2011: A Spaced Odyssey

‘Twenty eleven’, or ‘Two thousand and eleven’? We don’t say that World War II ended in ‘One thousand, nine hundred and forty five’, or the Battle of Hastings took place in ‘One thousand and sixty-six’, so the consensus seems to be that ‘Twenty eleven’ is the correct terminology. Film title-wise, that means Bernardo Bertolucci once made a film called Nineteen zero zero and that Stanley Kubrick directed a science fiction ‘Space Odyssey’ called Twenty-Zero-One, or even simply Twenty-One.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve spent quite a large part of 2011 researching and writing about science fiction movies for Outer Limits: The Filmgoers’ Guide to the Great Science Fiction Films. In addition to watching the classics which are freely available on DVD (or failing that videotape), I’ve been looking at some of the interesting US Region boxed sets, each containing 50 movies. Though the picture quality is usually of the ‘worse than faded VHS’ variety, these sets are filled with oddball and unusual delights of sci-fi cult cinema and are great value.

Sci-Fi Classics has the great Japanese giant turtle Gamera on the cover and includes such anti-classics as Cosmos: War of the Planets, Killers from Space, Mesa of Lost Women, First Spaceship on Venus, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Teenagers from Outer Space, Voyage to the Planet of the Prehistoric Women and the immortal Eegah, about a giant caveman (played by a pre-James Bond ‘Jaws’ Richard Kiel) wandering around the Californian desert.

The Nightmare Worlds 50-movie set includes the Italian Alien rip-off Alien Contamination, The Day the Sky Exploded, The Manster, Radio Ranch, Star Odyssey, This is Not a Test, The Disappearance of Flight 412 and three of the imaginative Japanese ‘Starman’ series, Atomic Rulers of the World, Attack from Space and Evil Brain from Outer Space.

The latest of these releases, the Sci-Fi Invasion 50-movie set, includes such hearty fare as Battle Beyond the Sun, Hundra, Mission Stardust, Night of the Blood Beast, R.O.T.O.R., Raiders of Atlantis (aka Atlantis Interceptors), War of the Robots, Top Line (with Franco Nero), Star Knight (with Harvey Keitel and Klaus Kinski), Horst Frank in the German horror The Head, Jack Palance in Welcome to Blood City and the killer carpet movie, The Creeping Terror. It also features an Italian Close Encounters rip-off called Eyes Behind the Stars, an Italian Terminator rip-off, Hands of Steel (filmed in Arizona), and the unforgettable Spanish E.T. knock-off Extraterrestrial Visitors, with an alien that resembles someone wearing a baby elephant costume.

Don’t expect too much in terms of picture quality – nor indeed, in some cases, of filmmaking quality – but these entertaining movies are still better than anything you’ll find on our dire TV channels these days.

My favourite film book published this year was Kim Newman’s Nightmare Movies, a great read which I discussed in an earlier post.

Also look out for a new guide to Italian fumetti comic book superheroes on film in Matt Blake’s Fantastikal Diabolikal Supermen.

For me the DVD release of 2011 was the BFI’s excellent presentation of Bernardo Bertolucci’s little-seen Before the Revolution (1964), an unheralded classic of Italian cinema which can be seen as a precursor to The Conformist (1970).

The best film at cinemas was the Coen brothers’ version of True Grit, which really captured the flavour of Charles Portis’ book and pithily authentic frontier language.

April 2011 saw the publication of my book on the golden era of Italian Cinema, Cinema Italiano: The Complete Guide from Classics to Cult, which I’m pleased to say has received some very good reviews:

Kamera

BUFVC

Spaghetti-Western.net

Subtitled Online

Filmjuice

I was also proud to hear from my friend Tom Betts that at the First Los Angeles Spaghetti Western Festival in March, I was mentioned – alongside other writers and film historians including Bill Connolly of Spaghetti Cinema, Sebastian Hasselback of the Spaghetti Western Web Board, Sir Christopher Frayling, Ulrich Bruckner, John Nudge and authors Tony Williams and Laurence Staig – ‘For keeping the spaghetti western heritage alive’. This festival featured film screenings and guest appearances by spaghetti western stars Mark Damon, Hunt Powers, Richard Harrison, Robert Woods, Brett Halsey, Michael Forest, Dan van Husen and Edd Byrnes.

