The Amazing Mr. Bickford (1987)

Admittedly you're losing a lot of the effect if you watch it without the No-D glasses supplied with the VHS, but still this is freewheeling psychedelic animation that will disturb, enthrall, nauseate and make you feel very, very hungry.

The Cabin In The Woods (2012); A Night In The Woods (2011)

Oh this is interesting.

No, really, you'll like this.

You know how often I lament the state of modern horror on this here blog? This here blog which you're reading, right now, as we speak – so to speak?

Well. Tonight I watched, back to back, two films; both horrors, both made in the last year or so.

One of them relied upon established tropes, the other used ides which, whilst by no means unique, remain relatively novel.

One of these films was boring to the point of being appalling. The other will likely be considered a masterpiece within the year.

For a bit of late November fun, see if you can guess which is which!

A clue: The answer is very interesting.

Ahem, both films involved misdeeds and miscreants in the woods. One involved a Cabin In The Woods. It was called The Cabin In The Woods. The other involved three young people spending A Night In The Woods. It was called A Night In The Woods.

Let's look at The Cabin In The Woods first.

I'll get it over with now: It's this one which I anticipate will be considered a masterpiece within the year.

Remember Scream? Of course you do. The appeal of Scream was in how it played with the various tropes of horror in order to create something that was at once thrilling and self-referential. It was good. In retrospect, though, if you take away the trimmings you're left with pretty standard slasher fare.

The Cabin In The Woods is similar to Scream in that it takes all the standard horror tropes and uses them to create something that, on first viewing at least, is unlike anything you've ever seen before.

OK, maybe you'll have seen lots like this before. But, if you watch this without knowing much at all about the plot, I don't doubt that you'll be surprised repeatedly by the places it takes you. Just when you think that you've got the film pinned, something else happens that serves to raise the eyebrows further.

It's simultaneously a celebration of where horror's come from and an exploration of where it can go. I don't want to write too much about it because a lot of the love lies in not knowing what comes next.

But I will say this: I recently watched 2001: A Space Odyssey again. That film has three possible “types” of scene. Either there's dialogue, or there's music or there's silence.

I've come up with three similar “types” of scene for The Cabin In The Woods. Either it's hilarious, terrifying or awesome.

And when I say awesome, I do, to some extent, mean that inspires awe. But to a greater degree, I wish to use that word in the American sense. The last half hour of The Cabin In The Woods is awesome in the same way the lobby and bullet-dodging scenes from The Matrix were awesome.

But would the film still be great on a second viewing? Yes. You'll notice more. And that's why I believe it will be considered a masterpiece within the year. Once the initial love's died down and people realise that it's still brilliant, well. That's when the real praise will be ripe for the heaping.

Or, at the very least, it will be considered a cult classic.

And then we come to A Night In The Woods, which was just awful.

I became aware of this film on the really quite excellent Folk Horror Review blog. From the trailer, it looked like a British spin on The Blair Witch Project. In actuality, it's The Blair Witch Project stripped of everything that makes it worth watching.

The “found footage” sub-sub-genre may only be about 13 years old, but everything that could possibly be done with it had already been done by 1999.

I understand the appeal. When things are shaky and grainy, the horrors look more real. But one question will always arise which serves instantly to destroy the suspension of disbelief that's necessary to subscribe to any horror film: Why are you filming?

Well, usually the question's one of why are you still filming. In A Night In The Woods, though, it's unclear as to why they were even filming in the first place.

Worse, the appeal of The Blair Witch Project was less in the novelty and more in the graininess. Through being so ugly, it felt real. A Night In The Woods, though, is filmed on a digital camera. So too is every film these days. As a result, it ends up looking just like every other film but with inferior camera angles.

It follows the misadventures of three friends: Brody, Kerry and Leo. American Brody spends the first half hour guaranteeing that nobody who watches this film can possibly like him. He's snarky, sarcastic, humourless, clingy, creepy and, in the first five minutes, asserts American superiority over Britain using the medium of Stonehenge. Twat.

It's Brody who films everything. And, fair enough, he's told off repeatedly for filming everything, and a later exposition scene – as clumsy and shoehorned as it is – serves to offer a possible explanation as to why he might be filming – but it doesn't help. Sometimes he holds the camera at arm's length away from him and keeps it perfectly still. Other times he rests it on a rock and just keeps it running, perfectly framing an important conversation. Why?

The problem is, had they dropped the found footage conceit, they would have something which, if by no means remarkable, might have at least been worth watching. The setting, you see, is beautiful. Bleak, rain-splattered Dartmoor, with all its gloomy prisons, standing stones, crows and mossy trees. The first half hour, spent exploring the landscape, is stunning. At one point it's filmed using infra-red during the day, making the already breathtaking landscape look strangely alien. In fact, mute the first half hour and set it to a Richard Skelton soundtrack and you might be onto something.

Though it says a lot about the poor quality of a horror film set in the woods when it actually makes you want to go camping. After having watched Jaws, you'd take a desire to swim as a testament to the film's failure, wouldn't you?

A Night In The Woods, had it been successful, would have left me scared of the dark. Instead, it left me wanting to spend a night in the woods. Make of that what you will.

The final hour is spent in darkness and it's almost identical to the final hour of The Blair Witch Project – rustled tents, night-vision, lots of running through the woods. Nothing you haven't seen before, even if you've only ever seen it once before.

Christ, people shouldn't bother with the found footage conceit anymore. It was dated within an hour of The Blair Witch Project's release.

So there you go. Rely on standard horror tropes and I'll applaud. Try something relatively new and I'll describe your work as awful.

There's no pleasing me, is there?

Or perhaps the secret's in the writing? The Cabin In The Woods is written by Joss Whedon. He knows what he's doing.

I've got it. If horror is to have a future, it needs good writers.

Hello!

The Dictator (2012)

"Why are you guys so anti-dictators? Imagine if America was a dictatorship. You could let 1% of the people have all the nation's wealth. You could help your rich friends get richer by cutting their taxes. And bailing them out when they gamble and lose. You could ignore the needs of the poor for health care and education. Your media would appear free, but would secretly be controlled by one person and his family. You could wiretap phones. You could torture foreign prisoners. You could have rigged elections. You could lie about why you go to war. You could fill your prisons with one particular racial group, and no one would complain. You could use the media to scare the people into supporting policies that are against their interests. "

Death Line (1973)

Here's one I've been wanting to see for some time. Since – oh, I don't know – probably since I read a gushing article about it in a book left in the bathroom by my then-flatmate. I can't remember the name of the book, but it was a pretty insufferable collection of tragically iconoclastic essays concerning various aspects of British cinema. There's “celebrating the less familiar” and then there's “hey, let's stubbornly pour scorn upon anything that's beloved of more than ten people”. This book unfortunately went for the latter approach on far too many occasions, which might explain why I never deigned to remember the its title.

