Whoever thought somebody could make a movie that had the potential to turn horror fans into ballet enthusiasts? The intoxicating BLACK SWAN (2010) may be about ballet, but it isn't some wispy emotional journey or bittersweet tale of the heart. We're talking full-blooded, high-class nightmare stuff here, the kind of thing the Crypt Keeper might introduce while wearing a tux.
Director Darren Aronofsky (REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, PI) wanted to tell a story about one person's dual natures in conflict, with a chance viewing of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" providing the ideal catalyst. In it, a princess who has been turned into a white swan can only be cured by love, but her hopes are dashed when a handsome hunter is seduced by her evil twin, the black swan.
In Aronofsky's film, aspiring dancer Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) yearns for this dual lead in a new production of "Swan Lake" although the arrogant, manipulative director, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel, SHEITAN), considers her too sheltered and "frigid" to fully embody the Black Swan. Another dancer, the exotic Lily (Mila Kunis), seems willing to help Nina break out of her shell--and get in touch with her dark side--until it becomes apparent that she's actually working against her while trying to seduce the director into giving her the role.
Nina lives with her domineering, eccentric mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), a failed dancer trying to live vicariously through her daughter. Their scenes together are odd and disturbing, and it soon becomes clear why Nina is so screwed-up. Whenever Nina begins to experience pleasure of any kind, especially of a sexual nature, "Mother" is always there to extinguish it. Thus, Erica's presence is just as smothering and repressive as that of Mrs. Bates in PSYCHO, and almost as enigmatic--as we learn more about Nina's deteriorating mental state, it's uncertain whether or not Erica actually even exists.
BLACK SWAN takes us behind the beauty and grace of ballet to emphasize its arduous physicality, discipline, and pain, along with the fiercely competitive nature of its dancers. From the start, the film is captivatingly visual and involving as we quickly get caught up in Nina's never-ending obsession from her point of view.
We first see her as she awakens from a dream in which she's performing onstage, but she's never truly awake. Her senses are heightened and distorted, her sensations brittle and urgent. The handheld camera follows her intimately as she walks or stays tight on her face (establishing shots are rare), while those around her are often heard in brief snippets and furtive whispers. The effect is disorienting and we never feel as though we're just passively observing her actions, but are right there inside her head the whole time.
Because of this, we're never really sure what's real and what isn't. The airy music of a rehearsal hall echoes constantly through her mind while she struggles to make sense of the increasingly bizarre images that keep twisting her perception of reality. Gradually, her dreamlike state veers into nightmare territory when her own body begins to rebel against her, leading to scenes of such shudder-inducing "body horror" that it seems at times as though David Cronenberg is at the helm. As Nina's dark side emerges, we witness a number of other shocking incidents which earn BLACK SWAN a spot in the upper echelons of the horror genre.
"I've never seen you lose yourself" Nina's director chides during a rehearsal of the Black Swan's dance, but Natalie Portman truly loses herself in this juicy role. It's exhilarating to see her cast off the dreck of that awful dialogue she struggled to emote in REVENGE OF THE SITH and deliver such an intense, exhausting performance.
Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, and especially Barbara Hershey provide great support, with Winona Ryder eerily effective in her scenes as the ballet company's washed-up former star. For guys who quiver at the thought of Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis making out, their frantic lesbian scene will probably be the equivalent of the "stargate sequence" from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.
The DVD from 20th-Century Fox is widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound in English, French, and Spanish. Subtitles are in English and Spanish. A three-part featurette, "Metamorphosis", looks at the film's direction, acting, and special effects. The Blu-Ray contains additional extras.
Dazzling and disturbing, BLACK SWAN is just the right mixture of ballet and shattering, gibbering schizophrenia. You don't just watch the story unfold, but are drawn deeper and deeper into one of the most frightening descents into madness ever put on the screen.
Did you ever watch a movie that made you suspect that you had just gone totally insane? THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS (1961) is one of those movies. There are thousands of low-budget, inept, negligible cinematic duds that are just plain boring, and a number of big-budget ones, too. But THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS goes beyond all that and emerges as a viewing experience not unlike being attacked by aardvarks while mowing the shag carpet in your Aunt Petunia's house in Buffalo. If that doesn't make any sense to you, then you have a good idea of what this movie is like.
The first image that greets the lucky viewer about to be subjected to this cinematic Rorschach test is that of a young woman drying herself after a bath. She's naked except for a towel, and a pair of loafers. Why is she wearing loafers right after stepping out of the bathtub? Well, if you start asking questions like that this early on, you're never gonna make it. But here's another one: why would a film that could otherwise be shown to general audiences begin with a gratuitous glimpse of a woman's bare nipple, in a scene that was obviously tacked on, and which has nothing to do with anything that happens in the rest of the film? But wait, it gets better, because while she's sitting on the bed drying off, she's attacked by a large maniac whom we only see from the chest down. He strangles her, and then--get this--climbs into bed with her. WTF? Let me check...this was made in 1961, right? Where did the filmmakers plan for it to be shown? In a tent?
