American video director Alex Ritt (Rick Gianasi) goes to Rome in order to shoot some promotional films for Italian singing sensation Stefania Stella (herself) only to find that a serial killer is at large in the city.
Since Alex's wife and a number of other women fell victim to a killer with a similar modus operandi back in New York, suspicion quickly falls upon Alex, forcing him to track down the killer in order to clear his name.
As far as this basic scenario goes, Fatal Frames doesn't sound too bad. Indeed, it's very much a classic giallo set-up obviously inspired by The Girl Who Knew Too Much, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Tenebre.
And, indeed, things get better when we consider that there are also plenty of iconic guest star appearance (ranging from Ciccio Ingrassia as a beggar, to Alida Valli as a blind seer, to Donald Pleasance as a detective, to Angus Scrimm as an apparent ghost, to Rossano Brazzi as a doctor) along with plenty of “violence numbers” and effective use of iconic locations like the Coliseum and the Trevi Fountain.
Unfortunately there are also many fundamental problems with the film.
At over two hours it's way too long. Most of the blame for this can be attributed to producer and star Stefania Stella, who just also happened to be the partner of writer, director and composer Al Festa. While the film isn't a complete vanity project, it's fair to say that the target audience were more interested in violence numbers than her musical ones. Nor does it help that Stella is neither the most attractive of women nor much of an actress.
Then there's the fact that Ritt and his male co-stars are from the same muscled, long-haired mould. While of benefit when it comes to the killer's identity, that the shadowy form of the killer could be any of them, it also means that one is frequently having to do a double take to tell who is who.
Then there's Festa's direction. He tries, but way too hard: Every scene is lit and filmed like a music video, stylised for its own sake. While a fair reflection of his own background and that of his protagonist, it makes for a tiring and confusing viewing experience as we're constantly having to determine whether this or that image is supposed to be subjective or objective and if the self-conscious use of technique has any significance or not at this particular moment. In terms of Koven's Pasolinian poetic / prosaic reading of the giallo, Festa has attempted to make every scene poetic, with the paradoxical result that all become prosaic.
The shame in all of this is that there's the sense of a leaner, meaner, better film struggling to escape from Fatal Frames' bloated form.
Showing posts with label David Warbeck. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Warbeck. Show all posts
Sunday, 29 November 2009
Saturday, 25 July 2009
The Sex Thief / Ladro di sesso
Here is a perfect example of why it is unwise to criticise the low budget sexploitation film out of hand. For New Zealand-born director Martin Campbell, who debuted with this film and followed it up with Eskimo Nell subsequently went to Hollywood and made the likes of Goldeneye, Zorro and Casino Royale – i.e. big-budget, major-studio productions. If these are not the kind of films that qualify him as an auteur, they do suggest a competent and reliable journeyman.
With regard to the Bond films, this is also the reason why Quentin Tarantino will never get the opportunity to direct one: his own directorial personality is too strong, such that he would bone up on 60s spy films and seek to make a meta-commentary on the form.
Such references are not arbitrary given the Bondian elements of The Sex Thief; the casting of David Warbeck, who was both an understudy for the role of Bond and played the Sex Thief-like Milk Tray Man in a long running-series of adverts, in the role; and Tarantino’s own avowed enthusiasm for the film.
Returning to Campbell and the importance of exploitation, it is also significant is that, according to exploitation veteran Stanley Long, the debutant director was not the most technically aware at this time, requiring advice on the importance of eye-line matches and the like. Either Campbell was under the influence of new wave directors like Godard and needed to be disabused of such notions as distanciation or – perhaps more likely – he just didn’t know the rules before breaking them.
The two approaches come together to a degree within the film anyway, insofar as it features one of those speeded-up sex scenes, like A Clockwork Orange, that arguably make you aware you are watching a film, along with the characters of a crass agent and a dumb starlet. This said, Eskimo Nell takes things far further in this regard, seeing that it is itself set within the world of the British (s)exploitation industry of the time. (For what it’s worth, I recently entertained the idea of programming Eskimo Nell and Godard’s Contempt with one another.)
If The Sex Thief is not as endearing as Eskimo Nell, it is also more problematic in terms of its attitudes.
