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.
Showing posts with label Antonio Margheriti. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Antonio Margheriti. Show all posts
Monday, 15 October 2012
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Finalmente... le mille e una notte / Les mille et une nuits érotiques / 1001 Nights of Pleasure
One of the basic criticisms made of filone cinema is that it it was imitative. Clearly imitation and innovation are placed in hierarchical terms, the latter valued above the former. But what then isn’t clear is what we should make of non-filone art films when they themselves form series.
Should Pasolini have made The Canterbury Tales and The Arabian Nights after The Decameron? Should there have been a Trilogy of Life? Why couldn’t he have said everything he wanted to in the one film?
These questions are all the more important here in that what we have is a Decamerotic made in imitation of The Decameron but which takes as its source text The 1001 Nights – and this a good year or two before Pasolini’s version.
Antonio Margheriti’s approach is very different from Pasolini’s, of course, but this serves to further establish that the film and other Decamerotics were selectively rather than slavishly imitative, tending to get rid of the more serious elements.
Though probably not a particularly big-budget film, the money is all there on the screen.
Taken in its own right the film has a lot going for it, with attractive locations, production design and costumes – the last often not amounting to much as far as the female cast are concerned.
It is also pretty funny in places.
The film consists of three stories – how far they are actually found in The 1001 Nights I cannot say – vaguely connected by a framing device in which sultan Al Mamoun challenges three storytellers to arouse him with erotic / pornographic tales in order that he can satisfy the latest addition to his harem, Zumurud, incarnated by Femi Benussi.
Benussi's boobs
The first of the three stories features another arbitrary and unjust sultan whose magic mirror tells him that he is not the greatest lover in the kingdom. He has the man who is sought out and sets him a test intended to demonstrate otherwise. Inevitably it doesn’t do what the sultan wanted...
More boobs, and some strategically placed fruit
This also means, however, that the storyteller’s work fails to satisfy Al Mamoun, who has him executed. Cue the second storyteller, whose fate is equally certain.
The second stort features Aladdin – or more exactly an Aladdin – and a Genie. Aladdin has the genie turn him invisible in order that he can sneak into a rich merchant’s house and make love to his wife Mariam, incarnated by Barbara Bouchet. Aladdin then makes use of a flying carpet to sneak her away. This flying carpet is distinguished by not going down until whoever is using it also ‘goes down’. Aladdin doesn’t have a problem with this when it is Bouchet, but inevitably the husband soon ends up on the flying carpet instead...
Bouchet auditions for The Sex Life of the Invisible Man
The third story begins with a parody of a spaghetti western as a mysterious stranger arrives in town to take up the challenge of satisfying a cruel princess thirteen times in one night. He proves more than up to this thanks to some duplicity that’s nicely, well, mirrored in Margeriti’s compositions...
Should Pasolini have made The Canterbury Tales and The Arabian Nights after The Decameron? Should there have been a Trilogy of Life? Why couldn’t he have said everything he wanted to in the one film?
These questions are all the more important here in that what we have is a Decamerotic made in imitation of The Decameron but which takes as its source text The 1001 Nights – and this a good year or two before Pasolini’s version.
Antonio Margheriti’s approach is very different from Pasolini’s, of course, but this serves to further establish that the film and other Decamerotics were selectively rather than slavishly imitative, tending to get rid of the more serious elements.
Though probably not a particularly big-budget film, the money is all there on the screen.
Taken in its own right the film has a lot going for it, with attractive locations, production design and costumes – the last often not amounting to much as far as the female cast are concerned.
It is also pretty funny in places.
The film consists of three stories – how far they are actually found in The 1001 Nights I cannot say – vaguely connected by a framing device in which sultan Al Mamoun challenges three storytellers to arouse him with erotic / pornographic tales in order that he can satisfy the latest addition to his harem, Zumurud, incarnated by Femi Benussi.
Benussi's boobs
The first of the three stories features another arbitrary and unjust sultan whose magic mirror tells him that he is not the greatest lover in the kingdom. He has the man who is sought out and sets him a test intended to demonstrate otherwise. Inevitably it doesn’t do what the sultan wanted...
More boobs, and some strategically placed fruit
This also means, however, that the storyteller’s work fails to satisfy Al Mamoun, who has him executed. Cue the second storyteller, whose fate is equally certain.
The second stort features Aladdin – or more exactly an Aladdin – and a Genie. Aladdin has the genie turn him invisible in order that he can sneak into a rich merchant’s house and make love to his wife Mariam, incarnated by Barbara Bouchet. Aladdin then makes use of a flying carpet to sneak her away. This flying carpet is distinguished by not going down until whoever is using it also ‘goes down’. Aladdin doesn’t have a problem with this when it is Bouchet, but inevitably the husband soon ends up on the flying carpet instead...
Bouchet auditions for The Sex Life of the Invisible Man
The third story begins with a parody of a spaghetti western as a mysterious stranger arrives in town to take up the challenge of satisfying a cruel princess thirteen times in one night. He proves more than up to this thanks to some duplicity that’s nicely, well, mirrored in Margeriti’s compositions...
Saturday, 11 April 2009
Tornado / The Last Blood
Made in between the David Warbeck and Lewis Collins jungle war trilogies, Tornado is something of the odd one out amongst Antonio Margheriti, Tito Carpi and Gianfranco Couyoumdijan’s 80s war entries.
Though there is still plenty of action, stunts and things exploding, it’s more of a message movie with stronger defined characters and situations than normal. The big surprise, in terms of the traditional derivativeness of the Italian genre film, is that as a Vietnam war film it was made after First Blood, but before Rambo, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and company, and as such emerges as a film which innovates as much as it imitates.
At the core of the film is the conflict between two Green Berets, one a Captain and the other a sergeant. The Captain believes that the war against the Vietcong could and must still be won and, as a demonstration of this, relentlessly sends his men on what Sergeant Maggio surmises to be pointless, high risk missions.
To the captain the men are fundamentally resources excepted to follow orders, whatever they are, while to the sergeant the are human beings who need to be protected against his superiors' growing Kurtzian madness.
In the middle is journalist Freeman, played by Alan Collins / Luciano Pigozzi, who provides a sounding board and critique for both men's perspectives whilst also making clear where his own sympathies lie.
After one mission Maggio is left behind by the helicopter support and forced to bring a wounded soldier back to camp via a canoe. Though the soldier, a promising athlete, survives he proves unable to come to terms with the amputation of his leg and thus shoots himself.
Flying into a rage, the Sergeant has to be restrained by his troops, before being goaded by the Captain into attacking.
Arrested by the reluctant Military Police, Maggio is taken to another base where he will be held until his court martial. The Vietcong attack, giving him a chance to escape for the Cambodian border.
At this point the Rambo element comes to the fore as the Captain takes an ironic pride in the achievements of his “creation,” praising Maggio’s resourcefulness in evading the Vietcong whilst also making it clear that he intends to himself capture and execute his underling for desertion.
Action and direction wise it’s pretty much the standard Margheriti fare, with model work and stock footage being used to compensate for the low budget and a certain gung-ho treatment of the battle scenes. Some torture scenes involving Maggio are also of note as an indicator of what might have happened to Charlie and Tom in Cannibal Apocalypse.
Though there is still plenty of action, stunts and things exploding, it’s more of a message movie with stronger defined characters and situations than normal. The big surprise, in terms of the traditional derivativeness of the Italian genre film, is that as a Vietnam war film it was made after First Blood, but before Rambo, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and company, and as such emerges as a film which innovates as much as it imitates.
At the core of the film is the conflict between two Green Berets, one a Captain and the other a sergeant. The Captain believes that the war against the Vietcong could and must still be won and, as a demonstration of this, relentlessly sends his men on what Sergeant Maggio surmises to be pointless, high risk missions.
To the captain the men are fundamentally resources excepted to follow orders, whatever they are, while to the sergeant the are human beings who need to be protected against his superiors' growing Kurtzian madness.
In the middle is journalist Freeman, played by Alan Collins / Luciano Pigozzi, who provides a sounding board and critique for both men's perspectives whilst also making clear where his own sympathies lie.
After one mission Maggio is left behind by the helicopter support and forced to bring a wounded soldier back to camp via a canoe. Though the soldier, a promising athlete, survives he proves unable to come to terms with the amputation of his leg and thus shoots himself.
