Teleport City Cinema

film home | review index | a-b | c-d | e-f | g-h | i-l | m-n | o-q | r-s | t-v | w-z

Thursday, September 02, 2004

The Fall of the House of Usher

1960, USA. Starring Vincent Price, Mark Damon, Myrna Fahey, Harry Ellerby. Directed by Roger Corman. Available on DVD from Amazon.

So this is the one that started it all, so to speak, so long as you consider "it all" to be the first cycle of films based, sometimes extremely loosely, on the works of Edgar Allen Poe, and directed by low-budget legend Roger Corman. Prior to this film, Corman had made a name for himself slapping together drive-in quickies while Price had become a beloved horror film icon working with William Castle. Film production company AIP had specialized primarily in black-and-white genre pictures, made two at a time with ten-day shooting schedules. Everyone came together for this historic meeting of elements that remains, to this day, one of the best examples of American-made gothic horror films. Corman's Poe films for American International Pictures became to the United States what Hammer films were in England: low budget, wonderfully acted, gorgeously designed horror films dripping with atmosphere and literary tradition. It was Corman's first picture in scope, and one of AIP's first color films to be sold as an individual movie rather than as part of a package. It also had an extended shooting schedule - a whopping fifteen days as opposed to ten.

For this initial venturing forth into the murky waters of Poe's imagination, Corman stuck fairly closely to the original story - something they'd not always do. By the time Gordon Hessler inherited the role of house Poe director from Corman, the movies were Poe adaptations in title alone. But here we get a pretty close adherence to the source material as we meet young Philip Winthrop, played by genre film regular Mark Damon (Mario Bava's Black Sabbath), not to be confused with Mark Harmon (Summer School, not directed by Mario Bava), a Boston gentleman who is paying a visit to his most beloved Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey), who has herself returned from Boston to her ancestral home in Nightmaresville, USA, or some other similar New England locale. Philip's plans to sweep Madeline off her feet and into the welcome arms of marriage are stymied by Madeline's elder brother, played with delicious menace and sympathy by Vincent Price, who also sports a head full of blond hair. But the shocks don't end with the locks.

It seems Price is convinced that his sister is possessed of that ol' Usher madness that has caused so many of the ancestors to go on to lucrative careers as swindlers, murderers, rapists, adulterers, slavers, and any number of other unsavory pursuits. Price's Roderick Usher is himself something of an eccentric. He has hypersensitive eyesight and hearing, can only bear the touch of the softest materials, and plays the lute on a regular basis. He's also committed to eradicating the evil curse of the Usher family by seeing that neither he nor his sister ever get a chance to have children. Roderick considers this the least he can do to atone for the madness and suffering the Ushers have inflicted on the world. Philip thinks the guy is a loony, especially when Roderick begins speaking of how the very house itself has absorbed the madness and become a living creature of pure evil.

The conflict, then, arises between Roderick and his desire to quell the Usher name and Philip and his desire to marry Madeline, then go forth and propagate. From time to time, the house itself does seem to exert a certain will, hurling about bits of flaming charcoal and letting drop the occasional big, gaudy chandelier as the stonework of the house cracks and threatens to collapse. When Madeline seems to die of heart failure, Philip discovers that Roderick's determination to keep her cloistered in the house can take on sinister proportions.

The Fall of the House of Usher represents so many things to the genre of horror. For starters, it is really the beginning of both Roger Corman and Vincent Price being taken with a greater degree of seriousness than anyone had ever invested in them before. People in the industry knew that Corman could be depended on to do a job and do it competently. In fact, find fault with the man and his body of work where you will, but the fact remains that was Corman was able to do is nothing short of a cinematic miracle. With budgets far smaller than average, and shooting schedules that would make even the sturdiest director weep, Corman managed to make movies. Not great movies, most of the time, but entertaining ones that delivered the goods. I mean, the man could make a film in three days, from writing the script to doing the filming. And while a movie like The Terror may not be a classic, it certainly doesn't feel like a three-day movie. Corman also had a wonderful eye for selecting and fostering new talent, which is why the list of his assistants and actors includes the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, James Cameron, Peter Fonda, Johnathan Demme, and Peter Bogdanovich, among others. Coppola in particular would come into play later in the Poe cycle as a script doctor and dialog director for The Haunted Palace.

So all this was known about Roger Corman. By 1960, however, he was growing weary of the black and white quickies and wanted to do something a little more complex. He must have looked to the east and seen what hammer had done the previous couple of years with Curse of Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula, and The Mummy (all made with very low budgets as well) and thought to himself, heck, if they can do it, why can't I? The further success in Italy of Mario Bava's Black Sunday was all Corman needed to convince him that the time was ripe for the Americans to enter the Gothic horror game, and heck, what better author upon which to base one's stuff than America's own homegrown master of the macabre, Edgar Allen Poe? So he pitched AIP the idea for The House of Usher, and they went along with it. Afforded a whole five more days than usual to shoot the film, plus a chance to work in color and scope, Corman proved that he wasn't just a reliable workman director; when given the chance, he was also a reliable artistic director. It brought newfound respect to AIP in general and Corman in particular, who needed a does of respectability after directing films like The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Journey to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent.

Likewise, Vincent Price was recognized as a horror movie stalwart with proven marquee value, but few people had ever really taken him seriously as an actor even as they saluted his ability to make even the worst material enjoyable. In particular, his role in 1944's Laura was proof of the untapped dramatic ability in the man, but for all his power in that role, short-term memory meant that he was primarily known as the hammy millionaire dancing around with his impossibly complex skeleton marionettes in House on Haunted Hill. But Roger Corman believed that there was more to Price, and so cast him as the brooding, tortured, and quite possibly insane Roderick Usher. Price was more than up to the challenge and turns in a spectacular, moving performance as the melancholy heir to the Usher curse. The script by Richard Matheson doesn't allow Roderick to become the easy-to-hate hand-wringing villain of the piece. Though we're appalled at some of the things he does, Price and the script invest in the character an air of intelligence and sensitivity that makes him impossible to hate even when he's going about the business of entombing people while they're still alive. It's obvious that, mad or not, he sincerely believes that the purpose of his life is to end the Usher curse, and Price's agonized performance make him less of a villain than he is a fallen hero. Not to mention that Price looks positively exquisite in the role. He appears initially in a long, fitted red robe that makes him look almost like some sort of deranged Catholic cardinal.

It's no real surprise, looking back, that Matheson's script is so clever with the characters. He was fresh from writing for The Twilight Zone and went on to pen three more of Corman's fine Poe adaptations: 1961's Pit and the Pendulum, 1962's Tales of Terror, and the comedic send-up The Raven in 1963. In addition, he wrote the script for another Gothic black comedy with Vincent Price, 1964's Comedy of Terrors, wrote the novel I Am Legend which served as the basis for George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, The Omega Man starring Charlton Heston, and Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price. He'd later go on to provide another AIP-Corman/Hammer link by writing the script for one of Hammer's very best films, 1968's The Devil Rides Out. Hammer also had plans to film their own version of Matheson's I Am Legend, a tantalizing project which, unfortunately, never came to pass.

His script here is, like just about all the Poe films in both this and the later Hessler cycle, heavy on dialog, which means in order to keep moving forward, the film has to be equally heavy on atmosphere and strong performances. In terms of atmosphere, Corman and cinematographer Floyd Crosby hit one out of the park. The opening shot -- the only exterior location in the entire film -- is of Philip riding through a mist-choked dead forest. Roger Corman had heard about the fire in the Hollywood Hills and sent a film crew up there to shoot the scene. The result is an overpowering eeriness, really one of the finest moments of atmosphere in any Gothic horror film as our hero is dwarfed amid this haunting landscape of skeletal trees, mist, and barren, lifeless earth with the menacing gray-black hulk of the house looming above it all. It sets the tone perfectly for the film, and Corman maintains this hypnotic sense of decay and something just beyond the shadows. The film becomes such a mood piece, such a visual banquet, that one scarcely notices that there's precious little action and a lot of talking.

