Horror and Sci-Fi films old and new, weirdo trash, arthouse, forgotten gems, well loved classics, and I'm watching the original Dr Who from the beginning.
The Body Snatcher is a classic example of a film that has all the ingredients on paper, but which never comes to life.
The screenplay is based on a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson. The film stars no less than Boris Karloff as the title character, John Gray, a shifty cab driver who has a sideline sourcing and delivering dead bodies for top surgeon Wolfe "Toddy" MacFarlane (Henry Daniell, best known as Goebbels parody Garbitsch in Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator). Bela Lugosi has a small role as MacFarlane's other cadaver consultant, but the fact that he barely registers should be an alarm bell for the rest of the film.
Producer Val Lewton had previously given us Cat People, The Curse of the Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie. These films, despite their lurid titles, have an unsettling mix of atmosphere and ambiguity. This kept the viewer intrigued and on edge. Director Robert Wise would go on to have an eclectic career, from editing montages for Citizen Kane, to directing everything from low key noir classics like The Set Up to big budget epics like The Sound of Music and Star Trek: The Motion Picture
There are some interesting ideas in The Body Snatcher, particularly with regard to class, and how those at MacFarlane's level feel like they can get away with flouting the law. But, largely it is talk, endless talk, with little or nothing left to the imagination of the viewer, the central strength of Lewton's former work. One for the Karloff / Lewton / Lugosi completists only.
Despite the painfully lurid title, I Walked with a Zombie is not a horror film, but an unsettling melodrama with lashings of ambiguity and ambience.
Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) is a nurse, sent to Haiti to care for Jessica (Christine Gordon), the wife of sugar plantation manager Paul Holland (Tom Conway). Jessica, always seems to wandering around in a silent stupor, and the Voodoo practising natives think she is a zombie. But is there something more to it than that? Something that involves Paul's missionary mother and his jealous alcoholic half-brother Wesley?
This was the second collaboration between French director Jacques Tourneur and RKO producer Val Lewton, following their box office smash Cat People. Both films share a visual palette steeped in shadows, a plot steeped in ambiguity and uncertainty, and a shocking advertising campaign from the studio.
However, unlike Cat People there are no jumps or shocks, as Tourneur prefers a slow burning atmosphere of creeping dread. The world of this film is one of unresolved conflicts and contrasts - light and dark, Caribbean Voodoo and Western Christianity, science and superstition, slavery and freedom, none of which are ultimately resolved.
The script is the other strong point for this film, with characters that are not as straightforward as they first appear, and a refusal to provide any easy answers. It is also refreshing to see our zombies were originally presented on screen, a world away from the flesh eating, rotten corpses we are used to nowadays.
Night of the Demon is a wonderfully wry supernatural story, with the chills coming from the ambiguity and atmosphere, and the tension and drama coming from the battle of wits between the human lead characters.
Psychologist Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews) comes to England from the US for a science convention at which he plans to expose renowned occultist Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnis) as a charlatan and a cult leader. On arrival he finds that not only has his research partner, Professor Harrington, has died in a mysterious accident, but Harrington was growing increasingly afraid of the powers he thought Karswell possessed. Holden is having none of this however, even when Karswell tells him he is going to die in three days time. But as increasingly strange incidents keep occurring, Holden is forced to question whether the supernatural does exist - and whether or not his days are numbered.
Andrews does not totally convince as a scientist, but one thing he does bring to the role is a forcefulness and an unshakeable faith in rationalism that makes him a believable opponent to Karswell, an equally strong character supposedly based on the so-called “wickedest man in the world”, real life occult guru Aleister Crowley.
The tension between the two is palpable as the cat-and-mouse games escalate, but it also found an off screen parallel in tensions between this film's producer and director. Hal E Chester originally wanted to make a straightforward monster movie rather than ambiguity and atmosphere, and shot the scenes involving the demon without the director's knowledge. With little money in the budget, the end result is a little bit silly. The appearance at the beginning of the film sets completely the wrong tone for what is to follow, and the appearance at the end almost undoes the hard work that the director and actors have done up to then - almost,but not quite.
