Ssshhh- A Tale of Two Ushers

The Fall of the House of Usher (1950), Dir, Ivan Barnett, 73 mins, SD -Talking Pictures TV

The Fall of the House of Usher (1960), Dir. Roger Corman, 79 mins, HD – Blu-ray

Another curious double-bill, and again, quite accidental- I seem to stumble into them like I’m tripping over or something.  With these dark early evenings, its easy, if you start early enough, to watch two films in a night, especially if they are fairly short as many older films tend to be. So how exactly did I get here, then? Well, no doubt Haunting Fear and its dubious claims to Poe has something to do with it-  I’d subsequently noticed the 1950 The Fall of the House of Usher, a version which I’d never heard of before, in the TV schedule so thought I’d record it to give it a try sometime.

Ivan Barnett’s film is indeed very obscure, and sadly rightfully so; it really isn’t very good at all. Its biggest problem is a desperate lack of pacing; even though its barely over 70 minutes long it feels much longer, with a terribly sparse script that just makes it all horribly interminable. I had the impression you could edit this film down to 25 minutes and you wouldn’t miss anything at all which hopefully suggests how tiresome it really is (indeed an alternate version of the film ran at just 39 minutes when re-released in 1956 and was likely improved for being cut down).

In the film’s defence, I guess its true that much of Poe’s fiction, rich in atmosphere and novel in premise as it is,  is light in substance, not really well-suited to full-length motion pictures as regards character arcs or dramatic depth without requiring plenty of elaboration and invention from film-makers. The acting, too, is frankly woeful; its cast of unknowns seem fresh out of amateur drama school and according to imdb never appeared in another film, other than Gwen Watford who does impress as the doomed Madeline Usher.

Its really quite a sad thing, in a way- critical as I am of ‘actors’ Kaye Tendeter, Irving Sheen and Vernon Charles, it remains grimly poignant that they are all long dead and yet have some shade of immortality in this film, and this film alone: it feels almost poetic enough to be something Poe might have written, the shades of failed actors lingering through the long years.

Where the film does make an impression is in its atmosphere, which is surprisingly ambitious at times: there are some nice shots, interesting angles, imaginative use of locations and curiously scattered moments of moody black and white cinematography that rewards sticking with it (my stubbornness watching films manifested itself again here, when I steadfastly refused to press the ‘stop’ button). It is clear some effort was made with the film, ill-fated as it may have been,  but its just not enough to save it. Far too much damage is done by the pacing and the acting and that awful script.

Utterly confounded/bemused by the film, when it ended it was still only mid-evening, so I scurried over to my Blu-rays in an attempt to cleanse my palette, so to speak, with my copy of the Roger Corman classic made just ten years later. This film is a totally different experience, far superior film. Well, its professionally-filmed for one thing,  a clear advantage even though this too had a meagre budget- with a great cast (Vincent Price is fantastic- its one of his best performances, subdued and note-perfect) blessed with a good script that’s much more faithful to the Poe original  and a lovely Les Baxter score for added atmosphere.

I still much prefer my Hammers for gothic horror, but this American production was successful enough to launch a series of Roger Corman adaptations of Poe in film, cannily bringing back Vincent Price in  almost every one of them. I do think this one may well be the best of them – funnily enough, watching it again it proved to be better than I had remembered (or maybe that was just a natural reflection from just how bad the 1950 version was). Its certainly more grounded, I think, than some of the later Corman films based on Poe tales and benefits from that less-theatrical performance by Vincent Price: I adore Price in his films, but he did have a tendency to  have a little too much fun chewing the scenery in later efforts. Here there is a darkness to him and he exudes a quiet feeling of inevitable dread that rewards hugely- its clear from just this film that he is one of the genuinely great, iconic actors of the horror genre that we will not see the like of again.

Getting dirty with the Haunting Fear

Haunting Fear (1990), Dir. Fred Olen Ray, 89 mins, Amazon Prime

Somewhere at a film and comics convention, at the far side of the exhibition hall hosting the event, way back behind all the merchandise booths and exhibition displays, there is a long line of tables behind which weary celebrities from comics, film and television charge $10 a pop to sign photographs for their adoring fans. The Star Trek and Star Wars actors dutifully greet their several fans and sign the autographs, long veterans of gigs such as this, smiling genially at each punter as if meeting some long-lost friend, but they are always glancing enviously out of the corner of their eyes at the long, long line queuing at the table up in the far corner of the hall where the lights don’t even reach properly.

