Murder by Decree (1979)

 "I prefer bad manners in the theatre to violence in the streets..."

This film is an odd and intriguing beast. It's very well directed indeed, with the scenes involving the Ripper particularly well-realised. It has a superb cast. It's a very well made film. And yet...

Firstly, the script is somewhat plodding, slow, oddly paced and not quite worthy of the excellent way it's been realised. While James Mason gives us a first rate Watson, Christopher Plummer's generally impressive performance as Holmes suffers from the fact that the script doesn't really get the character- this Holmes is too openly emotional, too "normal".

This isn't the first time that cinema has put Holmes and Watson into the context of the Jack the Ripper murders but... well, SPOILERS, but this film adopts wholesale the then-fashionable theories advanced by Stephen Knight in his unfortunately titled Jack the Ripper:  The Final Solution, theories that woukd later form the basis of both the graphic novel and the film of From Hell..

And this is a problem. Not because such theories have fallen out of fashion (Personally, I don't buy the freemasonry nonsense- it's a very silly organisation but, except in the context discriminating against non-freemasons in their careers, harmless nonsense. I'd suggest borrowing a razor off that nice Mr Occam. The Ripper was probably Charles Lechmere.), but simply because adopting this narrative wholesale means that Holmes and Watson are by definition unable to have much agency or influence over events. 

Still, this is an interesting little curiosity nonetheless.

Schalken the Painter (1979 TV Film)

 "The darkness is unsafe..."

This is an intrertestying little curiosity, a one-off Christmas ghost story broadcast on the BBC in late December 1979, on the surface feeling very much like the many M.R. James ghost story adaptations that were made at the same time. But, in reality, this is very different.

It's a ghost story, yes, this time from a short story by Sheridan Le Fau, and a rather chilling and atmospheric on, with a deathly, ghostly suitor that a man give his ward's hand in marriager to him in what we would, today, call a forced marriage... and there are terrifying hints that this many may be something undead or unholy, and that the poor girl is perhaps damned forever because "She is your property. She will become mine...".

The main character, Gottfried Schalken, is a very real, albeit relatively minor, Dutch painter from the late 17th century, and the period is shown perfectly in terms of cinematograpjhy, texture and direction. The actors are shot superbly,in an age where blocking was still a thing.

And yet, it's more than that. The slow, langorous pace, unthinkable nowadays, is essential to the creation of atmosphere. And the useof light echoes Schalken's paintings themselves, everything liyt by candlelight, strangely loveless, with something perhaps lurking in the darkness...

This is quite a wonderful little gem

Motorhead- Overkill (1979)

Happy New Year!

I used to listen to this album a lot in my late teens, but for some reason haven't given it much thought for years. Hearing it again today I'm reminded of why I love it so much.

Then again, we think we know Motorhead, don't we? They're a metal band, right, albeit the metal band that it ewas ok for punks to like before Grunge called a truce between the two genres? 

Wrong. And Lemmy always kept telling us so. They're Motorhead. They play rock'n'roll. Oh, they're heavy, but the songs are very much in the rock'n'roll tradition as much as they obviously owe a lot to the heavy rock of the time. But the songwriting is solid, and the songs are catchy, well-constructed if dsimple, and, well, bangers. There's a reason why this is my favourite Motorhead album, and it's the songs. 

Not, of course, that the playing is anything less than great, or the simple yet clean production. And no, Lemmy's not a great singer, but he's a great frontman- and he writes well for his limited range. But, ultimately, it's about the songs. And I'd quite forgotten how bloody good this collection of songs is.

The Brood (1979)

 "It has no teeth, but you'd get a pretty nasty bite from these beak-like gums..."

Nasty divorces and unpleasant custody battles happen, sadly, even to auteur film directors. And, if said auteur happens to be David Cronenberg, this will naturally lead to a film all about how evil his ex is and why he should have custody of his daughter, all through the medium of extreme body horror.

Thing is, though, it may well be blatant that this is what he's doing, but none of that stops this film being a masterfully helmed wotk of genius. This film really ought to feel self-indulgent, but it's just too good for that.