Director Jacques Tourneur had built a career on spooky and atmospheric horror classics such as Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie. He takes a similar approach here, with the end results feeling wonderfully spooky, rather than actually terrifying, with a ghoulish sense of humour thrown in, and much as the incidents affecting become ever more baffling they never truly spill over into the supernatural.
In addition, in all three of the demon's appearances, there are no external witnesses so it could still be argued that there is some ambiguity as to whether it makes it into the real world or whether it is simply a demon of the mind.
The author Shirley Jackson once wrote, “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality”, and such thinking may go some way to explain the appeal of watching films with a fantasy or escapist element to them. Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo is a clever and charming exploration of this idea, as well as our relationship with movies, movie characters, and the people who bring them to life. Although the film is a move away from the more usual explorations of contemporary New York, it still has plenty of his familiar tropes, as well as a surprising twist in the tail.
Cecilia (Mia Farrow) lives in Depression era New Jersey, struggling to get by on her waitress wages. Her husband, Monk (Danny Aiello) is no help, spending his days playing pitch and toss with his unemployed friends, and his nights drinking, gambling and occasionally hitting Cecilia. Her only escape is the movie theatre, losing herself week after week in the fluff and glamour on the silver screen. During one viewing of her latest favourite, The Purple Rose of Cairo, the impossible happens – her favourite character, Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels) comes out of the screen into reality – and declares his love for her. This has serious implications for her marriage – but also for the rest of the characters trapped on screen, who can't move the story forward without their leading man.
The film within a film, The Purple Rose of Cairo is brilliant, a perfect pastiche of the bright and breezy RKO fluff musicals with their mix of beautiful people flitting between big apartments and New York nightclubs, with singers, big bands, and endless champagne. When Baxter steps down into the audience, this takes the film into the world of magical realism described by the writer Matthew Strecher as “what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe”. While atypical of Allen's work overall, it is an area he does move into from time to time, in films such as Play It Again Sam and Midnight in Paris. In addition, as with those films, Allen never explains the cause of the fantastic events, leaving them open to interpretation – is it in people's imagination, some sort of mass hallucination – or has the sheer willpower of a devoted movie fan bought her idol to life?
The characters themselves are a little two dimensional, but in the context of the era, the films Cecilia likes to watch, and the fantastic events depicted, the slightly unnatural sounding dialogue, such as the onscreen characters having a philosophical discussion, does not seem as jarring as it would in a contemporary setting. Farrow helps, bringing a likeable charm to her character, and her sometimes neurotic mannerisms make her the nearest we have to the “Woody Allen” character that usually crops up if the man himself does not in one of his films.
The period detail feels convincing, and the film clearly had some money spent on it, but more importantly, Allen clearly also spent time on the script, and as feels engaged in the subject, so we feel engaged too. The Purple Rose of Cairo is a film about films, one which looks into not just the creative process that lies behind them, but also the relationship between the filmmakers, the fictional characters they create, and the audience who fall in love with them. Here Allen ask questions as to what it really is that we fall in love with – the actor, the character they are playing, or the image we have of them.
The crux of the drama and comedy is the clash between the world of the movies (perfection, order, repetition, happy endings) and that of real life (imperfect, real, chaotic, unhappy endings). Ultimately Allen celebrates both of these for being what they are, and while he does not appear to be favouring one over the other, he seems to suggest that "real" will eventually win out whether we like it or not. This is most evident in the heartbreaking climax, where Allen refuses to pander to the sort of happy endings of classic movie fantasy, even though he celebrates these as good things in their own world.
A quintessential Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film, The Gay Divorcee takes place in the sort of world only golden era Hollywood could create and a fast moving witty script, charming cast and great music make for wonderful old fashioned entertainment.
Guy Holden (Astaire) is a famous American song and dance man, hanging around London (I have always wondered by this and other Astaire and Rogers films are set in London - perhaps the European setting might have seemed exotic to Depression era American audiences) with a bungling lawyer friend, Egbert Fitzgerald (Edward Everett Horton). Enter another American, Mimi Glossop, who is in England, staying with her bossy and regularly married Aunt Hortense (Alice Brady) and
seeking a divorce from her geologist husband. Holden is besotted with Glossop – but once Hortense enlists Fitzgerald to help, things get complicated.