The next in the queue in this long line… lets call him Bob, middle-aged, overweight, of dubious bodily hygiene, he’s been  patiently waiting in this line for hours. This actress is the only reason why he came. he couldn’t give a toss about those mainstream geeks queuing at the other tables, and it has reinforced his ego to note that he’s been in the longest line of the entire event  Finally its his turn, and after wiping his nose on his dirty check sleeve he shuffles up to within arms reach of the subject of his adoration.  “Miss Stevens,” he gushes in abject veneration, “I’m so pleased to finally meet you, I just wanted to say, your picture Haunting Fear absolutely changed my life!”

Does Brinke Stevens blush? What a consummate professional! “Why, thankyou!” she smiles, “I’m sure you know, that’s my favourite movie!”

Okay, that never happened. Well, I assume not, but its such a strange world, who knows?

Its clear that Amazon Prime is the gutter of streaming services as far as movies are concerned. Amazon’s need to load up the service with  as much content as possible  has absolutely no QC attached, whatsoever (‘Quantity is  King’ seems to be their motto) . The Amazon app has ghastly  colourised versions of old b&w classics, dozens of ‘eighties films that look like VHS rips (complete with drop-outs for the authentic video-nasty ambience) and half the time mistakenly puts ‘2023’ as the production date for its latest additions, no matter how old they may in fact be (Star Slammer, a 1986 sci-fi ‘b’-movie so cheap it pinches shots from Dark Star for its effects scenes, is apparently a new 2023 release- its like these jerks adding the content can’t even be bothered to check Amazon’s own IMDB).

Sure, you might find new quality ‘Originals’ and blockbuster additions on the front end of its main screen, but just dip under that shiny service and prepare to get down and dirty with the kind of cinematic trash that sullied the dingiest corner of old bricks-and-mortar rental stores.

Tonight’s example; Edgar Allen Poe’s Haunting Fear, based on his horror tale The Premature Burial. At least, that’s what the film’s drawn-out title sequence would have you think. Except that, as it turns out if you dare to watch it, this film has nothing to do with Poe, other than using his name to get my attention (and yeah what do you know, IT BLOODY WORKED). To explain my folly, the old AIP feature The Premature Burial (1962), starring Ray Milland, scared me utterly shitless when I watched it on late-night television as a kid and I’ve always since been intrigued by other takes on the story. So with an hour or two late in the evening to kill,  like an old fool who will never learn, I gave this a go.

So anyway, lets make this as clear as I can. This is nothing to do with Poe or that tale. This is a story about a struggling businessman, Terry Monroe (John Henry Richards) cheating on his wife by screwing his tramp secretary, the pneumatic platinum-blonde Lisa (Delia Sheppard).  Terry is running out of time to settle huge gambling debts, and launches a scheme with Lisa to kill his rich wife Victoria (Brinke Stevens) somehow thinking he could kill her and settle the Estate in time to pay off the hoods on, er, Friday. Its as sleazy and low-rent as any straight-to-video flick could be back in the 1980s/1990s: lots of nudity, hilariously over-the-top sex scenes, and some of the worst cardboard acting this side of a stop-motion papier-mâché short. And that’s not even considering the immense acting chops of face-of-stone Jan-Michael Vincent who has a few scenes shoehorned in, presumably shot over a weekend, to get a ‘star name’ in the credits. No doubt that VHS box had a ‘featuring the star of Airwolf!’ blurb on the cover.

You may, like me, be wondering if the Edgar Allan Poe link ever comes in. Well, Victoria is suffering from horrible nightmares – we are told that she is terrified of being buried alive (aha!) but none of the dream sequences we see have any indication of that: one involves seeing her dead father in his casket suddenly becoming one of the undead, another involves her bath time being ruined by literally turning into a bloodbath.  Well, eventually, there IS one where she dreams she is concious while everyone thinks she is dead, and suffers attentions from the creepiest morgue attendant fresh out of the Addams Family, but buried she is not.