The star of the film is Tor Johnson. Yes, the bald, hulking Swedish wrestler who played Inspector Clay in PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE is the reknowned thespian whose talent has been enlisted to carry THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS on his big, hairy shoulders. Here, he tackles (and wrestles into submission) the role of defecting Russian rocket scientist Joseph Javorski, who arrives in the Nevada desert with top secret information for our government (something about the Russians landing on the moon, I think--the narrator keeps asking "Flag on the moon...how did it get there?") and is being pursued by two KGB agents who want to kill him. Oh, I'm sorry--did you just feel as though you were going totally insane? I'll repeat it, then--Tor Johnson plays a rocket scientist. Tor Johnson, rocket scientist. I know it doesn't seem as though those words should go together like that, but that's one of the charms of this incredible film.
Anyway, Javorski and his escorts are fired upon by the KGB agents and he is forced to flee into the desert, right into a nuclear testing ground. The bomb goes off, Javorski is bathed in deadly radiation, and--of course--he turns into a monster. Well, not quite a monster. More like Tor Johnson in tattered clothes and a rubber facial appliance that looks like a fried egg has been glued to half of his face. Naturally, this unfortunate turn of events makes him want to wander clumsily around the desert and kill people, while muttering "ahh...ahh." No doubt about it, Tor Johnson could mutter "ahh...ahh" with the best of them.
"Touch a button. Things happen. A scientist becomes a beast," the narrator sadly tells us. In fact, he talks through the entire movie, because it seems to have been shot entirely silent, with the sparse dialogue dubbed in whenever the actors' mouths couldn't be seen. "Joseph Javorsky, respected scientist," he continues. "Now a fiend prowling the wastelands, a prehistoric beast in a nuclear age. Kill...kill just to be killing." This guy needs help. His every utterance is intoned with such mournful solemnity that he constantly seems on the verge of hanging himself, and the most mundane events fill him with the urge to spout endless profound pronouncements on the human condition.
"Progress" is the subject he seems most obsessed with. As young lawman Joe Dobson rounds up his partner and they set off into the desert in search of the killer, the narrator woefully moans, "Jim Archer, Joe's partner...another man caught in the frantic race for the betterment of mankind. Progress." Later, when the vacationing Radcliffe family stops at a roadside gas station, the two young sons, Randy and Art, scamper around back to cavort with the local fauna, prompting him to note: "Boys from the city, not yet caught up in the whirlwind of progress, feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs." Like I said, this guy needs help.
The two lawmen, Joe Dobson and Jim Archer, could use a little help, too. These guys are nuts. In order to reach a cave where the beast may be hiding, they scale a sheer cliff where one slip could result in a fall of hundreds of feet, even though Randy and Art, who have wandered away and gotten lost, later stumble upon it simply by walking there. When, for some reason, Joe and Jim decide that the beast must be on top of a high plateau, former paratrooper Jim gets a pilot to fly him up there so he can parachute down to the otherwise unreachable location--where he is later picked up by Joe, who drives there in the patrol car. The lost boys' father, Hank, gets there on foot while searching for his sons.
Unfortunately for him, though, Jim Archer is a "kill first, ask questions later" kind of cop who whips out his sniper rifle and starts shooting at Hank from the airplane as soon as he spots him. "Find the Beast and kill him. Kill, or be killed. Man's inhumanity...to man." This leads to a sequence that can only be described as utterly insane, as the innocent father desperately runs for his life amidst a hail of bullets fired by the grimly determined, bloodthirsty cop. You just watch it and think, "Am I losing my mind?"
Randy and Art continue to wander around the desert until finally the beast spots them and gives chase. It may sound exciting, but "giving chase" wasn't exactly one of Tor Johnson's specialties. Most of the time you're amazed that this gallumphing mountain of beef can even remain upright, so seeing him chase someone is about as thrilling as watching Eskimoes run away from an advancing glacier. As the melancholy narrator continues to remind us of the irony inherent in the current beastly state of "Joseph Javorsky...noted scientist", Jim and Joe catch up with him at last and a life-and-death struggle between man and beast ensues. I was rooting for the beast.
After the film's climax reaches the excitement level of watching your elderly neighbor wash his car and then begins to taper off so that we can begin the long, difficult struggle to recover from it, there's a final, thought-provoking shot involving a bunny rabbit. That's right, a bunny rabbit. I'm not sure, but I'm willing to bet it was caught up in the wheels of progress, too.
THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS is a film that should be seen by anyone who loves bad, bad, really bad films. Because it's really, really bad. In a fun way, that is--but only if you're hardy enough to endure it, because it's also incredibly boring at times, and it's also one of the most stupefying things you could ever possibly subject yourself to. I'm only giving it one star because, perversely entertaining though it is, I think it could actually be considered a danger to humanity at large to give it any more than that. But you owe it to yourself to watch it if you want to see just about the only film imaginable that, for Tor Johnson, could be considered a step down from PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE.
A BUCKET OF BLOOD (1959) is a Roger Corman classic that I wasn't that familiar with at first since I bought the dollar DVD years ago at Wal-Mart, watched it once, and then sold it in a garage sale. I probably only got 50 cents for it, maybe even a quarter, but I was glad to get it because that's the kind of year I was having.
