The Witches (1966)

Whether you enjoy Hammer’s 1966 movie The Witches depends very much on what you expect from your horror movies. If you expect a film dripping with gore that will scare you out of your wits, then don’t bother with this one. There’s no gore and it’s not the least bit scary. If you want an atmosphere of subtle weirdness and suppressed evil then you might think slightly more highly of this one.

Joan Fontaine is Gwen Mayfield, an English teacher at a mission school in Africa. She gets caught up in a tribal rebellion fomented by witch-doctors and suffers a mental breakdown. After making a slow recovery she applies for a job as head teacher in small private school in the sleepy little English village of Heddaby. At first it seems idyllic, although it is a little puzzling that the village’s only church has lain in ruins for several centuries, and that the ice young clergyman who offered her the job turns out not to be a man of the cloth at all, but the local lord of the manor. And wearing a fake clerical collar is just one of Alan Bax’s little eccentricities. She’s also a little surprised to find one of her pupils, 14-year-old Linda, still carrying around a doll. Especially since Linda has clearly reached the stage of taking an interest in boys, and spends a good deal of time with young Ronnie Dowsett.

Gwen’s discovery that young Ronnie is extremely gifted and worthy of special attention also provokes a slightly odd reaction from both the boys’ parents and Alan Bax. More dolls make their appearance, and there are stories of odd happenings, of people falling ill without any rational explanation. Gwen begins to suspect that Linda’s grandmother may be playing at witchcraft. At first this seems merely amusing, a quaint survival of old beliefs in 1960s Britain, but soon Miss Mayfield finds cause to suspect that these events may have a more sinister aspect. The discovery of a doll stuck with pins, another unexplained illness, and a mysterious drowning all serve to heighten Gwen’s fears. And after what she saw in Africa, she is particularly susceptible to such fears.

Gwen takes Alan Bax’s sister Stephanie into her confidence, Stephanie having something of an interest in the occult. When Linda disappears it becomes increasingly likely that some sinister fate may be awaiting the girl.

The first half of the movie is quite good. The mood of something not quite right about the village, of a certain wrongness about things and people, is built up subtly but skillfully. The problem is that the payoff falls rather flat. With a script by Nigel Kneale you expect more than this. I suspect the problem was that Cyril Frankel as director was simply not up to the job, and was unable to deliver the finale that the movie needed. The film is also somewhat hampered by censorship restrictions, with a rather ridiculous orgy scene in which everyone is fully clothed. There’s a complete lack of any erotic charge to this movie, and a movie dealing with witchcraft and/or the survival of pagan beliefs in the modern world really needs some kind of erotic frisson. The whole exercise suffers from a fatal blandness.

At this time also Hammer was still, at least in their gothic horror films, too locked in to the “good must triumph and evil must be vanquished” mentality. In the hands of a skillful director like Terence Fisher such movies could still generate a real feeling of suspense (as in Fisher’s The Devil Rides Out) but in the hands of lesser directors and combined with the lack of eroticism and the lack of blood it could easily result in a movie that is much too predictable and lacking in excitement. Such is the case here.

It’s not a complete loss though. The film was a personal project for Joan Fontaine who had liked the original novel The Devil's Own enough to but the movie rights. And her instincts were sound enough. The potential was there, and she was certainly perfect for the role of Gwen Mayfield and does a fine job. Kay Walsh is equally good as Stephanie Bax. The acting overall is very solid. With Bernard Robinson as production designer and Arthur Grant as cinematographer the movie looks good.

This is definitely a lesser Hammer film, but still worth a look if you’re a major fan of 60s British horror. It’s one to rent rather than buy though.

Revolver (1973)

Revolver is a rather cynical 1973 Italian crime thriller with political overtones, not the sort of movie I’d normally watch except for the presence of Oliver Reed in the cast.

Reed is prison governor Vito Cipriani who becomes unwittingly involved in a complex web of political and criminal intrigue. Someone wants one of his prisoners out of gaol, and kidnaps his wife to force him to arrange the escape. Milo Ruiz is a petty criminal and he doesn’t know himself why anyone would want to go to such lengths to free him from incarceration. Vito is determined not just to get his wife back, but to make the kidnappers pay. He forms an unlikely alliance with Milo, and increasingly they discover that they’re both victims, and both pawns in a very big game.

