What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[DeadAlive]

Little Big Soldier

Jackie's best film of the last decade as far as I'm concerned. A change of pace and a performance that is about as complex as anything he has done previously without ever slipping into melodramatic overacting. The action is toned down too and is character based so you feel you are watching a real person and not just Jackie doing his thing. This looks grubby and as a film stays away from sentimentality. The ending is quite a surprise too.


She-Devils On Wheels

Hershcell Gordon Lewis stepped outside of his usual gorefest horrors to make this dreadful exploitation film about a female motorcycle gang. It is poorly acted and the script is full of unintentional laughs but unlike many of this type of film it is totally boring. For an exploitation film you really get to see very little. The only moment of HGL magic comes towards the end when one character litterally looses his head.

[42ndStreetFreak]

"Warlock"

Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda and Anthony Quinn star in Edward Dmytryk's epic, multi-layered, multi-plot strand Western that boasts some superbly crafted, three dimensional, characters all expertly played.

The action is sparse but effective and the clever, ever twisting, plot keeps you intrigued and guessing at exactly what will happen and just as importantly...how it will happen.

A streak of 50's melodrama (and some crappy sweeping strings on the soundtrack during the occasional - most dated aspect of the film - romantic interludes) goes against the astute, dark and intelligent screenplay now and again but overall this is stunning stuff.

And it features a truly fascinating portrayal of a driven, noble but ruthless gunslinger, now at a loss at what to do with his life as he and The West ages, by Fonda.
You can certainly see aspects here of his majestic, steely-eyed, complex performance as Frank in "Once Upon a Time in the West" as his Marshall character here could well be the noble flipside of Frank.

There's also a really unusual male bonding aspect between Quinn and Fonda too, that truly is a platonic love story about two men who literally need each other to stay alive.

An intelligent, astute, layered and superbly played Western classic.



"Ministry of Fear"

Fritz Lang's Nazi spy ring thriller starring Ray Milland is something Lang himself never liked due to his disapproval at the screenplay adaptation of Graham Greene's novel (which he liked).

It's certainly a bit all over the place in tone, going from dark and serious thriller/drama to frothy comedy thriller at the flip of a scene.
But it often looks impressive (of course, it's Lang) and has bags of atmosphere and some nice plotting.
The final scene gives us a rather abrupt, overly comic, ending to the film but overall this is pretty good stuff that benefits from Fritz Lang's artistic eye.



"The Human Jungle"

One of those gritty 50's Noirish cop thrillers that falls between two stools as far as a modern audience's perceptions go.

It hints at prostitution, it contains murder, features crime syndicates, petty hoods, street bums and brutal women killers.
And it goes out and films all this on the actual mean streets and drapes all the seedy alleyways in deep shadow.

And yet...because of the obvious censor constraints of 50's cinema (despite the slowly changing aspects that this film does highlight) and general mores of 50's society all this grit and darkness still plays out like a cozy, retro, viewing experience as all the shadows are just that bit lighter than they should be and all the dirt a little to shiny.
This is gritty urban crime drama with no sex, no nudity, no blood, no real on-screen violence no swearing.
As such it's a strange , though still highly enjoyable, creation and it would really take the 70's to fully catapult gritty crime cinema right into that dirt and grime and absolute darkness that "The Human Jungle" exists in, uses, but is never truly honest about.

A good cast features a young Chuck Connors as a slimy murderer and a still up and coming Claude Akins as a Mob heavy but the real acting honours here go to Gary Merrill as one of the most driven, uncompromising, tough as ****ing nails Police Captains ever put on screen.
So good stuff, nice retro viewing for lovers of 50's thrillers...but it never truly gets under the concrete skin of that urban jungle it takes its name from.

[antmumford]

Originally Posted by DeadAlive

Little Big Soldier

Jackie's best film of the last decade as far as I'm concerned. A change of pace and a performance that is about as complex as anything he has done previously without ever slipping into melodramatic overacting. The action is toned down too and is character based so you feel you are watching a real person and not just Jackie doing his thing. This looks grubby and as a film stays away from sentimentality. The ending is quite a surprise too.