The first thing here is the character of the Sex Thief himself. He’s a Bond meets Diabolik meets Milk Tray Man jewel thief, black clad and wearing a domino mask. His modus operandi is to break into the houses of wealthy couples when the husband are absent, steal the valuables and make love to the wife by way of compensation: Not quite a housebreaker-rapist, insofar as the women consent to sex, albeit sometimes in a vaguely no to yes manner, but enough to highlight division between 70s and 90s / 00s mores.
Seeing this is a British softcore sex film, it also serves to again foreground the differences between the form and its contemporaneous US hardcore counterpart, as a viewing of the Vietnam veteran rape-trauma entry Forced Entry will make particularly clear. Similarly, when The Sex Thief was circulated in the US under the titles Handful of Diamonds and Her Family Jewels it was with hardcore inserts.
The second is the way the manager and starlet try to take advantage of the Sex Thief’s notoriety to grab a bit of publicity for their latest project, by claiming that he broke in, stole her (non-existent) valuables and raped her no fewer than seven times – one time for each of her previous films.
Since the Sex Thief’s victims enjoyed their experience and were placed in compromising positions with regard to their respected, society husbands, they told a somewhat different story. Their thieves, one purportedly a six foot six Russian, another a midget, and so on, had only committed burglary, not rape.
One issue here is the growing disbelief that emerges at the press conference as the starlet describes her purported ordeal with ever increasing implausibility. It’s played for laughs, but you don’t have to be much of a feminist to see that the filmmakers are thereby treading on rather thin ground. Another is the way in which the Sex Thief responds to this challenge, by actually breaking into the starlet’s apartment and giving her what she was ‘asking for’. Again, it’s played for laughs, and is not ‘really’ a rape scene, but probably wouldn’t be done today.
But the film is saved by Michael Armstrong and Tudor Gates’s witty script and its equal opportunities approach to offending sensibilities. Thus, Armstrong’s vice squad officer is less concerned with catching the sex thief than taking advantage of his position to steal porn from the customs vaults, which he then trades with the equally sex-obsessed journalist assigned to report on the case. The figure of the corrupt cop also, of course, allows the filmmakers to comment on what they and everyone else in the exploitation industry knew was a fact at the time: That the vice squad were on the take.
While not sex-obsessed, the male half of the insurance team investigating the case and another male cop are basically pathetic and incompetent, both in marked contrast to the smart, sassy, karate and judo expert female insurance adjustor on the look out for a real man able to satisfy her carnal desires…
With regard to the Bond films, this is also the reason why Quentin Tarantino will never get the opportunity to direct one: his own directorial personality is too strong, such that he would bone up on 60s spy films and seek to make a meta-commentary on the form.
Such references are not arbitrary given the Bondian elements of The Sex Thief; the casting of David Warbeck, who was both an understudy for the role of Bond and played the Sex Thief-like Milk Tray Man in a long running-series of adverts, in the role; and Tarantino’s own avowed enthusiasm for the film.
Returning to Campbell and the importance of exploitation, it is also significant is that, according to exploitation veteran Stanley Long, the debutant director was not the most technically aware at this time, requiring advice on the importance of eye-line matches and the like. Either Campbell was under the influence of new wave directors like Godard and needed to be disabused of such notions as distanciation or – perhaps more likely – he just didn’t know the rules before breaking them.
The two approaches come together to a degree within the film anyway, insofar as it features one of those speeded-up sex scenes, like A Clockwork Orange, that arguably make you aware you are watching a film, along with the characters of a crass agent and a dumb starlet. This said, Eskimo Nell takes things far further in this regard, seeing that it is itself set within the world of the British (s)exploitation industry of the time. (For what it’s worth, I recently entertained the idea of programming Eskimo Nell and Godard’s Contempt with one another.)
If The Sex Thief is not as endearing as Eskimo Nell, it is also more problematic in terms of its attitudes.
The first thing here is the character of the Sex Thief himself. He’s a Bond meets Diabolik meets Milk Tray Man jewel thief, black clad and wearing a domino mask. His modus operandi is to break into the houses of wealthy couples when the husband are absent, steal the valuables and make love to the wife by way of compensation: Not quite a housebreaker-rapist, insofar as the women consent to sex, albeit sometimes in a vaguely no to yes manner, but enough to highlight division between 70s and 90s / 00s mores.