Other DVDs I’ve enjoyed this year include the 4-film Sophia Loren Collection (Region 1) which includes Attila (1954, co-starring Anthony Quinn) and the superb shot-in-Spain Napoleonic War comedy Madame Sans-Gêne (1962). The set also includes De Sica’s Sunflower (1970, co-starring Marcello Mastroianni) and the beautifully photographed musical, Neapolitan Carousel (1954).

I also contributed the collector’s booklet this year for Face to Face (1967), the spaghetti western DVD release by Eureka! in April. Another DVD set worth looking out for is The Best of Spaghetti Westerns 20-film Region Free set, which includes great prints of No Room to Die, A Coffin for the Sheriff, Cemetery Without Crosses, In a Colt’s Shadow, Shoot, Gringo…Shoot!, A Pistol for Ringo, The Return of Ringo, One Silver Dollar, Forgotten Pistolero, and many others, though the sound occasionally goes out of synch on some of them, these are still a bargain.

This year I’ve also seen one of the best Italian pepla, Ursus in the Land of Fire, in a widescreen English language version prepared by a film collector that is simply tremendous – it’s a shame more films of this type, from this era, aren’t available in such great presentations. One that has been released on DVD in widescreen and English is Mark Forest’s The Magnificent Gladiator.

Not necessarily new DVD releases, but I’ve also enjoyed Goke Bodysnatcher from Hell (excellent Japanese sci-fi/horror), Visconti’s Rocco and his Brothers, Night of the Comet (cult 1980s sci-fi), Raiders of Old California (an early Lee Van Cleef western), the eerie-yet-inept The Legend of Boggy Creek, Tonino Valerii’s giallo My Dear Killer, the classic Universal creature feature Creature from the Black Lagoon and the BFI’s swinging 60s release The Pleasure Girls (starring Francesca Annis, Ian McShane and Klaus Kinski).   

I’m continuing to contribute regularly to film magazine Cinema Retro and their new season begins with a great issue largely devoted to the big screen film format Cinerama. I attended the Widescreen Weekend in Bradford in April and saw How the West Was Won on the Pictureville’s curved screen in this format and would highly recommend anyone to attend the screening in 2012. The new issue of Retro has features on Krakatoa, East of Java and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, and Sir Christopher Frayling has written an excellent in-depth article on the making of How the West Was Won. My contribution is a 10-page article on the Congo-set mercenary adventure Dark of the Sun (1968 – aka The Mercenaries) starring Rod Taylor and Jim Brown, which features many full-colour posters and behind the scenes info and stills.       

Looking forward to 2012, my new book When Eagles Dared: The Filmgoers’ History of World War II is available to pre-order now and will be published in the UK in January. It looks at the history of the war, chronologically, through the films that have depicted the historical events, from Dunkirk and Battle of Britain, to The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far, Saving Private Ryan and Downfall. Here’s a preview of the excellent jacket design for it, by Chris Bromley.

Powered by Honda

I’m currently writing a sci-fi book called Outer Limits: The Filmgoers’ Guide to the Great Science-Fiction Films. It follows the format of earlier ‘Filmgoers’ Guides’, such as Stagecoach to Tombstone and Crime Wave, in that it looks at an entire genre’s history, tracing its development from early days to the present, via select, representative films. Stagecoach to Tombstone looked at the great westerns, from (as the title says) Stagecoach through to Tombstone, while Crime Wave (which was published to accompany a film season also called Crime Wave on Turner Classic Movies) looked at classic crime films from The Public Enemy to Ocean’s Eleven.

Outer Limits traces the history of sci-fi cinema, from Metropolis to Avatar, with diversions to Forbidden Planet, Star Wars, Alien, The Terminator, Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, Mad Max 2, Independence Day, Blade Runner, The Thing and Back to the Future, plus many, many more.

I also cover Japanese sci-fi cinema, which had led me to track down many ‘Kaiju Eiga’ (monster movies) and other top-line Japanese sci-fi. Japan’s Toho Studios was synonymous for international audiences in the 1950s and 1960s with the works of Akira Kurosawa. His Rashomon, Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress and Yojimbo, among others, were hailed as masterpieces of world cinema. But there was another side to Toho, as it was this studio that also released Gojira in 1954, which in its redubbed and recut international version, starring Perry Mason actor Raymond Burr, was a hit in 1956 as Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

