Tag Archives: Movies

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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Twitter: @MadeUpFilms

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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Twitter: @MadeUpFilms

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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Twitter: @MadeUpFilms

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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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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Twitter: @MadeUpFilms

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

Action/Adventure, Imaginary British Cinema

#23 – Fire in the Dunes

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(1979, GB, 102 mins) Dir Peter Hunt. Cast Roger Moore, Edward Fox, Barbara Carrera, Donald Pleasance.

In an unnamed oil-rich Middle Eastern country, aging guns for hire Moore and Fox are hired for a covert sabotage mission by the sultan’s envoy (Carrera) for reasons vague enough to give me pause, were I a mercenary, but doesn’t seem to faze these two. Of course it’s all a con and before long the hunters become the hunted. Though it’s a little sluggish in the opening stretch, director Hunt still betrays some of the panache of his sole Bond entry and before long gun battles, quips and explosions are ten a penny. Both leads seem to be enjoying themselves and Pleasance makes for an entertaining, if inexplicably German, adversary. The happy ending – where our heroes toast a successful mission that, as a side-effect, causes a massive oil spill in the clear blue waters of the gulf – seems a trifle odd to these eyes and not necessarily the cause for celebration but then perhaps this is why I’ve never succeeded as a cold-hearted mercenary. Enjoyable stuff for a Sunday afternoon but it’d probably be best to have disengaged the brain some first.

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Twitter: @MadeUpFilms

Horror, Imaginary Italian Cinema

#22 – Circo Nero (Black Circus)

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(1972, It, 93 min) Dir Antonio Marretti. Cast Patrick Magellan, Telly Savalas, Reena Pavlova, Ingrid Pitt.

Watery flower child Duke (Magellan) is abandoned in the woods one night by his brain-dead hedonist friends and after wandering in the day for night to the accompaniment of a lonesome ballad he happens upon a big top in a clearing and risks a peek inside. On the high-wire is barely animated porcelain doll Reena Pavlova with a lonesome ballad of her own. Duke is entranced, obviously. Unfortunately for him sadistic ringmaster Telly Savalas (his bald head inexplicably, if eerily, painted red) has this doll in his collection and isn’t giving her up easy. Duke parlays his juggling skills into the position vacated by a recently deceased clown and lo he can travel with the circus and moon over Pavlova from a distance all the while seeing off the advances of dancing lady (Pitt, having a ball). Of course everyone in the troupe are Satanic hell-spawn pilfering the bodies and souls of the locals as they traverse the countryside but, despite the obviousness of their schemes and the well shot trippy dreams he keeps having about them being evil, the dim Duke is none the wiser until the final reel. The race is then on to save his captured love but is she what she seems either? Silly fun.

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Detective, Giallo, Horror, Imaginary Italian Cinema

#21 – Quattro gocce di sangue in una stanza buia (Four Drops of Blood in a Darkened Room)

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(1971, It, 98 min) Dir Antonio Marretti. Cast Edwige Fenech, George Hilton, Jack Taylor.

In 1971 Edwige Fenech was in the middle of a hot giallo streak with Five Dolls for an August Moon and Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key just two genre classics she shot around the same time as this. Quattro Gocce, while not achieving the lasting reputation of the others, has plenty for the aficionado. Fenech is an eager student by day and dissolute boot model by night in go-go Rome when her life is turned upside down following the horrible murders, in the same night, of one of her student friends and one of her model friends. It’s obvious to her (but not to the feckless polizia) that someone is closing in on her but who could the killer be? Among the many red herring are Hilton’s photographer friend and Taylor’s sweaty-palmed peeping tom, both caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of course the reveal makes no sense it’s at least in keeping with the randomness of the rest of the feature and it’s flashy visuals, peppy Morricone soundtrack and some stylish kills make this a fine addition to any Friday night’s viewing.

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Twitter: @MadeUpFilms