No-one Knows Like Kronos

If this guy doesn't look like he'd eat babies to you it's because he's not Kronos, the titan who ate his children, but Captain Kronos--Vampire Hunter, star of the 1972 Hammer film that was supposed to be the beginning of a series that didn't pan out. It has one of the more impressively nonsensical plots for a Hammer horror film and its star is a bit lacklustre for the charming swashbuckler he's meant to be but the film is fun and has an engaging Dungeons and Dragons style party of adventurers at its centre.

This Kronos (Horst Janson) really hates people who eat people so he's pledged himself to eradicating them. He's a nobleman of few words, he has kind of a numb smirk on his face for the whole movie.

The first half of the movie switches between Kronos and his assistant, Professor Grost (John Cater), travelling about and unconnected scenes of different pretty girls being menaced by an off camera vampire. Kronos and Grost rescue a woman named Carla (Caroline Munro) from the stocks where she's been put for dancing. Throughout the rest of the film, she is often smirking beside Kronos and they have sex occasionally.

So how to foil a vampire menace? Well, luckily when you put dead frogs in boxes and bury them they come back to life when vampires pass over them. This, combined with a rather conspicuous looking system of red ribbons and bells tied to trees, helps them finally track down the home of the vampire. They send Carla in as a decoy to the front door while Kronos and Grost break in through the ceiling. Why did Carla need to be sent first? Maybe it was too complicated to explain to the audience.

There are some nice sword fights. Kronos uses a Japanese sword sometimes at first and then it randomly seems to change into a sabre in some scenes before he gets a special broad sword near the end.

I watched the whole film on YouTube where it's actually hosted on the official Hammer channel--so, for any snitches reading, restrain yourselves.

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Unappeased cloud rain cover crumbles nuts.
Forgotten shells impair the barest sole.
A foot remained between the sodden huts.
Distance was breached by a courageous vole.
Eggs boiled are walking the blazing street.
Reminders now demand flyers to bake.
Spinach has turned to smoke on the concrete.
A rain drop flees for humanity's sake.
Unsought the ice has nonetheless melted.
A sheaf of curling irons reddened at dusk.
The brain with burning gingham was belted.
Wan grains are floating dry inside the husk.
Aghast the streamer golems gallop home.
Above the Queen Alien paints the dome.

The Highway Cage

It's a lonely experience, driving a long distance alone at night, with no-one to talk to. For Ivan Locke in 2013's Locke, it's a lonelier experience because he does have people to talk to--his wife Katrina, who's leaving him; Bethan, a woman he had a one night stand with who's going into labour; his boss, who wants to fire him; his sons, who can't understand why he's not home watching football; and his subordinate at work who's up the creek without a paddle without Ivan. An entire film set inside a car with one visible actor, the film is almost an academic exercise and yet it is genuinely effective.

There are other characters in the film but they're only voices on the speaker phone. Ivan (Tom Hardy) also talks to his deceased father whose presence I found to be suggested by two headrest supports that look like eyes.

I don't know if that was intended or if Ivan was meant to be talking to an empty seat but it was nicely eerie. Ivan was the unintended child resulting from his father's indiscretion and, as he explains to the phantom, he's keen not to repeat that mistake. Though he does stress rather awkwardly at times that he doesn't know Bethan (Olivia Colman) even as he tries to comfort her while she's in labour. She complains that waiting for him is like "waiting for Godot" he's taking so long. He doesn't get it and she becomes angry at having slept with someone who doesn't share her passions.

Ivan's wife, Katrina (Ruth Wilson), also reveals a lack of sympathy with Ivan's priorities when he reveals to her that he's still trying to make sure a crucial construction job goes off without a hitch even though driving to London for Bethan means he won't be there for the job in the morning and he's going to be fired.

I rather liked the film's attention to Ivan's construction job. I loved that Ivan's sense of honour is so heartfelt that he wants to see the job done properly regardless of whether he's going to be rewarded. How often do we see that kind of work ethic in film, particularly for something as lacking in glamour as pouring concrete? It's really refreshing.