Vito’s hunt for the kidnappers will take them both to France, and to the home of pop star Al Niko, whose connection with plots involving political assassinations seems even more unlikely than Milo’s. Both Vito and Milo will find themselves questioning their assumptions about each other and about themselves. Director Sergio Sollima was most interested in the idea that there are no clear-cut good guys and bad guys, and as he says in the accompanying featurette, it’s often the good guys who do the most harm.

The strange friendship that develops between these two mismatched characters provides the most interesting moments in the film. Oliver Reed and Fabio Testi (as Milo) deliver powerful and surprisingly subtle performances.

The plot is heavily laced with paranoia, and is formidably complex. There’s plenty of action and quite a bit of violence, but the violence is used effectively to underscore the increasingly anomalous position that Vito finds himself in, a lawman unable to turn to the law for help and having as his only reliable ally an habitual criminal.

Sergio Sollima’s direction is assured and very stylish. Ennio Morricone provides a memorable and effective score. The scenes involving pop star Al Niko include some of the most unforgettable fashion catastrophes of the 1970s.

The Blue Underground DVD includes a very short but reasonably interesting making-of featurette. Sollima remembers Oliver Reed with fondness, although he admits that after his 26th bottle of wine for the day he could become a little difficult, while Reed’s co-star Fabio Testi seems to have enjoyed working with him.

Revolver is a very dark and very pessimistic little movie, offering little hope for the triumph of justice or for ay worthwhile human ideals. Corruption is inescapable and all-pervasive. It’s entertaining and engrossing, and it’s a must for fans of Oliver Reed.

Airport '77 (1977)

The production team behind Airport '77 found themselves facing a formidable challenge indeed - to come up with something even more ridiculous than Airport 1975. And it has to be said that they succeeded admirably. While it’s just about possible to believe that we’re meant to take Airport 1975 seriously, or that it at least takes place in our reality, we can be under no such illusions in the case of Airport '77. This one is pure fantasy. Wealthy industrialist and art collector Philip Stevens (James Stewart) has had a 747 fitted out as a gigantic luxury corporate jet. Its first task is to ferry a planeload of his friends, relations and some assorted VIPs (along with some extremely valuable paintings) to the opening of his new art gallery. Disaster strikes over the Bermuda Triangle when the aircraft is hijacked by a gang that includes the co-pilot and the chief steward. They intend to land the 747 on a disused World War 2 landing field on an island, transfer the paintings to another aircraft and then head off to South America.

The plot naturally miscarries. Flying low to avoid radar, the co-pilot manages to fly the plane straight into an oil rig. The aircraft crashes into the ocean and sinks, with the crew and passengers still alive on board! Since the gang had been evading the air traffic control radar and heading in the opposite direction from the original course the resulting search takes place in entirely the wrong area of ocean. Somehow the survivors must find a way to alert the searchers to their actual location, while also dealing with the fact that the aircraft is slowly filling with water. And the worst news of all is that Charlton Heston is not in this picture, so who is going to save them?

Standing in as the chief hero is the aircraft’s pilot Captain Don Gallagher, played by Jack Lemmon at his hammiest (and that’s saying quite a lot). Lemmon tries hard, but he just isn’t square-jawed enough to inspire confidence. The lack of a plucky stewardess like Karen Black is an added concern. Captain Don does have Darren McGavin as a kind of general purpose assistant hero, but he’s no Chuck Heston either. Also aboard is Christopher Lee as a scuba-diving scientist, so there is some hope. And although he does very little George Kennedy is wandering about in the background somewhere.

The passengers include the expected assortment of Hollywood has-beens, in this case headed by Olivia de Havilland and Joseph Cotten. Oddly enough there are no nuns or critically ill children desperately awaiting kidney transplants on the passenger list, but there are a couple of kids and one of them soon falls ill, thus satisfying one of the main requirements of any good disaster movie. And luckily the passengers include a vet, so the injured have someone to look after them. Compared to Airport 1975 though the cast is a little on the disappointing side.

The main attraction of this film is of course the remarkably improbable plot. Some rather iffy special effects add to the fun. There’s lots of breathless excitement as the plane keeps springing new leaks while the Navy is frantically scouring the oceans looking for the missing 747. It’s your classic race against time, and naturally there’s the added factor of the steadily depleting air supply. If you like your disaster movies campy and silly (and I’m assuming that’s how all disaster movie fans do like them) then this one should satisfy your requirements quite satisfactorily. Good enjoyable nonsense.

