Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

First broadcast in 1973 as an episode for the long running, German detective series, Tatort (which still airs today.) Dead Pigeon On Beethoven Street is truly, the legendary Sam Fuller’s strangest film. It’s a bizarre film noir (in colour) that hypnotises you, urging you to keep watching.

New York private investigator Sandy (Corbett) travels to Germany to find out why his partner was killed over a compromising photo of a U.S. senator. Sandy meets up with agent provocateur, Christa (Lang, who later married Fuller in real life) who is part of a blackmail syndicate led by Mensur (Differing), who is also an expert sword fighter.

Gaining Christa’s trust by drugging her and creating his own compromising photos – in order to create the persona of a rival blackmailer – Sandy then infiltrates Mensur’s organisation, discovering his game of extorting world dignitaries for large sums of money. His mission is to then break the ring and get the senator’s photo.

Corbett and Lang have a nice onscreen chemistry and Differing plays a villain that would feel at right at home in a James Bond movie. The dialogue is great in some parts and very weird in others. There is a major lack of film coverage during the movie and the viewer has to fill in the blanks in their head during some crucial scenes.

You have to hand it to Fuller who shot this on a shoestring budget where there are lots of guerilla-style long shots and segments that he just went out and filmed with his actors running around adding in sound later. Fuller does make great visual use of a Mardi Gras type parade, that includes Mensur’s hitman/heroin junkie dressed up like a clown (who talks to himself) that’s sent to kill Christa, and his escape from a hospital that includes throwing a man in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs.

The fight between Corbett and Differing is one of the strangest battles in sword fighting history. It’s like the $1.98 version of the Prisoner of Zenda.

Fuller shines particularly in one segment where Sandy is alone with his thoughts in a café and a little girl approaches him lighting his cigarette. He tells her his problems and his love for Christa as she just listens. He tips her as he leaves and they both press hands against the café’s window smiling. It’s a touching moment.

Overall, its worth watching to see what Fuller created and the unexpected ending is particularly satisfying.

Special Features: Trailer / Documentary (by Robert Fischer- return to Beethoven Street with interviews by Christa Lang-Fuller, Eric P. Caspar, Wim Wenders and many more) / Essays (by Lisa Dombrowski author of the Films of Samuel Fuller and Samuel B. Prime) / booklet

DEAD PIGEON ON BEETHOVEN STREET / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: SAMUEL FULLER / SCREENPLAY: / STARRING: GLENN CORBETT, CHRISTA LANG, ERIC P. CASPAR, ANTON DIFFERING / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Based on Adelaida García Morales’ short story El sur, this 1983 film version was voted one of the best Spanish films ever made. Directed by Morales’ then-partner, the celebrated director Victor Erice (The Spirit of the Beehive) it tells the story of the adult Estrella as she thinks back to her childhood in Northern Spain, her memories of her mythical (to Estrella at least) and emotionally withdrawn father, Agustin, his complex relationship with the south of the country and his own hidden history.

Agustin was forced to leave the south due to his opposition of the dictator Franco’s regime and fractious relationship to his father, and since then lived not only in a literal exile from his home but also a self-imposed inner exile from those around him, stranded in his past. The family lived in a farm house away from other people at the edge of the city, and Estrella and her mother Julia endured this physical isolation and his emotional distance from them both.

The film begins on the morning 15-year old Estrella awoke to discover her father had disappeared. Estrella had been infatuated with her father and the mystery of his Southern years and the film tells of how Estrella came to learn that her father was flawed and that he had his own infatuation, something that shades her previously uncomplicated idolisation of him. El Sur is a film about memory and the gulf between what we imagine life to be and the reality of life as it is, and the painful discoveries of childhood as we come to realise our parents are humans too.

This is one of those instances where a film takes what was written evocatively for the page and truly brings it to life for the cinema. Erice, his director of photography Jose Luis Alcaine and cameraman Alfredo Mayo collaborate here to produce an intensely beautiful movie. Precisely using light and shade, composition of shot and direction, El Sur is remarkable viewing. Assisted by standout performances from the two young actresses portraying Estrella at age 8 and 15, and Omero Antonutti as Agustin, this is an evocative and moving experience.