When the scares do come, they're usually quick and melodramatic. A startling entrance, a sudden death, the collapsing of a railing. The film draws its frightfulness not so much from the shock as it does from the overarching sense of dread that permeates every corner of the house. Whether there is some evil force lurking within its walls, or whether that evil force is simply Roderick's madness, is inconsequential. Corman makes sure you can feel that something is out there. That isn't to say, however, that the film is not without its shocks. Madeline's entombment is particularly harrowing, as is the finale in which she and her brother struggle to come to grips with the madness that engulfs them as the entire house catches fire and rumbles thunderously to the boggy ground. The score by AIP's resident composer and exotica pioneer, Les Baxter, further enhances the mood with its creepy blend of orchestral bombast, haunting soft spots, and occasional use of "the tortured howls of the damned."

Corman's philosophy for the Poe films was that they shouldn't necessarily reflect the familiar or the real world, that Poe was a psychological writer and so any films based on his work would have to inhabit a different world from the one we see everyday. Thus the limited number of exteriors and locations. Apart from the initial scene, the entirety of The House of Usher takes place within the house. The scope photography creates an odd sensation of wide-open claustrophobia, if that makes any sense at all. In the commentary for the DVD, Corman states that he didn't really think it was worth shooting in scope for a film set almost entirely indoors. What was the point? Well, it works out for the best. The house, which the script turns into a character, becomes this sprawling beast, immense and overshadowing and threatening to swallow up the human characters lost in its decaying opulence. Crosby's cinematography meshes perfectly with the production design by Daniel Haller, which follows in Hammer's footsteps by draping every inch of the set with gorgeous, vibrant props. His greatest achievement is that nothing looks like a prop. It all has an aged, lived-in appearance, which not only makes things more believable but also works in thematically with the notion that this is a house and a family whose existence, sanity, and very foundations are crumbling.

Exactly what is going on in the house is never fully realized. We're certainly led to think that Roderick might be right, that there is some malevolent supernatural force at work. But we're just as likely to believe that he's simply insane. Kindly at times, intelligent, and caring, but thoroughly mad to the point of committing unspeakable atrocities against himself and his sister to keep the Usher name from venturing forth to commit even greater atrocities against mankind. While Corman's Poe films are, production-wise, on par with Hammer's, the one thing that makes them different is that Hammer had a policy that stated no matter what sort of devilry took place in the film, good had to obviously triumph over evil by the end credits. The Poe films were never so forgiving to the forces of good, and often the "winner" is unclear, if indeed there is any winner at all. Subverting expectations was the fact that evil - or madness - was just as likely to conquer all as was good - perhaps even more so.

With the mood of the film firmly established, the rest of the weight of such a dialog-heavy film falls on the cast. It's a small cast, which undoubtedly allowed Corman to move fast and cheap while maintaining a high standard. Aside from a dream sequence in which some infamous Usher ancestors menace Philip, there are only four humans in the film: Philip, Roderick, Madeline, and the butler Bristol (Harry Ellerbe). Myrna Fahey's Madeline spends much of her time doing what the women in these films so often do, which is hugging the hero and collapsing on the bed. Her big scene doesn't come until the very end when the Usher madness begins to run rampant through the house. She's quite terrifying. Most of the film's lines come from Price and Damon, and since Damon is the hero of the film, that means he is essentially more boring than Price and confined to the "Good God, man! You can't be serious!" and "Good God, man! Are you mad?" before he finally gets to stagger around a burning set in the end. He's as serviceable a hero as any Gothic horror film hero who isn't played by Peter Cushing. Damon just can't stack up next to Price, but that's not really a fair comparison since Price is really turning in one of the most elegant, emotional and non-hammy performances in his career. As said, the only supporting hero who could have ever hoped to match him would have been Cushing and, well, even with his impressive skills he would have been a little old to pull off the role of a romantic twenty-something.

Our remaining supporting character is Bristol the butler, a man who seems much saner than Roderick but also seems to believe the same things as his more flamboyantly mad employer. Bristol's character, like all the Ushers, is cloaked in mystery. He's only partially explored, and his more tempered belief in the Usher curse and in the sentient evil of the house helps us understand and have more compassion for Roderick. All of the characters deliver Matheson's eloquent, perhaps overwrought at times, Victorian prose, and everyone takes yet another page from the book of Hammer by checking any sense of tongue-in-cheek camp at the door. Price, in particular, has some "creature of unspeakable horror" type of gloom and doom dialog that might have undone the whole film if it had been delivered with any hint of irony or anything but the greatest sense of sincerity and gravity. No matter how outrageous the claims may be, no matter how melodramatic the language, you never once fail to believe it. Price makes you believe it. It's easy to see how, if indeed the supernatural force is just a figment of his twisted imagination, he could have convinced his sister and butler to believe in it as fervently as he does.

House of Usher was a deserved hit, and critics and fans alike suddenly had to reassess the way they thought about Roger Corman, Vincent Price, and AIP. It is a grand accomplishment of American horror, full of imagination and wit and ambiance. It's arguably one the best horror films ever made, and certainly one of the top five or six Gothic horrors from the period, ranking alongside the very best from Hammer, Mario Bava, or Antonio Margheriti's own Edgar Allen Poe film, 1964's Castle of Blood. It certainly convinced AIP to invest more time and money (relatively speaking) in Roger Corman, resulting in several more Gothic horror films drawing from the stories of Edgar Allen Poe. All of Corman's Poe films are good, and a few are, quite frankly, absolutely brilliant. Masque of the Red Death and Haunted Palace run neck and neck with House of Usher, and together the three represent the paramount of American Gothic horror, not to mention showing how elegant and sumptuous a film can look even with a meager budget and blink-of-an-eye shooting schedule. The Pit and the Pendulum and The Tomb of Ligeia don't trail too far behind, for that matter.

For anyone who appreciates the history of horror, House of Usher is a treat. It creaks and creeps with menace and is crawling with intellectual angst and doom. It is a poetic, delicately crafted masterpiece of the macabre that fuels itself with atmosphere and an inspired performance from Vincent Price. Reality fades away completely as the movie pulls you in the way the plot pulls the characters into the downward spiral of insanity. In an age of disposable films, especially horror films, that have nothing to over beyond an action-packed visceral punch that abandons you as soon as the credits roll, House of Usher is something to treasure: a literate, patient, poetic horror film that will stay with you long after you've finished watching it.

Labels: Director: Roger Corman, Horror: Poe, Stars: Vincent Price, Studio: AIP, Year: 1960

posted by Keith at 12:45 PM | 0 Comments

Sunday, August 01, 2004

Brides of Dracula

Release Year: 1960
Country: England
Starring: Peter Cushing, Yvonne Monlaur, David Peel, Martita Hunt, Freda Jackson, Miles Malleson, Henry Oscar, Mona Washbourne.
Writer: Peter Bryan, Edward Percy, Jimmy Sangster
Director: Terence Fisher
Cinematographer: Jack Asher
Music: Malcolm Williamson
Producer: Anthony Hinds
Availability: Buy it from Amazon

When people talk about the sequence of films that make up Hammer Studio's "Dracula" series, a good many of them make the eight-year leap from the first film, 1958's Horror of Dracula to Dracula, Prince of Darkness in 1966. It's quite a jump, indeed, but one that seems to land you just about where you need to be, with the latter film beginning with a quick recap of the climax from the former. What gets lost in between the two films is the actual first sequel to Horror of Dracula, which is a shame because it's one of the best in the series, and one of the best vampire films Hammer ever produced.

1960's Brides of Dracula gets skipped over primarily for two reasons. First, it is the one of the only Hammer Dracula films not represented by a DVD release as of this review. This means that fans amassing a Hammer collection have a notable hole in the series that some of them might not even realize exists. The second reason Brides of Dracula tends to lurk in the shadows is because, while it sees the return of Peter Cushing as Dr. Van Helsing, it is Dracula - and Christopher Lee - free. Upon seeing how popular he was in the role, Lee was keen not to play the count again lest he be typecast and never get to play anything again besides Dracula or some cheap public domain variation thereof. The phenomenal success of Horror of Dracula and the first two Hammer Frankenstein movies showed the producers that audiences were hungry for the Hammer brand of Gothic horror, and another entry in the Dracula series was a given. But where to go when your Dracula doesn't want to do it again?