Flying into a rage, the Sergeant has to be restrained by his troops, before being goaded by the Captain into attacking.
Arrested by the reluctant Military Police, Maggio is taken to another base where he will be held until his court martial. The Vietcong attack, giving him a chance to escape for the Cambodian border.
At this point the Rambo element comes to the fore as the Captain takes an ironic pride in the achievements of his “creation,” praising Maggio’s resourcefulness in evading the Vietcong whilst also making it clear that he intends to himself capture and execute his underling for desertion.
Action and direction wise it’s pretty much the standard Margheriti fare, with model work and stock footage being used to compensate for the low budget and a certain gung-ho treatment of the battle scenes. Some torture scenes involving Maggio are also of note as an indicator of what might have happened to Charlie and Tom in Cannibal Apocalypse.
Monday, 6 April 2009
Geheimcode: Wildgänse / Code Name: Wild Geese / Arcobaleno selvaggio
Here we have a classic example of the filone principle in operation via an opportunistic bit of titling to make the film sound like a belated sequel to the late 70s mercenary war actioner The Wild Geese but which in fact bears no relation whatsoever beyond the codename given the secret mission.
It’s directed by Antonio Margheriti, whose other work during the early 1980s encompassed somewhat more timely Apocalypse Now and Raiders of the Lost Ark rip-offs, most starring cult favourite David Warbeck and invariably using Philippines jungle locations and likely as not the talismanic Luciano Pigozzi in a supporting role.
The replacement of Warbeck by Lewis Collins, fresh from his long running stint in the British TV series The Professionals, gives the film something of a transitional feel. Having passed the selection procedure for the SAS reserves only to be rejected on account of his celebrity status, it doesn’t take long for Collins to establish his fitness for the role of Commander Robin Wesley. Indeed, he would in time appear in two confusingly similar outings for Margheriti, Commando Leopard and The Commando.
The transition between leading men is also aided by the way we’re thrown right into the thick of the action. Admittedly it’s soon revealed to just be a training exercise, but also serves to establish the no-nonsense professionalism of Wesley and his mercenaries and something of their respective characters. With the group’s pilot suffering an injury, it also provides a means to shoehorn in Lee Van Cleef’s character, China / The Colonel. He’s a grizzled veteran of no less than five wars – the Second, Korean, Vietnam and which two others, one wonders – who’s presently serving a prison sentence for smuggling, for which he is offered a pardon in return for his services.
The mercenaries, you see, are working for the ‘good’ guys rather than the highest bidder, in the form of two government officials. Ernst Borgnine plays the US Drug Enforcement Agency representative and Klaus Kinski’s, complete with an obviously dubbed voice, that of the British Crown in Hong Kong.
The hush-hush, unofficial mission entails destroying a Golden Triangle opium depot belonging to a powerful warlord, known as The General.
Assisted by local guerrilla fighters, everything goes about as well as can be planned, with the mercenaries putting the depot out of commission. Unfortunately the group also lose their helicopter through an act of sabotage, while Wesley discovers evidence of another store further inside The General’s territory that their employers had said nothing about, along with evidence implicating one or other of them as a client of The General.
If all this wasn’t enough, the mercenaries also free a number of prisoners. Though the majority are locals, one is a Canadian journalist whom The General got hooked on heroin after she came looking for an exclusive interview. She’s played by Mimsy Farmer, thus rounding off the name cast, with the rest of the mercenaries being played by German actors as another indication of where the rest of the co-production money was coming from.
As usual Margheriti and his writing collaborators Tito Carpi and Gianfranco Couyoumdijan prove better at dealing with action than character and back story. We get some attempts to establish additional motivation for Wesley beyond money, in the form of a dead brother or son, and understand that there may be something suspect about his point of contact with the British and US officials, but these remain at rather simplistic, comic book level.
If the film is a comic book, it is however also a very entertaining one when its playing to its strengths, even if some of the gimmicks, most notably a makeshift flamethrower Wesley uses from a helicopter, are preposterous and some of Margheriti’s trademark model work a touch too obvious, as when Welsey drives his car sideways along a half-completed tunnel to evade some pursuers.
If Collins’s SAS buddies laughed all the way through the supposedly serious Who Dares Wins, one wonders what they would have made of Code Name: Wild Geese.
It’s directed by Antonio Margheriti, whose other work during the early 1980s encompassed somewhat more timely Apocalypse Now and Raiders of the Lost Ark rip-offs, most starring cult favourite David Warbeck and invariably using Philippines jungle locations and likely as not the talismanic Luciano Pigozzi in a supporting role.
The replacement of Warbeck by Lewis Collins, fresh from his long running stint in the British TV series The Professionals, gives the film something of a transitional feel. Having passed the selection procedure for the SAS reserves only to be rejected on account of his celebrity status, it doesn’t take long for Collins to establish his fitness for the role of Commander Robin Wesley. Indeed, he would in time appear in two confusingly similar outings for Margheriti, Commando Leopard and The Commando.
The transition between leading men is also aided by the way we’re thrown right into the thick of the action. Admittedly it’s soon revealed to just be a training exercise, but also serves to establish the no-nonsense professionalism of Wesley and his mercenaries and something of their respective characters. With the group’s pilot suffering an injury, it also provides a means to shoehorn in Lee Van Cleef’s character, China / The Colonel. He’s a grizzled veteran of no less than five wars – the Second, Korean, Vietnam and which two others, one wonders – who’s presently serving a prison sentence for smuggling, for which he is offered a pardon in return for his services.
The mercenaries, you see, are working for the ‘good’ guys rather than the highest bidder, in the form of two government officials. Ernst Borgnine plays the US Drug Enforcement Agency representative and Klaus Kinski’s, complete with an obviously dubbed voice, that of the British Crown in Hong Kong.
The hush-hush, unofficial mission entails destroying a Golden Triangle opium depot belonging to a powerful warlord, known as The General.
Assisted by local guerrilla fighters, everything goes about as well as can be planned, with the mercenaries putting the depot out of commission. Unfortunately the group also lose their helicopter through an act of sabotage, while Wesley discovers evidence of another store further inside The General’s territory that their employers had said nothing about, along with evidence implicating one or other of them as a client of The General.
If all this wasn’t enough, the mercenaries also free a number of prisoners. Though the majority are locals, one is a Canadian journalist whom The General got hooked on heroin after she came looking for an exclusive interview. She’s played by Mimsy Farmer, thus rounding off the name cast, with the rest of the mercenaries being played by German actors as another indication of where the rest of the co-production money was coming from.
As usual Margheriti and his writing collaborators Tito Carpi and Gianfranco Couyoumdijan prove better at dealing with action than character and back story. We get some attempts to establish additional motivation for Wesley beyond money, in the form of a dead brother or son, and understand that there may be something suspect about his point of contact with the British and US officials, but these remain at rather simplistic, comic book level.
If the film is a comic book, it is however also a very entertaining one when its playing to its strengths, even if some of the gimmicks, most notably a makeshift flamethrower Wesley uses from a helicopter, are preposterous and some of Margheriti’s trademark model work a touch too obvious, as when Welsey drives his car sideways along a half-completed tunnel to evade some pursuers.
If Collins’s SAS buddies laughed all the way through the supposedly serious Who Dares Wins, one wonders what they would have made of Code Name: Wild Geese.
Sunday, 19 October 2008
I Lunghi cappelli della morte / The Long Hair of Death
Though the title might suggest a contemporary J-horror, The Long Hair of Death is, of course, a 1960s Italian Gothic. Whilst one of the less well known examples of the form, it serves as an ideal introduction to it through the dense network of intertextual references in Ernesto Gastaldi's script and the iconic presence of Barbara Steele.
Set in the 14th century we open with the impending execution of suspected witch, Adele Karnstein, for the sorcerous murder of the local lord, Franz Humbold. It's the usual damned either way trial by ordeal scenario, whereby death will provide absolution. (“Adele Karnstein the hour has arrived. The lord will save you if you are innocent. Be strong and have faith.”)
An almost unrecognisable Umberto Raho as the local witch-finder, here beautifully isolated by the all-encompassing blackness.
Desperately seeking a stay of execution, Adele's elder daughter Helene (Steele) pleads with the new lord, Franz's brother (Giuliano Raffaeli), for a stay of execution. She has evidence that the killer is one of the Count's own household.