Obsession (1976)

Yet another Brian De Palma movie. A slightly more obscure one this time -Obsession, from 1976. This was released shortly before the movie before Carrie brought him major mainstream recognition. Obsession has a very different feel compared to the other De Palma movies I’ve seen recently, but in its own way it’s just as impressive.

It is 1959, and wealthy real estate speculator Michael Courtland and his wife Elizabeth have just celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary. They have a daughter, and life is very good, until disaster strikes from out of a clear blue sky. Courtland’s wife and daughter are kidnapped and held to ransom. The police are called in, but their ambitious operation to catch the kidnappers and free the hostages goes badly and tragically wrong.

Sixteen years later Michael Courtland has not moved on at all. He is still a successful businessman, but life holds little interest for him until he makes a business trip to Florence. This is the city where he met his wife shortly after the war, and wandering into the church where they met he catches sight of a young Italian woman working on the restoration of a fresco. Her name is Sandra. The resemblance to his late wife is uncanny, and she is about the same age Elizabeth had been when they first met. Inevitably he is fascinated, he asks her out, they get along well, the fascination develops into obsession, and he asks her to marry him.

She returns with him to his palatial home in New Orleans, to find that Michael still keeps a room in the house, which had been their bedroom, as a kind of shrine to Elizabeth. She becomes obsessed with Elizabeth - in her own way as obsessed as Michael. For both Michael and Sandra herself the two women are increasingly merging into one. But this is a De Palma movie, and the situation is not at all as it appears. For both Michael and Sandra a crisis of identity is approaching as the past begins to replay itself. They will both be given an unexpected second chance, but will they be able to grasp it? There are major plot twists to come, but I don’t intend to spoil the movie for you.

As is usual with De Palma’s movies, this is not the kind of movie it initially appears to be. It has elements of the thriller genre, but it’s not a thriller. It’s a story about love, and the power of memory, and the unpredictable operations of chance. This is not Vertigo, although the movie was conceived after De Palma and scriptwriter Paul Schrader had watched Vertigo. Comparisons to Hitchcock's masterpiece can be both enlightening and misleading, which is typically De Palma. The style is very lush and romantic, with director of photography Vilmos Zsigmond giving everything a hazy soft-focus dream-like quality which works superbly.

De Palma chose Cliff Robertson for the role of Michael Courtland because he wanted an old-style leading man, the kind of actor who could easily have turned up as a leading man in a Hitchcock movie of the 50s. It was an inspired choice and Robertson gives one of his finest performances. He approaches the role with a good deal of subtlety and makes a character who might have been just a tad creepy into a very sympathetic if slightly misguided figure. Geneviève Bujold is equally good in a role that was incredibly challenging, for reasons I can’t go into without revealing spoilers. John Lithgow is also good as Courtland’s friend and business partner.

This is a De Palma movie entirely lacking in sleaze! There’s no nudity and no sex, and no graphic violence. This was a deliberate decision on the director’s part, since he anticipated (quite correctly) that he would have enough problems persuading distributors to accept the very touchy subject matter, the controversial nature of which does not become apparent until very late in the movie.

It’s a stylish movie, as you expect from this director, but with a strangely old-fashioned feel to it. Although it was in fact a low budget independent production it has the feel of a 1950s Hollywood studio film. This is appropriate, since for Michael time stopped in 1959. This is De Palma in a serious but very romantic mood, and it’s a psychologically and emotionally gripping and very moving film. Many of De Palma’s signature tricks are there, but this time he doesn’t want us to see them, and they’re done with such subtlety that in fact we generally don’t notice them. Another unexpected treasure from Brian De Palma.

Amazingly enough the Region 4 DVD includes extras! Well one extra anyway, but it’s a good one - a documentary that includes interviews with De Palma, Bujold and Robertson as well as cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond.

Vampyrer (2008)

Vampyrer (Vampires) is a Swedish vampire movie that was released in 2008 and apparently vanished without trace. As modern horror movies go it’s not as bad as most, and at least it doesn’t have any CGI.

Vera and Vanja are sisters. They are vampires. They live on the streets of a city (presumably Stockholm) and they prey on urban low-lifes. Including neo-nazi bikers, which is possibly not the smartest thing they could do, especially given that they are vampires possessing no supernatural powers and no special abilities.

