The Flesh and the Fiends (UK, 1960). Directed by John Gilling. Cast: Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasence, June Laverick, George Rose, Dermot Walsh, Billie Whitelaw. Producers:Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman. Screenplay: John Gilling and Leon Griffiths. In black and white.

A movie adaptation of the notorious real life-story of a medical surgeon in 1820th Edinburgh, Scotland who became involved with the grave-robbers William Burke and Willam Hare. The duo provided him with cadavers to experiment on and ofcourse this is a true gem as an inspiration for a horror movie.
Donald Pleasence gives a fantastic performance as William Hare but it`s really Peter Cushing who dominates the whole movie. Ruthless and determined, close to his dr. Frankenstein-portrayals in the Frankenstein-cycle of movies made by Hammer between the late 50ties and the early 70ties. But still different from that.
Cushing was always careful never to repeat a character twice (unless it was the same character like dr. Frankenstein or professor Van Helsing and even then he tried to portray them as characters wich changes with time).
His performance as the Scottish doctor Robert Knox was unique and quiet different from the Timothy Dalton-interpretation in the 1985 movie The Doctor and the Devils (directed by another Hammer-stalwart: Freddie Francis).
Essential viewing for Peter Cushing-fans.

21-11-2009 om 05:49 geschreven door cheverrrant  

Bay of Blood (Italian: Ecologia del delitto) 1971 Italy. Directed by Mario Bava. Screenplay: Bava,  Giuseppe Zaccariello, Filippo Ottoni and Sergio Canevari, with story credit given to Dardano Sacchetti and Franco Barberi. Cast: Claudine Auger, Luigi Pistilli, Isa Miranda, Laura Betti. Carlo Rambaldi created the special makeup effects.

Easily Bava’s most intensely violent film, its emphasis on graphically bloody murder set pieces was hugely influential on the slasher and splatter films that would follow a decade later.The magazine Total Film named it in 2005 one of the 50 greatest horror films of all time.

Plot: The wheelchair bound Countess Federica (Isa Miranda) sits alone in her bayside mansion one night when she is suddenly attacked and strangled to death by her husband, Filippo Donati (Giovanni Nuvoletti). As he pauses to gloat over her body, an assailant hidden in the shadows stabs him repeatedly until he is dead. His corpse is then dragged to the bay. The police find a note written by the Countess, and they assume the cause of death is suicide. Donati's murder goes undiscovered.

Frank Ventura (Chris Avram) is a real estate agent who plots with his lover, Laura (Anna Maria Rosati), to take possession of the bay. They believe the bay can be turned into a hugely profitable venture, so they arranged with Donati to murder his wife after she had refused to sell her house and property to them. To finalize their scheme, Ventura needs Donati's signature on a set of legal documents. Unfortunately, they have no idea that Donati has been killed.

Paolo Fassati (Leopoldo Trieste), an entomologist who lives on the Donatis' grounds, is attempting to capture an insect when he collides with Simon (Claudio Volonté), the Countess' illegitimate son who also lives on the property. Simon is poor and is able to survive by feeding on the squid he catches from the bay. Fassati tells Simon that he suspects the countess has been murdered. Simon, however, firmly insists her death was a suicide.

Four teenagers, two girls and two boys, decide to party at the bay, and they break into Ventura's cottage. Bobby (Robert Bonnani) is too shy to make any advances on his date, Brunhilda (Brigitte Skay). She ends up skinny-dipping in the bay while Bobby stays behind in the house. Donati's rotting corpse rises from the water and collides with the nude girl. She rushes out of the water and runs screaming towards the house. Before she can make it to safety, an unseen assailant hacks into her throat with a machete. She falls to the ground and dies. The killer then goes to the house and surprises Bobby, slamming the machete deep into his face. Bobby and Brunhilda's two companions, Duke (Guido Boccaccini) and Denise (Paola Rubens), find a bed upstairs and are in the throes of sexual passion when the murderer finds them; a long spear is thrust through them, bloodily killing both at the same time.