Taking advantage of the situation, the Count demands that Helene first submit to his carnal desires. (“What can a man ask of a beautiful woman like you? There is only one thing that I want.”) She does. Unfortunately her mother is burnt at the stake anyway since the one presiding over the execution, the old count's son and the new count's nephew, Kurt Humbolt (Giorgio Ardisson), is the real murderer. As she dies, Adele swears vengeance on her persecutors.
Burn witch burn!
Later, as the distraught Helene flees, she is ambused by the Count, who murders her and throws her body into the river to conceal his own crimes. Helene's death is duly adjudged a suicide.
Left orphaned but exonerated through the deaths of her mother and sister, the young Elisabeth Karnstein adopted by the Count as one of his household in a display of magnanimity which further helps to conceal his family's crimes whilst also allowing him to feel that he has made amends for his own. Unfortunately for the Count, Elisabeth is reminded of her family's heritage by the family's housekeeper, Grumalda (Laura Nucci), who also lets her in on the secret of where her mother and sister's remains are hidden.
Time passes and Elisabetta (Halina Zalewska) grows into a beautiful young woman. Unable to come to terms with his crime and Kurt's revelation of his guilt, the Count has become ill, leaving Kurt in the position where he can do more or less as he wishes, including forcing Elisabeth to marry him.
But, as a plague sweeps across the land as Adele had cursed, a new woman comes into the Humbolt family's life in the form of the mysterious and beautiful Mary Karnstein (Steele). Almost immediately, Kurt resolves that she will be his, with Mary reciprocating his advances. This, however, only leads them to a new problem: what to do about Elisabeth. A dose of poison provides the cure, but then Kurt begins to wonder if his ex-wife is indeed ex...
The usual mirrors drawing into question identity and reality
To now itemise some of the intertextual connections:
The land ravaged by plague aspect recalls The Masque of the Red Death and thus the Corman Poe cycle, although the Christian rather than Satanic rituals that ensue are perhaps more reminiscent of Bergman's The Seventh Seal.
The family name of Karnstein and the arrival of Mary recall Carmilla and, through it, Mastrocinque's film Crypt of the Vampire. Though one of those rare-seeming Italian Gothics those in which Steele does not appear one nevertheless also gets the impression that the role of the vampire revenant was written with her in mind by Gastaldi, whose scenario there also incorporated a family curse for good measure.
The relationships amongst the Humbolt family are reminiscent of those amongst the Menliffe family in The Whip and the Body – itself another film featuring a more obvious Steele stand-in in the somewhat similar looking Daliah Lavi – as is the role played by the Harriet Medin White like family servant here. The film, directed by Bava and scripted by Gastaldi, also happened to feature a villainous black sheep of the family named none other than Kurt.
The return of characters from beyond the grave in search of revenge also alludes to Bava's Black Sunday and Freda's Hitchcock diptych of The Horrible Secret of Dr Hichcock and Lo Spettro – both penned by Gastaldi – albeit with a pre-modern tendency to inherently accept of supernatural in a manner that somewhat alien to these films and others with similar later settings, including Margheriti's own Castle of Blood which, whilst not written by Gastaldi, purports to be a Poe adaptation and even incorporates the author into its telling.
Beyond this, we also have some murderous black gloves, an iron-maiden type device – as per Margheriti's The Virgin of Nuremberg – and some point-of-view shots from behind its mask, a la Black Sunday.
Hands of doom
While the film isn't perhaps as atmospheric as some of these counterparts, in that there are fewer sequences of characters wandering through the castle and its environs that exist as much for their own sake as to advance the plot, the upside of this is a less somnambulistic pace that may appeal more to those who find the Italian Gothic at times veers too far in the direction of style over all else.
Some explary moments here arise when Elizabeth and the Count 'coincidentally' decide to venture into the castle's dungeons and catacombs at the same time: As Humbolt plead forgiveness from his dead brother and sees his skeleton move: as he flees in terror the camera lingers on for a moment to allow us to see the rat which has nested within Franz's remains and caused the disturbance, thus reminding us that we cannot just replace supernatural discourses and explanations for naturalistic ones to raise a degree of ambiguity over the nature of the plague soon to descent on the Humbolt lands. Then, as Elizabeth and the Count move through the darkness, they do so cautiously but also at speed, each wary of the possible presence of the other, their haste further accentuated by Margheriti's rapid tracking shots and relatively brisk cutting. Finally, as Elizabeth exits through a secret passage once the Count has passed, she emerges before the awaiting Kurt, who duly professes his desire to marry her and thus neatly moves the narrative on to its next sequence and plot point.
Dead
Undead
Though Steele's role perhaps doesn't stretch her abilities, in that she's incarnating much the same diva type as she had done before and would do again, rather than a more fully rounded real character as in Volker Schlondorff's adaptation of Rober Musil's Young Torless – as the kind of film you suspect she would like to have moved into making, post 8½ – she again brings that distinctive physicality and intensity to the role.
Giorgio Ardisson turns in an effective performance as the dastardly Kurt, the kind of villain with no redeeming qualities whatsoever whom we can be justified in hating, to further demonstrate that he was capable of being far more than just the pretty boy type showcased in Bava's Hercules in the Haunted World and Knives of the Avenger. (As he and Elizabeth are blessed by the priest on the occasion of their wedding, Kurt mockingly asks: “There are many people dying in the streets. Shouldn't you recite a prayer for them?”)
Technically the film is accomplished, with attractive black and white cinematography, solid production design and fluid camera work. Carlo Rustichelli delivers an agreeable if unexceptional score: if its tropes are at times predictable, they help further fix us within the film's distinctive world, having much the same function as James Bernard's work for Hammer in this regard.
Set in the 14th century we open with the impending execution of suspected witch, Adele Karnstein, for the sorcerous murder of the local lord, Franz Humbold. It's the usual damned either way trial by ordeal scenario, whereby death will provide absolution. (“Adele Karnstein the hour has arrived. The lord will save you if you are innocent. Be strong and have faith.”)
An almost unrecognisable Umberto Raho as the local witch-finder, here beautifully isolated by the all-encompassing blackness.
Desperately seeking a stay of execution, Adele's elder daughter Helene (Steele) pleads with the new lord, Franz's brother (Giuliano Raffaeli), for a stay of execution. She has evidence that the killer is one of the Count's own household.
Taking advantage of the situation, the Count demands that Helene first submit to his carnal desires. (“What can a man ask of a beautiful woman like you? There is only one thing that I want.”) She does. Unfortunately her mother is burnt at the stake anyway since the one presiding over the execution, the old count's son and the new count's nephew, Kurt Humbolt (Giorgio Ardisson), is the real murderer. As she dies, Adele swears vengeance on her persecutors.
Burn witch burn!
Later, as the distraught Helene flees, she is ambused by the Count, who murders her and throws her body into the river to conceal his own crimes. Helene's death is duly adjudged a suicide.
Left orphaned but exonerated through the deaths of her mother and sister, the young Elisabeth Karnstein adopted by the Count as one of his household in a display of magnanimity which further helps to conceal his family's crimes whilst also allowing him to feel that he has made amends for his own. Unfortunately for the Count, Elisabeth is reminded of her family's heritage by the family's housekeeper, Grumalda (Laura Nucci), who also lets her in on the secret of where her mother and sister's remains are hidden.
Time passes and Elisabetta (Halina Zalewska) grows into a beautiful young woman. Unable to come to terms with his crime and Kurt's revelation of his guilt, the Count has become ill, leaving Kurt in the position where he can do more or less as he wishes, including forcing Elisabeth to marry him.
But, as a plague sweeps across the land as Adele had cursed, a new woman comes into the Humbolt family's life in the form of the mysterious and beautiful Mary Karnstein (Steele). Almost immediately, Kurt resolves that she will be his, with Mary reciprocating his advances. This, however, only leads them to a new problem: what to do about Elisabeth. A dose of poison provides the cure, but then Kurt begins to wonder if his ex-wife is indeed ex...
The usual mirrors drawing into question identity and reality
To now itemise some of the intertextual connections:
The land ravaged by plague aspect recalls The Masque of the Red Death and thus the Corman Poe cycle, although the Christian rather than Satanic rituals that ensue are perhaps more reminiscent of Bergman's The Seventh Seal.