Apparently intended to be 3 hours in length, production was halted by producer Elias Querejeta when funding changed and so we don’t get the final act of the film, which means this could be considered an unfinished film. That doesn’t mean that what we have here isn’t eminently worthwhile and fully formed as it is, and as mentioned earlier, it is considered a masterpiece of Spanish cinema, something we would readily agree with. An almost perfect example of cinematic storytelling at its finest, in a great BFI presentation.

Special Features: Video Essay on the films of Victor Erice / Victor Erice Interview / Theatrical Re-Release Trailer / illustrated Booklet

EL SUR (1983) / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: VÍCTOR ERICE / SCREENPLAY VÍCTOR ERICE, ADELAIDA GARCÍA MORALES / STARRING: OMERO ANTONUTTI, SONSOLES ARANGUREN, ICÍAR BOLLAÍN / RELEASE DATE: 23RD JANUARY

We’ve always been sceptical of health farms and diet pills, and this obscure little gem from Down Under just validates our thoughts.

The middle-class residents of housing complex Pebbles Court become the unwitting guinea pigs for an unscrupulous health company whose new vitamin Vimuville certainly helps the user shed the pounds. Well, actually, it causes them to hallucinate, mutate and ultimately, melt. While the hapless victims are put through their suffering, the police attempt to figure out what’s going on and close in on the shifty company and corrupt doctors, who all appear to care very little about the shocking results of their trails.

While the story is fairly simple, the execution is more akin to an anthology movie, as each reaction to the vitamin – and gruesome death – is treated in an episodic fashion. It’s understandable when you realise that the script was made up of a series of short stories, but what it might lose in cohesion (there’s a lengthy segment in which a pair of tearaways stop off at a run-down garage-diner occupied by an inbred family that seems completely irrelevant until it turns out old papa provides a vital ingredient to the vitamin formula), it makes up for in pace and inventively gory demises.

Body Melt tries its best to be as ‘cult’ as it can. Not just in the effects, but with some of the more outlandish aspects of the characters. We’ve touched on the inbred garage family already, and they certainly tick all manner of boxes in the weird stakes, but then there’s also the security for the head of the company. They are overly muscle-bound and dressed for the gym rather than in suits; one of them also has an unnaturally high-pitched voice, and the other dies by exploding penis after popping the pills. If anything, it works in spite of all the forced elements, rather than because of them. There’s a distinct antipodean charm to it that highlights some very different sensibilities but keeps the satire relevant to a universal audience – be it the fake infomercial, health fanatics or the intense autopsy examiner.

Being an Australian production, it’s no surprise that there are a few familiar TV faces, notably Neighbours’ Harold Bishop himself, Ian Smith and Gerard Kennedy (The Flying Doctors), and it’s fun seeing them in such a schlocky (and incredibly gory) flick.

Coming a few years after such body horror delights as Society and Street Trash and following a similar satirical tone, Body Melt is an overlooked and underappreciated classic. Sure, it’s patchy, but it’s also a hell of a lot of fun.

BODY MELT / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: PHILIP BROPHY / SCREENPLAY: ROD BISHOP, PHILIP BROPHY / STARRING: GERARD KENNEDY, ANDREW DADDO, IAN SMITH, MATTHEW NEWTON / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

After his mother died, Michael’s dad Roger managed to drink his way out of a job and the pair out of their house. Now the two of them are forced to live in a run down cabin in the woods owned by Michael’s uncle. Roger isn’t much interested in finding any work, and Michael is dismayed by their new living arrangement. Upon arrival it’s clear something violent happened at the cabin but they chalk it up to vandals and move in anyway.

Soon after Michael’s uncle Will arrives with Roger’s friend Sergio, a tedious douchebag, for a weekend of drinking and hunting. As Michael doesn’t want to drink and isn’t interested in hunting he thinks things can’t get much worse. But a logging company cutting down swathes of the forest is about to prove him wrong. Their activity has put a family of Sasquatch on the move and the cabin is directly in their path.

But before then we need long stretches where nowt of interest happens. Sergio marks himself out as a charm-deficient git, and the other three circle each other checking for personality, but alas, nothing is discovered. They wander around the woods for a bit, argue, fight and generally endear themselves to no one, least of all an audience, until the family Bigfoot shows up.

