subjects cut out and removed from the backgrounds. Added to that, the photographic reproduction was notably poorer, fainter. I was also far less dependent on them for their tricklefeed of movie news and images.

There were now far more movie magazines available than the ones sold in cinemas, but most of them I daren't reproduce here because they are ongoing organisations - like Omni, Fangoria, Starburst and Starlog. Though, for reasons I don't fully understand, most back issues of Starlog have recently appeared online to view, legally, here.





Photoplay Annual 1980

In an article about actors-turned-directors, here's a shot of Burt Reynolds in charge of Gator, the sequel to White Lightning. His very tall co-star, William Engesser, is just behind him.

Two current genres offered blockbusters to start the year. The ultimate Vietnam movie Apocalypse Now, and sci-fi adventure Star Trek - The Motion Picture. 



Film Review, January

I saw Apocalypse Now at the ABC 2, Shaftesbury Avenue and was startled by the use of multi-channel Dolby Stereo - that sounded like helicopters were actually flying overhead. The end of the film simply faded to black and the end credits were handed to the audience as they left cinema, as a booklet. This is one of several endings that the film has had.

Film Review, January

Just as they did with Superman - The Movie, the press focussed on the budget, in particular Marlon Brando's fee compared to his time on screen. His face on the posters was worth every penny.

Film Review, January

The Star Trek movie franchise started here, with the stars of the 1966 TV series and a crew full of Trekkies (the speech Captain Kirk gives the crew was filmed with using a crowd of fans in futuristic costumes and alien masks). 

Film Review, January

Meteor proved that Irwin Allen wasn't the only one struggling with disaster movies. Despite a great cast (including Sean Connery and Natalie Wood) and a potentially interesting premise (basically the same as Armageddon), the climax is a long slow launch of hundreds of missiles.

Disney's outer space adventure The Black Hole opened in London the same week as Star Trek - The Motion Picture. Both studios had barely enough time to cash in on the success of Star Wars before The Empire Strikes Back arrived!

Much more about The Black Hole here.

Photoplay, February

Perhaps it was the return of Superman that inspired TV to attempt so many superhero series. The feature-length pilot episode for The Incredible Hulk was released in cinemas in Britain. The added attraction of an old Lassie film didn't tempt me. If we were patient, it would appear on TV soon enough.

Photoplay, February

Another franchise that launched in 1979, The Amityville Horror followed the huge success of the book. Perhaps it was the cursed house that soon led to star James Brolin returning to TV and Margot Kidder doing nothing more famous than Superman sequels. Despite taking his performance deadly seriously, Rod Steiger's career continued on downwards and he even made two more horror movies, The Kindred and American Gothic.

More about the story of The Amityville Horror here.

Photoplay, February

The winning combination of director Don Siegel and star Clint Eastwood (Coogan's Bluff, Dirty Harry...) ended with this prison break film, Escape From Alcatraz.

Films and Filming, March

William Friedkin's success with The Exorcist and The French Connection had been cancelled out by the poor reception to Sorcerer. But Cruising was a controversial return to form, with a serial killer stalking the sado-masochistic leather bars of Manhattan's Greenwich Village. Despite a relatively honest and explicit portrayal, and the fact that he'd already made a very different 'gay film' before (The Boys In The Band where all the characters are gay), the gay community urged a boycott and straight audiences weren't in a rush to see Al Pacino struggle with his sexuality.

It remains a dark thriller making the most of New York locations, with a great cast and plenty of surprises. I keep confusing the imagery from the opening scene with that of Zombie Flesh Eaters...

Photoplay, June

Besides Star Wars launching a fleet rip-offs, it also inspired renewed interest in science fiction stories set in outer space. Alien had also skewed a sub-genre towards horror, though dark thriller Saturn 3 opted to be cut down to an 'A' certificate. Several scenes build themselves up to unseen nastiness and Farrah Fawcett's sexy hallucination disappeared completely.

More about Saturn 3 here.

Photoplay, June

Advanced publicity for The Elephant Man, with a shaven-headed John Hurt out of make-up and director David Lynch looking like James Spader. The publicity photos, TV clips and cinema trailer all avoided revealing the face of John Merrick before the film was released. It also downplayed Mel Brooks involvement - the comedy director had produced this and hired David Lynch to make his first studio film.

And then, this happened. The first Star Wars sequel struck for the school holidays.

Photoplay, June

Unlike Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back only opened in one West End cinema - the Odeon.

Film Review, July

Film Review, July

Empire builders (above): director Irvin Kershner, producers Gary Kurtz and George Lucas, writer Lawrence Kasdan.



Film Review, June

Opening the same week as The Empire Strikes Back (!!!) the second Battlestar Galactica movie, The Cylon Attack, was again bumped up from American TV. Just like the first film, it was shown at the Empire, Leicester Square in Sensurround sound. 

Hmm. A Clint Eastwood comedy western, the Village People movie or the Star Wars sequel?


Film Review, August

Interesting photo comparison of Roy Scheider playing Bob Fosse's alter-ego, and the man himself directing All That Jazz. I'm not big on dance movies but this is superbly made. A revealing and honest look behind the scenes of Broadway musicals with many immaculate dance routines, also choreographed by Fosse.

Film Review, August

Director Alan Parker refused to be categorised, following up the successes of Bugsy Malone and Midnight Express with his first American film, Fame - a huge hit that also span off a hit TV series. Hollywood felt briefly threatened (for a few minutes) that they were about to be swamped by British directors (like Ridley Scott and Hugh Hudson...).

Film Review, August

The Final Countdown was sold like a 'Bermuda triangle' sci-fi mystery on the scale of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. What we got was a B-movie adventure with a big cast (Martin Sheen and Kirk Douglas) that looked like a million dollars because of the spectacular use of an actual US Navy aircraft carrier. It's no Close Encounters but still an enjoyable watch because of the cast, the score and the king of Troma, Lloyd Kaufman, both acting and producing!

The Final Countdown reviewed on blu-ray, here.

Film Review, August

While disco had been proclaimed dead (news reports of vinyl being burned in football fields, and an elaborate joke at the end of Airplane!) Can't Stop The Music presented itself as a musical comedy, the comedy notably missing. However, this caption in Film Review is funny...

Film Review, August

Film Review, August

How about this for a double-bill?

More about Exorcist II: The Heretic here.

Film Review, December

My first taste of John Carpenter's The Fog. Spoilt a little by a weak comedy caper as the support film. Note that the censors thought that The Fog uncut was okay for 14-year olds despite the director improving the graphic scares with boathooks.

Film Review, December

After The Deep failed to cause a ripple, The Island was another attempt at adapting a Peter Benchley novel. Michael Caine stars, years before his Jaws sequel.

Film Review, December

I've not got every cinema magazine from these years, but it was strange that I didn't find any mention of John Carpenter's Halloween. Other, lesser-known slashers had full page treatment though. He Knows You're Alone briefly includes Tom Hanks' screen debut!