Edinburgh Zombie Club Presents:
A British Horror All Dayer with special guest, cult director Norman J. Warren.
Sunday 18th July @ The Banshee Labyrinth, 29-35 Niddry Street, Edinburgh. EH1 1LG
Five pounds entry, first screening begins at 12pm and the Q&A with Norman starts at 4pm so be sure to get down early to avoid disappointment. There's only a limited amount of space in the cinema room so we'd suggest you booked in advance to ensure a seat.
We’ll be showing classic and cult British Horror gems throughout the entire day, including Norman J. Warren’s slasher epic “Terror” which he’ll no doubt discuss with us on the night. Food and refreshments will be available in the pub and there will be breaks in between films. The film schedule is as such (in running order):
* Night of the Demon (Dir. Jacques Tourneu, 1957)
* Terror (Dir. Norman J. Warren, 1979)
* Q&A with Norman J. Warren
* Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly (Dir. Freddie Francis, 1970)
* Frightmare (Dir. Pete Walker, 1974)
* The Devil Rides Out (Dir. Terence Fisher, 1968)
Email tickets@edinburghzombieclub.com to book a ticket.
There will also be a small number of online tickets shortly available from http://www.wegottickets.com/
Website here - http://www.edinburghzombieclub.com/
Sunday, 27 June 2010
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Programming a rare Hammer season
If you were programming a six-film season of rare, non-horror Hammer intended to showcase the diversity of the studio's output, what would you show?
The films need to be of decent quality able to appeal to a general audience, so the 1970s sitcom adaptations are out, though something like Up the Creek or Further up the Creek may not be.
I'm currently thinking of six from this lot, probably the starred ones:
Yesterday’s Enemy*
Hell is a City*
Taste of Fear
The Damned*
Never Take Candy from a Stranger*
Cash on Demand*
Night Creatures*
The Nanny
The Lost Continent
Moon Zero Two
Straight on Till Morning
The films need to be of decent quality able to appeal to a general audience, so the 1970s sitcom adaptations are out, though something like Up the Creek or Further up the Creek may not be.
I'm currently thinking of six from this lot, probably the starred ones:
Yesterday’s Enemy*
Hell is a City*
Taste of Fear
The Damned*
Never Take Candy from a Stranger*
Cash on Demand*
Night Creatures*
The Nanny
The Lost Continent
Moon Zero Two
Straight on Till Morning
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
La mano lunga del padrino / The Long Arm of the Godfather
In that the main conflict in this 1972 poliziotto is in fact between rival gangsters, with the police barely making an appearance despite the gunning down of several soldiers and the theft of a consignment of arms, this is this is one of those filone entries which qualifies as a poliziotto in name only.
Groovy credits superimposed over cold blooded killing
It's also a somewhat difficult film to otherwise place. The groovy credits and the breezy lounge score (complete with frequent use of la la la la type male and female vocalism) are at odds with the cynicism, violence and general air of misogyny and/or misanthropy that is otherwise the film's stock in trade. Perhaps tellingly the film was also the only credited work for composer Silvano D'Auria and co-writer and director Nando Bonomi alike.
Casual violence and sadism
Elsewhere we are on more familiar ground, insofar as the other co-writer and editor was Giulio Berruti of Killer Nun note, the three leads are Adolfo Celi, Peter Lee Lawrence and Erica Blanc and many of the gang members familiar faces.
Celi plays the Godfather of the title, Lawrence the treacherous underling who does a double crosses and tries to sell the arms on himself, and Blanc the moll whom he wishes to impress.
The pacing is often somewhat leisurely and the game of cat and mouse not as tense as it could have been.
This is partly down to the characterisation of the leads: Celi’s Don Carmelo is a criminal mastermind in the Thunderball or Danger Diabolik mode, confident he’s always at least one move ahead of everyone else:
Goon: Don't you want revenge?
Don Carmelo: Romantic notions don't interest me. I want the money.
Lawrence’s Vincenzo thinks he is smarter than he actually is, but is also adept at improvising his way out of sticky situations:
Vincenzo: For the moment I'm still winning.
Sabina: Don't count on that.
Vincenzo: I always do.
It is also down to the fact that the action quickly relocates from Italy to somewhere in North Africa or the Middle East, such that we get a fair amount of tourist style sightseeing worked into the narrative.
And something a bit more disturbing, perhaps
Things do get back down to the serious business after a bit, albeit again with some awkward inconsistencies in tone, not least when Blanc’s Sabina is brutalised by one of Don Vincenzo’s thugs to some incongruous but not obviously intentionally ironic musical accompaniment.
In sum, an oddity that doesn’t always work but which isn’t the kind of disaster that its first and only film nature might lead you to assume.
