Another potential Edinburgh Film Guild season for next year...
Although most western audiences only became aware of Japanese horror cinema with the release of The Ring, Dark Waters, Audition and so on, the genre has a long history in the country. With this mini-season we showcase six of the best Japanese horror films from the late 1950s through the 1970s.
Jigoku -- Right from the opening credits, projected onto a naked woman's body and accompanied by a John Zorn-esque soundtrack, you know you are in for a trip as a university student falls foul of a demonic figure to find himself plunged into hell, the depiction of which still packs a punch and shows how those rumours of Hammer producing extra-gory versions of their films for the Japanese market arose.
Matango -- Survivors from a shipwreck find themselves on an island populated by mushroom people. The condition turns out to be contagious...
Irezumi -- After being kidnapped, made to work as a geisha, and forcibly tattooed with a large spider, Otsuya seeks bloody revenge upon those who have wronged her. The title Irezumi refers to the traditional Japanese tattooing methods depicted in the film.
Goke Bodysnatcher from Hell -- After their plane crash lands in an isolated area a mixed group of characters discover that there is a body-jumping alien parasite amongst them. Tarantino referenced Goke in Kill Bill Vol 1 as the bride flew to Japan against a blood-red sky.
Horror of Malformed Men -- Suffering from a de facto ban in Japan, this complex and at times avant-garde production based on a story by the pseudonymous Edogawa Rampo -- i.e. the Japanese Edgar Allan Poe -- must be seen to be believed.
House -- A group of school pupils venture into the house of a witch, with bizarre and frequently fatal consequences. At times reminiscent of Dario Argento's Suspiria, but incredibly upping the what-the-fuck factor even higher.
Should Kwaidan/Kaidan be there? Or one of the Toho Dracula films?
Thursday, 8 November 2012
US Trash Cinema
Being another possible Edinburgh Film Guild season for next year. As before comments and suggestions welcomed...
As the likes of Eric Schaefer's Bold! Daring! Shocking! True! and David Friedman's A Youth in Babylon show, trash cinema has existed almost as long as Hollywood, exploring subject matter that mainstream filmmakers could or would not exploit, generally around some combination of sex, violence and drugs. With this season we showcase six important example of the genre.
Reefer Madness -- one of a slew of films conveniently released as the US government moved to ban marijuana in the 1930s, Reefer Madness sees clean-living youths fall under the deadly sway of “the weed with roots in hell” to suffer hysterical and factually inaccurate consequences.
Blood Feast -- Caterer Fuad Ramses is appointed to prepare a 21st birthday feast for Mrs Fremont's daughter Suzette. Ramses proposes an “Egyptian feast” which Mrs Fremont agrees with, not knowing about its unique human ingredients. The original gore film from Herschell Gordon Lewis and David Friedman.
Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill -- Three go-go dancers go on the lam after one kills a boy racer and wind up at a dilapidated farm where a fortune is hidden. Thelma and Louise ain't got nothing on Turu Satana and Hajii...
The Wizard of Gore -- Montag the Magician performs incredible tricks by which members of his audience have fatal wounds inflicted upon them, only to then recover at the conclusion of the performance. The problem is that Montag is not actually curing these wounds, instead only delaying their effects...
Pink Flamingoes -- John Waters' first feature length film sees Divine and David Lochary's characters vying for the title of filthiest person alive. Presented completely uncut, including the chicken sex scene, the man with the talking anus, and Divine eating dog shit.
Double Agent 73 -- When Agent 99 is murdered by the drugs kinpin whose operation he had almost infiltrated Double Agent 73 is called in to continue the investigation. The 73 refers to the real bust size, in inches, of freakshow star “Chesty Morgan”.
As the likes of Eric Schaefer's Bold! Daring! Shocking! True! and David Friedman's A Youth in Babylon show, trash cinema has existed almost as long as Hollywood, exploring subject matter that mainstream filmmakers could or would not exploit, generally around some combination of sex, violence and drugs. With this season we showcase six important example of the genre.