The title monster, a giant fire-breathing lizard, was the creation of nuclear testing and the physical embodiment of Japan’s attitudes to and fears of nuclear weapons. Other monsters followed, including beaky Rodan, self-explanatory Mothra, hydra-like King Ghidorah, Hedorah (a pile of toxic sludge) and the ever popular flying turtle Gamera – some of which were from Toho and some were launched by rival studios. But it was Godzilla that prevailed. From the early 1960s he transformed from a threat to become Earth’s protector against various giant predators and intergalactic invaders. The best of the original 1950s-70s series was Destroy All Monsters (1968 – Operation Monsterland) which deploys all the Toho monsters in an all-stops-out ‘creature feature’ free-for-all.  Invasion of the Astro Monsters (1965) is also highly entertaining, as is Son of Godzilla (1967), but even the average entries are worth a look. Godzilla has been periodically resurrected over the years – in the 1980s and 1990s – culminating in what many fans believe to be the best of the entire franchise in Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-out Attack (2001 – or GMK for short) by writer-director Shusuke Kaneko, which was from the Toho stable and released internationally by TriStar. This very well produced movie – Toho’s repost to the appalling Roland Emmerich-directed Hollywood attempt at the story in 1997 – ignored all the intervening ‘Godzilla’ films and was a direct sequel to the original Gojira, with Godzilla the villain and Earth protected by the ‘Guardian Monsters’: Baragon, Mothra and King Ghidorah.

The master director of Japanese sci-fi was Ishirô Honda, who helmed the original Gojira and many of the finest entries during the 1950s-70s heyday. But Godzilla movies weren’t the only Japanese sci-fi releases and thanks to enterprising DVD companies, some real gems have surfaced over the last few years. ‘Icons of Sci-Fi’, issued in 2009, is a Region 1 release also known as the ‘Toho Collection’ which includes three Honda classics: Battle in Outer Space (1960), Mothra (1961) and The H-Man (1959).

Battle in Outer Space is the sequel to Honda’s The Mysterians [which is available in another ‘Toho Pack’ three-film set, with Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People and the aptly-named Varan the Unbelievable]. Battle in Outer Space is an alien invasion space opera with the Natalians attacking Earth with an anti-gravity ray. Mothra is the moth’s film debut and is another allegory on nuclear testing. But the gem of the set is The H-Man which is The Blob, Toho-style, as people dissolve and mutate into gelatinous monsters, and the creeping blob eventually makes its way into Tokyo’s drains for a ‘Turd Man’-inspired finale in the sewer system. Its imaginative melding of film noir gangster movie, murder mystery, night club acts and sci-fi creature feature is a winner and is well worth a look. The sequel is the difficult-to-find The Human Vapour. All three films in the set boast special effects by the great Eiji Tsuburaya and all are presented in their original colour and Tohoscope 2.35:1 widescreen ratio. Even better, this great value set features both the original Japanese releases (with English subtitles) and the international English language versions, distributed by Columbia Pictures. Mothra and The H-Man are both shorter in their international release than the Japanese originals. There are also extras, including audio commentaries on Battle in Outer Space and Mothra from Japanese sci-fi experts Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski.

Icons of Sci-Fi: Toho Collection is available in the UK and US, though note the disks are Region 1 (US and Canada) only.

The Toho Pack (with Mysterians, Varan and Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People) is also an excellent set, worth getting for the colourful psychedelic fantasy adventure Matango.

Roma Therapy 7

In the last instalment of my Top 20 essential Italian movies, we have two mid-1970s classics, from two masters of their field.   

Illustrious Corpses (Francesco Rosi, 1975)

In the days before Italian politics was synonymous with media ownership and bunga-bunga parties, Italian political cinema was a global force to be reckoned with. At the forefront of the movement was Francesco Rosi, whose films still stand today as visceral depictions of the Italian political process, which was often riddled with corruption and scandal. Rosi’s key films include Salvatore Giuliano (depicting the famed post-war Sicilian bandit), Hands Over the City (corruption in the building trade which leads to the collapse of an apartment block), The Mattei Affair (the suspicious death of a prominent oil magnet), Lucky Luciano (the later years of the famed gangster) and Christ Stopped at Eboli (with Gian Maria Volonté as novelist Carlo Levi). All are fine films, but Rosi’s finest is Illustrious Corpses, his depiction of a killing spree by an assassin with a judge grudge. Lino Ventura played Inspector Rogas, who is on the trail of a murderer that is targeting the judiciary, apparently avenging a miscarriage of justice. A powerful, engrossing film, based on Leonardo Sciascia’s 1971 novel Il contesto (‘Equal Danger’ in its English language version), it was photographed on location in Sicily, Naples and Rome by Pasquale De Santis, and plays like an overtly politicised police procedural, or a whodunit giallo thriller with a political edge.