The family name of Karnstein and the arrival of Mary recall Carmilla and, through it, Mastrocinque's film Crypt of the Vampire. Though one of those rare-seeming Italian Gothics those in which Steele does not appear one nevertheless also gets the impression that the role of the vampire revenant was written with her in mind by Gastaldi, whose scenario there also incorporated a family curse for good measure.
The relationships amongst the Humbolt family are reminiscent of those amongst the Menliffe family in The Whip and the Body – itself another film featuring a more obvious Steele stand-in in the somewhat similar looking Daliah Lavi – as is the role played by the Harriet Medin White like family servant here. The film, directed by Bava and scripted by Gastaldi, also happened to feature a villainous black sheep of the family named none other than Kurt.
The return of characters from beyond the grave in search of revenge also alludes to Bava's Black Sunday and Freda's Hitchcock diptych of The Horrible Secret of Dr Hichcock and Lo Spettro – both penned by Gastaldi – albeit with a pre-modern tendency to inherently accept of supernatural in a manner that somewhat alien to these films and others with similar later settings, including Margheriti's own Castle of Blood which, whilst not written by Gastaldi, purports to be a Poe adaptation and even incorporates the author into its telling.
Beyond this, we also have some murderous black gloves, an iron-maiden type device – as per Margheriti's The Virgin of Nuremberg – and some point-of-view shots from behind its mask, a la Black Sunday.
Hands of doom
While the film isn't perhaps as atmospheric as some of these counterparts, in that there are fewer sequences of characters wandering through the castle and its environs that exist as much for their own sake as to advance the plot, the upside of this is a less somnambulistic pace that may appeal more to those who find the Italian Gothic at times veers too far in the direction of style over all else.
Some explary moments here arise when Elizabeth and the Count 'coincidentally' decide to venture into the castle's dungeons and catacombs at the same time: As Humbolt plead forgiveness from his dead brother and sees his skeleton move: as he flees in terror the camera lingers on for a moment to allow us to see the rat which has nested within Franz's remains and caused the disturbance, thus reminding us that we cannot just replace supernatural discourses and explanations for naturalistic ones to raise a degree of ambiguity over the nature of the plague soon to descent on the Humbolt lands. Then, as Elizabeth and the Count move through the darkness, they do so cautiously but also at speed, each wary of the possible presence of the other, their haste further accentuated by Margheriti's rapid tracking shots and relatively brisk cutting. Finally, as Elizabeth exits through a secret passage once the Count has passed, she emerges before the awaiting Kurt, who duly professes his desire to marry her and thus neatly moves the narrative on to its next sequence and plot point.
Dead
Undead
Though Steele's role perhaps doesn't stretch her abilities, in that she's incarnating much the same diva type as she had done before and would do again, rather than a more fully rounded real character as in Volker Schlondorff's adaptation of Rober Musil's Young Torless – as the kind of film you suspect she would like to have moved into making, post 8½ – she again brings that distinctive physicality and intensity to the role.
Giorgio Ardisson turns in an effective performance as the dastardly Kurt, the kind of villain with no redeeming qualities whatsoever whom we can be justified in hating, to further demonstrate that he was capable of being far more than just the pretty boy type showcased in Bava's Hercules in the Haunted World and Knives of the Avenger. (As he and Elizabeth are blessed by the priest on the occasion of their wedding, Kurt mockingly asks: “There are many people dying in the streets. Shouldn't you recite a prayer for them?”)
Technically the film is accomplished, with attractive black and white cinematography, solid production design and fluid camera work. Carlo Rustichelli delivers an agreeable if unexceptional score: if its tropes are at times predictable, they help further fix us within the film's distinctive world, having much the same function as James Bernard's work for Hammer in this regard.
Monday, 11 August 2008
I Cacciatori del cobra d'oro / Hunters of the Golden Cobra
In his essay on the Italian filone cinema of the late 50s through to the early 1980s in the Monthly Film Bulletin, critic Kim Newman makes the point that if this cinema could be for ripping-off Hollywood, it could also be praised for the energy and audacity of many of these rip-offs.
Hunters of the Golden Cobra is an case in point. Though clearly derivative of Raiders of the Lost Ark and, before it, the adventure serial – in turn a reminder that the only thing that was really new about Spielberg and Lucas's film were the resources and talent behind it – it showcases all that was best about this cinema in making the most of its comparatively limited resources with ingenuity and its sheer coglioni.
The story begins in 1944, as two British and American commandos, Bob Jackson and David Franks, played by the inimitable David Warbeck and John Steiner, launch a daring raid on a Japanese base somewhere in the Philippines; coveniently, these same islands also serve, post Apocalyse Now, as the actual locations for the film.
Their misson is to abduct Japanese officer Yamato, apparently an agent and counter agent.
Yamato has something else on his mind, however: The Golden Cobra. Recalling the likes of the golden snake of the Edgar Wallace novel and krimi film as much as Raider's Lost Ark – and thus as further reminders that in this day and age everything has some antecedent – this McGuffin is valuable in more ways than one, as we shall soon learn.
As Yamato flees the base after calmly gunning down the Japanese soldier who had discovered his treachery, Jackson and Franks embark on a desperate pursuit via jeep and then plane, bombs and buildings exploding all around them. (“You know, I've never driven one of these before” “Now you tell me.” “It's going to be quite an experience, I can assure you.”)
Yamato's plane crash lands on an island, so Jackson parachutes out after him while Franks returns to base with the promise of returning with reinforcements.
Jackson soon catches up with Yamato but both men are then shot with poisoned darts by the natives. Whereas Yamato is slain, Jackson is placed on a makeshift raft and floated downstream, unsure whether he has really seen a white woman at the head of the tribe or just hallucinated her presence...
A year or so passes, during which time the Japanese are defeated. Franks, still an officer in the British army, tracks down Jackson in a seedy bar, hitting the bottle hard and down on his luck to the extent that he's willing to trade his campaign medal for a couple of dollars.
With Jackson responding to Franks' hello with a right hook, a fistfight and then mass brawl breaks out before Franks finally gets the chance to explain himself. He did search for his colleague, but was delayed as his plane had ditched in the ocean some 200 miles from land.
Franks is not here about past history, however. Rather, he has been ordered to offer Jackson $20,000 to go back into the jungle with him and find the golden cobra. For, as Franks' superior in the briefing room explains, “If this priceless object should fall into the wrong hands, all of south east Asia could be destabilised [...] Call it superstition, but millions of people in Asia believe this golden cobra possesses some sort of supernatural power, a destructive force that we can't even imagine.”
Jackson remains cynical and reluctant until the high priestess of the cult appears on the screen wreathed in flames and a native waiter, evidently a member of the cult from his cobra tattoo, attacks him with a machette. He thus accepts the mission – but for $40,000, paid in advance.
By the time the expedition is ready to leave – during which time more cultists come out of the woodwork at every opportunity – it has gained two more people: a wealthy adventurer and archaeologist by the name of Greenwater (Alan Collins) and his niece Julie (Almanta Suska), who looks exactly like the woman from the island.
And so she should, for they are in fact sisters...
“I see no reason why we shouldn't all go” surmises Franks, and thus the adventure really begins...
The hunters and their quarry
Director Antonio Margheriti was quite simply the man for this kind of film, knowing not only how to deliver no-nonsense, testosterone-fuelled action scenes with the best of them but also a whole range of more subtle trick effects, ranging from model work with aeroplanes and lava-filled chasms to convincingly placing two his leading ladies in shot simultaneously
The implicit racism of the material with its backwards cultists and the white goddess figure of Suska is made slightly more palatable by the fact that Franks is just as much of a caricature; the base motives accorded most of the western characters, and, most interestingly, the space given one of the natives who opposes the cobra cultists for their backwardness and dreams of a progressive future for his country as one “with many friends and no masters – and that includes you westerners too.” (On this subject, it's also worth remembering that Jackie Chan's Armour of God isn't exactly politically correct either, with its 'comedy' tribesmen.)
The natives bowing down before the white goddess, as per usual
Warbeck is reliable as ever as the tough, no-nonsense action hero, making one lament that he was never given the opportunity to play James Bond, while Steiner's unflappable British officer with his Terry-Thomas style upper class twit voice is amusing without becoming tiresome.
The talismanic Collins, whom Margheriti would always cast if he got the chance is suitably shifty, his character's name recalling Sidney Greenstreet, his mannerisms that actor's Maltese Falcon co-star, Peter Lorre; on the Bond angle Jackson amusingly calls Greenriver Greenfinger at one point.
