Monthly Archives: October 2014

Black and White, Horror, Imaginary British Cinema

#33 – Ghost in the Floor, The

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(1962, GB, 95 min, b/w) Dir Eric Conway Bryce. Cast Denholm Elliott, Janette Scott, Martin Stephens, Freda Dowie.

Superior chiller, like an MR James story for Christmas that was never written, and impeccably shot by Freddie Francis. Victorian schoolteacher Reginald Benway (Elliott) is assigned to Oldgrey’s college in the moor bound village of Hampton. The reception, as one would expect in such a film, is chilly. That night, as he sits on his bed, his head in his hands in despair, he makes out what seems to him to be a face in the floorboards made from the whorls in the wood’s grain. As time goes on things improve – he makes friends with one of his pupils, the lonely and awkward Alec (Stephens), and a relationship is tentatively begun with his fellow teacher, Miss Devonshire (Scott). Of course everything goes wrong after that, with false rumours being spread about his relationship with the boy and even Miss Devonshire begins to keep her distance. As his troubles mount each night the face in his bedroom floor changes and grows larger… This all plays out at a superbly measured pace, all leading to an end that’s all the more terrifying for its inevitability.

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Action/Adventure, Comedy, Imaginary US Cinema

#32 – S.P.O.T.S.

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(2013, US, 117 min) Dir Roger Bertle. Cast Elle Fanning, Will Poulter, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Ed Harris, Sam Elliott.

“S.P.O.T.S. stands for Special Protection Organisation, Teenage Service,” says Sam Elliott’s General Macey, pacing before his new adolescent recruits, “And yes, we did do that on purpose. So what is it for, this organisation? Well let me tell you – if we were to send in a bus full of students into North Korea or Iran on a cross-cultural exchange then nobody would bat an eyelid, not really. If those students were to be highly trained assassins? Well then, that’d be an advantage, wouldn’t it? The perfect cover for the perfect killers.” Think Kick-Ass meets Mission: Impossible. Will Poulter’s troubled Danny is spirited away to the S.P.O.T.S. training camp following the death of his parents and finds himself being trained as the ‘Cleaner’ for his assassin’s cell that includes Fanning’s trained killer Mindy and Brodie-Sangster’s tech head Patch. Their mission, following the obligatory training montage, is to use a school trip to the fictional Eastern European country of Ezkhazia to kill its West-unfriendly premier who is played by Ed Harris and, despite all appearances and biographical similarities, is definitely not Vladimir Putin. No sir. Ex-ad man Bertle’s flashy, bubbly direction and the film’s appealing leads helps to ease the moral issues of the ensuing underage bloodbath even though the whole thing’s totally reprehensible.

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Documentary, Imaginary British Cinema

#31 – Is Your Life Worth Living?

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(1974, GB, 51 min) Dir Alan Foster. Cast Phil Farmer, Janet Bee, Oliver Basquit.

A strange bit of propaganda produced by Anthony Beckett, the head of the notorious Anti-Life Brigade prior their disbanding the following year. The film takes the form of a documentary following three people – Phil, Janet and Oliver – as they occupy themselves in their day-to-day life while being interrogated by an omnescient narrator as to the point of their existence, the pointlessness of their marrying and reproducing and so on. As a failed propaganda this would have come and gone and that would be that but following the demise of the ALB copies were passed about film societies in the UK and it was shown once or twice television too. Unfortunately for Beckett this interest wasn’t for the film’s philisophical arguments but for the comedy of every point the film’s leads come up with for living being rebuked by the narrator’s doomy stentorian voice, like a furiously depressed Christopher Lee. For example, from Phil: “Sometimes on a Sunday I’ll go to the pictures – that puts the time in.” Narrator: “In the life of the universe the time you spend on earth is so insignificant that you might as well not exist.” There are, so far as I know, no records of the film’s effectiveness.

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Twitter: @MadeUpFilms

Drama, Imaginary British Cinema

#30 – Ghosts of the Caspian

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(1985, GB, 120 min) Dir Richard Loncraine. Cast Art Malik, Brian Blessed, Omar Sharif.

