The Unseen #61 Mannaja

Why Did I Buy It?: Mannaja AKA A Man Called Blade AKA Manna(tomahawk)a was bequeathed to me at the great Insomniac closing.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: The Spaghetti Western is a funny genre. One where a blind watch can end up delivering stylistically ambitious, violently operatic action film or just as easily deliver something that makes you lose all lingering traces of your faith in humanity (Take Four For The Apocalypse which features the regrettably unforgettable sight of Michael J. Pollard getting his ass served. Literally.)

Given that the director Sergio “Chuckles” Martino is best known for such classy demure films as Mountain Of The Cannibal God, 2019: After The Fall Of New York and the immortal Torso and that the back cover of Blue Underground’s DVD boasts “including the famous eyeball torture scene” (not quite the draw you think it is guys) I thought I was safe in assuming that Mannaja was one of the latter.

But what can I say? The announcement for the new Django movie got me in the mood for a spaghetti western.

How Was It?: An unfortunately  large part of The Unseen has involved watching movies that are not as awesome as they look. A Man Called Blade is the welcome exception to the rule, a movie that is exactly as awesome as it looks. For all the hype about the violence Mannaja isn’t all that bad. It’s not exactly mellow, after all the film’s gimmick is that the hero prefers chopping off people’s hands with tomahawks to using a gun (something that yields mixed results). Sure it’s gory and somewhat sadistic but show me a Spaghetti Western that isn’t- 

...OK show me one that doesn’t star Terrence Hill that isn’t

There’s not much to set A Man Called Blade apart from the average Spaghetti Western. It’s just one of those movies that manages to embody the tropes of their genre with admirable efficiency. There are Great Danes, a hero who does his best impersonation of Franco Nero and a bad guy who does his best impersonation of Henry Fonda in Once Upon A Time In The West (and speaks in a Germanic accent because of course he does) a rich puritan who owns the town, cheerful whores, torture scenes, great quantities of mud, blood, fog and dust and a terrible terrible theme song which is not sung but droned. (Seriously you could find any drunk at closing time and have him croon Karaoke style to the lyrics of A Man Called Blade and they would sing it better then the person they actually got to sing the theme song. I guarantee it.) Basically you could show this to someone who has never seen a spaghetti western and afterwards they’d have a complete understanding of the subgenre.

Really you could do a lot worse for a hypothetical ambassador. The film has tighter  (not to mention more coherent) plotting then the average Spaghetti Western and Sergio Martino has a great sense of gothic atmosphere and a keen eye for action. Though the film like all Spaghetti Westerns revels in the grotesque it isn’t overwhelmed by it. A Man Called Blade is simply a fine example of its subgenre. 

POSTSCRIPT:

So word on the street is that there's a certain script making its way around the interwebs. Not that I support the deplorable practice of Script trading. But if a faithful TTDS reader wants to send a certain PDF to bryced021@hotmail.com I'd be very much obliged.

The Unseen #60: The Beast From Haunted Cave

Why’d I Buy It?: Bought during my completist phase, that heady time when fueled by the cocaine in the seventies like atmosphere of the DVD boom I was for some reason convinced that to appreciate someone’s work you had to own it. To any young cinephiles reading this I can only highly suggest that you skip this phase. Not only will you save a lot of dough, but you will also save innumerable man hours of having to explain when people ask “Why the fuck do you own that?”

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: Out of all the sacred cows Monte Hellman is perhaps the one I feel least sacred about. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m more than happy to acknowledge that perhaps I just don’t get it. Nevertheless the fact remains, that I just don’t get it. I mean I can see how his quasi existential soporifically paced, sorta genre films could seem real interesting if you’ve never seen an Alejandro Jodorowsky films, or for that matter a Jim Jarmusch, Jean Pierre Melville or a Sam Fuller one. But the fact is that I have seen a lot of Jean Pierre Melville movies, and I think he along with a lot of other people get what Hellman’s going for and do it markedly better. Why bother with an also ran?

How Was It?: Though you might find it hard to believe The Beast From Haunted Cave Bears plenty of Hellman finger prints. From the elliptical dialogue, stagy (as in Meissner) acting, and believe it or not, Hellman’s trademark dirge pacing. I’m unsure how that last one is possible in a movie that more or less reaches seventy minutes on a technicality. (Monte Hellman founder of Mumblecore?)

The film follows a group of thieves who hire a hapless ski instructor to take them out of the mountains after a heist. After being caught in a blizzard the gang and the instructor are forced to hole up in the instructor’s cabin and wait out the storm. Oh and the monster. They have to try and wait that out too.

This is the kind of plotting that shows why Helleman is so name checked by the likes of Tarantino. By making a gangster film turn into a horror film Hellman was making a mash up film before such a thing existed. It wouldn’t be too far off the mark to call the film Key Largo, with the hurricane replaced by the monster

The problem is, as always with a Hellman film this all sounds a lot more interesting than it actually is. Everyone just kind of mopes around, including the monster who is a pretty poor one even by the lenient standards of the AIP Era Monster. To say the film lacks the snappy pace and elegance of the classic era filmmaking would be an understatement. This is the sort of movie that uses the phrase “you dig?” unironically. And the lead’s quasi Thoreau mumblings make him seem like he’s still really pissed about losing the lead of All That Heaven Allows to Rock Hudson.

“Movies Are about Motion And Emotion.” Hellman wrote in an essay about Richard Linklater’s Slacker, yet the problem with Hellman is that I have rarely seen a director who made movies so drained of either.

The Unseen #59: At The Circus

Why’d I Buy It?: Came In The MGM Marx Brothers Boxset I Bought.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: The Dirt poor reputation of the post Day At The Races Marx Brothers Comedies. But then I found Room Service to be relatively painless. And hey one of my favorite underrated Golden Age Comedies is The Circus and how could the Marx Brother’s spreading mayhem at a circus not be fun?!! Hey maybe I was in for a treat after all!

