The Spider Woman (1944)

The Spider Woman (also known as Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman) is one of the best of Universal’s Sherlock Holmes series. It displays all the best features of this, one of their best and most successful B-movie series.

Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce are in fine form as Holmes and Watson in this 1944 release, but most importantly Holmes has a worthy (and refreshingly new) adversary. It has the right mix of humour and suspense, with just the right amount of campiness. And just a touch of horror as well.

The movie also has a solid script script, courtesy of screenwriter Bertram Millhauser. While Holmes and Watson have been trout-fishing in Scotland a mysterious series of apparent suicides, the pyjama suicides, has created a sensation in the London press. The victims were all wealthy men who seemingly awakened during the night and hurled themselves, for no obvious reason, out of windows whilst still clad in their pyjamas. Scotland Yard might be taken in, but right from the start Holmes has no doubt that these acts of self-destruction are in fact fiendishly planned and executed murders. And he also has no doubt that the diabolical criminal mastermind behind them is a woman. To Holmes the murders clearly have a feminine touch to them!

After first faking his own death Holmes disguises himself as a reasonably rich although minor Indian potentate, a distinguished army officer with a weakness for gambling. All the pyjama suicides shared an addiction to the gaming tables. He soon attracts the attention of his prey. Adrea Spedding (Gale Sondergaard) encourages him to bet, and to lose, heavily, all part of her cunning plot.

The plot also involves some imaginative murders, deadly venomous spiders, eccentric entomologists, and a wonderful evil child. In fact one of the screen’s great evil children, a kind of trainee Renfield with a penchant for capturing flies in mid-air. There are also deadly games in a fairground, and rooftop shoot-outs.

Roy William Neill directs with the vigour and economy that made him such a fine maker of B-pictures. The pacing never lets up, and there are some nice visual set-pieces.

Gale Sondergaard indulges in some epic scenery-chewing, throwing down an acting challenge to Basil Rathbone which he gleefully accepts, and to which he proves himself equal. The film positively zings when these two are on on screen together.

It’s unfortunate that Universal (and indeed most of the major studios) cared so little about B-pictures that they were often content to see them as mere cash cows, and to churn out uninspired and inferior genre movies whilst lavishing much cash and attention on worthy but dull A-pictures. It’s unfortunate because the B-movie arguably represents 1940s Hollywood at its best, combining craftsmanship and great entertainment.

This is pure fun, never taking itself seriously but a well-made little movie that succeeds perfectly in what it what it sets out to do.

Alvin Purple (1973)




I’ve almost completed my crash course in ozploitation cinema. Tonight’s offering was possibly the most notorious of all ozploitation movies. Yes, I’m talking about Alvin Purple.

This wasn’t quite the first Australian sex comedy. Both Stork and The Naked Bunyip could claim to be comedies about sex. But Alvin Purple was the first real Australian sex comedy as the terms as understood in overseas countries, 
with relatively copious quantities of nudity. Censorship had been relaxed slightly in Australia and the R rating had been introduced, which was more or less equivalent to the X rating in the US, and to its notorious successor, the dreaded NC-17 rating. The Australian R rating allowed filmmakers to go much much further than they’d gone before, and director Tim Burstall was determined to make the most of it.

It gained him a huge commercial success, but it also destroyed forever his credibility as a movie-maker in the eyes of Australian critics and the arty set who were increasingly seeking to dominate the film industry and mould it into something that would satisfy their cravings for both political correctness and artistic elitism. Like Mad Max a few years later, Alvin Purple's greatest sin was that it was enormously popular with the people who actually go to see movies.

When judging Alvin Purple as a movie you have to bear in mind that Burstall wasn't trying to make an Australian Citizen Kane. It’s a sex comedy, with no pretensions whatsoever to being anything else. And generally speaking it succeeds in what it sets out to do.

The plot is simple, but has a clever twist. Rather than having the hero as either a guy who is hopelessly socially inept with women, or a guy who is absolutely irresistible to women, he’s both. And combined with the casting of Graeme Blundell, who is not exactly most people’s idea of a stud, the result is a hero who is neither annoying not obnoxious. He’s a nice ordinary guy who really doesn’t mean any harm to anybody who just happens to have a strange effect on women. They’re not quite sure why, but they all want to go to bed with him.

There are enough amusing moments to make the film reasonably successful as a comedy. There’s enough nudity, both male and female, to make it reasonably successful as a sex film. And there are enough outrageous 1970s fashions to make it in all probability rather more entertaining today than it was in 1973. Some of Alvin’s outfits are absolutely jaw-droppingly 70s kitschy.