That was the question facing Hammer as they set about creating a sequel to Horror of Dracula. Without Lee, where do you go? The most obvious option would be to cast another actor in the role. That Dracula was destroyed in the finale of the first film was meaningless. Hammer could make up any number of ways to resurrect the count if they had the right man in the cape. But dropping another actor in, even another very good actor, just wouldn't do. Hammer was smart enough to recognize that a big part of the reason Dracula was so popular was because of Christopher Lee. Replacing him would almost surely result in fan backlash. So Hammer went with the second option, which was to attempt to handle the franchise the same way they were handling things in the Frankenstein movies.

Going into Horror of Dracula, Peter Cushing was the big name, and Christopher Lee was still an unknown commodity despite his appearance as the creature in Curse of Frankenstein. Coming out of Horror of Dracula, if Lee wasn't quite as big a name as Cushing, he was inarguably a big name. Hammer had progressed to a second Frankenstein film without Lee, focusing the series on Cushing's Baron Frankenstein instead of the monster. Perhaps, then, they could do the same with Dracula, and focus the film on the reoccurring character of Cushing's Dr. Van Helsing and his conflict with a parade of vampires. Assembling the remaining key players from the first film - director Terence Fisher and screenwriter Jimmy Sangster - Hammer went about creating the sequel to Horror of Dracula without Dracula or Christopher Lee. Initially titled Disciples of Dracula, the film soon became Brides of Dracula because even if Dracula isn't it, that doesn't mean you can't have his name in the title. Bruce Lee could tell Dracula a thing or two about that.

The movie begins with fearless Hammer beauty Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur, also in Circus of Horrors and Hammer's Terror of the Tongs) finding herself stranded in one of your standard-issue creepy little villages with an ominous secret. She's desperate to make it to the academy where she's to start a new teaching job since showing up days late with stories about villagers giving you the evil eye rarely endear you to the headmaster. Naturally, no one is willing to go out after dark though no one will explain exactly why. And they're not willing to give her a room at the inn, which is often the case with these grumpy locals, though I can't for the life of me figure out why. The landlord yells at you not to go out after dark and then, a breath later, yells at you to get out because he'll not rent a room to ye! What does he get by not renting out the room? I mean, they're often shown later regretting their decision and going, "Well, what you have had me do?" How about give her a room and then see her off in the morning with a smile?

Marianne eventually finds a sour old woman named Baroness Meinster who is willing to give Marianne a place to stay for the evening. Now all of a sudden the landlord has all sorts of rooms for rent and pleads with Marianne not to go. What's with these guys? If you went and ordered a pint of ale from them, they'd yell, "We've no ale for likes of you!" as they were serving you up a pint of ale. Every one of them is loopy as a shithouse bat. Not wanting to stay with the gruff and apparently crazy innkeeper, Marianne graciously accepts the Baroness' invitation to spend the evening in a posh mansion. Of course, we all know this'll lead to trouble, and it soon does. The Baroness seems to act weirder and weirder the longer Marianne is there, and before too long, Marianne even encounters the Baroness son, who the Baroness keeps chained to the wall in another room. Obviously this woman is as loony as the innkeeper, so Marianne agrees to free the young Baron Meinster (David Peel). Well, wouldn't you know it? The guy turns out to be a vampire, though Marianne herself is unaware of the fact.

Marianne gets where she's going with the help of one Dr. Van Helsing (Cushing), who happens to be passing through the area on his never-ending quest to study, understand, and drive a stake through the heart of the undead. Meinster, meanwhile, spends his time out of the grave preying on the local beauties, as well as the girls at the finishing school in which Marianne now works. As young lovelies start dropping dead then crawling back out of the grave, it's up to Van Helsing and Marianne - but mostly Van Helsing - to put an end to Meinster's reign of terror, thus putting one more nail in the coffin of the horrible disease of vampirism his old arch-foe Dracula has spread throughout the world.

Although a Dracula film without Dracula sounds like it should be a misfire, Brides of Dracula works even better for the absence of the titular neck-biter. David Peel's Baron Meinster isn't in the same class as Christopher Lee's towering prince of darkness, but he's plenty good and looks well scary when he starts to get all lusty and vamped out with bloodshot red eyes. Peel didn't have a lot of credits to his name before or after this film, but that doesn't reflect on his performance here. He is superb, tender and sincere-sounding when he needs to be, and ruthlessly animalistic once he's free to show his true colors. He wisely decides not to attempt a Christopher Lee impersonation and instead come up with a unique vampire character that has some obvious similarities stemming from the fact that the blood of Dracula runs through all vampire veins.

As Marianne, Yvonne Monlaur is acceptable - another in the long line of Hammer beauties who were picked for their looks instead of their skills, but who never the lass manage to come off relatively well, or at least well enough so as not to ruin the scenes in which they appear. Though her agreement to marry the Baron comes almost out of nowhere, we can write that off as Victorian-era female innocence and the desire to be swept off one's feet by a dashing prince, or baron as the case may be. Too bad he's the baron of evil. Despite the occasional girlish foible, Monlaur has one of the better sketched-out female roles in the Dracula films. She is surrounded by women who, one by one, succumb to Meinster's charms, to say nothing of his fangs, and she rarely resorts to screaming and running down unless it's absolutely necessary.

The focal point of the story, however, and the link to the first film, is Peter Cushing returning as the intrepid Dr. Van Helsing. He is here as he was the first time around: authoritative, kind, and believable. The sort of chap you'd really want looking after you if a vampire was chasing after you. From interviews I've read with his co-stars and directors, Cushing was fiendishly devoted to every role he had and did mountains of work before the cameras started rolling. The result on screen is that he makes this type of role look utterly effortless and thoroughly convincing. Hammer films have about as much half-baked mysticism and "occult anatomy" in them as the average episode of Star Trek has half-baked techno-babble, but coming from Cushing, you'd never dream of questioning his theories on vampirism not so much as a function of the supernatural, but as a social or sexual disease, very much a part of the rational world.

Cushing is also very good in the action scenes, of which there are several. The finale of the film, in which Van Helsing goes one-on-one with Meinster in a burning windmill is at least as good as the climax of the first film, and perhaps even a bit better, especially given the ingenious way Van Helsing eventually defeats his undead foe. It's one of the best scenes in a film that is full of great scenes.

Speaking of which, two of the other great scenes in the movies belong to the other two standout performers. Martita Hunt is wonderfully creepy as the mysterious Baroness Meinster, who seems at first to emerge as the villain of the film until we comprehend the reasons for her cruelty to her own son. The scene in which she beseeches Van Helsing to kill her after her son has turned her into a vampire (something Van Helsing seems to liken to a form of incest) is outstanding. The other scene involves Freda Jackson as the Meinsters' servant. She seems to be on the side of the Baroness, but it's soon revealed that her true loyalties lie with the vampire in the secret room. The scene in which she, in full ranting hag mode, coxes a young victim of the baron out of the grave is positively chilling.

Sangster's script is well-constructed and keeps a quick pace as it navigates the many twists and turns that establish everything. The complex path upon which we're carried that leads to the freeing of Baron Meinster is quite exciting and well put-together - intricate without being convoluted. There are also a number of clever surprises in the film, not the least of which would be the fact that Baron Meinster gets the better of Van Helsing and puts the bite on him. We can guess that Van Helsing will have some multi-step ritual to reverse the infection of the bite, but even so it's a major shock when we see him actually get bitten. This script seems to have been the result of some serious rewriting when Cushing apparently reacted very unfavorably to the initial draft and said he thought that he, like Lee, might want to have nothing to do with it. Although there are some small holes here and there, the story is all the better for whatever amount of revisions they made to keep Cushing happy and on board. It's handling of vampirism from a less supernatural, more social, approach is inspired.

The one short-coming in the story is that although Van Helsing is the nominal focus of the film, he doesn't show up until the halfway point, leaving the first half of the film on the shoulder of the supporting players. Luckily, they are more than capable supporting players, and so ultimately it doesn't harm the film any. Still, it would have been nice to see Van Helsing a little sooner.