Director Steven Knight keeps things visually interesting by playing with lens focus, different lighting from passing cars, and camera angles, the ride never becomes monotonous even as the stifling feeling of being locked, if you will, in a car when so much of Locke's life is in critical condition comes across quite well. More than anything, though, it's Tom Hardy's performance that sells it as a man very earnest about doing what he sees as the right thing even though he has the nagging worry there are aspects about his life he's failed to examine properly.

Uneven and So Visible

It may be impossible to define oneself without having other people for contrast. One's spouse may provide a consistent reflection of differences and similarities becoming as essential as a limb but for identity. So much so that the loss of a spouse, through death or separation, may be such an insuperable loss that one attempts suicide or reflexively creates a surrogate for the spouse. 1968's The Odd Couple shows two men in this predicament who bond through their mutual need for this other. It's a very funny film with great performances from Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, particularly Walter Matthau.

The film opens with Felix (Lemmon) attempting suicide while the looping theme song plays on the soundtrack, a lightly troubled tune which seems to both belittle and sympathise with Felix's dilemma. His wife has just announced she wants a separation so the devoted husband and father finds himself absolutely bereft. When he can't get the window open in the lofty hotel room he rents to throw himself out of, he hurts his back, so decides to wander the town until winding up back at the usual weekly poker game at Oscar's (Matthau) apartment.

One thing leads to another and the fastidious Felix ends up moving in with the sloppy Oscar. Oscar's apartment is huge with several bedrooms, a relic of his own failed marriage. He seems much better adjusted than Felix not only because he's had more time but there seems to be a flexibility permitted by Oscar's careless mode of life that is not allowed into Felix's tightly organised world. The battles the two have over the cleanliness of the apartment become like manifestations of their respective psychological issues--Oscar's fear of confronting the void in his life and Felix's obsession with confronting it.

At the same time, the conflict creates for each man a new complementary other in his roommate. Both accidentally refer to the other using the names of their ex-wives in a rather blatant symbol of this process coming to completion.

Jack Lemmon was great but I really loved Walter Matthau in this film. His delivery is odd and appropriate in such ingenious ways.

It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's a Bat, It's Great, It's Not Bad, It's Finished, It Needs Work, It's an Undisputed Success

There's an article on io9 now about how Warner Brothers studio brass are insisting on adding more Batman to Batman v Superman. "Two years ago, when Ben Affleck was cast as Batman, no one would’ve guessed it could come to this." Yes, it's been two years since we heard Ben Affleck was cast as Batman. For a movie that comes out next year. Gods, this story. It is really starting to fascinate me. In case you hadn't heard, Batman v Superman, which was supposed to be released a couple months ago, was pushed back a year. Warner Brothers CEO Kevin Tsujihara explained:

It was a tough decision at the time because it was going to create a hole in 2015, but it was absolutely the right decision for the franchise, for DC and the movie. Having seen the movie multiple times, and again last night, I'm extremely confident it was the right decision to make the movie better. And it's so important for the studio to get the foundation right on DC.

I think people are shitting their pants at the growing impression that the Spruce Goose just isn't going to fly. But at the same time, the mechanisms cannot be stopped. They've gone all in. Two years on and no-one has seen the Batfleck except in trailers but to keep it alive they have to pump some blood into it. Paying audiences may not have seen Batfleck, but people at the studio have and, just between them and us, he's really good. Oh, he's so good. This movie is definitely going to come out and no-one should worry about it. Stop worrying about it.

That's the latest exciting development in the movie that was supposed to be in the can three months ago. Oh, what glorious gas.

I'm pretty tired from walking in the 104 Fahrenheit weather so here are some photos I've taken recently:

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A temporary sleeve of black has stretched.
Across the card a cup demolished quotes.
Reclining peaks of salamanders fetched
Reprove a mess of holiday bound boats.
Computer hopes negotiate with lives.
Transporters won't report broken waistcoats.
When Bilbo's buttons were given for tithes
Gargoyles looted necks for their ascots.
Spaghetti hidden under collars wait.
The seeds of citrus condemnation root.
On aprons scissors slip off to their fate.
A dizzy deity shoved hearts in soot.
Virginia no the mark is a spider.
I'll ignore there are flies in the rider.

Gangster Gravity

How do you escape the yakuza when the yakuza own every operation in the country? A young man makes a go of it after he falls in love with a boss's daughter in 1964's The Flower and the Angry Waves (花と怒濤), possibly the least experimental Seijun Suzuki movie I've seen so far but it's not a bad film. It was certainly fascinating to see a yakuza movie about how Japanese organised crime runs industrial labour in a situation not dissimilar to the one depicted in On the Waterfront.

