Tobe is a 17-year-old self-identified dork, with a fascination for the cultural detritus of past decades and an especial interest in late 1970s-early 1980s porn star Monica Velour (Kim Catrall), the star of such titles as Saturday Night Beaver (the title of a real-world porn film), New Wave Nookie and Pork and Mindy (both made up, though the former parodies another real-world porno rather than a mainstream production).
Though Tobe is a dork, even he considers his female counterpart Amanda as being too dorky – until, that is, he notices the Faster Pussycat Kill Kill and Switchblade Sisters posters on her walls.
However, by this time, they’ve graduated and Tobe has been given a somewhat unwelcome gift by by grandfather Pops Pops (Brian Dennehy), namely the family weenie van.
Not wanting it, Tobe puts it up for sale. Almost immediately he has a buyer, in the form of kitsch collector Claude (Keith David). There’s one snag, however: Claude lives in Indiana and would need Tobe to drive the van to him from his Oregon home.
At first Tobe declines, but then discovers via a Monica Velour fan site that she’s due to be performing in a nearby Indiana strip club.
Checking the map, Tobe he discovers that Claude’s and the strip club are not far apart and thus decides to go sell the van and meet the woman of his dreams.
Predictably things don’t go smoothly, before turning out all right in the end. The good guys are rewarded and the bad guys punished – the usual stuff.
Part road-movie, part coming-of-age story, part drama, part comedy this might well be summed up as one part Napoleon Dynamite, one part Ghost World and one part the Boogie Nights subplots dealing with Amber Waves’s custody battles with her husband and the characters’ struggles to live down the stigma of their porn pasts. (Those wanting a more obscure reference point may also wish to refer to the 2002 documentary Desperately Seeking Seka, in which Swedish filmmaker Christian Hallmann set out to track down his adolescent lust object, 15 or so years after her retirement)
The problem is that in terms of writing and direction it thus fails to do anything that hasn’t been done before or better.
The exceptions are the chance to see a distinctly de-glamourised Kim Catrall demonstrate her acting abilities as Velour and the sight of Brian Dennehy’s naked arse – the kind of once seen never to be unseen image that shouldn’t have been included, not out of any sense of propriety or gross-out value, but because with it he completely upstages the nominal star.
Showing posts with label comedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comedy. Show all posts
Monday, 20 June 2011
Sunday, 19 June 2011
Almanya - Willkommen in Deutschland
Six-year-old Cenk has a problem, precipitated by a teacher’s unthinking questioning of where he really comes from: Is he German, Turkish, Turkish-German, German-Turkish or what?
Though more secure in her identity, Cenk’s cousin Canan also has a problem: She’s just discovered she’s pregnant by her British boyfriend. Her mother is not likely to approve
And now their entire family has a problem, as patriarch Huseyin unexpectedly announces that he has bought a house in Turkey and wishes to take all of them to visit and work on it...
Thus the set-up for this this comedy about ethnic (mis)understandings from sisters Yasemin and Nesrin Samdereli is established.
Thereafter, the filmmakers confidently interweave two parallel narratives, one taking place in the present as the family sets off on their journey to their old homeland, the other in a part-imagined past as Canan retells Cenk the story of how their grandparents and parents came to West Germany in the 1960s and encountered such strangeness as giant rats being taken for walks on bits of rope; that man on the cross whom the Christians eat every Sunday, and flush toilets.
Through these and other gags German and Turkish cultural stereotypes are paraded and gently mocked, although more substantive issues of the type addressed in Against the Wall are largely evaded or left implicit.
Nevertheless, it is undeniably well put together at all levels, particularly for a first feature from someone with a television background. The performances are credible, the child actors not too annoying, and a mixture of German, Turkish and made-up nonsense language cleverly used to telling effect to indicate the different levels of cultural assimilation and separation.
Though more secure in her identity, Cenk’s cousin Canan also has a problem: She’s just discovered she’s pregnant by her British boyfriend. Her mother is not likely to approve
And now their entire family has a problem, as patriarch Huseyin unexpectedly announces that he has bought a house in Turkey and wishes to take all of them to visit and work on it...
Thus the set-up for this this comedy about ethnic (mis)understandings from sisters Yasemin and Nesrin Samdereli is established.
Thereafter, the filmmakers confidently interweave two parallel narratives, one taking place in the present as the family sets off on their journey to their old homeland, the other in a part-imagined past as Canan retells Cenk the story of how their grandparents and parents came to West Germany in the 1960s and encountered such strangeness as giant rats being taken for walks on bits of rope; that man on the cross whom the Christians eat every Sunday, and flush toilets.
Through these and other gags German and Turkish cultural stereotypes are paraded and gently mocked, although more substantive issues of the type addressed in Against the Wall are largely evaded or left implicit.
Nevertheless, it is undeniably well put together at all levels, particularly for a first feature from someone with a television background. The performances are credible, the child actors not too annoying, and a mixture of German, Turkish and made-up nonsense language cleverly used to telling effect to indicate the different levels of cultural assimilation and separation.
Saturday, 2 January 2010
Torremolinos 73
Madrid, the early 1970s: Alfredo works as an encyclopaedia salesman for Montoya publications. The Spanish public is less and less interested in the 3,000-plus page multi volume collection on the history of the Spanish Civil War, complete with complimentary scale bust of Franco’s head; he’s behind in his rent; his wife Carmen is desperate for them to have a baby, and has just lost her own job in a beauty parlour.
Illusion
Reality
Fascist spectacle reduced to kitsch
A world drained of colour
Soon thereafter Alfredo’s boss Don Carlos summons him and the three other remaining salesmen to a hotel for a conference weekend. They’re given two choices: Start making educational documentary films with their respective partners for a Danish magazine and film series on sexual practices throughout the world or look for a new job. The other two couples present leave in disgust. Alfredo and Carmen stay behind, at least for the time being, along with the single Juan Luis. (We soon find out more about his sexual practices, probably only legal in the Danish market...)