Truish tale of the Iranian biologist Dr Tehrani (Malik) searching the north Iranian forests for evidence that the Caspian tiger may not be extinct in the mid to late Seventies, fighting on the way with loggers stripping the hills of their trees and the locals killing of the wildlife. A city bred scientist, his struggles with the privations of living rough are of great amusement to his experienced companions, which include Blessed’s Angelo Paxbury, former big game hunter turned conservationist, and Sharif’s local elder who is attempting to modernise his people. Of course Tehrani is unsuccessful and, when he returns home he finds that the revolution that has occurred in his absence has changed the country so much that he can’t settle back there and returns instead to the forest, like the tiger he seeks, never to be seen again. A heartfelt but never over serious drama, fantastically shot by Freddie Francis, that is only ever close to derailment in it’s opening straight with a cameo from Michael Palin as a lost butterfly enthusiast from the Royal Entomological Society, Lepidoptera Division, that seems beamed in from another planet.

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Drama, Imaginary British Cinema, Science Fiction

#29 – Last Elephant, The

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(1972, GB, 89 min) Dir James Hill. Cast Ron Rifkin, Bill Travers, Virginia McKenna.

Environmental sci-fi from the Born Free director. It’s the undated future and through a combination of poaching and the environmental devastation caused by a limited nuclear war all of the elephants of Africa are now dead. American journalist Alan Finch (Rifkin) is sent to Botswana to follow-up on a tip-off of a sighting from conservationists Frank and Mary Beckett (Travers and McKenna). The first half of the film finds our trio travelling uncomfortably, Finch’s city-living type not cottoning on to the Beckett’s nature loving ways. After they find the elusive elephant the second half becomes a kind of dirge with their every attempt to help the sickly survivor failing. At the end the world’s media convenes on this dying elephant, filming it as it expires. Finch’s conversion is complete when he is asked by a newscaster what the big deal is – “We have elephants in zoos, right?” Finch shakes his head. “No,” he says, “This wasn’t an elephant in a zoo. This was the last real elephant there will ever be.” A heartfelt film with no embellishments in it’s vision of the future – no hover cars or ray guns – that would suggest either the film’s modest budget or that the story they’re telling is something less than allegory.

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Drama, Horror, Imaginary US Cinema

#28 – Mean Average, The

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(2012, US, 100 min) Dir Eric Ceder. Cast Rob Morrow, Brent Briscoe, Laura Regan.

Bizarre Randian horror movie that spitballs the unrest of the Occupy movement into a society wide uprising that targets the innocent one per cent that are safeguarding our society. Our hero here is Alex Forster (Rob Morrow, possibly prepping for his role in Atlas Shrugged Part 3), a stockbroker titan unlike anything seen in The Wolf of Wall Street – he himself would totally never do anything bad ever and has a loving family that apparently exists in a perpetual sunbeam. The supposedly expensive but cheap-looking walls of his world come tumbling down one day when the unwashed drug-crazed hippies protesting outside his office move indoors and begin exacting their revenge on the money men. Thus begins a discount apocalypse in what is essentially a filmed play with CGI inserts and crowd scenes of mass riot that only work if your definition of the word ‘crowd’ bottoms out at two dozen. It’s baffling to conceive as to who this film is aimed at as it seems designed to offend and angry anyone not rich enough to own a gold toilet but, at the same time, is so cheap and stagey in its execution to betray the fact that no self-respecting wealthy person would put their money near it.

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Comedy, Drama, Imaginary Japanese Cinema

#27 – Burakku kokoro sanzoku (Black Heart Bandits)

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(1976, Jap, 76 min) Dir Taku. Cast Mitsuo Ibaraki, Gen Otori, Anna Shimura.

Japanese biker gang movie cashing in on the rise of bōsōzoku subculture in Japan in the seventies. Hideo is a gawky, nerdish young man with a small motorbike that’s more like a scooter. He has a big dream though – to cast off his studies and become a member of the legendary criminal biker gang the Black Heart Bandits. One night, by sheer coincidence, he meets their leader – the cool, black clad and perpetually sunglasses wearing Ichi – and of course he uses the opportunity to beg for a place among the crew. Ichi – who isn’t one for charity I’m guessing – says yes, but only when he has passed his initiation. His first task is running the gauntlet of the local girl gang, the Pink Heart Bandits, which ends with him at the wrong end of a chain whipping coupled with a zealous helping of sexual humiliation. His trials escalate to drug smuggling and murder, the film ending with his gruesome demise at the wrong end of a stick of dynamite. The first in the six entry series revolving around the gang and as psychedelic, flimsy and comically sadistic as the rest. A great theme tune too.