If the final couple of minutes, featuring an awful theme song performed by someone with a somewhat flexible sense of pitch, are painful, the preceding 90 odd are compensation enough.
[I watched the film on a English-dubbed, Japanese (?) subtitled AVI, again found via Cinemageddon]
Hunters of the Golden Cobra is an case in point. Though clearly derivative of Raiders of the Lost Ark and, before it, the adventure serial – in turn a reminder that the only thing that was really new about Spielberg and Lucas's film were the resources and talent behind it – it showcases all that was best about this cinema in making the most of its comparatively limited resources with ingenuity and its sheer coglioni.
The story begins in 1944, as two British and American commandos, Bob Jackson and David Franks, played by the inimitable David Warbeck and John Steiner, launch a daring raid on a Japanese base somewhere in the Philippines; coveniently, these same islands also serve, post Apocalyse Now, as the actual locations for the film.
Their misson is to abduct Japanese officer Yamato, apparently an agent and counter agent.
Yamato has something else on his mind, however: The Golden Cobra. Recalling the likes of the golden snake of the Edgar Wallace novel and krimi film as much as Raider's Lost Ark – and thus as further reminders that in this day and age everything has some antecedent – this McGuffin is valuable in more ways than one, as we shall soon learn.
As Yamato flees the base after calmly gunning down the Japanese soldier who had discovered his treachery, Jackson and Franks embark on a desperate pursuit via jeep and then plane, bombs and buildings exploding all around them. (“You know, I've never driven one of these before” “Now you tell me.” “It's going to be quite an experience, I can assure you.”)
Yamato's plane crash lands on an island, so Jackson parachutes out after him while Franks returns to base with the promise of returning with reinforcements.
Jackson soon catches up with Yamato but both men are then shot with poisoned darts by the natives. Whereas Yamato is slain, Jackson is placed on a makeshift raft and floated downstream, unsure whether he has really seen a white woman at the head of the tribe or just hallucinated her presence...
A year or so passes, during which time the Japanese are defeated. Franks, still an officer in the British army, tracks down Jackson in a seedy bar, hitting the bottle hard and down on his luck to the extent that he's willing to trade his campaign medal for a couple of dollars.
With Jackson responding to Franks' hello with a right hook, a fistfight and then mass brawl breaks out before Franks finally gets the chance to explain himself. He did search for his colleague, but was delayed as his plane had ditched in the ocean some 200 miles from land.
Franks is not here about past history, however. Rather, he has been ordered to offer Jackson $20,000 to go back into the jungle with him and find the golden cobra. For, as Franks' superior in the briefing room explains, “If this priceless object should fall into the wrong hands, all of south east Asia could be destabilised [...] Call it superstition, but millions of people in Asia believe this golden cobra possesses some sort of supernatural power, a destructive force that we can't even imagine.”
Jackson remains cynical and reluctant until the high priestess of the cult appears on the screen wreathed in flames and a native waiter, evidently a member of the cult from his cobra tattoo, attacks him with a machette. He thus accepts the mission – but for $40,000, paid in advance.
By the time the expedition is ready to leave – during which time more cultists come out of the woodwork at every opportunity – it has gained two more people: a wealthy adventurer and archaeologist by the name of Greenwater (Alan Collins) and his niece Julie (Almanta Suska), who looks exactly like the woman from the island.
And so she should, for they are in fact sisters...
“I see no reason why we shouldn't all go” surmises Franks, and thus the adventure really begins...
The hunters and their quarry
Director Antonio Margheriti was quite simply the man for this kind of film, knowing not only how to deliver no-nonsense, testosterone-fuelled action scenes with the best of them but also a whole range of more subtle trick effects, ranging from model work with aeroplanes and lava-filled chasms to convincingly placing two his leading ladies in shot simultaneously
The implicit racism of the material with its backwards cultists and the white goddess figure of Suska is made slightly more palatable by the fact that Franks is just as much of a caricature; the base motives accorded most of the western characters, and, most interestingly, the space given one of the natives who opposes the cobra cultists for their backwardness and dreams of a progressive future for his country as one “with many friends and no masters – and that includes you westerners too.” (On this subject, it's also worth remembering that Jackie Chan's Armour of God isn't exactly politically correct either, with its 'comedy' tribesmen.)
The natives bowing down before the white goddess, as per usual
Warbeck is reliable as ever as the tough, no-nonsense action hero, making one lament that he was never given the opportunity to play James Bond, while Steiner's unflappable British officer with his Terry-Thomas style upper class twit voice is amusing without becoming tiresome.
The talismanic Collins, whom Margheriti would always cast if he got the chance is suitably shifty, his character's name recalling Sidney Greenstreet, his mannerisms that actor's Maltese Falcon co-star, Peter Lorre; on the Bond angle Jackson amusingly calls Greenriver Greenfinger at one point.
If the final couple of minutes, featuring an awful theme song performed by someone with a somewhat flexible sense of pitch, are painful, the preceding 90 odd are compensation enough.
[I watched the film on a English-dubbed, Japanese (?) subtitled AVI, again found via Cinemageddon]
Friday, 4 July 2008
Apocalypse domani / Cannibal Apocalypse / too many AKAs to fit into this space
The film opens in Vietnam with an extended action sequence that sees Norman Hopper (John Saxon) and his men undertake a search and destroy mission against a Vietcong base. Having dealt with the enemy Hopper is shocked to discover two GI's in a pit, feasting on the still-warm flesh of an unfortunate VC. What makes it all the worse is that he knows one, Charlie (John Morghen), from his home town. Moving to help them out of the pit, Hopper is bitten on the arm by the other man, Tommy (Tony King)...
Stock footage...
And some woodland outside of Rome?
The image momentarily turns pixellated and black on white, as Hopper wakes up in his bed, next to his wife Jane (Elizabeth Turner), back in Atlanta.
Another Vietnam flashback, but the war – or more specifically the consequences of Tommy's bite – is about to come back in a major way.
Going to the kitchen, Hopper finds himself drawn to the raw, bloody meat in the fridge. In the morning he feels compelled to bite the next door neighbour's jailbait daughter (Cinzia de Carolis) after she gives him the come on, though since she takes it in her stride it was presumably more a gentle nibble than anything else.
Hopper gets bitten
When Charlie, just released from mental hospital with a clean bill of health phones up to see if Hopper wants to go for a drink, he understandably hesitates.
This merely delays the inevitable encounter, however, as Charlie bites a chunk out of a woman's throat in a movie theatre and kills one of a cycle gang before holing up in a flea-market where he picks up a convenient shotgun.
Hearing about the incident from his wife, who phones to check that he is not the one involved, Hopper races to the scene and persuades the captain into letting him bring Charlie out without further shooting.
Charlie is taken back to the hospital, but not before a few others have been bitten or otherwise infected with virus.
Even worse, by the time the authorities realise that this particular strain of cannibalism is contagious, Charlie, Tommy and Hopper have all been re-united and, along with a recently infected nurse, escape from the hospital in search of more flesh on the city’s streets...
A classic Morghen image
Charlie enjoys the breakfast of champions, in yet another piece of unauthorised J&B product placement
If there was one thing Antonio Margheriti knew how to do it was turn out efficient, unpretentious filone films. A good example of this are the trio of Vietnam films he made in the early 1980s: this one, The Last Hunter and Tiger Joe.
Whereas The Last Hunter takes its title from The Deer Hunter and its plot wholesale from Apocalypse Now, here we start off in Apocalypse Now territory – the Italian title literally translating as Apocalypse Tomorrow – before quickly shifting into something more reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead.
The Dawn of the Dead influence is particularly evident in the composition of the cannibal group, comprising three men, two white and one black, and one white woman, exactly the same as that in Romero’s film. Similarly, that the group has another run in with the gang of bikers seems to be little reason other than that Dawn film also has this.
Hitting the bullseye, as an infected cop fails to obey orders to “put it down son”
Elsewhere Rabid and The Crazies emerge as closer models in other respects, including their emphasis on spurious scientific explanations and living human monsters rather than the living dead – particularly the typhoid Mary figure of Rose in Cronenberg's film with her horrified awareness of what she has become and must do to survive and repeated cries of “I'm still me.” It must, however, also has to be borne in mind that these earlier films had not had the same wider influence outside as Dawn.