Vera is content with life as a vampire, but she is worried about her sister. Vanja seems depressed. She shows worrying signs of existential angst. I suspect she’s simply watched too many episodes of Angel. She yearns to be like the normal people. She wants an ordinary life. And she’s met this guy she really likes. It isn’t clear if she’s told him about her odd little habits, like drinking blood and killing people, but he says he loves her so she’s sure it will all be OK. Although there’s still the matter of the neo-nazi bikers, and the fact that Vera killed their leader.

The most interesting thing about the movie is that these vampires are not fearsome hunters of the night. They’re more scared, vulnerable and helpless than their potential victims. In fact they’re so helpless and hopeless you can’t help wondering how they managed to survive on the streets of any city for more than 15 minutes. They appear to have no survival skills and no instincts for self-preservation.

The movie is very Dark and Edgy. It’s very grainy and badly lit, although that might be more to do with budgetary limitations rather than artistic choices. Writer-director Peter Pontikis appears to have little idea of what he wanted to achieve other than to make his movie Dark and Edgy. He fails to explore the relationship between the sisters or to develop their personalities in sufficient detail to make us care about them. The ending is predictable and unsatisfying.

Jenny Lampa as Vera is the one thing the movie really has going for it. With a better script she might really have done something with this role.

While it’s not a great movie, when compared to the usual run of modern horror movies it at least has one or two good ideas and it at least aspires to rely more on mood and character than on gore and special effects. So by the admittedly catastrophically low standards of modern horror it’s worth a look. And it appears to be Peter Pontikis’s first feature film so taking that into consideration it would be unfair to write him off on the basis of this one movie.

Since watching this movie I've seen the other modern Swedish vampire movie, Let the Right One In (which I didn't like at all) and it's made me appreciate the virtues of Vampyrer a lot more. Vampyrer is a very rare beast, a modern movie that doesn't feel bloated and overlong. And it has far more interesting characters.

Hot Rod Girl (1956)

There is just no way I could pass up a juvenile delinquent movie with a title like Hot Rod Girl. This 1956 movie is certainly fun, although disappointingly it’s not actually about a hot rod girl.

There is a hot rod girl in the movie, Lisa, and we do see her participating in (and winning) a drag race early in the movie. But the central character is her boyfriend Jeff. Jeff and Lisa hang around with the other hot rod fanatics in some unnamed town. They’re not really juvenile delinquents - they’re basically Swell Kids, but the squares just won’t give them a chance.

The exception to this is Detective Ben Merrill (Chuck Connors). Ben is a bit of a square, but he likes the kids and he’s come up with a plan. By providing the kids with a proper drag strip they’ll be able to satisfy their urge for speed without resorting to street racing. Jeff and Lisa are his main allies among the hot rodders. Jeff is so virtuous and so responsible it’ a wonder the other hot rodders can stand to be around him. Of course Ben’s plan doesn’t work, and Jeff’s hot-headed kid brother is enticed into a street race, with fatal consequences. Jeff wasn’t driving, but the police take his driver’s licence away anyway. This was the 50s, and the police seem to make up the law as they go along.

Jeff decides to give up drag racing completely, and he also starts to neglect Lisa. Trouble starts go brew when a stranger rolls into town into his hotted-up car. The stranger is Bronc Talbott, and he’s a Bad Boy. He decides he wants Lisa, and he wants to put the local hot rodders in their place. He taunts one of the kids into a potentially deadly game of chicken. Bronc’s next step is to try to force Jeff into a duel on the highway. Is Jeff going to stand by while this outsider steals his girl? Will Ben be able to convince the Gruff But Kindly Police Captain that the hot rodders are really decent kids and to let him continue to operate the drag strip?

The plot sounds impossibly contrived and that’s how it plays out. No opportunity for a moral message is allowed to slip by. The dialogue is cringe-inducing. The acting is mostly awful. In other words it’s a fairly typical 50s juvenile delinquent movie, and these are the very features that make such movies so much fun.

Chuck Connors as Ben is an impossibly square-jawed figure, but his performance should provide endless amusement. Lori Nelson makes Lisa reasonably sympathetic and at least makes an attempt at acting, and she looks good behind the wheel of her incredibly sexy sports car. The movie has plenty of action scenes involving cars, at least one brawl, and plenty of romance as well as Lisa battles to save her man and restore his faith in the world, and in hot rodding.