Simon is the killer. He had killed Donati, and is now conspiring with Ventura. Ventura offers him a large amount of cash to leave the country and live comfortably, so Simon agrees to sign all the legal documents, turning the land over to Ventura. However, it turns out that the Countess had a daughter, Renata (Claudine Auger), who is resolute about the property becoming hers. A search for the Countess' will proves unsuccessful, and Ventura, who believes Renata may be the rightful beneficiary, suggests to Simon that he finish her off.

Renata and her husband, Albert (Luigi Pistilli), arrive and go directly to Fassati's house. They talk with him and his wife, Anna (Laura Betti), a fortune teller. Anna tells them that the Countess’ death was due to Donati, and says that Simon will probably end up with the property. Renata, who until that moment had no idea she had a half-brother, immediately makes plans with her husband to murder Simon, who at the same time is planning her demise.

Renata and Albert find Donati's gruesomely mangled corpse on Simon's boat, then go to Ventura's house. Nobody is present at the moment, so Albert leaves temporarily, leaving Renata alone. Ventura suddenly attacks Renata and tries to kill her, but Renata manages to kill him instead. Fassati has witnessed everything, and when he starts to telephone the police, Albert strangles him to death. In order to ensure that there are no additional witnesses, Renata murders Anna by decapitating her.

Laura arrives, hoping to meet up with Ventura. When Simon discovers that it was she and Ventura who had plotted with Donati to kill his mother, who Simon loved dearly, he slowly strangles Laura to death. Seconds later, Simon is murdered by Albert.

Albert and Renata know that everybody who could possibly get in their way is now dead. Since there are no other living heirs, the property is guaranteed to be theirs, and they go home to wait for the announcement of their inheritance. Their own children are at the front door waiting for them with a shotgun, and they shoot their parents to death. The young boy and girl gleefully jump over the corpses and rush outside to play.

Several critics have stated that the film is probably the most influential of Bava’s career, as it had a huge impact on the slasher film genre. Writing in 2000, Tim Lucas wrote that Bava’s film is “the acknowledged smoking gun behind the ‘body count’ movie phenomenon of the 1980s, which continues to dominate the horror genre two decades later with films as Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and their respective sequels.” Bay of Blood is one of the most imitated movies of the past 40 years. It helped kick start the slasher genre….Bava’s influence still resonates today (although often watered down to dullness) in movies such as I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream, and Urban Legend.

While most slasher movies owe a considerable debt to Bay of Blood’s narrative and its emphasis on bodily mutilation, at least one film was directly imitative: Friday the 13th Part 2 copied two of Bava’s murder sequences almost shot for shot. One character in that 1981 film is sliced full in the face with a machete, and two teenage lovers are interrupted when a spear is shoved through their bodies. Along with The Burning, Just Before Dawn (both 1981), and several other similarly plotted slashers, Friday specifically followed Bava’s inspired cue, having young people stalked by violent death in the midst of beautiful wooded settings.

Highly recommended !

21-11-2009 om 05:05 geschreven door cheverrrant  

16-11-2009 om 00:00 geschreven door cheverrrant  

The Silent Scream (Hammer House of Horror, 1980

An episode of the famous Hammer House of Horror television series made in the 80ties. "Only" an episode ? No, because it was directed by Alan Gibson who also directed the Hammer movies Dracula AD 1972 (1972) and The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1974) and it starred Peter Cushing (as an innocent looking petshop owner with a sinister ww2 German past and Brian Cox as a petty criminal). The photo hereby is of the petshop wich was used to shoot some of the scenes. The story is well executed and in parts even claustrophobic (which is exactly what it should be; I will not give anything anyway: you have to see it for yourself). Don't expect a "Gothic chiller" however. Even given the fact that Peter Cushing is present who was part of and even established to create "the body" of the Hammer Gothic tradition all by himself (along with Christopher Lee of course), this is not Gothic or does not even come close to what viewers expect to be a Hammer-movie. It is something which is "in between". Meaning: too restricted to its origins (television) but with lots of promise as to were Hammer movies (as a movie-producing company) should have gone in the future. Sadly, they never did because British movie-making had already become too expensive at that time to keep producing anything worthwhile in the UK and most of the British actors and actresses had either gone off to the USA or stayed in England to do supporting roles in many more television-series. It's a sad epitaph for Hammer and mostly a sad one for British movies in general because it showed promise.