While one could no doubt attempt to draw a line of descent here from Night of the Living Dead itself as a film 'about' the Vietnam war, made when it was still ongoing and a more direct critique of US policy was difficult if not impossible for the film-maker there – we can here also note in passing that Apocalypse Now's late 1960s genesis lay in the idea of shooting a film guerilla style in Vietnam itself – the truth is that Margheriti and screenwriter Jimmy Gould / Dardano Sacchetti were less concerned with social comment than commerce. Combining the Vietnam war and zombie horror genres was first and foremost a move motivated by box-office potential: if doing something sullo stesso filone A attracts X viewers and something sullo stesso filone B Y viewers, then why not combine the two filone and their potential audiences?
That the film's inspiration lies in the zombie film means that it's more comfortable viewing than other Italian cannibal titles, being less harrowing than Deodato's work and less unpleasant than Lenzi's.
Though there's a moment of animal killing, as some unfortunate sewer rats get flambé-d with a flamethrower, it’s hardly representative of a desire to go further and further in this direction when we recall that 1964's Castle of Blood and its 1971 remake Web of the Spider had both included the casual decapitation of snakes.
This is not to say that Margheriti skimps on the blood and guts, however. Rather, there are plenty of scenes of those afflicted with the cannibal virus biting chunks out of hapless victims; a Fulci-esque eyeball gouging; the use of a circular saw to cut chunks of flesh out of one victim’s leg and a spectacular demise by shotgun as one character has a large hole blown through his belly. If Margheriti here draws his inspiration from The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, it’s still an impressive set-piece shot.
The location for the Vietnam scenes looks suspiciously like the outside of the cave complex used as a base by the US troops commanded by John Steiner in The Last Hunter. While not entirely convincing as the Vietnamese jungle and not quite matching the stock footage that its integrated with (although later films would see Margheriti and other Italian directors making use of Philippines location shooting in the manner of Apocalypse Now itself) Margheriti keeps the action flowing such that it doesn’t really matter too much, except for to the sticklers for authenticity who one can’t imagine would be watching the film in the first place.
In this regard, John Saxon has frequently indicated in interviews that he accepted the project because he believed it to be a serious commentary on the plight of returning Vietnam veterans. It’s a tough one to swallow unless he didn’t read the script and accepted the role sight unseen, all the more given that his long experience in Italian crime films during the previous decade must have provided him with a working knowledge of how the country’s rough-and-ready exploitation movie industry operated.
As evidence that the filmmakers weren’t taking it all that seriously themselves and just intent on providing their target audience with a fun 90 minutes consider the surname of Morghen’s character – Bukowksi – in a possible nod to the American drunk / poet; that it’s Alberto Di Martino’s war movie From Hell to Victory he watches in the movie theatre scene; or the frequently over-the-top tough guy dialogue and one-liners with their own distinctive, almost self-parodic poetry:
“Do you know who he is?”
“His name's Bukowski, Charles Bukowski”
“I don't mean his name, dumbass, I'm talking about his background. Is he a subversive, a queer, a black, a commie or a Muslim fanatic?”
Whatever Saxon's feelings about the finished product, his performance as Hopper is credible, feeling less about collecting the paycheck as wanting to say something about Vietnam. Morghen and King take a different approach more in tune with their one-dimensional crazy comic-book characters, mugging for the camera and generally hamming things up. Not surprisingly it works.
Elsewhere the likes of Venantino Venantini, Elizabeth Turner and Cinzia de Carolis, almost unrecognisable from her Cat o' Nine Tails days, provide reliable support in the smaller roles; Venantini’s son Luca plays de Carolis’s brother with he and his father obviously conveniently in Atlanta for this and Fulci’s City of the Living Dead at around the same time.
Alexander / Allesandro Blonksteiner's score is a bit hit and miss. It works when he does synth sweeps and atmospheres – some sounding suspiciously like cues from Giuliano Sorgini's Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue to my ears – less so when providing funky action themes that come across as a bit lightweight and out of place.
Stock footage...
And some woodland outside of Rome?
The image momentarily turns pixellated and black on white, as Hopper wakes up in his bed, next to his wife Jane (Elizabeth Turner), back in Atlanta.
Another Vietnam flashback, but the war – or more specifically the consequences of Tommy's bite – is about to come back in a major way.
Going to the kitchen, Hopper finds himself drawn to the raw, bloody meat in the fridge. In the morning he feels compelled to bite the next door neighbour's jailbait daughter (Cinzia de Carolis) after she gives him the come on, though since she takes it in her stride it was presumably more a gentle nibble than anything else.
Hopper gets bitten
When Charlie, just released from mental hospital with a clean bill of health phones up to see if Hopper wants to go for a drink, he understandably hesitates.
This merely delays the inevitable encounter, however, as Charlie bites a chunk out of a woman's throat in a movie theatre and kills one of a cycle gang before holing up in a flea-market where he picks up a convenient shotgun.
Hearing about the incident from his wife, who phones to check that he is not the one involved, Hopper races to the scene and persuades the captain into letting him bring Charlie out without further shooting.
Charlie is taken back to the hospital, but not before a few others have been bitten or otherwise infected with virus.
Even worse, by the time the authorities realise that this particular strain of cannibalism is contagious, Charlie, Tommy and Hopper have all been re-united and, along with a recently infected nurse, escape from the hospital in search of more flesh on the city’s streets...
A classic Morghen image
Charlie enjoys the breakfast of champions, in yet another piece of unauthorised J&B product placement
If there was one thing Antonio Margheriti knew how to do it was turn out efficient, unpretentious filone films. A good example of this are the trio of Vietnam films he made in the early 1980s: this one, The Last Hunter and Tiger Joe.
Whereas The Last Hunter takes its title from The Deer Hunter and its plot wholesale from Apocalypse Now, here we start off in Apocalypse Now territory – the Italian title literally translating as Apocalypse Tomorrow – before quickly shifting into something more reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead.
The Dawn of the Dead influence is particularly evident in the composition of the cannibal group, comprising three men, two white and one black, and one white woman, exactly the same as that in Romero’s film. Similarly, that the group has another run in with the gang of bikers seems to be little reason other than that Dawn film also has this.
Hitting the bullseye, as an infected cop fails to obey orders to “put it down son”
Elsewhere Rabid and The Crazies emerge as closer models in other respects, including their emphasis on spurious scientific explanations and living human monsters rather than the living dead – particularly the typhoid Mary figure of Rose in Cronenberg's film with her horrified awareness of what she has become and must do to survive and repeated cries of “I'm still me.” It must, however, also has to be borne in mind that these earlier films had not had the same wider influence outside as Dawn.
While one could no doubt attempt to draw a line of descent here from Night of the Living Dead itself as a film 'about' the Vietnam war, made when it was still ongoing and a more direct critique of US policy was difficult if not impossible for the film-maker there – we can here also note in passing that Apocalypse Now's late 1960s genesis lay in the idea of shooting a film guerilla style in Vietnam itself – the truth is that Margheriti and screenwriter Jimmy Gould / Dardano Sacchetti were less concerned with social comment than commerce. Combining the Vietnam war and zombie horror genres was first and foremost a move motivated by box-office potential: if doing something sullo stesso filone A attracts X viewers and something sullo stesso filone B Y viewers, then why not combine the two filone and their potential audiences?
That the film's inspiration lies in the zombie film means that it's more comfortable viewing than other Italian cannibal titles, being less harrowing than Deodato's work and less unpleasant than Lenzi's.
Though there's a moment of animal killing, as some unfortunate sewer rats get flambé-d with a flamethrower, it’s hardly representative of a desire to go further and further in this direction when we recall that 1964's Castle of Blood and its 1971 remake Web of the Spider had both included the casual decapitation of snakes.
This is not to say that Margheriti skimps on the blood and guts, however. Rather, there are plenty of scenes of those afflicted with the cannibal virus biting chunks out of hapless victims; a Fulci-esque eyeball gouging; the use of a circular saw to cut chunks of flesh out of one victim’s leg and a spectacular demise by shotgun as one character has a large hole blown through his belly. If Margheriti here draws his inspiration from The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, it’s still an impressive set-piece shot.
The location for the Vietnam scenes looks suspiciously like the outside of the cave complex used as a base by the US troops commanded by John Steiner in The Last Hunter. While not entirely convincing as the Vietnamese jungle and not quite matching the stock footage that its integrated with (although later films would see Margheriti and other Italian directors making use of Philippines location shooting in the manner of Apocalypse Now itself) Margheriti keeps the action flowing such that it doesn’t really matter too much, except for to the sticklers for authenticity who one can’t imagine would be watching the film in the first place.