Corman regular Dick Miller plays a guy named Walter Paisley, who's also having a bad year (how's that for a segue?) He's an insecure milquetoast who buses tables in a coffee bar where beatniks hang out, but dreams of being a creative artist like pretentious poet Maxwell (Julian Burton) in order to impress his heartthrob Carla (THE WASP WOMAN's Barboura Morris).
Another Corman fave, the great Antony Carbone of THE LAST WOMAN ON EARTH, CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA, and PIT AND THE PENDULUM, is Walter's overbearing boss Leonard.
When Walter accidentally kills his landlady's cat, he covers the evidence with modeling clay and then shows off the result as his own artistic creation, garnering instant fame as a brilliant new talent.
But a hunger for greater recognition leads to murder when he whacks a gun-waving narc (future game-show host Bert Convy) over the head, killing him, and then turns him into a highly-praised clay sculpture as well. With more money and fame rolling in, Walter's trail of victims grows longer, eventually leading to Carla herself.
If you liked 1960's THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS you should really be interested in this amusingly morbid tale which amounts to pretty much a dry run for the later film. Besides also being helmed by Corman, both were penned by Charles B. Griffith, whose sense of humor seemed to play into the then-current appetite for beatnik culture and "sick" humor (the film's tagline is "You'll be sick, sick, sick--from laughing!")
Both feature typical be-bop musical scores by Fred Katz and similar production values (moody black-and-white photography, modest stage-like sets, a "skid row" ambience). Carbone's bullying boss Leonard, just like flower shop owner Gravis Mushnik, first sees dollar signs from his employee's creative efforts but grows increasingly squeamish when he discovers the truth behind them.
Walter could be a first cousin of Jonathan Haze's Seymour Krelboyne, another mousey shlub stuck in a dead-end job with an oppressive boss, who yearns to break out of his rut by doing something creative which will lead to murder. We almost expect him to have a clinging, overbearing mother when he shleps back to his cheap apartment, and indeed his landlady is played by Myrtle Damerel, who was Seymour's hypochondriac mom in LITTLE SHOP.
Barboura Morris, however, grounds the film by playing her role straight, and Griffith's script for BUCKET isn't nearly as whimsically farcical as the later story. Carbone maintains a delicious deadpan even when Leonard's dazed reactions to Walter's bloodthirsty activities threaten to incapacitate him.
Other familiar faces include Ed Nelson as Bert Convy's undercover vice-cop partner, Lynn Storey of LITTLE SHOP (she played "Mrs. Hortense Fishtwanger") as a curious square, and, as an art patron interested in Walter's work, the ubiquitous Bruno Ve Soto.
In the lead role that would define his career as a cult actor, Dick Miller wrings every nuance of nebbishness out of his pitifully desperate character and manages to remain likable even as his murderous tendencies spin out of control. Corman's camera explores Miller's manic expressions with his own artistic eye and the collaboration results in a truly memorable performance.
A BUCKET OF BLOOD itself stands as a minor classic and a model of efficient, creative low-budget filmmaking as well as simply being a real kick to watch.
There are some pretty hair-raising Asian horror movies that rely on the supernatural, along with a hefty amount of nerve-jangling jump scares, to chill the blood. Korean writer-director Jung Huh's HIDE AND SEEK (2013), on the other hand, is a reality-based suspense thriller that literally strikes close to home.
Seong-soo (Hyeon-ju Son) is an obsessive-compulsive upper-class business owner with a lovely wife, Min-ji (Mi-seon Jeon) and two darling (ehh) children who live in one of those antiseptic, high-security apartment buildings. Some of the film's most unsettling early scenes are those in which this hand-washing neat freak is exposed to germs. And when we see this happy family playing a carefree game of hide-and-seek in an early scene, we know they're really in for it.
When he discovers that his estranged stepbrother Sung-chul has been reported missing, Seong-soo goes to the soon-to-be-demolished slum where he's been living to investigate. Since we saw one of the tenants brutally murdered in her apartment in the way-disturbing opening sequence, we know something really bad is going on there.
Seong-soo has his own suspicions when he notices that the doorbells in the building are crudely inscribed with mysterious symbols. Back at his nice, well-protected apartment building, he finds the same symbols showing up there as well. It appears, then, that not only might the killer be his stepbrother looking for revenge for a past wrong, but that he may have followed Seong-soo home.
But we're never really sure, and that's one of the fun things about HIDE AND SEEK. The killer appears to be a Jason/Michael Myers clone with his dark outfit, face-obscuring motorcycle helmet, and silent but deadly demeanor. But he's realistic enough to give us the old "this could really happen" feeling, especially when he tries to force his way into the apartment as Min-ji stands between him and her children.
Seong-soo, meanwhile, has some downright scary experiences of his own back at Sung-chul's place, some of which involve grievous bodily harm and discovery of a dead body or two. And when his own behavior starts to go off the rails as a result of it all, we begin to doubt his sanity as well as that of his mysterious stepbrother.
Despite some early nods (mostly during dream sequences), the story doesn't aspire to the fear level of a supernatural Asian horror film with jack-in-the-box ghosts and other sudden scares, depending as much on getting our adrenaline going as chilling the blood.