Reefer Madness -- one of a slew of films conveniently released as the US government moved to ban marijuana in the 1930s, Reefer Madness sees clean-living youths fall under the deadly sway of “the weed with roots in hell” to suffer hysterical and factually inaccurate consequences.
Blood Feast -- Caterer Fuad Ramses is appointed to prepare a 21st birthday feast for Mrs Fremont's daughter Suzette. Ramses proposes an “Egyptian feast” which Mrs Fremont agrees with, not knowing about its unique human ingredients. The original gore film from Herschell Gordon Lewis and David Friedman.
Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill -- Three go-go dancers go on the lam after one kills a boy racer and wind up at a dilapidated farm where a fortune is hidden. Thelma and Louise ain't got nothing on Turu Satana and Hajii...
The Wizard of Gore -- Montag the Magician performs incredible tricks by which members of his audience have fatal wounds inflicted upon them, only to then recover at the conclusion of the performance. The problem is that Montag is not actually curing these wounds, instead only delaying their effects...
Pink Flamingoes -- John Waters' first feature length film sees Divine and David Lochary's characters vying for the title of filthiest person alive. Presented completely uncut, including the chicken sex scene, the man with the talking anus, and Divine eating dog shit.
Double Agent 73 -- When Agent 99 is murdered by the drugs kinpin whose operation he had almost infiltrated Double Agent 73 is called in to continue the investigation. The 73 refers to the real bust size, in inches, of freakshow star “Chesty Morgan”.
Blaxploitation
I'm in charge of programming films for my local film society, The Edinburgh Film Guild. As part of our programme we have four mini-seasons of six films/screenings each which showcase cult type films. For next year I'm thinking of doing a Blaxploitation mini-season. What do you think of the films I've chosen and which changes would you make? I've deliberately steered clear from Sweet Sweetback, Shaft and Superfly.
BlaxploitationThe term Blaxploitation refers to a type of exploitation cinema that emerged in the early 1970s, with the realisation that African-Americans comprised an increasingly large part of the US film audience that Hollywood had hitherto failed to tap into. Most Blaxploitation films used familiar genres but changed their dynamics by having black rather than white heroes and anti-heroes. In this mini-season we showcase six examples of the form, featuring iconic stars such as Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, Pam Grier and Rudy Ray Moore.
Hitman -- Based upon the same novel as Get Carter, but transposed to Los Angeles, this hard-hitting revenge tale gives the better known Michael Caine vehicle a run for its money. Bernie Casey stars.
Black Caesar -- Independent auteur Larry Cohen's re-imagining of the 1930s rise-and-fall gangster tale, with Fred “The Hammer” Williamson in the title role as the ambitious Harlem mobster.
Coffy -- Pam Grier plays the titular nurse seeking vengeance upon the drug pushers whose wares were responsible for the death of her sister.
Blacula -- Acclaimed stage actor William Marshall plays the titular vampire, an African prince who had unwisely sought Dracula's help against the slave trade centuries before, and who now finds himself in present-day Los Angeles.
Welcome Home Brother Charles -- Having spend several years in the pen after falling victim to racist cops, the titular protagonist seek revenge. His method and weapon have to be seen to be believed.
Disco Godfather -- The inimitable Rudy Ray Moore is a retired cop now working as a DJ in the hottest disco in town. When his relative flips out on PCP he goes seeking revenge. One of those films that's so bad it's good.
BlaxploitationThe term Blaxploitation refers to a type of exploitation cinema that emerged in the early 1970s, with the realisation that African-Americans comprised an increasingly large part of the US film audience that Hollywood had hitherto failed to tap into. Most Blaxploitation films used familiar genres but changed their dynamics by having black rather than white heroes and anti-heroes. In this mini-season we showcase six examples of the form, featuring iconic stars such as Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, Pam Grier and Rudy Ray Moore.
Hitman -- Based upon the same novel as Get Carter, but transposed to Los Angeles, this hard-hitting revenge tale gives the better known Michael Caine vehicle a run for its money. Bernie Casey stars.