Although it’s a low budget labour for Portanova, the Washington state scenery is a big plus, and he knows if he points the camera at some trees he’s onto a winner. Having said that, despite having a huge natural filmset on hand a lot of the film feels like a mid-season episode of a minor league sci-fi show. It has that we-shoot-in-Vancouver feel.

Dramatically it’s inert, none of the conflict between the father and son rising much above soap opera level. As a horror film it’s not especially gory and certainly isn’t scary, more likely inadvertently comical. There’s often a listlessness to proceedings and subsequently there’s no real oomph to much of what transpires.

If a straight-up Bigfoot flick is your cryptozoological cinematic bag then that’s definitely what Portanova is aiming for. From the opening scene where another hunter encounters the creatures to the Sasquatch-siege finale, they’re on screen frequently. This isn’t the mysterious slow discovery of the creature, but a show all as often as possible.

So then, it’s not particularly good. If you’re hoping for a scary creature-feature throwback, this is not the film you’re looking for. But if you’re an undemanding Sasquatch enthusiast you get plenty of a dudes-in-hairy-suits bang for your buck. To those people it’s mildly recommended as you’ll get what you expect, another in a long line of not particularly good Bigfoot features. For everyone else it’s a pass.

VALLEY OF THE SASQUATCH (HUNTING GROUNDS) / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: JOHN PORTANOVA / STARRING: MILES JORIS-PEYRAFITTE, JASON VAIL, BILL OBERST JR, DAVID SAUCEDO / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The imagination of H. G. Wells and the visual talents of Ray Harryhausen are such a good match for each other that it’s a surprise they only came together for one film. The trailblazer of stop-motion animation planned to adapt the Victorian novelist’s most famous work, The War of the Worlds, but because that film never came to fruition, First Men in the Moon must suffice.

Directed by Nathan Juran, with Harryhausen credited as associate producer and visual effects creator, this ‘60s classic adapts Wells’ 1901 novel of the same name. When Victorian businessman Bedford (Judd) discovers that the reclusive inventor Cavor (Jeffries) has come up with a technique to negate gravity, he immediately invests in it, hoping to become rich off the practical applications. But Cavor has other ideas, and soon Bedford is whisked along on a trip to the moon, with his narked-off girlfriend Kate (Hyer) accidentally on board, too.

The characters and performances are clichéd (perhaps the fair term is ‘of their time’) – the opportunistic businessman, the mad scientist, the whiny-but-actually-not-as-annoying-as-she-could-be girlfriend – but this does allow for some lively comic interplay between them. There’s also tension derived from Bedford and Cavor’s attitudes to the aliens, as the businessman wants to shoot them on first sight, while the scientist would rather learn about their society; it’s an ultimately optimistic message about the importance of understanding other cultures.

The script, from Jan Read and Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale, retains much of Wells’ tale. This means it’s a fantastic science fiction adventure, and one where the naïveté of the Victorian science only adds to the quirky charm – it’s a film where you can jump around the moon in a diving suit, because “if it can hold water out, it can hold air in”. However, there is an added framing story; the opening of this, in which the first American moon landing team find Bedford’s Union Jack, is a fun way into the story. The ending, however, doesn’t work as well; its weird twist nabs a plot element from another Wells story, which really doesn’t work here and serves only to ruin the story’s message.

But what allows this 1964 movie to remain entertaining today is the delightful animation. Though some of the moon creatures are simply men in fly suits, others are rendered using Harryhausen’s ‘Dynamation’ stop-motion, a highlight being the giant caterpillar-like beast that accosts Bedford and Cavor.

For animation enthusiasts, sci-fi fans, and kids not yet corrupted by the lure of CGI, First Men in the Moon showcases the work of two of the most pioneering, revered names in fantastic entertainment. Quality viewing that’s not dated half as much as your average CGI-fest blockbuster will do in half the time.

FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (1964) / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: NATHAN JURAN / SCREENPLAY: NIGEL KNEALE, JAN READ / STARRING: EDWARD JUDD, MARTHA HYER, LIONEL JEFFRIES / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Head of the Family was made in 1996 by B-movie king Charles Band, but feels like it comes straight from the mid-‘80s at the height of the VHS boom instead of at the point when the format’s dominance had begun to decline along with most audiences’ tolerance for the shameless trash it produced.