The assorted plot twists that crop up along the way do not stand up to much scrutiny, but this is not meant as a criticism, as the very absurdity of them helps to create the fantasy world that the film inhabits.
The characters are pretty much the same as in any of the other classic Astaire and Rogers films. Fred plays the showbiz celebrity, famous enough to get out of paying a Paris restaurant bill by treating the diners and staff to a spot of tap dancing, and rich enough that he can devote his ample spare time to hanging around with his friend and chasing the woman of his dreams. Rogers is brassy and great fun, without ever being overbearing or grating, not an easy trick to pull off. The chemistry between the two is fascinating and not the usual on screen romance. Astaire is hardly a macho, alpha-male type, and Rogers looks as likely to sweep him off his feet as the other way around.
The rest of the cast are equally enjoyable, with Horton and Brady bringing charm to characters who could otherwise be irritating, especially important as it is these two who often drive the plot forward.
Although still a bit technically crude in places, we can see director Mark Sandrich experimenting with cinematic techniques that were in their infancy. The camera is largely static in the talking sequences but becomes mobile during dance numbers, panning from side to side as it follows the stars. Even more interesting is the montage created for the song The Continental, with some odd angles and (still modern looking) fast, rhythmic editing.
The well-worn legend goes that an RKO screen test report on Fred Astaire read "Can't sing. Can't act. Can dance a little....” However true the legend may be, such an assessment of Astaire is simply not true, and this is easily proved with Top Hat. Despite being nearly 80 years old, this film is still breathlessly exciting and thoroughly charming fun, as well as being a perfect vehicle for the astounding, seemingly effortless talents of Astaire and his most famous on screen partner, Ginger Rogers. It is also interesting to see the film as part of the early ongoing development and increasing complexity of cinema as a medium.
American superstar dancer, Jerry Travers, played by Astaire, is in London to star in a show, and falls hopelessly in love with Dale Tremont (Rogers), the woman in the hotel room below him. Unfortunately, she is under the misapprehension that Travers is actually her best friend’s husband, Horace Hardwick, the producer of his show (whom she has seemingly never met). Can Jerry rectify the identity crisis before Tremont does something rash – like marry another man?
Astaire’s dancing looks astonishing, not least because he makes it look so effortless, and spontaneous, no mean feat considering how much rehearsal and preparation he must have undergone. It is also interesting that the routines do not just explore the movement of the human body, but also the fascination with the sound and rhythms of tap dancing, rhythms that sometimes sound like a machine gun.
What is equally astonishing is finding a second person who can match him move for move, and Ginger Rogers is more than up to the task. At times during their routines, they seem to hit a bewildering, supernatural level of synchronisation, and when combined with the joyous music, and the smiles of sheer joy on their faces, it is almost impossible not to get caught up in the euphoria.
Obviously, the dancing cannot last forever, and while the plot does not stand up to much scrutiny, the screwball elements and dry, witty dialogue (“have you any objections if I scare your husband so that he'll never look at another woman?” “No husband is ever too scared to look”) keep the energy and interest going between dance numbers. The fact that there is a plot is significant in itself as only a few years earlier, music and narrative were still often kept apart with the likes of The Hollywood Revue of 1929 consisting largely of a static camera pointing at a staged-based variety show, and while some, such as The Broadway Melody had a plot of sorts, it was still a revue format cutting between several characters. Top Hat helped to show that you could focus on two main characters, base a story arc around them, and still incorporate musical numbers that were not irrelevant.
The stars clearly have chemistry on the dance floor, but away from it, you would be hard pushed to claim it is a tumultuous sexual or romantic one. Fred Astaire is no alpha male and Ginger Rogers is wonderfully bold and brassy, making for a much more balanced dynamic than you usually see in films of the day.
Astaire has never struck me, as natural leading man material (and perhaps the originator of the mythical note had similar thoughts) but his unique looks, voice and unimpeachable dancing skills are precisely what has made him so memorable. His singing may lack the drama and coolness of a crooner like Sinatra, but it has a simplicity, and clarity, along with impeccable timing that make it both a companion and a counterpoint to his dancing, as well as delightful to listen to.
