L' Ultima chance / Last Chance / Last Chance for a Born Loser / Motel of Fear / Stateline Motel

Having just been released from a Canadian prison after serving a six-month sentence for stealing a car, career criminal Floyd (Fabio Testi) takes advantage of the fact that he has to return to his native USA within 48 hours by teaming up with his old colleague Joe (Eli Wallach) to pull a jewelery store heist. The plan is that Floyd will smuggle the loot across the border and meet up with Joe back stateside the following day, where they will divide it up. As we all know, however, plans have a habit of going awry – especially in the heist movie.

The two men manage to pull off the robbery, albeit with Joe being forced to shoot a man who tries to raise the alarm, Floyd having failed to take control of the situation. The younger man does, however, prove his mettle in the car chase that ensues, as they successfully evade the police and make it out of the city.

Driving along a snow-covered backroad, Floyd unwisely starts veering from side to side and winds up going off the road. Though he is unhurt, the car needs repairs. And these repairs as mechanic Jack (Howard Ross) explains require a part – a part which will have to be brought in from out of town, meaning that Floyd isn't going to get across the border as planned.

Floyd goes to the motel next to the garage, and phones Joe to try to explain, but fails to his colleage's suspicious that he is trying to pull a fast one.

His frantic need to get out of town, railing at the gas station attendant who cannot – he believes will not – rent him a car, soon arouses suspicion, all the more so when the news broadcasts footage taken by a hidden camera inside the jewelers and notes that it is likely the American robbers may well be heading for the border.

While Floyd and Joe men were wearing masks, the descriptions of them are accurate, noting in particular that the younger man unusually wore his watch on the right rather than left wrist.
Floyd manages to remove the offending item before it can incriminate him, but by now the motel owner's wife, Michelle Norton (Ursula Andress) is convinced that something about the stranger is not as it seems. She's unstable and, keen to get out of her stultifying relationship with her older husband (Massimo Girotti), has already been carrying on with Jack, who also quickly puts two and two together...

Worse, the other inhabitant of the Last Chance Motel, the chambermaid Emily (Barbara Bach) just happens to be the girlfriend of one of the town policemen (Carlo De Mejo)...

Based on a novel of the same name by Franco Enna (whose work also provided the source for Omicidio per appuntamento a few years earlier), Maurizio Lucidi's L'Ultima chance is unusual among Italian crime thrillers of the early 1970s for its setting, which is also made a relatively important part of the whole.

While I didn't really get whether the story was supposed to be taking place in Francophone or Anglophone Canada – the advertisement hoardings are all in English, but the Montreal Star seems to be the newspaper of choice – the story probably wouldn't work in most European border locales with, say, two robbers trying to cross from Austria into Italy or from Belgium into France. It needs the scale and anonymity which the US-Canada border can provide, along with a harsher winter.

Though first in the credits, Wallach's role is largely limited to the opening and closing moments – albeit with his work there having that intensity which just about warrants his prominence in terms other than box-office recognition.

The rest of the film is pretty much the Testi and Andress show. Both do what they need to, with Andress taking the honours as far as the more complex performance goes, leaving us unsure as to her true feelings until the last – although it is also harder to fairly judge Testi's performance insofar as unlike Andress he does not do his own English dubbing – and are capably supported by Ross, Bach and Girotti.

The plotting and direction don't immediately come across as equally successful, however.
Part of this could be down to the English version apparently being cut compared to the Italian, but the rhythm and tone do seem a bit off at times. In particular, the opening robbery and chase set you up for a different kind of film than what the rest delivers, while the challenge of conveying a state of stasis without also boring the viewer is not quite met.

There are also some possible inconsistencies of character, such as Joe's trusting Floyd with the loot and Floyd's behind the wheel antics (as the sort of thing likely to attract the attention of the police or lead to some sort of (un)foreseen mishap) though more charitably it could be said that these reflects the basic inadequacies of the two men as (un)professional criminals.

Much the same might be said of place the loot ends up being hidden. Anyone who has seen Night of the Hunter or Wait Until Dark will probably be ahead of Floyd here, but perhaps thereby also forget to pay as much attention as might otherwise be the case to certain other curious details that emerge along the way to the final resolution...

While it may be a consequence of poor video mastering or similar, the visuals are a bit murky at times, with some scenes being so dark that it is difficult to anything out or else featuring the kind of contrast where there is black, white and little else.

All'onorevole piacciono le donne (Nonostante le apparenze... e purché la nazione non lo sappia) / The Senator Likes Women / The Eroticist

This 1972 comedy from Lucio Fulci is both a pleasant surprise and proves to have some surprising affinities with his better known horror and thriller work.