Ogata (Akira Kobayashi), the young man, flees his old crew and takes a job in a mining operation while his lover (Chieko Matsubara), the boss's daughter, becomes a waitress.

But Ogata just doesn't blend in. He's got the cool demeanour, something cooler than what's to-day called "swagger", of a top yakuza, the other miners instinctively defer to him and are astonished when he actually does some manual labour.

He quickly rises in the ranks when one of the bosses of the yakuza clan who owns the mining operation is impressed by Ogata's attitude. He captures the interest of three other dangerous individuals--a police detective, a quiet assassin in a broad brimmed hat and red lined black cloak, and the most popular, and unattainable, geisha in town. Here she bares her back to a boss she doesn't like in order to save Ogata's life.

Ogata finds himself increasingly drawn into yakuza business. The further in he goes, the closer the cop and assassin get.

Like Youth of the Beast, most of the interest here comes from Suzuki's visual flair than from the story but it's an enjoyable enough tale.

She Got It Unholy and That ain't Sacred

She's committed the perfect crime, Diana Dors tells us at the beginning of her 1957 film The Unholy Wife. I don't know about perfect but it's pretty clever considering directly admitting to the murder on the witness stand is part of the plan. The second of the two films Dors made in her brief American career, The Unholy Wife is a lot better than I Married a Woman but it's still a deeply flawed film noir and not half as good as some of Dors' efforts in Britain like The Long Haul and Yield to the Night.

The Unholy Wife was directed by John Farrow who had just recently made Back from Eternity, the remake of his own Five Came Back (which I talked about a few days ago). While the Five Came Back movies functioned perfectly well as mostly clever plot exercises, one of the main flaws with Unholy Wife is its attention to plot mechanics which become absurd the moment one starts to imagine real people doing these things instead of people in a movie.

Rod Steiger plays Paul, husband of the unholy one, Phyllis (Dors). In charge of a winery in Napa valley, an important part of the story is his bizarre family tradition of never locking the door (that could've been the tagline for promotions--"He didn't lock the doors and he couldn't lock--Diana Dors!"). This peculiar practice was clearly invented to fill a necessary link in the chain of Phyllis' plot which involved shooting either her husband or her lover and then claiming that she'd thought it was a prowler who'd come through the door. A gun is conveniently located in a drawer by the entrance. No-one stops to think about the contradiction of having a door always open to strangers and a gun next to the door at all times. Our doors are open to all, but we might kill you.

The worse thing is that characters get so caught up in figuring out the whys and what fors of who killed or didn't kill who that people seem to forget to feel very upset when family members or dear friends die. Method actor Rod Steiger remedies this a little with a characteristically great performance that sticks out like a sore thumb. Dors tells the story from a prison cell where her hair is put in a dowdy ponytail in a clear attempt to channel some of her performance in Yield to the Night but mostly she never really stretches her legs here. I saw an interview with Steiger who said he felt Dors was never permitted to be as good an actor as she could have been. The two supposedly had an affair, it might have been interesting to see a Diana Dors who took up method acting under Steiger's tutelage.

The film isn't exactly bad. There's a nice thought towards ruminations on fundamentally good or evil people that's sabotaged quite a bit by the mechanical quality of the story. And so it was back to Britain for Ms. Dors.

The Unholy Wife is another one that's just about impossible to find. I watched it on Daily Motion, which tends to be a bit more lenient than YouTube, but since the last time I posted a whole movie on my blog it was immediately taken down I think I'll avoid embedding another one here for now unless it's indisputably public domain. I wonder if I have a narc among my readers.

A Pitt for All Doctors

The great Ingrid Pitt, star of some memorable Hammer horror films and a supporting player in The Wicker Man, appeared in two Doctor Who serials. The above image is from the 1972 Third Doctor story The Time Monster, my favourite Third Doctor story. Pitt came back to Doctor Who to play a scientist in the 1984 Fifth Doctor story Warriors of the Deep, an inferior story and Pitt was given inferior hair, makeup, and costume.