The white coater
Alfredo proves a natural filmmaker and is soon offering the Danish director who has come to train him suggestions, leading to his being given a megaphone that was supposedly given the Dane by no less than Ingmar Bergman when he was his assistant. Whatever the truth of this, it only enhances Alfredo’s determination to do a good job.
With Carmen persuaded by virtue of the purportedly educational nature of the film, that it will only be screened in the Scandinavian territories and – above all – the money they can make, the money which will help pay for a baby, she consents to appearing with her husband.
The finished product is a bit raw and ready but Don Carlos and his Danish partners are nevertheless pleased and want more from Alfredo and Carmen. They oblige, purchasing a new car, television and various other consumer goods with the money that is now rolling in. The only thing that is still lacking in their lives is a child.
The erotic charge of the personal over the impersonal pornographic?
Alfredo seeks to turn their frustrations into art, scripting the Bergman inspired Torremolinos 73 for Carmen to appear opposite a respected actor. Don Carlos agrees to bankroll the project and even to pay for a professional – if small – Danish crew.
What Alfredo doesn’t realise, or doesn’t want to realise, is that he can have all the existential angst he wants, as long as there is still some sex...
70s discotheque, beautifully reproduced
Let’s get the negative out of the way first: Torremolinos 73’s central premise doesn’t seem completely plausible in itself nor quite worked through as dramatic license by writer-director Pablo Berger. To realise this, however, does probably require a bit more knowledge of the ins and outs (groan) of porn cinemas of the period than the typical viewer perhaps cares to acquire.
To explain: The white coater sub-genre of porn, in which an educational premise was used as a pretext for showing sex on screen, essentially belonged to a period when porn qua porn was not yet permitted. But in Denmark all pornography was legalised in the late 1960s, making a white coater premise seem unlikely for Danish films from 1972/73. Even if we grant that the white coater shown to the Spaniards serves to reassure/dupe them into believing that what they are doing is scientifically justified, there’s then the issue of believing that amateur Spanish productions was really what the market wanted. Alfredo’s films are shot on 8mm (yet somehow acquire sound) with him functioning as cameraman and director as well as male performer – an unlikely combination in a pre-gonzo/POV era. The amateur aspect is also undermined by the hint of formula emerging in some of the porn stereotypical scenarios, of the trades- or delivery man turning up at the housewife’s door. For what we don’t get here (unless we are meant to assume some meta-commentary on Alfredo and Carmen’s fantasies as conveniently mirroring those of professional pornographers and audiences, which is possible) is anything about emergent porn conventions. There is nothing about close ups of the action, for instance, while the money shot is only referred to in relation to Torremolinos 73 itself.
Product over process
Having said all this, it is true that the film is a comedy-drama and not a documentary. Moreover, comparable criticisms could be levelled at Boogie Nights. For instance, Dirk Diggler is basically John Holmes, yet Holmes’s Johnny Wadd films are also referenced diegetically as something Diggler wants to get away from in his rival Brock Landers series.
Torremolinos 73 is far stronger when it is on home soil, in representing and critiquing the final years of the Franco regime in Spain. Even before the encyclopaedia is introduced, we have Alfredo standing before a massive billboard for the Paradise Apartments, whose representation looks little like their reality, which he then has to trudge across a field to reach. And, once there, inevitably the lift is out of order. Or then there are the references to child-star Marisol and “Spanish weekends,” by which Spanish filmgoers would cross the border into France to watch forbidden films such as Last Tango in Paris. Or there is the top of the range colour TV Alfredo buys, only to find that programming is still in black and white.
In terms of look and feel the filmmakers get the early 70s look down beautifully, whether its cars, clothes, hairstyles, decors or music. It’s probably no exaggeration to suggest a disco/nightclub scene could be cut in into a Paul Naschy vehicle from the period without any but the most astute being able to notice the difference. (If this was an Italian film, there would be prominently displayed J&B bottles, Punt e mes and Fernet Branca somewhere.)
The performances are impressive, with leads Javier Cámara and Candela Peña proving equally adept at comedy and drama and beautifully channelling the hopes and frustrations of their parents’ generation; interestingly Peña has more recently appeared in the similar sounding Los años desnudos, about the Spanish ‘S’ film boom of a few years later.
By turns funny and touching, Torremolinos ’73 is a film that the cult film fan should enjoy, reservations notwithstanding; its treatment of the intersection between art and commerce in erotic and pornographic cinema may appeal particularly to the Jesus Franco or Lina Romay fan.
Illusion
Reality
Fascist spectacle reduced to kitsch
A world drained of colour
Soon thereafter Alfredo’s boss Don Carlos summons him and the three other remaining salesmen to a hotel for a conference weekend. They’re given two choices: Start making educational documentary films with their respective partners for a Danish magazine and film series on sexual practices throughout the world or look for a new job. The other two couples present leave in disgust. Alfredo and Carmen stay behind, at least for the time being, along with the single Juan Luis. (We soon find out more about his sexual practices, probably only legal in the Danish market...)
The white coater
Alfredo proves a natural filmmaker and is soon offering the Danish director who has come to train him suggestions, leading to his being given a megaphone that was supposedly given the Dane by no less than Ingmar Bergman when he was his assistant. Whatever the truth of this, it only enhances Alfredo’s determination to do a good job.
With Carmen persuaded by virtue of the purportedly educational nature of the film, that it will only be screened in the Scandinavian territories and – above all – the money they can make, the money which will help pay for a baby, she consents to appearing with her husband.