Seeing this is a British softcore sex film, it also serves to again foreground the differences between the form and its contemporaneous US hardcore counterpart, as a viewing of the Vietnam veteran rape-trauma entry Forced Entry will make particularly clear. Similarly, when The Sex Thief was circulated in the US under the titles Handful of Diamonds and Her Family Jewels it was with hardcore inserts.
The second is the way the manager and starlet try to take advantage of the Sex Thief’s notoriety to grab a bit of publicity for their latest project, by claiming that he broke in, stole her (non-existent) valuables and raped her no fewer than seven times – one time for each of her previous films.
Since the Sex Thief’s victims enjoyed their experience and were placed in compromising positions with regard to their respected, society husbands, they told a somewhat different story. Their thieves, one purportedly a six foot six Russian, another a midget, and so on, had only committed burglary, not rape.
One issue here is the growing disbelief that emerges at the press conference as the starlet describes her purported ordeal with ever increasing implausibility. It’s played for laughs, but you don’t have to be much of a feminist to see that the filmmakers are thereby treading on rather thin ground. Another is the way in which the Sex Thief responds to this challenge, by actually breaking into the starlet’s apartment and giving her what she was ‘asking for’. Again, it’s played for laughs, and is not ‘really’ a rape scene, but probably wouldn’t be done today.
But the film is saved by Michael Armstrong and Tudor Gates’s witty script and its equal opportunities approach to offending sensibilities. Thus, Armstrong’s vice squad officer is less concerned with catching the sex thief than taking advantage of his position to steal porn from the customs vaults, which he then trades with the equally sex-obsessed journalist assigned to report on the case. The figure of the corrupt cop also, of course, allows the filmmakers to comment on what they and everyone else in the exploitation industry knew was a fact at the time: That the vice squad were on the take.
While not sex-obsessed, the male half of the insurance team investigating the case and another male cop are basically pathetic and incompetent, both in marked contrast to the smart, sassy, karate and judo expert female insurance adjustor on the look out for a real man able to satisfy her carnal desires…
Saturday, 4 October 2008
Bakterion / Panic / I Vivi invidieranno i morti
The most memorable thing about Bakterion / Panic is surely the name of David Warbeck's special agent: Captain Kirk.
Otherwise it's pretty much your standard MIC experiment goes wrong leading to a monster running amok 50s sci-fi stuff, brought up to its 1970s date by the distinctly cynical treatment given the selfsame authorities, who are concerned more for covering their own backs over the location of a bacteriological warfare lab in the middle of a city than the welfare of its citizens.
The putative location is Newtown, England, resulting in some awkward non-integration of stock footage of iconic London buses and location shooting with clearly Spanish locations and extras elsewhere and the concomitant displacement / generalisation of any political point compared to the more specifically grounded likes of The Quatermass Xperiment, Quatermass II and The Crazies.
Admittedly, however, any such point is also decidedly secondary insofar as we're still very much in the realm of individualising conflict, with Kirk the representative of a more benevolent face of authority who takes up the cause of the people of Newport and saves them from themselves, the monster and the excesses of his masters, all whilst finding time to establish the classic heterosexual romantic outcome with Janet Agren's research scientist in that don't-worry-she's-also-a-woman-as-well manner.
The monster
Those scenes which don't feature the good and bad guys emphasise the scientist turned monster stalking and slaying, each being announced by the introduction of two or three stock types who we know are there solely for the purpose of being slaughtered.
There is one exception. This is the priest who saves his choirboys at the cost of his own life, who get an establishing scene before they are attacked – a scene which one suspects must have played differently to Catholic Spanish and Italian audiences than an Anglican one.
Having said all this, it's also worth noting that if the IMDB can be believed the film wasn't released in Italy and Spain until late December 1982 and March 1983 respectively. The possibility of political factors playing a part here are, however, countered by the likelihood that the film sat on the shelf because of its overall poor quality. If so, its belated release might then be speculatively attributed to some combination of the relative prominence of Nightmare City – whose end "the nightmare becomes reality" coda is recalled by the "this could already have happened" one here – Zombie Creeping Flesh and other monster-cum-disaster movies in the early 1980s along with the higher profiles enjoyed by its stars at this time.