Black Caesar -- Independent auteur Larry Cohen's re-imagining of the 1930s rise-and-fall gangster tale, with Fred “The Hammer” Williamson in the title role as the ambitious Harlem mobster.
Coffy -- Pam Grier plays the titular nurse seeking vengeance upon the drug pushers whose wares were responsible for the death of her sister.
Blacula -- Acclaimed stage actor William Marshall plays the titular vampire, an African prince who had unwisely sought Dracula's help against the slave trade centuries before, and who now finds himself in present-day Los Angeles.
Welcome Home Brother Charles -- Having spend several years in the pen after falling victim to racist cops, the titular protagonist seek revenge. His method and weapon have to be seen to be believed.
Disco Godfather -- The inimitable Rudy Ray Moore is a retired cop now working as a DJ in the hottest disco in town. When his relative flips out on PCP he goes seeking revenge. One of those films that's so bad it's good.
Monday, 29 October 2012
The Four Dimensions of Greta -- in 3D
The story begins in the West Germany, where Hans Weimer (Tristan Roger, later to appear in producer-director Pete Walker's The Flesh and Blood Show and another softcore sex film, the Spinal Tap-esque titled Sex Farm) is recruited to travel to London to investigate what has happened to au pair Greta (Leena Skoog).
Hans first makes contact with Mrs Marks, with whom Greta was originally living. He learns that Greta was unhappy with the poor treatment she had received at the hands of the Marks family, who regard au pairs as “a type of servant” and whom Greta left after only a week. Hans in turn considers Mrs Marks as a “sow”, a term that gains additional resonance given Hans's nationality and the implication of the Marks/Marx name and Golder's Green residence, in that she is coded as Jewish.
Hans then meets up with Sue, with whom he visits clubs and discotheques, and makes contact with another of Greta's acquiantances, Serena; Walker, making a Hitchcockian cameo as a waiter, gets a pie in the face.
Serena tells Hans that Greta was a nasty piece of work, who exploited her and her friend Kristina, before then leaving them to work at a Soho strip club with Cynthia. (The man enticing men into the club has a patter that likely intentionally references Paul Raymond's approach, of having nude models who move rather than stay static, this prompting a raid from the clearly corrupt police.)
Hans then learns about footballer Roger Maitland (Robin Askwith), who takes a more active role in determining what has happened to Greta...
This confusingly titled entry might be considered the Citizen Kane of the British sexploitation film. That's not referring to its quality, which is no better or worse than most comparable films within the genre and time period, as much as its structure. For it is one that sees the investigator protagonist visit a series of characters who reveal what they know about the missing Greta, A mentioning B, then B mentioning C etc. These flashbacks scenes are presented in black and white, green and red, and in 3D rather than in colour and 2D, with this coding being identified in the opening credits rather than being left for the spectator to figure out. The flashbacks also feature a lot of crude “comin' at ya” shots of things being thrust forward from the screen.
One important area where The Four Dimensions of Greta -- in 3D departs from Welles's film is in placing the diegetic investigator and the viewer on an equal footing. In Welles's film the investigator never learns what Kane's dying utterance, “Rosebud”, refers to. Here, by contrast, we and the investigator simultaneously learn what has happened to Greta.
Another area where the film's classical aspect is evident is how these flashbacks are discreet and largely non-contradictory. This contrasts with another key film exploring the flashback and its relation to truth, Rashomon. Akira Kurosawa's film presents the same incident from a variety of self-interested and subjective perspectives, none of which -- including the observer who was not a participant -- can be trusted to convey the truth.
Hans first makes contact with Mrs Marks, with whom Greta was originally living. He learns that Greta was unhappy with the poor treatment she had received at the hands of the Marks family, who regard au pairs as “a type of servant” and whom Greta left after only a week. Hans in turn considers Mrs Marks as a “sow”, a term that gains additional resonance given Hans's nationality and the implication of the Marks/Marx name and Golder's Green residence, in that she is coded as Jewish.
