Halloween period viewing;
"Aenigma"
Oohhhhh....Oohhhhh....Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.
What the hell ever happened Lucio Fulci?
What went wrong?
What?
Completely, utterly, numbingly tedious drivel. When the best scene in the movie involves a rubber slug and snail shit, you know you have real problems.
Jared Martin teams up with Fulci again 3 years after "Fighting Centurions" to far lesser success as Lucio bores us to tears with that old chestnut the 'revenge while in a coma' plot.
Virtually goreless this plods from tedious dialogue scene to tedious dialogue scene (with crap dialogue) until a stupendously weak and bloodless death scene arrives......then it's back to the tedious dialogue again.
We have some unattractive breasts and a colossal bit of writhing booty to give us at least something to stare at and the famous 'death by snail 'n' slug' scene works on a gross-out gonzo level as (rubber slug in the mouth aside) these are indeed tons of real snails really oozing and dripping and crapping their way over the actress's body.
But hey! Anyone with a camcorder, lots of snails and a very forgiving female friend could make that scene work! So not much praise for Fulci there either.
OH boy...Can this really be the same Fulci that gave us such magnificent Gothic Gore Gems as "City of the Living Dead", "House by the Cemetery" and the truly iconic "Zombi 2"??
Hell, this makes "Door to Silence" look like "The Beyond"!
Lay down the slug pellets and kill this monstrosity!! Never let this festering sore of a film anywhere near your precious eyes!
Save your brain and indeed your very soul and walk away...no, run away...if you ever see this thing cluttering up a DVD shelf.
"The Lodger"
Hitchcock's 1927 silent adaptation of the book of the same name by Marie Lowndes, based roughly around the Jack the Ripper killings.
Someone is killing off blond haired women on the foggy London streets.
A mysterious lodger (the now legendary Ivor Novello) takes rooms at the house of an old couple who have a the pretty,blond, daughter named Daisy.
As the lodger steps out into the dark streets...another murder occurs....
Not remotely in the same class as true silent classics, Hitchcock's first real public success is hampered by many (of course mute) conversational scenes that fall dead without any words bar a few short inter-titles.
Novello's acting at first is also too sinister and overwrought to make us believe he would ever have got through the front door, let alone be taken in as a lodger and there is little incident in the story.
There are positives here though.
We have some fun 'sinister' visuals, most famously the scene where Novello appears at the lodging house, framed in the doorway, with his only his eyes showing above his scarf shrouded visage and with that iconic (though utterly erroneous) Ripper black medical bag clasped in his hand, and a few shots effectively based on German Expressionist cinema.
And the plot is interesting enough to hold the attention (just) as Hitch piles on the fog, Cockney 'salt off the Earth' characters, shocked bystanders, dumbfounded Bobbies on the beat and best of all the angry mob in the genuinely tense and pretty tough finale.
The film needlessly goes on for a couple of sequences after this finale for no good reason though and so the effect of the subsequent 'angry mob' sequence is weakened.
Worth a look from any historical point of view and for those few effective scene, and it's surprising to think that this was in cinemas just 40 years after The Ripper prowled London's streets, this closeness adds to the film's fascination as many of those who may have sat in the audience in 1927 would have lived through the slayings.
"Fear 2: Halloween Night"
Dopey wooden supernatural guy aside, this has nothing to do wth the first "Fear" and stands on its own.
The film is a very slow builder and no red stuff is seen until well passed the hour mark. But the acting is fine, the film is generally well made and the unfolding plot manages to just about hold the attention.
The later killings are pretty weak, but one is quite violent and a few dollops of crimson get splashed around. But it has one of those nonsensical finale frame twists that serves no purpose and really the entire thing is too low key for its own good.
Worth a look if you can get it very cheap (which it is).
"Time after Time"
Amazingly this gem has slipped though the cracks of time (ho ho) and is generally forgotten about now.
This is a travesty that needs addressing.
A great plot has Jack The Ripper (essayed by a brilliantly on form David Warner) turn out to be a Dr Stevenson, a close friend of none other than author H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell in a superb, non-hammy, performance).
With the Police on his heels 'Jack' flees in Wells' very own time machine and ends up (where the machine ended up) in San Francisco circa 1979!
Without a special key, that Wells has, the time machine goes back whence it came and so H.G steels his nerves and goes after The Ripper.
While looking for 'Jack' he meets bank employee Amy (A wonderfully cute, slightly spaced but strong and wilful turn by Mary Steenburgen) and finds himself falling in love with her, even as he reallses the violence of future society makes The Ripper look like a novice. And soon the murdered bodies of prostitutes start turning up in San Francisco...
A cuttingly astute mix of the comic, the whimsical and the deadly serious Nicholas Meyer's film juggles these ingredients perfectly and the move from the 'man out of his time' humour that plays a big part in the first half of the film into straight ahead thriller territory for the tense final third of the movie is seamless.
The screenplay makes much of Wells' being not only from another time but also being English and there are some lovely comedy sequences here to enjoy all perfectly played by McDowell who bounces off Steenburgen wonderfully.
Warner's role is always serious and his strong delivery, voice and presence ensures that we never crucially forget, 70's denim get-up or not, what a dangerous killer his character is and again his scenes with McDowell are superb.
Despite the topic, violence is pretty tame due to the fact that at it's heart the film is as much a fish out of water love story as a hunt for a serial killer flick, but Meyer brilliantly manages to crank up the tension and threat during Jack's brief killings and the occasional splash of blood (and in one case a severed arm on the floor) effectively add much needed darkness to the rest of the movie's lovable lightness of touch.
Highlight of the thriller aspects of the film must be a brilliantly staged, edited and acted (McDowell is simply amazing) extended sequence involving Well's trying to stop Stevenson's next murder but finding himself a prisoner of disbelieving Police as The Ripper closes in on his victim. Cleverly using what we have already learned from a future newspaper about the murder this sequence will stick in the mind of anyone who sees it as we are truly put through the emotional wringer.
You can pick a few holes in the plot (as is basically the folly of all time travel stories) but that aside, "Time after Time" is a classy, clever, funny, charming, tense, exciting and strongly emotional journey through time that is exquisitely acted and highly memorable.
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