14-11-2009 om 09:41 geschreven door cheverrrant  

Shatter is an assassination and kung fu action film. It was a joint venture between Hammer Studios of England and Shaw Brothers Studio of Hong Kong. The film was shot entirely on location in Hong Kong and was first released in 1974 in UK.

Plot:

Shatter (Stuart Whitman) is a hitman contracted to kill a dictator in a certain African country. He completes his assignment and returns to Hong Kong to collect his fee, only to learn that he himself is the next target of the assassination because he was intended to be used as a scapegoat by his client for a larger political agenda. Being pursued by various government agencies and gangsters, Shatter seeks help from a master martial artist Tai Pah (Lung Ti) and promise to share half of his fee in exchange for Tai Pah’s protection and assistance to recovering his fee.

A very troubled movie: 3 directors tried their hand on it: Seth Holt (who died), Monte Hellman (who kept shooting scenes after scenes without going anywhere) and finally Michael Carreras who completed it. In the early seventies Hammer Studios realized that their Gothic Horror movie-formula, wich had been so succesfull in the last 20 years, had worn out. So they were trying desperately to produce anything wich could strike a chord with audiences. Those days, kung-fu action movies were striking chords very much, so Hammer went into business with Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong. It was a clumsy movie with an aging American "star" beyond his prime (Stuart Whitman, already ravaged by booze and other addictions).
Around the same time they made also The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (a more traditional Gothic Horror movie set in China with additional kung fu-action-scenes) also in a joint venture with Shaw Brothers.
Shatter nor The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires were box office-hits (although The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires has gained cult-status over the years), so the cooperation with Shaw Brothers came to a stop.
Hammer Studios clearly did not know anymore what to do, being a financially modest movie producing company wich could not compete with American studios and the succes of The Exorcist (1971), to name only one. American studios were leaving the UK, because it was more profitable at the time to make movies in the USA. British moviemaking was thrown in a pit from wich it has not really surfaced to this day.

09-11-2009 om 06:24 geschreven door cheverrrant  

08-11-2009 om 10:33 geschreven door cheverrrant  

Plot:
An apparently abandoned yacht drifts into New York Harbor, and the Harbor Patrol investigates. On board, a huge rotting man kills Marty, one of the patrolmen, by tearing out his neck with his teeth. The remaining patrol man called Bill manages to knock the hulking man into the sea by blasting him with his revolver several times.

A young woman named Anne Bowles (Tisa Farrow) is questioned by the police when it is discovered that the boat belonged to her father (Ugo Bologna). She does not know anything except that her father left for a tropical island to do research. A reporter named Peter West (Ian McCulloch) is assigned by his news editor (director Lucio Fulci in a cameo) to get the story on the mysterious boat. Anne and Peter meet on the boat and decide to work together after finding a note from Anne's father. The note says that he is on the island of Matool and that he has come down with a strange disease. Anne and Peter enlist the aid of a seafaring couple, Brian Hull ('Al Cliver' aka Pier Luigi Conti) and Susan Barrett (Auretta Gay), to help find Matool.

On Matool, Dr. David Menard (Richard Johnson) is hard at work studying the island's secrets. Matool is a cursed place where the dead rise to attack the living, and Menard is determined to find out why. Menard's contemptuous, highly-strung wife Paola (Olga Karlatos) wants to leave the island in fear of the zombie attacks, but Menard insists on staying to continue his research. When Anne, Peter, Brian, and Susan reach Matool, the island itself seems to come alive, vomiting forth all the dead buried on the island to kill them.

In the end, all of the island's inhabitants and Susan fall victim to the walking dead; Brian is infected and dies soon afterward. Peter and Anne manage to escape by boat, taking the now reanimated Brian with them as evidence for their story. Shortly after the group leaves the island and reach the open ocean, they receive a radio message that, to their great horror and dismay, the undead have attacked New York City. Marty, the policeman killed by the zombie, and his killer itself have infected the New York population, explosively multiplying the zombie army beyond any hope of control.