This is especially true of a fight scene about midway in the film in which Seong-soo has a tooth-and-nail encounter with a helmeted figure who may be Sung-chul. The violence isn't extremely gory but it may have you wincing in sympathetic pain a few times as people get stabbed and beaten with blunt instruments.
Early on there are mild hints of Argento and Hitchcock, with a bit of a CACHE' vibe creeping in due to some story elements. Jung Huh has a clean, economical directing style that moves it all along briskly while relentlessly building tension. (A plot twist late in the film may have you doing a mental doubletake unless you're one of those "I saw it coming" types.)
Even when things get more chaotic the director keeps it all effectively restrained and well-controlled for the most part, stretching our nerves like piano wires--until finally allowing the ending sequence to go on too long. Here, one climax too many robs the film of its effectiveness in the final minutes, although--for me--this didn't prevent it from being a worthwhile experience.
Performances are good, notably Hyeon-ju Son as the deceptively placid-looking Seong-soo and Jung-Hee Moon as Joo-hee, a furtive neighbor of Sung-chul who may hold the key to his disappearance. Even the smallest children in the cast, called upon to portray either screaming terror or abnormal behavior, are well up to the task.
The DVD from RAM Releasing is widescreen with Dolby 2.0 sound. Korean soundtrack with English subtitles and closed captioning. Extras consist of a behind-the-scenes featurette (about half an hour long) and trailers for this and other films from RAM.
Tense, unsettling, and at times achingly suspenseful, HIDE AND SEEK has a decadently dark appeal much like a modern-day Hitchcock horror with both an Asian flavor and a dash of giallo. It's only in the closing minutes that we start wishing it would hurry up and end already.
How exhilarating it is these days to encounter a full-blooded horror thriller that yanks you up out of your seat and whisks you along like a carnival ride before coming to a crashing halt and leaving you dazed and breathless.
That, my horror-friendly friends, is TRUTH OR DARE (2017), one of the most exciting, nailbiting, and just all-around fun genre flicks I've seen in a goon's age.
Oh sure, it starts out just like one of those standard stalker-slasher yarns about a group of annoying young people who drive to some secluded house for the weekend to party and end up being terrorized by something or someone.
I was all ready to settle in for the same old familiar hijinx and see if this one was going to be so-bad-it's-good or just plain bad. In fact, I seem to have developed a fondness for such trash over the years and usually derive at least some amount of fun from watching it.
Here, we get the usual group of various teen-types in the big, creepy house, spending Halloween night getting drunk, scaring each other, and playing the titular game which, as you might suspect, dredges up some unpleasant truths (such as infidelity in the ranks) and puts certain members of the group at odds with one another.
But what these hapless kids don't suspect is that there's an evil entity inside that house, and it likes to play the game too--only it plays it for real. Which means that those cryptic, crudely-scrawled "dares" which start to turn up everywhere ("smash your knee", "burn your hands on the stove", etc.) must be followed to the letter within an alotted time, or else.
The "or else" is what gives TRUTH OR DARE its most potent shocks and thrills, with our stalwart protagonists--who actually develop into real people that we care about--getting wise to the seriousness of it all and scrambling (to borrow a line from the script) to "do the dare before the dare does you."
This leads to a frantic succession of horrific acts including self-mutilation, cannibalism (a vegan is forced to devour her friend's freshly-charred scar tissue), and other atrocities that grow in magnitude until I was literally cringing with dread at what they'd be "dared" to next. Just when one dare seems unfairly extreme, the next one goes it one better on the horror scale until such things as hanging and dismemberment come into play.
As I said, we really do start to care about these characters and their plight, which makes the story all the more effective. Taking a tip from an aging survivor of the game from years back (NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET's Heather Langenkamp in a welcome cameo), they begin to help each other get through the dares, sharing the burden equally whenever possible so that all might have a chance to make it past the final round.
But the game is always ahead of them, and each successive horror is enough to have guys like Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft nodding in amusement and approval. Langenkamp's presence is especially appropriate since NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is one of the last teen-oriented horror flicks that I remember enjoying this much.
The film looks great and is sharply directed by Nick Simon (REMOVAL, THE GIRL IN THE PHOTOGRAPHS) for maximum effect, with a uniformly fine cast. Standouts include Cassandra Scerbo as Alex, Brytni Sarpy as Maddie, and Mason Dye as Tyler, whose volatile romantic triangle will be one of the key factors in the dares. Surprisingly, this is a made-for-TV movie that premiered on the SyFy Channel, blowing away most of their other original fare.
Am I praising TRUTH OR DARE too highly? Perhaps, but I'm simply basing my comments about it on how I felt at the fadeout, which managed to be open-ended while still delivering a slam-bang finish. It left me excited, impressed, jazzed, wrung-out, and feeling as though I'd just stepped off a Tilt-A-Whirl. For a modern-day horror film in a sub-genre known for its frequent mediocrity, that'll do just fine.