I'm an awful fickle rat sometimes.

But Death Line. Death Line.

They were right on the money when it comes to Death Line.

I know I moan a lot on this site about the state of modern horror. Death Line, though, takes pretty much every single one of the tired tropes about which I'm so fond of complaining and demonstrates how to treat them in such a way as to make a film that's oh so much more than a sum of its parts.

It's about a dying tribe of cannibalistic inbreds who live in the “rabbit warren” that is the London Tube. Trapped beneath the rubble after having been abandoned in the wake of a cave-in, it's implied that life is bleak, damp yet ultimately quite touching underground. Though they've all but lost language, they still communicate; and that they cling to such customs as defined clothing for men and women and even burial rites makes this film, on one level, a subtle exploration of what makes us human.

Only emerging to feast on the flesh of the living, it's likely that their existence would have continued unnoticed but for two reasons. First of all, their last remaining pregnant female just died. Second of all, they made the mistake of choosing, as their prey, one James Manfred – gentleman, pervert, OBE.

Being an OBE, not only does his death invokes the involvement of MI5 (a marvellously creepy cameo from Christopher Lee, above), but it also forces adorably lazy Inspector Calhoun to actually do his job for a change.

Played brilliantly by Donald Pleasence, Inspector Calhoun appears to be the reason as to why so many people rate this film so highly. In that you can tell that, at any given moment, he'd much rather be sat alone with a lovely cup of loose-leaf tea, he's wonderful and strangely cuddly despite his caustic chronic grumpiness.

There's a very long scene in which he and his second in command outstay their welcome in a grotty little pub – getting hammered and eating sausages whilst playing pinball and being really quite rude to the ever-tolerant barman. It contributes precisely nothing to the plot but goes in a long way to explain the appeal of this film: Death Line doesn't appear to take itself at all seriously, but with its fully-drawn characters and carefully considered cannibals, scratching beneath the surface reveals fathomless depth.

The only downside is the American – the eternally dour Alex Campbell, whose character doesn't seem to stretch too far beyond “student”. He's boring and almost threatens to ruin the fun for everyone else, but even he's saved thanks to his really, really lovely girlfriend and the gorgeous book shop in which it works. Wall-to-wall Penguin paperbacks and a big poster of Dickens? If I'm good, that's probably where I'll go when I die. The tea will flow like rivers, and there'll be a really comfy chair in the corner.

Region 2 DVDs of Death Line are surprisingly hard to come-by, but this is one I want to own forever and never give away. It's this close to entering my beloved pantheon of horror alongside The Wicker Man, Eraserhead and Evil Dead 2. I'm almost certain that I've found a new favourite here.

We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)

 
We Need To Talk About Kevin tells the story of a high school massacre from the perspective of the killer's mother.

Does that sound like the sort of thing you'd like? Then read the book. Lionel Shriver's novel approaches its subject matter with a chilling restraint. Lynne Ramsay's film adaptation, though beautifully shot and brilliantly performed, ultimately comes across as little more than a nuanced remake of The Omen.

It's worth watching for two things. First, the haunting soundtrack which blends scratchy blues with a strange mix of ethnic instrumentation and industrial droning. Second, the incredible career-best performance of Tilda Swinton.

Swinton is fantastic throughout. She doesn't say much, but she exudes the sort of sadness that you can almost feel as a pressing weight on your chest and stomach – an all-encompassing grief that manifests itself as debilitating fatigue and nausea. Her Eva radiates an unbearable pity which makes the whole film emotionally draining.

But that's part of the problem. We aren't exactly supposed to pity Eva.

In the translation from the page to the screen, we are inevitably robbed of many things. Most obvious is Eva's narration. And, as a result, we also lose a delicious slice of ambiguity.

Eva has a son called Kevin. Kevin is an insufferable monster. But was he born this way?

The book insists that he was indeed born a monster. However, there's the subtle implication that Eva simply didn't lavish him with a sufficient amount of love, patience and attention to prevent his inherent mental health problems from developing into full-blown nihilistic sociopath psychosis.

The film, on the other hand, quite explicitly implies that, despite Eva's best efforts, Kevin was just a bad egg. He was always going to do what he ends up doing.

And that's really quite hard to take. It reduces what is supposed to be an intriguing and gruelling exploration of the nature/nurture debate into the realms of quasi-supernatural horror.

Also, halfway through the film, Kevin grows up and is suddenly played by Ezra Miller. This is the first time I've ever seen Miller in anything, so I'm in no position to assess his chops as an actor. His Kevin, though, just feels wrong. Of course, Kevin is supposed to be an amoral superior husk. But is he really supposed to be so irritating?

In any case, I'm sure he's not supposed to be so attractive.

So yes. Read the book. Apart from anything else, it fills in many, many plot holes concerning “the incident” and even manages something of a happy ending.

At least, it manages a poignant ending which, thinking about it, sort of makes me want to stop living. The film, though, ends in such a way that seems specifically designed to troll those who like closure.

Go And See Looper!

Hey, go and see Looper.

I mean it: Go and see Looper.

You might not enjoy it. You might even hate it. In fact, so many good things have been said about it by so many reliable outlets of wisdom that by now it's almost certain that, at the very least, you'll be disappointed.

If it was doomed upon being declared “this century's Matrix”, that it's now drinking from the poisoned chalice that is the IMDB number one spot I know to be enough for it to be outright blacklisted in the eyes of many.

But never mind. Go and see Looper. If you have any respect for cinema, go and see Looper.

Why? Because Looper is not a sequel. Nor is it a remake. It's not even an adaptation of an existing and already-popular franchise.

It's directed by the same person who wrote it. At no point does it feel like this film was designed to make money. Rather, it feels like it was made because a group of people wanted to tell a story.

More than that, though. They also wanted you to be entertained and to entertain some deep-seated notions concerning cause and effect; Machiavellian politics and telekinesis; selflessness vs. the self. They wanted to excite and enthrall; to move you with their liquid mind bullets squirted directly into the eye.

