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.

Johnny Got His Gun (1971)

 "I'll pray for him for the rest of my days. But I will not risk testing his faith against your stupidity."

Two things first. One: this film is one of the finest works of cinematic art to which I've been exposed, and I've blogged many hundreds of films. I'm very grateful to the lovely individual who introduced me to it. Two: yes, I've seen the video to Metallica's "One" probably hundreds of times. That means, firstly, that there were spoilers, although I don't think that matters and, secondly, that finding clips I recognised provided some relief from the beautiful yet cathartic horror of what this film is about.

It's an anti-war fim, yes, completely and absolutely; the end caption drives that home. But there is so much subtext here. The poetry of both the dialogue and the direction is painfully exquisite. The sheer horror of imagining oneself without eyes, nose, limbs, mouth, movement, yet forced to live one's natural span with nothing but interior life and what touch and feeling one is permitted. The ambiguity between dream and reality, with sedatives further blurring the lines. The importance of kindness, a kiss on the forehead. The joy of sunlight. 

The longing for extinction. For this cannot be life.

Joe's dreams of the past- in colour, for the monochrome of the present has an obvioius symbolism- mix memory and surrealism. The sweet yet only time that he and Corrine, people of their time, in 1917, enjoy the union of their bodies. His innocence. The cynical evil of a world that, having communicated with him and registered his wish to die, keep him alone, secret, to live and suffer. The frustrated kindness of the nurse and his love for her. 

It's hard to process, shortly after a first viewing, how much meaning there is in this film.But it is magnificent, cathartic, beautiful.

Don’t Look Now (1973)

 “The one who’s blind. She’s the one who can see.”

This film has a reputation of one of this country’s famous horror films, despite the fact that it’s largely set in Venice, and one of its two co-stars is Canadian. I am, I’m sure you’ve gathered, blogging this because it’s Halloween weekend. Yet this isn’t the film I was expecting.

The direction is filets and full of nice little tricks and juxtapositions. The whole directorial grammar is that of a horror film. Nicolas Roeg, whose I work I have never previously, to my fault, seen, excels. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland are excellent. There’s a lot of cleverness here, from the echoes from John’s job being to restore the murky and faded past, which is awfully gothic, to the whole presence of Venice here in this very British yet also very Italian, Giallo film.

Venice is so very present- reminding me of nothing so much as Siouxie and the Banshees with their video for their cover of Dear Prudence- but has never been more dark or creepy.

And yet, good as the film is, it somehow doesn’t particularly impress as a horror film until it’s too late. This film is seen as a classic of the genre, yet beyond the considerable style, I must confess, I find little substance beyond the obvious.

However, the film is very well shot, and Venice is. Wry pressure. I just wish I’d enjoyed this more.

Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965)

“An unfortunate misnomer for I am the mildest of men...”

This is the first of the Amicus portmanteau horror films from Freddie Francis and Milton Subotsky, and the pieces are already in place- a number of vignettes of varying quality, An overarching framework that looks gradually more sinister as the film progresses, a troupe of British character a tor’s including some quirky choices, and of course the ever-splendid Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

The overarching framework is that Dr “Schrek” (Nosferatu reference alert) uses Tarot cards to predict the bleak future of each of the very male occupants of a railway compartments. Yes, compartments and, indeed, a steam train; 1965 feels so very long ago sometimes. It’s an odd structure plot-wise, as each character is told their ghastly tale of what awaits them only for none of that to happen and all of them to die in a train crash, but it’s a suitably atmospheric framework and Cushing is superb.

The first vignette, a Gothic take of a werewolf in the Hebrides, is probably the weakest. But the second, where a vine takes over the world(!) features a rare acting role by none other than future Radio 1 DJ Alan Freeman. Not ‘alf, pop pickers. And we get the interesting sight of him interacting with Bernard “M” Lee as a vine threatens to kill them all.

The third tale, with Roy Castle as a jazz trumpeter, is much stronger, as musician Biff steals the time of a Voodoo god that he finds in the Caribbean, with ominous consequences. But the absolute highlight is Lee’s snobbish and conceited art critic who gets his revenge from being humiliated by an artist he dislikes by running him over so his right hand is lost, only to be pursued by the disembodied stop motion hand until, poetically, he loses his hand in a car crash. I suspect an influence on Evil Dead 2 here, but Lee’s very real performance hopes the main thing work. The silly last vignette, with a young Donald Sutherland and  a very Bram Stoker take on vampires and an interesting effect of a bar, can’t follow this but nicely rounds things off.

The vignettes are variable but the Roy Castle and Christopher Lee segments are particularly superb, and the whole thing is atmospheric, fun and entertaining in equal measure in spite of the plot holes and the variable quality of the vignettes. Worth a look.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)

“I’m the Chosen One. And I choose to go shopping.”

OK, I know. This is four horror films in a row, sort of. It’ll be something very different next time, I promise.

I’m saying nothing about how soon I’ll be reviewing Buffy and Angel on TV for this blog(!), but suffice to say that I’ve seen every episode before, although a few years have passed. And that makes this film a very odd experience indeed. And I’m not just talking about the presence of an absurdly young Hilary Swank and David Arquette.

For a start, there’s the absence of that theme tune. This is film, not TV, so exposition needs to be over with quickly; hence the flashback at the start. We quickly move to the present day, though (well, the early ‘90s) and to Southern California, although not Sunnydale.

I’m sure that for most Americans reading this blog, the institution on the American High School was a formative experience in your life. But to me, a foreigner, it’s something defined entirely by popular culture, and a huge chunk of it Buffy-related. All the tropes of the American high school- cheerleaders, strange sports of which I know nothing, those strange jackets, jocks, nerds, stoners, senior proms, homecoming queens (whatever they are) are just that: tropes from film and TV.