With the direction throughout characterised by a perfunctory quality – the one sign of imagination seems more accidental than anything else, as the monster's attack on a crowded cinema sees everything go black in a reductio ad absurdum of the old don't show the monster trope – Panic is a film which strongly suggests the success of the only other Ricci film I can remember seeing, the 1971 giallo Cross Current, was down more to Flavio Mogherini's production design and its impressive ensemble cast.
Don't have nightmares, do sleep well...
With no Mogherini on board, more weight is placed on the performers here. Warbeck and Agren are game, but don't quite seem as comfortable in their roles – or the co-production way of working – as they would given a few more years experience. Franco Ressel, something of a regular in Ricci's films, again proves to the manner born as the sleazy scientist in charge of the biological warfare programme, while Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue's Jose Lifante is very welcome as the Newtown police sergeant out of his depth – even if his presence also reminds one of another, far superior, English set, Italian-Spanish made science gone bad horror movie of the period.
Otherwise it's pretty much your standard MIC experiment goes wrong leading to a monster running amok 50s sci-fi stuff, brought up to its 1970s date by the distinctly cynical treatment given the selfsame authorities, who are concerned more for covering their own backs over the location of a bacteriological warfare lab in the middle of a city than the welfare of its citizens.
The putative location is Newtown, England, resulting in some awkward non-integration of stock footage of iconic London buses and location shooting with clearly Spanish locations and extras elsewhere and the concomitant displacement / generalisation of any political point compared to the more specifically grounded likes of The Quatermass Xperiment, Quatermass II and The Crazies.
Admittedly, however, any such point is also decidedly secondary insofar as we're still very much in the realm of individualising conflict, with Kirk the representative of a more benevolent face of authority who takes up the cause of the people of Newport and saves them from themselves, the monster and the excesses of his masters, all whilst finding time to establish the classic heterosexual romantic outcome with Janet Agren's research scientist in that don't-worry-she's-also-a-woman-as-well manner.
The monster
Those scenes which don't feature the good and bad guys emphasise the scientist turned monster stalking and slaying, each being announced by the introduction of two or three stock types who we know are there solely for the purpose of being slaughtered.
There is one exception. This is the priest who saves his choirboys at the cost of his own life, who get an establishing scene before they are attacked – a scene which one suspects must have played differently to Catholic Spanish and Italian audiences than an Anglican one.
Having said all this, it's also worth noting that if the IMDB can be believed the film wasn't released in Italy and Spain until late December 1982 and March 1983 respectively. The possibility of political factors playing a part here are, however, countered by the likelihood that the film sat on the shelf because of its overall poor quality. If so, its belated release might then be speculatively attributed to some combination of the relative prominence of Nightmare City – whose end "the nightmare becomes reality" coda is recalled by the "this could already have happened" one here – Zombie Creeping Flesh and other monster-cum-disaster movies in the early 1980s along with the higher profiles enjoyed by its stars at this time.
With the direction throughout characterised by a perfunctory quality – the one sign of imagination seems more accidental than anything else, as the monster's attack on a crowded cinema sees everything go black in a reductio ad absurdum of the old don't show the monster trope – Panic is a film which strongly suggests the success of the only other Ricci film I can remember seeing, the 1971 giallo Cross Current, was down more to Flavio Mogherini's production design and its impressive ensemble cast.
Don't have nightmares, do sleep well...
With no Mogherini on board, more weight is placed on the performers here. Warbeck and Agren are game, but don't quite seem as comfortable in their roles – or the co-production way of working – as they would given a few more years experience. Franco Ressel, something of a regular in Ricci's films, again proves to the manner born as the sleazy scientist in charge of the biological warfare programme, while Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue's Jose Lifante is very welcome as the Newtown police sergeant out of his depth – even if his presence also reminds one of another, far superior, English set, Italian-Spanish made science gone bad horror movie of the period.
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]
Thursday, 5 July 2007
7 Hyden Park: la casa malaedetta / Formula per un assassinio / Formula for a Murder
This US-set giallo opens with an attack by a priest – for added iconic value he offers his victim a doll beforehand, which then bounces down the steps with head and body separating before coming to rest – and an an attack on a priest.
