Girl on a Motorcycle (1968)

The first things that one has to to say about Jack Cardiff’s 1968 Anglo-French co-production Girl on a Motorcycle are that it’s arty, it’s pretentious, it’s slow, and it’s very very 1960s. If those things turn you off, don’t even bother with this movie. On the other hand if (like me) you happen to enjoy 60s movies that are arty, pretentious and slow then you’re in for a treat. 

Marianne Faithfull stars as Rebecca, a young woman who is engaged to be married to a very nice young school teacher named Raymond, but who is also hopelessly obsessed with another man, Daniel (Alain Delon). Daniel also teaches, but he isn’t a nice respectable young man. He is however devilishly handsome and very sexy, and he treats society’s rules with contempt. And he rides a motorcycle. A very big, very macho motorcycle, which he presents to Rebecca as a wedding present. 

After a short period of wedded bliss, which turns out to be not very blissful and extremely boring, Rebecca hops on her bike and sets out on a road trip to find Daniel. Most of the movie takes the form of her memories of past events, her daydreams, her imaginings of future happiness and her slightly kinky sexual fantasies. Rebecca is a woman who wants more out of life. She isn’t sure exactly what it is she wants, but she just knows she wants more. She wants to feel alive. Riding her bike makes her feel alive. Bad boy Daniel makes her feel alive. Raymond makes her feel dead. 

Marianne Faithfull might not be a great actress in the conventional sense, but she’s perfect for the role and she’s very effective. It’s a sympathetic and very erotic performance that avoids the potential pitfalls of making the character overly precious or whiney. Alain Delon doesn’t have much to do other than look gorgeous, sexy and dangerous, but he does that very well. 

Jack Cardiff was not only a good director, he was also a cinematographer of genius, and the movie is visually stunning. Some of the techniques he used seem very dated and very 60s now, such as the solarisation used in the sex scenes, but they’re actually quite effective. And it did allow him to include sex scenes that the censor would not otherwise have allowed him to get away with. It didn’t do him any good when it came to a US release though – the movie was still cut to ribbons there. Censors never have liked films that show women taking control of their sex lives, and the sight of a naked Marianne Faithfull was apparently considered much too dangerous for US audiences. 

The solarisation gives the movie a trippy feel that I rather enjoy. It’s also a great example of old-fashioned movie-making, where technical problems (such as the fact that Miss Faithfull could not ride a motorcycle but her character has to spend most of the movie riding one) had to be solved by skill and ingenuity rather than money and CGI. 

I’ve heard reports that the Region 2 DVD release is rather disappointing in terms of image quality. There are no such problems with the Region 4 DVD – the movie looks fabulous, the colours look sensational, and there’s a superb commentary track by director Jack Cardiff. It’s one of those movies that really needs a commentary track. Cardiff was clearly immensely proud of this film. He describes it as a stream-of-consciousness movie and that’s a pretty fair summary of it. If you love off-beat quirky arty movies, and if you like movies that focus on women, then this one is worth checking out. And the scenes with Rebecca on her motorcycle on the autobahn, where she is going as close to having sex with a motorcycle as a person can possibly go, really are extraordinarily erotic.

Tentacles (1977)

Tentacles, a 1977 Italian-US co-production, is one of those movies that you approach believing it can’t possibly be as bad as its reputation suggests. Sadly, I have to report that it really is that bad. It’s not just bad, it’s bad in a not very interesting way.

Which is a pity - a movie about a giant killer octopus, with a cast headed by Shelley Winters and John Huston, should have had at least some potential for camp fun. It’s not like Shelley Winters and John Huston weren’t capable of outrageous over-acting. But this time their hearts just weren’t in it. Even the bizarreness of John Huston (at age 71) playing Shelley Winters’ kid brother doesn’t add the right touch of entertaining silliness.

The plot involves an evil corporation headed by Henry Fonda which is using high-frequency sound as part of a project to build an underwater tunnel. Unfortunately high-frequency sound, as everyone knows, turns otherwise peaceable giant octopi into savage killers of the deep. Luckily there’s a marine biologist on hand with couple of trained killer whales to save the day. You can see what I mean about the potential for high camp silliness. The movie certainly manages to be silly, but the expected fun just doesn’t happen.

Still, any movie with giant cephalopods can’t be all bad, and if you’re in the right mood there’s some amusement to be had.