Hans then meets up with Sue, with whom he visits clubs and discotheques, and makes contact with another of Greta's acquiantances, Serena; Walker, making a Hitchcockian cameo as a waiter, gets a pie in the face.
Serena tells Hans that Greta was a nasty piece of work, who exploited her and her friend Kristina, before then leaving them to work at a Soho strip club with Cynthia. (The man enticing men into the club has a patter that likely intentionally references Paul Raymond's approach, of having nude models who move rather than stay static, this prompting a raid from the clearly corrupt police.)
Hans then learns about footballer Roger Maitland (Robin Askwith), who takes a more active role in determining what has happened to Greta...
This confusingly titled entry might be considered the Citizen Kane of the British sexploitation film. That's not referring to its quality, which is no better or worse than most comparable films within the genre and time period, as much as its structure. For it is one that sees the investigator protagonist visit a series of characters who reveal what they know about the missing Greta, A mentioning B, then B mentioning C etc. These flashbacks scenes are presented in black and white, green and red, and in 3D rather than in colour and 2D, with this coding being identified in the opening credits rather than being left for the spectator to figure out. The flashbacks also feature a lot of crude “comin' at ya” shots of things being thrust forward from the screen.
One important area where The Four Dimensions of Greta -- in 3D departs from Welles's film is in placing the diegetic investigator and the viewer on an equal footing. In Welles's film the investigator never learns what Kane's dying utterance, “Rosebud”, refers to. Here, by contrast, we and the investigator simultaneously learn what has happened to Greta.
Another area where the film's classical aspect is evident is how these flashbacks are discreet and largely non-contradictory. This contrasts with another key film exploring the flashback and its relation to truth, Rashomon. Akira Kurosawa's film presents the same incident from a variety of self-interested and subjective perspectives, none of which -- including the observer who was not a participant -- can be trusted to convey the truth.
Wednesday, 24 October 2012
Hot Girls / For Men Only
Freddie (David Kernan) is a fashion photographer for Vogue. His fiancée Rosalie (Andrea Allen) is worried that the models will prove a temptation to him, and is pleased when Freddie is hired, sight-unseen, by Fanthorpe (Derek Aylward), the owner of some 30 or so publications with a big and small C conservative orientation.
Note the credit for "The Birds"
What nobody else knows is that Fanthorpe is also the proprietor of a cheesecake publication, For Men Only, and has hired Freddie because he thinks Freddie will prove to have a knack for glamour photography and be able to recruit some “birds” through his Vogue contacts.
A further complication is provided by a rival publisher, who hopes to steal away the best of Fanthorpe’s talent and use them as the basis for his own magazine.
Running under an hour – and listed on the IMDB as being a mere 43 minutes long, rather than the 58 or so of this washed-out, scratchy Something Weird release – this early Pete Walker piece, on which he served as producer, director and writer, plays out much like a classic farce with added tits & arse.
The most interesting aspect of the film, if the viewer has seen Walker’s later horror films, particularly those written or co-written with David McGillivray, is how it prefigures aspects of them. The glamour/softcore porn industry also appeared in House of Whipcord, the attack on religious hypocrisy House of Mortal Sin.
Note the credit for "The Birds"
What nobody else knows is that Fanthorpe is also the proprietor of a cheesecake publication, For Men Only, and has hired Freddie because he thinks Freddie will prove to have a knack for glamour photography and be able to recruit some “birds” through his Vogue contacts.
Sexy secretary: "Sugar?"
Freddie: "Two large ones
please"
A further complication is provided by a rival publisher, who hopes to steal away the best of Fanthorpe’s talent and use them as the basis for his own magazine.
Running under an hour – and listed on the IMDB as being a mere 43 minutes long, rather than the 58 or so of this washed-out, scratchy Something Weird release – this early Pete Walker piece, on which he served as producer, director and writer, plays out much like a classic farce with added tits & arse.
The most interesting aspect of the film, if the viewer has seen Walker’s later horror films, particularly those written or co-written with David McGillivray, is how it prefigures aspects of them. The glamour/softcore porn industry also appeared in House of Whipcord, the attack on religious hypocrisy House of Mortal Sin.