Fisher's direction is once again top notch. The film is filled with the various requirements of Gothic horror as set down by Hammer itself. Misty forests, decaying cemeteries, shifty peasants, and the mincing dark old house up on the hill are exploited for their full power by Fisher's expertly guided camera. Along with cinematographer Jack Asher, Fisher paints another gorgeous picture for Hammer and further solidifies the studio's emerging look and style. Asher it as much responsible for defining the look of Hammer horror as Fisher, perhaps even more so given Fisher's reportedly easy-going style of direction. Asher had already worked on the big three - Curse of Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula, and The Mummy - as well as the equally superb Revenge of Frankenstein and The Hound of the Baskervilles. His work in Brides of Dracula goes a long way to establishing the increasingly menacing mood developed by Sangster's script.

If Brides of Dracula is the forgotten Dracula film, I can't imagine it will stay that way for very long. It's simply too good. Maybe not quite as good as the original, but definitely the equal of the next sequel, Dracula, Prince of Darkness, which saw the return of Christopher Lee to the role of Dracula. Brides of Dracula may even be better than that film. It's certainly a real gem in Hammer's filmography. Almost everything about the film works perfectly, and the few parts that don't work are easy to overlook. Cushing is magnificent, Peel is solid, and in the Baroness and her servant we have two of the best supporting characters in the whole series. A proper DVD release would seem inevitable given that pretty much all Hammer horror material is making its way to the format. At that time, Brides of Dracula should be able to take its rightful place next to Hammer's best horror productions.

Labels: Horror: Dracula, Horror: Vampires, Stars: Peter Cushing, Studio: Hammer, Year: 1960

posted by Keith at 12:33 AM | 0 Comments

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Breathless

Release Year: 1960
Country: France
Starring: ean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger, Jean-Pierre Melville, Henri-Jacques Huet, Van Doude, Claude Mansard, Jean-Luc Godard, Richard Balducci, Roger Hanin, Jean-Louis Richard.
Writer: Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Cinematographer: Raoul Coutard
Music: Martial Solal
Producer: Georges de Beauregard
Original Title: A bout de souffle
Availability: Buy it from Amazon

It's "one of those films," but even more so than Blow Up. You can escape film school without seeing Antonioni's anti-thriller masterpiece, but few and far between are the professors who won't sit you down and make you watch and over-analyze the film that made Jean-Luc Godard's career and stands out, even today as the defining film of the French new wave and, in a way, of the entirety of French cinema - or perhaps more directly, of the entire host of clichés commonly commented on when people lampoon French cinema. I mean, this is a Godard film based on a Truffaut plot. There wouldn't be two more famous French directors until Jean-Pierre Jeunet and, umm, well that Luc Besson guy, who actually has more in common with Godard than might at first be apparent.

I don't really have enough time here to go into a history of the French New Wave, and to be perfectly honest, I hardly have the knowledge to do so. My exposure to the movement is still limited to those rare moments I was paying attention back in college. Like anyone who took film classes in college, I had to sit through a few. At the time, I think I was too young and wild and full of crazy ideas. I thought the films were talky and pretentious and got by primarily on the reputations they made by getting a few outspoken critics to hail them as groundbreaking masterpieces. Now, as an older man who has tired of the razzle-dazzle and bright lights, I can go back and reevaluate a film like Breathless from a more relaxed and rational point of view.

One of the defining characteristics of the French New Wave, or at least those pieces of it to which I've currently exposed myself, seems to be a love-hate relationship with American cinema and culture. That could sum of France itself, but really, you get to the point in your life when jokes about the French just aren't that funny anymore. Well, maybe one or two of them are, but given the savaging France has taken for having the nerve to stand up and express opinions contrary to Bush's America, I tend to have a little more respect for them these days than I did back when I was fighting the Gerries in the Argone Forest back in 14-18 War. Besides, if nothing else the French have given us fine wine, some good chicken dishes, French women, French kissing (or is that Freedom kissing now), and French Lick, Indiana, which gave us Larry Bird. Besides, like I said a couple days ago, although we saved the French in both World Wars, they saved us during the American Revolution, so if it hadn't been for America, the French would be speaking German; and if it wasn't for France, us Americans would be speaking English. Yeah, I like that joke so much I've now trotted it out in two separate reviews. I thought for a while I actually made it up, but now I'm pretty sure I heard it somewhere else, which makes me using it twice even lamer.

So where was I? Ah yes, much of the French New Wave seems to have been built upon filtering American pulp culture through the lens of French and European intellectualism (or pseudo-intellectualism, if you are cranky about such things) as much as it is rejecting the classical aspects of a well-polished, well-made film in favor of experimental cinema-verite style, clever editing, and almost documentary-style proximity to the subjects of the film, often with handheld cameras. It all begins here in Godard's directorial debut, and many claim that all modern filmmaking begins with this movie, meaning you can look at Breathless in one of two ways: you can look at it as a film, or you can look at it as a revolution. Well, yeah, you can look at it any other number of ways, or combine those two, but they are the aspects of the film with which I'll be poking around. As a revolution, there's not much denying Breathless' impact on filmmaking. Everything changed the day people saw Breathless. Technique changed, and more importantly perhaps, content changed. It is the movie that opened the way for more radical political films. It pioneered a style of filmmaking, writing, and acting and inspired countless stylistic offshoots that took the manifesto and ran with it in wildly diverse directions. It challenged pretty much everything anyone thought they knew about how a film could be executed. In this sense, it doesn't matter how the pieces are put together in Breathless itself; it only matters what Breathless did to other films.

As is befitting for such an anti-establishment sort of movement, many of the innovations in the film were not the product of a conscious philosophy but were, in fact, simply side effects of limitations. Handheld shots were used because they could not afford to lie down tracks for proper dolly shots. The jump edits which came to define the film were a product of the film being overlong by half an hour. Rather than cutting whole scenes, Godard decided to trim bits and pieces from within each scene.

Watching a manifesto isn't usually much fun, though, and since this is a film we should be interested in whether or not it is an entertaining film, which means, was I personally entertained? I could write about whether or not you were entertained, but you know, we get onto some shaky ground there and to be frank, I lied about pretty much all the psyonics and mind reading powers I had in D&D. So all I can say is that, as a film, Breathless entertains me, but as important as I recognize it to be in the grand scheme of things, it's more of a call to arms than a movie I would sit down and watch for enjoyment.

Godard takes the basic tenants of a classic American film noir set-up and goes batty with them. Jean-Paul Belmondo, who would skyrocket to French icon status with this film, stars as Michel, a small-time Paris nobody who idolizes Bogart and the other tough guys of American gangster cinema. He practices tough guy facial expressions in the mirror, always wears a fedora, and smokes more cigarettes in a single film than any other character in cinematic history, probably even in that dippy pander-to-unhip-hipsters dump of a film 200 Cigarettes. But try as he might, he still looks like a kid playing dress-up, and no amount of gangster posturing can cover the fact that he's basically a confused, scared loner.

The hypnotically beautiful Jean Seaberg stars as Michel's opposite, an American girl trying her best to be more French. "Gamine" would not be used again so often to describe an actress until Audrey Tautou's turn in Amelie. She's utterly astounding to look at, and her appearance here, cute beyond belief and sporting the pixie haircut, would become iconic during the decade. Her character, Patricia, is a more mystifying figure. Michel we can understand and see through. But Patricia is more difficult to decode. The two young wanderers meet one another after Michel kills a police officer during a botched car theft and must go on the run. The two spend time making love, seeing movies, chit chatting, and smoking a whole lot of cigarettes before Patricia basically begins to wonder if she loves him enough not to turn him in.

The film is less about the plot than Godard's approach to filmmaking, but even so, the film remains breezy, witty, and enjoyable even as it delves into the depths of pretension. This is thanks in part to lead actor Belmondo, who is comic in his tough guy appearance. Belmondo had been pummeled into a curious state thanks to a boxing career, and his utter lack of classic leading man good looks (itself an homage to Humphrey Bogart) allows him to carry himself with a humorous air. While Patricia remains inscrutable, Michel is just sort a hopeless loser you can't help but warm to even when he's being a bastard. He would have gotten along well with Alfie. Both Michel and Patricia, however, are characters running in sharp contrast to what people expected of movie leads at the time. They are rebellious, adrift, and precursors to the sort of violently anti-authority figures that would come in their wake.