DVD distributors take note: this excellent film is not currently available on DVD in the UK or US. It was screened many years ago in the UK on BBC2, as part of a Rosi season in ‘The Film Club’. Leonardo Sciascia’s novel is available however, with Day of the Owl, another crime thriller which was made into a film by Damiano Damiani, with Franco Nero and Claudia Cardinale

Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)

The gialli master was back with a vengeance in 1977, as Argento struck out in a bold new direction with the accent on supernatural witchery. Suspiria starred Jessica Harper as Suzy Banyon, an American student who arrives to study at the Freiberg Tanz (Dance) Academy, a ballet school in Germany, which she later discovers is the cover for a coven of witches (including Joan Bennett and Alida Valli) who worship the Black Queen. The first part of Argento’s ‘Three Mothers’ trilogy (followed by Inferno and Mother of Tears), this suspenseful, bloody masterwork is many Argento fan’s favourite. He certainly hasn’t equalled its visceral power since. The film’s shock tactics are greatly abetted by Goblin’s menacing score.

Suspiria has been released on DVD in the UK and US. It is also available on Blu-ray and Goblin’s score is out on CD.

So that’s my top 20. In my opinion, the essential classics of the golden age of Italian cinema are La dolce vita, The Mask of Satan, Hercules Conquers Atlantis, The Horrible Secret of Dr Hichcock, The Leopard, Contempt, The Gospel according to St Matthew, Castle of Blood, Fists in the Pocket, Battle of Algiers, Blowup, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Big Silence, Diabolik, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Conformist, Violent City, The Marseilles Connection, Illustrious Corpses and Suspiria.  

Next week I’ll begin looking at my Top 20 Italian cult movies – the great, the good and the downright odd – in a new thread, RomaDrome.

To read more about Illustrious Corpses, Suspiria and other films by Argento and Rosi, check out my book, Cinema Italiano: The Complete Guide from Classics to Cult

Black Cats

Seeing as the cat has one expression, it’s amazing how many expressions the cat has.

Contented

Guilty

Disdainful

Awesome!

Feed Me

The black cat is the star of one of the great tales of horror fiction: Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Black Cat’, a short story first published in 1843. The account, one of the author’s most famous works, details in the first person the drunken protagonist’s torment of his title pet and ends with the cat giving away the location of a concealed corpse, as the protagonist has ‘walled the monster up within the tomb!’

There have been many attempts to bring Poe’s tale to the big screen. There’s the Karloff-Lugosi version, directed in 1934 by another Edgar – Edgar G. Ulmer – which though called The Black Cat bears no resemblance to the tale. Perhaps the most famous version is the second episode of Roger Corman’s three-part Tales of Terror (1962). Peter Lorre portrayed Montresor Herringbone, an alcoholic, whose wife Annabel (Joyce Jameson) begins an affair with pompous wine taster Fortunato Luchresi (Vincent Price). When he discovers their betrayal, Montresor walls up his adulterous wife and her lover in the cellar – alive. When the police investigate, the cat’s yowl again gives the game away. Tales of Terror, the fourth of Corman’s eight Poe adaptations, aimed for macabre laughs, with the likes of Price and Lorre at their hammiest. This style was fully realised in Corman’s next Poe film, The Raven (1963), with its broad comedy, duelling magicians and the unholy trinity of Price, Lorre and Karloff.

Among many other adaptations, Harold Hoffman’s The Black Cat (1966) was explicit in its gore and blunt in its intent, Mario Bava used elements of the story for his Shock (1977) and even Dario Argento had a crack at the tale, with his contribution to the two-parter Two Evil Eyes (1989). George A. Romero directed an adaptation of ‘The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar’, starring Adrienne Barbeau, while Argento’s ‘The Black Cat’ reworked the central protagonist as Rod Usher (Harvey Keitel), a photographer whose portfolio of murder images reference other Poe tales, including ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ and ‘’Berenice’.

I’ve recently seen another Italian director’s reworking of the tale: Lucio Fulci’s The Black Cat (1981 – Il gatto nero). This Italian-financed, shot-in-England production starred Patrick Magee as Professor Robert Miles, a medium who makes ‘tape recordings’ of the moaning, wailing dead. Mysterious disappearances in the small English village where Miles lives are investigated by American tourist Jill Travers and Inspector Gorley of Scotland Yard, played by Italian exploitation movie favourites Mimsy Farmer and David Warbeck. There’s excellent, prowling, low-level Technovision cinematography by Sergio Salvati, an effective Euro-score by Pino Donaggio and a supporting cast that includes Dagmar Lassander, Bruno Corazzari and ‘Al Cliver’ (Pier Luigi Conti). This is a solid, suspenseful horror from Fulci, a director who often overbalanced the tension and effectiveness of his films, when he wallowed in bloody, over-the-top special effects at the expense of all else, as for example in his tour-de-gore The Beyond (1981).