Tuesday, 16 October 2012
No Blade of Grass
The film opens with a voice-off indicating that by the early 1970s conditions were ripe for an environmental catastrophe, accompanied by a montage of stock images of pollution, over-population, rampant consumerism and starvation, culminating in the explosion of an atomic bomb.
Similar images will appear throughout, sometimes interpolated in with no direct relation to the narrative. There are also frequent flash-forwards, tinted in red, and flashbacks, with the narrative sometimes chopping back and forward between past and present without clearly indicating so.
The catastrophe, as indicated by the title, stems from a plant disease that attacks grasses – i.e. the key crops for men and livestock alike. First appearing in East Asia, the disease is reported to have spread to Africa and South America, with the current death toll estimated at hundreds of millions in these areas. Social order in India has broken down and starving refugees from China have flooded into Hong Kong.
Not that any of this, as reported on the television playing in an up-market restaurant or club, appears to have had much effect on most of its patrons, a cross section of gluttonous bourgeois grotesques who seem to have wandered in from an Eisenstein or Buñuel film.
Three of those present have a different understanding. One, Roger Burnham (John Hamill), is government scientist party to information that the media dare not reveal. The second, his friend John Custance (Nigel Davenport), is an architect and ex-military man. The third, John’s brother David (Patrick Holt), owns a farm in the Lake District.
David advises John that he and his family should leave London as soon as possible and head for his farm. David says Roger can come along as well, in case they need someone for the pot – a joke whose reality is then indicated by news reports of cannibalism in some parts of the world.
With cities of over 300,000 people about to be sealed off and martial law imposed, along with rumours that there is only a week’s supply of food remaining, John and Roger decide to get out of London.
There’s a nice sequence of match edits around this point, as filmmaker Cornel Wilde cuts from John and Roger’s shocked “Jesus!” and “Christ!” to the image of John’s son Davey at his public school, a choir singing “Was born for thee...” on the soundtrack. Davey then coughs, his cough being taken up by a man on TV who is interviewing government ecologist Sir Charles Brenner (Burnham’s boss) about recent developments.
It seems the Chinese government has nerve gassed 300 million of its own people. Brenner accepts this action as rational in the circumstances, being “necessary for survival”. He then predictably evades the question of whether similar measures would be countenanced for the UK.
The group barely manage to get out of London after getting caught up in a confrontation between a hungry mob and the police – a scene whose images of the former using petrol bombs and the latter teargas and rifles perhaps had a special resonance for British audiences of the time in relation to the Northern Ireland “Troubles”.
The refugees go to pick up Davey and agree to take his friend ‘Spooks’ with them. Their next task is to get some guns and ammunition from a gunshop owner Custance knows, Mr Sturdevant. Sturdevant trusts the authorities and refuses to hand over the weapons, even when Custance explains how things are only going to get worse. Custance and Burnham move to take the guns, only to find themselves covered by Sturdevant’s assistant, Pirrie. Pirrie proves more amenable to Custen’s arguments, shoots his erstwhile employer and throws in his lot with the refugees.
Their next encounter is a roadblock manned by soldiers, whom they find themselves forced to kill:
Ann Custance: “There was no other way, was there darling?”
John: “No”
Clara Pirrie: “Why did you do all the shooting?”
Pirrie: “I had to”
The violence and disorder continue to escalate as the group continue on their way towards David’s farm, with encounters including a marauding biker gang, who rape the Custance’ 16 year old daughter Mary (Lynne Frederick); a rural posse who take their food, vehicles and weapons; a Farmer Palmer type who refuses them food, with predictable consequences; another group of refugees with a pig-headed self-appointed leader, and soldiers who mutiny against their commanding officer. Then, by the time the farm has been reached brother is pitted against brother...
Though released after George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead this survivalist horror can also be seen as a follow-up to director-producer-co-screenwriter Wilde’s own The Naked Prey. In that film a group of white hunters in Africa anger the native population – this, of course, a staple theme of the cannibal film – and are killed with the exception of one of their number, who is then allowed to fight for his life in a Most Dangerous Game type man-hunt.