She-Devils On Wheels

Hershcell Gordon Lewis stepped outside of his usual gorefest horrors to make this dreadful exploitation film about a female motorcycle gang. It is poorly acted and the script is full of unintentional laughs but unlike many of this type of film it is totally boring. For an exploitation film you really get to see very little. The only moment of HGL magic comes towards the end when one character litterally looses his head.

How did you see Little Big Soldier?

[DeadAlive]

Originally Posted by antmumford

How did you see Little Big Soldier?

I bought the HK release from www.dddhouse.com

[Mojo]

The Black Cat

No - not that one! This is the 1934 Universal flick with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Good atmosphere and some bizarre imagery, combined with great performances from the two stars - particularly Karloff, who is pretty much excellent in everything he's in.

The Sadist With Red Teeth

Where do you start with this one? More bizarreness from Jean - Louis Van Belle, concerning a guy who, following a car crash, believes he is turning into a vampire. Completely bonkers. There's also a featurette and interview with the director on this Mondo Macabro release. Suffice to say it's easy to see why the film itself is so crazy!

[vincenzo]

Originally Posted by Mojo

The Black Cat

Thought this was great fun and better than The Raven. Clever twist to have Lugosi as the hero and Karloff as the villain.

[42ndStreetFreak]

"Valley of the Gwangi"

Meh....Time lies to you about what you thought was once good.

The film is half over before the dino even appears, as such we have to sit through 45 minutes of needlessly complex plot shenanigans to eventually get the cowboys into the dino valley in the first place.

Mixed in with all those said shenanigans is a tedious love triangle sub-plot (to say my 5 year old daughter was asking where the dinosaurs are should come as no surprise) that bogs the swamp down until 1 point on the triangle is suddenly eaten, with hardly a reaction to the loss, as the film carries on as if the guy we have just spent 45 tedious minutes with had never existed.

The dino action is pretty good, but either the mostly dodgy (though certainly not always) matte work has dyed Gwangi blueish grey or Harryhausen and co choose a weird ass colour scheme for him.
Not that the block blue colour is stable anyway as it flips from grey to brownish and back to blue with wild abandon. Again, crappy matte or bad colour timing?

The eventual finale sees Gwangi at last doing something more interesting as it munches on elephants, chases cowboys and scares lots of Mexicans in their floppy hats.
Sadly though scaring the Mexicans is about all Gwangi does, as only one unfortunate is actually killed, the rest just look over their shoulders in fear as Gwangi ignores them. *sigh*

It all ends in a farcical fire that sees one tiny little pot of thrown burning embers (that Gwango decides not to simply walk away from) set an entire cathedral on fire in 20 seconds flat.

A nice idea poorly executed I'm afraid.
Harryhausen's pretty solid stop motion work deserved a better script, better execution and more damn screentime.

[nekromantik]

Saw Daybreakers last night and quite enjoyed it. Thought it was a different take on the vampire film but it cant touch let the right one in. Thought Ethan Hawke was good in it.

Tonight saw three extremes 2. Overall not as good as first part. The first story was from director of tale of 2 sisters and was in the same vien as that. Kinda supernatural drama about a husband trying to figure out what happened between him and his wife before she left . Was pretty good although kinda slow even for a 40 or so min film. Second one was rubbish IMO, was about some cursed puppets. Good atmosphere but did not keep me entertained or into the story much. Third was the best, was a very haunting and atmopsheric tale about this guy and his son who move into these shoddy flats and the boy sees this girl who lives next door. Then he goes missing when he goes and plays with the gal and the father goes next door flat to ask if he there and then it all goes wrong. Not your typical j horror ghost story and thought it was very good. Worth the £4 price I paid for the DVD ha ha

[James Morton]

VAMPYRES
Iremember seeing this excelllent film on a heavily cut Rank video, back in the 80's.
I bought the Blue Underground dvd, a long time ago and last night, I saw the best British erotic vampire film again.
Nice, gory and sexy.

[Gigantor]

Ghost ballroom