It’s also a rather good-natured movie. The only group that really gets targeted by this movie is the psychiatric profession, and they’re the subject of some very funny and quite clever satire. There’s no real evidence of any kind of misogynistic feel to the movie. It accepts sex and nudity in a very matter-of-fact way without resorting to crude schoolboy humour.

Of course it wouldn’t be an ozploitation movie without some vehicular mayhem. Yes, they’re even managed to get a car chase in. And some crazy stunts.

It’s not going to change your life or the way you think about cinema. But it’s a painless enough way to spend an hour-and-a-half. It’s all just silly harmless fun.

She (1965)

When Hammer Films decided to try their hand at adventure films. H. Rider Haggard’s classic She must have seemed an obvious choice. Unfortunately any subsequent movie adaptation will always be judged against the wonderful 1935 version, and Hammer’s attempt doesn’t quite measure up.

Having said that, the Hammer movie is still a great deal of fun. They were trying for a Hollywood epic feel on a Hammer Films budget, and although there’s some obvious corner cutting it does succeed surprisingly well in achieving the epic feel.

Haggard’s 1886 novel is one the classics of Victorian adventure fiction. The movie transposes the action to 1918, and has the heroes as recently demobbed soldiers in Palestine. A chance encounter in a bar with the exotic beauty Ustane leads a young officer, Leo Vincey (John Richardson), his old commanding officer Holly (Peter Cushing) who happens to have been his university lecturer in archaeology, and his batman Job (Bernard Cribbins) on what seems like an insane trek across the desert in search of the fabulous lost city of Kuma. They are tempted to abandon the expedition, but Leo is led on by visions of the beautiful Ayesha (Ursula Andress) and by his conviction that his destiny is somehow linked to hers.

They find the lost city, a survival of the culture of ancient Egypt. There are two races inhabiting the city, one a black slave race and the other, the ruling class, descended from the Egyptians. The city is ruled by Ayesha, known as She Who Must Be Obeyed. Ayesha has ruled the city for 2,000 years, and for the whole of these two millennia she has awaited the return of her lover Callicrates. She had killed him in a fit of jealous rage, but has always known that he would return. Leo bears a striking resemblance to Callicrates, and he is soon convinced by her story, and intoxicated by her beauty and by her promises that he will share her immortality. Of course things are not going to be quite so simple.

The movie captures much of the fun of Haggard’s novel, but misses some of its strangeness. In the novel Holly is a more important character than he is in the film and his truly bizarre attitude towards women is one of the more interesting features of the book. Holly is clearly terrified of women, which explains much of the novel’s weirdly ambivalent attitude towards Ayesha.

Peter Cushing gives a solid performance in an undemanding role. Christopher Lee as Ayesha’s high priest Billali also doesn’t have much to do, but both Cushing and Lee make the most of what the script offers them. Bernard Cribbins is surprisingly not all that annoying as Job. Rosenda Monteros is quite good as Ustane, who loves Leo but knows she can never compete with what Ayesha can offer him.

It’s always going to be the performance of the actress who plays Ayesha that makes or breaks a movie adaptation of She. Ursula Andress isn’t really required to act. What is demanded of her is that she should have an extraordinary presence, a cruel and exotic beauty, and a sense of complete indifference to the fate of mere mortals. She must give the impression of believing that she is close to being a goddess. Hammer were afraid that the Swiss actress’s accent would put viewers off so they dubbed her voice ( a fate she suffered in several early movies), which limited Andress’s opportunities for acting even more.

It makes no difference. She was a perfect choice for the role, and her limited acting abilities work in her favour. A better actress might have made Ayesha more human, which would have been a grave mistake. Andress plays her as a goddess who has deigned to walk among mortals - remote and cold, but capable of terrifyingly jealous rages, rages that are all the more chilling because her anger burns so coldly. Andress’s acting range may have been severely limited, but this role is well within that range and she does a superb job. Her performance is the highlight of the movie. Ayesha isn’t exactly sympathetic character, but Andress manages to give her dignity and despite her cruelty she’s strangely admirable. She really is a superior being to those round her.

If only Hammer had been able to come up with a male lead worthy of her! John Richardson is terribly dull. It’s difficult to believe that a woman like Ayesha would waste her time on such a sorry specimen.

The special effects are adequate, the sets are quite good, and the costumes are reasonably good (although Ayesha’s troops look suspiciously Roman). Ayesha’s strange feathered gown adds the right touch of exoticism and Andress wears it with style.

While I still prefer the 1935 film, Hammer’s version is entertaining and with Ursula Andress’s iconic performance it’s well worth seeing.