And, as far as I'm concerned, they succeeded on every count.

You might disagree. And if you did, ace! Let's have a conversation.

The important thing is that this film gets watched and that it gets watched at the cinema.

Because the more this film is watched, the harder it will be for those who sign the cheques to ignore some beautiful truths:

That people will still go and see something daring and unprecedented.

That something doesn't have to be safe and reliable in order to turn a profit.

I really enjoyed Looper. However, I am willing to attribute a large portion of my enjoyment to the feeling I had throughout – that films like this don't come along as often as they should.

Would that they did! Would that they did.

And that's why you should go and see Looper.

Baby Blood (1990)

Baby Blood – otherwise known as The Evil Within – was shown as part of The Horror Channel's World Cinema season.

I do believe that it's the first time I've ever seen a French horror film. I'd quite like to see some more! Infused with a dynamic verve all-too-rare in this genre, I rather hope that Baby Blood is a typical – perhaps even “tame” - example of the French horror genre. If so, I would very much like for some kind of expert to give me a list of suggested viewing, as I feel I'm in for a treat. If not – well – Baby Blood was fantastic.

Particular kudos is to be reserved for The Horror Channel for broadcasting the original uncut French version. I've been reading about the dubbed American version. Whilst it features the voice talents of Gary Oldman, by the sounds of it, the cuts effected were so brutal as to have rendered the film unwatchable. It seems that some scenes were spliced mercilessly; their butchered footage spliced willy-nilly into that which remained; with chronology often completely and inexplicably ignored. Having not seen said version, I have no right to describe it as “a mess” or “a shambles”, but I'm ever so grateful to have viewed Baby Blood as it was intended to be viewed.

The plot involves the beautiful and distant Yanka. She lives with her abusive husband in a small caravan and performs as part of a circus's lion-taming.

The circus receives a delivery of a new leopard, who unexpectedly implodes during the night. This is because it was infected with a slimy snake-like parasite, which proceeds to slither into the uterus of the sleeping Yanka.

Yanka is immediately impregnated by this alien parasite which might well be as old as time itself. Wise and sentient even in the womb, it is later revealed that it is part of the advanced race destined to rule the world in humanities stead some five million years down the line. Indeed, the only thing holding it back is the fact that it's never had a proper birth, meaning that it's never been allowed to properly evolve.

In Yanka, however, it finds the perfect host. She's lonely and vulnerable and therefore in a perfect position to be manipulated to this parasite's own devious ends. It needs human blood to survive. It doesn't take much to convince Yanka to carry out the necessary atrocities to satisfy her parasite's blood-lust.

The result is engrossing and tragic. The violence is so over-the-top as to sometimes appear farcical, yet this somehow never distracts from the film's overall gravitas. Yanka can hear her parasite at all times, and it speaks with a disturbing babyish growl on various aspects of the human condition. The result is a film highly reminiscent of Peter Jackson's early work, except with French political musings in the place of Kiwi humour.

It's always very late at night when I watch these films, so I'm always in quite a hazy and suggestive frame of mind. I don't doubt that Baby Blood might appear comparatively underwhelming on a repeat viewing. However, it's been so long since I've been so impressed by any horror film that I'm more than willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and grant it entry into the pantheon of films that demonstrate how these things should be done.

Critters 4 (1992)

Critters 4. This time, they're in space!

It picks up exactly where Critters 3 left off. That's to say that the closing scene from Critters 3 forms the introduction to Critters 4. Expert Crite-killer Charlie McFadden is about to destroy the final remaining Crite eggs when he's informed that destroying them would be unethical. Crites are now an endangered species and must be protected.

Unfortunately, whilst placing the eggs into stasis, Charlie is accidentally frozen himself. He spends the next few decades floating in space, only to be picked up by a salvage ship in the year 2045.

The crew of this ship are so similar to the inhabitants of the apartment block in Critters 3 that it's almost as though these films are written according to a template. There's the sexy but powerful woman, the grizzly yet caring sort, the absolute bastard (who you just know is going to get chewed to death at some point) and the plucky young scamp.

Critters 3 will possibly never be forgotten because, in that film, Leonardo DiCaprio played the plucky young scamp role. Critters 4 has no such curiosity credentials, so as such will probably only ever be watched by those who love The Horror Channel, those who own box-sets and those who run blogs on which they write at length about every single film they watch.

It's a shame, really. Critters 4 isn't essential viewing by any means. It's not good, it's not bad, and it's not at all “so bad it's good”. It just is. It's fitting that it's set in space, as it sort of just floats by. Along the way, though, there's certainly some fun to be had.

Most of the action takes place in a decrepit space station controlled by an irritating computer called Angela. Angela works on the curious logic that she should simply do the opposite of whatever those who don't have security access might say. So, throughout the film, characters say things like “Angela, don't open the door,” only for said door to slide defiantly open. “Exactly like my ex-wife,” quips one character.

What I liked about Critters 4 is that it's of the “working guy sci-fi” genre. What's “working guy sci-fi”? Well, I just made it up. But consider the astronaut – he's of peak physical and mental fitness and has a haircut to which you could set your watch. He's a maths expert who spends the majority of his day doing sit-ups and the rest of his time eating puréed banana.

My favourite sci-fi, though, send the sort of people into space who you might otherwise have expected to find in a bar with a neon beer sign in the window. They have long hair, a few days worth of stubble and talk with their mouths full. I'm not talking about Armageddon, because that film's ridiculous. I'm talking about Dead Star, Ice Pirates, Silent Running and – if you want a British take on this sub-sub-genre – Red Dwarf.

The main reason I stuck with and – yes – rather enjoyed Critters 4 was that it made me wonder when we might really find such people crewing spaceships.

When will space be democratised? That's just one of the many important questions that Critters 4 dares to ask.

L'anticristo (1974)

The Horror Channel (about which I just won't SHUT UP) are currently having a world cinema season. Every Friday night they're showing a horror film from somewhere that's not the UK or the US.

To promote this season of fine, fine broadcasting, they had an advert which did exactly what adverts are supposed to do: It battered the synapses into submission and made me determined to soak up every single minute of their quality programming in the coming weeks.

OK. So far I've watched one film. It entailed staying up really late, and then not ten minutes ago I find the exact film to be on Youtube in its entirety.

Had I known I could have watched it from the comfort of my own blog I may not have bothered.