The finished product is a bit raw and ready but Don Carlos and his Danish partners are nevertheless pleased and want more from Alfredo and Carmen. They oblige, purchasing a new car, television and various other consumer goods with the money that is now rolling in. The only thing that is still lacking in their lives is a child.
The erotic charge of the personal over the impersonal pornographic?
Alfredo seeks to turn their frustrations into art, scripting the Bergman inspired Torremolinos 73 for Carmen to appear opposite a respected actor. Don Carlos agrees to bankroll the project and even to pay for a professional – if small – Danish crew.
What Alfredo doesn’t realise, or doesn’t want to realise, is that he can have all the existential angst he wants, as long as there is still some sex...
70s discotheque, beautifully reproduced
Let’s get the negative out of the way first: Torremolinos 73’s central premise doesn’t seem completely plausible in itself nor quite worked through as dramatic license by writer-director Pablo Berger. To realise this, however, does probably require a bit more knowledge of the ins and outs (groan) of porn cinemas of the period than the typical viewer perhaps cares to acquire.
To explain: The white coater sub-genre of porn, in which an educational premise was used as a pretext for showing sex on screen, essentially belonged to a period when porn qua porn was not yet permitted. But in Denmark all pornography was legalised in the late 1960s, making a white coater premise seem unlikely for Danish films from 1972/73. Even if we grant that the white coater shown to the Spaniards serves to reassure/dupe them into believing that what they are doing is scientifically justified, there’s then the issue of believing that amateur Spanish productions was really what the market wanted. Alfredo’s films are shot on 8mm (yet somehow acquire sound) with him functioning as cameraman and director as well as male performer – an unlikely combination in a pre-gonzo/POV era. The amateur aspect is also undermined by the hint of formula emerging in some of the porn stereotypical scenarios, of the trades- or delivery man turning up at the housewife’s door. For what we don’t get here (unless we are meant to assume some meta-commentary on Alfredo and Carmen’s fantasies as conveniently mirroring those of professional pornographers and audiences, which is possible) is anything about emergent porn conventions. There is nothing about close ups of the action, for instance, while the money shot is only referred to in relation to Torremolinos 73 itself.
Product over process
Having said all this, it is true that the film is a comedy-drama and not a documentary. Moreover, comparable criticisms could be levelled at Boogie Nights. For instance, Dirk Diggler is basically John Holmes, yet Holmes’s Johnny Wadd films are also referenced diegetically as something Diggler wants to get away from in his rival Brock Landers series.
Torremolinos 73 is far stronger when it is on home soil, in representing and critiquing the final years of the Franco regime in Spain. Even before the encyclopaedia is introduced, we have Alfredo standing before a massive billboard for the Paradise Apartments, whose representation looks little like their reality, which he then has to trudge across a field to reach. And, once there, inevitably the lift is out of order. Or then there are the references to child-star Marisol and “Spanish weekends,” by which Spanish filmgoers would cross the border into France to watch forbidden films such as Last Tango in Paris. Or there is the top of the range colour TV Alfredo buys, only to find that programming is still in black and white.
In terms of look and feel the filmmakers get the early 70s look down beautifully, whether its cars, clothes, hairstyles, decors or music. It’s probably no exaggeration to suggest a disco/nightclub scene could be cut in into a Paul Naschy vehicle from the period without any but the most astute being able to notice the difference. (If this was an Italian film, there would be prominently displayed J&B bottles, Punt e mes and Fernet Branca somewhere.)
The performances are impressive, with leads Javier Cámara and Candela Peña proving equally adept at comedy and drama and beautifully channelling the hopes and frustrations of their parents’ generation; interestingly Peña has more recently appeared in the similar sounding Los años desnudos, about the Spanish ‘S’ film boom of a few years later.
By turns funny and touching, Torremolinos ’73 is a film that the cult film fan should enjoy, reservations notwithstanding; its treatment of the intersection between art and commerce in erotic and pornographic cinema may appeal particularly to the Jesus Franco or Lina Romay fan.
Monday, 21 September 2009
Don Camillo / Keiner haut wie Don Camillo / The World of Don Camillo
Produced, directed by and starring Terence Hill, Don Camillo could so easily have been a classic example of an actor's overextending themselves with a hyphenate vanity project.
Happily, however, it proves nothing of the sort, with Hill acquitting himself well on all fronts.
He may be a relatively lightweight, non-serious actor who gets through everything with that same twinkle in his eyes, but you feel that is exactly what the role of the titular town priest needs, especially as he written for the screen by Hill's wife Lori.
Hill also proves a competent director who is not afraid to try out different techniques, with some effective angles and use of slow-motion, as well as some larger scale set-pieces that indicate an ample budget, and thus something of his skill and ambition as a producer.
But if the film was clearly intended for international distribution - the version I watched had German titles and had been dubbed into English - this is also where it suffers in certain regards.
The Don Camillo character was created by Giovanni Guareschi just after the Second World War, with a series of massively popular novels being released over the course of the 1950s, along with a number of film adaptations. Ins that the battle for hearts and minds between Don Camillo and Communist Party mayor Peppone lay at the core of these stories and films, they were very much a product of and commentary upon the situation in Italy in the mid-1940s to mid-1950s: While both Catholics and communists had made important contributions to the anti-Fascist and anti-Nazi resistance, the Cold War resulted in communists being recast as the enemy within.
Permanently excluded from power at the national level and hostile to the - equally hostile - institutions of the Catholic church and the DC state, the PCI thus established its own organisations in an attempt to offer the workers an alternative to official life and culture.
Without this background, specific aspects of the film make less sense: Why is it that Don Camillo refuses to set foot in the PCI's casa dell popolo, or House of the People? Who is that young man in a portrait prominently displayed on one of the casa walls?
Nevertheless, at least these elements are there for those who know to look for them; the portrait is of Antonio Gramsci by the way.