The Case of the Bloody Iris (1972)

The Case of the Bloody Iris is a fairly stock-standard 1972 Italian giallo. If you’re a giallo fan you’ll enjoy it; if you’re not a fan of the genre this one doesn’t really have enough going for it to convert you.

This one was also released under the infinitely superior title What Are Those Strange Drops of Blood Doing on Jennifer's Body? (which is pretty much a literal translation of the original Italian title Perché quelle strane gocce di sangue sul corpo di Jennifer?).

This one has most of the expected giallo plot elements and trappings. It has glamorous models and photographers, it has a series of mysterious murders of women, it has lots of red herrings, relatively ineffectual police investigators, some nudity, some reasonably graphic murders and the obligatory hint of sexual perversity.

Edwige Fenech is Jennifer, a model who thinks she’s had a stroke of luck when a hunky architect friend finds a luxury apartment for her and a friend. It turns out that the apartment is vacant because the previous tenant was murdered in her bathtub. Her architect friend comes under suspicion, but there are lots of strange tenants in the buildings who seem like equally plausible suspects. And Jennifer is pretty keen on the architect, Andrea Barto (George Hilton), so she’s inclined to believe him to be innocent. Especially after they start an affair. Then her flatmate is murdered, which takes the tally of victims to four women, all of them with some connection to the apartment building.

The police as usual follow up the wrong leads, and Jennifer finally decides that this isn’t a very healthy place to live. But will she be able to get out alive?

The actually starts quite well. Murders in elevators aren’t startlingly original, but elevators are inherently scary and this one is done quite well. And then there’s the delightfully strange and perverse night-club act of the beautiful black woman Mizar. She challenges the male members of her audience to one three-minute round of all-in wrestling. If the customer wins, he gets to spend the entire night with her and she will allow him to do absolutely anything he wants with her. It sounds like a great deal, but so far not one customer has survived three minutes in the ring with Mizar! She’s one tough cookie. Of course in the process of wrestling with the audience member she tends to lose most of her clothing, so for the rest of the audience it’s three minutes of wonderfully kinky entertainment. This is the sort of inspired sleaze that provides much of the appeal of the giallo genre, but unfortunately the rest of the movie fails to reach the same level of kinky visual inventiveness.

In fact compared to classics of the genre such as The Fifth Cord and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage the movie lacks visual punch. The settings are a little disappointing as well - the apartment house really isn’t all that interesting. A couple of the early photo shot scenes are amusingly sexy in an early 70s way, with naked girls with painted on costumes. But director Giuliano Carnimeo just can’t put together enough striking images to make this a classic giallo.

It does have Edwige Fenech, which is always a plus, but even she isn’t quite as sexy as usual. Her character is a little on the dull side, and that doesn’t give her much to work with.

Blue Underground’s DVD presentation looks as impressive as you expect from this company, but offers no worthwhile extras at all. One alternative murder scene, running for a few seconds, and a trailer.

On the whole it’s a mildly entertaining example of a genre that I must confess I’m not really a huge fan of anyway. If you’re more of a giallo fan you might find more to like in this film, but I’d be inclined to rent it before buying, unless you simply have to own every Edwige Fenech movie (and that’s an obsession I find perfectly understandable).

Emmanuelle: L'antivierge (1975)

The original Emmanuelle movie, released in 1974, was an attempt to bring softcore porn to a broader audience, including women and couples. To make porn classy, and if not quite respectable then at least socially acceptable. To bring porn to the multiplexes. It was also an attempt to swim against the rising tide of hardcore porn. It was determinedly softcore.

Given that it happens to be the most commercially successful movie in the history of French cinema (and was a gigantic hit in the US and in fact everywhere else as well), I think it’s fair to say that it succeeded in its aims. You could actually walk in to a screening of Emmanuelle without having to hope that nobody you knew saw you. It was sexy, but it was stylish and superbly photographed, it boasted exotic locations, and it was at least an attempt to approach sex from a woman’s point of view. And it had a plot. The plot didn’t really consist of much more than a woman’s sexual awakening, but it was there.

There was never really any doubt that there was going to a sequel. In fact there ended up being many many sequels, some official and some unofficial. It was with the first of the official sequels that we are concerned at the moment, released under a bewildering variety of titles including Emmanuelle 2, Emmanuelle: L'antivierge and Emmanuelle the Anti-Virgin.

The big difference (and the big weakness) compared to the first film is the almost complete absence of a plot this time around. It’s really not much more than a series of sexual encounters. On the other hand it does have most of the other elements that made the first film successful - exotic locations (Hong Kong rather than Bangkok this time), beautiful cinematography, gorgeous clothes (although the actors don’t manage to keep them on for very long) and a general air of class.