Groovy credits superimposed over cold blooded killing
It's also a somewhat difficult film to otherwise place. The groovy credits and the breezy lounge score (complete with frequent use of la la la la type male and female vocalism) are at odds with the cynicism, violence and general air of misogyny and/or misanthropy that is otherwise the film's stock in trade. Perhaps tellingly the film was also the only credited work for composer Silvano D'Auria and co-writer and director Nando Bonomi alike.
Casual violence and sadism
Elsewhere we are on more familiar ground, insofar as the other co-writer and editor was Giulio Berruti of Killer Nun note, the three leads are Adolfo Celi, Peter Lee Lawrence and Erica Blanc and many of the gang members familiar faces.
Celi plays the Godfather of the title, Lawrence the treacherous underling who does a double crosses and tries to sell the arms on himself, and Blanc the moll whom he wishes to impress.
The pacing is often somewhat leisurely and the game of cat and mouse not as tense as it could have been.
This is partly down to the characterisation of the leads: Celi’s Don Carmelo is a criminal mastermind in the Thunderball or Danger Diabolik mode, confident he’s always at least one move ahead of everyone else:
Goon: Don't you want revenge?
Don Carmelo: Romantic notions don't interest me. I want the money.
Lawrence’s Vincenzo thinks he is smarter than he actually is, but is also adept at improvising his way out of sticky situations:
Vincenzo: For the moment I'm still winning.
Sabina: Don't count on that.
Vincenzo: I always do.
It is also down to the fact that the action quickly relocates from Italy to somewhere in North Africa or the Middle East, such that we get a fair amount of tourist style sightseeing worked into the narrative.
And something a bit more disturbing, perhaps
Things do get back down to the serious business after a bit, albeit again with some awkward inconsistencies in tone, not least when Blanc’s Sabina is brutalised by one of Don Vincenzo’s thugs to some incongruous but not obviously intentionally ironic musical accompaniment.
In sum, an oddity that doesn’t always work but which isn’t the kind of disaster that its first and only film nature might lead you to assume.
Sunday, 20 June 2010
Sunday, 13 June 2010
Permissive
Suzie arrives in London from the provinces, hoping to catch some of that Swinging London vibe that she has heard about through the mass media. Fiona takes Suzy under her wing and introduces her to the band she hangs out with. After a short while Suzy does an All About Eve and usurps Fiona's position, with fatal consequences...
It may have plenty of sex, drugs and rock and roll, but 1970's Permissive is not exactly what you'd call a fun film. Rather it's one of the most dreary, drab and depressing films you could hope to see about the realities of the music world, more Cocksucker Blues than Almost Famous, but with a band whose material circumstances are more akin to those of Black Flag than the Rolling Stones.
Stylistically the film is an odd combination of pseudo-documentary nothing much to see for the most part punctuated by moments of machine gun editing, as if someone had decided to make a kitchen sink drama of the Cathy Come Home or Bleak Moments type with editing inspired by Performance.
Is it Madeleine or Maria? One of the Collinson twins as a groupie
Even more intriguingly, the editing isn't used to make the musical performances more interesting, as might be expected, but rather to present disconcerting (acid?) flashbacks and flashforwards as to the characters' relationships and fates.
The big surprise is who was responsible for it all, with notorious hack for hire Lindsay Shonteff writing and directing and Tony Tenser's Tigon producing.
Yes, part of the business of exploitation filmmaking was exploiting the audience in giving less than is promised.
But to make a film that is utterly joyless, which leaves you feeling cheated and like you also just might want to end it all?!
Either Shonteff seriously pulled the wool over Tenser's eyes and intended this all along as some sort of perverse artistic statement, which seems unlikely, or something just started to happen once the cameras were rolling.
It may have plenty of sex, drugs and rock and roll, but 1970's Permissive is not exactly what you'd call a fun film. Rather it's one of the most dreary, drab and depressing films you could hope to see about the realities of the music world, more Cocksucker Blues than Almost Famous, but with a band whose material circumstances are more akin to those of Black Flag than the Rolling Stones.
Stylistically the film is an odd combination of pseudo-documentary nothing much to see for the most part punctuated by moments of machine gun editing, as if someone had decided to make a kitchen sink drama of the Cathy Come Home or Bleak Moments type with editing inspired by Performance.
Is it Madeleine or Maria? One of the Collinson twins as a groupie
Even more intriguingly, the editing isn't used to make the musical performances more interesting, as might be expected, but rather to present disconcerting (acid?) flashbacks and flashforwards as to the characters' relationships and fates.
The big surprise is who was responsible for it all, with notorious hack for hire Lindsay Shonteff writing and directing and Tony Tenser's Tigon producing.