But I won't let reputation alone put twinkling stars in my eyes. I fully admit that I'm not just a film geek, but also a film history and technique geek, and my interest in such things obviously colors my enjoyment of Breathless. If you don't share such a passion, then this movie still has the potential to offer you something to enjoy, though it's more likely you'll just find the whole affair on the irritating side of irritating. Although I have a healthy appreciation for the film, I wouldn't pretend not to understand how someone, even someone intelligent and well versed in film, could find the whole thing a ponderous, pompous mess. I still feel that anyone interested in film should see it if for no other reason than to flesh out your education and see when so much of what has been taken to outrageous extremes these days (jump cuts, unexpected editing, shaky hand-held cameras) and become annoyingly overused convention was still fresh and bold, not to mention much better done.

Plenty of movies have become events, but I find it easy to separate most of them from their sensation. Not so with Breathless, since what caused the sensation remains challenging even today. That leaves me with the feeling that Breathless isn't so much to be watched and enjoyed as it is to be watched and studied -- though I do rather enjoy it. Truth be told, I could just sit and stare at Jean Seaberg for ninety minutes and be happy. That this is one of the most influential films of all time is not a debatable point. It's a fact. Now, whether or not those innovations were put to good use in making a film you can enjoy - that's up for you to decide for yourself. Me? Yeah, I dig it, but that's the kind of guy I am. I think noir fans might get a kick out of it as well since it plays with the genre conventions so much while still remaining more or less faithful to the formula. And even if you're just amused by philosophical mind games, you can sit and think about how the French New Wave was inspired by films of the classic Hollywood era and in turn inspired the ground-breaking American films of the 1970s, which were determined to destroy the concept of the classic Hollywood film.

Whether you love it, hate it, or think it sounds like you would probably hate it, it's a film you really should get around to seeing sooner or later. After all, everything was different from there on out.

Labels: Country: France, Director: Jean-luc Godard, Film Noir, Netflix Diary, Year: 1960

posted by Keith at 11:57 PM | 0 Comments

Friday, April 02, 2004

Jigoku

1960, Japan. Starring Shigeru Amachi, Hiroshi Hayashi, Fumiko Miyata, Torahiko Nakamura, Yoichi Numata, Jun Otomo, Kimie Tokudaiji, Akiko Yamashita. Directed by Nobuo Nakagawa.

Hell. Our rock and roll albums teach us that Hell is one big party town, but Jack Chick comic tracts would have us believe otherwise. Hell can take the shape of many different places. In one movie, it is an oppressively hot tropical village where b-grade made-for-television movie actors sweat profusely. In other movies, legions of the damned march pointlessly to and fro while a killer red robot stands on a mountain. My personal hell, of course, involves frequent broadcasts of Brat Pack movies and a stereo that only plays adult contemporary hits and that "Our God is an Awesome God" song.

Some people don't even believe in Hell, and I guess I'd have to be among them since I'm not an overly religious fellow. But still, Hell is fun to talk about. It's a lot more interesting than Heaven, even to Christians. Fire and brimstone sermons are a dime a dozen, and each one goes into graphic detail regarding the eternal sufferings one endures in Hell. When Dante wrote his epic Divine Comedy, he spent about five pages on Purgatory, a couple pages on Heaven, and about a million pages on Hell. Everyone wants to describe Hell, but no one seems all that into Heaven. About the best we get is people wear a lot of robes, and maybe it's foggy. Other than that, who knows? The problem with Heaven is that it's a place where everything is basically going alright. While that may not be a bad way to live, it doesn't make for very dramatic literature.

This is why film makers, much like Renaissance poets, tend to dwell on Hell while dashing off Heaven scenes with little imagination or consideration. But Hell - now there's a place worth writing about. It's miserable, fiery, evil, and full of sin. Actually, I don't know if it's full of sin or just full of sinners. Seems like if you were a big time sinner in life, then Hell would be a place where you don't get to do any more sinnin'. I know I like me a good sin every now and then, and I'd be pretty annoyed if every time I tried to commit a sin, the Devil popped up to make me stop. Likewise, Heaven is a place where, if you didn't sin in your life, you get to sin like mad for all eternity. I don't know. This theory is probably why I'm not a preacherman.

Christians don't have a monopoly on Hell, of course, and lots of other religions serve up their own particular brand of post-mortem eternal suffering. One of the most wild and creative visions of Hell comes from Japan, and more specifically from the gloriously twisted imagination of famed horror director Nobuo Nakagawa. Nakagawa, one of the most respected names in the history of classic Japanese horror cinema, became an instant favorite of mine after I saw his stunning samurai ghost film Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan, a film that combined the more traditional slow build-up with some truly shocking gore scenes the likes of which were unheard of in 1959. A year later, he completely outdid himself with the film Jigoku, also known as Sinners of Hell.

People generally credit HG Lewis' outrageous 1963 film Blood Feast as the first splatter or gore film, a claim that betrays a lack of knowledge regarding horror and shock cinema on a global scale. Nakagawa not only beat Lewis to the punch, but he did it with a movie that is both far bloodier and far better than Lewis' ridiculously cheap but enjoyable romp. Jigoku is splatter that also manages to maintain a high production value, outrageous imagination, and a truly warped surrealism that sets it far apart from the legions of splatter films from all over the world that would follow in its wake. Part of the reason the film probably isn't as widely known as Lewis' film, apart from it being Japanese, is that while it delivers the grue, it's all reserved until the final third of the film. Up until that point, the movie is fairly slow in its pace, allowing time for the development of characters, the explanation of situations, and other aspects of basic storytelling that the kids these days seem not to have the patience for.

We begin things with a credit sequence that is positively James Bond in nature, or at least Seijun Suzuki. Scantily clad, curvatious femmes in weird shadows and blue light populate the sequence, which then leads into a montage of hellish images that will be revisited during the film's finale. Having thus shocked the viewer right out of the gate, Nakagawa continues with the story proper. A college professor is giving the typical movie professor lecture on concepts of hell, the kind of lecture that never actually takes place in real classrooms. One of the students, Shiro (Shigeru Amachi, who also played the wicked samurai lead in Tokaido Yatsuya Kaidan), is especially interested for a couple different reasons. First, he's about to marry the professor's daughter, but more influentially, he and a shady acquaintance named Tamura were recently involved in a hit and run murder. As a result, damnation, sin, and guilt have been weighing pretty heavily on Shiro's mind.

He and Tamura had been out for a drive that night when a drunken petty criminal stumbled out in front of their car. Though it was clearly not their fault and the police would probably write the matter off entirely as an accident, Tamura - who had been at the wheel - convinces Shiro not to report the incident since no one saw it. Though he is uncomfortable with such a course of action, Shiro is eventually persuaded by the darker, somewhat mysterious Tamura. Shiro begins to question why he even hangs out with this thoroughly creepy individual. "Who is this guy Tamura?" Shiro thinks to himself. "I know I don't like him." I guess everyone has one of those people in their lives who you really just absolutely do not like, and yet you always seem thrown together with them regardless of how much you strive to avoid them.

The big hole in Tamura's plot is that the crime did not go unwitnessed. The gangster's aging mother actually saw the whole thing, but rather than go to the police and settle for a court battle that will probably not end too horribly for Shiro and Tamura, she gives the license number to the recently widowed wife of the gangster, a fiery woman who immediately vows to hunt down the men who killed her man and extract horrible revenge on them. As if having the sexy but murderous widow of a gangster your creepy acquaintance killed after you isn't enough of a hassle, Shiro is soon involved in another car accident, this one resulting in the death of his fiancee, the professor's daughter.

Spurned by her relatives and obviously not getting a passing grade in the professor's theology class, Shiro seeks solace in the embrace of a young hussy named Yoko, who we immediately recognized as the vengeful widow. Before she can stick an ice pick in the back of his skull, however, he gets word that his mother is dying and so decides to pack up and leave town, his destination being to visit his ailing mother out in the countryside.

Upon reaching the Tenjoen Senior Citizens Facility where his mother lies dying, things hardly improve for the troubled young man. His mom, of course, is at death's door. His father is an unrepentant asshole who ignores his dying wife in the next room in favor of getting it on with a young harlot from the city. He also runs into the friendly and proper young Sachiko, who happens to look like his recently deceased fiancée. Oh, and there's the insane artist who spends all day working on paintings of Hell, a corrupt cop, a criminally negligent doctor, a seedy reporter, and a couple other rakehells and ne'r-do'wells. Put it all together and you have one hell of those "gathering of lost souls" type things. Suffice it to say that this motley gang of sweaty sinners is hardly the pick-me-up Shiro was needing.