Pretty much everyone in the film is a thoroughly unpleasant individual and as a result you feel no guilt in enjoying watching the reprobates thoroughly screw each other over when they’re not literally screwing each other. Far from being a hero, Lance is selfish, cowardly and only marginally smarter than the local morons he is contrasted against, but is still the closest thing available to a match for the eponymous Stackpoole patriarch Myron, a tiny man with a giant-sized head and corresponding enhanced intellect (all things being relative). The pair’s simplistic mind games form much of the plot, the back and forth power plays pushing things to ever greater extremes.

Rounding out the cast of misfits is the rest of the Stackpoole clan, the super-strong Otis, Wheeler with enhanced senses and giant eyeballs, and Ernestina, whose special powers we are informed hardly need told (hint: it’s not her brains). The least unlikable character is the delectable Loretta (played by softcore porn star Jacqueline Lovell in her first non-erotica role, actually proving herself to be a half-decent actress in the process) and the comparative affection you have for her gives any danger she is placed in an accompanying sense of peril.

The resultant chaos is almost reminiscent of Coen brothers movie, with an assortment of exaggerated characters stumbling through scheme and counter-scheme, each run with the erroneous assumption that their operator is more intelligent than they think they are, while events are periodically punctuated by overstated monologuing. The absurdity is augmented by some hilariously clunky expository dialogue, much of which takes place during fairly frequent sex scenes as though economising the film’s tight budget and reducing the amount of film requiring shot.

For a film whose entire premise is built around the word play of its title Head of the Family is not half bad, and when looking for 80 minutes of daft, perverse and unapologetic nonsense to provide some mindless entertainment, you could certainly a lot worse.

HEAD OF THE FAMILY / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: CHARLES BAND / SCREENPLAY: CHARLES BAND, NEAL MARSHALL STEVENS / STARRING: BLAKE ADAMS, JACQUELINE LOVELL, J.W. PERRA, BOB SCHOTT, JAMES JONES, ALEXANDRIA QUINN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Luke (son of Ridley) Scott’s directing debut is a serviceable, if unremarkable, lo-fi sci-fi thriller which asks familiar questions about the place of artificial intelligence in the modern world. Unfortunately these are questions which have been asked a little too often recently and, in all honesty, the answers were given pretty comprehensibly in Alex Garland’s striking Ex Machina just two years ago. Consequently, Morgan just comes across as a rather flabby postscript, a film with pretensions towards the pretentious which it abandons in the final reel for a few fist fights, car chases and random bloodshed.

The whole set-up is achingly familiar, if not entirely uninteresting. Corporate troubleshooter Lee Weathers (Mara) is dispatched to a top secret middle-of-nowhere research facility where revolutionary experiments are being conducted on a new, advanced level of living, breathing artificial life. But Morgan (Taylor-Joy) has developed a glitch and has plunged a blade into the eye of one of her supervisors. Eeuuw! At the facility Weathers gets acquainted with the staff and even has a little romantic kissy-kissy with one of them. But clearly something’s not right and despite the best, slightly desperate efforts of the unit’s top brains (including the ubiquitous Toby Jones) to paper over the cracks and dismiss a previous rogue AI incident,  which saw a team of scientists killed, Weathers can’t help but voice her growing concerns, especially when Morgan kills a visiting psychologist (Giamatti). Not unreasonably, Lee decides that Morgan – super-powered and hyper-intelligent – ain’t worth the risk and orders the experiment to be terminated. You’d not be too far off the mark if you were to suggest that perhaps things don’t go quite as planned…

After a leisurely, moody first hour set in and around the research facility and its environs, establishing the tone of a film which has precious little originality but is content to revisit familiar themes with some style and gravitas, all Hell breaks loose in the last half-hour. Perhaps writer Owen felt his story needed a kick up the backside or maybe Scott decided he needed to show his credentials as an action director. Either way the last act is a shock to the system as Morgan sets off on a rampage, killing anyone in her way and suddenly ratcheting up the film’s previously-sedate adrenaline levels. This change of pace – and a ‘twist’ ending you’ll probably have twigged a good hour earlier – turns Morgan into a bumpy, frustrating ride. Although it was never destined to be anything other than a tame reworking of the likes of Hanna and Ex Machina, it might have stood a better chance of hanging onto its credibility as a measured character study-come-morality tale if it had ditched the gung-ho and been satisfied with being just a bit hey-ho. Watchable, well-made – Scott shows some promise behind the camera – and with game performances, Morgan’s not a waste of time but it certainly doesn’t tread any new ground and it’s hard to shake off the nagging suspicion that it really wasn’t trying to.