There are naturally a couple of comic relief characters, but they’re not excessively annoying. There’s some of the sexism you expect in 1950s movies, but not too much, and we do get to see Lisa as the champion drag racer showing the boys how it’s done.

If you’re a fan of juvenile delinquent movies you know you want to see this film, and you shouldn’t be disappointed.

It’s included in the Classic Teenage Rebels boxed set from St Clair Vision - eleven public domain JD movies on three DVDs for a ridiculously cheap price. The prints aren’t sensational but they’re watchable, the movies are fun, and it’s really pretty good value.

Trasgredire (2000)

Tinto Brass is a director who has spent the last 30 years totally and cheerfully ignoring everything that has happened in the world of cinema. He makes the sorts of movies that conventional wisdom says can’t be made any more - classy erotica, politically charged erotica and sex comedies. And since people continue to give him money to make his movies one can only assume that he’s doing reasonably well at it. Trasgredire (also released under the titles Cheeky and Transgessions) is a 1970s sex comedy made in 2000, and it’s a pretty good one.

Carla is a rather high-spirited and uninhibited Italian girl just arrived in London. She finds a rather nice flat, but she’d have to sleep with the lesbian real estate agent in order to get it. But it’s a very nice flat, and Carla is open-minded, so her accommodation problems are soon solved. Moira (the real estate agent) believes in giving her clients lots of after-sales servicing, but since Carla’s boyfriend Matteo is still in Venice and Carla doesn’t like to go for really long periods (say more than two or three hours) without having sex the arrangement suits them both. When Moira makes it obvious that she’s looking for more than just casual sex complications do seem likely to ensue, but Carla’s appetites

Meanwhile back in Venice the boyfriend is starting to worry that perhaps Carla isn’t being completely faithful to him while she’s in London. He becomes even more worried when his best friend points out to him something he hadn’t known - that women are often quite fond of sex so it’s quite likely that Carla has found alternative outlets for her desires. Matteo’s jealousies become really inflamed when he goes around to her house in Venice to pick up a few items she’s asked him to send on to her, and he discovers a stack of very steamy love letters she’s written to a young Frenchman she met on holiday shortly before, while he and Matteo were already dating. The letters are accompanied by a nude photo of Carla on the beach, apparently taken by her young Frenchman.

Matteo is soon on a plane to London, determined to confront Carla with the evidence of her betrayals. But Matteo has made an interesting discovery. Jealousy acts as a powerful aphrodisiac. The more jealous he is, the more he wants her. The Italian title of the movie was rendered as Tra(sgre)dire, incorporating the Italian word for betrayal within the word for transgression, but the interesting thing about the movie is that it suggests that betrayal is not always a bad thing, and of course transgression can always be fun. And infidelity can do wonders in spicing up your sex life.

Yuliya Mayarchuk is likeable as Carla, while Francesca Nunzi is fairly sympathetic as the obsessed lesbian Moira. There aren’t any villains in this movie - everyone is basically decent even if completely and joyously amoral.

Tinto Brass’s famous obsession with the female derrière is certainly very much in evidence. This is a very erotic movie with lots of nudity and lots of sex, and could be described as being at the harder end of the softcore spectrum. It’s also a very good-natured movie. It’s a celebration of sex, and it’s a celebration of love as well. As Brass himself famously out it, pornography is there to give you an erection while erotica is there to give you emotions. By that definition this is definitely erotica.

If you think all modern softcore porn is badly and unimaginatively photographed with little attention to lighting and filmed on digital video so it looks awful then Trasgredire will come as a revelation. This is the way erotic movies such as Emmanuelle were made back in the 70s, with style and class, by someone who actually cares about how the movie looks and not just about how much flesh is on display, with competent actors and a script that consists of more than just excuses for having everyone taking their clothes off. They do take their clothes off, and they do so very frequently, but at least there’s some semblance of a reason for it.

I don’t want to give the impression that Trasgredire is the Citizen Kane of the 21st century, but it’s fun and it’s sexy and it leaves you feeling reasonably well disposed towards one’s fellow humans and also feeling that life is not such a bad thing after all. And that’s more than most movies these days can offer.