The Wild Angels (1966)

It was the mid-60s, and youth rebellion was in the air. Hollywood could see opportunities for profits in this, but at this stage the studios were still very nervous about dealing with such a potentially controversial subject. No such fears held back Roger Corman, and in 1966 he made his outlaw biker epic The Wild Angels, complete with real Hell’s Angels as extras, and with Peter Fonda (three years before Easy Rider) creating a new kind of youth icon. Fonda is Heavenly Blues, leader of the local chapter of the Hell’s Angels. He and some of the Angels set off for Mexico to retrieve his buddy Loser’s chopper, stolen by a Mexican gang. A brawl ensues, Loser steals a police motorcycle, is shot by a cop. And ends up in hospital. Blues decides that it would be a really fine idea to bust Loser out of the hospital before he can be transferred to prison. Well it seemed like a good idea at the time.
This is a remarkably hard-hitting film. There are several rapes, a church gets trashed during a funeral service, a preacher is beaten up, and there’s plenty of other incidental violence. Not all the violence is committed by the bikers either – the police are shown as being disturbingly willing to gun down people who are unarmed. The movie doesn’t flinch from examining the belief systems that motivate Blues and his pals – they not only wear the symbols of fascism, such as swastikas, they live out a fascist fantasy of power, violence and nihilism. But at the same time the movie doesn’t merely demonise them. They have a dream of freedom, and their behaviour is a weird mix of loyalty and viciousness, of idealism and selfishness. When Blues is asked what he believes in, and can come up with nothing better than vague mumblings about freedom and the right to get loaded, we can see his awareness of his own tragedy, that he knows the emptiness of his own rhetoric. His alienation is complete, and it’s real. He isn’t evil – he simply doesn’t have enough awareness to be evil.

Corman does a great job as director. The scenes of the bikers partying, and of the drunken orgy in the church, have a frenetic and rather frightening energy to them. The unpredictability, the potential for sudden explosive violence, is conveyed very effectively indeed. Peter Fonda’s very considerable limitations as an actor don’t matter at all – he’s an icon, icons just have to look iconic, and he does that extremely well. Much the same argument applies to Nancy Sinatra’s performance as his girlfriend. The movie doesn’t have the embarrassingly dated look that most 1960s movies about youth have – the fact that bikers still look pretty similar to the way they looked in 1966 certainly helps, and Corman’s bikers look dirty and dangerous. The Wild Angels works extremely well as a film about alienation, about being young, and as a film about the 60s. In fact it works on every level, and may well be one of the very best movies of its type ever made.

The Beyond (1981)

Lucio Fulci’s 1981 movie The Beyond was a useful reminder to me of why I very rarely watch horror movies made after the late 1970s. The movie opens in Louisiana in 1927, with the murder of a wizard in a hotel. It then jumps forward to 1981, at which time a young woman who has inherited this very hotel is about to renovate and re-open it. Unfortunately the hotel has apparently been built on a doorway into Hell. Late on some zombies appear, although the reasons for the appearance of the zombie remain obscure. It’s not so much the gore that’s the problem (although I’m not a fan of gore at all), it’s the fact that the gore is used to disguise the fact that it’s a visually not very interesting movie and the images are not particular striking. If you have the visual brilliance of a Dario Argento you can get away with gore; if you lack that flair then you end up with a mere gross-out. In this case the images are not merely gross, they’re banal as well. They display a disheartening lack of real imagination. An incoherent plot and poor acting (and The Beyond certainly has both) aren’t necessarily fatal flaws in a horror movie – Mario Bava could make great horror movies with incoherent plots and poor acting. But then Bava was a genius, and Fulci clearly isn’t. The Beyond has one moderately good idea, but the film needed the right atmosphere to give that idea the proper impact, and that atmosphere was sadly lacking. The Beyond has plenty of gore, but no actual horror, and no dramatic tension. In fact it has none of the elements required for a successful horror movie, and it illustrates perfectly the decline of the horror film. Violence, guts and blood do not equal horror. I somehow managed to struggle to the end of this film, but I still don’t know why I bothered. I suppose I thought it might get better. It didn’t.

The Trip (1967)

The 1960s psychedelic acid-trip movie is something to be approached with considerable trepidation. The potential for truly embarrassing disaster is just so enormous. In fact Roger Corman’s 1967 entry in this sub-genre, The Trip, is not too bad. It has no plot whatsoever – it’s just an acid trip taken by a guy who directs TV commercials, played by Peter Fonda. It still manages to remain entertaining for an hour-and-a-half, and despite the customary Corman low budget it’s visually reasonably impressive. Peter Fonda is, well he’s Peter Fonda and of course he can’t act at all (Jane obviously got all the acting talent in that particular generation of Fondas), but it doesn’t really matter. Bruce Dern and Dennis Hopper are both amusing in supporting roles. Although Corman couldn’t escape the necessity of having an anti-drugs scare intro to the film, the movie is actually very non-judgmental on the subject. He gets into a few scrapes, and has some bad moments, but he doesn’t turn into an axe-murderer or end up in a psych ward. I don’t think Roger Corman was capable of making a boring movie and he seemingly had the ability to come up with something interesting in just about any genre he attempted (and he attempted most of them). It’s a movie to watch purely for fun of course, and if you approach it that way it’s rather enjoyable.