Victoria’s sleepless nights are driving her to distraction, so her family doctor, whose negligence Victoria thinks killed her father years earlier (gosh, can he be trusted?!), hires quack hypnotist Julia Harcourt (Karen Black)  to investigate.  Dr Harcourt ‘cures’ Victoria by, well, hypnotising her, asking a few questions and deducing from one ten-minute session that Victoria has actually been haunted by someone who died in the house centuries ago who was buried alive. I mean, Dr. Harcourt both deduces Victoria’s mental disorder and proves the existence of supernatural phenomena within ten minutes all free of charge and immediately declares that Victoria is cured. It took those scientists in Poltergeist rather longer, but Dr. Harcourt is just as fallible as they were-  Victoria isn’t cured at all, just like that Freeling family’s house wasn’t ‘clean’.

Goodness, this review is almost as tedious as that bloody movie. Isn’t it weird how its so much easier to write a stream-of-consciousness review of a bad movie than it is to write about a good one? That never ceases to amaze me. Anyway, Terry and Lisa launch their cunning plan to kill Victoria by drugging her and then putting Victoria in a wooden crate cum-coffin. Its decidedly over-sized too, funnily enough, and they nearly outwit themselves by building the ‘coffin’ upstairs in the bedroom, and have to haul it downstairs into the basement with Victoria in it- highly unlikely, it’d be like Laurel and Hardy and that Piano, you’d think, but a nifty  editorial cut puts them in the basement and shovelling earth onto the top of the coffin in an attempt to make Victoria wrongly think she’s being buried alive when the soil slips through the gaps in the wooden planks. The cunning plan, you see, is to trigger a heart attack of panic and say that she died in bed during another nightmare. Oh the devils.

Anyway, Victoria does indeed flip-out in terror but… and the film is pretty vague here, but I assume that the haunting spirit in the house fully possesses Victoria and she breaks out of the coffin as a bloodied zombie and goes on a murder spree after Terry and Lisa. Yeah, if only Mr Poe could have imagined such a fiendishly clever tale.

Its trash. Its utter trash. Kind of fun in a “I remember back in the day when we used to rent tapes like this shit‘ but… well, that isn’t really fun, is it, its more like a  gruesome flashback to the bad old days. Saturday nights may have been made of such dodgy entertainment back then, but those dark evenings are long gone- or so we thought.  Seems Amazon Prime has brought them back… be careful with that remote….

Out this week

As we approach Christmas, the rate of home video releases continues to risk the wreckage of our wallets, but my self-control holds strong- not that I’m tempted much this week (I feel much more pleased with myself when I’m resisting some of the big-hitters).

This week I’ve bought just one disc, the 1958 comedy (?) Bell, Book and Candle which is one of those films that has impossibly slipped through the net for the past forty-odd years, as its a Jack Lemmon film I’ve never seen. It also stars James Stewart and Kim Novak. Novak was something of a revelation to me a while ago, when I watched her in the noir Pushover and the drama Strangers When We Meet– having only seen her before in Vertigo, those two films certainly wet my appetite, but I haven’t seen her in anything since. Bell, Book and Candle was directed by Richard Quine, who also made my favourite Valentine’s movie, How To Murder Your Wife, and the noir  Drive a Crooked Road as well as both Strangers When We Meet and Pushover, which are all very good films, so I’m managing my expectations for a fall, it seems inevitable, really. The film is getting a bargain-basement, barebones, zero-fanfare old-transfer-no-doubt UK release courtesy of what looks to be a new label, Mediumrare, that appears to be releasing some old catalogue titles that nobody else seems to want to.  The disc should arrive tomorrow and I’m not really expecting much regards video/audio quality, but I’m hoping the film will be okay. Its another box ticked on my list of Jack Lemmon films I have yet to see so worth the punt if only for that.

So what else is out this week that I’ve so easily resisted?

Hmm, well the Bruce Lee titles sure look pretty with lovely covers. I was always a sucker for that, but in all honesty (here goes my street cred down that drain again) I never really understood the fascination with Bruce Lee’s films, so I easily ignored the Arrow boxed collection that came out awhile back which admittedly must have been a pretty amazing set for the genuine Bruce Lee fans. I guess Arrow have sold all those boxsets and are now releasing the films separately- and they really do look gorgeous. I still can’t believe someone made a film about that Playstation game Gran Turismo– or am I missing something? I can’t even be bothered to look that one up to find out, my apathy for films being based on games, toys etc is so great now (I partly blame that Battleship debacle, and I must be one of the last on the planet to have not seen that Barbie flick). I admit I was tempted for all of about fifteen seconds when I learned that Steven Spielberg’s Duel was coming out on 4K, but I can wait for it to drop into a sale next year. As for Blue Beetle, wasn’t that in the cinema a week or so ago? Are releases so brief that you blink and miss it these days? Must confess, the first time I saw the trailer for that film last year my first question was “why?” and I’m still asking it.  I do find myself asking that question about so many films now, I must be getting old or something. That being said, I asked the same thing about Barbie, and look what happened with that, so what the hell do I know.