How Was It?: Relatively dire. If Room Service was pleasant surprise, a minor but energetic and effective farce, then At The Circus is unfortunately exactly the later day studio micromanaged Marx Brothers film you’ve heard it is. The gags fall flat a disorienting amount of the time. The four leads look palpably tired. Worst of all entire swatches of the movie are taken up by the romantic troubles of the bland couple at the center and their truly, truly terrible songs. They fret how to save their circus from the evil loan sharks who robbed them (if only his wealthy aunt could help!) and then sing and sing flat tuneless songs. Every now and again one of the brothers shows up. It takes a full five minutes for one of the Brothers to even make an appearance. Almost fifteen until Groucho appears. That’s not disappointing. That’s near criminal.

It’s not to say that the movie is completely worthless. For Marx completests it’s worthwhile for Groucho’s performance of Lydia The Tattooed Lady, perhaps the last truly iconic routine The Marx’s cooked up. In an odd bit of synchrony with Room Service the one truly stellar sight gag moment is an animal based . This time with Harpo trying to hold an umbrella over a circus seal during a downpour.

But to get to these moments of gold you once again have to sit through some truly interminable filler, which when it’s not boring is just off putting and strange. Like the huge African American musical number dedicated to how weird Harpo Marx is. Really. I didn’t just make it up. It actually happens. Admittedly, while about as far from PC as you can get it’s hard not to be charmed by a musical number devoted to what a mutant Harpo Marx is.

The back half of the film picks up a bit. The invaluable Margo Dumont shows up and the sight of feature Groucho harassing an elderly dowager is one of those things that simply does not get old.

But even the isolated bright moments just feel like the pale reflections of past glories. At The Circus sags under the weight of all too apparent studio mandates, and it shows the Brother’s hearts aren’t in it. At The Circus is a depressingly dispirited movie from the kings of spirited anarchic comedy.

The Unseen #57: Rambo First Blood Part II Vs. The Expendables

Why’d I Buy It?: Came in the Rambo Boxset, which if I recall was actually five dollars less then the single disc Rambo.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: I’m kind of at a loss on this one. I like most of the kids who grew up in the VHS boom am very well versed in this particular brand of OOTP 80’s action. And yet I’ve never gotten around to watching what is arguably the apex (or nadir depending on your point of view) of the genre. The film that embodied every meathead cliché the subgenre had to offer, whose very name has become a synonym for Hyper Testosterone driven mayhem. It’s not like I was unaware of the Rambo series either, First Blood is a great grungy thriller, and if you’re avoiding it for its association with the franchise you’re missing out on one of the greatest B-Movies ever made. I even have a good deal of affection for Rambo, whose final third is a bloodbath of such staggering proportions that I can’t help but shake my head in awe at it.

So why avoid Rambo First Blood Part II? Like I said it’s tough to put my finger on, it’s not Just the risible “Do we get to win this time?” politics of it, stomaching conservative politick is part and parcel of watching 80’s action movies. It’s just that Rambo II always seemed just too much. Let’s put it this way I love Rock but I don’t listen to a lot of Ted Nugent or David Lee Roth either.


How Was It?: Bizarre. For a movie reputed to be one of the most over the top action films of all time Rambo II gets off to a surprisingly sleepy start. The first half hour is almost pure exposition, involving Rambo being released from Prison to go on a mission to find American POWs. Betrayed by the evil CIA Rambo does what he’s best at. Killun’.

But really up until the forty five minute mark Rambo First Blood Part II is a surprisingly compact little action movie. There are a few sequences, particularly a shootout on a boat that makes good use of the enclosed spaces and lethal speed of a gun battle, that are just first rate action filmmaking. I began to compose the revisionist review in my head. And then we hit that halfway mark…

…Oh my.

Suffice to say, almost like clockwork Rambo II becomes exactly the movie you’ve heard it is. There’s a good ten minutes of straight torture that would make Mel Gibson roll his eyes. There are spurious Russian Villians who make Ivan Drago look like a sympathetic fully rounded character. There is Rambo shooting wave after wave of a seemingly inexhaustible supply of baddies. There are exploding arrows shot into torsos and large pieces of machinery. There is speechifying. Oh lordy there is speechifying. And Stallone gets to deliver his trademark fuming “I Hate You So Bad. I’m Going To Kill You So Hard!” Glare whilst hyperventilating.

Is it good? Is it bad? It is tough to quantify. Let us suffice to say that it is very, very Nugent.


The Expendables on the other hand is not very Nugent at all.

Warning here there be spoilers…

Ahem…

You Can’t Have A Movie Called The Expendables In Which Nobody Dies.

That’s Stupid.

Furthermore You Can’t Have A Movie Named After A Team And Not Have The Team Show Up For A Good 2/3rds Of The Movie.

That’s Also Stupid.

The Movie Was Not Called Jason Statham And Sylvester Stallone Fuck Around.

It Was Called The Expendables.

As In A Team Of Expendable People In Which Nobody Is.

Now look, I’m sure there’ll those who argue that I’m missing the point here. But I haven’t seen a movie this tonally confused since The Wolfman. Is it a movie that is seriously trying to follow the consequences of a life of violence. Mickey Rourke’s monologue about The horrors of war, made hilarious by Sylvester Stallone’s baffled reaction shots certainly seems to think so. Is it a fun gore cartoon ultimate action movie? If it is it sure plays it close to its chest.

The Expendables is at the end of the day just another film that hedges its bets. It wants to have its cake and eat it too in almost every element. It won’t commit either to over the top spectacle or serious Peckinpah style last stand. It wants to be a team movie but it doesn’t feature a team. It features one of the most insulting final scenes I’ve ever seen in a film. It is a movie called The Expendables in which no one dies.

On the plus side my friends and I will now occasionally turn to each other and gravely intone “It is good to hang pirates.”

So it has that going for it.
.

