This week Third Window Films, who specialise in bringing Asian cinema to UK audiences, announced that they were no longer going to distribute films theatrically:
http://compactd.exblog.jp/15533802/
The first reason Third Window gives for this decision is the cost of having a film BBFC certificated for both cinema and home video.
This is something which disproportionately affects independent filmmakers and distributors, since they are paying the same as the majors for certification, this despite the obvious fact that their product is never going to sell in comparable quantities.
There's now an online petition urging the BBFC to reduce their costs:
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/34821
Whether or not this will make any difference is another matter, but the mandatory requirement to have films certificated by a single agency seems like the kind of restrictive business practice that a supposedly pro-business government should be acting against.
Unless they're really only concerned with helping big business...
Thursday, 14 June 2012
Wednesday, 13 June 2012
5 Donne per l'assassino / Five Women for the Killer
As Giorgio Pisani’s (Francis Matthews’) flight arrives – i.e. a classic giallo opening – he is called to the phone – i.e. a key giallo technology – over the intercom. It is his wife, and she is about to give birth.
Pisani contacts family friend Dr Lydia Frantzi (Pascale Rivault) and hurries to his home, finding his newborn son – and his wife dead; Lydia could not save her.
Later, at the hospital, Pisani finds his medical record left on a desk, as if for him to read. Doing so, he learns that he is infertile (apparently a hereditary condition, whose logic thereby makes one wonder.)
Over the next few days two women, whose only points in common are that they are both pregnant and have encountered Pisani, one fleetingly and the other on multiple occasions, are murdered. The method (graphically shown) is the same in both instances: A blade from the pubic region, upwards.
Pisani is brought in for questioning by a police inspector (Howard Ross/Renato Rossini), but released since there is nothing concrete against him.
It’s about this point that Stelvio Massi’s 1974 giallo begins to lose its way. The basic problem is that up until this point we’ve been following Pisani. Now, however, he becomes a suspect while the focus of the narrative shifts to other characters and the police investigation. (That some of the murders show the killer wearing the same distinctive driving gloves as Pisani helps reinforce the suspicion.)
We’re thus given no clear point of identification, in the manner that a Hitchcockian double-pursuit narrative, with Pisani seeking to identify the killer in order to demonstrate his own innocence to the authorities, would have provided.
This tends also to bring out the weaknesses in Massi’s direction. It is not that it lacks style, with there being plenty of hand-held camera work, shock zooms, rack focus, and compositions foregrounding objects before the characters or mirrors. Likewise, in contrast with Mikel Koven’s prosaic narrative/poetic set piece division of scenes, there are potentially poetic touches in even the more routine scenes – the kind of thing that arguably elevates Argento’s work above the generic norm.
This, however, is where the problem arises. For, unlike Argento, there is little sense that Massi’s stylistic devices are employed with any consistent or coherent logic, such that form informs content. The zooms, for instance, sometimes work to heighten dramatic impact, but sometimes just appear to have been used for economy/convenience. As such, they also lack the self-consciously excessive quality that their counterparts in, say, the opening moments of Bava’s Five Dolls for an August Moon have.
This also applies to Giorgio Gaslini’s jazzy score. It’s certainly good and would warrant an extended version CD re-release (it was available via a 1996 Japanese disc, running barely 30 minutes). Unfortunately sometimes it isn’t clear how it fits into the film and its images.
There are, however, some moments when all comes together. One example is the funeral of Giorgio’s wife, where Massi nicely introduces several of the suspects and red herrings. Another is the scene in which one of the titular five women senses she is being stalked and nervously goes to her door and looks through its fish-eye lens, only to find her eccentric but entirely harmless neighbour there. Suspense is thereby built up and deflated, only for shock to then be privileged as, after said neighbour has left, she is suddenly attacked by the killer.
Another point of interest for giallo fans is seeing Ross cast against type as the detective/investigator rather than a perpetrator or suspect, as with the aforementioned Bava film and Fulci’s The New York Ripper.