Killing time

The Killer (2023), Dir. David Fincher, 118 mins, Netflix

The Killer would have been the perfect project for Christopher Nolan; its title character, played not without some irony by Michael Fassbender, is the perfect onscreen personification of Nolan and his films- cool, detached, calculated, on the outside looking in.

Its not a bad fit for David Fincher, either, but I have the suspicion that had Christopher Nolan made this film identically to how Fincher did, it would be greeted as the Second Coming and a sure-fire Oscar contender, whereas Fincher just won’t win such applause, he’ll just get politely praised with the caveat that, well, its not as good as Seven.

I rather suspect that Fincher doesn’t care, but surely he must hold some resentment regards his earlier films. I admit, the first thing I thought while watching The Killer was, I miss the David Fincher of Seven and Fight Club. Films that were bold, fresh, intoxicating, that had a weight to them, that could bear endless repeat viewing. The Killer is perfectly fine but I don’t know how many times I will feel the need to sit down and rewatch it- something true of most of Fincher’s post-Fight Club filmography: Panic Room, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl (I’ll give Zodiac some slack here)… I enjoyed these films but doubt I’ll ever feel the need to rewatch them. They are lacking some spark, some juice, that separates good, perfectly fine films from being Great, and the looming shadow of a film like Seven always suggests Fincher’s films should be Great.

I( guess its rather like Ridley Scott’s film’s always being compared to Alien or Blade Runner, or John Carpenter’s later films to Halloween or The Thing (I can imagine Scott puffing a cigar saying, “Fuck off!” to that but Carpenter eventually seemed to respond with a “Fuck this!” and left making films for years). Of my two named examples, Fincher seems to have adopted the attitude of the former).

The Killer is an assassin in Paris, who is waiting for his target to arrive. The Killer’s patience seems infinite. His success in his profession is attributed, in his voiceover narration that is part-laconic, part-post mortem, to his precise adherence to what he sees as professional codes of conduct- a lack of empathy, concern, a rigid adherence to method, bordering on obsession. Nothing is left to chance, everything is calculated, assessed and abandoned if found wanting. The opening twenty minutes or so, in which he waits and we observe his rigid routine, is the best part of the film- essentially a fascinating examination of the boredom of efficiently killing people.

Eventually after several days of waiting, his target does arrive and the Killer takes his shot- but a whim of chance and bad timing results in the assassination attempt going awry, which seems to momentarily befuddle the Killer, as this never happens and for a moment it seems he is at a loss, until he falls back to routine, and gets away. Unfortunately through his failure he has fallen foul of his bosses who don’t like loose ends, another set of killers hired to kill him and his (wife?)/partner back home in their luxurious hideaway in the Dominican Republic. Wary of being hunted, the Killer delays his return home not realising his hideaway is already known, so eventually returns to find his partner in hospital.

Here the Killer seems to break his own code- he has wealth, prepared identities and stashes in six different countries, and can still simply walk away, start a new life with his partner once she has recovered, but somehow the Killer, to his own surprise, takes it all personally, and turns on his bosses, the killers hired to eradicate him and the client who wanted the target in Paris dead.

Its here that the film possibly alienates viewers, usually this kind of plot turns into a cathartic, violent revenge flick, but the impersonal methodology of the Killer reasserts itself, albeit there is always a struggle going on (“Forbid empathy,” he chides himself, ) so that, while his desire for revenge may be something rather alien to him, he nonetheless is always a cold-bloodied killer without morals, regret something he can’t afford. The definitive anti-hero, then, and maybe rather alienating as a protagonist we can root for (sorry to belabour a point, but so very Christopher Nolan).

I’ve heard Michael Fassbender has been coming for some criticism, but I think people are underestimating how difficult it must be for an actor as handsome and charismatic as Fassbender to play someone  looking so ordinary. In a profession that demands a cinematic presence that draws attention to itself, it must be difficult to switch that off and present such a blank slate; he’s being cast against type, essentially, and I certainly couldn’t imagine Tom Cruise managing this as successfully, for example. The Killer needs to be able to sit on a park bench and nobody notice him, something larger-than-life, beautiful actors can rarely manage. Viewers are likely watching this performance and think he’s just phoning it in, something not helped by that deliberately detached laid-back voiceover.