Format: Color, NTSC, Widescreen Language: English Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.) Number of discs: 1 Not Rated Captions: none Studio: Cinedigm DVD Release Date: September 4, 2018 Run Time: 90 minutes Extras: none
Film Movement Classics' four-disc Blu-ray collection ALASTAIR SIM'S SCHOOL FOR LAUGHTER is a delightful sampler of British film star Alastair Sim's best comedy films of the 40s and 50s, all beautifully restored (especially for fans of fine black and white photography) and augmented with a number of bonus features. Here are our impressions of each film.
THE BELLES OF ST. TRINIAN'S (1954)
If you thought Hayley Mills' mischievous Catholic schoolgirl in THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS was something, wait'll you get a load of THE BELLES OF ST. TRINIAN'S (1954). These girls and their crooked moneymaking schemes would be the admiration of both Sgt. Bilko and all of McHale's Navy.
Popular British comedy actor Alastair Sim scores a homerun here in the dual role of St. Trinian's harried headmistress Millicent Fritton, who struggles to turn a blind eye to the goings on in her severely cash-strapped institution, and her conniving brother Clarence, a bookmaker with a special interest in horse racing.
The plot, about a visiting Sultan and his prize racehorse Arab Boy upon whom the girls are planning to make a potentially lucrative wager if they can scrape together enough money (a scheme in which Miss Fritton will also become involved), provides an excuse for scene after frenetic scene of wildly inappropriate behavior by this bunch of very dirty-faced angels.
Not only do they make their own moonshine gin in chemistry class, which is bottled and sold by their weaselly bookie Flash Harry (George Cole), and cheat at intermural field hockey games by knocking the referees and opposing coaches cold with mallets, but they're not above actually kidnapping Arab Boy and keeping him under wraps at the school in order to foil Clarence's own kidnapping scheme.
As Miss Fritton states, "At most schools, girls are sent out quite unprepared for a merciless world but, when our girls leave here, it is the merciless world which has to be prepared."
Each of these girls is like a cross between Wednesday and Pugsley Addams, who should've been sent to St. Trinian's in ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES instead of that happy-shiny summer camp. Here, they'd have barely seemed out of place.
We can't help rooting for these female refugees from "Lord of the Flies" even at the expense of the good girls in the school, bless them, whose efforts to maintain a sense of order and decency are utterly doomed. (Hammer horror fans will be pleased to spot a very young Andree Melly of THE BRIDES OF DRACULA as one of the bad girls.)
Created by cartoonist Ronald Searle in a series of popular cartoons which in turn spawned this film series, THE BELLES OF ST. TRINIAN'S are so brazenly and unabashedly warped that their exploits seem to appeal to our most basic desire for chaos and nonconformity. And for fans of the very dry, very droll Alastair Sim, his amusing dual role here (helped by some nifty split-screen effects) will have an irresistible appeal all its own.
SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS (1960)
This time, achingly droll British comedy star Alastair Sim plays more background character than lead as headmaster of the SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS (1960), the main focus being on his clumsy, mild-mannered, and socially inept (but very willing) student Henry Palfrey (Ian Carmichael).
Henry's a nice enough young chap but totally out of his league when his attempts to woo pretty young acquaintance April (Janette Scott, HOW WENT THE DAY?, DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS) are thwarted by snide upper-class cad Delauney, played to perfection by Terry-Thomas at the top of his game, who steps all over Henry's romantic aspirations with a curdled grace and sadistic glee.
With other aspects of his life proving too much to handle, including an inherited family business he's unable to manage, Henry makes his way to a dumpy old mansion on the outskirts of a small English village, where cynical old Mr. Potter (Sims) and his staff teach their pupils all about one-upmanship, i.e. how to always get the upper hand over one's fellow man.
Thus, the first half of the film is a brutally cringeworthy account of Henry's staggering ineptitude that's keenly funny in an almost unpleasant way. Carmichael's easy likable as Henry, with Scott a winsome object of his affections, but it's Terry-Thomas who provides the most joy as we watch his Delauney effortlessly steamroll over Henry's every feeble effort to impress while laciviously moving in on the lovely April.
This includes dinner in an expensive restaurant--Delauney manages to sit between Henry and April while mocking Henry's attempts to order from the complicated menu--and a disastrous tennis match in which Delauney breezes to victory with insufferable ease.
A particularly funny scene occurs when Henry tries to purchase a fancy auto to compete with Delauney's expensive sports car and ends up being taken to the cleaners by a couple of smooth con artists. The sputtering, smoke-churning monstrosity that he ends up with is unlike anything I've seen on four wheels.
Naturally, after all of this build-up, we view Henry's successful graduation from Mr. Potter's "Lifemanship" course and subsequent declaration of war against Delauney with a great deal of satisfaction.
It's gratifying to watch Henry's devious plans to humiliate his foe and win April's heart come to fruition--but at what cost? Will Henry stop being the lovable fellow we've come to admire and become a lecherous cad like Delauney?
With a very capable cast (look for Jeremy Lloyd, the tall man who dances with Ringo in A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, in a bit part as a student) bringing this sharply-written story to life, SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS is one of the most giddily enjoyable and well-rendered of the classic British comedies.
LAUGHTER IN PARADISE (1951)
Sometimes the premise of a comedy sounds so enticing that you can't wait to see how it's actually carried out. For me, that was the case with LAUGHTER IN PARADISE (1951), in which a notorious practical joker dies and his will stipulates that all beneficiaries must perform certain tasks before they can receive their inheritance.