This movie is legendary. Not as an Italian rip-off from George A. Romero`s Dawn of the Dead (1978, USA) wich is legendary in its own rights, but as a genuine shocker. Clearly derived from Romero`s Dawn of the Dead, Zombie Flesh Eaters stand its own grounds, as a separate zombie-movie. Some critics went as far as calling it a prequel to Dawn of the Dead (unnessecary because Dawn of the Dead had already its own prequel: the also legendary Night of the Living Dead (1978, USA) also directed by George A. Romero. In Zombie Flesh Eaters there is not even a try to explain where the zombies come from or why the dead come back to roam the earth. Everybody seems to aknowledge the fact that zombies are out there and do what they have to do: scare the shit out of the cinemagoers.
That is exactly what this movie does. All in all, there are not so many Italian horror-movies wich really deserve the title of classic. This one does.

07-11-2009 om 11:05 geschreven door cheverrrant  

The Legend of the Werewolf (UK, 1975). Directed by Freddie Francis for Tyburn Films. Screenplay: Anthony Hinds under his pseudonym John Elder. Hinds was also the author of Hammer's 1961 film The Curse of the Werewolf, which was also based on the same novel, Guy Endore's The Werewolf of Paris.

Cast:

• Peter Cushing
• Ron Moody
• Hugh Griffith
• Lynn Dalby
• David Rintoul
• Roy Castle
• Stefan Gryff
• Renee Houston
• Marjorie Yates
• Norman Mitchell

Plot: A boy that has been raised by wolves is displayed as a circus freak. Then he grows up, becomes a zookeeper and falls in love with a prostitute. His jealousy brings out his wolf side, changing him into a werewolf so that he can kill her clients.

A very poor adaptation of the classic Guy Endore-novel. Even if its set in Paris, all we see of the city of lights ar a few dim lit streets and a circus ground. It could have been taken place anywhere. There is not even the sightest effort to make it look like Paris. It looks like decors wich they very much are.
A few scenes take place in a morgue, with Peter Cushing as the doctor. His scenes are fine but too short to save the movie.
The transformations when the young man (David Rintoul) changes from man into werewolf are OK, but not breathtaking.
Anthony Hinds did much better with Curse of the Werewolf (1961, directed by Terence Fisher for Hammer Films). If the scenes in that were supposed to be in Spain (neither very convincingly), at least it had Oliver Reed to play the tortured soul who changes into a werewolf and a good, if craftmanlike direction by Terence Fisher).
Tyburn Films was a movie production company in the UK founded by Kevin Francis (son of Freddie Francis), wich came too late (at a time when British movies were already near-dead and when horrormovies were nothing more then ghosts from past glories). Twenty years before they could have meant something, even with limited budgets. In 1975 the company was just destined to go under. So it did. So did this movie.

05-11-2009 om 11:55 geschreven door cheverrrant  

Profondo Rosso (also known as Deep Red or The Hatchet Murders) is a 1975 giallo thriller film directed by Dario Argento and starring David Hemmings and Daria Nicolodi. The soundtrack was composed by the band "Goblin". It is known as one of Argento's more popular films, and has developed a fan base from genre fans. The film is considered by some to be Dario Argento's finest film.

Profondo Rosso is about music teacher Marcus Daly (Hemmings) as he investigates the violent murder of psychic medium Helga Ulmann (Macha Meril), which he witnesses in an apartment building. Other major characters are introduced early, including Daly’s occasional friend Carlo (Gabriele Lavia), Ulmann’s associate Dr. Giordani (Glauco Mauri) and reporter Gianna Brezzi, with whom Daly begins an affair. Brezzi’s character is played by Daria Nicolodi, who would later become Argento’s partner and the mother of his daughter Asia.