Special features: Commentary / deleted scenes / documentary / short film / still gallery

MORGAN / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: LUKE SCOTT / SCREENPLAY: SETH W. OWEN / STARRING: KATE MARA, ANNA TAYLOR-JOY, TOBY JONES, MICHELLE YEOH, PAUL GIAMATTI / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

With the apparent lack of distinctive voices (with the exception of names like James Wan and Mike Flanagan) in the mainstream Horror market, as the output seems increasingly overstuffed with jump scare studio offerings, the genre now seems to be booming independently and internationally. Back in 2014 Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night provided a strong start to the budding Persian language Horror market and now we have debut director Babak Anvari’s chilling offering Under The Shadow, which is a UK/Jordan/Qatar production, and has been shortlisted as the British entry for Best Foreign Language Feature at this year’s Oscars…and with any luck it will make the cut and get the win.

The film takes place during the period of a war torn Tehran in the 1980s (specifically The War of the Cities), as mother Shideh (Narges Rashidi) fails to re-qualify for her medical course at university and her problems only grow when her husband Iraj (Bobby Naderi) – who works as a doctor for the military – is called away to the war zone, leaving Shideh and their young daughter Dorsa (Avin Manshadi) both home alone together. Worse still, the mother and daughter and their neighbours are shaken by a missile strike that damages their housing block. As neighbours begin to relocate and the surroundings become more turbulent, Shideh and Dorsa become convinced something has invaded their home, as Dorsa’s beloved doll goes missing and stress slowly begins to raise.

Even before the scares fully envelop the screen, Anvari’s film entices with its frighteningly realistic presentation of this era of fear, panic and grief. The drama is real because the era was and the characters are similarly urgent, while the ideologies are timely and alarming. This film recalls Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook and A.J. Bayona’s El Orfanato in how eloquently and effectively it marries together atmospheric frights with meaning. This is a film that has much to say about the emancipation of women in this era of real life horror and also addresses ideas of the anxieties of war and the loss that comes with it. The surrounding disaster of the film is every bit as terrifying as the central maternal story of a mother and her child threatened by evil and how their relationship is strained further by this climate of fear and oppression.

This is a very slow burning film that is an absolute treat to a fan of the genre or any genre for that matter, as it methodically unravels to deliver well earned chills and startlingly original moments of culturally specific frights. The film simply excels at attacking both your heart and your mind, as its story is both emotive and lingeringly shocking, with a climax that leaves a lasting sense of unease in the face of seemingly inescapable evils (that are likened to the carnage perpetrated by war).

Rashidi is superb in the lead as Shideh and really captures the soul of a frustrated and  trapped individual, who is being confined by the views of the society in which she lives, while on the flip side she captures the shaken vulnerability of a mother doing her best in the face of so many problems and this unknown menace in her home. Meanwhile young Manshadi as Dorsa is equally brilliant and her stress and grief over her lost dolly (almost a character itself) is wonderfully reflective of her mother’s own parental nightmare and Dorsa as a character is such a strong core to the film. The supporting cast play a great part too but undeniably this is a film that belongs to its two female leads and Anvari has constructed two characters we truly care about and whose ordeal we suffer along with them.

From moments of hair raising scoring by Gavin Cullen, the perfectly paced direction by Anvari and the engulfing atmosphere, to the compelling characters and the many moments of idealogical impact, there is not a bad word this writer can find to say about Under The Shadow. This is what Horror filmmaking should be and not only is it the best film of last year but it is an absolute masterpiece. See it, or rather experience it, fear it and never forget it.

UNDER THE SHADOW / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: BABAK ANVARI / STARRING: NARGES RASHIDI, AVIN MANSHADI, BOBBY NADERI  / RELEASE DATE: 23RD JANUARY