Not a giallo beginning with a plane arriving, but not as divorced from them as the film's status as a sex comedy would suggest

The story is simple: a presidential candidate (Lando Buzzanca) finds his careful political manoeuvring to become president may be undone by his compulsion to pinch women's bottoms when a blackmailing priest winds up with some incriminating photos...




Loss of control

Or, in other words, we have something close to a giallo – forbidden images of a citizen above suspicion plus anti-clericalism – but reworked as a sex comedy / political satire:

“As chief of politics, I'm confused.”

“Right, left, we're in a complete mess here. Look, all we know is that Senator Puppis is the major exponent of the left-wing fringe of a right-wing movement in the centre party. It's a fringe that finds itself on the left after the break-up of a moderate right-wing movement.”




The dreamscape void and the alluring yet dangerous woman, but it's not Lizard in a Woman's Skin...

The connection is further cemented by the fact that the politician undergoes analysis in a bid to determine what lies at the root of his condition, leading to a primal scene of his priest mentor (the great Lionel Stander) laying down the law of the father and a number of other dream sequences which wouldn't be completely out of place in A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (Anita Strindberg has a role in both films) or The Beyond.






Interpellation by the father?


The dreamscape void, again

You see the roots of the blind girl Emily's silent, slow-motion, repeated run out of her empty ghost house there in the repeated like slow-motion leaps the senator makes towards a row of nun backsides and, in its recalling of Rene Clair's Entr’acte an indication that Fulci's referencing of Antonin Artaud was decidedly more than an attempt to claim intellectual legitimacy for anyone who might have been listening.




Note the leaping / landing figure; this image repeats three times, no doubt conveying the barring of the signified or somesuch psychobabble...

The Clair connection is further enhanced by the way Fulci plays with sound and image early on: we cut from the TV station reporting on the latest round of elections in parliament, where we watch the pundits watching the screen behind them (all in black and white), to a shop window full of TV sets (black and white squares in a colour world) and the sound of cheering. But as the camera pans, however, we discover that the crowd is gathered around another window and is watching – and engaging with – a football match instead...

Fulci's direction has the subtletly of a bull in a china shop most of the time, however, with some serious overuse of the zoom lens. But equally you could visualise the same kind of material being regarded a whole lot better by many if it had borne the name Fellini...

A link and a book

Essay by Bengt Wallman on the giallo, well worth a read:

http://www.diva-portal.org/diva/getDocument?urn_nbn_se_su_diva-7035-1__fulltext.pdf

I found it while searching for more information on the latest volume from Glittering Images, which is looking at the fumetti and film and should be out in April / May; I saw it in an issue of the comics listings magazine Previews but unfortunately couldn't find an image online. It's got what looks to be the poster art for one of the Kriminal films on it and covers 1960-73.

Contextualising Cannibal Holocaust

One of the points that Ruggero Deodato often makes about Cannibal Holocaust when criticised for the mondo style animal slaughter footage in it is that it's no big deal if one grows up in a rural community.

There's a little human interest 'from our own correspondent' story on the BBC about the 'day of the pig' in Umbria that makes for interesting reading in this regard:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7231228.stm

Nekrofile: Cinema of the eXtreme

This 1997 publication from Midnight Media, written by British genre writer Alan Jones, presents a selection of 20 reviews organised around the notion of cinema of the extreme: disreputable, marginal and envelope-pushing independent productions like Anthropophagous the Beast, Expose, Friday the 13th and Mark of the Devil.

Jones characteristically breathless reviews are entertaining and pleasurable to read, even if inevitably you don't always agree with his evaluations.

The things that are to be savoured most, however, are the obscure little nuggets of information and the personal angle that he brings: the reminiscences of seeing Blood and Black Lace at the age of 13 or a double bill of Zombie Flesh Eaters and The Toolbox Murders on its first release; memories of having dinner with Mariangela Giordano, the dining room decorated with a nude portrait of her; or just the 'I'm not telling' Cinecitta Babylon type scurillous rumours as to various unnamed individuals sexual orientations and off-set activities.

It's also fascinating to see how the scene around these films has changed over time. The digital revolution, in the form of DVD and file sharing, has made it comparatively easy for us to see these films, putting them almost literally at our fingertips.

Ten years ago I had only read about most of the titles in the book, today I have all of them bar a couple, Mother's Day and The Fiend, and could doubtless add these to my collection and watched list with minimal effort.

Yet, our culture around extreme cinema has also changed as a result. Viewing that uncut, beautifully presented DVD of Cannibal Holocaust in the comfort of your own home cinema is a fundamentally different experience from watching a beaten-up print in that sleazy fleapit, grindhouse or drive-in with an audience of like minded types or via that nth generation video obtained from some dubious source. Whether this is all for the better, the worse or a mixture of both is, of course, a matter for debate.

