The Killing (1956)

 "It isn't fair!"

This early film by Stanley Kubrick has no stars- hardly the last of his films to fit this description- and I took the quote from a parrot. The narrative structure is cleverly non-linear but the use of narration to explain this feels a little awkward in 2023. Yet this is a stone cold classic, a truly great heist film.

Heist movies are more intrinsically philosophical than you might think. A heist consists of an intricate, precise plan where all the many moving parts must work perfectly.  Yet even the best laid plans must take place in our chaotic little universe. Even in successful heists, little things go wrong that create ripples. As hrere, it's after the apparently successful heist that things go horribly pear-shaped for most. I suppose one moral is that crime doesn't pay, but more fundamentally that we do not live in a clockwork universe and there are no happy-ever-after. This film articulates all of that beautifully, the heist as tragedy.

It does this all the more so because of the very real characters, already tragic before anything happens. We know from the beginning that Johnny Clay's promises to his sweetheart are doomed to fail. Only just out ofv a five year stretch, instead of marrying her he will be going back inside. Then there's the horribly real unhappy couple that is Sherry and George- she's far more intelligent, greedy and immoral than the wet drip she married. The two relationships are quite the contrast, but both equally doomed.

Even the little characters are well crafted. I like Nikki's comeuppance for his racism, and that Maurice, the thug whose role is to start a fight, is a chess-playing intellectual.

This film has depth. It has characterisation. It is a masterpiece.

Batman: Ice Spy & The Duo Defy

Ice Spy

"Gosh, Batman. That's sure great wit all right."

Only in Batman would the above quote relate to gentle taking the piss out of Rabelais and his supposed great wit. I suspect some long-held pedagogical grudge on the part of writer Charles Hoffman.

Overall, though, this is a perfectly decent couple of episodes that has more than its share of funny moments but never really stands out. Eli Wallach gives a perfectly good performance but I think the character of Mr Freeze, on his third actor now, has outstayed his welcome somewhat. If they carry on like that they'll be casting some random Austrian bodybuilder next.

The plot is delightfully silly- use a fake iceberg to hijack a cruise ship and hijack an Icelandic professor with some formula or other. There's a glamorous moll, of course. There's a moderately interesting death trap. But the highlight of the episode, and comic highlight from the splendid Adam West, is where Gordon and O'Hara hold two phones together so Batman and Bruce Wayne can hold a conversation. It's not the first time I've said it, but being a comic straight man requires enormous talent, and West has it in spades.

Oh, and what's this window cameo from the "Carpet King"? Who he?


The Duo Defy

"A true crime fighter always carries everything he needs in his utility belt, Robin"

This second episode is just a little by-the-numbers, with a more than usually rubbish cliffhanger resolution and an ending that feels rushed, but we get more dialogue heralding the imminent arrival of Barbara Gordon, and enough wit and fun to make up for the so-so plot and mildly rubbish villain. No wonder we won't see Mr Freeze again.

The stakes, and ransom demands, are absurdly and wonderfully high. There's a nice moment in the Batcopter with the usual piece of stock footage where Robin says he can't track the bugged seal below, and Batman gently reminds him that the seal is in fact a marine mammal. We even get a slight reprise of the same Rabelais quote.

Overall, then, an average and representative story, not inappropriate to end the second season, which has had both highs and lows but notably more of the former.

A quick diversion while I blog something else (something short) over the next few days, then Season Three...

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

"I haven't poisoned it..."

"It's always good to know that."

SPOILERS

Well, that was very good indeed, and not at all what you'd expect from what on the surface of what looks like a typical late 1950s low budget horror flick which does, after all, star Vincent Price at his camp best. Instead we get a fourth wall-breaking, immaculately plotted (well, there are a few holes on reflection bt let us not be churlish: how did Annabelle and Trent know that Loren would hand out guns?) and, above all, gloriously witty.

This is, in the end, a murder mystery without any supernatural elements. Well, other than the heightened sense of reality, but it just about manages to skirt the line. In the Lorens we have one of cinema's most gloriously acidic couples, appropriate considering where one of them ends up, with each cheerfully wanting to murder the other. There's what looks like an unpleasant note of feminine hysteria in the treatment of Nora but this is partly explained. This is far from the square-jawed 1950s Hollywood I'm used to seeing.

Most refreshingly surprising, though, is the witty fourth-wall breaking and the cheerful use of haunted house tropes throughout to heighten the atmosphere and drama. A gloriously fun way to wind down of a Tuesday evening and the best Vincent Price performance I've seen to date.

Blacula (1972)

"You shall be... Blacula!"

Oh my God. The hair! The clothes! Must be the early '70s. Great fun, though. This is my first Blaxploitation film but it certainly won't be my last.

On reflection I should probably have watched Dracula: A.D. 1972 first: it's not unlikely that it was an influence. But I loved this. Oh, the plot was generic Hammer-style stuff and there's not a star in sight, but the very moment I heard the line above being declaimed by Dracula I knew I'd love this film.

This is, plot wise, a modern Dracula with '70s black American vernacular and an arrestingly frequent use of the word "faggot" we have a Van Helsing in the form of s detective, and even a Lucy. We have an early '70s depiction of a gay couple. We have an unlikely doppelgänger of Blacula's beloved. And we have a showdown, a final tragic suicide by sunlight, and a genuinely impressive concluding visual effect involving maggots. 

I enjoyed this muchly. Next time I see a blaxploitation film, though, I want Pam Grier!