Naturally, all of them are in need of the money and willing to do whatever is required of them, no matter how outlandish. Which of course is the built-in appeal of this pleasantly appealing comedy whose various interrelated subplots consist of either light farce or more substantial personal drama.
That most unlikely of comedy stars, the terminally droll Alastair Sim, embodies the former as Deniston Russell, a mild-mannered gent who secretly writes the most lurid best-selling pulp novels under various pen names while living in fear that his bride-to-be, a straight-edge military woman with a humorless father, will find out.
His task in pursuit of the inheritance is to commit a crime like one depicted in his novels and spend at least 28 days in lock-up. Thus, his scenes are a series of amusing attempts to get arrested without having to do anything really harmful or destructive. He even goes to a police station trying to solicit their advice for the most genteel ways of breaking the law.
Other humorous subplots involve a milquetoast bank worker (George Cole) tasked with robbing his tyrannical boss at gunpoint, and an irresponsible cad (Guy Middleton) who must marry the first single woman he speaks to after leaving the reading of the will.
In the more heartfelt segment of the story, a wealthy woman (Fay Compton) who is cruel and thoughtless to her servants must hire on as a servant herself for one month to a similarly callous rich old eccentric. As one might guess, she will soon learn what it's like to be browbeaten and emotionally abused by a "superior."
As with so many of these classic British comedies, the technical aspects are neatly done in eye-pleasing black and white and with modest production values. Sharp-eyed viewers will spot such familiar faces in the supporting cast as a young Sebastian Cabot and an even younger Audrey Hepburn. BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN and THE OLD DARK HOUSE fans will enjoy seeing an older Ernest Thesiger as the reader of the will.
While this premise may have resulted in raucous mayhem in other hands, LAUGHTER IN PARADISE treats it with a sublety and restraint that invites the viewer to simply settle in and watch things unfold without being wracked with guffaws and belly laughs. Which, every once in a while, is a markedly pleasant way to enjoy a comedy.
HUE AND CRY (1946)
Ostensibly a comedy--known, in fact, as the first from Britain's venerable Ealing Studios--1946's HUE AND CRY is actually more of a rousing boys' adventure yarn in which a group of rowdy city boys (and one plucky girl) take on one of England's most insidious smuggling gangs.
Harry Fowler plays Joe Kirby, a typical teen boy whose love for the "kids' papers", or comic-book type serial stories printed in the newspapers, leads him to the shocking discovery that local criminals are using the periodical to transmit information on upcoming robberies to various members of their gang.
Trying to inform the police of this phenomenon only gets him in hot water, so Joe must organize his friends and undertake an investigation that will lead them into plenty of hair-raising situations that will pit them directly against the ruthless bad guys.
The pace never lets up in this surprisingly gritty tale which boasts a superb cast, crisp black and white photography, and sharp direction that often has the look and feel of a Hitchcock thriller.
Unlike most boys' adventure films, this one places its young characters into some truly perilous scrapes, sometimes in opposition to the police themselves, with the kids making a harrowing escape through the sewer system or going into actual physical battle with burly baddies.
Some of the few purely comedic scenes are those involving Alastair Sim as the unsuspecting writer of the comics (his work is later altered before publication by the gang's beautiful moll who works for the printer).
Sim, probably the biggest name in the picture, has a surprisingly minor role here although his fans will enjoy his cowardly eccentric who writes lurid crime stories in a creepy old apartment building with only a cat as his companion.
The kids themselves are refreshingly realistic, not above getting into fistfights with each other but pulling together in times of danger. Their exploits in pursuit of the smugglers lead to an action-filled finale fit for an adult crime thriller, which, along with its more lighthearted aspects, makes HUE AND CRY a wholly satisfying entertainment.
The Belles of St. Trinian's: Interview with Geoff Brown Interview with Melanie Williams Interview with Alistair Sim’s Daughter - Meredith McKendrick Interview with Steve Chibnall The Girls of St Trinian’s
School for Scoundrels: School for Scoundrels Trailer Interview with Peter Bradshaw Interview with Graham McCann Interview with Chris Potter
Hue and Cry: Interview with Steve Chibnall Location Featurette
Booklet with notes, written by film scholar Ronald Bergan
While some of the blurbs describe the 2017 German film SNOWFLAKE (aka "Schneeflöckchen") as being Tarantino-esque, a modern Grimm's fairytale, and other such colorful phrases, don't let that put you off (if it does) or mislead you.
This is really an enjoyably offbeat tale that manages to deconstruct the usual narrative and throw the viewer a few wicked curves, but it isn't a mind trip of LSD proportions that will leave you strung out in the middle of a surrealistic wasteland.
The Tarantino comparison is mainly due to the fact that two of the protagonists, Javid (Reza Brojerdi) and Tan (Erkan Acar), trade some quirky "Royale with cheese"-type dialogue while casually killing people during their nocturnal prowl through the streets and fast food joints of a violently dystopian near-future Germany.