Shiro is at least happy hanging out with his dead fiancee's doppleganger, but the determined advances of his father's mistress are unwelcome. Equally unwelcome is Tamura, who shows up to taunt everyone and expose their secret shameful pasts. Slightly more welcome is the old professor, who is ready to reconcile his differences with Shiro, at least until Tamura starts talking about how the old man was a jackass during World War II and stole his wounded buddy's canteen, then left said buddy to die. It's really one of those parties that involves too much alcohol and "truth or dare."

Not one to have a moment of good luck, Shiro's life is further complicated when both Yoko shows up. She reveals her background then attempts to shoot Shiro. A struggle on a bridge results in Yoko accidentally plunging to her death. Maybe Shiro should just stay home. When Tamura shows up to taunt Shiro and generally act like an asshole, the two get into a fight and Tamura falls off the bridge, too! All this is witnessed by Yoko's crazy old mother-in-law, who also witnessed the hit and run and apparently spends entire weeks hiding in the bushes around various towns hoping to catch a glimpse of some knavery.

During a party to celebrate the center's tenth anniversary, everyone gets drunk and belligerent and generally behaves like those old guys you see trying to punch each other out in Japanese parliamentary meetings. When the dad's young harlot puts the moves on an exhausted Shiro, the father catches them and tries to kill her. The only reason she doesn't succeed is because she falls down the stairs while running away and breaks her neck. Lesson learned: don't be friends with Shiro. His dad immediately conspires to cover it up, and they both head back to the main hall where people are passed out, fooling around, or generally behaving like the scum of the earth. Not one to stay dead for long, a pale and deathly looking Tamura shows up to hurl barbs and taunts yet again, and as the clock strikes nine, Shiro finally loses it and tries to choke Tamura to death, his actions slightly hampered by the fact that while trying to choke Tamura to death, he himself is being choked to death by Yoko's crazy mother-in-law. About that time, the clock freezes, and the fiery pits of hell open up to consume the various lost souls bickering with one another in the living room! That will kill a party even faster than breaking a lamp or getting caught staring at the hostess' cleavage.

Shiro finds himself on the misty, barren banks of the river of death, and it is here that the movie kicks its eerie surrealism into high gear. I'd be slightly surprised if future surreal horror auteurs like Lucio Fulci didn't see this movie. There are parts of the landscape of Hell that look very much like the hellish landscapes from The Beyond. The king of hell shows up to bellow about damnation. On the banks of the river, he is met by his inescapable load, Tamura, who tells him they are destined to burn in hell together. Not one to accept the word of a psychopath who recently returned from the dead only to quickly return back to being dead, Shiro wanders off through the various levels of hell just like the protagonist in Dante's Inferno (as opposed to Dario's Inferno).

He first encounters his recently departed fiancée, who is spending her time in hell stacking rocks along the riverbank. Her sin: dying before her parents, which seems like a pretty lame thing to get sent to hell for, though not as lame as being damned for driving a Volkswagon backwards into the bay, if you know what I mean (and I bet at least three of you do). She informs Shiro that she was seconds away from joyfully telling him she was pregnant, but got sidetracked by the whole being killed in a car wreck thing. As if Shiro didn't have enough to deal with, he now understands that their baby, too, is condemned to Hell. This is pretty harsh, really.

Next thing you know, people are being dangled upside down with spikes jammed through their blood-gushing necks. They are being forced to drink from a river filled with pus and bile and other tasty treats (pus and bile custard is only slightly more disgusting than your average British fare, though). Others are forced to simply run around in a big confused circle forever, sort of like being stuck in a never-ending Limp Bizkit concert. One may provides the film's most shocking and gruesome atrocity as his skin is ripped away, leaving a bloody skeleton covered with pulsating, dripping organs.

As Shiro searches desperately for his child, he is still tormented by Shiro, who is revealed to be a demon and eventually tortured just to shut him the hell up. Shiro finally finds his child on a giant flaming wheel of life and struggles in vain to rescue the child and possibly achieve some sort of salvation from the horrors of hell. Needless to say, he appears to fail miserably.

What Nakagawa accomplishes in the final thirty minutes of this film is truly mind-blowing. His sets are not lavish, but instead make ingenious use of smoke, multi-colored lighting, superimposition, fire, and animation to create an otherworldly and terrifying nightmare landscape. It's the sort of thing Fulci spent his entire life trying to achieve (and did, to some degree, in The Beyond): an overwhelmingly eerie, alien world that feels like you've stepped right into a Salvador Dali painting. Cinematically, it seems to forecast the out-of-control artistic style of maverick film makers like Seijun Suzuki, who would apply similar color-saturated hallucinations to his yakuza films. As grisly as the effects to come are, they are overshadowed by the sheer wild imagination put into the set pieces they inhabit.

Simply put, the gore is good. The scene of the man being flayed alive, lying there screaming as his organs pulsate and spew blood, is really something else. I can only imagine how audiences must have reacted in 1960, because it's still a very successful and bloody effect, far more shocking than anything HG Lewis would attempt a few years later with his better known but far worse Blood Feast. Part of what makes the splatter content of Jigoku so powerful is that the movie itself is a very well crafted work of art. While some of the editing during the final journey through Hell is confusing, the movie as a whole is technically sound, not to mention full of great writing, pacing, and acting. Lewis' splatterfest is, of course, amazingly bad in all departments (though not at all unfun to watch).

Pioneering though it was, Jigoku was not necessarily alone in its move toward a more shocking, more surreal, or just plain bloodier presentation. While it was blowing the minds of unsuspecting patrons in Japan, the West was getting assaulted by Alfred Hitchcock's ground-breaking Psycho, which while not sharing the same artistic style as Nakagawa's film, certainly shares the same desire to shock, amuse, confuse, and break new ground in what was a very tired and overly safe genre. Though not nearly as well known today, even in Japan, Jigoku is every bit as much responsible for throwing open the doors to a new type of horror as was Hitchcock's film. From the seeds planted by these films came glorious monstrosities like Blood Feast and the various Hammer horror films that continued to push the envelope of gore and sexuality throughout the 1960s.

Jigoku snares and disarms you with its very slow-paced, conventional first hour, leaving you completely unprepared for the moment when the clock stops and everyone is plunged into the depths of the underworld. Nakagawa once again proves himself a master of the classic horror film while, at the same time, defiantly showing that he is not bound by the conventions and can move the genre into bold new territory. It is a cautionary tale about the wages of sin and indulgence, yet it communicates its message without seeming preachy and its gore without seeming exploitive. Jigoku is a classic of the horror genre, and self-respecting fan with interest in horror beyond the director's cut of Valentine, featuring 15% more Denise Richards boob shots, owes it to themselves to track this horrible beauty of a film down. It's been released subtitled in English on region 2 DVD in Japan, which will cost you a pretty penny, of course. Hopefully, someone will one day take notice of this unjustly forgotten classic and give it a release elsewhere for less than ¥4800.

Labels: Country: Japan, Horror: Just Plain Weird, Year: 1960

posted by Keith at 4:07 PM | 1 Comments

Thursday, December 18, 2003

Colossus and the Amazon Queen

1960, Italy. Starring Ed Fury, Rod Taylor, Gianna Maria Canale, Dorian Gray, Alberto Farnese, Ignazio Leone, Adriana Facchetti, Alfredo Varelli, Gino Buzzanca, Marco Tulli, Renato Tagliani, Daniela Rocca, Paola Falchi, Carla Dody, Nadia Bianchi. Directed by Vittorio Sala.

People unfamiliar with genre films have this weird idea that the movies all carry themselves with an air of complete seriousness, that a particular type of film can't possibly be aware of its own clichés and pitfalls until some smarmy mainstream director steps in and makes a spoof. The fact of the matter is that genre films are far more aware of their own short-comings and trappings than most mainstream films (do Meg Ryan or Julia Roberts ever spoof how trite and predictable their own movies are). Genre films - science fiction, horror, sexploitation, action, and so forth - have been self-referential and satirizing themselves since the early days.