What is more problematic is the way that the stories have been updated to the 1980s: With the Cold War having thawed considerably and the PCI having distanced itself from the old USSR-led Leninist, Stalinist and post-Stalinist orthodoxies along with seeking a "historic compromise" with the DC in the 1970s, there was less for Hill's Don Camillo and Colin Blakely's Peppone to be fighting over.
In part the Hills seem to implicitly recognise this. There are various incidents within the episodic narrative that see the priest and the mayor guilty of the same little transgressions, such as poaching for game on private land; using marked cards; or bringing in outside ringers for the supposedly locals only football match between their factions. Likewise, there's an emblematic scene where Don Camillo refuses to baptise Peppone's son with the first names Lenin Liberty, with the two men reaching a compromise that he can be called Liberty Lenin Camillo Peppone. (It's a bit like how Asia Argento's official first name is Aria, her full name being Aria Asia Maria Vittoria Rossa Argento.)
If these mutual encounters give the clear sense that both men genuinely want to do what they feel is right for the town and its people but simply disagree over parts of the details, there are nevertheless also some awkward spots. The football match, in which Don Camillo's team (in blue) is named The Angels and Peppone's (in red) The Devils, is an obvious example. Besides situating the PCI within a DC discourse as the villains, whilst simultaneously depoliticising them, the depiction of the match includes US-style cheerleaders. Given PCI hostility to US consumer culture as cultural imperialism along with Catholic hesitancy about the materialism and lack of morality in this culture, they seem misplaced.
If all this serious criticism is irrelevant to your way of watching films, the thing that has to be emphasised is that Don Camillo is also genuinely funny - not least when the priest is talking with his personal Jesus.
Happily, however, it proves nothing of the sort, with Hill acquitting himself well on all fronts.
He may be a relatively lightweight, non-serious actor who gets through everything with that same twinkle in his eyes, but you feel that is exactly what the role of the titular town priest needs, especially as he written for the screen by Hill's wife Lori.
Hill also proves a competent director who is not afraid to try out different techniques, with some effective angles and use of slow-motion, as well as some larger scale set-pieces that indicate an ample budget, and thus something of his skill and ambition as a producer.
But if the film was clearly intended for international distribution - the version I watched had German titles and had been dubbed into English - this is also where it suffers in certain regards.
The Don Camillo character was created by Giovanni Guareschi just after the Second World War, with a series of massively popular novels being released over the course of the 1950s, along with a number of film adaptations. Ins that the battle for hearts and minds between Don Camillo and Communist Party mayor Peppone lay at the core of these stories and films, they were very much a product of and commentary upon the situation in Italy in the mid-1940s to mid-1950s: While both Catholics and communists had made important contributions to the anti-Fascist and anti-Nazi resistance, the Cold War resulted in communists being recast as the enemy within.
Permanently excluded from power at the national level and hostile to the - equally hostile - institutions of the Catholic church and the DC state, the PCI thus established its own organisations in an attempt to offer the workers an alternative to official life and culture.
Without this background, specific aspects of the film make less sense: Why is it that Don Camillo refuses to set foot in the PCI's casa dell popolo, or House of the People? Who is that young man in a portrait prominently displayed on one of the casa walls?
Nevertheless, at least these elements are there for those who know to look for them; the portrait is of Antonio Gramsci by the way.
What is more problematic is the way that the stories have been updated to the 1980s: With the Cold War having thawed considerably and the PCI having distanced itself from the old USSR-led Leninist, Stalinist and post-Stalinist orthodoxies along with seeking a "historic compromise" with the DC in the 1970s, there was less for Hill's Don Camillo and Colin Blakely's Peppone to be fighting over.
In part the Hills seem to implicitly recognise this. There are various incidents within the episodic narrative that see the priest and the mayor guilty of the same little transgressions, such as poaching for game on private land; using marked cards; or bringing in outside ringers for the supposedly locals only football match between their factions. Likewise, there's an emblematic scene where Don Camillo refuses to baptise Peppone's son with the first names Lenin Liberty, with the two men reaching a compromise that he can be called Liberty Lenin Camillo Peppone. (It's a bit like how Asia Argento's official first name is Aria, her full name being Aria Asia Maria Vittoria Rossa Argento.)
If these mutual encounters give the clear sense that both men genuinely want to do what they feel is right for the town and its people but simply disagree over parts of the details, there are nevertheless also some awkward spots. The football match, in which Don Camillo's team (in blue) is named The Angels and Peppone's (in red) The Devils, is an obvious example. Besides situating the PCI within a DC discourse as the villains, whilst simultaneously depoliticising them, the depiction of the match includes US-style cheerleaders. Given PCI hostility to US consumer culture as cultural imperialism along with Catholic hesitancy about the materialism and lack of morality in this culture, they seem misplaced.
If all this serious criticism is irrelevant to your way of watching films, the thing that has to be emphasised is that Don Camillo is also genuinely funny - not least when the priest is talking with his personal Jesus.
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Io zombo, tu zombi, lei zomba
In some ways this little seen zom-com proves something of a missing link between various other better known films.
For if Fulci’s Zombie took what critic Kim Newman has described as a “straight-faced” approach to the post-Romero zombie, Io zombo, tu zombi, lei zomba – i.e. I’m a zombie, you’re a zombie, she's a zombie – draws instead on the “splatstick” aspects of Dawn of the Dead.
We begin with a animated credits sequence that sees a head modelled on a combination of Dawn of the Dead’s poster / airstrip and Hare Krisha zombies, open up to display the credits, accompanied by the strains of a jungle call theme clearly modelled on Goblin’s caccia cue.
The credits
Following this, we’re then introduced to the four main characters: two drivers, a cyclist and a gravedigger. The first three are involved in a road accident, which leaves them dead and in the care of the gravedigger.