Do people think that maybe Fincher is phoning it in, because this film isn’t as fascinating and haunting as Seven? Maybe. It is true to itself though and I think its his best film in quite awhile.

Crom! Conan in 4K… but there is a price, barbarian…

….and that price is the expense of an import from the USA, so this isn’t cheap.  But this is John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian, from 1982, a film that has gotten better with age in my opinion (and really, I didn’t even care for it very much when it originally came out). Its also a  film not altogether treated well on home video over the years, and the chances of this 4K edition ever getting released here in old Blighty is beyond remote.

(The film’s mixed International rights means that while its a Universal release in the States -hence Arrow striking a deal- over here it is owned by Fox, which means Disney who are historically disinterested in releasing or licensing catalogue films on disc, but you never know, recently they seem to be warming to the idea that there’s money in them discs, so who knows, the universe seems to enjoy confounding me once I’ve gone to such expense importing films- Touch of Evil for recent example).

I’m certainly hoping that this 4K edition finally delivers a definitive restoration of the film- if done well it could be something revelatory.  A 4K scan from the negative, original mono soundtrack alongside an Atmos mix. The disc will have the three versions of the film (mostly concerning slight editorial cuts at the end, so nothing really major between them) . While  I have no need for those horse fall shots that the BBFC insisted on being cut here in the UK, it will be good to have the film uncut as those cuts were never handled very well, with the jarring edit to the score only calling attention to them.

Anyway, this is all old news really. The disc was announced a few weeks back for release in January next year and I pre-ordered it pretty much immediately – while I’ve been meaning to note of it here I haven’t had chance until now, in just the same way as I’ve been intending to post a review of John Walsh’s book about the film, released in September. This was most disappointing and I’d recommend fans to avoid it: like most similar editions there seems more emphasis on padding things out with pages of photographs than offering serious amounts of analysis or detail in text. Why is it editors of so many books think we just want to see pretty pictures? It just feels lazy, and poor even for that, as most of these pictures have been seen before (infuriatingly, some of the rarer and more interesting images are, confoundingly, then printed far too small anyway). The writing lacks anything new, missing new interviews with the major players or any retrospective insight. In Walsh’s defence, it was probably exactly what the book’s commissioning editor wanted and could afford, but it does seem such a wasted opportunity. The late, great J. W. Rinzler really set the bar high with his books.

Makes me rather miss the old days of making-of paperbacks; they didn’t have all the images but they did have plenty of text and information.

Paul M. Sammon’s in-depth making-of in Cinefantastique‘s double-issue remains the definitive account of the making of this film by a wide margin- in fact, it puts this new book to utter shame. Such a pity Titan couldn’t have just repackaged that issue for a new book in the same way they did that Cinefex issue on Blade Runner, but really, you license a new book about the film so many years after and you can’t ensure it matches or improves upon a  magazine article forty-plus year’s old?

I notice that John Walsh has written for the 4K disc’s booklet. I guess he’s considered the new authority on the film, despite how poor that book of his was. With some trepidation I also note that Arrow have seen fit to get Paul M Sammon to record a new commentary for the film – I’m sure it will be a worthwhile listen, but no doubt Sammon will namecheck his Cinefantastique article and time on set endlessly as he is wont to do in his commentary tracks, something that has grated on me before.

But hey, Conan the Barbarian in 4K.  And The Abyss all but officially confirmed for a 4K release next year. Hell really has frozen over. Dang it, no doubt the Apocalypse is just around the corner…

Hichcock delivers taboo horrors

The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (aka Raptus: The Secret of Dr.Hichcock/The Terror of Dr.Hichcock) (1962), Dir. Riccardo Freda (as Robert Hampton), 87/79 mins, Blu-ray

The Horrible Dr. Hichcock is an Italian Gothic horror, not a genre I’m really familiar with – I’ve naturally seen several Italian Westerns, and a few (mostly awful) gory Italian Zombie horrors; Italian Gothic though? Considering my love of all things Hammer, its perhaps odd that I never gave it a try, but I’ve always found the dubbing of Italian films distracting, and other than Sergio Leone’s films, they have seemed universally amateur in execution compared to American and English films. So this particular release was very much a blind-buy: partly it was because of the seasonal (Halloween) timing of this new Radiance edition, but also because when news broke of its impending release, some commentators rated the film very highly indeed, suggesting its obscurity was more due to other factors than its quality, appealing to my curiosity.