There's also the somewhat fractured storyline, due mainly to the fact that they find, in the backseat of their stolen car, a screenplay in progress which features them as the main characters and has the exact dialogue that they've just spoken moments before. The screenplay, it seems, has recorded their exact words and deeds in the past, present, and, to their greatest shock, the future.
Meanwhile, an emotionally-damaged young woman named Eliana (Xenia Assenza) and her devoted bodyguard Carson (David Masterson) are seeking hired killers to avenge the deaths of Eliana's parents at the hands of none other than Javid and Tan. Carson's father Caleb (David Gant), who thinks he's God, gives them a list of killers to approach with their proposal.
Eliana wants to hire them all, setting off a series of encounters that include a deadly clash with two insane brothers (one thinks he's a pig, both are bloodthirsty cannibals), another pair of assassins who keep a human robot as their slave and engage in playful roleplaying games with their prey, and, finally, a fascist paramilitary leader with an underground army who, as we discover, may have touched off the entire convoluted storyline himself years before.
Director Adolfo J. Kolmerer brings all this to life without trying to overly dazzle us with style, while the script by Arend Remmers (who named the film's writer character after himself) avoids unnecessary pretensions or profundities while still keeping us mentally on our toes.
Javid and Tan are constantly trying to stay one step ahead of their written destinies, even seeking out scriptwriter Arend--a dentist with dreams of breaking into movies--and torturing him into writing a happy ending for them.
This gives their scenes a pleasant brain-teaser aspect often found in time-travel stories, tossing in an interesting paradox or two along the way. We also ponder the signficance of their meeting with the angelic Snowflake (Judith Hoersch), whose beatific innocence borders on the simpleminded.
Fans of horror and violence won't be disappointed when the story swings into "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" territory a time or two (especially when the cannibal brothers are busy processing their victims for future consumption) and the frequent gunplay leaves plenty of bullet-riddled bodies in its wake. Even superhero fans will thrill to the exploits of Hydro Electric Man, a vigilante zapping the bad guys on the mean streets.
The Artsploitation Films Blu-ray is in 5.1 Dolby stero with German and English soundtrack and English subtitles. Bonus features consist of a making-of featurette and a trailer.
As all the various story threads come to a head, SNOWFLAKE finds Arend furiously bent over his laptop with fingers flying, writing and rewriting until the killers he's imagined into existence are satisfied with the outcome. The result isn't enough to blow you away or leave your mind frazzled with phantasmagoria, but it's a delightfully disorienting and mentally stimulating tale nonetheless.
One of the most hard-and-fast rules of cinema is that any movie is worth watching if it has a "Werewolf Break."
Okay, I made that up, but I do find it to be true in the case of the 1974 Amicus werewolf thriller THE BEAST MUST DIE! (Severin Films), which not only does have a "Werewolf Break" but happens to be the only film I can think of to boast such a distinction.
It opens with a lively title sequence featuring eccentric millionaire Tom Newcliffe (American actor Calvin Lockhart, COTTON COMES TO HARLEM, UPTOWN SATURDAY NIGHT) being hunted by his own ex-military security staff in order to test their capabilities. This is in preparation for an antipated guest--namely, a werewolf.
Newcliffe, in fact, has invited a varied array of men and women to his secluded estate for the weekend, believing one of them to be a werewolf and looking forward to the opportunity of hunting it down to satisfy his sadistic lusts for sport and blood, as he does every other kind of wild beast he comes in contact with.
Thus, we already get a strong THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME vibe, especially when Newcliffe makes it clear that none of the guests--that is, werewolf suspects--is free to leave the grounds until one of them has been exposed and terminated.
There's also sort of a low-rent Agatha Christie flavor a la "And Then There Were None" and "Ten Little Indians", including even the traditional gathering of the suspects and surprise reveal at the end. (The script is actually adapted from a short story by James Blish, author of the very first Star Trek novel "Spock Must Die!")
What makes this variation on the old saw so much fun--besides, of course, the werewolf angle, which will have the attention of old-school monster fans from frame one--is the pure, undiluted 70s-era cheesiness of the whole thing.
While capable enough, the direction by Paul Annett, as well as cinematography, editing, and some rather broad acting, give the film the look and feel of a quickie TV-movie of the era.
The original score by Douglas Gamley is perfectly fine and even somewhat reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann until he tries for a 70s funk-rock effect, which recalls the old thwacka-wacka 70s porn-movie backing tracks.
This, however, by no means hampers one's enjoyment of the film. Rather, it increases it for viewers with a taste for fine cheese who revel in seeing such a cast, including Peter Cushing, Anton Diffring, Michael Gambon, and Charles Gray, taking part in such goings on.
Calvin Lockhart himself overacts his role with such magnificent abandon that I kept wishing he could skip the werewolf and go up against Rod Steiger in a ham-actor cage match.
With three successive nights of full moons, THE BEAST MUST DIE! gives us plenty of furious action (although the murky day-for-night photography sometimes makes it hard to see just what's going on) as well as lots of ensemble drama pitting the hot-blooded hunter against his own reluctant guests as he tries to trick each into revealing his or her hidden lycanthropy. This includes even his wife, Caroline (Marlene Clark, who also tends to emote rather robustly).