The Night Porter (1974)

On the whole I avoid movies or books dealing with World War II or the Holocaust. There’s very little left to say on these subjects but that doesn’t stop people saying the same old things over and over again. There’s also a worryingly pornographic aspect that tends to creep in – a bit too much wallowing in violence and cruelty. It also depresses me too much; it illustrates all too clearly the human race’s total inability to learn from past mistakes. Supposedly civilised nations have continued to carry out the same kinds of atrocities, and for the same reasons – enemies are dehumanised, so it’s OK to treat them as less than human.

So what makes Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter, a story of a sadomasochistic relationship between an SS officer and a concentration camp inmate that is reignited when they meet again years later, different? For one thing, the acting. Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling remorselessly expose the darkest corners of their character’s psyches. Their performances go far beyond categories like victim or monster. Max, the former Nazi officer now working as a night porter in a Vienna hotel, has certainly done monstrous things but he remains frighteningly human. He’s not one of them – a mere comic-book monster. He’s one of us. He’s a human being, and he has human emotions. The motivations and emotions of Rampling’s Lucia are complex. Is she a collaborator? A victim? Or both? Or neither? There’s no doubt that she chooses to become involved with Max once again. Whatever the situation in the past, she is now free to choose.

Her willingness to rekindle his relationship is one of the many things that upset people about this film when it was released in 1974. The film provoked hysterical reactions at the time. This was not the approved way of dealing with this kind of subject matter. The movie’s refusal to deal in clear-cut categories of hero, villain or victim enraged many viewers. The fact that the movie was directed by a woman provoked even more outrage. The most disturbing thing about The Night Porter though is the fact that it’s a love story. It’s an unhealthy love, it’s a love founded on abuse, but it is still a love story. It’s a movie that tells us things about love that we don’t really want to hear. It’s a movie that tells us all kinds of things about the human condition that we don’t really want to hear. It also raises wider questions about guilt and complicity in regard to events such as the Holocaust. The guilt and complicity of all of us, and of nations as well as individuals. Perhaps we are all like Max and Lucia. We might like to think that in extreme situations we would be heroes but possibly we’re far more likely to behave like Max and Lucia.

It’s not easy viewing but The Night Porter is an important, complex and thought-provoking movie, a movie that is as disturbing to the heart as it is to the mind. I highly recommend it.

Lady Snowblood (1973)

Toshiya Fujita’s Lady Snowblood (Shurayukihime), made in 1973, was one of the movies that provided the inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. Unkind people might say that Kill Bill was in fact little more than a remake of this Japanese film. As usual you find that everything in Kill Bill that seemed fresh and innovative was in fact “borrowed” from the work of some other more talented film-maker, even including in this case the use of the interpolated anime sequences (Lady Snowblood uses a succession of still manga images, but the idea is the same). Lady Snowblood is divided into four chapters, and follows the story of Yuki as she tracks down four murderous villains and exacts a bloody revenge on them. There’s a truly astonishing amount of gore. Not just buckets of blood, but oceans of blood. It has that combination of extreme violence and absolute stillness, of butchery and lyrical beauty, that only the Japanese seem to be able to achieve. The movie is set in the late 19th century, at the time when Japan was modernising at an incredibly rapid pace and there was an enormous tension between traditional values and new western ideas. The role of Yuki doesn’t require great acting so much as it requires presence, and Meiko Kaji has presence in abundance. While this is an interesting and well-crafted movie I can’t say I enjoyed it all that much. The relentless violence and the obsession with revenge get a bit wearing. It does have surprising layers of complexity and richness, these being just about the only elements that Tarantino didn’t “borrow” for his version. If you like extremely bloody samurai movies than Lady Snowblood will be right up your street; if you’re not into gushing fountains of blood and grim tales of revenge then I’d give it a miss.

Baba Yaga (1973)

Corrado Farina’s Baba Yaga is based on Guido Crepax’s Valentina comic books of the 60s. Valentina, a wealthy and successful photographer, finds herself involved in a series of increasingly eerie and unsettling events after an encounter with the mysterious blonde lesbian witch Baba Yaga. The witch takes from her an intimate item of clothing, and gives her in return a doll – a female doll, dressed in fetish gear. As you might expect, the doll turns out to be more than just a doll.

This 1973 movie forms an interesting companion piece to two earlier and better-known adaptations of adult-oriented comics, Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik and of course Vadim’s Barbarella. Much as I adore Danger: Diabolik and regard it as being the greatest of all movies based on comics, Baba Yaga is perhaps the most interesting film of the three. Much of the action is clearly taking place in Valentina’s dream world, an erotically charged world of disturbing and often violent imagery. It’s never quite clear how much, if anything, is actually taking place in the real world. While Bava’s classic film is pure fun with the emphasis on action and outrageous criminal capers, Baba Yaga is more in the fantasy/horror mould, and could possibly be described as magic realism. The emphasis is on the psychological, and specifically it’s an exploration of the fevered interiors of Valentina’s mind.