Hammer enthusiasts, meanwhile, may find it intriguing to see Francis Matthews of Dracula Prince of Darkness and Rasputin the Mad Monk in a contemporary setting.
Future porn queen/MP Ilona Staller has a brief role as a sexually liberated foreigner whose pregnancy precipitates her demise.
Not bad, just not as good as it could have been with a bit more care and attention.
Again thanks must go out to the community for bringing us this composite Italian/German sourced version, in widescreen and with English fansubs. It certainly beats the panned and scanned, Italian-language, VHS-sourced version of the film I viewed a few years back.
Pisani contacts family friend Dr Lydia Frantzi (Pascale Rivault) and hurries to his home, finding his newborn son – and his wife dead; Lydia could not save her.
Later, at the hospital, Pisani finds his medical record left on a desk, as if for him to read. Doing so, he learns that he is infertile (apparently a hereditary condition, whose logic thereby makes one wonder.)
Over the next few days two women, whose only points in common are that they are both pregnant and have encountered Pisani, one fleetingly and the other on multiple occasions, are murdered. The method (graphically shown) is the same in both instances: A blade from the pubic region, upwards.
Pisani is brought in for questioning by a police inspector (Howard Ross/Renato Rossini), but released since there is nothing concrete against him.
It’s about this point that Stelvio Massi’s 1974 giallo begins to lose its way. The basic problem is that up until this point we’ve been following Pisani. Now, however, he becomes a suspect while the focus of the narrative shifts to other characters and the police investigation. (That some of the murders show the killer wearing the same distinctive driving gloves as Pisani helps reinforce the suspicion.)
We’re thus given no clear point of identification, in the manner that a Hitchcockian double-pursuit narrative, with Pisani seeking to identify the killer in order to demonstrate his own innocence to the authorities, would have provided.
This tends also to bring out the weaknesses in Massi’s direction. It is not that it lacks style, with there being plenty of hand-held camera work, shock zooms, rack focus, and compositions foregrounding objects before the characters or mirrors. Likewise, in contrast with Mikel Koven’s prosaic narrative/poetic set piece division of scenes, there are potentially poetic touches in even the more routine scenes – the kind of thing that arguably elevates Argento’s work above the generic norm.
This, however, is where the problem arises. For, unlike Argento, there is little sense that Massi’s stylistic devices are employed with any consistent or coherent logic, such that form informs content. The zooms, for instance, sometimes work to heighten dramatic impact, but sometimes just appear to have been used for economy/convenience. As such, they also lack the self-consciously excessive quality that their counterparts in, say, the opening moments of Bava’s Five Dolls for an August Moon have.
This also applies to Giorgio Gaslini’s jazzy score. It’s certainly good and would warrant an extended version CD re-release (it was available via a 1996 Japanese disc, running barely 30 minutes). Unfortunately sometimes it isn’t clear how it fits into the film and its images.
There are, however, some moments when all comes together. One example is the funeral of Giorgio’s wife, where Massi nicely introduces several of the suspects and red herrings. Another is the scene in which one of the titular five women senses she is being stalked and nervously goes to her door and looks through its fish-eye lens, only to find her eccentric but entirely harmless neighbour there. Suspense is thereby built up and deflated, only for shock to then be privileged as, after said neighbour has left, she is suddenly attacked by the killer.
Another point of interest for giallo fans is seeing Ross cast against type as the detective/investigator rather than a perpetrator or suspect, as with the aforementioned Bava film and Fulci’s The New York Ripper.
Hammer enthusiasts, meanwhile, may find it intriguing to see Francis Matthews of Dracula Prince of Darkness and Rasputin the Mad Monk in a contemporary setting.
Future porn queen/MP Ilona Staller has a brief role as a sexually liberated foreigner whose pregnancy precipitates her demise.
Not bad, just not as good as it could have been with a bit more care and attention.
Again thanks must go out to the community for bringing us this composite Italian/German sourced version, in widescreen and with English fansubs. It certainly beats the panned and scanned, Italian-language, VHS-sourced version of the film I viewed a few years back.