The Italian sword and sandal films that were so popular during the first half of the 1960s were no exception. They were pretty light-hearted fare to begin with, despite what some less astute critics might think. No one making a Maciste adventure thought they were recreating Ben Hur. Well, most of them didn't anyway, even if the hyperbole storming across the screen during the trailer claimed it was the biggest epic since God, his son Jesus, and a few friends collaborated on a book. They knew they were making a shallow, somewhat ham-fisted but good-natured and rousing action film that appealed to a matinee audience who didn't demand too much beyond what the films offered. Not everything can be a heavy, soul-searching work of art. Sometimes, you have to take a break from genius and watch a guy in a loin cloth throw a rock at a rubber monster.

Since peplum films were a blend of all sorts of ingredients, including comedy, doing a satire of the genre seems somewhat redundant. What's the point of spoofing something that isn't meant to be all that serious to begin with? Well, redundancy never stopped anyone - especially in film - from doing it anyway. While the peplum comedies are not as plentiful as, say, the peplum horror or peplum sci-fi films, there's still a couple out there that tried to up the yuks while delivering a solid action outing. Maciste against Hercules in the Veil of Woe gave it a try in 1961 with good-natured sport Kirk Morris and a plot about pro wrestling promoters who travel back in time. Unfortunately, the movie stars two of the foulest creatures in the history of cinema, the comic duo (and I use the word "comic" as in "painfully and profoundly unfunny") of Franco and Ciccio. For me, watching one of their movies is akin to inviting Roberto Benigni around to do three hours of improv while he boils your scrotum in a tub of sulfuric acid.

More palatable for the distinct lack of Franco and Ciccio is the peplum spoof Colossus and the Amazon Queen. Instead of a comedy team whose shtick is about as funny as your average Hee-Haw hillbilly comedy act, you get a load of gorgeous women and, for the ladies themselves, Rod Taylor and peplum pretty boy Ed Fury. Like most peplum stars, he was a body builder, but he took beefcake to hear cheesecake levels with lots of saucy "naked haunches" type photos with him being caught up in fishing nets and other goofy scenarios. I always wondered what must have been going on for a naked bodybuilder to get tangled up in someone's fishing net, but then I quickly realize such quandaries are best not dwelled upon for too long, at least in a public forum.

Plus, it only gets more disturbing when Fury shows up in this movie all tangled up in rope. Still fully clothed (well, as fully clothed as anyone can be in one of those little tunics), but still the nightmare surfaces.

Fury brought the same sense of goofiness to a lot of his sword and sandal roles, which include such films as Ursus (1961), Ursus in the Land of Fire (1963), Samson Against the Sheik (1962), Ursus in the Valley of the Lions (1961), and The Mighty Ursus (1961). Obviously, the guy was really into Ursus. But what young man doesn't go through an Ursus phase? It was Fury's somewhat silly approach to the muscleman character that makes some people love him while other can't stand him. Personally, I figure I like some his movies, and I don't like others, so I have no strong feelings toward Ed Fury other than thinking he picked himself a name that is every bit as cool as Alan Steele or Slab Hunkchest.

Born Edmund Holovchik in June of 1928, Fury gave himself the tough sounding name and went on to a successful career as a fitness model during the 1950s. His acting career started on the stage, and he later moved into small roles in films like Athena (alongside Steve Reeves), Abbot and Costello Go To Mars, and Wild Women of Wongo. So, you know, serious stuff. In 1960, he packed his bags and set sail for Italy, where he made his sword and sandal debut in the wild peplum comedy Colossus and the Amazon Queen. It was the first of the peplum comedies out of the gate, and it manages to balance the humor and the action fairly well, without excelling at either one. Certainly there are more exciting sword and sandal adventures out there, and funnier comedies. But it's not a bad blend, and the movie is all the funnier if you are a fan of peplum movies, or at least know enough about them to recognize the movie's attempts to exploit the genre's growing reputation for homoeroticism and rather limited roles for women. Not that it takes a brain surgeon or a trained master of film criticism to recognize homoerotic undertones in films full of naked, sweaty men wrestling with each other and doing that Spartacus "gripping the forearm" handshake.

Many people have analyzed the homoeroticism of the sword and sandal genre then patted themselves on the back for their clever insight and reading of homosexual tendencies boiling just below the surface of the film. Given that many of these films contain greased-up, stripped-down muscleman heroes bent over a table covered in spikes while being whipped mercilessly by some foppish henchman, revealing to people that there may be some homoerotic shades to the films is about as insightful as revealing that Pink Floyd's The Wall is about a guy going insane. Of course, none of the heroes were expressly homosexual. They still lusted heartily after the ladies, even if they also loved a good grappling session with the lads. One can only imagine, then, if instead of "the Masked Avenger" (as in Hercules and the Masked Avenger, a film that combines muscleman heroics with Zorro swashbuckling) Hercules had teamed up with Zorro The Gay Blade.

Since you can't really expect subtlety in the action of a peplum film, you shouldn't expect any subtlety from the comedy or the self-referential jokes. Taken for what it is within the confines of the peplum world, this is a clever film that plays off the gender clichés already emerging in the genre. The ladies of sword and sandal films almost never do anything other than get rescued, swoon, faint, engage in erotic tribal dancing, or make strange proclamations and predictions. The important stuff, like throwing rocks at monsters, plotting dastardly schemes in the throne room, and pushing over columns, is left up to the men. Well, I take that back. Women -- you know, the evil ones with black hair and black hearts -- sometimes get to take part in throne room scheming. In Colossus and the Amazon Queen it's the women who perform tasks like hunting and fighting and belching while the men all run around like a bunch of howling fops. It's also one of the only peplum films to feature a hero who shouts, "Yahoo!" in a high-pitched girlie voice.

It' a ground-breaking story, at least for a sword and sandal film, for this inversion of the sexes if not for the plot (which is pretty much the same plot used in every Amazon exploitation movie). The film decided to have some fun with things by turning everything upside down while also delivering the sexiest -- yet most feminist (as feminist as these movies could be) -- peplum adventure there had been. The city of the Amazons is a subversion of everything people expected from peplum. Effeminate men prance around and swap tips on getting the whites whiter when doing laundry. When the women return from hunting and killing, the men all giggle and run home to engage in arguments with their wives in which the wife complains that the men don't understand the value of a hard day's work while the men whine, "You think cooking and cleaning all day isn't hard work?" Eventually, some marauding pirates threaten to upset the Amazonian society, and the two sexes must unite on equal ground in order to combat this common enemy. Luckily, Ed Fury and Rod Taylor are there to help the dames know their roles. All things considered, I bet the ancient Greeks would have loved it. It's a classic farce (well, maybe not classic), and it would have given everyone a break from The Frogs or that dreary Antigone.

Like I said, that's the plot for just about nine million movies in which a society of strong women dominate a bunch of men. Almost every one of them involves a strapping hero and his men who arrive and upset the balance of things, with the women eventually admitting the equality (or superiority) of the men when they all have to team up and fight some band of brigands. It's a way to have your feminist cake and eat it too. Oh sure, you have your strong females, but they're still drop dead sexy. And sure they boss around the men, but in the end a man has to come to their rescue. That way, the men in the audience don't feel emasculated, and the women can be pleased by a well-placed wink that says the movie's "men to the rescue" finale is just part of the camp appeal. It's the same thing on a far less sleazy level as those rape-revenge movies that relish every nude shot they can get of a woman, then try to pass themselves off as a feminist movie by claiming that since the bulk of the running time involves the wronged woman getting violent revenge, they are somehow sending out a positive message.

Whatever makes them happy. Frankly, people who debate the social merits of They Call Her One-Eye and other such films are wasting a lot of time. For me, gender politics has never been an interesting subject. I don't see the world in terms of gender or sexual orientation, and whether or not someone is male or female, gay or straight, couldn't interest me less. It's the quality of the person that counts, and things like gender don't really seem to be a deciding factor in whether or not someone is an asshole. So as shallow as it may sound, film as a crusade is not nearly as interesting to me as film as art and entertainment. Similarly, I don't think anyone is honestly going to go into Colossus and the Amazon Queen with a big interest in how the film handles the reversal of classical gender roles. That's the kind of crackpot essay a sophomore year film studies student dreams up, or the way academic culture has been going these days, a doctoral candidate who has somehow conned the university into thinking that studying the role of gender in cheap 1960s Italian muscleman adventures is the film studies equivalent of discovering a cure for Parkinson's Disease or inventing the Flowbie.