He foolishly reads a passage from a book on voodoo out loud, thus reanimating the others. On seeing them, the shock causes him to have a fatal seizure. The others, finding his body and the book, then unwittingly recite the same passage, bringing the gravedigger back and leaving them all in the same predicament.
Reading the book for guidance on what to do, namely look for human flesh to devour, they then relocate from the cemetery to a nearby hotel, conveniently all but deserted – the aunt of one of the men is there but soon dies of natural causes, with the family connection enough to mean that she is not placed on the dinner table – where they masquerade as the staff in the hope of luring in some more appropriate victims.
Zombies on the march
Some guests soon arrive, including a family with a noxious child who knows all about zombies from having read Oltretomba and tries to convince his parents that they all in danger of being eaten, and a gangster type with his mistress and, unbeknownst to the zombies, her recently murdered husband in the car...
The horror kid
They make a point of asking for a matrimoniale rather than two single rooms
Eventually, after various comic living dead hijinks, the action relocates to a shopping centre / mall as the military go in pursuit of the zombies…
We are going to eat you!
But in a properly civilised manner...
The main innovation on the Romero zombie, prefiguring Nightmare City, Cannibal Apocalypse and the Return of the Living Dead series, is that these zombies are conscious of their situation, even if they also have grey-painted skin and, in sharp contrast to their speedy Nightmare City counterparts, still do a slow Romero shuffle.
Elsewhere there's also another foretaste of Cannibal Apocalypse in the way the zombie group, by now expanded to include the mistress/wife, finds itself pursued by the authorities.
The major strength of the film is that it is actually funny. While I wouldn't claim to have gotten much of the verbal humour, of which there seems to be a lot, the sight gags and the actors' zombie routines work regardless of your knowledge of Italian, with the actors making some priceless expressions and gestures.
If the writing seems a little weak, what with all the nightmarish coincidences and contrivances as things go on, there's also a very good reason (beyond it being inherent in this kind of comedy) for this, with it worth recalling here that co-writer Roberto Gianviti had also contributed to several of Fulci and others' gialli, including Lizard in a Woman's Skin and Seven Notes in Black.
Another Romero moment, at the supermercato / mall
While director Nello Rossati doesn't quite come across as one of the forgotten auteurs of the Italian B-cinema on the basis of his showing here or in the other film of his that I've seen, the Ursula Andress sexy comedy The Sensuous Nurse, both films do have a self-referential aspect - there a youth reads i libri gialli, from which he starts to get wind of the murder conspiracy within his own extended family - ex-military figures, and an agreeable general no-nonsense approach.
In the latter regard, Nadia Cassini is here on hand to provide some glamour as the gangster's moll, and while remaining scantily clad does perform what could, at a pinch, be seen as the cinema's first zombie stripper routine.
Cassini also helps explicate the formula of the film's title, having appeared the previous year in the comedy anthology Io tigro, tu tigri, egli tigra.
In sum, a pleasant way to spend 90 minutes and an intriguing intertext for the zombie film scholar.
[As can be seen, I watched the film through an AVI produced by one Doctor Divx, though there is now a Nocturno DVD out]
For if Fulci’s Zombie took what critic Kim Newman has described as a “straight-faced” approach to the post-Romero zombie, Io zombo, tu zombi, lei zomba – i.e. I’m a zombie, you’re a zombie, she's a zombie – draws instead on the “splatstick” aspects of Dawn of the Dead.
We begin with a animated credits sequence that sees a head modelled on a combination of Dawn of the Dead’s poster / airstrip and Hare Krisha zombies, open up to display the credits, accompanied by the strains of a jungle call theme clearly modelled on Goblin’s caccia cue.
The credits
Following this, we’re then introduced to the four main characters: two drivers, a cyclist and a gravedigger. The first three are involved in a road accident, which leaves them dead and in the care of the gravedigger.
He foolishly reads a passage from a book on voodoo out loud, thus reanimating the others. On seeing them, the shock causes him to have a fatal seizure. The others, finding his body and the book, then unwittingly recite the same passage, bringing the gravedigger back and leaving them all in the same predicament.
Reading the book for guidance on what to do, namely look for human flesh to devour, they then relocate from the cemetery to a nearby hotel, conveniently all but deserted – the aunt of one of the men is there but soon dies of natural causes, with the family connection enough to mean that she is not placed on the dinner table – where they masquerade as the staff in the hope of luring in some more appropriate victims.
Zombies on the march
Some guests soon arrive, including a family with a noxious child who knows all about zombies from having read Oltretomba and tries to convince his parents that they all in danger of being eaten, and a gangster type with his mistress and, unbeknownst to the zombies, her recently murdered husband in the car...
The horror kid
They make a point of asking for a matrimoniale rather than two single rooms
Eventually, after various comic living dead hijinks, the action relocates to a shopping centre / mall as the military go in pursuit of the zombies…
We are going to eat you!
But in a properly civilised manner...
The main innovation on the Romero zombie, prefiguring Nightmare City, Cannibal Apocalypse and the Return of the Living Dead series, is that these zombies are conscious of their situation, even if they also have grey-painted skin and, in sharp contrast to their speedy Nightmare City counterparts, still do a slow Romero shuffle.
Elsewhere there's also another foretaste of Cannibal Apocalypse in the way the zombie group, by now expanded to include the mistress/wife, finds itself pursued by the authorities.
The major strength of the film is that it is actually funny. While I wouldn't claim to have gotten much of the verbal humour, of which there seems to be a lot, the sight gags and the actors' zombie routines work regardless of your knowledge of Italian, with the actors making some priceless expressions and gestures.