My enjoyment of Fulci’s Black Cat was probably enhanced by a combination of the lateness of the night, a bottle of Perroni and the fact that my jet black cat was prowling around the lounge throughout, becoming, in a strange way and rather disconcertingly, part of the action. This was like watching the film in 3-D and reminded me of the horrific moment in Hideo Nakata’s Ringu (1998 – Ring), the celebrated J-Hôra ghost story from Toho Studios, when lank-haired, fractured video killer Sadako (Rei Ino’o) emerges from the well towards the TV screen, out through the television and into the room, to scare her victims to death.

Not realising his contribution to my three-dimensional experience of Fulci’s movie, my black cat’s expression was one of mild bemusement – or was it menace? I couldn’t quite tell.

The Black Cat © Howard Hughes 2011

Lucio Fulci’s The Black Cat is available on DVD in the UK and in the US.

Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat is available on DVD in the UK and as part of a Lugosi set in the US.

Roger Corman’s Tales of Terror is available on DVD in the UK and the US.

Two Evil Eyes are available on DVD in the UK and the US.

Ringu is available on DVD in the UK and the US

To read Poe’s original tale of terror, it’s included in this classic Tales of Mystery and Imagination collection.

Roma Therapy 3

This week on my tour through Italy’s cinema, three monochrome classics: a gothic horror starring a 1960s scream queen, an unsettling psychological melodrama that earned its young star the tag ‘the new James Dean’ and the greatest biblical film ever made.

Castle of Blood (Antonio Margheriti, 1964)

One of Margheriti’s three gothic horrors from 1963-64 – the others are: The Virgin of Nuremberg and The Long Hair of Death – this is also known as La danza macabra and The Castle of Terror. It sees Alan Foster (Georges Riviere), a foolhardy Times journalist, taking Edgar Allan Poe up on a tavern wager, which results in Foster spending the ‘Night of the Dead’ in haunted Blackwood Castle. Classic cobwebby stuff from Margheriti and Steele has never been better, as she makes a spectre of herself as mysterious Elisabeth Blackwood.

It’s available on Region 1 import in the UK and in the US there’s the uncut version on DVD, as well as the more widely seen cut version.

Fists in the Pocket (Marcello Bellocchio, 1965)

Writer-director Bellocchio’s debut film made waves internationally in 1965, with the press trumpeting its star, Lou Castel, as a rebel successor to James Dean, but viewed today Castel’s petulant performance owes more to the young Brando. This strange and unique drama depicts a dysfunctional family living in a secluded provincial villa, where lies and selfish deceit give way murder. Castel’s performance is riveting, Bellocchio’s visuals by turns poetic and disturbing, and there’s a eerie, avant-garde score from Ennio Morricone.

Again, in the UK it’s only available on DVD in the UK on import or on videotape and in the US, it’s available on DVD.

The Gospel According to St Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964)

This is the antithesis of Hollywood’s showbiz treatment of the life of the Messiah. For a biblical film made by an atheist, this is a moving, powerful discourse on the live of Jesus Christ (as played by Spanish economics student Enrique Irazoqui). Pasolini shot his low-key religious epic on location in Italy, in Lazio, Calabria, Mount Etna and most memorably at the rock-hewn hovels of the Sassi di Matera, in Basilicata, which played Pasolini’s Bethlehem. Shot in black and white by Tonino Delli Colli, the film also features a memorable score that includes music by Luis Enriquez Bacalov, Bach’s ‘Matthew’s Passion’ and the spiritual ‘Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child’, performed by Odetta.

This has been released on DVD in the UK and in the US, and as part of a Pasolini boxed set, which also includes Accattone and Hawks and Sparrows.

Castle of Blood, Fists in the Pocket, The Gospel According to St Matthew and other films mentioned here are discussed in detail in my book, Cinema Italiano: The Complete Guide from Classics to Cult, published by I.B. Tauris.

I also wrote a profile of Barbara Steele entitled ‘Scream Queen of the Italian Scene: The Woman Who Haunted Herself’ in issue #11 of Cinema Retro, back issues of which can be ordered here.