The Unseen #56: 800 Bullets

Why’d I Buy It?: Was bequeathed to me during the legendary Insomniac closing.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: I have absolutely no idea. It wasn’t like nobody told me.

I first heard of 800 Bullets when it was released and made it on half the top ten lists of the AICN guys (and say what you will about them, but they’re commitment to spreading world cinema was and is admirable). I filed it away in my “must watch” bin and then never got around to seeing it.

Then the Insomniac closed and I was given a copy. “Sweet” I thought, “Now I can get around to finally seeing this!” And then I didn’t.

THEN Neil over at Agitation Of The Mind raved about the film (He's also responsible for the below screencap). I pulled it out of my Unseen pile and went “Yep now it’s finally time to watch it.” AND THEN I STILL DIDN’T DO IT!

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him watch a kick ass movie while he’s there.

How Was It?: You know how there are certain movies you’re pissed you didn’t watch sooner because that means by its very definition you’ve limited the number of viewing you have of it?

800 Bullets is one of those.

Imagine a movie Steven Spielberg might have made if he was obsessed with spaghetti westerns and binged non stop on tequila and whores through the writing, shooting and post production of the film.

800 Bullets is the story of a fatherless boy who discovers his grandfather is still alive and travels to Portugal to find him. The Grandfather a “legend in his own mind” stuntman lives and works at “The Village.” An old set for Spaghetti Westerns that no one ever bothered to tear down. There are he and a band of miscreants from the old days perform a Wild West Show For increasingly small and nonplussed crowds. Telling the same old stories about being friends with Clint Eastwood and fucking Raquel Welch, which become less believed in each repeating. After the usual gruff rebuffs turn to affection arc, Grandfather and Grandson bond over whores, hard drinking, arson, violence and mayhem and the rest of the code of the Spaghetti Western way. The kids like eight. It’s awesome.

The Grandfather is a fascinating character. A hard living blowhard made lovable despite his flaws. The movie deserves credit for never flinching from those flaws. The film never excuses him. But there are moments and I’m being vague here to keep from giving away the film, were the bravado drops and you see the decades of pain and self doubt that have been eating him alive behind the façade for years.

If the first half of 800 Bullets is surprisingly sweet natured (somehow in all the years of hearing about the film I never really figured out it was centered around a child) the second half grows apocalyptic and while it’d be unfair to say just how this happens, suffice to say the ending of 800 Bullets could easily rival The Great Silence for starkness, while always holding on to the romance that the greatest Spaghetti Western’s promised under all the grime.

Still no matter which mode it’s in 800 Bullets is the type of exuberant filmmaking, headily in love with both the world of spaghetti westerns and the world of it’s ramshackle characters.

The only problem I have with 800 Bullets is the harsh digital stock it’s shot in is completely wrong for the film. DV is a great tool and sorely tempting for any filmmaker on a budget, but if ever there was a film that begged for the soft dusty tones of it’s ancestors it’s 800 Bullets. And the fact that such a loving tribute to Spaghetti Westerns looked nothing like one, annoyed me.

Still don’t put off a viewing of 800 Bullets like I did. It will only lead to terrible regret.

The Unseen #55: Room Service

Why’d I Buy It?: Came included in the Marx Brother’s box set I purchased.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: The post Night Of The Opera MGM Marx Brother’s films have a reputation set firmly between dire and dismal. Studio edicts forced the brothers off of the A List and into increasingly crummy B pictures into which inane subplots featuring “normal” leads were shoe horned in.

I unlike the MGM executives of yore have never been deranged enough to let the thought, “I’d like to see The Marx Brothers movie. Only I want the brothers to be toned down and not as funny as they can be. Also I’d like long stretches of the films dedicated to boring people I could care less about." enter my head

As there are enough of the Classic Marx Brothers films to rotate through while remaining fresh, it seemed to me that watching one of the lesser films would be a bit masochistic. Why eat baloney when one has Porter House, or rather Duck Soup, so readily available?

How Was It?: Easier to watch then I anticipated. The film isn’t perfect and has more in common with classic farce then The Brother’s usual brand of free range anarchy (One sublime moment involving an inconveniently alive turkey notwithstanding). The Brother’s play a troupe of Theater Impresarios trying to secure their funding while outwitting a hotel manager trying to thwart them.

There’s no denying that the focus is firmly on The Brothers. While a few drab “straight” leads do show up, they act not so much as focuses for the film as targets for the Brother’s madness.

Really what is missing isn’t the anarchy, but the scope. Even though The Brother’s films were always brisk, the range of action in them, particularly Duck Soup and Opera are borderline epic. With plenty of sets, locations, and extras to play along. Room Service on the other hand is made up of the two aforementioned extended set pieces. One in which the Brother’s attempt to keep from being thrown out of their hotel room, and one in which they attempt to escape it, glued together by a few scenes. It’s essentially one set, and hardly more then a half dozen actors. The Brothers are at this point in their career very much property of the B unit. The film has CHEAP stamped on its forehead.

There is no denying that the lack of freedom and more formalized script bound humor make for a lesser film then The Brother’s masterpieces. But it is impossible to place the Marx’s in an enclosed space and not have something funny happen and as mentioned before there are a few brushes with the old brilliance.

On the whole the experience has to be called “Less then painful.” If the likes of Room Service was all The Marx Brother’s had to show it’s highly doubtful they’d be remembered as the comic geniuses that they are. But taken in context with their work, it’s a low key pleasant exercise. Should all of The MGM films prove this painless I shall think them very underrated.

The Unseen #53: The Good Guys And The Bad Guys

(Oh Christ if only...)

Why’d I Buy It?: Came In The Robert Mitchum Boxset I Purchased (Last One Of These)

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: I’ve always heard it was kind of a piece of shit.

How Was It?: Funnily enough it was kind of a piece of shit.