A big contrast to the ravishing image she presented just a year before in a BBC production of A Comedy of Errors.

Around this time, Pitt was also trying to participate in Doctor Who in another fashion--she and her husband wrote a script for the Sixth Doctor a year after Warriors of the Deep. That script, The Macro Men, was rejected but was finally produced as an audio play in 2010, just months before Pitt's death, starring Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor and Nicola Bryant as his companion Peri.

Gods only know why this script was rejected originally though it was par for the course in a season defined by a series of bad decisions. The Macros, as the audio play was retitled, isn't one of the best Doctor Who stories but it's at least as good as anything that appeared in Colin Baker's run, saving possibly only Robert Holmes' scripts. Possibly it was rejected due to the fact that the story partly concerns The Philadelphia Experiment and in 1984 a Hollywood film based on the same subject was released. Pitt's script is a bit weirder than that movie, though.

The TARDIS materialises on the time jumping ship, the USS Eldridge, which had been the subject of an experimental invisibility shield--essentially a cloaking device--during World War II. That much is part of the real legend. The Doctor and Peri find most of the crew unable to see or hear them, endlessly repeating the same actions for years. The story feels much more like genuine science fiction than Doctor Who usually does as the plot ends up concerning energy uses and distorted cultural perspectives in the form of a microscopic society where slave labour is employed to produce less energy than what's stored in a torch battery the Doctor has in his pocket.

In real life, Pitt, as a child, was placed in a concentration camp in World War II and barely survived. With this in mind, the strange story of terrible military power pursued by culturally isolated minds or leading to chaotic results rather than peace or dominance takes on a poignant light. The story's not perfect--the Doctor comes off as oddly naive in several scenes in order to move the plot along, but Pitt overcomes one of the more infamous shortcomings of the Sixth Doctor era by having the Doctor and Peri actually expressing concern and affection for each other. I wouldn't mind seeing this story adapted for television now in the new series.

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Tower goblets shine with spider vintage.
Waiting dresses've filled with Shallot dreams.
Mason shoes ring like stones from stair vantage.
Verdant spectator cooks close meat in seams.
The spam has decomposed within the can.
A blank recall consigned the whale to Oz.
For whoever returns the red old van.
There's plenty now of grain to right the odds.
Accountant games of grapefruit blitz have stopped.
Apocalyptic allergies gel down.
The talking fabric was Christened in shop.
Revoked permissions fast mutate the town.
Blueberry semblance brought up ocean stars.
The cherry blossom wings pierce passing cars.

Satan's Root Beer Float

It seems like sexually experienced adults have been obsessed with virgins since the beginning of time. Is it just the idea that sex is more pleasurable or painful when it's new, making someone look more important in the eyes of the virgin, or is the wouldbe deflowerer motivated also by a quest for their own lost innocence? Thirteen year old Lila finds herself pursued by both mortal men and the undead in 1973's Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural. Despite its name, this isn't a kid's movie but a delightful, wicked adult fantasy managing a consistently effective style despite its low budget.

Lila, played convincingly enough by twenty year old Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith, is the sweet, pretty daughter of a gangster who's being brought up by a reverend (Richard Blackburn, also the director) who dresses like a nineteenth century southern plantation owner.

One evening she sneaks out after receiving a letter from her father asking to see her--her plan is to meet her father so she can forgive him, so absolutely pure hearted she is. She stows away in the back of a neighbour's car to get to the next town and overhears one of them talking about how much he'd like to fuck her and speculating how much the reverend wants to fuck her. This is confirmed by Lila's flashbacks where we see the reverend acting twitchy at Lila's physical proximity.

After leaving the neighbours and dealing with a bus station attendant who gives her chocolates because he also wants to fuck her, she gets a ride on a little bus with no other passengers. It's the only bus going to her destination, the town of Astaroth, a name which ought to be a warning flag to the church going Lila but she doesn't seem to pay it any mind. The bus driver talks to her about the town in an apparent reference to Shadow Over Innsmouth, talking about how the people of Astaroth have the infamous "Astaroth look". When the bus is attacked by rotting corpses we see it's not by any means a subtle look.

Eventually Lila finds herself in the home of a group of vampires led by Lemora (Lesley Gilb) who, of course, also wants Lila's body. Lemora seems obsessed particularly with turning children and she has a whole gang of blood drinking youngsters.