But, in the immortal words of Uncle Bryn, there really is something about watching it live, isn't there?

L'anticristo is a bit like an Italian remake of The Exorcist. That's to say that it details the demonic possession of a young woman, only this time everybody's dressed beautifully and more people get naked. Also, there's a strange series of flashbacks to a previous life set during the inquisition threaded through the narrative.

In scope, then, L'anticristo is ostensibly much broader in scope than the film it so clearly wishes to be. On the whole, though, it's let down by some zero budget cut'n'paste effects and a general mood of over-the-top hamminess which serve to pull the wary viewer out of the otherwise nightmarish world so brilliantly realised when the film's on its best behaviour.

Ippolita is "she who becomes possessed". Or does she? She's partially paralysed, sexually frustrated, grieving for her dead mother and suffering through some kind of spiritual crisis. On one level it could be argued that we're not so much witnessing a possession here as a severe nervous breakdown. However, that would be to ignore the spectral hands Ippolita is able to summon from thin air; not to mention her ability to make love across the temporal divide with a goat-headed lover from her past life.

So, yes. If you're interested you can watch L'anticristo in its entirety on Youtube. I've embedded it below for your safety and convenience.

It's worth watching if you've a spare 1:51:50, if only for the pagan woodland orgy scene, in which everyone's painted to look like a corpse. That appears about 40 minutes into proceedings. I warn you, though – it looks utterly ridiculous when taken out of context.

Lawless (2012)

How lovely it was to go and see a film at the pictures that wasn't a superhero film.

I mean, don't get me wrong; whether it's dark and gritty or fun and colourful, I do enjoy a nice muscular heroic romp now and then – and my word, did that last sentence sound gay.

But still. It recently dawned on me that pretty much everything I leave the house to see these days seems to have been released either by Marvel or DC. That's possibly more a testament to the fact that I don't get out much than it is to the lack of imagination at the box office. But still.

How lovely it was to go and see a film at the pictures that wasn't a superhero film.

Lawless initially proclaims itself to be “based on a true story”. In actuality, it's an adaptation of a novelisation of a true story. As such, it's seeped in romantic myth and outlandish legend. And, seeing as said adaptation was effected by Mr. Nick Cave, it also happens to be dripping with blood, booze and cussing.

Can one drip with cuss? I suppose it depends upon the cuss in question. Some words are wetter than others.

Tom Hardy plays Forrest Bondurant – the oldest of three brothers running a moonshinin' and bootleggin' business out in the sticks.

Having survived a lethal strain of flu and a war that was, for so many others, genocidal; the brothers believe themselves to be immortal.

As the film progresses, it's hinted that they just might be onto something there.

Forrest Bondurant is one of those characters – like Scarface, The Joker or The Goblin King - who may yet become an enduring favourite for an entire generation. He's a speech slurrin' high-talkin' gentleman boozer with a heart of gold. Despite the fact that a lot of people are really quite keen to see him die, I found his life to be quite enviable. He lives with his brothers – with whom he's close and friendly – running a quaint café/gas station by day and an exciting booze running business by night.

Plus, his girlfriend is “well fit”.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But this tranquil life on the edge is brought into rude jeopardy with the arrival of Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce, above) – an effete, immaculately dressed yet utterly psychotic deputy from the city. He's been brought into the sticks to enforce them prohibition laws, but he's more than happy to look the other way for pay.

Hence the title of the film. This was a lawless time; in which not even Johnny Law is beyond tarrin' and featherin' a bootlegger who would – about ten years before or after – be considered innocent.

A problem arises when Forest and his brothers refuse to play Rakes's game. Mr. Cave must have had a great time adapting the ensuing standoff. It meant he could paint the screen red with no small amount of his trademark southern-fried ultraviolence.

With the beautiful cinematography; the authentically dusty sets and costumes; the memorable characters and an unexpected yet welcome beating heart of human warmth and humour, there really is rather a lot to love here.

But because I'm a masochist I've been reading the IMDB comments. Of course, there are a few threads screaming the usual “worst film ever” guff. Dip into them and you get inchoate diatribes against the “lazy writing and direction” and the “uninspired performances”.

My initial instinct was to wonder if said people had been watching the same film as me, but then I just sighed with deep resignation.

It seems that people are so used to having their eyes and brains melted by lush CGI splendour that they've forgotten that films don't have to be showy and larger than life to be at all remarkable.

No wonder there are so many superhero films.

No, I don't feel superior. Like I said earlier, I really like superhero films.

But I do wish that wonderful masterpieces like Lawless would stand out only because they're outstanding, and not because they're different to the glut of sequels, remakes and CGI sagas.

Countess Dracula (1971)

Before watching this, I presumed that the plot would be as follows:

"DRACULA! Only this time, he's a woman!"

But no. Countess Dracula is Hammer's take on the horrible tale of Elizabeth Bathory. Seeing as the idea that vampires rejuvenate when they drink blood has its roots in the legends surrounding Bathory, the title is fitting.

Indeed, the scariest moment comes right at the start, when a picture by István Csók depicting Bathory delighting in the awful torture of young women is shown over the opening credits:

I'm not sure if that's a testament to the disturbing visionary powers of Csók or to the slow and meandering pace of Countess Bathory. In any case, though this film is an atmospheric treat for late night viewing, by no means does it do justice to the sickening nature of its subject matter.

But then, I suppose if I wanted a film that did do justice to such subject matter, I'd be watching Hostel 2. I don't have time for that sort of thing, so I've really no idea what I'm complaining about.

As Hammer films go, it's at least outstanding in that it's not set in some incarnation of nineteenth century Britain. Rather, it's set in seventeenth century Hungary; the result being a film that should be visually appealing to those who covet costume and facial hair.

Ingrid Pitt plays the Countess (here renamed Elisabeth Nadasdy). Much to her undying irritation, her vocals were dubbed; which explains the uncanny floaty nature of her performance.

Having been made in 1971, the film is anaemic by today's standards. It's more interested in courtesan intrigue than the mass murder of naked virgins. It's sleepy in tone, far from gripping, but I thought it had a similar sort of fairytale dreaminess as can be found in such cult fare as Valerie & Her Week of Wonders.

But that might just be because I was extremely tired when I watched it.

On DVD, it comes packaged with The Vampire Lovers in the US and with Twins of Evil and Vampire Circus in the UK.