Friday, 8 June 2012
Weird British actors
Donald Sumpter is becoming one of those weird British actors of the 60s and 70s who I'm looking out for. It started with Night After Night After Night, then continued with The Black Panther. And now here he is in Groupie Girl:
Wednesday, 6 June 2012
The new blogspot post tool
Is very annoying and keeps messing up the formatting whether I use Compose or HTML mode.
Sfida al diavolo / Challenge the Devil / Katarsis
One of the things about watching lots of Italian genre films from the late 50s through 80s is that you get used to certain names cropping up, like wig makers Rocchetti and Carboni or CSC graduate Carla Mancini.
This, by contrast, is one of those films where most of the names in the credits don’t mean much – including director Guiseppe Veggezzi / Joseph Vegh whose sole IMDB credit this is.
The two important names in the cast are Christopher Lee and Giorgio Ardisson, the former spelled as Cristopher in the credits and the latter’s forename Anglicised to George.
The film opens at an airport and looks like it’s going to be a crime thriller as two hitmen prepare to go into action against Carlo, for his refusal to hand over some documents.
Although wounded, Carlo escapes – it isn’t completely clear how – to a monastery where he asks to see one of the order, Pejo, an old friend. Carlo explains he hasn’t got the documents because Alma took them.
We then cut to a nightclub and are presented with a succession of song and dance numbers. Their relationship to the previous scenes only becomes evident when Pejo goes to visit Alma, a dancer at the club, backstage. Alma is reluctant to give up the documents – at least not for a considerable sum of money.
Pejo then recounts the story of how he became a monk – we’re now 20 minutes into the 75 minute film – and we segue into an extended flashback.
He and the rest of the gang – including the particularly out of control Ugo, played by Ardisson – were out looking for kicks, entailing forcing other cars off the road and then beating the occupant of one such vehicle after he has crashed.
Continuing on, the gang leave the road and, as night falls, end up at an old and apparently uninhabited castle. They decide to break in and explore the place, soon finding a banquet table laid out with food and drink which, needless to say, they gorge themselves on, before having a remarkably chaste “orgy” entailing dancing around and playing bongos for several minutes.
At this point Lee makes his appearance as the old man of the house and talks about his dead beloved and sold his soul to the Devil in order to bring her back. He hears her voice, but can never find her, and thus offers the gang all the riches in the castle if they can find her for him. After they have gone, the clock chimes midnight and the man is either replaced by or transforms into the Devil himself.
Round about this point the gang, who have gone in search of the treasure, start to feel a little less brave, and we get some reasonably decent Gothic/Fantastique atmospheres along with the woman making her appearance, leading the gang onto a seemingly endless spiral staircase ending in a crystal/mirror image filled room, traps each of them such that they can see the others but not reach or touch them.
The existential dread of the scene is effectively conveyed, recalling the likes of Sam Dalmas’s entrapment in the gallery sequence of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage; the infinite plane that Liza and John find themselves in at the end of The Beyond; Eswai’s pursuit of himself in Kill Baby Kill and – perhaps ultimately most revealing – the doubled characters in Nude for Satan.
Having been trapped for a while and now on their last legs, the gang follow one of the spiders inhabiting the place to find an equally long descending staircase that in turn leads onto a long passage. They have only just entered it, however, when they fall into a pit and encounter the Devil and/or the old man again. Suitably chastened and transformed by their experiences, they flee the castle.
At this point we cut back to the framing narrative as Pejo provides the moral of the story before, back in the past, the lady of the castle appears to them once more, coming out of a clock in a somewhat Rollin-esque manner.
At this point we cut back to the framing narrative as Pejo provides the moral of the story before, back in the past, the lady of the castle appears to them once more, coming out of a clock in a somewhat Rollin-esque manner. They take her out of the castle, into the light, and give her a proper burial. Significantly here we’re given a semi-subjective shot from inside the grave, looking up to the heavens.
As the contrite gang members pass the man they had earlier beaten, they tend to his injuries. “Strangely, his face resembled the old man from the castle.”