It helps that we have a just-sober-enough Oliver Reed as a gloriously weird red herring of a creepily unorthodox psychiatrist (his book looks like a kind of very '70s yet also very Cronenberg tome: Erich Von Daniken with body horror) who is there as a very prominent piece of misdirection, but the real killers are, it seems, a gang of homonculuses (none of this Latinate "homonculi" nonsense; loan words don't get to bring their own syntax with them even if they are from swanky old Latin) which are birthed by, let's face it, a character representing Cronenberg's ex, in gloriously horrific ways as seen in the extraordinarily long and wonderfully effective final scene.

As ever with Cronenberg we have exquisite direction with the most banal of locations made to look creepily beautiful. We have eccentric minor characters and his usual themes of memory, family, bodily squelchiness and medical madness. This film is superb.

The Mystery of Chess Boxing (1979)

 "To play chess, one must be as calm as a mountain."

This film, let us be clear from the start, is utter pants. The pace and tone are all over the place, and the characterisation is weak. But, as I've only seen and blogged half a dozen or so martial arts films, it's interesting to look at why.

We have a decent premise here with a young man setting out to avenge his father's death by training in kung fu and using this to wreak his revenge, while engaging throughout in a martial arts philosophy of five elements and the use of chess (xiangqi, or Chinese chess, a broadly similar game) as some kind of vague metaphor for the right sort of kung fu. All with the addition of various hilarious-looking wigs.

And yet it all falls flat. Too much of the early part of the film is devoted to silly slapstick sequences rather than developing the Ghost Faced Killer or developing the characters; instead we get lots of fancy martial arts and acrobatics and lengthy sequences of hazing at the kung fu school, but very little in the way of character development in order to get us to know or like these people. Instead, the entire film has (in English translation at least) extraordinarily functional dialogue throughout, and a lot of the more dramatic scenes towards the end don't have the intended effect, as we simply aren't sufficiently invested in these characters.

Also, I'm no connoisseur of martial arts, but I'm told the fighting is awkwardly directed, with very little visual evidence of the five different element-based styles. And the chess angle, such as it is, is very superficial indeed. the overall effect is, well, rubbish. And it's a pity; the concept could have worked well with a dedent script and execution

Dracula (1979)

“Oh, I loved to be frightened..”

This was the last of the famous Dracula films I’d seen and, while it doesn’t rival the recent BBC TV series, it’s easily the best cinematic version of the original novel, excellent though some of the others have been.

This film is, strictly speaking, based on the play written in the years after the novel was published but, despite skipping the famous Transylvanian bit, and with those inevitable lines "I never drink wine" and "Children of the night, what (sad music they make" present and correct, this is broadly very faithful to the original epistolary novel- not without changes but preserving the core of the story, namely Dracula coming through the window to threaten first Mina and then Lucy.

There's no downplaying the original sexual subtext of Dracula drinking Lucy's blood, either: the film is very well-shot throughout but the main scene of Dracula feeding from Lucy is directed in an abstract but obviously sexual way. Plus, of course, Frank Langella gices us a charming and deeply erotic version of the Count, with charisma enough almost to rival the great Christopher Lee.


Laurence Olivier is, perhaps, hamming it up as Van Helsing, although Larry hamming it up is worth a strong performance from a lesser actor. But it's a real stroke of genius to cast Trevor Eve as an appropriately chippy Jonathan Harker, somewhat pissed off at Dracula for nicking his fiancee.

It's also nice to hear Hollywood acknowledging that Whitby is in face in Yorkshire and not the Home Counties, with the not-posh characters having accents to match. It's a nice but crucial detail that is so often forgotten. It may or may not be the best Dracula film, but it's easily the best cinematic version of the novel Bram Stoker wrote.

The Driller Killer (1979)

“You should let him stick it up your ass once. Use KY jelly. It won't hurt."

This is the original video nasty which, in this country at least, led to a nightmare of Thatcherite censorship for many, many years. So what's the fuss about? Well, the deaths are extremely violent with loads of blood, as one might expect, as our anti-hero Reno Miller (the artist as Travis Buckle, if you will) is driven mad by poverty and rejection of his art, But the young Abel Ferrara, directing and starring, gives us a far more arty and far more philosophical work than that may imply, although there's also plenty of black humour.

The first scene worried me a little. I saw Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant many, many years ago, in my pre-blog days and indeed very possibly in my pre-Internet days. I hated it. I couldn't stand the crude, didactic, overdone Catholic imagery that was being constantly fetishised by the camera. So the opening scene, with similar use of religious iconography, worried me a little. Fortunately there's no more of this, just some nicely done handheld camerawork, naturalistic acting, proper rotary telephones, and blood. Lots and lots of the latter. And a rather good punk band which reminds me very much of the Damned.