I've not seen any of those, but I imagine that to watch either collection in one sitting would make for an excellent night of back-to-back viewing; even if the resulting few hours proved less than the sum of their parts.

Information TV - It's Ronke!

What is Ronke? What does Ronke do? How long has Ronke been doing whatever it is Ronke does? Does Ronke have a smell? Does Ronke wear shoes? Are there any Ronke socks?

Is Ronke a noun, a verb or an adjective? Animal, vegetable or mineral?

How does one Ronke? At what time does Ronke take place? Is the sky Ronke, or the sea?

On what sort of diet does a Ronke subsist? Where might one expect to find Ronke growing? What medicinal benefits, if any, does Ronke have?

Ronke lives on Information TV. At the end of a Ronke broadcast, there's a link. Following that link takes you to an Error 404 page. But this Error 404 page is different. It's an apology.

Ronke is the unwelcome guest who's here to stay. Information TV is your host, just as Information TV is Ronke's host. Over dinner, you both hear Ronke stomping about upstairs. Information TV looks at you with despairing eyes and mouths a pained sorry.

Ronke is, apparently, single. Ronke is a Capricorn. How do I know this? Because Ronke has a Myspace page.

From this we can also deduce that Ronke is male. Be that as it may, conducting a Google image search for Ronke will reap pictures of women.

At the time of writing, Ronke is apparently 91 years old. I think it shows.

Ronke has 247 friends.

How does Ronke describe himself?

“Ronke is dedicated to bringing you the best short films from around the world. We show everything from festival award-winners to no-budget student films. We offer audiences an exciting mix of drama, comedy, horror, animation and experimental shorts.”

I saw Ronke once. In that time, I caught two of these films, both of which I would place in the “no-budget student” category.

The first was an Australian piece called All My Friends Are Getting Married. One man complained to another about itchy hands. The other man suggested that they should get married, so they did. At the end, one of them raised a very good point: The sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer is called I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Yet surely if the action's intended to take place the year following the preceding film, it should be called I Know What You Did The Summer Before Last?

The second film was called Eating Out. Having been to the cinema, a couple went for a meal at a restaurant which could only be described as “swanky”. In the corner a lesbian couple kissed with increasing passion. The man refused to admit that the couple were lesbians, so his girlfriend left him. The dialogue was awful, simply because it came across as obviously having been written. But as a result, it raised another very good point: What the hell do people talk about?

Sandwiched between these films were remarkable idents, presumably made by Ronke himself. These too were of the “no-budget student” category, but my word, were they weird. Come for the films, stay for the idents.

 

Information on Ronke is scant. Their web presence appears to be trapped in about 2006. But if you've made it this far, surely you agree this this dearth of information only adds to the allure?

Ronke is unique and unprecedented. Where else but Information TV would provide a home for Ronke?

The images in this post are not necessarily representative of the films or idents discussed, but are the sole images pertaining to Ronke I could find anywhere. I got them from Ronke's Myspace. I use them without permission.

If Ronke wants me to take them down, I will do so immediately. But for that to happen, Ronke would first have to contact me.

And how amazing would that be?

The Masque of the Red Death

A Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe adaptation starring the great Vincent Price and the lovely Hazel Court with unforgettably technicolour cinematography by Nicholas Roeg!

This one's ideally suited for a tired late-night viewing with the sound turned so low that it's mistaken for a lurid dream. It was also perfect, though, for a rainy bank holiday weekend afternoon.

Vincent Price – with his voice like cake so rich you know it's killing you – plays the Satanic prince Prospero. He hosts a series of debauched balls in his opulent castle whilst, outside, peasant and uninvited nobility alike are decimated by a deadly plague – The Red Death.

Because the source material stretches to little more than five pages in most books, this one actually incorporates elements from two Poe stories. Interwoven with The Masque of the Red Death is the ever-satisfying story of Hop Frog; which, of course, climaxes with the decadent nobility dressed as a gorilla, immolated whilst suspended from a chandelier.

Here, though, Hop Frog is for some reason called Hop Toad. His beloved Tripetena is replaced by the creepy, creepy Esmerelda. Evidently they thought the sight of a female dwarf might upset the audience. Therefore, Esmerelda's played by a child with a dubbed adult voice – easily the most disturbingly uncanny element of the whole film.

I've always been drawn to the Hop Frog story. This might be because it inspired the song which sparked what I know will be a lifelong obsession with the music of Lou Reed:


Price's Prospero is brilliant. He's a complete and utter amoral bastard, but he speaks so passionately and eloquently about his Satanic faith that you can tell that he genuinely believes himself to be doing the right thing. All of his decisions are made based upon a dark and twisted belief system – an unholy code – which makes his performance a lot more cutting and believable than the glut of tedious self-righteous serial killers currently plaguing horror.

Also, he occasionally has moments of weakness. For example, upon slaughtering the last surviving victims of the Red Death, he insists that a child be spared. Despite his guard's protests, he doesn't give a reason – he just insists that she be spared in increasingly strained tones.

Powerful moments like this – where humanity appears to be struggling against staunch Satanic doctrine – ensure that the film and performance alike transcends any possible accusations of campiness.

Glasgow Smile

I'm in Glasgow. It's great to be sitting in a hotel room in the only country in the world in which Coca-Cola is not the best-selling soft drink. This morning a group of Italians gathered around the coffee machine. It wasn't going to happen, so I enjoyed a can of the national beverage in lieu. Irn Bru is increasingly hard to find in England, and I'd forgotten all about that strange eggy aftertaste.

As you know, I'm tedium itself. As a result, I listened to Belle & Sebastian and The Delgados on the way. You know: To get myself in the mood. This was followed by some Mogwai, but I was getting so bored I had to stop.

Because I'm here on business, I've not had much time to have a proper look around. I wanted to go to the Kelvingrove, but with the time it would have taken to get there, I'd have been looking at a window of around six minutes in which to have my horizons expanded. So instead, I went to the GOMA.

The Gallery of Modern Art claims to host a collection of works which belong to the people of Glasgow. It being free to get in, I can sort of see what they're getting at. However, had I tried to purloin Peter Fischli's rubber sculpture of a vinyl, I'm sure that no false defence of “I live here” would have worked in my favour.

The main gallery is dominated by a unique video installation by Fiona Tan. Entitled Disorient, it features two high definition films projected on facing screens. One screen shows a series of slow pans across a sort of depot filled with various Oriental artefacts. Incense, spices, statues, picked pig foetuses – the sort of space in which anyone of a curious nature could happily spend the best part of the day.