Another factor here is the emergence of the arthouse/grindhouse crossover, already perhaps implicit in a film like Abel Ferrara's MS .45, but apparently growing in importance with the likes of Claire Denis's Trouble Every Day and Gaspar Noe's Irreversible. The challenge here is that of bringing the two non-or anti- Hollywood mainstream cultures, and the larger part of their audiences, together to cross-pollinate/contaminate...

Femmine insaziabili / The Insatiables / Beverly Hills / Mord im schwarzen Cadillac / Excess

Italian journalist Paolo Vittori (Robert Hoffmann) arrives in Los Angeles at the behest of his old friend. Now known to millions as the public face of International Chemicals (clearly not Incorporated) after winning a competition which took him far away from his old life, Giulio Lamberti, who now goes by the anglicised name Julius Lambert, is in big trouble.

Paolo does what he can, beginning with taking a beating and having his face shoved in his own vomit by a couple of thugs by way of demonstrating that he doesn’t know where his friend is, but proves unable to prevent Giulio from being murdered shortly afterwards.

Paolo resolves to find out who was responsible and bring them to justice. The list of suspects is long, including an ex-wife, ex-mistresses and about half the board of International Chemical.

But as the investigation proceeds, with each new contact revealing further unpleasant aspects of Giulio’s personality and how it had changed with wealth and fame, we may begin to wonder if his murder wasn’t entirely justified…

Given the succession of flashbacks deployed here, it is tempting to read The Insatiables /Femmine insaziabili as a somewhat Wellesian film, Citizen Kane meets The Lady from Shanghai (with a key exchange in both films occurring in an aquarium) all’ italiana.

The subtle shift in meaning between the English and Italian titles is significant: the Italian suggests insatiable women threatening the male with their desires, the English probably more accurate in making it clear that near everyone, man and woman alike, wants more and according with the cynical resolution to the whole affair. (According to the IMDB, Le Insaziabili was also the working title for the film in Italian.)

One of the film’s flaws is the unconvincing way in which the Italian characters are inserted into the Los Angeles environment. It’s understandable in light of the film’s primary audiences, as a means of providing extra exoticism, glamour and distance, but never quite convinces, insofar as the same basic country mouse / town mouse type theme might have worked more naturally with two provincial Italians in Rome or two Americans from some Midwest Hicksville.

Another is perhaps the way the film doesn’t deal with all the suspects in Giulio’s murder. Though we’re informed that the probabilities of each of International Chemicals’ major shareholders being involved in the affair are directly proportional to their stakes in the company some of them, including John Karlsen’s 25 per cent man, hardly feature at all.

Then again, if the choice is between scenes foregrounding Karlsen’s grey eminence and Romina Power’s hippie chick looking for kicks wherever she can find them, the filmmakers’ choice again makes sense. (Having watched Power play almost the exact same role in Perversion Story, it's doubtful how far she could act, but she certainly had look and attitude down pat.)

Like Bruno Nicolai’s brash big band score, Alberto De Martino’s direction is rarely subtle but all the better for it in terms of conveying the alternately glamorous and sleazy world of the film’s characters.

De Martino handles the violence well, not least when Paolo avenges himself on the two men who beat him up and their paymaster, but is less convincing when it comes to the sex, with one of those lobster-like ‘one on top of the other’ orgy scenes where the women remove their clothes and the men keep theirs on where it matters throughout. Nevertheless, the very inclusion of some full frontal female nudity suggests that the director was keen to push the envelope here as well.

The performances are variable. Robert Hoffman is somewhat impassive as per usual, good for conveying a determination to get to the bottom of the whole affair but less adequate when required to suggest how this demi monde is actually getting to him.

The female leads – Luciana Paluzzi, Dorothy Malone and Nicoletta Machiavelli – are better, bringing glamour and complexity to their roles.

Best of all, however, is the always impressive Frank Wolff as Frank Donovan, here playing an effete gay sophisticate far removed from the likes of his bluff sheriff in Corbucci’s The Great Silence and Irish settler in Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West.

In sum, an enjoyable thriller that, if not doing anything particularly new or envelope stretching – 1967’s Omicidio per appuntamento has a somewhat similar set-up, albeit with the action occurring in Italy – is nevertheless a pleasing way to spend 100 or so minutes and another useful reminder of the diversity of the post-Bava, pre-Argento giallo.

[ An AVI of the film is available from Cinemageddon; there's a link to the OST here should you want to try before you buy ]

George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead

[Not a regular review / post, more something I did for a writing on film class which I'm doing for fun and figured I'd post here as well; the brief was to write 700-1000 words or so on a film of your choice and, if an older film, contextualise it]

It is impossible to approach Dawn of the Dead (1978) without consideration of its auteur, George A. Romero. Born in 1940 in New York, Romero worked as an industrial film-maker in Pittsburgh before making his independently made feature debut, Night of the Living Dead (1968). Today recognised as one of the most influential horror films ever made, the failure of the film's original distributors to properly copyright their release caused it to pass into the public domain. While situations like this are alas none too rare in the world of low-budget independent filmmaking, Romero was unusual in that he did not seek to use Night as a route into Hollywood, preferring to remain as a regional, independent filmmaker.