Classic broken doll imagery
A nice juxtaposition of modern and traditional architectures and Vincenzo Tomassi hiding being an Anglo pseudonym
It's an attention grabbing, risk taking opening of the where-do-we-go-from-here variety. The answer is into more conventional Hitchcock / Clouzot thriller territory as the three principal characters and a wealth of backstory come thick and fast.
Joanna is a rich, wheelchair bound heiress who has found new purpose in life through the activity centre for the handicapped she has set up and her own training for a paralympics type event.
Craig is Joanna's physical therapist cum trainer, who professes to have fallen in love with her and is thus contemplating a proposal of marriage.
Ruth is Joanna's personal carer and assistant, who admits to regarding Craig as an rival for her affections in a could-this-be-a-sapphic-infatuation kind of a way.
The evils of panning and scanning
Joanna is about to give most of her fortune away to her local church – the same church as we saw the priest being killed in earlier – as was her father's wish.
Her paralysis is the result of having been violently attacked and raped by an insane priest-impersonating maniac – possibly the incident glimpsed in the pre-credits sequence. (Giallo aficionados will also recognise this stratagem from Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye and Who Saw Her Die: present a killer priest for anti-clerical shock value but then say the man is not really a priest in case of too great a controversy arising.)
Joanna is menaced by the killer priest / priest killer
Curiously, however, the next piece of exposition also throws the status of the pre-credits sequence as a straightforward flashback into doubt – perhaps significantly the sequence uses slow-motion, a technique unused elsewhere in the film – as we are then told that Joanna does not remember the traumatic incident. Indeed, attempts to make her remember were soon abandoned after it became clear that the shock of remembering could strain her weakened heart to breaking point.
Craig wonders whether making sex with Joanna might incur similar risks, but is reassured by Joanna's personal physician Dr Sernich that this would be safe by virtue of being an act done out of love – the little death of orgasm will not lead to death itself.
Accordingly he and Joanna marry, their nuptials being overheard with apparent disgust by the seemingly now out of the picture Ruth.
While all this has been going on the killer priest / priest killer has also struck again...
Given the predictability of the set-up thus far, along with the film-makers themselves now showing their hand – or at least revealing part of it by way of a possible bluff – it's not likely to spoil your enjoyment to reveal that Craig is indeed only in it for the money...
7 Hyden Park: la casa malaedetta / Formula per un assassinio / Formula for a Murder is the kind of old-fashioned giallo that one can imagine enjoying more had it been made roughly 15 years earlier, with reliable troupers like George Hilton, Carroll Baker and Anita Strindberg in place of David Warbeck – delivering a solid performance as per usual – and two-no name actresses, along with more 70s visuals, designs and scoring.
The last aspect does need some qualification, however. There are two sort of cue used, droning synthesizer pieces that sound like out-takes from The House by the Cemetery and funkier numbers that previously saw service in The New York Ripper. Though not a patch on the classic 70s giallo sound, these at least allow for some nice in-jokes when the newlyweds visit The Big Apple on their honeymoon and Craig decides upon the Staten Island ferry as an ideal place to kill.
All done with mirrors
Zombie, The New York Ripper and Formula for a Murder – The Staten Island Ferry makes another bid for its SAG status
A traumatised but unexpectedly resilient Joanna, wearing a yellow raincoat...
... the killer attired in the same...
... and the obligatory straight razor
While the plotting and dialogue leave much to be desired, throwing in more than the usual quota of credulity straining twists and turns, motivations and lines, the participants attack this material with the kind of enthusiasm that wins the viewer over with the courage of their convictions, as if we'd never seen a Les Dialoboliques or Taste of Fear.
At the helm Alberto De Martino likewise goes all out, handling the suspense and shock set-pieces with energy and endeavouring to impart a degree of visual style to the proceedings as a whole, with a particular penchant for mirrored shots.
If one is again reminded of earlier gialli to Formula for a Murder's detriment, inasmuch as there is rarely that sense of this particular angle, movement or cut having been carefully chosen for what it brings to the whole, the small number of characters and comparative lack of opportunities for enigma do somewhat lessen the director's options.
Likewise, it also has to be noted that characteristically insensitive panning and scanning make it harder to know for sure – a original aspect ratio release would be welcome.