Its probably a perfect example of how great physical media can be for film-lovers, bringing to one’s attention films that are either too old, too strange or too obscure to be accessed any other way. I’d never heard of this film six months ago, and now its one of my favourite gothic horrors.  The Horrible Dr. Hichcock is a great, moody, fascinating horror film- more please!

The film opens in distinctly Hammer Horror fashion, with a dimly-lit graveyard late in the day, when a lone grave digger is knocked unconscious whilst preparing the grave for a waiting coffin. The coffin lid is forced open, revealing the body of a beautiful young woman. Gloved hands hover over and caress the corpse and the scene ends as the intruder’s body shifts over the poor woman’s body, thankfully obscuring our view from unmentionable acts….

London, 1885: Dr. Hitchcock (Robert Flemying) has developed a radical anaesthetic that makes patients comatose enough to enable life-saving surgeries, but at home he likes to drug his willing wife Margarettha (Maria Teresa Vianello) with the same anaesthetic for sexual games in which he has total power and, er, use of her body.  What his wife gets out of it is anyone’s guess, although a sequence later in which second wife Cynthia (Barbara Steele) experiences twisted visions during her own drugged state suggests… something. Clearly Hichcock and Margarettha are deviants.

Unfortunately, one night Hichcock’s overconfidence and twisted desires results in him accidentally administering an overdose that kills Margarettha.  While her death is presumably attributed to a sudden heart attack, wracked with guilt Hichcock leaves his home in the care of housekeeper Martha (Harriet Medin).  Several years later he remarries and returns with his new wife, Cynthia (the latter much to the disapproval of Martha), and resumes his hospital work.  Cynthia starts to hear and see strange things both around the house and in the grounds approaching the family crypt where Margarettha is interred. Who is the  woman that Cynthia glimpses sitting with Martha in her quarters? Meanwhile Hichcock seems to be struggling with his necrophiliac urges- at one point he apparently allows a beautiful female patient to die during an operation, in order to then go to the morgue where her body waits…  (only to be thwarted when he is disturbed by an intern).

The title of the film, name-dropping the great Alfred Hitchcock, no less, albeit misspelling to protect from litigation, offers a clue to the finer points of a film which honours Alfred Hitchcock through call backs to several of his films, like Vertigo,  Psycho and perhaps most notably Rebecca. The story also has obvious nods to Poe, and Hammer films in general (set in late-nineteenth-century England, the credits have the  Italian cast and crew names anglicised to make it seem to be a British or American film because Italian audiences preferred those horror films to their native ones).

The story about the making of this film is possibly as enjoyable as anything in the film- its one of those situations in which the making of it informs the film, and vice-versa, I guess. Part of it was to do with a bet- director Freda had a bet with a friend over a racehorse that he could shoot a film in ten days. To that end it was filmed almost entirely in an Italian villa (necessity is the mother of creation, after all, and Freda won the bet and the horse). The villa represented the mad doctor’s mansion, the villa’s tiled kitchen was turned into the hospital surgery and morgue (and, later, incredibly, transformed again, into the cemetery for the tantalising prologue). Ten pages of the script were cut (one suspects to better manage that ten-day shoot) that leaves the film with a curious sudden gap in the narrative, ensuring a twist/jump that entices as much as it befuddles – a character completely disappears from the film, and another appears as Hichcock suddenly succumbs completely to madness.

Actor Robert Flemying signed on for the film’s title role because he fancied the opportunity to revisit Rome and see the sights, but was then horrified upon reading the script and learning that it concerned Necrophilia. Fearing for what such a possibly scandalous film might do to his career he called his agent only to be told he’d got to do it, as he’d signed a contract- and as it turned out, the shockingly quick ten-day shoot meant he was on a plane back to England never having time for the sight-seeing anyway.

Funnily enough, for all his misgivings, Flemying manages a superb performance, both dramatic and subtle, depicting a brilliant man driven by his twisted urges. For all the limitations of its ten-day shoot in a villa, the film looks absolutely gorgeous, beautifully shot with atmospheric and imaginative cinematography that leaves the film looking like a work of art rather than the cheap exploitation movie it might have done. The excellent music score assists in this no end; the film looks and sounds quite ravishing.