After his attempt to rescue the medium fails, Daly realises he could have seen the killer’s face among a group of portraits on the wall of the victim’s apartment but is unable to find or recognise it when the police arrive. Later in the film, he also initially overlooks another clue that causes him to discover a mouldering corpse walled up in a derelict house. In typical Argento fashion, one murder leads to a series of others as Daly’s obsession with this vital clue that he fails to understand endangers his life and that of everyone with whom he comes into contact. This inability of a character to interpret or comprehend what he has seen is a common theme in Argento’s films and was used repeatedly in Tenebrae.

The killing of Helga Ulmann is prefaced by a child’s doggerel tune, the same music that accompanies the film’s opening sequence in which two shadowy figures struggle until one of them is stabbed to death. The music serves as the murderer’s leitmotiv. When Daly hears it in his own apartment soon after becoming involved in the case he is able to foil his attacker. Later, he plays the tune to Giordani, a psychiatrist, who theorizes that the music is important because it probably played an integral part in a traumatic event in the killer's past. The doctor’s theory is of course correct, as the identity of the killer is finally revealed as Carlo’s insane mother Martha (Clara Calamai). When Carlo was still a child, he watched as she murdered her husband when he tried to have her committed, then entomb his body in a room of their house. Daly’s discovery of the corpse is one of the film’s most dramatic moments.

In the climax, Martha confronts Marcus and tries to kill him. Wielding a butchering knife, Martha chases him around the complex and into a room with an elevator. Marcus gets hit in the shoulder by the knife, and, in the process, he kicks Martha toward the elevator shaft. Her excessively long necklace slips in through the crossed metal bars. She tries to pull herself away and, in doing so, the large pendant on the end of the necklace becomes lodged between two small metal bars. As Martha is desperately trying free the necklace, Marcus realizes she is caught and presses the button to activate the lift. It travels downward and the necklace starts choking her tightly. Her hands are clad in leather gloves, making her fingers much too thick to slip in-between her neck and the necklace to try and save herself before it's too late. The elevator provides so much force that the necklace cuts through her neck, decapitating her.

By using David Hemmings (already famous for his role as the photographer in the 1966 classic Blow Up by Michelangelo Antonioni), Dario Argento was not hiding anything back about his influences. And he was right in not hiding anything back. Profondo Rosso was a major hit at the box-office and was also a giallo-thriller wich provided more "giallo"-elements then Blow-Up ever did for a thriller-loving public.  Ofcourse Blow Up by Michelangelo Antonioni was never intended as a giallo-thriller, it just borrowed ideas from the genre, but was an artmovie most and for all. And a good artmovie, for that matter. Meaning: it kept audience`s attention busy because there was a mistery to uncover and even if the mistery was not uncovered satisfactorily at the end the movie was still a breathtaking experience.
Profondo Rosso is a breathtaking experience also.

05-11-2009 om 11:09 geschreven door cheverrrant  

More killings occur. Tilde (Mirella D’Angelo), a beautiful lesbian journalist, is murdered at her home along with her lover. Later, Maria (Lara Wendel), the young daughter of Neal’s landlord, is bloodily hacked to death with an axe after stumbling into the killer's lair. Neal notices that TV interviewer Christiano Berti (John Steiner) appears to have an unusually intense interest in the novelist's work. At night, Neal and his second assistant Gianni (Christiano Borromeo) watch Berti’s house for suspicious activity. Neal decides to separate from Gianni in order to get a better view. Alone, Gianni watches in horror as an axe-carrying assailant brutally hacks Berti to death. But he is unable to see the murderer’s face. Gianni finds Neal unconscious on the lawn, having been knocked out from behind.

Giermani's investigation reveals that Berti was unhealthily obsessed with Neal's novels, and now that he is dead it is believed that the killings will cease. However, Bullmer, who is having an affair with Jane, is stabbed to death while waiting for his lover in a public square. Gianni is haunted by the thought that he had seen, but did not recognize, something important at Berti’s house during the night of the interviewer's murder. He returns to the house and suddenly remembers what was so important— he had heard Berti confessing to his attacker, "I killed them all, I killed them all!" Before Gianni can share this important detail with anyone, he is attacked from the back seat of his car and strangled to death.