Alma, reduced to tears by Pejo’s tale, gives him the documents; that her name means soul hardly seems coincidental insofar as she too has been saved.
While this can in no way be considered a good film, it is certainly an interesting one for its combination of the inept and the poetic, or that “sublime” which Ado Kyrou famously identified as a reason for watching bad films.
Thanks must again go out to the badfilm community for recording this obscurity off Italian TV; converting it to an AVI and torrent, and providing fansubs.
This, by contrast, is one of those films where most of the names in the credits don’t mean much – including director Guiseppe Veggezzi / Joseph Vegh whose sole IMDB credit this is.
The two important names in the cast are Christopher Lee and Giorgio Ardisson, the former spelled as Cristopher in the credits and the latter’s forename Anglicised to George.
The film opens at an airport and looks like it’s going to be a crime thriller as two hitmen prepare to go into action against Carlo, for his refusal to hand over some documents.
Although wounded, Carlo escapes – it isn’t completely clear how – to a monastery where he asks to see one of the order, Pejo, an old friend. Carlo explains he hasn’t got the documents because Alma took them.
We then cut to a nightclub and are presented with a succession of song and dance numbers. Their relationship to the previous scenes only becomes evident when Pejo goes to visit Alma, a dancer at the club, backstage. Alma is reluctant to give up the documents – at least not for a considerable sum of money.
Pejo then recounts the story of how he became a monk – we’re now 20 minutes into the 75 minute film – and we segue into an extended flashback.
He and the rest of the gang – including the particularly out of control Ugo, played by Ardisson – were out looking for kicks, entailing forcing other cars off the road and then beating the occupant of one such vehicle after he has crashed.
Continuing on, the gang leave the road and, as night falls, end up at an old and apparently uninhabited castle. They decide to break in and explore the place, soon finding a banquet table laid out with food and drink which, needless to say, they gorge themselves on, before having a remarkably chaste “orgy” entailing dancing around and playing bongos for several minutes.
At this point Lee makes his appearance as the old man of the house and talks about his dead beloved and sold his soul to the Devil in order to bring her back. He hears her voice, but can never find her, and thus offers the gang all the riches in the castle if they can find her for him. After they have gone, the clock chimes midnight and the man is either replaced by or transforms into the Devil himself.
Round about this point the gang, who have gone in search of the treasure, start to feel a little less brave, and we get some reasonably decent Gothic/Fantastique atmospheres along with the woman making her appearance, leading the gang onto a seemingly endless spiral staircase ending in a crystal/mirror image filled room, traps each of them such that they can see the others but not reach or touch them.
The existential dread of the scene is effectively conveyed, recalling the likes of Sam Dalmas’s entrapment in the gallery sequence of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage; the infinite plane that Liza and John find themselves in at the end of The Beyond; Eswai’s pursuit of himself in Kill Baby Kill and – perhaps ultimately most revealing – the doubled characters in Nude for Satan.
Having been trapped for a while and now on their last legs, the gang follow one of the spiders inhabiting the place to find an equally long descending staircase that in turn leads onto a long passage. They have only just entered it, however, when they fall into a pit and encounter the Devil and/or the old man again. Suitably chastened and transformed by their experiences, they flee the castle.
At this point we cut back to the framing narrative as Pejo provides the moral of the story before, back in the past, the lady of the castle appears to them once more, coming out of a clock in a somewhat Rollin-esque manner.
At this point we cut back to the framing narrative as Pejo provides the moral of the story before, back in the past, the lady of the castle appears to them once more, coming out of a clock in a somewhat Rollin-esque manner. They take her out of the castle, into the light, and give her a proper burial. Significantly here we’re given a semi-subjective shot from inside the grave, looking up to the heavens.
As the contrite gang members pass the man they had earlier beaten, they tend to his injuries. “Strangely, his face resembled the old man from the castle.”
Alma, reduced to tears by Pejo’s tale, gives him the documents; that her name means soul hardly seems coincidental insofar as she too has been saved.