The story's eschewing of thematic subtlety is matched by the brashness of its visual style, not only in the extremes of innocent, pale little Lila contrasted with zombies and sunken eyed vampires, but in the constant use of unmistakably artificial lighting, giving the film a cracked fairy tale feel. It doesn't take place in anything resembling our world and achieves an odd subtlety for its lack of subtlety, like a weird dream.

Bat the Ball Quickly

What do you do about a dying catcher? Robert De Niro plays a sweet, not particularly bright young baseball catcher in 1973's Bang the Drum Slowly but the movie is not so much about him as it is about how his teammates deal with his impending death from Hodgkin's disease. A not particularly profound meditation on death it has some charm in its interplay between the goofy bunch of guys who play for the fictional New York Mammoths.

Watching from the perspective of someone in the twenty first century, it's amazing to see a time when baseball players couldn't afford the top of the line medical treatment and frequently had other jobs. A great catcher who comes out of retirement to train Bruce (De Niro) has taken a job as an English teacher.

Some of the players even supplement their income with petty graft. The film features a fictional card game called "T.E.G.W.A.R." which stands for "The Exciting Game Without Any Rules" but you don't tell the mark that. Basically when some gullible, star-struck lug sits down with two recognisable baseball players already pretending to play the players just make up rules as they go that result in the mark losing his money, relying on the mark being to embarrassed to admit he doesn't know the rules.

Bruce's best friend and at first the only guy who knows he's sick is star pitcher Henry Wiggen (Michael Moriarty) who in negotiating his contract raises eyebrows as he requires a clause that he and Bruce come as a package--if they want to sign Henry, they have to sign Bruce too. If Henry's traded, Bruce goes with him. No-one agrees to this absurd requirement and Henry won't explain why he's made it. Then the manager, Dutch (Vincent Gardenia) comes in the room and complains about it at length before telling Henry he'll agree to this this one time because "something in your eyes tells me I've got to."

The film frequently indulges in this sort of magical sentimentality. Character goofiness and irascibility sets the stage and then melts away at the very end of the scene with something that's supposed to stab you in the heart. This movie is one of the films when people started to really notice Robert De Niro and I don't want to suggest he gives a bad performance. But his character is one of the reasons the movie doesn't quite hit it out of the park.

Bruce is pure. He's more humble than everyone else, always ready to step aside, he's happy to sign all his money over to a woman who's obviously just into him for that purpose. He's an average player but he really tries. In most any other actor's hands he would be intensely annoying but De Niro makes him a believable, good hearted young guy. But, again, this movie isn't about him as much as it is about the people around him and most of the movie consists of lines of comedic plot. Like the way everyone else finds out Bruce is dying--Henry finally tells one guy who swears secrecy. Later we find out of course he tells his wife because he tells her everything. She tells another guy's wife who tells him, etcetera, you've heard this one before.

Any movie about someone dealing with a terminal disease is always going to remind me of Ikiru. There you have a more honest contemplation of death because Watanabe is far from pure, not everyone loves him. Bang the Drum Slowly says, isn't it horrible when a really good man dies? Ikiru says, what do you do if you're going to die?

A Hot Day Under Occupation

When stripped of pride and when the bonds of love are revealed to be meaningless, are human beings lost animals? Or was it all delusion to begin with? Seijun Suzuki's 1964 film Gate of Flesh (肉体の門) is another of the many great Japanese films to emerge in the three decades after World War II, nearly all of which in some way deal with the aftermath of Japan's loss in the war, thematically or explicitly. Gate of Flesh chooses a group of prostitutes working in U.S. occupied Japan to tell a story of cynicism born of wounds and one woman's breakdown as she discovers she lacks the capacity for that cynicism.

The film is told mainly through the perspective of Maya (Yumiko Nogawa), a young woman who joins an unusual brothel, a group of women who manage themselves without pimp or madam, only paying tribute to the local yakuza.

The film features conspicuous stylisation alongside attempts on a low budget to create a realistic reconstruction of the miserable conditions following the war. The women lived in a bombed out building of twisted and burnt brick and pipes, each woman always wearing a distinct colour. When Maya joins she's wearing an ordinary navy blue dress but soon she's assigned the colour green and wears that for the rest of the film.