And we start right in the middle of this sort of thing, with a bunch of cheerleaders and some teenage boys playing basketball. Even in the early lines in these scenes it’s apparent that we’re going to get a very witty script indeed, which should come as no surprise as the writer is Joss Whedon. In fact, I’d argue that the script is pretty much entirely brilliant, and the film’s many shortcomings are due to other factors, but more of that later.

Anyway, Buffy and her friends are, like, totally a bunch of Valley Girls, with dialogue which sounds like it could have come straight from that Frank Zappa song (which is, as if it needed saying, my soundtrack to writing this!). I could listen to them talking all day.

It all looks a bit cheap, though, and there’s little focus to the succession of scenes we get; vampires, Rutger Hauer as “The Master” (that gets re-used!), Pike and Ben. In fact, we’re introduced to so many different similarly-aged characters that it takes some time to get used to who’s who.

Eventually Buffy meets her Watcher, Merrick, played by Donald Sutherland, whose accent seems all over the place. Is he trying to sound British or something? Is he even attempting the same accent in every scene? It doesn’t feel like it. He’s certainly phoning in his performance, which is a shame; like everyone else in this film, he gets great dialogue. Kristy Swanson, on the other hand, is actually quite good, but her performance it pitched too far towards pure broad comedy. But that’s the main problem with this film; Joss Whedon’s scripts are invariably funny, but they’re more effective if played mostly straight.

Merrick exposits at Buffy until she’s convinced, and tells her of Lothos, the “Master” we met earlier. He shows her some real vampires and she stakes them. This being a low budget film, though, they don’t disintegrate. They just fall down rather unconvincingly.

Ben is vamped, and calls on his friend Pike. Fortunately for Pike, he doesn’t invite his former friend in, because he’s acting weird. By floating in mid-air, for one thing, although this apparent ability of vampires is never referred to again.

We get the usual sort of plot for this sort of movie, really; protagonist gets called from humdrum life to do Great Things; protagonist refuses but is persuaded to continue; protagonist meets Big Bad and gets arse whupped; mentor figure gets killed; protagonist gets big final showpiece battle. But here, the fact that we pretty much expect all this to happen means the emphasis can go on witty dialogue such as “All I want to do is graduate from high school, go to Europe, marry Christian Slater and die.” It’s a shame the characters feel so wooden, and I don’t think that reflects any fault in the script.

Merrick persuades Buffy to continue by showing her that she has superhuman strength and reflexes, something which she’s unaccountably failed to notice until now. We then get an unintentionally hilarious montage scene, complete with rubbish music, which goes on for aaaaages.

At last she gets a proper vampire fight, or at least the nearest we’re ever going to get in this terribly directed movie in which all the fight scenes are slow, ponderous, entirely lacking in oomph and full of characters standing around talking mid-fight. Here she discovers that “My secret weapon is PMS!”, and Merrick discovers that Buffy can’t even make a decent cup of tea.

Buffy then rescues Pike, who by this point is obviously going to be the love interest. After pausing to see Rutger Hauer about to eat a little kitten (awww!), we then get shown how alienated Buffy is becoming from her rather shallow friends. Still, that night, she chooses cheerleading over slaying. I think my favourite character in the film is the team coach (“Assert your personhood! Actualise! Actualise!”), the most stereotypical Southern Californian ever.

Soon a vamp comes on to the pitch, or court, or whatever it is that basketball gets played on, and Buffy gives chase, with motorbikes and everything. Here she meets loads of vampires and the Master himself, but for some bizarre reason they don’t actually want to kill her as she’s “not ready”. How very sporting of them.

Merrick, who has suddenly turned up, gets suddenly killed and, in a rather bathetic scene, dies in Buffy’s arms, telling her with his last words to keep doing it “wrong”. It’s such a shame this doesn’t really work. Yes, it’s badly directed, like the whole damn film, but there never was any chemistry between the two of them.

After this, Buffy has a crisis of confidence, and gets a bit of a pep talk from Pike. It’s a nice reversal of the usual gender roles from Whedon’s avowedly feminist script but, again. It would be nice if there was some semblance of chemistry between the two of them.

It’s obvious that the school dance is going to be the scene of the final confrontation, and it’s a scene that could have only taken place in 1992 and no other year. Even the DJ looks like he should be a member of Faith No More. Buffy’s not happy; her boyfriend has humiliated her by publicly dumping her in from of her smug and mocking friends, but Pike has gatecrashed the party. She’s glad to see him, they dance together, and they kiss. Inevitably, this is when the vampires attack- and I notice this is the exact point where the music suddenly changes to the likes of Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Halford. If this is the effect that vampires have on music being played on dancefloors, then frankly I think there should be more of them.

Fortunately, Pike has remembered to take all Buffy’s stuff, and we get a series of long, talky and uninvolving fight scenes. The Master suddenly turns up playing a violin, which makes me momentarily feel that we’re about to segue into the music video for Come on Eileen. This is a very silly scene for something that’s meant to be a climax; the annoying vamp’s slow and “ironically” badly-acted death is just embarrassing, and for someone who’s supposed to be the Big Bad the Master poses absolutely no sense of threat whatsoever. He even dies with an “oops”.

This film is entertaining enough, but this is entirely due to the excellent script. Not only is this badly shot, you get the sense, from the fact that many of the actors here are perfectly good elsewhere, that the big problem with this movie is a director who simply can’t give direction to actors. A sadly wasted opportunity. Fortunately, though, there was to be another chance…