In this regard, John Saxon has frequently indicated in interviews that he accepted the project because he believed it to be a serious commentary on the plight of returning Vietnam veterans. It’s a tough one to swallow unless he didn’t read the script and accepted the role sight unseen, all the more given that his long experience in Italian crime films during the previous decade must have provided him with a working knowledge of how the country’s rough-and-ready exploitation movie industry operated.
As evidence that the filmmakers weren’t taking it all that seriously themselves and just intent on providing their target audience with a fun 90 minutes consider the surname of Morghen’s character – Bukowksi – in a possible nod to the American drunk / poet; that it’s Alberto Di Martino’s war movie From Hell to Victory he watches in the movie theatre scene; or the frequently over-the-top tough guy dialogue and one-liners with their own distinctive, almost self-parodic poetry:
“Do you know who he is?”
“His name's Bukowski, Charles Bukowski”
“I don't mean his name, dumbass, I'm talking about his background. Is he a subversive, a queer, a black, a commie or a Muslim fanatic?”
Whatever Saxon's feelings about the finished product, his performance as Hopper is credible, feeling less about collecting the paycheck as wanting to say something about Vietnam. Morghen and King take a different approach more in tune with their one-dimensional crazy comic-book characters, mugging for the camera and generally hamming things up. Not surprisingly it works.
Elsewhere the likes of Venantino Venantini, Elizabeth Turner and Cinzia de Carolis, almost unrecognisable from her Cat o' Nine Tails days, provide reliable support in the smaller roles; Venantini’s son Luca plays de Carolis’s brother with he and his father obviously conveniently in Atlanta for this and Fulci’s City of the Living Dead at around the same time.
Alexander / Allesandro Blonksteiner's score is a bit hit and miss. It works when he does synth sweeps and atmospheres – some sounding suspiciously like cues from Giuliano Sorgini's Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue to my ears – less so when providing funky action themes that come across as a bit lightweight and out of place.
Saturday, 7 June 2008
Nella stretta morsa del ragno / The Web of the Spider
Along with the likes of Hitchcock's The Man who Knew too Much and Haneke's Funny Games, this is one of those rare instances of a director remaking their own film. The director in question is Antonio Margheriti / Anthony Dawson and the original is Castle of Blood.
The story, by Bruno Corbucci, is simplicity itself: Sceptical journalist Alan Foster (Anthony Franciosa), follows Edgar Allan Poe (Klaus Kinski) to the UK in search of an interview, refuses to believe that Poe's tales of mystery and imagination are in fact reportage of actual occurrences, wagers with Lord Blackwood to spend a night in his haunted castle to prove that there are no such things as ghosts, and comes to regret this decision somewhat by the time the night is over.
The sceptical enquirer
The tortured artist who knows it is all real
Like its predecessor, Web of the Spider is somewhat slow moving but undeniably atmospheric, with plenty of cobweb-filled rooms, billowing curtains, creepy portraits and single candles illuminating it all as if they were spotlights. It also has that distinctive blend of the physical and metaphysical, with vampires who only materialise one night of the year; a Beyond-like place out of the laws of space and time; and, more regrettably, the killing of a snake as a means of demonstrating a point about the nature of life and death, acknowledged even within the diegesis as somewhat spurious.
A clock stopping in a haunted house is never a good sign...
Nor are women identical to those in old portraits...
Nor balls in previously empty rooms...
The chief difference is that the film is in colour rather than monochrome. While a commercial necessity by 1971, it is debatable whether it adds terribly much. Indeed, in that Margheriti seems to here avoid more stylised colour effects, with almost everything in the same drab shades, it's possible that it actually detracts by giving the film a more realistic veneer throughout. Though this may be intentional, as a means of conveying that Blackwood Castle and its inhabitants seem normal to the reporter until it is too late, one can't think it would have been aesthetically preferable to establish greater contrast between real and fantastical through a more expressive use of contrasting colour regimes.
Having said this, it's also equally possible that this general drabness is a consequence of the poor quality of the version of the film under review here, particularly given that the near contemporaneous Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye features a number of beautiful colour effects.
The panning and scanning, most evident within what would otherwise be two or three shots as an awkward telecine whip pan moves from one character to another, is particularly bad here, making it even more difficult to fairly judge the film.
One does, nevertheless, hesitantly get the impression that Web of the Spider comes across as somewhat out of time and place itself, as a comparatively tame and suggestive 1960s gothic made in the more explicit 1970s. This said, the pervasive sense of deja-vu one gets from having seen its predecessor also adds to the experience by re-enforcing the selfsame theme of fatalism that already runs through the film.
The changes in casting between original and remake are both for the better and worse. Klaus Kinski of course makes for an excellent haunted Poe, though his contributions is confined to the framing narrative(s). Franciosa is an agreeable protagonist, effectively conveying the journalist's smug self-confidence in the initial scenes followed by its progressive undermining and ultimate collapse. The female beauties, including Michele Mercier and Karin Field, are suitably fatally attractive, though inevitably comparatively lacking in those unique sado-masochistic, victimiser-victim and pain-pleasure hacceities that Barbara Steele brought, consciously or otherwise, to her role in the original.
A cleaned up DVD release would certainly be very welcome.
The story, by Bruno Corbucci, is simplicity itself: Sceptical journalist Alan Foster (Anthony Franciosa), follows Edgar Allan Poe (Klaus Kinski) to the UK in search of an interview, refuses to believe that Poe's tales of mystery and imagination are in fact reportage of actual occurrences, wagers with Lord Blackwood to spend a night in his haunted castle to prove that there are no such things as ghosts, and comes to regret this decision somewhat by the time the night is over.
The sceptical enquirer
The tortured artist who knows it is all real
Like its predecessor, Web of the Spider is somewhat slow moving but undeniably atmospheric, with plenty of cobweb-filled rooms, billowing curtains, creepy portraits and single candles illuminating it all as if they were spotlights. It also has that distinctive blend of the physical and metaphysical, with vampires who only materialise one night of the year; a Beyond-like place out of the laws of space and time; and, more regrettably, the killing of a snake as a means of demonstrating a point about the nature of life and death, acknowledged even within the diegesis as somewhat spurious.
A clock stopping in a haunted house is never a good sign...
Nor are women identical to those in old portraits...
Nor balls in previously empty rooms...
The chief difference is that the film is in colour rather than monochrome. While a commercial necessity by 1971, it is debatable whether it adds terribly much. Indeed, in that Margheriti seems to here avoid more stylised colour effects, with almost everything in the same drab shades, it's possible that it actually detracts by giving the film a more realistic veneer throughout. Though this may be intentional, as a means of conveying that Blackwood Castle and its inhabitants seem normal to the reporter until it is too late, one can't think it would have been aesthetically preferable to establish greater contrast between real and fantastical through a more expressive use of contrasting colour regimes.
Having said this, it's also equally possible that this general drabness is a consequence of the poor quality of the version of the film under review here, particularly given that the near contemporaneous Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye features a number of beautiful colour effects.
The panning and scanning, most evident within what would otherwise be two or three shots as an awkward telecine whip pan moves from one character to another, is particularly bad here, making it even more difficult to fairly judge the film.
One does, nevertheless, hesitantly get the impression that Web of the Spider comes across as somewhat out of time and place itself, as a comparatively tame and suggestive 1960s gothic made in the more explicit 1970s. This said, the pervasive sense of deja-vu one gets from having seen its predecessor also adds to the experience by re-enforcing the selfsame theme of fatalism that already runs through the film.
The changes in casting between original and remake are both for the better and worse. Klaus Kinski of course makes for an excellent haunted Poe, though his contributions is confined to the framing narrative(s). Franciosa is an agreeable protagonist, effectively conveying the journalist's smug self-confidence in the initial scenes followed by its progressive undermining and ultimate collapse. The female beauties, including Michele Mercier and Karin Field, are suitably fatally attractive, though inevitably comparatively lacking in those unique sado-masochistic, victimiser-victim and pain-pleasure hacceities that Barbara Steele brought, consciously or otherwise, to her role in the original.
A cleaned up DVD release would certainly be very welcome.