If the writing seems a little weak, what with all the nightmarish coincidences and contrivances as things go on, there's also a very good reason (beyond it being inherent in this kind of comedy) for this, with it worth recalling here that co-writer Roberto Gianviti had also contributed to several of Fulci and others' gialli, including Lizard in a Woman's Skin and Seven Notes in Black.
Another Romero moment, at the supermercato / mall
While director Nello Rossati doesn't quite come across as one of the forgotten auteurs of the Italian B-cinema on the basis of his showing here or in the other film of his that I've seen, the Ursula Andress sexy comedy The Sensuous Nurse, both films do have a self-referential aspect - there a youth reads i libri gialli, from which he starts to get wind of the murder conspiracy within his own extended family - ex-military figures, and an agreeable general no-nonsense approach.
In the latter regard, Nadia Cassini is here on hand to provide some glamour as the gangster's moll, and while remaining scantily clad does perform what could, at a pinch, be seen as the cinema's first zombie stripper routine.
Cassini also helps explicate the formula of the film's title, having appeared the previous year in the comedy anthology Io tigro, tu tigri, egli tigra.
In sum, a pleasant way to spend 90 minutes and an intriguing intertext for the zombie film scholar.
[As can be seen, I watched the film through an AVI produced by one Doctor Divx, though there is now a Nocturno DVD out]
Saturday, 14 March 2009
Si può fare molto con sette donne / You can do a lot with Seven Women
You may be able to do a lot with seven women, but making a decent film out of them is not one of those things.
The groovy titles
It’s difficult to know where to apportion the blame, for while director Fabio Piccioni / F A King [sic] hardly come across as the most imaginative of filmmakers, the mark of writer-producer Frank / Farouk Agrama is all over the piece.
There’s the Egyptian setting, with lots of travelogue material and a models by the pyramids routine that seems to prefigure his later Dawn of the Mummy, and his lyrical contributions to the theme song, sung by one Melody:
What is this love
That burns me so
That has me in its spell
Is it the hope
Is it some dope
Or just a binding rose
Is it chinchilla
A seaside villa
Or a delicious ice cream
La, la...
The story begins in comparatively serious Blood and Black Lace territory as model Maggie discovers her employers to be involved in drugs smuggling and is consequently murdered.
The obligatory darkroom scene
This continues as her Interpol agent boyfriend Mike, played with typical seriousness by Richard Harrison, takes it upon himself to solve the case: “I’m going to get those bastards!”
But as Mike goes to see his woman-obsessed photographer friend Tiger for assistance in going undercover as a photographer, the tone quickly changes to more of a crime caper comedy where no-one really seems to be playing for keeps.
The problem is that it isn’t really all that funny in itself, with most of the smiles being raised through the general datedness of the early 70s styles on display; some rather stereotypical depictions of the Egyptians, albeit perhaps with a hint of detournement, of Agrama ironically playing upon Italian / western expectations to subvert them (“Once again, the Oriental motif has been our inspiration,” as one of the designers / smugglers remarks); Harrison’s macho bluster; or the extensive product placement for airlines and messrs Justerini and Brooks’ finest.
The fashion show by some pyramids
Elsewhere we get a spot of Blow-Up style play with photographs, though the detail is less hidden than obvious in line with the general style of the direction and narrative, an extended fistfight in a bakery and a perfunctory car chase.
Harrison enjoys the breakfast of champions
If nothing else, it’s all accompanied by some delightfully catchy caper cues that, if I didn’t have them already via the first Beat at Cinecitta compilation, I would have surely tracked down.
The groovy titles
It’s difficult to know where to apportion the blame, for while director Fabio Piccioni / F A King [sic] hardly come across as the most imaginative of filmmakers, the mark of writer-producer Frank / Farouk Agrama is all over the piece.
There’s the Egyptian setting, with lots of travelogue material and a models by the pyramids routine that seems to prefigure his later Dawn of the Mummy, and his lyrical contributions to the theme song, sung by one Melody:
What is this love
That burns me so
That has me in its spell
Is it the hope
Is it some dope
Or just a binding rose
Is it chinchilla
A seaside villa
Or a delicious ice cream
La, la...
The story begins in comparatively serious Blood and Black Lace territory as model Maggie discovers her employers to be involved in drugs smuggling and is consequently murdered.
The obligatory darkroom scene
This continues as her Interpol agent boyfriend Mike, played with typical seriousness by Richard Harrison, takes it upon himself to solve the case: “I’m going to get those bastards!”
But as Mike goes to see his woman-obsessed photographer friend Tiger for assistance in going undercover as a photographer, the tone quickly changes to more of a crime caper comedy where no-one really seems to be playing for keeps.
The problem is that it isn’t really all that funny in itself, with most of the smiles being raised through the general datedness of the early 70s styles on display; some rather stereotypical depictions of the Egyptians, albeit perhaps with a hint of detournement, of Agrama ironically playing upon Italian / western expectations to subvert them (“Once again, the Oriental motif has been our inspiration,” as one of the designers / smugglers remarks); Harrison’s macho bluster; or the extensive product placement for airlines and messrs Justerini and Brooks’ finest.
The fashion show by some pyramids
Elsewhere we get a spot of Blow-Up style play with photographs, though the detail is less hidden than obvious in line with the general style of the direction and narrative, an extended fistfight in a bakery and a perfunctory car chase.
Harrison enjoys the breakfast of champions
If nothing else, it’s all accompanied by some delightfully catchy caper cues that, if I didn’t have them already via the first Beat at Cinecitta compilation, I would have surely tracked down.
Thursday, 12 February 2009
Operazione San Pietro / Operation St. Peter's / Die Abenteuer des Kardinal Braun / Au diable les anges
There's a book of photographs of American skid-row poet Charles Bukowski on a European tour entitled Shakespeare Never Did This, which this 1966 Fulci comedy somehow reminded me of.