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Twitter: @MadeUpFilms

Comedy, Imaginary US Cinema

#26 – Can You Do What Doobie Do?

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(1966, US, 72 min) Dir William Asher. Cast Fabian, Frankie Avalon, Susan Hart, Luciana Paluzzi.

Made at the decline of the beach party movie, CYDWDD betrays no shortage of spirit for this and in fact has more of an anything goes attitude than anything else. Fabian and Avalon are Hank and Randy, rivals for king of the beach who put their differences to one side when the big house on the dune is rented out by a quartet of British musicians. The band is The Weevils and they’re adorably mop-topped and skinny trousered – that’s right, the American insecurity of having their rock and roll music stolen from them has made it to the beach party movie. Much to Hank and Randy’s chagrin the girls are just head over heels for these guys and they have to battle on the beach to get them back via surf contests, dance-offs, you name it. Everything goes in The Weevils’ favour until Hank and Randy pull out their big gun – the titular Doobie Do, who is a dancing, surfing rock and roll chimp (and is obviously a man in a suit). It’s all very tongue in cheek and more like a parody of the genre than anything else, down to wacky cameos from horror maestros Boris Karloff and Vincent Price.

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Comedy, Imaginary Irish Cinema

#25 – Ti Fac

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(2009, Ire, 84 min) Dir Phil Neeson. Cast Phil Neeson, Patrick O’Shannon, Aoife MacMurrough.

Irish mockumentary about a Gaelic language wannabe gangsta rapper who tours the Gaeltacht of the west of Ireland plying his wares and being very street. This is very much in the Borat vein of things with lead actor Neeson (of the occasionally controversial late-night comedy group The Black and Tans) actually touring the far west of the country in character between staged comedy moments to regale audiences with his hits Slán go Fóill, Dia Dhuit/Dia is Muire Dhuit and Cá Bhfuil an Leithreas? In case you’re not in the know these songs are composed entirely in the most basic Gaelic (the titles meaning, respectively, Goodbye, Hello and Where’s the Toilet?) which means Ti Fac is either run out of town as the charlatan he is or finds his hosts straining to retain their civility in the face of it all. The film’s climax is a performance from his compatriot, the oafish Lig Dom, with his grotesquely offensive rap opus Níl ach Braon Beag Fola Ort (which translates as There is Only a Little Blood and whose meaning I’ll leave to your imagination). You’ll get more from the film if you’ve a working knowledge of the language but it’s not essential. Funny stuff even if the point of some of the mockery, beyond the bravado of it all, seems a little less than clear.

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Horror, Imaginary French Cinema

#24 – Extase de l’obscurité (Dark Ecstasy)

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(1975, Fr, 85 mins) Dir Jean Rollin. Cast Christina von Blanc, Maria Rohm, Joëlle Coeur, Britt Nichols, Alice Arno.

Lesbian vampire nuns. If the preceding sentence has left you cold then there’s not much here for you as Dark Ecstasy hasn’t much to offer beyond the allure of those three words. Young novice Caterina (von Blanc) has been sent to the mountaintop convent of Marie-des-Monts by the shifty Sister Elizabeth who lived there herself years ago and now rocks back and forth while cackling incessantly. It seems that Caterina’s purity is just right for the perverted denizens of Marie-des-Monts, as led by the icy and statuesque Maria Rohm, to exploit. And exploit it they do, for the full of the film’s running time, with Caterina of course proving victorious in the end, burning the convent down and sacrificing herself in the process. Slow but fun for fans of lesbians, vampires and nuns. Originally the film ran for a trim 72 minutes but the relaxing of certification laws in later years saw Rollin return (possibly under duress, depending on whose version of events you believe) to insert a lengthy dream sequence that included hardcore sex scenes and, because they were popular at the time, zombies. This hardcore zombie version was released under the imagination-free title Nonnes lesbiennes de Vampire in 1981.

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Twitter: @MadeUpFilms