It’s by far the most arty comic book movie I’ve ever seen, but it’s also a great deal of fun. Isabelle De Funès as Valentina has a wonderful swinging 60s kind of look. Carroll Baker’s performance as Baba Yaga didn’t please everyone, but I think she’s marvellous – ever so subtly creepy, glamorously other-worldly, and with a strangely detached eroticism. Unfortunately the erotic nature of her obsession with Valentina was weakened somewhat by the censors’ decision to cut her nude scene. The scene is included in the extras on the Blue Underground DVD release, and provides a classic example of the silly and destructive nature of censorship, since it’s really the single most crucial scene in the movie.

Farina’s movie is visually impressive, and more importantly he captures the rhythms and the feel of comics more adroitly than anyone else has ever managed to do. Brilliant editing! The brief animated sequences using washed-out black-and-white still images are very effective, especially in the love scene between Valentina and her boyfriend - it’s not at all explicit, but it’s sexy, and it gets us right inside her head.

Blue Underground’s DVD includes some very desirable extras including an interview with the charming and erudite Farina (who sadly made only two feature films in a long career otherwise devoted mainly to documentaries) and a short documentary on the comic book art of Guido Crepax. Baba Yaga is stylish and intelligent and thoroughly enjoyable entertainment. This one’s a must-see!

The Heroic Trio (1993)

The Heroic Trio (Dung fong saam hap) is a completely insane Hong Kong martial arts movie. The plot involves….well actually I have no idea what the plot was about, but it was fun. It had something to do with a scientist working on a way to make people invisible, and three female superheroes, and the kidnapping of babies by an old evil supernatural guy who used to be the master of two of the women superheroes. These three superhero types, played by Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Cheung and Anita Lui, spend most of the movie trying to bet each other up, while intermittently helping out the police in a number of cases that may or may not have had something to do with the main plot.

The main thing is, you have three beautiful women doing lots of cool stunts, and you have some truly breath-taking visual ideas. Unlike most Hollywood action movies the action sequences don’t just rely on violence, gore and blowing stuff up. They’re bizarre, surreal and surprising and filmed with a great deal of flair. There’s a genuine visual imagination at work here, not just special effects and a big budget. The strange chainmail helmet weapon and the room full of hanging bird cages are particularly noteworthy. There’s also a fairly scary unstoppable bad guy.

The acting is generally pretty decent for the type of film it is, with Michelle Yeoh being especially good. It’s non-stop thrills mixed with comedy, a dash of romance and a touch of pathos. If you’re going to do a comic-book style action movie, this is the way to do it (something that Hollywood will probably never learn).

The Region 4 DVD, from Force Video, features poor audio quality and a terrible English dub, and with no other options and no extras apart from a few trailers. At least it was cheap. The movie though is terrific.

Blood of the Virgins (1967)

Emilio Vieyra’s Blood of the Virgins (Sangre de vírgenes) is a 1967 horror movie from Argentina. I have to admit that I didn’t know there were horror movies from Argentina. In fact it’s a vampire movie.

At some time in the 19th century a woman has to choose between two men, not realising that one of them is a vampire. On her wedding night she finds herself the victim of the vampire. Cut to 1967, and a group of young people are on holiday when their car runs out of petrol. They reach an apparently deserted house, where a mysterious servant has a meal already prepared for them. But of course the vampire and the vampire bride are still there, haunting the house, and the girls in the party are bitten and start to transform into the undead.

What’s surprising (apart from the locations in the mountains of Argentina) for a 1967 movie is the amount of gore and nudity. Other than that it’s a fairly well-made low-budget horror flick. It’s strictly B-movie stuff, but it’s entertaining enough. Being a Mondo Macabro release it comes with some fascinating extra, which are actually even more interesting than the movie itself. There’s a documentary about the exploitation film industry in Argentina, the existence of which I had never even suspected.

Emilio Vieyra, the director of Blood of the Virgins, made several other horror films in the 60s, including the gloriously titled The Curious Dr. Humpp (a movie that sounds very bizarre indeed). Blood of the Virgins includes some groovy 60s clothes and some rather naughty go-go dancing, both of which add considerably to the fun. It was filmed in colour and the DVD release looks terrific. Definitely worth a look.