That being said I always find it tough to be hard on the shitty movies of days of yore. Even a movie like this which I got virtually no enjoyment out of, has a sort of base line to it absent in today’s abominably bad cinema. The Good Guys And The Bad Guys is a movie because someone had an idea, convinced other people to make the idea and then shot the film. Now why that idea doesn’t work can be chalked up to various factors. Factors like the fact that despite it bills itself as a comedy it is never really funny, or seems to be especially trying to be. Or the fact that it saddles itself with an overbearing and fucking terrible folk score that narrates the action as obtrusively as possible (Imagine that Altman had wished for The McCabe And Ms. Miller score on The Monkey’s Paw and you’re halfway there). But one of those factors wasn’t that the film was market tested and demographed to within an inch of its life. And thus even in its awfulness has a certain organicness to its nature that prevents it from passing the last event horizon into truly unredeemable dreadful.

The Good Guys and Bad Guys, stars Robert Mitchum and George Kennedy as the titular Guys. They both sleepwalk through the film. Relying so heavily on their schtick that it’s a genuine surprise it doesn’t crack under their weight. They’re old cowboys who done outlived their time and run smack into the modern age. Why Mitchum even has to run the whores out of town!

Mitchum can't get any of the townspeople to believe him, or get all that upset when he tells them that Kennedy his old nemesis is riding into town for a robbery. He's unceremoniously retired, but goes out to stop Kennedy on his own, only to find that Kennedy has been similarly ejected from his gang of young guns.

This might all seem very poignant until you realize, shit The Fucking Wild Bunch (official title) was released that same year. This is not how you tell this story. David Carradine brings some life to it as a character meant to represent a new vicious breed of outlaw. But even he seems just kind of put out more then anything.

The film was directed by Burt Kennedy, whose just one of those guys who always turning up. As a writer he’s responsible for some of the finest Westerns ever written, including most of Budd Boeticher’s. Stuff like Seven Men From Now, The Tall T and also Clint Eastwood’s underrated White Hunter Black Heart. His career as a director is a good deal spottier. He’s responsible for the not “good”, but kind of interesting Raquel Welch revenge flick Hannie Caulder, Support Your Local Sheriff and the woefully misbegotten initial adaptation of The Killer Inside Me. He’s also made the immortally titled Dirty Dingus McGee (Starring Frank Sinatra!)

What’s the point of this? Only that Kennedy had more interesting ways to spend his time and so do you. Not everyone of the above movies is great, or even good. But they all do more then just sit there. Which is all The Good Guys And The Bad Guys does.

The Unseen #52: The Age Of Consent

Why'd I Buy It?: Came in Michael Powell Boxset I Purchased

Why Haven't I Watched It?: It's one of Powell's few post Peeping Tom Films and thus has a slim to none reputation.

How Was It?:Age Of Consent is a deeply flawed film, though ultimately a rewarding one.

James Mason plays an artist who has lost some of his spark. His work, hanging in bourgesis galleries is being evaluated less on it’s aesthetic, and more on how well it will fit in that open space above the fireplace.

Attempting to rejuvenate he retreats to a small island in Australia, where he meets a young Helen Mirren who inspires a late period spurt of creativity. While he in turn inspires in her the self confidence she needs to put the place, and her Gollum like horrible Alkie Grandmother in the rearview.

Had the movie stuck solely to Mason and his relationship with Mirren in this strange place; rekindling both the enjoyment of his art, while unmistakably passing the torch at the end of his career, Age Of Consent may have been a minor masterpiece. As well as a prescient metaphor about the relationship Powell would have with the American New Wave directors.

Unfortunately Powell decides to shoehorn in some rather broad comedy. When I say the film plays this material (and the scenes involving the Grandmother) Broad I mean BROAD. Everything is so shrill and so ugly and ungainly that I was tempted to think this film was directed by some other Michael Powell and was placed in a box set of his work on accident.

Mason’s boorish horny friend comes to the island accompanied by music better suited to a lesser Benny Hill vehicle. He runs around naked on the beach. Women stare at his dong. We also get plenty of comic interludes involving the hick islanders with the exaggeration turned up to eleven. In short a sensitive coming of age/graceful twilight film gets buried under Michael Powell’s Porkys.

And yet it can’t bury it completely.

Mason, who at this point in his career usually just set the temperature to “fey” and waited till the timer went off, is obviously as invested in the movie as Powell. Bringing a string of vulnerability to his artist along with his trademark wit and sophistication. (His Australian Accent wanders in and out at will though).

He's muse is played by a then unknown Helen Mirren. Helen Mirren’s late period hotness is such a matter of public record that it’s difficult to remember that she did not emerge from the womb a sexy septuagenarian. Yet here she is, in her debut roll, young and borderline feral (Also oft naked. But it’s Helen Mirren so that’s not really a surprise). It’s no wonder she inspires Mason, it’s not as simple as sex thing. Indeed that element is only introduced, somewhat awkwardly at the last possible moment, and only the leering theme song (sample lyrics "Cora Cora I love you so/As I've waited Cora and watched you grow/And now that you're reaching The Age of Consent/ The Talking is over/ Love me my Cora" GAH!) generates any real ickiness. It’s just that she has so much of what Mason used to have.

While the film doesn’t have Powell’s usual eye melting visual brilliance, he does bring a meditative air to the film. The best scenes are a pair of long dialogue free passages where the characters simply takes the alieness of their surroundings in. The first in which Mason explores the woods of the island under a canopy of chattering bats, the second a long dreamy underwater swim. In moments like these, and the sensitive story at its center Age Of Consent reveals itself to be a film that no one but Powell could make.

There’s a lovely movie here, you just need to crane your neck a bit to see it.

The Unseen #51: A Matter Of Life And Death

Why’d I Buy It?: Two Michael Powell films for the price of the average forgettable studio blockbuster? With analysis by Scorsese? No way was I passing it by.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: No real reason. It’s always nice to keep a few really juicy titles in reserve.

How Was It?: A Matter of Life And Death starts with a title card informing us that however much the place our young airman, played by David Niven, may look like heaven it is not. And is further more all in the victim’s head. It’s a strange, almost stern opening and it just gets stranger.