For the main theme of the film, that of the narrow boundary between modern/civilised and primitive/savage man is one that recurs here and which can also be seen in a number of films of the time, including Straw Dogs, Deliverance, Deep River Savages, Last Cannibal World, and The Hills Have Eyes.
A significant difference between No Blade of Grass is the way it approaches the issue of the other. For in No Blade of Grass there is not an identifiable 'other' against which 'we', via our on-screen representatives, are positioned. Rather, there is the rapid emergence of a state of war of all against all, as per Hobbes or Bataille, where the enemy is (or was) us:
Ann: What kind of people are you?
Leader of posse who rob them: Same kind of people you are, ma’am.
As such, the main reason we identify with the protagonists is more that it is their story we are following rather than their being particularly morally superior to their antagonists, the exceptions being the rapist bikers and the establishment elites.
This scene is also notable for seeing Ann, who had previously questioned the necessity for violence, taking Pirrie’s rifle and cold-bloodedly shooting a wounded biker as he pleads for mercy.
One perceptive IMDB commentator has suggested that there are some intriguing parallels between No Blade of Grass’s main quest narrative, of the search for the promised land, and the Old Testament story of Exodus, with John and Pirrie the Moses and Joshua figures respectively.
While sometimes clunky in its execution, No Blade of Grass remains worth a look for its chilling and plausible portrayal of apocalypse. For ordinary people like us, driven to extremes, are ultimately more terrifying than flesh-eating animated corpses or humans effectively zombified by an implausible rage virus...
Similar images will appear throughout, sometimes interpolated in with no direct relation to the narrative. There are also frequent flash-forwards, tinted in red, and flashbacks, with the narrative sometimes chopping back and forward between past and present without clearly indicating so.
The catastrophe, as indicated by the title, stems from a plant disease that attacks grasses – i.e. the key crops for men and livestock alike. First appearing in East Asia, the disease is reported to have spread to Africa and South America, with the current death toll estimated at hundreds of millions in these areas. Social order in India has broken down and starving refugees from China have flooded into Hong Kong.
Not that any of this, as reported on the television playing in an up-market restaurant or club, appears to have had much effect on most of its patrons, a cross section of gluttonous bourgeois grotesques who seem to have wandered in from an Eisenstein or Buñuel film.
Three of those present have a different understanding. One, Roger Burnham (John Hamill), is government scientist party to information that the media dare not reveal. The second, his friend John Custance (Nigel Davenport), is an architect and ex-military man. The third, John’s brother David (Patrick Holt), owns a farm in the Lake District.
David advises John that he and his family should leave London as soon as possible and head for his farm. David says Roger can come along as well, in case they need someone for the pot – a joke whose reality is then indicated by news reports of cannibalism in some parts of the world.
With cities of over 300,000 people about to be sealed off and martial law imposed, along with rumours that there is only a week’s supply of food remaining, John and Roger decide to get out of London.
There’s a nice sequence of match edits around this point, as filmmaker Cornel Wilde cuts from John and Roger’s shocked “Jesus!” and “Christ!” to the image of John’s son Davey at his public school, a choir singing “Was born for thee...” on the soundtrack. Davey then coughs, his cough being taken up by a man on TV who is interviewing government ecologist Sir Charles Brenner (Burnham’s boss) about recent developments.
It seems the Chinese government has nerve gassed 300 million of its own people. Brenner accepts this action as rational in the circumstances, being “necessary for survival”. He then predictably evades the question of whether similar measures would be countenanced for the UK.
The group barely manage to get out of London after getting caught up in a confrontation between a hungry mob and the police – a scene whose images of the former using petrol bombs and the latter teargas and rifles perhaps had a special resonance for British audiences of the time in relation to the Northern Ireland “Troubles”.