The other screen shows a disjointed montage of library footage detailing life, work, war and misery – is this the real “Orient”?

The two films were silent, but a constant soundtrack lilted through the room of readings from Marco Polo by a guy who sounded just like Liam Neeson. Marco Polo, of course, quite likely fabricated much of his travels. This narrow-minded misinformation, coupled with the fact that it was impossible to take in both screens at once, was the whole point: Your perception of culture, history and people is skewed. There's no way to get the full picture without having lived in a place since birth, and all that you can possibly learn is prejudice by either stereotype, prejudice or a cynical desire for ratings.

Hey, readers: Does the fact that the film was projected on two screens entail that it can count as two entries in my 2012 Film Challenge? No? No. Just one then.



But I did see two films. Upstairs I found myself enthralled by Peter Fischli's The Way Things Go. The most elaborate Rube Goldberg I've ever seen, this should be required viewing for anybody who's ever moaned about 'elf and safety. Such alarming disregard for self preservation is demonstrated that at times you genuinely fear for the cameraman's life.

There are grounds for calling shenanigan. It probably doesn't count as a “proper” Rube Goldberg machine as it wasn't a continuous shot; there were a few obvious scene changes. However, I've never seen such an orchestrated ballet of cause and effect to use so many lethal chemical reactions. Events were triggered by various caustic substances and fire; lots and lots of fire, which burned in every colour it's possible for fire to burn.

As a bunch of fireworks attached to a tyre sit in a pile of combustible powder towards which a trail of sparks is making inexorable process, there's nail-biting tension of which Hitchcock could only ever have dreamed.

Traditionally, Rube Goldberg sequences have a punchline – the whole thing having been engineered to fulfil some trivial task. Not so here. The picture simply faded out. Perhaps the cameraman died? Still, I'm not complaining. No film in which a Catherine Wheel is dropped into a bucket of phosphorous can ever be described as “ultimately disappointing”, as what could possibly live up to that?

At one point, the deadly sequence even creates a temporary tin society of phuttering zeppelins and sauntering robot tight-rope walkers, and I demand a lifetime supply of whatever red powder burns with magical glowing sparks which resemble terrible sci-fi SFX.

If the criteria for “favourite film” is determined by the sort of visuals which you could happily take in on a permanent loop for the rest of your days, I think we have a new winner.

The video above, it must be noted, is not complete. It can be watched here in its entirety, but it does have a "bonus" Aphex Twin soundtrack. That's not a problem for me, but if might be for you.

I like Glasgow. Their central subway line is known affectionately as The Clockwork Orange.

2012 Film Challenge #64 - London: The Modern Babylon

Having never seen The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, Absolute Beginners, The Filth & The Fury or Earth Girls Are Easy, my introduction to Julien Temple came in the form of his 2006 Glastonbury documentary.

Halfway through my initial viewing of said documentary, it had already become one of my favourite films. It captures perfectly the life-affirming wonder that is a weekend at Worthy Farm. It's hard to put into words as to quite why Glastonbury is unlike and superior to any other festival, but somehow that film nails it in one long montage of disjointed archive footage set to the best possible soundtrack. Every time I watch it these days, within seconds I yearn for the Brigadoon which has for me become almost as important an annual experience as Christmas.

I suppose total sensory overload is the only way you can contain so many strong and disparate themes and emotions in one manageable running-time. Not only is each image worth a thousand words, but each is also liable to be interpreted in a completely different way by any given person. Through being presented with what is, quite possibly, far too much information, you're free to thread your own narrative, tell your own stories and to will the film to be whatever you want it to be.

Well, he's done it again. And this time he's tackled a theme so impossibly sprawling that he's made his success with Glastonbury look amateur by comparison.

Glastonbury remains one of my favourite films simply because I feel that the festival itself is such a big part of me. But even though Temple achieved the impossible in capturing something as elusive as the feel of a music festival, you have to consider the relative parameters. The festival itself has only been taking place for about four decades, and when it does take place it does so for less than a week each year.

The subject of London: The Modern Babylon is a dense metropolis of liquid culture and monumental history which has been in a state of continuous existence for millenia.

With Glastonbury, Temple could, at the very least, structure his film in the same way as the festival itself: You start with people arriving on the Wednesday and you end with people leaving on the Monday. Indeed, it struck me on repeat viewings how the “narrative” progresses from morning to night over the course of three days. Simple, when you think about it.

But how do you even begin to approach the throbbing orb of humanity and gravity that is a city like London?

I suppose we must start like Temple doubtlessly started – by assessing as to what he actually wanted to achieve. I believe that, like with Glastonbury, he wanted to capture the feel of the city– to ask why so many people are so drawn there – why it occupies not just such a large land-mass, but also such a large part of our shared thoughts and histories. I mean, how many degrees of separation are there between London and anyone in the world who you could possibly care to mention?

Temple doesn't start at the very beginning, as that would be insane. Rather, he starts with the invention of film. I suppose he had to; otherwise his film would open with a series of static rostrum camera shots of engravings and paintings.

Instead, then, it begins with shaky, hand-cranked silent images to which have been set a soundtrack which alternates between then-contemporary and now-contemporary. This footage – presumably shot to capture existence for the sake of posterity – are already filled to the brim with life. Incredibly though, they're painted in even broader colours with interviews with people who were actually alive back then.

One such woman, 107 years old, has an absolutely astonishing memory. She speaks of things like they happened a decade ago rather than a century. And when she speaks, she does so in a halting weariness behind which you can feel every single one of those hundred-plus years. It's powerful stuff.

The film progresses from this shaky starting point through following affairs on a loosely decade-by-decade basis. As a historical essay, without a doubt it's of the cultural history school. The emphasis is very much upon how events effected the lives of people on a daily basis.

And throughout we're therefore struck with just how resourceful people are. We progress through decades of war, unrest, urban-renewal, immigration and depression, yet the one recurring theme seems to be humanity's ability to live through anything. No matter what happens, we're shown time and again that people still have lives. They still work and they still have fun.

Another more distressing theme is that of fear, distrust, hatred and violence. Like a depressing rite-of-passage, identical suspicion and hostility is directed at successive generations of minority groups as they first come to the city. Never mind man's inhumanity to man: Man's distrust of man is distressing enough.