The first proper shot is a long slow pan of nothing less then universe in it’s entirety. The shot brings to mind another WWII film concerning angels with the same opening shot, It’s A Wonderful Life. Though while that shot is undercut by a lush soothing score and the a dialogue track composed of prayers, before settling on a cluster of stars revealed to be nothing less then God himself. A Matter Of Life And Death on the other hand, supplies a cool clipped British voice lecturing on the cosmos, before almost reluctantly panning down to consider the Earth, and the second World War.

It’s a curiously unsentimental way to start a film. Particularly one about a young airman who forsakes Heaven for love. The message of It’s A Wonderful Life’s opening shot is that even in the vastness of the universe there is still someone whose looking out for old George Bailey. The message of A Matter Of Life And Death’s opening shot is that against the face of eternity even the defining conflict of the 20th Century amounts to exactly “fuck all”.

Powell and Pressberger did not take the expected approach.

Then again, when did they ever?

This isn’t to say that A Matter Of Life And Death is a joyless film. Far from it, it’s a film of keen wit (In one of the best moments Powell slyly sums up the difference between American’s and Europeans thusly. That upon reaching the afterlife The Americans make a beeline for the Coke machine). And like all the Archer’s films, in terms of visuals it’s staggering in both sophistication and invention. In a keen bit of subversion, life on Earth is presented in Powell’s trademark ultra saturated three strip Technicolor, while the eerie abstract Heaven is presented in monochrome. The cinematography by master Jack Cardiff and production design by Alfred Junge is beyond superlative (What's more in regards to Cardiff, there's a shot of an eyelid closing that nearly short circuited my brain with a case of the "How the fuck did they do thats?")

It’s just that the overall tone of the film is a lot closer to Carnival Of Soul’s then Defending Your Life, despite what the presence of deft comic performers like David Niven and Kim Hunter would have you expect, though they do bring their trademark sophistication to bear, with their unusually touching love story. Though nothing outright “horrifying” happens, things are unsettling in their impersonalness. To once again bring up the It’s a Wonderful Life Parrellel rather then a chubby homely angel begging Niven to cling to life, we have a foppish Frenchman (played by the great Powell regular Maurice Goering) pestering him to embrace death, for reasons no grander then bureaucratic annoyance.

The film was made, like the earlier Cantebury Tale, partially to convince America that allowing England to be bulldozed into the ground by Germany would be a bad idea (Though it wasn’t released until 1946) and thusly the many many pleas for Euro American friendship come off as a little heavy handed.

Yet, these entreaties only further ground the film in it’s particular time and place, and give the film a further sense of urgency (World War II may not mean much to the cosmos but we’re pretty happy that it ended the way it did down here).

A Matter Of Life And Death may in the end, be absolutely nothing like I expected. But it is something better. Just like all of Michael Powell film’s. A beautiful, strange, and meditate film, The Archers prove once more to be the masters of the ineffable cinematic dream state.

The Unseen #50: The Sundowners

Why’d I Buy It?: Came In Robert Mitchum Box set I bought.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: Not a huge Fred Zinneman fan, hadn’t really heard that much about it. But I figured a Robert Mitchum Movie would be the perfect way to celebrate reaching fifty entries in The Unseen.

How Was It?: The Sundowners is one of the most laid back epics ever made. Most films of its era and size rush along in a panic of spectacle, desperate to prove film relevant in the face of Television. Predicated on incident rather than event. The Sundowners takes the opposite route. It’s probably the closest thing we’ll ever come to an old school Hollywood epic directed by Richard Linklater.

The Sundowners follows a family of Sundowners (Australian slang for vagabonds) follow job to job around the country, droving sheep across The Outback. The family is headed up by Robert Mitchum, as always a personification of charisma and cool and the film is lucky enough to be one of the four he did with Deborah Kerr, one of the few women who always seemed able to match him. Rounding out the cast is the incomparably fussy Peter Ustinov as their family friend/sidekick. As always Ustinov happily more or less plays himself. And as always he does so as if there would be no one else who could possibly be more delightful to play.

(Wait... Wut?)

Rather then allowing some artificial crisis, obscure these characters Zinneman pulls back and simply lets us enjoy them.

The conflict such as it is, comes from the desire of Kerr to settle down with her son and Mitchum’s desire to push forever on into the horizon. Still this isn’t handled melodramatically, but with a fairly surprising amount of realism for the time. There are no real histrionics, just another at odds married couple trying to work shit out.

I’ve never been a huge fan of director Frederic Zinneman (though I do admire his A Man For All Seasons) but he directs well here. With a keen unshowy visual eye, a sure hand with the set pieces the film does have (A scene where the family is caught in a forest fire with their flock being the most impressive, with some truly striking imagery) and a judicious use of the local color. The Australian setting adds a well employed sense of the exotic, and some beautiful shot on location footage which captures both the beauty and the harshness of the land. It also presents the opportunity for some of the worst faux Australian accents known to man.

The Sundowners at the end of the day may not remake the wheel. Call it workman like if you must. What it does is present an engaging, entertaining, occasionally wistful and pleasantly human story, with one of the greatest movie stars of all time at its center. Sometimes you just need a good movie to curl up to on a lazy Sunday afternoon and for the classic movie fan The Sundowners fits that bill admirably.

The Unseen #49: The Trip

Why’d I Buy It?: Came in the Roger Corman Boxset I Purchased (Last One Of These!)

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: Indifference.

How Was It?: There is a problem inherent in making any movie about psychedelic. As anyone who has ever dabbled in it even the slightest bit knows, any hallucinations in the Beatles sense of the word is completely secondary to the profound shift in perception that occurs in the user.

(Not entirely accurate)

In other words what’s remarkable isn’t so much that you would meet a clown with the face of a fish who speaks in the voice of your dead auntie. Its that this would not surprise you at all. But it's not even really about that either, its about the sense of connectedness, seeing behind the makings of things however temporarily. A sense of profundity. However fleeting it ultimately silly it may feel in the harsh light of sobriety.