The killings themselves are graphic and violent, but take up relatively little screen time. Instead we mostly get a low budget but very nicely shot version of Taxi Driver where the protagonist is a struggling artist, and where the art criticism can be as violent as the killings. A surprisingly and genuinely good film.

Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979)

"He wanks as high as any man in Wome!"

This is, surely, the greatest comedy film ever made. By miles. I suspect that’s an uncontroversial comment. It’s also not at all about religion. That one needs a bit more explaining.

Life of Brian is about how ideas, such as Jesus’ rather excellent views on how to live one’s life, are always taken over and twisted into something else by those who want to use them to gain power and status. Hence the central part of the film, where Brian is followed by professional disciples (“I should know- I’ve followed a few”) who argue amongst themselves and split into various denominations over a dropped shoe on day one, killing their first heretic for good measure. The main example of the film’s central message is in that context. But it isn’t only applied to religion- aren’t Reg’s People’s Front of Judea and all the other “splitters” am example of exactly the same thing? Yet again, principles are subordinated to power, status and meaningless bureaucracy, exactly the same as per every organised religion that has ever existed. That’s how humanity always twists religion but also, I’m afraid, politics. Principles don’t stand a chance. That’s the film’s message, beneath the inspired humour. It’s very bleak, very Adam Curtis, and every bit as dark as the gleefully dark humour.

It’s bloody funny, though. We all have our favourite lines; mine is when Brian convinced the crowd that “we’re all individuals” and “we’re all different”, and one bloke shouts “I’m not”. The performances are superb, the Pythons being geniuses, and the script is the best comedy script ever. The filming in Tunisia looks lush and expensive- thank you, George Harrison, for paying for such things as this and Shirley Bloody Bassey. If you haven’t seen this then just bloody watch it now.

Mad Max (1979)

"They say people don't believe in heroes any more!"

I'd never seen Mad Max until now. It's been a film I'd been meaning to see for years, having such an effect in popular culture (referenced in a Rick and Morty episode I saw a couple of weeks ago, for example) and being pretty much the poster kid for post-apocalyptic futures. What I found was a fairly straightforward but rather good revenge action movie, but also very different from what I expected.

The film is quite simple; Max is a cop who tussles with a  motorcycle gang and its charismatic leader, leading ultimately to his wife and son (called "Sproggo", wonderfully!) being murdered (Does Jess survive, though? We aren't told.) and his spending the last twenty minutes exacting his revenge. It's a simple formula, one found in so many action films, but what makes this film stand out is simply that it's well scripted, directed and acted. It gets the basics right.

But the setting- it's clearly set in a future (for 1979) in which civilisation is fragmenting a little, fuel is scarce and technology is a valuable resource, but only up to a point. It's a Wild West type society; justice is a little rough and ready but hardly arbitrary, there are motorbikes instead of horses and the glorious Outback location adds so much. But there is a society, law and order, a functioning economy, private property etc. I'd hardly call it post-apocalyptic.

One more thing; it's been bugging me but really needs an Aussie to pronounce definitively on this, but... Mel Gibson sort of sounds as though he doesn't naturally speak with an Australian accent and is putting one on?

Apocalypse Now (1979)

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning..."

 I may have waited until I was forty but at last I can claim to have seen this troubled yet magnificent and iconic film, and now at last I know where the phrase "Charlie don't surf" comes from. But there#s so much more, and not just the well-known set pieces with eccentric warfare, surfing chat and Ride of the Valkyries.  No; this modern take on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (which I read long ago, in Florida, when I was nineteen) doesn't just transplant the events from the Belgian Congo to Vietnam but imparts added meaning. There's far more going on in this film than a single viewing can pick up, but there's the barbarity and ethics of warfare, misogyny, mortality and so much more, and it all feels so much more profound for the extraordinary skilled direction from Francis Ford Coppola.

It doesn't feel over-long; yes, Kurtz (a magnificent Marlon Brando, always filmed in some degree of shadow as metaphor for the character's ambiguity) is held back to the end, being built up slowly until his final, iconic appearance, but the film is equally about the events that happen to Willard (an extraordinary and very young Martin Sheen) along the way, alongside such characters as Chef, Clean (a teenage Laurence Fishburne) Dennis Hopper's nameless fawning photojournalist and the unforgettable Colonel Bill Kilgore. There's more than a hint of Aguirre: Wrath of God in how the journey along the river is shot, but the characters feel real and human; this isn't some aloof art flick.