When we see the werewolf itself, it's rather disappointingly played by an actual canine rather than a person in werewolf makeup (which I, being a lifelong fan of such films as THE WOLF MAN and CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF, would much prefer).
I got used to this, however, and was primed when the film finally paused for its delightfully hokey "Werewolf Break", a gimmick harkening back to the days of William Castle in which we're given thirty seconds to weigh the clues and decide the true identity of the werewolf. (I was wrong, and you probably will be, too.)
The Blu-ray from Severin Films looks good despite occasional imperfections in the source material. Personally, I prefer my vintage monster flicks with a hint of the old grindhouse look since that's the way they used to look running through a theater projector for the thousandth time back in the good old days. So to my eyes, the film looks just fine.
Special features include an audio essay by horror historian Troy Howarth, an informative commentary track with director Paul Arnett, the featurette "Directing the Beast" with Arnett again, and the theatrical trailer. These extras, like the film itself, are exclusive only to the Severin 4-volume set "The Amicus Collection", which also includes "Asylum", "And Now the Screaming Starts", and "The Vault of Amicus." Both English and Spanish soundtracks are available, with English subtitles.
There are those, of course, who will find this practically unwatchable if they require their horror films to be more costly, refined, and sophisticated. That's fine for them, but I'm one of many who can watch a movie like THE BEAST MUST DIE! and relish it every bit as much as those other ones--and, occasionally, even more.
A lot of low-budget horror movies are just plain boring, either because the makers lacked the talent to create interesting movies or they just didn't care enough to try. But then there are those, like the 1981 Italian zombie thriller BURIAL GROUND (aka "The Nights of Terror"), that take you on a non-stop rollercoaster ride through Horror Land that doesn't stop until it rockets right off the rails into a brick wall.
This sucker wastes no time getting things underway: an archeologist discovers an ancient tomb beneath a monastery and accidentally releases a horde of long-decayed zombies dressed in ragged monk's robes who instantly start chowing down on him before shambling over to his nearby villa just in time to start terrorizing his weekend guests and staff. And this is all before the opening credits!
There are a few brief introductory scenes before the full-scale attack begins, in which we meet three horny couples, one with a creepy dwarf-like son named Michael who's a real mama's boy (played by 20-something actor Peter Bark). We get to see a little bedtime hanky-panky including brief nudity, with Michael walking in on his parents and throwing a fit of jealousy to see someone else gettin' jiggy with Mommy. Yikes!
So anyway, the next day Michael's parents are puttering around the villa's sculpting studio firing off their pistol (!) while the other two libininous couples cavort around making whoopee all over the verdant villa grounds, when suddenly--it's zombie time! Without warning, the beyond-rotting ambulatory corpses shuffle in from the nearby woods or start clawing their way out of the ground, causing a general panic among the warm-blooded.
These guys are ugly, too--although crudely made, the plethora of zombie masks they wear are utterly grotesque, resembling the old "shock" masks one used to see advertised in monster magazines, and festooned with squirming maggots. It looks as though the makeup department had a field day creating them all and the sheer variety is marvelous.
As the living barricade themselves in the house, the zombies prove themselves more industrious than their usual movie brethren by using such weapons as pitchforks, axes, and even scythes as they chop through boarded-up windows and climb their way to the upper-floor balconies. Once they've gained entrance, pandemoneum reigns with various members of the cast getting disemboweled and feasted upon.
And while the special effects may lack Tom Savini's artistry and finesse, they make up for it in graphic gore. Certain moments are particularly imaginative (read: horrifying) especially those involving main characters who die and return from the dead themselves to confront the others in gruesome ways. There's one touching reunion between Michael and his mom that really...well, I won't go into that.
Director Andrea Bianchi (MALABIMBA: THE MALICIOUS WHORE) also makes up for a lack of finesse (as per the usual cheap Italian horror flick, there's much shaky camerawork and overuse of the zoom lens) by maintaining a high energy level and lightning pace. We're allowed scant breathing time between scares before the suspense tightens up yet again with our protagonists barely avoiding death at every turn. Or not.
Another thing that distinguishes BURIAL GROUND from the standard horror fare is its genuine chill factor. That drafty old mansion gets really creepy after nightfall when the electricity goes out, and there's a real sense of menace when these shambling ghouls start to close in en masse with their hideous wormy faces and clutching claws. This effectively spooky ambience continues right up until the film's freeze-frame fadeout.
The Blu-ray disc from Severin Films is in 1.85:1 widescreen with Dolby 2.0 soundtracks in both Italian and English, with English subtitles available. In addition to deleted/extended scenes and a lengthy trailer, extras consist of four featurettes: "Villa Parisi--Legacy of Terror" (the historic house location for this and many other films including NIGHTMARE CASTLE), "Peter Still Lives: Festival Q & A With Peter Bark", "Just For the Money: Interview With Actor Simone Mattioli", and "The Smell of Death" which features recent interviews with the producer and Mariangela Giordano, the actress who played Michael's mother. The cover art is reversible.
From the intial look of it, BURIAL GROUND could've gone one of two ways--boringly bad, or wonderfully bad. As it turns out, this fast-paced little powerhouse of cheapo horror filmmaking shoots right past bad and straight into being just plain awesome.