So basically no matter how many fish eyed lens, vibrant colors, quick zoom ins and zoom outs, or how much you shoot in Widescreen without anamorphically adjusting the image you’re never going to capture that intangible feeling. Which is why so many of the most famous psychedelic movies, Fantasia, 2001, The Fountain, have absolutely nothing to do with Psychedelia.

Instead, you’re going to just waste your time and effort looking really really silly.

Which is as you may have guessed exactly what happens in The Trip.

The kind of movie were people do things like were Nehru Jackets and speak lines like “Hey don’t bogart that joint!” whilst wearing them, all without even the slightest whiff of irony..

Peter Fonda plays a young executive suffering from malaise (were there any other kind in the sixties). He procures some acid from Dennis Hopper (always a dicey proposition at best) and with Bruce Dern as his spiritual guide (once again, always a dicey proposition at best) he wanders out into the night on the Sunset Strip. A Place where young nude painted dancers gyrate wildly to music provided by a band called Electric Flag. Brightly colored strobe lights flicker and everything is always canting CANTING CANTING!!! He also wanders in and out of random peoples homes. Giving long winded musings about commercialism, sex and women’s lib. Some are so pleased to find Peter Fonda stoned out of his ever loving gobstobber has deigned to stumble into their home and drop his science that they have no choice but to have sex with him. I have a feeling he would have less success if he tried this now.

Also Bruce Dern pulls him naked from a pool.

It all culminates in the hallucinogenic “Trip” of the title. In which Dennis Hopper wearing purple velvet menaces Fonda as he rides a carousel (Man I’ve been there) and then Fonda looks at pictures of Che Guevera, Sophia Loren, and Khalil Gibran (one of those things is not like the other) with mounting horror until he screams “BAY OF PIGS!!!”

It’s all profoundly inexplicable.

As you might have surmised The Trip is a pretty big turkey. But I think its almost impossible not to have fun with. It’s goofy as you can get, and calling it a time capsule does damage to the right honorable and venerable tradition of Time Capsules.

But every once in awhile it is nice to remember that for however briefly there was a time when Nehru Jackets and a band called Electric Flag were both the very height of cool.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 22: The Unseen #42: The Premature Burial

Why’d I Buy It?: Came with the Roger Corman Boxset I purchased.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: It’s a Corman Poe picture that doesn’t star Vincent Price. Which is like Bruce Springsteen without the E Street Band. Yes The Ghost Of Tom Joad is a very nice album, but no one’s is ever going to confuse it with Darkness On The Edge Of Town or Tunnel Of Love.

How Was It?: Well, better then I expected in segments, and worse in others.

The story as you might have surmised from the title, follows Ray Milland playing a man with a morbid fear of being buried alive. The film is called The Premature Burial, no points for guessing what happens.

I don’t think anyone would argue terribly strenuously, if I said that this is the least of Corman’s Poe Films. It lacks both the frenzied lurid intensity, hallucinogenic color saturated style and strange unearthly beauty of The House Of Usher, Tomb Of Ligeia, and The Masque Of The Red Death. Only Milland’s perfunctory “Drawings O’ Satan” really even wave in this direction.

Furthermore, Milland, though a fine actor in his own right just doesn’t quite hit that same wavelength of melodrama without camp that Price maintained throughout The Poe films.

Worse, the film is narratively disjointed, even for a Corman film. Though all of the Poe Picutures had to leap through all sorts of odd narrative hoops in order to drag their twenty to thirty page source materials into feature length. The Premature Burial takes this to the extreme.

It’s understandable, unlike the other Poe storys which at least give small opportunity to expansion, there’s really not much to deal with in original The Premature Burial. A fellow is buried, it’s a touch premature, he deals with the consequences of this. Oh hey it turns out he was actually on a ship, and just randomly lost his shit. Have fun turning that into 90 minutes, with a poster to bring in the drive in crowd.

So yeah, there’s a whole bunch of filler. Milland builds an elaborate premature burial proof tomb, just so he can destroy it in the subsequent scene. Dark family secrets are disclosed just so they can be forgotten. Long elaborate hallucinogenic nightmare scenes take place just so the film can get that much closer to feature length. Etc. Etc.

This unpredictable plotting ends up being the film’s secret weapon when (minor spoilers) the film, apropos to nothing suddenly morphs into “Raymond Milland’s Badass Revenge” (AKA Ray Milland Brings The Pain) in its last fifteen minutes. Dishing out some a Bride level of hurting bombs to all how have injured and annoyed him over the course of the runtime.

That’s fucking badass.

The Premature Burial belongs to that odd class of movies, that I can’t recommend but would never dissuade anyone from seeing. While there’s a lot that doesn’t work, there’s a lot that does, including the burial itself and the afore mentioned final fifteen minutes. It probably works best when viewed as a variation on Corman’s Poe films, which in all fairness is exactly what it is and will probably play best with foreknowledge of said same.

It doesn’t work in the usual ways, but it works in some very unusual ones.

31 Days Of Horror: Day 21: The Unseen #40-41: Lisa And The Devil/House Of Exorcism

(For those new(ish) to Things That Don't Suck The Unseen is a column where I examine the horrors of The DVD's that have made it into my collection without being viewed ooooooohhhhh!!!

In all seriousness, I'm guilty as anyone, when it comes to being a know it all on Titles viewed. So It's nice having a column all about reinforning the idea that I always have more to learn. So for the next week, it's going to be all Unseen All The Time. In order to give the red headed stepchild of a column a chance to catch up against my shameful neglect of it.

I'll just go ahead and say this now, there are going to be some bonafide classics coming up over the next week that I am flat out embarrassed to admit I haven't seen. But that's always part of the fun of being a cinephile isn't it?)