Classic broken doll imagery
A nice juxtaposition of modern and traditional architectures and Vincenzo Tomassi hiding being an Anglo pseudonym
It's an attention grabbing, risk taking opening of the where-do-we-go-from-here variety. The answer is into more conventional Hitchcock / Clouzot thriller territory as the three principal characters and a wealth of backstory come thick and fast.
Joanna is a rich, wheelchair bound heiress who has found new purpose in life through the activity centre for the handicapped she has set up and her own training for a paralympics type event.
Craig is Joanna's physical therapist cum trainer, who professes to have fallen in love with her and is thus contemplating a proposal of marriage.
Ruth is Joanna's personal carer and assistant, who admits to regarding Craig as an rival for her affections in a could-this-be-a-sapphic-infatuation kind of a way.
The evils of panning and scanning
Joanna is about to give most of her fortune away to her local church – the same church as we saw the priest being killed in earlier – as was her father's wish.
Her paralysis is the result of having been violently attacked and raped by an insane priest-impersonating maniac – possibly the incident glimpsed in the pre-credits sequence. (Giallo aficionados will also recognise this stratagem from Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye and Who Saw Her Die: present a killer priest for anti-clerical shock value but then say the man is not really a priest in case of too great a controversy arising.)
Joanna is menaced by the killer priest / priest killer
Curiously, however, the next piece of exposition also throws the status of the pre-credits sequence as a straightforward flashback into doubt – perhaps significantly the sequence uses slow-motion, a technique unused elsewhere in the film – as we are then told that Joanna does not remember the traumatic incident. Indeed, attempts to make her remember were soon abandoned after it became clear that the shock of remembering could strain her weakened heart to breaking point.
Craig wonders whether making sex with Joanna might incur similar risks, but is reassured by Joanna's personal physician Dr Sernich that this would be safe by virtue of being an act done out of love – the little death of orgasm will not lead to death itself.
Accordingly he and Joanna marry, their nuptials being overheard with apparent disgust by the seemingly now out of the picture Ruth.
While all this has been going on the killer priest / priest killer has also struck again...
Given the predictability of the set-up thus far, along with the film-makers themselves now showing their hand – or at least revealing part of it by way of a possible bluff – it's not likely to spoil your enjoyment to reveal that Craig is indeed only in it for the money...
7 Hyden Park: la casa malaedetta / Formula per un assassinio / Formula for a Murder is the kind of old-fashioned giallo that one can imagine enjoying more had it been made roughly 15 years earlier, with reliable troupers like George Hilton, Carroll Baker and Anita Strindberg in place of David Warbeck – delivering a solid performance as per usual – and two-no name actresses, along with more 70s visuals, designs and scoring.
The last aspect does need some qualification, however. There are two sort of cue used, droning synthesizer pieces that sound like out-takes from The House by the Cemetery and funkier numbers that previously saw service in The New York Ripper. Though not a patch on the classic 70s giallo sound, these at least allow for some nice in-jokes when the newlyweds visit The Big Apple on their honeymoon and Craig decides upon the Staten Island ferry as an ideal place to kill.
All done with mirrors
Zombie, The New York Ripper and Formula for a Murder – The Staten Island Ferry makes another bid for its SAG status
A traumatised but unexpectedly resilient Joanna, wearing a yellow raincoat...
... the killer attired in the same...
... and the obligatory straight razor
While the plotting and dialogue leave much to be desired, throwing in more than the usual quota of credulity straining twists and turns, motivations and lines, the participants attack this material with the kind of enthusiasm that wins the viewer over with the courage of their convictions, as if we'd never seen a Les Dialoboliques or Taste of Fear.
At the helm Alberto De Martino likewise goes all out, handling the suspense and shock set-pieces with energy and endeavouring to impart a degree of visual style to the proceedings as a whole, with a particular penchant for mirrored shots.
If one is again reminded of earlier gialli to Formula for a Murder's detriment, inasmuch as there is rarely that sense of this particular angle, movement or cut having been carefully chosen for what it brings to the whole, the small number of characters and comparative lack of opportunities for enigma do somewhat lessen the director's options.
Likewise, it also has to be noted that characteristically insensitive panning and scanning make it harder to know for sure – a original aspect ratio release would be welcome.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)