Friday, 18 May 2007
Nude... si muore / School Girl Killer
A black gloved killer strangles an unidentified woman in the bath, stuffs her naked body into a trunk and puts it on the train for the south of France. The next thing we see is the trunk atop the minibus from St Hilda's School for Girls - what is it with St Hilda; didn't the college in What Have You Done to Solange have the same patron saint? - whilst inside some of the exclusive boarding school's staff are introduced to us: Sr Brazi, the new gym teacher; Richard Barrett, the riding teacher, "very popular with the girls"; Misses Martin and Clay and handyman La Foret.
Insert finishing school joke here; I find it interesting that the 's is perhaps missing from St Hilda's - possible coincidental parallels with the fashion house sign in Blood and Black Lace?
As it turns out there about as many of them as pupils, although this staff:student ratio is one that also proves to be in something of a state of flux when it emerges that the still unidentified killer has in fact accompanied his or her luggage.
The first victim is Betty-Ann, who strays where she shouldn't into the storeroom containing the trunk, but is assumed by the headmistress to have run away. Rather than calling in the authorities, she has the staff conduct a search of the grounds, while the students are ordered to stay in their rooms but proceed, inevitably, to sneak out for secret rendezvous and the like.
Compare this to the shower murder in Crimes of the Black Cat - what a difference a few years makes; or Psycho as thriller model and Psycho as slasher model
Betty-Ann is then followed by Cynthia in what could be a case of mistaken identity, insofar as Lucille had entered the showers a few moments before. Faced with a body, the headmistress has no option but to call in the police, while the Nancy Drew style Jill decides to conduct her own investigation. This is a wise move seeing as the chief investigating officer, as played by Michael Rennie in what-am-I-doing-here mode, needs all the help he can get. Suspicion at first falls upon the La Foret, incarnated by the ever-shifty Alan Collins / Luciano Pigozzi in sweaty peeping tom mode, but then he too gets offed...
Margheriti's direction is comparatively restrained, his mise-en-scene more classical than flashy pop modernist. There's a calculated elegance to his compositions and camera movements that evinces a professional very much in control of his medium at work.
A similar of restraint carries through into the depictions of sex and violence, with as much suggested as shown and a sense of decorum prevailing as far as shower scenes and burgeoning schoolgirl sexuality are concerned. (Silvia Dioniso plays one of the schoolgirls, but not such that you'd see her as a forerunner of Waves of Lust as the like.)
The male voyeur becomes the subject of the female gaze; note that Jill is not punished for this usurpation of a purportedly masculine prerogative
Genre scholars will no doubt want to compare and contrast with Solange, released a mere four years later, in this regard - especially since our Schoolgirl Killer, whose identity is probably the film's biggest surprise, proves to have a financial rather than psychosexual or revenge motivation, although disappointingly we don't really have the opportunity to solve the case for ourselves.
More post-Blood and Black Lace, pre-Bird with the Crystal Plumage black glove as metonymic killer stand (hand?) in
Likewise, the involvement of Mario Bava in writing the story cannot but lead to imagining what might have been in terms of a school set version of Blood and Black Lace, perhaps as riposte to the Kriminal installment Omicidio al riformatorio that had in turn riffed on his film within the context of a reform school (cf. http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/new_offscreen/fumetti.html)
Guess what's used to kill Pigozzi...
Lucille tries to persuade another student to double for her, as Margheriti's composition futher makes the point
At any rate, Carlo Savina's bright and breezy score further conveys the sense that nothing here is really to taken that seriously - another highlight in this regard is a figure in a wetsuit trying to drown one of the girls in the school's outdoor swimming pool, the kind of bizarre idea that only makes sense in a context where Brazi is a scuba expert and agues for lessons in it as a vital part of the girls' education - while the theme music, Nightmare, is more likely to raise a smile than induce fear.
Not, then, the kind of giallo to read too much into, but certainly a fun way to spend an hour and a half.
Insert finishing school joke here; I find it interesting that the 's is perhaps missing from St Hilda's - possible coincidental parallels with the fashion house sign in Blood and Black Lace?
As it turns out there about as many of them as pupils, although this staff:student ratio is one that also proves to be in something of a state of flux when it emerges that the still unidentified killer has in fact accompanied his or her luggage.
The first victim is Betty-Ann, who strays where she shouldn't into the storeroom containing the trunk, but is assumed by the headmistress to have run away. Rather than calling in the authorities, she has the staff conduct a search of the grounds, while the students are ordered to stay in their rooms but proceed, inevitably, to sneak out for secret rendezvous and the like.
Compare this to the shower murder in Crimes of the Black Cat - what a difference a few years makes; or Psycho as thriller model and Psycho as slasher model
Betty-Ann is then followed by Cynthia in what could be a case of mistaken identity, insofar as Lucille had entered the showers a few moments before. Faced with a body, the headmistress has no option but to call in the police, while the Nancy Drew style Jill decides to conduct her own investigation. This is a wise move seeing as the chief investigating officer, as played by Michael Rennie in what-am-I-doing-here mode, needs all the help he can get. Suspicion at first falls upon the La Foret, incarnated by the ever-shifty Alan Collins / Luciano Pigozzi in sweaty peeping tom mode, but then he too gets offed...
Margheriti's direction is comparatively restrained, his mise-en-scene more classical than flashy pop modernist. There's a calculated elegance to his compositions and camera movements that evinces a professional very much in control of his medium at work.
A similar of restraint carries through into the depictions of sex and violence, with as much suggested as shown and a sense of decorum prevailing as far as shower scenes and burgeoning schoolgirl sexuality are concerned. (Silvia Dioniso plays one of the schoolgirls, but not such that you'd see her as a forerunner of Waves of Lust as the like.)
The male voyeur becomes the subject of the female gaze; note that Jill is not punished for this usurpation of a purportedly masculine prerogative
Genre scholars will no doubt want to compare and contrast with Solange, released a mere four years later, in this regard - especially since our Schoolgirl Killer, whose identity is probably the film's biggest surprise, proves to have a financial rather than psychosexual or revenge motivation, although disappointingly we don't really have the opportunity to solve the case for ourselves.
More post-Blood and Black Lace, pre-Bird with the Crystal Plumage black glove as metonymic killer stand (hand?) in
Likewise, the involvement of Mario Bava in writing the story cannot but lead to imagining what might have been in terms of a school set version of Blood and Black Lace, perhaps as riposte to the Kriminal installment Omicidio al riformatorio that had in turn riffed on his film within the context of a reform school (cf. http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/new_offscreen/fumetti.html)
Guess what's used to kill Pigozzi...
Lucille tries to persuade another student to double for her, as Margheriti's composition futher makes the point
At any rate, Carlo Savina's bright and breezy score further conveys the sense that nothing here is really to taken that seriously - another highlight in this regard is a figure in a wetsuit trying to drown one of the girls in the school's outdoor swimming pool, the kind of bizarre idea that only makes sense in a context where Brazi is a scuba expert and agues for lessons in it as a vital part of the girls' education - while the theme music, Nightmare, is more likely to raise a smile than induce fear.
Not, then, the kind of giallo to read too much into, but certainly a fun way to spend an hour and a half.
Wednesday, 16 May 2007
Nude... si muore
Dark Sky films, who have released some interesting horror stuff in recent months - I can recommend their Slaughter of the Vampires, Count Dracula and Berman / Baker double bill of Blood of the Vampire and The Hellfire Club - have also put out the Bava scripted, Margheriti directed Nude... si muore:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063370/
Not either man's finest hour and a half by any means as I remember it - I really should do a proper review some day - but is an enjoyable enough post-Bava, pre-Argento mid-late 1960s giallo as I remember it, with the ever-reliable Alan Collins / Luciano Pigozzi as a perving handyman and a sleuthing schoolgirl detective whose father is... well, watch it and find out.
Given that the packaging has the banner "The Antonio Margheriti Collection" I wonder what else may be forthcoming should it prove successful.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063370/
Not either man's finest hour and a half by any means as I remember it - I really should do a proper review some day - but is an enjoyable enough post-Bava, pre-Argento mid-late 1960s giallo as I remember it, with the ever-reliable Alan Collins / Luciano Pigozzi as a perving handyman and a sleuthing schoolgirl detective whose father is... well, watch it and find out.
Given that the packaging has the banner "The Antonio Margheriti Collection" I wonder what else may be forthcoming should it prove successful.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)