Specifically, it might be subtitled Argento Never Did This, in reference to Fulci's great and more widely recognised rival. For, the more one explores the sheer breadth of Fulci's filmography beyond the horror and gialli films for which he would later become best known, the more he emerges as a talented filmmaker able to engage with just about any material
Though Fulci had certainly directed plenty of comedies by this time, including crime capers such as I Ladri, Operazione San Pietro immediately signals its distinctiveness by beginning more or less where they tended to finish, as a gang of robbers bungles a break-in.
Specifically, The Baron, The Captain and Agonia wind up not in the vault as intended, but in a prison cell, occupied by Lando Buzzanca's Napolean. Before the guards can arrive, all four men escape. (Argento would later begin Le Cinque Giornate with a similar escape from gaol, while Agonia is played by Ugo Fangareggi, later Gigi the Loser in Cat o' Nine Tails.)
Encouraging his new colleagues to think big, in line with his name, Napoleone suggests that they head north, to Rome, where one of his friends is currently in 'business'.
They arrive, only to find that this friend is himself in custody while the only other resident of the less than palatial shack, Jean-Claude Brialy's Majella, is too busy with his own work as a gigolo cum swindler to be of much help.
He does, however, suggest the newcomers take a trip to St Peters. While there Napoleone has the idea for an audacious theft: they will take Michaelangelo's Pieta and sell it on the black market.
Incredibly the plan succeeds, at which point things become more complicated. For not only does the Vatican understandably want the statue back, but a group of gangsters whom Cajella has inadvertently become involved with learn of the theft, which the Vatican has kept top-secret, and naturally want the statue for themselves…
Worse, these gangsters are led by legendary US mobster Joe Ventura, incarnated by none other than Edward G. Robinson, whose idea of subtlety is to bring out the machine guns and kill everyone who stands in his way…
The film obviously had a decent budget given its combination of US, French, German and Italian stars, comparatively large-scale set piece chases and stunts – credited to none less than Remy Julienne and his team – and the delightful animated credits sequence atop which plays some suitable irreverent jazz-pop accompanied with scatted vocals.
While it is hard for the non-Italian and / or non-Catholic to quite get all of the religious references, with the various rival orders present – the Jesuits "always have to be first," as a member of another order remarks when they are overtaken – the overall picture that emerges is of Fulci having fun and making some points at the Church's expense, without overstepping the mark into the more full-blown anti-clericalism that would come to the fore around the time of Beatrice Cenci.
Thus, Napoleone seems about to be let off lightly for his crimes by his confessor, who asks him rhetorically who hasn't stolen these days, until he then admits to stealing from the church, and specifically taking the Pieta, as far more serious matters…
There's also the way in which all the statues in St Peters are covered over, with the guide then telling visitors that they can, however, purchase postcards of said statues from the gift shop; the representation of the Vatican and its agents appear to exist as a shadow state within the state, complete with their own presses for publishing wanted posters, channels for efficiently distributing these, and unofficial police forces, used as an alternative to those of the Italian state who remain oblivious to the whole affair throughout; or Cardinal Brown's dubious past and remark at one point that the Church has been going almost two millennia longer than the cosa nostra.
But, in the end it's all in good fun, rendered safe by a touch of the old deus ex machina and a happy end in which no-one really gets hurt and some are even redeemed…
Not that Fulci only targets the church, however, as the sight of a fake blind beggar – born blind, according to his placard – finishing his meal and going back to work, updates the “court of miracles” while also introducing in passing that most famous of Fulci motifs, the ocular.
Edward G Robinson's gangster presents an amusing self-deprecating throwback to his most famous character types. 35 years or more years on and he's still responding to every situation in the same old way. There's also a sense of his being able to “dish it out” but “not take it,” a la Little Caesar, via a neat black-and-white flashback sequence set in the 1930s, in which he suffers a physical beating at the hands of other members of the mob, resulting in a psychological trauma every time the specific conditions preceding it coincide; a combination that also manages to prefigure both the chain whippings of Don't Torture a Duckling and The Beyond and the more general theme of the giallo “primal scene”.
If there is the risk of over-analysing the film, of seeing something Fulci-esque in every little detail – here we might also note the figure of the crucified Christ in a procession, who comes down off his cross to join a chase, as a further precursor of Schweik in The Beyond – this can be countered by a consideration of the more general visual style of the film, in which close-ups are sparsely used and the emphasis is usually placed more on the long and medium shot to better illustrate the expansiveness (expensiveness) of the film.
In other words, it's Fulci again demonstrating that he knew how to adapt his approach to the material and collaborators at hand, and that his later style was a genuinely personal one emerging as he matured as a filmmaker / auteur in his own right. (The question was perhaps whether critics at the time were able to recognise this, that the zoom, the rack focus, the extreme close-up of the eyes and the nailed-down camera in the set piece, represented an actual aesthetic rather than ineptitude or an unsuccessful attempt to copy Argento; to re-iterate, the two filmmakers have very different aesthetics, with one also doubting that Argento would have ever been able to work effectively with the likes of Buzzanca.)
A nice self-reflexive moment occurs when Napoleone returns to find his friends apparently dead, the victims of Ventura and his gunmen. But then it transpires that the men are really just passed out after a rather large meal, and that the blood around their faces is in fact the sauce from their pasta by way of a nice joke at the expense of what initially seemed unconvincing effects work of the sort where someone can be riddled with bullets yet without any holes or red fluid showing…
Away from Fulci’s films, the other key intertexts are The Treasure of San Gennaro, which also featured Fangareggi, and the two German Father Brown films in which the detective priest was played by Heinz Rühmann, and which give the film its German title, by way of a promotion - The Adventures of Cardinal Brown.