And it has Sylvia Kristel. Emmanuelle made the Dutch actress a star, and one of the great sexual icons of the 1970s. She may not be the world’s greatest actress, or the world’s most beautiful woman (although she’s certainly extremely attractive), but she has undeniable elegance. She personifies chic. She knows how to wear clothes, and she knows how to take them off, and she does both with style and grace. And she looks like a woman, not a surgically enhanced silicone-boosted plastic barbie doll.

So is the movie any good? That really depends on your expectations. While Emmanuelle had pretensions towards being more than just a sex movie, and to some extent justified those pretensions, this sequel has no such higher aims. This is pure erotica. But it’s very very good erotica.

It’s a classic illustration of the huge advantage that softcore has over hardcore - when you have to leave some things to the imagination then the film-maker has to actually use his or her imagination as well. They have to work much harder to achieve the desired erotic frisson, and if they have sufficient talent the results can be much sexier than hardcore porn. And the sex scenes in Emmanuelle: L'antivierge are definitely imaginative, and they’re definitely erotic. Can you make an acupuncture session into a steamy and slightly kinky sex scene? This movie demonstrates that you most certainly can. The peepshow scene and the bath-house scene are object lessons in doing porn with style.

Emmanuelle is, by virtue of its historical significance and its ground-breaking sense of style, one of those movies you simply have to see. The same cannot be said for Emmanuelle: L'antivierge. But if you want classy erotica it delivers the goods.

El secreto del Dr. Orloff (1964)

Like so many of Jess Franco’s films El secreto del Dr. Orloff exists in several different versions with a bewildering array of titles, including The Secret of Dr. Orloff and Dr. Orloff's Monster. My copy was entitled Dr. Jekyll's Mistresses, but it’s still the same movie! Made in 1964, it’s one of the best of his early black-and-white horror flicks.

Melissa (Agnès Spaak) is spending a week in the country with her aunt and uncle. They live in a wonderfully gothic castle, and her uncle is a mad scientist. He’d been working with his mentor on the re-animation of corpses, and just before his mentor’s death he had come up with what he believed was the answer they’d been looking for - the use of ultrasonic sound waves. These would not only allow the creatures to move, they would also allow them to be controlled absolutely.

Having a robotic corpse wandering about is bad enough, especially when it starts killing women. The mad scientist uncle doesn’t seem very fond of women; we later find out why. We also find out why Aunt Ingrid is an alcoholic. In fact there are all sorts of dark family secrets. This extreme emphasis on the family, and on family dysfunctionality, makes the movie slightly unusual among Franco’s output. I can’t think of any other of his films that focus so much on family relationships.

It has a slightly early 60s German krimi feel to it, with the police detective providing the comic relief those movies always incorporated. The black-and-white cinematography and the mix of gothic and seedy urban settings emphasises this resemblance. Not that a resemblance to the classic German Edgar Wallace krimis is a bad thing. I happen to be incredibly fond of such films, and they continued to influence Franco for many years to come. The Devil Came from Akasava is an obvious later example.

And it has the erotic night-club act scene, without which no Jess Franco movie is complete. It’s not as memorable as some of the classic night-club scenes in later Franco opuses, but it’s still quite well done. And features more nudity than you’d expect in 1964.

The makeup effects for the monster are subtle but actually quite creepy, since he still looks mostly human. The acting is generally quite good, with Agnès Spaak very effective as Melissa.

Overall it’s a well-constructed and clever little movie with some good plot twists that come together rather nicely. It’s a lot more conventional than his later movies, or even his 1962 The Sadistic Baron Von Klaus (La mano de un hombre muerto), but it’s still very successful. There’s none of the trippiness or dream-like feel of late 60s or early 70s Franco, there’s a straightforward linear narrative and a neat ending that ties up the loose ends. It’s a Franco movie that should satisfy fans of traditional horror movies, while still having enough hints of perversity to keep true Francophiles happy.

The Region 2 DVD from Arrow Films is dubbed in English but is apparently the French cut, which I’m led to believe includes some scenes not included in the Spanish cut. Picture quality is very good, and the dubbing is reasonably well done, but there are no extras.

This is not one of the essential Jess Franco films, but if you’re a fan of his movies it’s well worth a look.

Cecil B. DeMented (2000)

To say that John Waters’ 2000 film Cecil B. DeMented is a hit-and-miss affair is really to miss the point. It’s as deliberately anarchic as its subject matter, and despite its unevenness it’s more successful than it has any right to be. Its sheer energy and Waters’ bravado carry it through.