Yes, part of the business of exploitation filmmaking was exploiting the audience in giving less than is promised.
But to make a film that is utterly joyless, which leaves you feeling cheated and like you also just might want to end it all?!
Either Shonteff seriously pulled the wool over Tenser's eyes and intended this all along as some sort of perverse artistic statement, which seems unlikely, or something just started to happen once the cameras were rolling.
Saturday, 12 June 2010
Paradiso Blu
After their plane goes down in bad weather, survivors Karen (Anna Bergman) and Peter (Dan Monahan) manage to make it to an isolated island. Another plane flies overhead, indicating that there is at least the prospect of rescue, but fails to spot them. Accordingly the two build a shelter and attempt to settle in to their new situation.
How did we get here?
Chris Taylor (John Richardson) comes to the island by boat and stays with them a while.
Following his departure a group of natives land on the island to conduct a voodoo ceremony. Peter manages to scare them off and save Inez (Lucia Ramirez) from apparent sacrifice.
Ramirez and Bergman
This is something of an oddity from producer-director-cinematographer Aristide Massaccessi / Joe D'Amato. Given its setting, voodoo references and the presence of Ramirez, it would be of a piece with the likes of Erotic Nights of the Living Dead and Black Sex were it not for the fact that the sex and horror elements that were their stock in trade are downplayed in favour of Blue Lagoon meets Swept Away styled drama.
A grizzled looking Richardson
While the results again demonstrate D'Amato's adaptability and occasional willingness to try his hand at making a 'proper', less exploitative film, they are not the most interesting to watch, with a distinct lack of dramatic, sexual, class or any other sort of tension throughout.
The appearances of Chris and then Inez certainly threaten to alter the dynamics between Karen and Peter, but nothing really happens. (Lost anyone?)
D'Amato's direction is flat with the more self-conscious moments – slow motion as Karen and Peter embrace, some sudden zooms – decidedly awkward.
This is partly because these moments don't built into memorable set-pieces. This is perhaps most evident in the plane crash sequence, as D'Amato unexpectedly cuts from the build up within the plane to the aftermath. Clearly there wasn't the budget or inclination even for some unconvincing model work.
But the avoidance of the supernatural means we don't get anything like the well-executed statue turning into a cat match cut of Erotic Nights of the Living Dead, the avoidance of more explicit nudity and sex means comparable to Ramirez's popping a champagne bottle using her vaginal muscles.
In the end one gets the sense that D'Amato recognised that the film didn't have much going for it when he encouraged Bergman to put her name to it as director in the hope that it might gain something from association with her more famous father, Ingmar.
I suppose this gives us a nice shock answer if ever asked to name a favourite Bergman film ;-)
How did we get here?
Chris Taylor (John Richardson) comes to the island by boat and stays with them a while.
Following his departure a group of natives land on the island to conduct a voodoo ceremony. Peter manages to scare them off and save Inez (Lucia Ramirez) from apparent sacrifice.
Ramirez and Bergman
This is something of an oddity from producer-director-cinematographer Aristide Massaccessi / Joe D'Amato. Given its setting, voodoo references and the presence of Ramirez, it would be of a piece with the likes of Erotic Nights of the Living Dead and Black Sex were it not for the fact that the sex and horror elements that were their stock in trade are downplayed in favour of Blue Lagoon meets Swept Away styled drama.
A grizzled looking Richardson
While the results again demonstrate D'Amato's adaptability and occasional willingness to try his hand at making a 'proper', less exploitative film, they are not the most interesting to watch, with a distinct lack of dramatic, sexual, class or any other sort of tension throughout.
The appearances of Chris and then Inez certainly threaten to alter the dynamics between Karen and Peter, but nothing really happens. (Lost anyone?)
D'Amato's direction is flat with the more self-conscious moments – slow motion as Karen and Peter embrace, some sudden zooms – decidedly awkward.
This is partly because these moments don't built into memorable set-pieces. This is perhaps most evident in the plane crash sequence, as D'Amato unexpectedly cuts from the build up within the plane to the aftermath. Clearly there wasn't the budget or inclination even for some unconvincing model work.
But the avoidance of the supernatural means we don't get anything like the well-executed statue turning into a cat match cut of Erotic Nights of the Living Dead, the avoidance of more explicit nudity and sex means comparable to Ramirez's popping a champagne bottle using her vaginal muscles.
In the end one gets the sense that D'Amato recognised that the film didn't have much going for it when he encouraged Bergman to put her name to it as director in the hope that it might gain something from association with her more famous father, Ingmar.
I suppose this gives us a nice shock answer if ever asked to name a favourite Bergman film ;-)
Friday, 11 June 2010
Keep it up Jack
One reason the British sex comedy was never particularly well regarded by critics is, at base, social class: Middle class critics were looking at a working class form that drew more from music hall than modernist theatre and whose pleasures were thereby fundamentally alien to them.
