Tag Archives: Movies

Horror, Imaginary Italian Cinema

#40 – Spanish Inquisition, The

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(1973, It, 80 min) Dir Antonio Marretti. Cast Vincent Price, Barbara Steele, Patrick Magellan.

Reuniting Price and Steele following Corman’s The Pit and the Pendulum, Marretti’s The Spanish Inquisition finds the two of them in the same torturer/victim relationship as before. Young Francis (Magellan, still hanging around from Circo Nero and still wooden as all hell) longs to run away with his love Elizabeth (Steele) but when he finally drums up the courage to act he is interrupted by the arrival in town of the dreaded Spanish Inquisition. Price is Inquisitor Medina and from the time he first arrives he has his eyes set on Elizabeth. It all gets a bit Witchfinder General from then on – he concocts an accusation against her so that he can get her alone for some special torturing and, despite Francis’ best efforts, gets her up on the stake for the finale. But, just when you thought that unlike the Python’s Inquisition this was totally expected, Elizabeth’s head turns into a writhing ball of snakes and her unfurling bat wings snap the ropes that bind her to the stake. Yes, that’s right – she actually is some sort of Satanic hell-spawn and of course the Inquisition are running about like headless chickens because this is the first time they’ve actually seen a demon. But Elizabeth quickly blinds Inquisitor Medina and grabs a now not so keen Francis, making off into the dying sun. The special effects are terrible but points are scored for the unexpected.

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Comedy, Imaginary US Cinema

#39 – Rolling Free!

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(1981, US, 88 min) Dir Andy Farmer. Cast Tommy Chong, Christopher Guest, Kirk Douglas, Jack Palance.

Dismal stoner cowboy ‘comedy’ featuring Chong sans Cheech and an awfully miscast Guest (who mostly seems to be asleep upright on his horse). They play low-level crooks in the Old West smuggling drugs up from Mexico to the big cities up north and evading the law on the one hand (Douglas, manic) and their sinister rival the Black Moustache (Palance, scenery chewing) on the other. With no discernible plot bar their travels from one place to the other and no perceptible peril via their low-consequence run-in’s with both Douglas and Palance there is only infantile word play, flatulence, the prostitution of women and the inherent hilarity of marijuana left to get by on. Even the potentially glorious scenery provides no relief – it’s shot by first-time director and future journeyman Farmer as though Monument Valley had for him the same visual interest as an inner city laundromat. The most fun to be had is in spotting cameos from John Candy, Harry Shearer and Paul ‘Pee Wee’ Reubens, all acting away under three acres of fake facial hair each.

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Animation, Childrens, Imaginary US Cinema

#38 – Velvet Paw, The

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(1990, US, 81 min) Dir Art Stevens, Ron Clements.  Cast Kathleen Turner, Burt Reynolds, Freddie Jones.

Originally intended for cinema release in 1984, The Velvet Paw was shelved by Disney for unknown reasons and then, following the disappointing box office of The Black Cauldron, it remained on the shelf, not being released until 1990 and then going straight to video. With all of this The Velvet Paw has been perhaps unjustly forgotten – it’s certainly stands up better than some of it’s pre-Disney Renaissance contemporaries. The titular Velvet Paw is a jewel thief in a 1920’s Paris populated by anthropomorphic animals who is being hunted by the inept Detective Copper (a bloodhound of course, voiced by Jones) and is, in reality, sophisticated high society rag doll Lady Fluffington (the appropriately husky Turner, recorded prior to Jessica Rabbit). Into her life comes streetwise con artist Max (Reynolds) to sweep her off her feet. Will she give away her secret to Max? Is he only in it for the money? The time and the place are well evoked (down to a bear Hemingway and a fox Scott Fitzgerald) with a couple of choice ragtime numbers in the place of the usual treacley Disney tunes. Throw in a couple of exciting jewel heists and a moonlit rooftop chase and you have enough to distract from the muddled pacing of the rest of the film.

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Childrens, Imaginary Japanese Cinema

#37 – Kitten Dream

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(1995, Jap, 72 min) Dir Takashi Ōmori.