Why’d I Buy It?: Came In The Mario Bava Boxset I purchased.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: Didn’t make the first the cut for my first Bava binge. Just never quite got around to it. Also I have a weird pet peeve about films that have two definitive cuts. And while it’s obvious that Lisa And The Devil is the preferred cut, just because House Of Exorcism is a bad Mario Bava movie doesn’t change that fact that it’s still a Mario Bava movie.

How Was It?: Depends which version we’re talking about. Of course.

Lisa And The Devil is as rumored, a latter day masterpiece, sumptuously styled, hallucinogenicly plotted, and more then a little personal. House Of Exorcism is on the other hand a borderline nonsensical Friedkin rip off so shameless that it makes Beyond The Door look like a piece of great artistic integrity.

Both film’s follow Lisa, an American Tourist who undergoes a profound spiritual crisis after encountering Telly Savalas, first in mural;


then in physical form.


Now Savalas has been known to cause spiritual crisis’s in many situations and sexual crisis’s even more.

(I mean how could you not?)

But in this case, things are made even more acute, by the fact that Telly is the Devil. The Lord Of Lies enjoys carrying around mannequins and lemon suckers, and also tormenting the souls of those that is damned.

Sevelas does this by having Lisa and a series of strangers undergo an ennui soaked spiritual fugue/rash of giallo killings, in an old manor in Lisa And The Devil. And by having her put on pancake makeup and swear at a Priest like a fifth grader who has just learned how in House. This footage was shot when the producers looked at Lisa And Devil and suddenly realized "Oh shit. We funded an art movie." followed by "We better put some exorcism in our Satan movie." Said footage was then shoved the cheap exorcism scenes in under the flimsiest of pretenses. Believe it or not, Lisa And The Devil is the more effective of the two.

What surprised me about Lisa And The Devil wasn’t how strange and arty it was. I had been well prepared for that. No what surprised me was how unadulteratedly lurid and vaguely trashy so much of it was. From a piece of vehicular homicide so gleefully perpetrated and filmed that I was actually taken aback. To one which is almost matched in delight with a candlestick bludgeoning late in the game.

And if Lisa’s ambitions and opaque surrealism sometimes cross the line into self parody, there are just as many where the dream logic tone just works. Most notably in the film’s climax upon a Ghost Airplane, that manages to be well and truly freaky.

Sevalas makes a game Old Scratch and Bava obviously put a lot into it. House Of Exorcism is just the same but less so. Aside from the tacked on Friedkin impersonation, the remainder of the film is just a strangely reedited chateau encounter. A re edit which strips away the dream logic and leaves in its place, absolutely no logic.

House Of The Exorcism may not make any less narrative sense then Lisa And The Devil. But it does lack that lunatic gleam of conviction to carry it through.

The Unseen #39: Angel Face

Why I Bought It?: Came in the Robert Mitchum boxset I bought.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: I don’t know, why haven’t you? Oh you have? In that case I have absolutely no excuse.

How Was It?: Is there an actor whose collective poon hounding has gotten him into more trouble then Mitchum?

Oh sure, there are plenty of movie characters led to their doom by a pretty face, but only Mitchum seems to go out of his way to do so. Time and time again he leaves the nice girl he has at home to forcibly attach himself to man devouring succubae who drag him down to his doom.

It might be misogynistic, but that’s just how they rolled in back then and you can’t say that Mitchum wasn’t asking for it.

Angel Face follows Mitchum as a hapless race car driver turned paramedic, who ends up called to the house of a rich lady who left the gas on. Its somewhat obvious that the accident wasn’t really an accident, or for that matter an “accident”, but instead an attempted murder by the victim’s daughter. Mitchum reacts to this news by falling head over heals with the crazy leaving his nice fiancé for a chance at fame and fortune, and owning his own maintenance garage (?) . The results go predictably awry, given you know, bitch be crazy.

The film is directed by Otto Preminger. A director whose reputation has been somewhat on the wane lately despite having a few bonafide classics, and a whole lot of interesting messes under his belt.

Preminger’s hand is evident both in the story’s cynicism, Mitchum is charming as always, but his character is kind of a shit, and the passive aggressive boundary pushing that was his forte. Incest, homosexuality, premarital sex, and other things not considered polite subject matter for dinner conversation in the nineteen fifties are all hinted at. But that’s all they are, hints, inferences, its what drove the Code folks crazy about Preminger, and part of why so many of his films have aged so badly.

Preminger’s great skill was shredding taboos, that are no longer taboos, ironically thanks to in a large part him. But it takes all the gas out of his films today, like Anatomy Of A Murder, whose entire existence is based around the fact that it allowed Preminger to have his characters say “Sperm” and “Panties” on film. All very shocking then, but hardly a suitable payoff for a two hour movie today.

While Angel Face does incorporate this technique it is not dependant on it. Mitchum as always is a heavy lidded source of charisma, the plot is pretty tightly wounded, hinging on the character’s neurosis’s rather then fate (same difference). It also features two spectacular car wrecks which make such fantastic use of its dummies that I can only hope that The Flying Maciste Brothers, the folks behind The Destructible Man spontaneously ejaculate whenever someone watches this film.

I mean come on. That's a car wreck!

Postscript:

(I couldn't in good conscience not show this beautiful poster)

The Unseen #38: Home From The Hill

Why’d I Buy It?: Came with the Robert Mitchum Boxset I purchased.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: No real reason beyond the film’s non reputation.

How Was It?: A huge mess of unseemly fun. And after consecutive reviews of The Last Exorcism, Winter's Bone, and this, I have no choice but to conclude I've got the south on the brain.

Home From The Hill, begins with Robert Mitchum getting shot by an irate husband, whose wife Mitchum has been sleeping with. Like all the ladies say, “Once you’ve had Mitchum, you go on ahead and pitch ‘em” (short notice, you do a better one). So the husband did have some right to be angry. Mitchum shakes it off though, he’s a Texas land baron who runs his empire like a fiefdom and that girl is just one of many. Besides as Werner Herzog might say “It was not a significant bullet.”