Available to buy from Movie Poster Mem; another design is here http://www.wrongsideoftheart.com/2009/10/keep-it-up-jack-1973-uk/
The correlations are immediately made in this 1973 entry from Derek Ford in that it opens on a pier-front theatre where protagonist Jack James (Mark Jones) is performing his one-man version of Oliver Twist, then develops into a bawdier version of the Victorian-era farce Charley's Aunt.
All that's needed here is the Donald McGill postcard as well
Unfortunately for Jack times are not what they were and the theatre's owner soon decides that his act – which had been performed by his father and grandfather before him – is not what is needed to draw in the punters these days.
At this point Jack has a stroke of luck as he inherits a property following the death of his aunt. It turns out that the place is a brothel where she was the madam. Or, rather it was a brothel, seeing as only one of the girls working there, the ironically named Virginia (Sue Longhurst) remains on site.
Taking a fancy to Virginia, Jack starts posing as his aunt and re-opens the place for business.
He soon learns that Virginia has distinctly amorous intentions towards Auntie. But rather than coming clean about things (oo er!) Jack continues to keep it up (fnaar fnaar!) and impersonate all manner of the brothel's clients, each with their own preferences and pecadilloes amongst the seven women now working there...
The set up gives plenty scope for Jones and Longhurst to demonstrate their talents.
Jones’s various personas are particular highlight – even if his Japanese visitor is, inevitably, the kind of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s style caricature unacceptable today. Interestingly earlier in his career Jones had worked with avant garde theatre director Peter Brook, suggesting that just because something appealed to the critics this didn't necessarily mean it provided a decent wage for the actor.
Longhurst, meanwhile, comes across (oo er!) as something of a British version of Edwige Fenech: Sexy, uninhibited and a whole lot better actress than many would probably give her credit for.
Though the version I saw was strictly softcore Ford apparently also shot alternative hardcore scenes for the export market. As it is there are some scenes which push the envelope a bit, such as Longhurst's memorable first appearance, lying naked on a bed pleasuring herself, and a pseudo-lesbian threesome.
Sue Longhurst goes exploring
There are also some amusing in-jokes: One of the prostitutes, who specialises in playing an infantile role, is played by On the Buses's Linda Regan. When the place is threatened with closure she remarks that she may have to go back “on the buses”...
Available to buy from Movie Poster Mem; another design is here http://www.wrongsideoftheart.com/2009/10/keep-it-up-jack-1973-uk/
The correlations are immediately made in this 1973 entry from Derek Ford in that it opens on a pier-front theatre where protagonist Jack James (Mark Jones) is performing his one-man version of Oliver Twist, then develops into a bawdier version of the Victorian-era farce Charley's Aunt.
All that's needed here is the Donald McGill postcard as well
Unfortunately for Jack times are not what they were and the theatre's owner soon decides that his act – which had been performed by his father and grandfather before him – is not what is needed to draw in the punters these days.
At this point Jack has a stroke of luck as he inherits a property following the death of his aunt. It turns out that the place is a brothel where she was the madam. Or, rather it was a brothel, seeing as only one of the girls working there, the ironically named Virginia (Sue Longhurst) remains on site.
Taking a fancy to Virginia, Jack starts posing as his aunt and re-opens the place for business.
He soon learns that Virginia has distinctly amorous intentions towards Auntie. But rather than coming clean about things (oo er!) Jack continues to keep it up (fnaar fnaar!) and impersonate all manner of the brothel's clients, each with their own preferences and pecadilloes amongst the seven women now working there...
The set up gives plenty scope for Jones and Longhurst to demonstrate their talents.
Jones’s various personas are particular highlight – even if his Japanese visitor is, inevitably, the kind of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s style caricature unacceptable today. Interestingly earlier in his career Jones had worked with avant garde theatre director Peter Brook, suggesting that just because something appealed to the critics this didn't necessarily mean it provided a decent wage for the actor.
Longhurst, meanwhile, comes across (oo er!) as something of a British version of Edwige Fenech: Sexy, uninhibited and a whole lot better actress than many would probably give her credit for.
Though the version I saw was strictly softcore Ford apparently also shot alternative hardcore scenes for the export market. As it is there are some scenes which push the envelope a bit, such as Longhurst's memorable first appearance, lying naked on a bed pleasuring herself, and a pseudo-lesbian threesome.
Sue Longhurst goes exploring
There are also some amusing in-jokes: One of the prostitutes, who specialises in playing an infantile role, is played by On the Buses's Linda Regan. When the place is threatened with closure she remarks that she may have to go back “on the buses”...
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