Jane sits at her kitchen table when a figure with an axe leaps through her window, hacking off one of her arms. She spews gallons of blood over the kitchen walls before falling to the floor, the killer continuing to hack at her until she is dead. Neal is her murderer. Upon learning the details of Berti's sadistic murder spree, Neal had suddenly been overwhelmed by a forgotten memory involving Neal's murder of a girl who had sexually humiliated him when he was a youth in Rhode Island. The memory now constantly torments him and has inflamed his previously repressed lust for blood. Neal has become completely insane, and it was he who also killed Berti, Bullmer and Gianni.

When Inspector Altieri arrives at the house a few minutes after Jane's death, Neal kills her too. Later, Giermani and Anne arrive at the house in the pouring rain, and when Neal sees that he cannot escape, he commits bloody suicide in front of them. Anne runs outside to her car for a moment. Giermani relaxes and is suddenly murdered by Neal, who had faked his own death. Neal waits inside for Anne to return, but when she opens the door, she accidentally knocks over a metal sculpture that impales and kills the demented writer. The horror-stricken Anne stands in the rain and screams over and over again.

30-10-2009 om 06:53 geschreven door cheverrrant  

Inferno (Italy, 1980) written and directed by Dario Argento. Cast: Irene Miracle, Leigh McCloskey, Eleonora Giorgi, Daria Nicolodi, Alida Valli, Feodor Chaliapin Jr.) .Cinematography:  Romano Albani, Music: Keith Emerson.
The story concerns a young man's investigation into the disappearance of his sister, who had been living in a New York City apartment building that also served as a home for a powerful, centuries-old witch.

A thematic sequel to Suspiria (1977), the film is the second part of Argento's "The Three Mothers Trilogy". The long-delayed concluding entry, La terza madre was released in 2007. All three films are partially derived from the concept of "Our Ladies of Sorrow" (Mater Lachrymarum, Mater Suspiriorum, and Mater Tenebrarum) originally devised by Thomas de Quincey in his book Suspiria de Profundis (1845).

Unlike Suspiria, Inferno received a very limited theatrical release and the film was unable to match the box-office success of its predecessor. While the initial critical response to the film was mostly negative, its reputation has improved considerably over the years. Kim Newman has called it "...perhaps the most underrated horror movie of the 1980’s. In 2005, the magazine Total Film named Inferno one of the 50 greatest horror films of all time.

Many viewers who wrote their impressions over the years on IMDB and other websites after seeing the movie, called it incomprehensible. Some of them wrote, ofcourse, it looked like a series of dreams cobbled together,  because a lot of movie-critics called it that before and a lot of movie-viewers also read movie-articles by movie-critics.
With many others (viewers and critics alike) I admit that the ending is far from satisfying. The ending looks and sounds like a lot of many other cheap Italian (or American, for that matter) horror-movies: a lot of noise, a building going up in flames and the evil powers inside the building destroyed by the fire... The same thing, however, I felt about Suspiria wich is heralded by very much the same people as a masterpiece of movie-horror.
What is powerfull about this particlar movie is the first 70 or 80 minutes: an extremely strong atmosphere of pervading doom, a sense of witchcraft and demonic forces at work in even the slightest corners of the protagonists existences, an impressing musical score (although Goblin would have made it more impressive, I think) and a breathtaking photography with luscious, over-satured colors wich is exactly what Argento wanted for this movie.
Dario Argento is one of the few directors in the world (not only in Italy but in the entire world) who can get exactly what he wants or as close as it can get. Similar to Alfred Hitchcock, he does not loose time by focusing on actors performances. Actors are supposed to act. Some do it well, others do it clumsy. Mario Bava, the legendary Italian director, was responsible (uncredited) for some of the special effects (particularly the underwater-sequence in the first ten or fifteen minutes of the movie). It turned out to be his last contribution to the movies.
Argento` attention is always focused on the end-product and on what possible effect it can make. Inferno makes a real impressive effect (despite the ending).
Strongly recommended for all of those who haven`t seen it yet.