There's a surprisingly small part for Harrison Ford but the cast as a whole is magnificent and entirely worthy of what must surely be one of the finest films ever made, however difficult it's creation.

Moonraker (1979)

"I think he's attempting re-entry, Sir!"

Meh. This is Bond by numbers. It's just a collection of barely connected set pieces,  some of them admittedly rather good, leading up to a silly and implausible finale. Hugo Drax must have the resources of a G7 nation to build six space shuttles and a space station. The fact that Michael Lonsdale makes a dull and charisma-free Drax doesn't help either.

At least Roger Moore is on good form. He seemed a little old in The Spy Who Loved Me but he seems a little rejuvenated in his sixth decade. It's also good to see a bigger role for M in Bernard Lee's final film, with a suggestion that, deep down, he always had a high regard for Bond. The return of Jaws is a mixed bag; he gets some superb action sequences but the scenes of him falling in love at first sight are just silly. And he finally gets to utter four whole words!!! Still, I love the way hired him after Chang dies, the suggestion being that there's actually an employment market for henchmen!

But this is all very obviously influenced by Star Wars and very silly, at a time when peak human space travel had already given way to the age of the space shuttle and the Moon had given way to the brilliant Voyager spacecraft. And worse: it's very worrying to see a Bond film be quite as formulaic as this.

Alien (1979)

“You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you?”

I should have reviewed this film ages ago. It’s certainly influenced so many other things that I’ve reviewed, not least Doctor Who during the 1980s. But at last I now have all four films, thanks to my friend Nick. That’ll be the next few films for the blog sorted, then!

I watched the director’s cut, which I originally saw at the cinema back in 1983. There’s a very stark contrast between the aesthetic of the Nostromo- functional, lived-in, run-down, unglamorous- and the gorgeous direction. The pace is extraordinarily slow. This is often, of course, because this is a tense thriller, but in the early scenes it simply seems to be for the sake of beauty. And beautiful it is, oddly enough. The ship may be a dull corporate blob, designed for function alone, but there is beauty. Also, there’s blueness. Lots of blueness. This is probably one of the bluest films I’ve ever seen.

Like Ridley Scott’s later Blade Runner, this is an interestingly contemporary take on the future. Again, everyone smokes. But this is a corporate ship, with lots of mentions of “The Company” but no mention of any governmental authority. How very 1979 and New Right. Also, everyone (even the cat!) is known by their surname alone, which gives a sense of coldness and alienation. It’s interesting that, while the characters are all distinct and well-drawn, none of them are particularly likeable. We identify with them because we identify with their circumstances as corporate wage-slaves in recognisable situations with sci-fi trappings and added peril, not because they’re people we’d particularly like to know.

This is an almost contemporary version of space travel, with a lot of screen time being given to the putting on of spacesuits and the opening and closing of airlocks. Space flight is not shown as safe or easy. Being a pioneer means danger and discomfort as it always has and always will.

Oh, and the computer interface has dated awfully, hasn’t it? And “Mother” seems awfully primitive in 2012. But still… this is superb. Hardly anything happens, but the tension is extraordinary. The scene with the cat in the locker, and the long, drawn-out scenes of Brett looking for the cat before he’s killed, and Dallas’ attempts to escape as Lambert panics, are justly legendary.

But what’s truly extraordinary about this film, and elevates it above the status of a superior thriller, is the gender and sexual subtext. I’m hardly the first to point out that it’s a man, Kane, who is brutally, orally raped and murdered, even giving birth to the creature. Interestingly, the white men all die first. And the final survivor (and probably the character who deserves to live the most) is Ripley. It’s an interesting subversion of the gender roles, and perhaps to an extent the racial roles, that we would expect.

Simple though the plot is, there are a couple of very nice twists. I’d forgotten that Ash was a robot; this is a superb performance from Ian Holm, who produces a character that makes sense whether or not you know he’s a robot or just a cold fish. And the alien being aboard Ripley’s escape pod is a huge shock. It’s a joy to see this film again, and I’m looking forward to the next three…