One could read it as reflecting her innocence, the fact that she's "green" or new to the trade, or her connexion to genuine nature as she's the only one who's unable to completely bury her feelings. We learn she was raped some time before joining the women and was taken in by an American army chaplain and for a time she'd found the new faith something of a solace after her rape and the death of her brother who'd been a soldier.

The women develop a nostalgia for pre-War Japan and refuse to have sex with American soldiers. This after we've witnessed prostitutes throwing themselves in the road to stop American cars before dragging the soldiers out. The small, independent group of prostitutes slowly seem to become proud of being able to maintain an ideology without the pure profit motive of a pimp controlling them. They institute another rule--no free sex. Any of the group caught having free sex will be beaten and humiliated as we see early on when a former member is left outside wearing only a net on a little boat.

Things get complicated when a fugitive ex-soldier, Ibuki (Joe Shishido), sneaks in and takes residence by force. One of the women describes it as primal law as Ibuki stays by his physical strength alone since Roku (Tomiko Ishii), the prostitute in red and the closest the group has to a leader, is unable to beat Ibuki up. But he doesn't rape them or assault them in any other way--though when they hit him he hits back--he just wants a place to sleep and lie low.

All of the women quickly become attracted to him but because of their rule it remains a subject of growing tension. The rule becomes doubly important because any woman who does have sex with Ibuki will invoke the jealousy of the rest. It becomes a particularly troubling issue for Maya for whom Ibuki brings back memories of her brother who died in the war.

Ibuki performs a sort of strip tease for them one night when he gets drunk and he acts out marching in formation and singing an old patriotic song. In the bombed out building, stripping for prostitutes, it's hard to imagine a more painfully brash symbol for the bruised and undead lump that had become of the ardent pride the nation took in itself before the war. No, it's not subtle, but I think it works because the film generally has a hot lamp quality, the tired and sweaty bodies we're shown again and again without the shield any comforting belief, faces always forced into the camera.

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Green telephone wires wither in blue.
Faded wind shambles across fronting cloud.
An idle goblin lawyer sweats to sue.
Wooden barristers grow apace, unbowed.
Obstinate mem'ries of Rubik's cubes vex.
Riot hued puzzles have hewn Moche brick.
Potted faces tell of infinite sex.
Exhausted candles consume God's own wick.
Eight bumble bees design a flower's fate.
Twice four is equal to honey makers.
All overlapping names and numbers cannot wait.
The NEET shepherd wants any nymph takers.
Cold colour rainbows show on bright display.
Opaque waters no jellyfish conveyed.

The Right Steel and the Wrong

Metal is useful, it makes for great tools and weapons. But if you're not careful metal can take over your town and steal your women. 1950's The Magic Sword (Чудотворни мач) shows us what happens when a horde of metal men are unleashed on humanity. A charmingly straight forward adaptation of Serbian folk tales there's also just a hint of influence from Errol Flynn Hollywood.

Mostly it breezes along the way folk tales do without pausing to marvel for special effects. As the film opens, a little boy and his grandfather are hunting. The old man misses a shot but refuses to admit it and so sends the boy and the dog off to retrieve the kill.

The boy and dog roam far and wide eventually hearing a voice crying for help the boy mistakes for his grandfather. Instead it's the voice of someone or something held captive in a barrel in the dungeon of an abandoned castle.

This episode serves to emphasise the threat of the film's villain when the boy, Nebojsa, grows to be a man now played by Rade Markovic whose life is spared once by the metal men invading his village only because as a boy he'd freed the metal leader from the barrel.

The metal men are impervious to normal weapons so Nebojsa goes off to find a magic sword. On the way, he makes friends with a fish, wins a leprous horse from a witch, and woos the heart of a beautiful and cagey empress. All the while, his bride, Vida (Vera Llic-Dukic), is being held captive by the metal leader.

Like Penelope endlessly weaving her tapestry in The Odyssey, Vida has convinced the metal leader that she needs to make a fine set of clothing for her intended before she can be touched by him. So while Nebojsa is out on his odyssey, Vida has to keep up this ruse.

The film is well shot, the action sequences aren't bad, the special effects are a little weak, but the actors and the unhesitant and smooth delivery of the tale make it work wonderfully.