So for once the luxury treatment a boutique label has given to an obscure film is thoroughly deserved here- this Radiance edition presents the film restored and looking better than it ever has, in three cuts over two discs with two commentaries and a few interviews, as well as a video essay and an in-depth booklet of articles.  Its a great package. I’ve sometimes been burned by blind-buys in the past (one can never be sure with a film one’s never seen)  but this has been a great surprise, one of my best buys  of this year, in fact, and one I’ll no doubt return to often (I’m very curious about the much-maligned American cut, I’m always fascinated by how much an alternate cut can change a film). Maybe this Italian gothic genre is one I’ll need to explore next year…

Titanium-plated fiasco

Titane, 2021, Dir. Julia Ducournau, 108 mins, HD

What a bad weekend for movies that was. After a fairly dismal double-bill of Censor and Freud on Saturday night perhaps it was fitting that I watched French arthouse horror Titane the following evening- particularly as Censor and Titane both share a fascination with (much better) David Cronenberg films: Censor preoccupied with borrowing from Videodrome, and Titane from Crash. All the two films really do is remind one of just how good Cronenberg was during his prime, and that it takes more than cheap shocks and graphic visuals to really get under a viewers skin and disturb.  What the makers of these films fail to realise is that Croneberg’s best films could fascinate us as much as they disturbed and repelled us. These films cannot fascinate- they are empty, hollow.

Titane is a stupid exploitation movie buried under lots of pretentious arthouse wankery. Its really no more than that, and the fact that it won the Palme d’Or just adds further proof of how pointless and worthless awards are. I am sure descriptions like ‘adult fairy-tale,’ ‘allegory’ and ‘brave’ were banded around this film by sophisticates itching to prove how important this film was- but its just a silly exploitation movie dressed as an arthouse film. There is nothing worse in my book.

We are supposed to ignore its ridiculous premise, its lack of internal logic, its bizarre characters, its leaps of fancy because it means ‘something important’ if the viewer can just fill in the blanks and go with the silliness?  No, I don’t buy any excuse for such rabidly poor storytelling: the shocks and the body horror mean nothing at all, the film doesn’t actually mean anything, or say anything, its utterly vacuous nonsense hiding behind fuzzy sophistication.  I would contend that if indeed the film is intended to mean anything, then it fumbles that intent completely: an early sequence in which Alexia is (presumably) having sex with a car that is leaping up and down with her naked inside it is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in years, I thought it was a joke  (Alexia is impregnated and starts leaking oil?). Its like a Saturday Night Live comedy sketch of Cronenberg movies.  But we are expected, incredibly, to take it at face value: the joke is instead on us.

No I really didn’t like it. I stubbornly watched it to its bitter end just in case there finally was some point to it, but there  wasn’t, unless it was really all just intended to wind me up – and this kind of film absolutely winds me up: its bad film-making in my book, nothing more. I don’t mind films being obtuse, Lynchian, there’s room for that, but some films just go too far and some critics (maybe they are confused or easily fooled) give them a pass. I refuse to give films like Titane a pass: if there is a worse film that I’ve seen this year, I will be very surprised.

Censor and Freud: A most peculiar movie-night

Censor (2021), Dir. Prano Bailey-Bond, 94 mins, HD

Freud (1962), Dir. John Huston, 140 mins, Blu-ray

Well, it just goes to show that one person’s failures can be someone else’s surprise late addition to a movie-night.  I’ve been curiously eyeing Censor ever since it originally came out and continually resisted Second Sight’s very tempting Blu-ray edition, so I’ve been waiting to see it for so long that when opportunity arose, with the info that the film is streaming on Channel 4, how was I to resist?

As it turned out, any expectations I had (that it looked to me like it could be a British Videodrome) were pretty much realised, but you know, funnily enough those same expectations turned out to be a negative too- it was indeed pretty much a British Videodrome and unfortunately its latter sections were as deranged and nonsensical as anything in Cronenberg’s movie. I think Cronenberg’s film got away with it because it was made back in 1982 and just so audacious and unique- there was nothing else to compare it to. Alas for Censor, then, that throughout there was indeed something else to compare it to.