Another, equally significant way that Top Hat shows the increasing complexity of cinema during the 1930s is the shooting style, and while it may not be particularly sophisticated in itself, like the plot, the fact that it is there is what makes it inherently significant. The dance sequences are shot in an unfussy, straightforward style that allows the skills of Astaire and Rogers to shine through, with the camera tracking from left to right with their movements. This may not sound like much, but it is the first flowerings of the realisation that by focusing on very specific people or things, filmmakers can direct and manipulate the view and attention of an audience in a way that the theatre cannot, and you can see a similar style being used years later by the other great pioneer of male cinematic dance, Gene Kelly, in films like Singin' in the Rain.
Of course, aside from the technical innovations, the films of Fred Astaire were also successful enough to establish the musical as a distinct genre, one that, like any genre, ebbs and flows in popularity, but always seems eventually to come back into fashion.
The penultimate entry in the RKO series of Falcon mystery thrillers, The Falcon's Alibi is one of the most enjoyable, thanks to two actors who nearly outshine the lead, as well as the film taking a more "hard boiled" approach to crime than usual.
The story starts with the Falcon aka Tom Lawrence (played as usual by the suave and charming Tom Conway) befriending a lady at a racetrack. The lady in question is Joan Meredith (Rita Corday), secretary to wealthy socialite Gloria Peabody. Mrs Peabody is unaware that some of her expensive jewels are missing, and Joan is concerned that suspicion will fall on her. Lawrence steps in to help, but along the way falls foul of the police, a gang of LA crooks, a terrified nightclub singer, and a radio DJ who may not be everything he appears to be.
The format for these films is solidly in place by this stage, with Lawrence stumbling into a mystery without even trying, aided and abetted by a sidekick (in this case the semi-regular character Goldie Locke) and dimwitted police detectives, charming his way to a rather rushed conclusion. However, what lifts The Falcon's Alibi above the norm is the intriguing supporting cast, and their story. Elisha Cook had his big break playing the creepy but hapless low-rent crook Wilmer in John Huston’s groundbreaking version of The Maltese Falcon and here as Nick, the local radio DJ he brings the same sort of unsettling intensity. He is excellently complemented by the alluring Jane Greer as Nick’s wife, nightclub singer Lola Carpenter. Greer gives her a believable vulnerability and likeability. Their doomed, crumbling relationship becomes a more intriguing storyline than the missing jewels, to the point where you sometimes feel, jumping between them and the Falcon, as though you are watching two different stories, one of which is not going to end well.
Cook and Greer would continue to shine in Film-Noir classics such as The Big Sleep, The Killing, and Out of The Past, but sadly the future was not so bright for the Falcon, as the waning popularity of the series would see RKO make one more before pulling the plug.
The Falcon in
Hollywood is
one of the best of the original RKO Falcon series, with the hackneyed plot more
than compensated for with the breezy script, debonair star, and his sassy
sidekick. In addition, we also get a fascinating behind the scenes tour of the
RKO backlot.
This time the
Falcon is on vacation, in Tinseltown, enjoying a relaxing day at the races.
However, within minutes of the opening credits he is being questioned by police
detectives and approached by beautiful women. Before you can say "how does
he do that?", he is embroiled in a murder mystery involving a shady
businessman, a neurotic, superstitious Shakespeare quoting movie producer and
film that seems to be cursed.
The script keeps
our hero busy locking horns with the police, the criminals, the filmmakers and
the actresses. Helping and hindering in equal measure in the faithful sidekick
role is cabbie Billie (Veda Ann Borg).Although the part is played by a woman,
the character is pretty gender neutral and, refreshingly, she is not presented
as merely a love interest who occasionally screams, but as great comic
relief.
Given the subject
matter and setting, The Falcon in Hollywood qualifies as a film about
filmmaking, with the focus on the behind-the-scenes drama as much as any taking
place in front of the camera. With the ruthless scheming producer, autocratic
director and pompous diva actors, it is fascinating to see how the movie world
sees itself.
The Falcon in Mexico is the ninth entry in RKO's Falcon series and sees a change of location/stock footage/backdrops, with pleasantly entertaining results.