Wary of being typed as a horror man, he also sought to resist making other genre films. However, the critical and commercial failures of There's Always Vanilla (1971) and Season of the Witch (1972) coupled with comparatively successful returns to horror with The Crazies (1973) and Martin (1976) led him back to the idea of a sequel to Night.

Although nearly ten years had passed since its predecessor's production, Dawn picks up events as if only a few weeks have elapsed. The living dead are everywhere, mindlessly and remorselessly searching for human flesh to eat. The situation is getting worse by the hour. Fran and her boyfriend Stephen, who work for the local television station, which is about to go off the air and be replaced by the emergency network, and two SWAT team members, Roger and Peter, who participate on a disastrous raid on a housing project whose inhabitants have refused to deliver up their dead for disposal, decide to flee the city. Escaping in one of the TV station's helicopters, they have a narrow escape whilst refuelling before landing on the roof of a massive out of town mall to rest. Entranced by the treasures therein, they formulate a new plan: seal off all the entrances to the place, kill all the living dead already within it and take over.

With backing for the project forthcoming and an uneventful shoot, Romero's trials began when he took Dawn before the MPAA for certification. They refused to grant it an 'R' rating and instead threatened an 'X'. This, through its association with hardcore pornography, would make it difficult for the film to get advertising and bookings. Reaching an impasse with the MPAA, Romero thus decided to release the film unrated – a situation, it is worth noting, which is not possible here, where every theatrical released film is required to have a BBFC certificate.

Thankfully for Romero, his refusal to compromise paid off, with the film doing good business. It might also be asked, however, whether it would have done even better with a major studio behind it and if compromise could have benefitted Romero's career in the longer term. Certainly his intended conclusion to the series, Day of the Dead (1985), was constrained by an inadequate budget. Likewise a long period in the wilderness followed before the commercial success of Zack Snider's remake-cum-interpretation, Dawn of the Dead (2004) paved the way for the long-proposed fourth Dead film, Land of the Dead (2005). Significantly, however, it was both a major studio production and an R-rated one.

So much for the history lesson. The question the contemporary viewer is likely to have is how well Dawn of the Dead holds up after 30 years. The answer is remarkably well. Although Tom Savini's state-of-the-art splatter effects have long been surpassed by those of today's CGI-intensive releases, they still pack a wallop. It also helps here that the aesthetic of these effects, like that of the film as a whole, is essentially a comic book one, in line with both Jean-Luc Godard's famous “This is not blood, it's red,” formulation and Romero and Savini's notion of“splatstick” While it might seem odd to juxtapose arthouse and grindhouse cinemas in this way, the truth is that they are closer than we might think on many occasions, including this one.

No doubt as a serious commentary on contemporary consumer society and what it does to us, Romero's film lacks the subtlety and complexity of Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967) – indeed, Romero's approach to satire can be summed up by the pies in the face which a number of the zombies receive in one action sequence, which may seem incongruous, but is in fact in perfect harmony with the grotesque comedy of the film as a whole and the tradition of Jonathan Swift's 'Modest Proposal' beyond it – but his allegorical vision is as apocalyptic as Weekend's (1968), has its own often-unacknowledged subtleties. Most important of all, it also managed to reach those mainstream audiences that the Frenchman singularly failed to.

How many of us, having seen the film, can never look at the crowds in a brightly-lit shopping mall with musak tinkling in quite the same way again, without thinking of the other shoppers as zombies and of what we would do if placed in Fran or Peter's position? “They're us, this was an important place to them,” as Fran observes. It's the continuing revelance of this statement which ensures the significance of the film today. It also gets it by those areas of potential weakness, such as the somewhat broad performances and at times overly-meaningful dialogue.

Romero's genius is all the more apparent when his film is contrasted with Snider's. It is not that Snider's undead run rather than amble as the effects this has on the core dynamics of the work. In Romero's Dawn we understand that the main threat the zombies pose is in the characters' underestimation of them as figures of fun and that the mall just might be a place of safety if it can be emptied of flesh-eaters, while the more deliberate pacing affords him to convey a real sense of the growing stasis of his characters lives, their own becoming zombie. In Snider's music-video styled remake, by contrast, everything is just that bit too fast, too intense, with little scope for meaningful digressions, be it a glacial pan across the mallscape or a leisurely montage of otherwise conventional middle-class life as a state of living death.

Or, 'independent horror 1, Hollywood 0'.