It ends on a positive note as implied by the title: London is the new Babylon, a place where each and every culture in the world can coexist if not in harmony, than in mutual tolerance – everybody's free to do as they please in London. The city and, by extension, the country is better off as a result. One of the most endearing moments is when one of the veterans interviewed tells of how his grandchildren don't feel like inhabitants of the British Isles. Rather, they feel like members of the human race.

Be that as it may, another strong implication is that fear and loathing between cultures has simply been replaced by fear and distrust between the classes. The gulf between rich and poor is far greater than ever truly was that between black and white. An early theme introduced is that of the London mob, and it's near the end that alarming footage of last year's riots fill the screen. The suggestion seems to be that we had better get used to such carnage. It's always been inevitable, and it's only just starting to break.

Despite this, though, I found the whole viewing experience to be positively life-affirming. Over a century of history and culture was crammed into just over two hours of running-time. In that time, hundreds, if not thousands of stories were told – and every single second is infused with passion, vibrancy, poignancy, energy and the marvellous incandescent glow of human experience.

Of course, having never lived in London, I cannot possibly comment upon whether or not it succeeded in capturing the feel of the place. But in its own right, as a freewheeling open piece of cultural history, it's nothing short of a masterpiece.

2012 Film Challenge #63 - The Cicerones

Ah, here we go.

I've no idea how they read, but through a combination of poor quality material and wild veers from the remit (such as it is); the past few posts on this blog have felt a bit lacking from my end.

But here we have a short film written and directed by Jeremy Dyson (yes!) starring Mark Gatiss (yes!) based on a short story by Robert Aickman (yes!).

It's one of those film where the less you know about it, the more you're likely to enjoy it.

It's just over ten minutes long, so you have no excuse to not watch it.

The opening seems to be a tribute to that of Eraserhead, and it ends like all Robert Aickman stories so far encountered – with an absolute refusal to answer any of the questions currently screaming through your disquietened brain.

If you don't know who Robert Aickman is, think of him as M.R James gone weird.

If you don't know who M.R James is, think of him as Edgar Allen Poe gone English.

If you don't know who Edgar Allen Poe is, think of him as the thinking man's HP Lovecraft.

If you don't know who HP Lovecraft is, think of him as a man whose terrifying brilliance was unfortunately tainted by racism.

If you don't know what racism is, then it's likely that you and I can be friends.

Unless you're one of those unwitting, blundering racist types.

Oooh.

2012 Film Challenge #62 - The Dark Knight Rises

It occurred to me that I only seem to go to the cinema at all these days to see superhero films.

However, it's also slowly dawned on me that the vast majority of visitors to this site pop in but fleetingly having been drawn in by Google Image Searches for superheroes. Most of them appear to be looking for The Incredible Hulk. Why is that so adorable?

Whilst most visitors to this blog seem to be looking for pictures of “gore”, it seems that the overflow of superhero films is doing wonders for my traffic. Swings and roundabouts?

I'm not complaining about the abundance of capes and masks at the box office, though with another Batman reboot already in the works, they do seem to have already run out of muscular men and busty women to adapt and engritten.

How many sequels and reboots will we have to sit through before those “Hollywood Movie Moguls” discover the Vertigo universe? An entire franchise could be created from proper handling of the work of Neil Gaiman alone; and universal transcendence will, I'm sure, be achieved once Constantine's given the film he deserves. The ideal would be a beautifully faithful adaptation by Christopher Nolan, but that won't happen. Our god's not a loving god.

Do you know what? It is much easier to write about also-ran features of dubious quality than it is to write about films that people actually want to see.

What could I possibly say about The Dark Knight Rises that hasn't already been said?

It has its detractors, but the detraction seems to extend to pointing out plot holes, as if plot holes cannot be found and ridiculed in everything that ever has or ever will be made.

And it's not as though the film's in need of defending anyway. At the time of writing, it's occupying the number 1 spot in the IMDB top whatever. Batman can fight his own fights.

I can't even discuss the (misguided) attestations that the film harbours a disturbingly right-wing anti-Occupy stance, because I'm starting to hope that the entire right-wing may one day simply disappear should we all just choose to ignore it.

It's good. It really is. OK, it takes around an hour to find its feet, but that still leaves about 100 minutes of intrigue and entertainment.

It will be doubtlessly be discussed, reviled, championed, adored, picked-apart and digested by scores of generations of legions of everyone for the remainder of time itself.

And why not? It's a worthy, satisfying end to what must be one of the most engaging trilogies of our times.

Or is it?

That's open to discussion.

Except, not here.

Here we talk about the sort of stuff they show on The Horror Channel on Sunday mornings. Don't we?

I know my place.

2012 Film Challenge #61 - Rubber

There was a point in 2011 when I found myself quite excited by a trio of forthcoming horror films. Each looked wonderful, and each promised a brave new vista of terror which would, I thought, transcend the dreary drudgery of torture porn and slasher remakes that seem to form the backbone of modern horror.

Monsters, the giant jellyfish caper with homemade SFX, was every bit as serene, graceful and stirring as it promised.

Troll Hunter I've not seen yet.

Rubber was a film about a killer tyre. How could that possibly be anything less than marvellous?

I bought it last Christmas and only got around to watching it last weekend.

Oh, I should have listened to the warnings.

Except, they weren't warnings at all. They were reservations.

It's a gimmick, I was told. It'll be about as marvellous as those people who describe themselves as “mad” and “bubbly”.

It will only revel in its quirkiness and, as such, be a waste of everyone's time.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

It's a film about a killer tyre called Robert who has the ability to make people's heads explode!

How could that possibly be anything less than marvellous?

For just the very reasons expressed in those reservations.

Spend a lot of time watching films and you acquire such tremendous powers of prophecy that are to be ignored at your peril, sir.

Rubber opens by breaking the fourth wall. As anybody who's seen Holy Mountain through to the end will attest, this device can have remarkably life-affirming effects.

Rubber, though, deploys the device to not only draw attention towards how stupid is the film you're about to watch, but also towards just how stupid are those who made it.

We are given a list of the great “no-reasons” in film history. You know what a “no-reason” is. It's something that's in a film just because it is. Why should everything have to be explained?

But if you're going to open your film with such meta ideas, at the very least you'd want to put some thought into what you're about to say, wouldn't you?

For the examples of “no-reasons” we're given are not “no-reasons” in the slightest.

First of all, we're asked to consider why E.T.'s brown.

Why is that even a thing?