As usual, our freelance crime-fighting mystery solving hero Tom Lawrence aka The Falcon (played for the sixth time by Tom Conway) gets dragged into the mystery in an amusingly implausible manner, one that us mere mortals can only dream of. Within seconds of kissing his girlfriend goodnight at her apartment, he finds himself lip-locked with a mysterious woman named Dolores in order to shield her from a passing police officer, then helping her break into an art gallery, to recover a painting that she has recently modeled for – even though the artist, Humphrey Wade, has supposedly been dead for over a decade. Dolores promptly disappears just as the Falcon finds the body of the gallery owner. Now wanted for murder, Lawrence teams up with Wade's daughter Barbara and travels to Mexico to clear his name and find out whether reports of Wade's death have been greatly exaggerated.
Conway is a suave as ever, playing the Falcon as seeming amused and bemused by events, but never fazed by them. As usual, he has a sidekick, Manuel, a stereotypical laid-back Mexican, who helps Lawrence negotiate the mean streets of a strange country, and who may not be all he seems, as his character takes on more significance later in the story (the sidekick also has a sidekick, in the shape of his son, basically a mini-Manuel)
The script saunters along at an appropriately relaxed pace, but does stick to the plot without getting sidetracked, with the exception of a few weak musical numbers. Given the brief running time of these sort of films (typically 65-70 minutes), it does leave the denouement feeling rushed, and the killer almost arbitrary. Nevertheless, there is enough entertainment along the way to make that not too much of a problem.
Interestingly, an oft repeated – and never confirmed – legend about this film concerns the stock footage, which is supposedly taken from Orson Welles' unfinished documentary about Brazil, It's All True. Whether this is true or not, what we see is very well shot and certainly a step above the usual stock footage standards.
Before
Roger Moore made the part of Simon Templar his own in the 1960s TV series, the
smooth talking gentleman thief and amateur sleuth appeared in a series of B
pictures made by RKO. After putting Louis Hayward in the title role for The
Saint In New York, the studio switched for the effortlessly debonair George
Sanders for the follow up, The Saint Strikes Back.
Loosely
based on the novel Angels of Doom, by Saint creator Leslie Charteris, the plot
sees Templar come to the aid of the daughter of a San Francisco police officer,
a man who committed suicide after being framed by a mysterious gangster. Can
our hero clear the name of the innocent party, and unmask the crook?
George
Sanders is one of those actors who nearly always plays a variation on the
"George Sanders" character, someone who is charming, witty, and
impervious to the doubts and emotions that plague us mere mortals. Unlike later
films such as The Picture of Dorian Gray or All About Eve, the
"George Sanders" here lacks the malevolent edge of Lord Henry or
Addison DeWitt, which is in keeping with the roguish but basically decent
character of Simon Templar, but is slightly less fun to watch.
I
have seen The Saint described as a "Robin Hood-like" character, but
if anything he seems like a precursor to Dr Who, someone whose motives are
vague and wanders into situations seemingly by accident, solving problems,
charming the authorities, then disappearing off into the sunset with no
material reward.
The
rest of the cast are competent enough, with significant roles given to Jerome
Cowan, who would be immortalised as Miles Archer, the doomed partner of
Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, and Neil Hamilton,
later to play Commissioner Gordon on the Batman TV show.
The
direction from John Farrow is also competent and workmanlike, with no
expressionistic or artistic flourishes, apart from one brief and unexpected
scene of a policeman having a nightmare about lobsters on trapezes. Farrow
works hard to convince us we are in the City by the Bay, with some nicely foggy
ambience. Screenwriter John Twist moves the action here from the original
novel's English setting, and packs the dense screenplay with plenty of twists
and turns, and some witty dialogue.
An
enjoyable bit of fun, The Saint Strikes Back ends on a slightly downbeat
note. For all Templar's cool, detached persona, at the end we are left with the
impression of a lonely man and the final scene sees him quoting Kipling (“he
travels fastest who travels alone”) before the camera tracks back, leaving a
solitary Templar, leaning on a lamppost in the fog, whistling in a slightly
resigned, almost melancholy fashion.