Cecil B. DeMented is a would-be independent film-maker who has gathered around him a devoted circle of guerilla underground film-makers. They’re kind of a cult, and they call themselves the Sprocket Holes. Their dream is to smash the corrupt Hollywood studio system. And they not only dream about doing this, they have a plan to make their dream a reality. They will make a movie called Raving Beauty, which will be an object lesson in cinematic purity. And they have a plan to generate so much publicity for the film that no-one will be able to ignore it. They will kidnap a major Hollywood star and force her to star in the picture.

They realise that this movie will probably cost them their lives, but independent cinema is a cause worth dying for! It soon becomes clear that they consider it a cause worth killing for as well. They storm a theatre (in Baltimore of course) where the ageing faded bitchy spoilt brat star Holly Whitlock (played by Melanie Griffith) is making a personal appearance at a charity bash to promote her new romantic comedy. The organiser of the charity gala is killed as a result of a shoot-out between the Sprocket Holes and the police.

Holly Whitlock is extremely obstructive at first, but gradually she comes to identify with her kidnappers. She starts to believe in their dream. There are of course uncanny similarities to the real-life story of Patty Hearst, kidnapped by urban terrorists back in the 70s, and in fact Patricia Hearst herself plays a small role in the film. In any other movie this would be creepy, but Patricia Hearst is a regular member of John Waters’ stock company of actors, in fact she’s more or less a part of his cinematic family, and somehow it doesn’t seem creepy at all.

The Sprocket Holes are the sort of collection of misfits that you’d expect to find in a John Waters movie. Cecil B. DeMented himself is an insane visionary. His chief assistant is Cherish, a former porn star. The makeup girl is a likeable Satanist. The director of photography is addicted to at least half a dozen different drugs. The hair stylist is tortured by guilt because of his heterosexual tendencies, which he has tried without success to repress. They have all taken a vow of celibacy until the movie is completed, as a result of which they are all permanently obsessed by sex.

The Sprocket Holes encounter numerous obstacles in their attempt to make their film, mainly because their film is about a bunch of radical film-makers who declare war on the Hollywood system. This involves them in another gun battle at a film industry function, and yet more violence erupts when they try to disrupt the making of the sequel to Forrest Gump, Gumped Again. On the run from studio heavies, film union representatives and the cops, as well as enraged movie fans who declare that they like family entertainment, the movie guerilla are rescued by king fu film fans. Still on the run, they take refuge in another movie house, which is screening a season of Cherish’s porn films. The audience recognise her, and willingly join the running battle on the side of the Sprocket Holes.

The movie ends in mayhem, but while Cecil B. DeMented proclaims his contempt for phoney life-affirming endings, the ending of Waters’ movie manages to be cataclysmic, tragic, farcical and yet weirdly life-affirming. Whatever his feelings for the subjects of his rather caustic satire, Waters loves movies and somehow there’s the strange feeling that the movie is saying that movies will survive even the efforts of the cynical manipulators who run the studios and the efforts of crazed fanatics like DeMented.

While Waters doesn’t neglect a single opportunity to mock the opportunism and greed of Hollywood, the movie’s satire is directed just as much at the oh-so-serious and pretentious indie film crowd who see themselves as the saviours of film. The Sprocket Holes’ vow of celibacy certainly appears to be a dig at the Dogme people. There are some wonderful sight gags involving movie marquees, and some great lines, my favourite being Cecil B. DeMented’s proclamation that, “Technique is nothing more than failed style.”

It’s difficult to say if we’re expected to see Cecil and his crew as heroes, anti-heroes or just crazies. I suppose that depends on how you feel about Cecil’s belief that movies are worth dying for! In fact they come cross as a mixture of all those characteristics. They’re idealists, but they’re violent and they kill people. They’re visionaries, but they’re also pretentious and pompous and more or less talentless. They’re all certifiably insane, but they form an odd little family and they care about each other. This ambiguity works in the movie’s favour, preventing it from being just a tiresome tirade against the evils of big business.

Perhaps the movie’s biggest strength though is the acting. Melanie Griffith is absolutely superb. Stephen Dorff is perfect as the crazed visionary Cecil. Maggie Gyllenhaal is a delight as the Satanist makeup artist. It’s Alicia Witt though as the crazed but oddly loveable porn star Cherish who shares the acting honours with Griffith.

Structurally the movie is a complete mess, but I’m inclined to think that it’s supposed to be that way. The chaotic nature of the movie is essential to its success. There are times when you wonder if they’re really going to be able to stretch out such a slight plot to feature film length, but it’s a fairly short film and every time it’s in danger of starting to drag Waters or his actors find the necessary inspiration to keep the momentum rolling.