In Japan in the eighties there was a TV show called Happy Puppy Kitten which consisted mostly of the fifteen minute adventures of puppies and kittens as they, for example, discovered a new box or frolicked in a garden, all while being narrated by an excessively excited young woman. Happy Puppy Kitten didn’t make it out of the country but Kitten Dream, a feature-length cat only version, did. Basic story: kitten in house, kitten escape from house. Kitten climb in van of milk man, milk man drive away. Kitten get out at sea-side, kitten lost. Kitten must find kitten’s way home. It’s all very cute though the little ones in the screening I attended were mildly traumatised by some of the scenes of lost kittens. I will assure you, to save any distress on your own part, that a happy ending is most definitely had with kitten finding her way home and being thrown a kitten party by her owner. Blessedly the big screen version released over here is without the breathless narration of the excited young Japanese woman but, oddly, she has been replaced with Christopher Plummer who I can’t help but think is being a touch too ironic for the proceedings. Puppy Dream was released the following year.

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Art Film, Documentary, Imaginary US Cinema

#36 – Access Road

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(2012, US, 87 min) Dir Emmanuel Pascal, Andrea Filipe.

An ethnographical docufeature from Pascal and Filipe, the makers of 2009’s Raised Road that followed the titular elevated motorway’s three year construction in the Philippines. Access Road ploughs a similar furrow in the unnarrated documentation of process and progress. A road is built through the forests of the Pacific Northwest to the site of a prospective mine. Trees are felled and rock dug out by bulldozers to make way for the asphalting crews. At the end of the road is the mountain, at which point the demolition crew get to work. The camera seems as interested in the environment and the equipment as it is in the people, keeping itself at a distance to the action being observed. Not everyone will be happy with this perspective being that it casts the workers as ants in the dirt and indeed there are those who have condemned the filmmakers oeuvre as ‘construction porn’ that sides with the devastation being witnessed. Of course an equal amount have taken an opposite view, that the remove places the filmmakers in the God’s eye view of nature, witness to it’s own ravishment. Personally I can see neither vantage point being explicitly portrayed but instead see a process usually hidden from view – one that forms part of our society for good or ill – being documented without prejudice for us to judge ourselves. That diametrically opposing perspectives can be had based on this film speaks volumes, I think, of the directors’ success.

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Childrens, Comedy, Imaginary French Cinema

#35 – Petit Ombré, Le (Little Shadow)

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(1962, Fr, 50 min) Dir Alexander Illienko.

Another marvel from Illienko, the first following his relocation from the Ukraine to Paris and only the second of three films he would ever make. The ‘Petite Ombré’ of the title is a sentient umbrella that seemingly drops from the clear blue Paris skies and proceeds to flit about the streets, causing mischief wherever it goes. It’s essentially a silent film in that there is no dialogue, just the sounds of the street and the umbrella’s schoolgirl giggling. It all leads to some fantastic slapstick worthy of the silent masters. In one sequence the whole of a street with its half dozen market stalls is turned into an elaborate Rube Goldberg style cause and effect contraption by the umbrella brushing its handle against a mere lemon. Just as there’s no real beginning to the film there is also no real end – the umbrella simply makes to the skies once again at the end, off to cause mischief somewhere else no doubt. A seriously playful film whose occasional visible strings only add to the charm. Despite winning the Golden Star at the Paris Festival de Fantasie and garnering general praise it would be another nine years before Illienko made it to the big screen once again.

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Comedy, Imaginary British Cinema

#34 – ’68

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(1982, GB, 102 min) Dir Michael Apted. Cast Alfred Molina, Paul McGann, Alexi Sayle.

British film about a young man called David (a scouse Molina) trying to hitch from Liverpool to Paris in the year of the riots so that he can join in with the revolution but it takes him half of the film to get to Dover. Along the way to Paris he meets a young actor who thinks that he’s Jesus, “the original revolutionary” (McGann), an Italian opera singing truck driver (Sayle, who co-wrote) and, once he gets across the channel, a car filled with a nervous French family, at which point we realise that along with the handicap of his naïve politicking, that the young man speaks no French. Of course by the time he gets to Paris the rioting is done and the cobblestones are back in place – not that that stops him being brained by le flics he annoys with his ranting and being tossed into the nearest cell along with a terrifying young bruiser called Phillipe (a young Denis Lavant). A film that looks back at the person it was before and being embarrassed about it whilst simultaneously reminiscing wistfully on the subject. An interesting film of its time about the time before that forms a kind of a hall of mirrors of cultural self-regard.

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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