The refugees go to pick up Davey and agree to take his friend ‘Spooks’ with them. Their next task is to get some guns and ammunition from a gunshop owner Custance knows, Mr Sturdevant. Sturdevant trusts the authorities and refuses to hand over the weapons, even when Custance explains how things are only going to get worse. Custance and Burnham move to take the guns, only to find themselves covered by Sturdevant’s assistant, Pirrie. Pirrie proves more amenable to Custen’s arguments, shoots his erstwhile employer and throws in his lot with the refugees.
Their next encounter is a roadblock manned by soldiers, whom they find themselves forced to kill:
Ann Custance: “There was no other way, was there darling?”
John: “No”
Clara Pirrie: “Why did you do all the shooting?”
Pirrie: “I had to”
The violence and disorder continue to escalate as the group continue on their way towards David’s farm, with encounters including a marauding biker gang, who rape the Custance’ 16 year old daughter Mary (Lynne Frederick); a rural posse who take their food, vehicles and weapons; a Farmer Palmer type who refuses them food, with predictable consequences; another group of refugees with a pig-headed self-appointed leader, and soldiers who mutiny against their commanding officer. Then, by the time the farm has been reached brother is pitted against brother...
Though released after George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead this survivalist horror can also be seen as a follow-up to director-producer-co-screenwriter Wilde’s own The Naked Prey. In that film a group of white hunters in Africa anger the native population – this, of course, a staple theme of the cannibal film – and are killed with the exception of one of their number, who is then allowed to fight for his life in a Most Dangerous Game type man-hunt.
For the main theme of the film, that of the narrow boundary between modern/civilised and primitive/savage man is one that recurs here and which can also be seen in a number of films of the time, including Straw Dogs, Deliverance, Deep River Savages, Last Cannibal World, and The Hills Have Eyes.
A significant difference between No Blade of Grass is the way it approaches the issue of the other. For in No Blade of Grass there is not an identifiable 'other' against which 'we', via our on-screen representatives, are positioned. Rather, there is the rapid emergence of a state of war of all against all, as per Hobbes or Bataille, where the enemy is (or was) us:
Ann: What kind of people are you?
Leader of posse who rob them: Same kind of people you are, ma’am.
As such, the main reason we identify with the protagonists is more that it is their story we are following rather than their being particularly morally superior to their antagonists, the exceptions being the rapist bikers and the establishment elites.
This scene is also notable for seeing Ann, who had previously questioned the necessity for violence, taking Pirrie’s rifle and cold-bloodedly shooting a wounded biker as he pleads for mercy.
One perceptive IMDB commentator has suggested that there are some intriguing parallels between No Blade of Grass’s main quest narrative, of the search for the promised land, and the Old Testament story of Exodus, with John and Pirrie the Moses and Joshua figures respectively.
While sometimes clunky in its execution, No Blade of Grass remains worth a look for its chilling and plausible portrayal of apocalypse. For ordinary people like us, driven to extremes, are ultimately more terrifying than flesh-eating animated corpses or humans effectively zombified by an implausible rage virus...
Monday, 15 October 2012
The Snow Devils / La morte viene dal pianeta Aytin
Earth, some time in the future. A weather monitoring station notes an impossible spike in temperature and is then attacked by an unseen force. All the staff are killed bar one, whose fate is unknown. The authorities at the UDSCO (United Democracies Space Command) send an expedition into the Himalayas, where they believe the source of the trouble is located – a suspicion enhanced by the sabotaging of the mission’s aircraft. This forces the team to proceed on foot, accompanied by a native guide and bearers. The bearers soon flee, but the team continue on. They discover a secret base, filled with advanced technology. The base is inhabited by a number of large green hairy creatures, which they initially take to be Yeti. The creatures’ leader then reveals, however, that they are actually from another planet, Aytin. As Aytin was about to become uninhabitable, they decided to take over the Earth. It is similar to their homeworld, but for its higher temperature. Accordingly the aliens have decided to melt the Polar ice caps, flooding large areas of the Earth, then freeze the oceans. The alien leader also stupidly – if predictably – reveals that their main power source is located elsewhere...