The Return of Doctor X (1939)

A Humphrey Bogart horror movie is a rarity indeed. As far as I know he only made one, and The Return of Doctor X, made in 1939, is it. It’s a movie Bogart was anxious to forget. In fact, as long as you don’t expect it to be any more than a B-picture, it’s not as bad as it’s often made out to be. The movie opens with a reporter finding an actress dead in her hotel room, but she then turns up shortly afterwards at the newspaper office, very much alive. The reporter has a friend who is a doctor, who has been working with a Dr Flegg, whose specialty is blood. Dr Flegg has a very pale-faced assistant, Kane (Humphrey Bogart). The plot bears some resemblances to an earlier Warner Brothers horror film, The Walking Dead (which starred Boris Karloff). The Return of Doctor X has some good Mad Scientist moments, and there’s a hint of vampirism, albeit unconventional vampirism. As far as the look of the movie goes it has that great Warner Brothers seedy, gritty feel to it, which I always enjoy. Reporters in movies of this vintage are always annoying, but Wayne Morris’s reporter in this one is less annoying than some. Dennis Morgan as his doctor pal is OK. Rosemary Lane shares top billing but has very little to do. John Litel as Dr Flegg gives his character a certain warped nobility. And Bogart? His performance is very understated, but he is definitely creepy and that’s really all that is required of him. This movie is hardly a classic of the genre but if you enjoy the horror B-movies of this period you should find it moderately entertaining. And how often do you get to see Humphrey Bogart cuddling a cute little white rabbit?

Just a Gigolo (1979)

Just a Gigolo starts as Paul, a very young Prussian officer (played by David Bowie), arrives at the front line just in time for the end of the First World War, and manages to get himself blown up in the last seconds of the war. After lying in a coma in a French hospital for a year or so he awakes and makes his way back to Berlin, only to find that nothing now makes any sense to him. He drifts into a number of dead-end jobs, meets up with his old commanding officer (played by David Hemmings) who is now an aspiring fascist leader with his own little gang of bully-boys. Well actually he only has one bully-boy, but he's hoping that more will join soon. Paul eventually finds himself recruited by a baroness (played by Marlene Dietrich) into her stable of gigolos.

This is a German movie, but was directed (with considerable panache) by David Hemmings. It looks rather wonderful. It's a kind of absurdist tragi-comedy. It seems that everyone except Paul has ideas of where his life should be going. The ending (which I won't spoil for you) is strangely appropriate in its utter absurdity. Bowie is superb, managing to give the character a certain baffled dignity. Hemmings is entertainingly over-the-top. Sydne Rome is a kind of vaguely Sally Bowles-ian cabaret singer, and is quite impressive especially in her musical numbers. Kim Novak goes close to stealing the picture as a general's widow determined to get Paul into bed. The scene where she attempts to seduce him are brilliantly weird and funny and disturbing and completely absurd. And Marlene Dietrich looks impressive, and songs the title song. The movie's mix of pathos and satire doesn't always work, but this is still a highly entertaining and thoughtful movie, and very stylish. Don't expect it to be another Cabaret, it's a totally different style of movie despite some obvious similarities. Well worth a look, if you can find it.

Lisa and the Devil (1972)

Mario Bava’s 1972 movie Lisa and the Devil is one of the most misunderstood of all horror movies. A lot of people dislike it because of the apparent absence of a plot. In fact the absence of a plot is deliberate. The film is nothing more than an extended meditation upon death. The atmosphere, the mood, the visuals, are the movie. Nothing else is required. And Mario Bava creates the atmosphere, the mood, and the visuals so perfectly, so exquisitely. This is a seriously gorgeous movie.

Telly Savalas gives the greatest performance of his career (stop laughing, I’m being serious) as the mysterious butler of a house in which a collection of people find themselves staying. He really is extremely good – both creepy and amusing, which is how the character is supposed to be. This is the only movie that Mario Bava was ever able to make exactly as he wanted to make it. It represents the vision he had of what horror movies could be. Sadly the producers butchered the movie after he’d completed it, but it’s now been restored to its original collection. You’ll either love this movie or you’ll loathe it.

The Bride with White Hair (1993)

The Bride with White Hair is not quite my first Hong Kong kung fu movie. The only other such films I’ve seen are Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and a rather excellent Japanese sci-fi/swordsplay movie called The Princess Blade. I don’t know how typical these films are of this genre, but if they are typical I could easily get hooked. The Bride with White Hair features some lyrically beautiful cinematography, magnificent sets, and lots of extreme and graphic violence. It combines all this with an insanely romantic and beautifully told love story. There are lots of swords, and there’s definitely some sorcery, so I think it probably qualifies as sword and sorcery! There’s also some rather good acting. Leslie Cheung is very good as a young man being groomed to take over leadership of an alliance of clans. He provides most of the film’s humour, and manages to be moody, romantic, dashing and surprisingly whimsical. Brigitte Lin, in the title role, gives a more restrained performance but she also manages to make her character believable, complex and charismatic. The plot involves a couple of malevolent sorcerous twins plotting to take over the province for their cult, a young swordsman (Leslie Cheung) who has to lead an army against them, and a mysterious wolf girl (Brigitte Lin) who belongs to the cult but falls in love with the young swordsman. The fight sequences are fairly impressive although I haven’t really got used to the flying-through-the-air thing they do in these movies. It’s the love story, though, that is the most impressive part of the movie. It’s skilfully plotted, well acted, imaginatively directed and very entertaining.