But age is starting to catch up with Mitchum, so he decides to start training his boy to take over in his stead. A training that involves plenty of wild boar fighting. Over the course of a couple of years every skeleton the family has in its closet gets dragged out kicking and screaming, in the prime fifties melodrama fashion and a few new ones are stuffed in their to replace them to boot. This all makes for some good watching.

Home From The Hill, was directed by Vincent Minelli, best known today for being the gay man who loved Judy Garland so much he married her, somehow making him more, not less gay. Home From The Hill is the kind of overheated melodrama that Minelli made his specialty, second only to Douglas Sirk in that particular Sub Genre.

The thing to remember about this particular kind of film is that they were as A list as you could get, the equivalent of today’s Oscar bait. Which is important to remember, because these films often feel like they’re literally insane. There’s a dog versus Giant Wild Boar fight that looks suspiciously like the real thing. There’s a kind of vitality and unpredictability to this kind of filmmaking that is completely lacking in today’s. Remember this is a prestige A list picture…. And it has a wild boar fight in it. As versatile as George Clooney is I don’t expect him to battle a wild boar in his Oscar bait.

The cast is filled out with the likes of George Peppard, George Hamilton, Eleanor Parker, and Luana Patton, not a group of what you would normally call heavy hitters, but all doing career best work.

Home From The Hill might seem a bit odd to the modern viewer. It’s spread out over two and a half hours and takes it time not getting anywhere in particular. It might all amount to Giant for the slow, stripped of its ambition and iconography (though not artistry this is Minelli we’re talking about here). But any movie that features Robert Mitchum surrounded by hunting hounds, drinking corn whiskey from a bottle, talking about manliness, while sitting on a throne like a cracker Lear, is more then alright in my book.

(Remember kids, Pimp is spelled M-I-T-C-H-U-M)

THE REVENGE OF THE UNSEEN!!!!

A Year ago I started the column The Unseen, in an effort to burn though the stack of unwatched DVD’s that sat on my shelf. The stack was beginning to look fairly obscene to me. And still does, as this column has been a failure, at least in regard to its housekeeping components.

That stack still looms over me, pointing, screaming “J’ACCUSE!”

And yet, The Unseen remains a favorite thing to write. Simply because it forces me to expand my cinematic vocabulary every time I do. It’s easy for a cinephile to grow complacent, and there’s nothing more dangerous to the art of loving film love then complacency. Especially after the demands of the real world loom their ugly head. After working nine hours for the eighth day in a row, feeling beat to shit, its easy, all too easy, to say “Fuck it” and just pop in Hot Fuzz for the 97th time. Something known, something easy, something that’ll make you feel good. It’s not so easy to say, “Well lets pop on the Wreckmeister Harmonies!” And yet, as soon as the love for the new, for the challenge, dies so does a vital part of the film lover.

The Unseen acts as an inoculation against this. The films watched aren’t necessarily “tough” but they are things I haven’t been engaged with before. And that simple thing can be invaluable.

So without further ado here’s 37 things I’ve learned from the Unseen. I keep promising to get this thing on a regular schedule, and I definitely want to be more consistent with it. But I almost feel as though that would defeat the purpose of the column. And besides I would miss the big pile in my writing room, a constant dare to dive into uncharted waters.

1. Without question the best and closest shave will be delivered by the man whose son you just murdered.

2. Nothing turns a woman on more then leaving her to enjoy the post coital bliss by herself in an abandoned house.

3. Christopher Lee wears a gimp mask for reasons other then sexual satisfaction. I don’t know if this is more or less disturbing.

4. Detroit is a shithole.

5. You can resurrect anyone with a flaming stream of dog piss.

6. Birthday Cake can fuck you up.

7. Finding out you’re gay is exactly like finding out you have a burnt child molester inside of you.

8. Never underestimate the power of dull.

9. Those Nazi guys were pretty fucked up.

10. Never allow the corpse of Lillian Gish to ruin your social engagements.

11. Ogami Itto will
straight up motherfucking end you.

12. For a man who made Nashville and Prairie Home Companion Altman chose a surprisingly shitty band to make a movie about.

13. Robert Mitchum is a fucking pimp.

14. Werner Herzog can make you feel sorry for Steven Zahn.

15. Frankenstein’s Monster has a heretofore unknown propensity for Pimp Coats.

16. David Cronenberg might have some issues with women/the human race as a whole.

17. Maybe I should just accept the fact that I don’t particularly like Monte Helleman. I’m sorry.

18. Boiled Rice can give a man one hell of a boner.

19. If you drive a huge bright yellow crane up to a prison in Britain, no one will notice.

20. The family that warshes each other in a bathtub while defending each other from accusations of gang rape stays together!

21. Dario Argento really can’t make good movies anymore.

22. The Philippines is the place where dignity goes to die.

23. Robert Duvall will straight up end you.

24. Mankind is destined to be replaced by Cats and Dogs. One of whom will evolve into a an exact replica of Lou Reed. This Replica will summon a space demon. That space demon will be Iggy Pop.

25. Happy people freak out Herzog.

26. When Anti God possess you, you will be compelled to put on pancake makeup and hit people with planks.

27. The way to
become the ultimate swordsman is to fall asleep during your duels.

28. Clint Eastwood can appear in a
boring unfocused movie that’s not City Heat.

29. Roger Corman can apparently block traffic in major European cities at his discretion.

30. Edgar Allen Poe and God are totally homeys.

31. Paul Newman can box the shit out of you,

32. When trying to intimidate someone its best not to attempt it at a place where your subject has several Ravenous Pitbulls at their disposal.

33. Its possible to have Paul Newman, Lee Marvin, and Terrence Malick collaborate on a movie that has no value at all.

34. You will indeed pay the cost to be the boss.

35. Man nobody did forbidden like the fifties.

36. Pimp Vs. Vampires. Vampires win.

37. Toshiro Mifune can have enlightenment beaten into him.