Directed by Antonio Margheriti, who has a producer credit as Anthony Marghertiti and a directorial credit as Anthony Dawson, this is one of those entertaining 1960s science-fiction films whose contemporary watch-ability arguably derives as much from the vision of the future it presents as anything else: Silver jumpsuits; pistols that seem more like blow torches when fired; domed, finned concept cars; computers whose main method of output is a printout onto continuous paper, and so on.
An obvious point of comparison, besides the director's other science-fiction entries of the period, is Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires. Bava and Margheriti were, after all, both filmmakers working in the popular filone cinema, under comparatively low budgets and with a knack for achieving effects and results that belied these impecunious circumstances.
It is, however, possible to identify authorial differences between the films. Planet of the Vampires is more reliant upon non-naturalistic lighting to create its alien landscape out of a studio space. The Snow Devils makes more use of location shooting – presumably with the Alps or Dolomites standing in for the Himalayas – and of actual sets. Bava makes more use of mattes, Margheriti of miniatures, which generally work, and stock footage, which is generally less satisfactory.
Moreover, while both films see their protagonists or identification figures facing off against hostile aliens, Margheriti’s is the more straightforward due to giving these aliens a visible and inhuman form, such that the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is obvious. His film’s resolution is also predictable and lacks the delicious ironies of Bava’s.
The Snow Devils benefits from a good Eurotrash cast, headed by Jack Stuart/Giacomo Rossi-Stuart and also including the likes of John Bartha and Franco Ressel in minor roles, plus a jaunty Angelo Francesco Lavagnino score.
No, it’s not 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it does feature a thought-provoking take on the climactic Star Wars type battle. For those monitoring the UDSCO strike force sent against the aliens’ base near one of Jupiter’s moons are receiving information from the strike force at a five minute delay. They can do nothing to advise or assist their colleagues nor affect the outcome of something that has already happened. Equally, however, the filmmakers do not subvert things further, as by only showing what happens (or more precisely has happened) from the Earth team’s perspective on their monitors, instead cross-cutting between the two crucially different points in time-space.
Directed by Antonio Margheriti, who has a producer credit as Anthony Marghertiti and a directorial credit as Anthony Dawson, this is one of those entertaining 1960s science-fiction films whose contemporary watch-ability arguably derives as much from the vision of the future it presents as anything else: Silver jumpsuits; pistols that seem more like blow torches when fired; domed, finned concept cars; computers whose main method of output is a printout onto continuous paper, and so on.
An obvious point of comparison, besides the director's other science-fiction entries of the period, is Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires. Bava and Margheriti were, after all, both filmmakers working in the popular filone cinema, under comparatively low budgets and with a knack for achieving effects and results that belied these impecunious circumstances.
It is, however, possible to identify authorial differences between the films. Planet of the Vampires is more reliant upon non-naturalistic lighting to create its alien landscape out of a studio space. The Snow Devils makes more use of location shooting – presumably with the Alps or Dolomites standing in for the Himalayas – and of actual sets. Bava makes more use of mattes, Margheriti of miniatures, which generally work, and stock footage, which is generally less satisfactory.
Moreover, while both films see their protagonists or identification figures facing off against hostile aliens, Margheriti’s is the more straightforward due to giving these aliens a visible and inhuman form, such that the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is obvious. His film’s resolution is also predictable and lacks the delicious ironies of Bava’s.
The Snow Devils benefits from a good Eurotrash cast, headed by Jack Stuart/Giacomo Rossi-Stuart and also including the likes of John Bartha and Franco Ressel in minor roles, plus a jaunty Angelo Francesco Lavagnino score.
No, it’s not 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it does feature a thought-provoking take on the climactic Star Wars type battle. For those monitoring the UDSCO strike force sent against the aliens’ base near one of Jupiter’s moons are receiving information from the strike force at a five minute delay. They can do nothing to advise or assist their colleagues nor affect the outcome of something that has already happened. Equally, however, the filmmakers do not subvert things further, as by only showing what happens (or more precisely has happened) from the Earth team’s perspective on their monitors, instead cross-cutting between the two crucially different points in time-space.
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