30-10-2009 om 00:00 geschreven door cheverrrant  

Trial By Combat (UK, 1976) aka A Choice of Weapons aka Dirty Knights Work. Directed by Kevin Connor. Screenplay by Julian Bond, Steven Rossen, Mitchell Smith.  Cast: John Mills, Donald Pleasance, Peter Cushing, David Birney, Barbara Hershey, Margaret Leighton,  Brian Glover.
A commentary on www.imdb.com says the following:
"A British aristocrat played by Peter Cushing is killed by the Knights who say "ni" and it's up to his son coming all the way from America to solve the case. The whole thing is extremely silly, but Donald Pleasence, the head of "The Knights of Avalon" (a society dedicated to the medieval values of live, unfortunately gone vigilante), manages to look fairly omnious in full knights armour. Quite hard to track down these days."
Another comment on www.timeout.com says:
"An awkward line-up of stars adds little lustre to this tediously derivative, vaguely black comedy. The plot, cobbled together by several writers who seem to have been set to produce an Avengers spin-off, revolves creakingly around the attempts of an eccentric, unflappable ex-policeman (Mills) to link a series of underworld killings to an upper-crust fancy-dress society of knights (led by Pleasence), originally dedicated to the ideals of medieval chivalry. The action sequences consist of knights on horseback, brandishing lances, chasing a car across country in hopes of impaling an East End villain (Glover), plus interminable clanking sword fights, the last of which ends with Pleasence impaled on his own portcullis."
Some commentator even compared it to the "Carry On Movies" wich were succesfull during the 60ties and 70ties in the UK, for no other reason then to explain how cheap British movies had become in the late 70ties.
When its compared to Monthy Python and the Holy Grail (the Knights who say "ni") I guess its humorous, but it says more about Monthy Python and how it affected people`s minds then it does about the quality (or lack of it) of this particular movie.
I don`t think this particular movie was all that bad. It could have been better, especially with the talent of actors involved. It could have been worse, especially with the talent of actors involved. ..
David Birney was a bad choice to make by a British producer to get involved in this. For obvious reasons British movie-producers always want an American star in their movies, so they have an easier job to sell the movie to Americans, but even Hammer at the very end of its movie-making business knew they had to get someone like Richard Widmark to star in To the Devil a Daughter (1976) instead of a complete unknown or a complete failing American actor.
It`s true that when several screenplay writers are involved, the result is seldom good. Maybe, The Avengers had some influence over the proceedings, but that is not necessarily a bad thing: The Avengers was a very imaginative televison-series with a noteworthy influence on other series in years to come. Granted: for movies it was not sufficient (take for example: Hammer`s The Satanic Rites of Dracula 1974).
Still, there is something to enjoy in this movie. Its not badly acted (how could it be with John Mills, Donald Pleasance, Peter Cushing, Margaret Leighton etc). There are some good action scenes, and even from time to time there is a catch to The Blind Templars-series of movies directed by  Spanish Ammando De Ossorio.
All in all: wortwhile to find and to watch.

27-10-2009 om 00:00 geschreven door cheverrrant  

25-10-2009 om 08:08 geschreven door cheverrrant  

John Paul Jones (July 6, 1747(1747-07-06) - July 18, 1792) was the United States' first well-known naval fighter in the American Revolutionary War. Although he made enemies among the American ruling class, his actions in British waters during the Revolution earned him an international reputation which persists to this day.

The film suffers from the star. Robert Stack was an admirable Elliot Ness on television, and had a goofy streak he revealed in AIRPLANE, CADDYSHACK II, 1941, and other late films. But often he seem stiff and overblown - and he does so in this film. Despite looking properly heroic, he rarely shows the darker side of Jones' character. Jones was a disciplinarian, and harsh tempered. He probably was responsible for killing two crewmen, one who tried to strike the flag of the Bon Homme Richard during the battle with the Serapis, and one just before the war, when Jones was Captain John Paul of the British merchant marine. In the earlier instance Jones knocked down a mutinous (or seemingly mutinous) seaman, and the other crewmen were ready to bring charges against him with the British authorities. This led to Jones fleeing to the 13 colonies, and changing his name.