A film of considerable charm.
Specifically, it might be subtitled Argento Never Did This, in reference to Fulci's great and more widely recognised rival. For, the more one explores the sheer breadth of Fulci's filmography beyond the horror and gialli films for which he would later become best known, the more he emerges as a talented filmmaker able to engage with just about any material
Though Fulci had certainly directed plenty of comedies by this time, including crime capers such as I Ladri, Operazione San Pietro immediately signals its distinctiveness by beginning more or less where they tended to finish, as a gang of robbers bungles a break-in.
Specifically, The Baron, The Captain and Agonia wind up not in the vault as intended, but in a prison cell, occupied by Lando Buzzanca's Napolean. Before the guards can arrive, all four men escape. (Argento would later begin Le Cinque Giornate with a similar escape from gaol, while Agonia is played by Ugo Fangareggi, later Gigi the Loser in Cat o' Nine Tails.)
Encouraging his new colleagues to think big, in line with his name, Napoleone suggests that they head north, to Rome, where one of his friends is currently in 'business'.
They arrive, only to find that this friend is himself in custody while the only other resident of the less than palatial shack, Jean-Claude Brialy's Majella, is too busy with his own work as a gigolo cum swindler to be of much help.
He does, however, suggest the newcomers take a trip to St Peters. While there Napoleone has the idea for an audacious theft: they will take Michaelangelo's Pieta and sell it on the black market.
Incredibly the plan succeeds, at which point things become more complicated. For not only does the Vatican understandably want the statue back, but a group of gangsters whom Cajella has inadvertently become involved with learn of the theft, which the Vatican has kept top-secret, and naturally want the statue for themselves…
Worse, these gangsters are led by legendary US mobster Joe Ventura, incarnated by none other than Edward G. Robinson, whose idea of subtlety is to bring out the machine guns and kill everyone who stands in his way…
The film obviously had a decent budget given its combination of US, French, German and Italian stars, comparatively large-scale set piece chases and stunts – credited to none less than Remy Julienne and his team – and the delightful animated credits sequence atop which plays some suitable irreverent jazz-pop accompanied with scatted vocals.
While it is hard for the non-Italian and / or non-Catholic to quite get all of the religious references, with the various rival orders present – the Jesuits "always have to be first," as a member of another order remarks when they are overtaken – the overall picture that emerges is of Fulci having fun and making some points at the Church's expense, without overstepping the mark into the more full-blown anti-clericalism that would come to the fore around the time of Beatrice Cenci.
Thus, Napoleone seems about to be let off lightly for his crimes by his confessor, who asks him rhetorically who hasn't stolen these days, until he then admits to stealing from the church, and specifically taking the Pieta, as far more serious matters…
There's also the way in which all the statues in St Peters are covered over, with the guide then telling visitors that they can, however, purchase postcards of said statues from the gift shop; the representation of the Vatican and its agents appear to exist as a shadow state within the state, complete with their own presses for publishing wanted posters, channels for efficiently distributing these, and unofficial police forces, used as an alternative to those of the Italian state who remain oblivious to the whole affair throughout; or Cardinal Brown's dubious past and remark at one point that the Church has been going almost two millennia longer than the cosa nostra.
But, in the end it's all in good fun, rendered safe by a touch of the old deus ex machina and a happy end in which no-one really gets hurt and some are even redeemed…
Not that Fulci only targets the church, however, as the sight of a fake blind beggar – born blind, according to his placard – finishing his meal and going back to work, updates the “court of miracles” while also introducing in passing that most famous of Fulci motifs, the ocular.
Edward G Robinson's gangster presents an amusing self-deprecating throwback to his most famous character types. 35 years or more years on and he's still responding to every situation in the same old way. There's also a sense of his being able to “dish it out” but “not take it,” a la Little Caesar, via a neat black-and-white flashback sequence set in the 1930s, in which he suffers a physical beating at the hands of other members of the mob, resulting in a psychological trauma every time the specific conditions preceding it coincide; a combination that also manages to prefigure both the chain whippings of Don't Torture a Duckling and The Beyond and the more general theme of the giallo “primal scene”.
If there is the risk of over-analysing the film, of seeing something Fulci-esque in every little detail – here we might also note the figure of the crucified Christ in a procession, who comes down off his cross to join a chase, as a further precursor of Schweik in The Beyond – this can be countered by a consideration of the more general visual style of the film, in which close-ups are sparsely used and the emphasis is usually placed more on the long and medium shot to better illustrate the expansiveness (expensiveness) of the film.
In other words, it's Fulci again demonstrating that he knew how to adapt his approach to the material and collaborators at hand, and that his later style was a genuinely personal one emerging as he matured as a filmmaker / auteur in his own right. (The question was perhaps whether critics at the time were able to recognise this, that the zoom, the rack focus, the extreme close-up of the eyes and the nailed-down camera in the set piece, represented an actual aesthetic rather than ineptitude or an unsuccessful attempt to copy Argento; to re-iterate, the two filmmakers have very different aesthetics, with one also doubting that Argento would have ever been able to work effectively with the likes of Buzzanca.)
A nice self-reflexive moment occurs when Napoleone returns to find his friends apparently dead, the victims of Ventura and his gunmen. But then it transpires that the men are really just passed out after a rather large meal, and that the blood around their faces is in fact the sauce from their pasta by way of a nice joke at the expense of what initially seemed unconvincing effects work of the sort where someone can be riddled with bullets yet without any holes or red fluid showing…
Away from Fulci’s films, the other key intertexts are The Treasure of San Gennaro, which also featured Fangareggi, and the two German Father Brown films in which the detective priest was played by Heinz Rühmann, and which give the film its German title, by way of a promotion - The Adventures of Cardinal Brown.
A film of considerable charm.
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