Then we're invited to ponder upon why, in Oliver Stone's JFK, “why is the President suddenly assassinated by some stranger?”

Because he was. Quite possibly by some shady underground group who had vested interests in the US remaining in Vietnam.

The stupidest “no-reason”, though, relates to The Pianist: “How come this guy has to hide and live like a bum when he plays the piano so well?”

Because he's Jewish and on the run from the Nazis.

Jesus Christ.
I can't think of any “no-reasons” from the top of my head, but I know that I'd be able to list two or three good ones were I to set aside as little as twenty minutes to do so.

Perhaps the whole idea is that these “no-reasons” have reasons. Perhaps this feeble and ridiculous opening gambit is designed to invite us to think on a certain level; to question everything through questioning nothing.

In reality, though, it's a clumsy, faltering vomit of an opening that inspired nothing but instant revulsion.

And it gets worse. Much, much worse.

All the action in the film is watched through binoculars by a group of film buffs on a hill. Throughout the film, they comment on proceedings in such terms as would be spoken by nobody who ever has or will draw breath.

At one point, they even comment upon how boring they're finding the whole thing.

Congratulations. Now I'm wondering why this 80 minute film seems to be taking longer to watch than Ben-Hur.

It's a terrible shame that Rubber's so preoccupied with how clever it is. The scenes of Robert the tyre finding his feet (so to speak) are strangely beautiful, like Bambi on the ice.

Similarly, the whole thing's shot in an exhausted, washed-out bleached bleakness which makes you feel the heat, the dust and yearn for a cold drink or shower.

Had they just focused upon telling the remarkable story of a sentient tyre with the ability to make heads explode for no reason, they'd likely have struck off-beat cinematic gold.

But no. At one point they must have realised just how clever they are, the results being the cinematic equivalent of an inebriated party guest who's outstayed his welcome and is wearing a lampshade on his head.

Or perhaps more likely, they realised that a film about a tyre has no legs. They had to pad out a wafer-thin story through drawing attention to just how wafer-thin it is.

In any case, it's a sad, unfortunate failure.

Saddest of all, though, is that this car-crash of a film is still infinitely preferable to the scores of tired old torture porn and slasher remakes out there.

Oh no, I'm so disappointed I'm getting predictable.

You knew I was going to close with such remarks, didn't you?

2012 Film Challenge #60 - Rope

The best episode of Psychoville – the post League of Gentlemen frolics of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Permberton – was that which reunited them with Mark Gattis. For thirty glorious minutes, the triumvirate was whole once again, and all was right in the world.

This episode was particularly remarkable in being achieved in one single, continuous take. It saw mother/son serial killer team the Sowerbutts visited by an amateur actor (Mark Gatiss!) in the wake of a murder.

I didn't know it when I first saw it, but the whole episode was an extended homage to Hitchcock's Rope. And only now I've realised that Psychoville managed to out-Rope Rope. So to speak.

Rope was made in 1948, a time when films were still made by capturing images on film. At 24 frames a second, the longer you filmed something, the larger would have to be the cannister in which the film was kept. It was thus utterly impractical and thus impossible to film any shot lasting more than ten minutes. After ten minutes, the cannisters simply became too big. And if the cannisters were too big, no cinema would show your work. So why even bother with long takes, genius?

Because you're Alfred Hitchcock.

With Rope, what feels like a single 80 minute take is actually comprised of ten shorter takes, each between four and nine minutes in length. The takes blend seamlessly together, with the screen blacking out when a character passes before the camera, for instance. There may even have been a few direct cuts, but having developed this strange habit of closing my eyes for a fraction of a second every few seconds, I would have missed them.

Hey, my eyes just get too dry otherwise.

So whereas Psychoville succeeded in one continuous shot for their Rope homage, Hitchcock cheated a little.

Credit where it's due, though. The Psychoville boys had just half an hour to fill. Also, Hitchcock was attempting what was, in 1948, literally impossible. That you only notice his bag of tricks when subjecting the results to scrutiny I think merits him a shiny or two.

It starts with a fatal throttling of a Harvard student by two of his friends. They're Nietzsche scholars, interested in the idea of the superman. Morals and ethics are for weaklings. They've killed because they can. And just to compound their superiority, they host a party minutes after murdering – with the body hidden in a chest in the middle of the room in which takes place the mingling.

Unfortunately for them, one of their guests is one of their old teachers, Mr. Rupert Cadell (James Stewart!) It was he who instilled those unfortunate ideas of superiority, so not only has he blood on his hands, he's also on to them. Right from the start, he seems to know what's going on.

This makes for an eighty minute reminder that I really should spend more time watching Hitchcock. His films are gripping like those conversations so tense you feel on the verge of vomiting from which you cannot walk away.

No wonder the gentlemen of Psychoville spent thirty minutes paying tribute.

2012 Film Challenge #59 - Play Misty For Me

So far this year I've watched werewolves, zombies, Satanists, ghosts, white worms and self-righteous serial killers.

Nothing so far, though, has freaked me out as much as the demented, obsessive Evelyn in Play Misty For Me.

This was the second Clint Eastwood film viewed in a week. And, whilst Firefox was tedious and plodding, this, his directorial debut, was engrossing, disturbing and unforgettable.

Mr. Eastwood plays Dave – a jazz DJ with a voice like chocolate silk who plays smooth music for lovers. He's very much paving the way for Alan Partridge's Deep Bath.

Because his show radiates orgasms, he gets himself a stalker. Every night she phones in to his show, asking him to play Misty. Eventually they meet, and things get clingy and creepy very, very quickly.

I sometimes make the mistake of visiting the IMDB boards. You can play a fun little game with them in seeing how long it takes for a perfectly innocuous thread to descend into personal attacks. It happens to every thread eventually. I believe the record for consecutive non-pyschotic posts is seven.

Anyway, there was talk on the Play Misty For Me boards of misogyny. Because no back-story is offered for Evelyn, it seems that some assumed that she's intended to represent all women, everywhere, with men being their long-suffering prey.

But not only does this analysis completely ignore all the sane and reasonable women in the film, it also ignores the context in which the film was made. I understand that to portray a man as butch as Clint Eastwood in such a subjugated role was unprecedented in 1972. Back then, men were men and women cooked things and sewed. Play Misty For Me eschews these gender roles. You could almost call it enlightened, were it not for the outrageous gay stereotype.

Of particular interest, though, must be the footage shot live at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Cannonball Adderley!