Another thing cleaned up (or at least changed) is the career of Jones as a Russian Rear Admiral under Empress Catherine the Great (Bette Davis). The film suggests that the Empress hired Jones, in part, due to his attractive appearance (after all, the Empress had all those affairs). Actually she hired him needing able sea commanders to fight the Turks in the Black Sea. And the experiment did not work because of jealousy by Russian commanders (possibly assisted by Catherine's chief minister Potemkin - whom the famous battleship in the Eisenstein movie is named after). Also, Jones left under a scandal - he may have picked up an underage girl, and was arrested (but released when he agreed to leave Russia). It was then that he moved to Paris (where he died in 1792). Oh, Benjamin Franklin died in 1790 in Philadelphia - he had stopped being Minister to France in 1784 (when he was replaced by Thomas Jefferson). He could not be present when Jones is dying in 1792 in Paris (as he is in the film). Well - it is an American movie trying to make entertainment out of history...

Its not bad, and even succeeds in being entertaining at times. But its too long (more then 2 hours) and too stiffly acted especially by Robert Stack.

25-10-2009 om 07:20 geschreven door cheverrrant  

25-10-2009 om 00:00 geschreven door cheverrrant  

Of all Hammer movies, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed comes closest of all Hammer's films to Mary Shelley's original concept. For the first time, the Baron's creation is a sensitive, articulate, misunderstood being who finally turns the tables on and destroys his maker.

The Baron (ofcourse Peter Cushing) is at his most ruthless here. He had begun life in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) as a hopeless disciple of scientific progress at all costs, and capable of murder to further his own ends. He had become his own monster or creation in The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), due to carefully left instructions for another surgeon on how to operate on the baron in case he died wich he did in that movie,  taken on a heroic dimension in The Evil of Frankenstein (1964) but only because Hammer made a financial deal with Universal Studios (wich produced the American Frankenstein-movies in the 30ties starring Boris Karloff as the Monster) and even become almost fatherly in Frankenstein Created Woman (1967). But in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, he blackmails, rapes and murders in the blink of an eye, just to get what he wants. The Baron has come a long way, a long way of failures and interruptions of his scientific work by people. Here he takes really revenge on everyone. The Creature is probably the most sympathetic of any in the Hammer cycle of Frankenstein movies.
This is definitely obligatory viewing for Frankenstein moviefans and a classic altogether !

23-10-2009 om 16:15 geschreven door cheverrrant  

23-10-2009 om 10:00 geschreven door cheverrrant  

The Brides of Dracula (UK,1960). Directed by Terence Fisher. Screenplay: Peter Bryan and Edward Percy. Cast: Peter Cushing, David Peel, Yvonne Monlaur, Martita Hunt, Freda Jackson, Miles Malleson, Andree Melly, Michael Ripper.

Hammer Films scored big with their version of Dracula (1958) so ofcourse a sequel was inevitable. Strangely however, Christopher Lee was not at hand to play Count Dracula and despite the movies title The Brides of Dracula, the arch-vampire does not show up. The vampire in this case is a baron Meinster, played by David Peel. Somewhere in the story hints are made that Baron Meinster is a disciple of Count Dracula, but all that sounds like it was put into the story to justify the title.
Peter Cushing on the other hand plays professor Van Helsing again, as he did in the Hammer original Dracula (1958) and is outstanding. The scene (after he is bitten by the vampire Baron Meinster and left to become a vampire himself) in wich he desperately tries to undo the curse upon himself is remarkable (maybe improbable by vampire legend standards, but still impressive).
Roman Polanski was heavily influenced by this movie to make his own The Fearless Vampire Killers in 1966.
The cinematography is excellent and makes the viewer forget that the decors and sets are cramped and small.
The acting by most of the cast involved is first rate.
Definitely a must-see for Hammer-fans and for fans of vampire movies in general.

22-10-2009 om 12:57 geschreven door cheverrrant  

21-10-2009 om 14:01 geschreven door cheverrrant  

20-10-2009 om 00:00 geschreven door cheverrrant