Honestly, I can't believe some of the crap people get to "study" in college these days, and this coming from someone who obviously enjoys writing about these sorts of films. One university even has a course about the films of Quentin Tarantino. What the hell? I mean, regardless of your opinion of Tarantino's work, the man's only made a couple films. Jess Franco has made something like eleven thousand films, but no one studies his work in college classrooms. And let's be real -- who's worthier of study: the man who gave us Uma Thurman foaming at the mouth and convulsing with a syrynge sticking out of her sternum, or the man who gave us Lina Romay naked one more time (one too many times, actually, since they're still at it even at their rather advanced current age)? Not to pass judgment on anyone, but I think academia needs to re-evaluate its policy of letting the whim of damn near anybody become an entire field of study. I love Godzilla toys and Airstream trailers, but I didn't try to turn it into a major.

So aside from that one goofball film student who is trying to impress someone with his serious, academic reading of movies aimed at subliterate twelve-year-olds, most of us aren't looking to peplum films for any dose of intellectualism or an analysis of gender politics in the time of Plato any more than we look to Hercules Against the Moonmen for tips regarding astronomy. No, what we want to see is hot guys and gals in mini-tunics beating up ugly guys in furs. Harmless fun! And that's what we are going to get.

Part of the clue that this isn't going to be your standard peplum adventure vene if it still includes all the requisite ingredients is the fact that director Vittorio Sala wasn't among the "stable" of regular peplum directors. Not that the stable had fully formed by 1960, but most of the directors who were making peplum films made quite a few before moving on to westerns or spy films once the sword and sandal well dried up. Sala, however, only made the one peplum film, and as an outsider he probably found it easier to lampoon what he saw. Similar effects were achieved when Mario Bava was hired for Hercules in the Haunted World, but while Bava isn't known as a peplum director, he'd at least worked as a cinematographer on sword and sandal films before helming one himself. Sala never had nor ever would have again any experience with the genre, so his is a unique point of view. He also made a couple Funicello-Avalon inspired beach party movies, which helps explain the goofball festive feel surrounding most of what goes on in Colossus and the Amazon Queen. Beach party movies always have at least one bodybuilder character, anyway, so it makes sense that this movie possesses a very strong "beach party" feel.

Granted, this also somewhat negates that whole bit I started out with regarding a genre's ability to spoof itself without some outsider stepping in, but my point is still valid (in my head anyway) since beach movies don't exactly make for a respectable director. Sala was still a genre director, even if it was different genres. Unfortunately, expanding my theory to compensate for this means I have to also cut slack to Wes Craven and his rotten Scream movies. Oh well, it's a theory still in it's embryonic stages. I'll have it better defined by the time I have to present it for my graduate thesis.

Although more than a few fans of peplum films have been put off by Fury's slapstick approach to his heroic roles, within the confines of this movie it works remarkably well. He is a more human, more vulnerable sword and sandal swashbuckler. But everyone is outclassed by what may be the only case of an internationally famous and somewhat respectable actor fulfilling the role of the hero's little buddy. B-movie superstar (with some top notch A-list films to his name) Rod Taylor stars as the womanizing con-artist, Pirro. For the most part, he's quite happy to pretend he's a subservient male while he seduced young, impressionable Amazons behind the back of the ever-watchful queen. Taylor hams it up wonderfully, playing his role with all the hip-swaying subtlety of Robin Williams doing his "gay guy" routine.

Fans know Taylor best for his turns in films like The Time Machine, World Without End, and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Interestingly, those last two films also feature similar themes of gender subversion - World Without End being about a futuristic post-apocalyptic society where the women are all fit and healthy while the men are all sterile old farts, and The Birds being Hitchcock's delightfully twisted absurdist answer to gender-obsessed filmmaking (notice how every time a women does something strong and independent, the birds are there to beat her down or peck out her eyeballs). I don't think Taylor is a crusader for the rights of women as much as he is a fan of roles that allow him to star alongside a cast of cuties in little togas (World Without End, Time Machine, and Colossus and the Amazon Queen all allow him to do so -- someone get me this man's agent!) Just as the presence of Christopher Lee in Hercules in the Haunted World gave that film an air of sophistication above it's contemporaries, Taylor's comical turn here makes the film seem more important that it really is. After all, he's mostly just goofing off and doing that "feminine man" walk where you swing your arms side to side in front of you a lot. I can't really describe the walk, but as I mentioned earlier, if you've ever seen any of the eleven billion times Robin Williams has invoked his gay guy character, you've seen the walk.

The requisite tribal dancing number is one that can only be described as fabulous. I'm guessing with that many dandy lads around, they must have one hell of a Broadway-esque production company going on the island of the Amazons, even if much of it's lost on their female masters, who prefer introspective folk rock about genitals. This particular dance number is possibly the weirdest, goofiest, and funniest of any peplum dance number. Golden men in loin cloths with little dangly bits up front start things off with some spriteful leaping about, after which the chicks sashay onto the floor for a saucy go-go number that culminates in all the scantily clad ladies writhing around on the floor while Rod Taylor reflects on his good fortune. If he has to be a slave, it might as well be a sex slave to women who go-go dance and writhe on the floor.

I won't even get into the guy who looks like a white Sammy Davis Jr. who, upon being chosen as a mate for a couple women, purrs "Y'all is my womens now," with a sassy Southern queen drawl.

So let's face the facts. This isn't a feminist movie, and while it's subversive within the peplum genre, no one is going to get away with an essay on how Colossus and the Amazon Queen was a major step toward advancing the rights of women. More than anything else, the flip-flopping of traditional gender roles gave the makers of the film a chance to show even more sexy women in tiny tunics while also packing in dozens of over-the-top gay man caricatures. No one walks out of Colossus and the Amazon Queen stroking their chin and going, "You know, it really made me think." If you have to come up with any one thing that truly epitomizes this movie, it wouldn't be anything about a bold challenging of genre conventions. It would, instead, be Ed Fury howling "Yahooo!" as he graces the world with a staggering buffalo shot while swinging from the rafters.

While you may be disappointed that this isn't the important arthouse exploration of sexuality you were hoping to get from a movie called Colossus and the Amazon Queen, it delivers the goods in every other way. The action is fast and furious, and Ed Fury handles himself very well in the stunt sequences. Like Gordon Scott (but less serious) or Kirk Morris, Fury is leaner than Steve Reeves or Reg Park, which means he does less strongman type stuff and more flipping and jumping about. No one is going to mistake him for Jackie Chan or Fred Berry, but he moves well and executes the action with panache.

The supporting cast is pretty good. The women are there to kick ass and look good doing it, while the men are there to screech and worry about their hair. The guys playing the pirates who bring the sexes together are there to look hairy and pasty. Things sure must have been simpler back in the days when you could tell a villain simply by seeing if he was pasty-skinned and clad in fur-trimmed duds. One of our favorite peplum/historical hellraiser actresses, the gorgeous Gianna Maria Canale from Hercules, Goliath and the Vampires, and I Vampiri which was co-directed by Mario Bava (with his peplum credit being Hercules in the Haunted World) and Riccardo Freda (whose peplum fim credits include the spectacular Samson and the Seven Miracles of the World and The Witch's Curse).

For those who find the peplum genre a little much to swallow, this may be a good action-packed way to still get a taste of the fun without watching a movie that handles itself with Spartacus-like seriousness. Everything is played for laughs, but it's not played so over-the-top that it becomes shrill and annoying. No Franco and Ciccio here. It's kind of similar in spirit to In Like Flint - it delivers all the goofs on the genre you want, but without disrespecting anything or forgetting that it still needs to be a good genre film. Fury's shtick may have ruined more serious films, but it's right at home here amid this world of dominant female warriors and the men who do their washing.

Labels: Fantasy: Peplum, Stars: Ed Fury, Stars: Gianna Maria Canale, Stars: Rod Fury, Year: 1960

posted by Keith at 4:49 PM | 0 Comments

review index | rss feed