While this can in no way be considered a good film, it is certainly an interesting one for its combination of the inept and the poetic, or that “sublime” which Ado Kyrou famously identified as a reason for watching bad films.
Thanks must again go out to the badfilm community for recording this obscurity off Italian TV; converting it to an AVI and torrent, and providing fansubs.
L'assassino... è al telefono / The Killer is on the Phone
Whilst preparing for the murder of his current target hitman Ranko Dragovic (Telly Savalas) has a chance encounter with Eleanor (Anne Heywood), the wife of one of Dragovic's previous victims from five years earlier. She had been suffering from amnesia about this traumatic event, but now begins to recall details of it, thus making herself a threat to the killer.
I'd previously seen this 1972 giallo by Alberto De Martino from an old VHS source, and dubbed into English, so it was a welcome opportunity to see it again for the first time in a clean, widescreen, Italian dub with English fansubs.
Savalas is a suitably menacing, near-silent presence, recalling his role in Bava's Lisa and the Devil, while Heywood passes muster in the Frightened Woman role more usually assigned to an Edwige Fenech, Florinda Bolkan, Carroll Baker or Dagmar Lassander.
The theme of the unreliability of memory is, of course, a staple of the filone -- one thinks of The Girl Who Knew too Much, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Lizard in a Woman's Skin before this, and of Footprints on the Moon and The Man Without Memory a couple of years afterwards.
While not reaching the heights of these points of comparison, The Killer on the Phone is nevertheless a solidly put together production, benefiting in particular from a lush Stelvio Cipriani score and attractive cinematography from Aristide Massaccessi.
De Martino tries to inject a bit of style into proceedings, but his contributions are more hit and miss. The slow-motion lyrical flashback scenes as Eleanor recovers her previously repressed memories whilst under the influence of a truth drug are a bit over the top in that post Elvira Madigan way. The director is on surer footing when it comes to such staples of the form as the fetishisation of weaponry and black gloves; the close-ups of eyes; the shock zooms and, yes, plenty of product placement for Justerini & Brooks.
The use of the theatrical milieu is also worth noting, Eleanor being an actress by profession. This allows for some confusion over reality versus role-play, as the boundaries between her dramatic work and her traumatic psychodrama become blurred; despite currently being in preparation for a production of Lady Godiva she recites Lady MacBeth's famous murder speech, potentially hinting that she's not as innocent in the affair as appears on the surface.
The theatre space provides the location for an effective finale that sees 'the curtain descend, everything end' or 'bring the house down' in an almost literal way for at least one of the dramatis personae; to say more would spoil things.
I'd previously seen this 1972 giallo by Alberto De Martino from an old VHS source, and dubbed into English, so it was a welcome opportunity to see it again for the first time in a clean, widescreen, Italian dub with English fansubs.
Savalas is a suitably menacing, near-silent presence, recalling his role in Bava's Lisa and the Devil, while Heywood passes muster in the Frightened Woman role more usually assigned to an Edwige Fenech, Florinda Bolkan, Carroll Baker or Dagmar Lassander.
The theme of the unreliability of memory is, of course, a staple of the filone -- one thinks of The Girl Who Knew too Much, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Lizard in a Woman's Skin before this, and of Footprints on the Moon and The Man Without Memory a couple of years afterwards.
While not reaching the heights of these points of comparison, The Killer on the Phone is nevertheless a solidly put together production, benefiting in particular from a lush Stelvio Cipriani score and attractive cinematography from Aristide Massaccessi.
De Martino tries to inject a bit of style into proceedings, but his contributions are more hit and miss. The slow-motion lyrical flashback scenes as Eleanor recovers her previously repressed memories whilst under the influence of a truth drug are a bit over the top in that post Elvira Madigan way. The director is on surer footing when it comes to such staples of the form as the fetishisation of weaponry and black gloves; the close-ups of eyes; the shock zooms and, yes, plenty of product placement for Justerini & Brooks.
The theatre space provides the location for an effective finale that sees 'the curtain descend, everything end' or 'bring the house down' in an almost literal way for at least one of the dramatis personae; to say more would spoil things.
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