Which is not to suggest that Censor was bad, just that… well, lets look at the positives, first. Its evocation of early-1980s Britain, the whole video-nasties, VHS-rental thing, the cars, the fashions, those train carriages! Its brilliant.  The use of colour in particular is very impressive indeed,  how its blooming colours replicated the feel of watching films on VHS. I had a bit of a giggle at the opening shots with saturated colours, picture drop-outs and tracking problems on the image (” and people bitch about issues with 4K discs,” I wryly observed).

Niamh Algar is excellent as Enid Barnes, playing a film censor whose childhood trauma involving a missing sister is triggered by scenes from a horror film to such an extent that her grip on what is real starts to collapse. Algar is just terrific and holds her own throughout, even when the film descends into farce. Which is where the negatives come in- the film’s plot just cannot live up to the film’s premise. It cannot sustain or deliver a satisfactory outcome regards the intriguing mystery regards what exactly happened regards Enid’s terrible childhood event losing her sister and how that event is somehow creepily recreated/alluded to in a b-movie horror film whose ‘victim’ looks uncannily like Enid’s lost sister. Instead Censor falls apart under the weight of its promising first half, ultimately unable to deliver.

Jerry Goldsmith’s haunting music score for Freud certainly delivers. As moody/horror scores go, its pretty definitive, and I think you could place it into any horror movie and it would elevate that movie to some other level. Which, to Goldsmiths own chagrin, was proven by some of its music being used in Ridley Scott’s Alien at the expense of Goldsmith’s own ‘new’ music he’d written specifically for it. Film editor Terry Rawlings was a great music lover, with a gift for putting temp music into films he was editing and used much of Goldsmith’s Freud score as Alien‘s temp track.  So enamoured was Ridley Scott with how well the music fit scenes that Rawlings put together that he just couldn’t let go of it. I was always fascinated. watching Alien, with these pieces of music that didn’t appear on any Alien soundtrack release- they certainly felt like Alien music, chiefly because, well, it was music written by Goldsmith, it had his style, his stamp on it, but wow was it creepy and gorgeous.  I’d eventually learn that the music was from a very early Goldsmith score for a fairly obscure movie, Freud, and when Varese released a deluxe CD edition several years ago I ordered it immediately, it arriving a few days before one Christmas that duly became a little… stranger than usual.

Listening to that CD, and appreciating what in my opinion is one of Goldsmith’s finest scores, only made me more curious about the film itself. So here we are years later and me finally buying Indicator’s Blu-ray edition in their sale this week. Turns out that the film is as strange and unsettling as its Goldsmith score. Indeed, in that respect, Goldsmith’s score is more perfect than I’d imagined. It sums up this quite bizarre, often frustrating movie.

John Huston’s Freud is, perhaps unsurprisingly having Huston’s name attached to it, rather self-indulgent, pompous and full of its own self-importance. John Huston’s own portentous narration at the films opening sets the tone – pay attention! This is important!

Its indeed a dramatic work, and I’m possibly being unfair to it, but I’m not sure it really works. I can’t say I expected an ordinary biopic, not with the Goldsmith score it has, and in that respect, I wasn’t disappointed- this is no life story, instead concentrating on just six years of Freud’s life  as he begins to formulate his theories of the human subconscious, how behaviours are driven by child sexuality, the Oedipal Complex…  its pretty heady stuff, especially, one would think, for a film made in 1962.  What saves the film for me is how it is structured like a noir-ish detective story, Sigmund Freud (Montgomery Clift) not so much trying to solve a whodunnit as much as a why-they-dunnit as he examines the cases of David McCallum’s Carl and Susannah York’s Cecily.

The performances are very fine, particularly Montgomery Clift in the title role – Freud was Clift’s penultimate film, his personal life beset by alcoholism and drug addiction following a near-fatal car accident in 1957 which destroyed his film star good looks, left him in pain and practically ruined his acting career. Like his brief but memorable turn in Judgement at Nuremburg his real-life fragility informs his onscreen performance. There’s something in his desperate, almost pleading eyes. Its really quite arresting. Clift’s ably supported by fine turns from Larry Parks, Susan Kohner and the aforementioned Susannah York… I’m possibly being a little unfair to it when I say it doesn’t really work, and suspect repeat viewings may improve my opinion of it.  There’s just something a little ‘off’ to me, regards the film’s heightened, self-important tone. I’m not suggesting it needed any comedy to lighten things up, but its tone does become wearing, and the film is 140 minutes long.

Or maybe its one of the pitfalls of a movie night double-bill when its getting late….