March Film Update 1

Ten films I watched last year

1. Grease 2

It’s 1961 and there are still two gangs in the High School from Grease, but with new members. The T-Birds wear leather jackets and quiffs, the Pink Ladies are their female auxiliary, with some sort of requirement for them to date or otherwise consort with a T-Bird. However Stephanie (Michelle Pfeiffer, Pink Lady leader) warns off Johnny (T-Bird leader) saying she’ll kiss who she wants when she wants and promptly kisses the first boy to walk into the bowling alley.

It's English new transfer to the school Michael Carrington (Maxwell Caulfield). Stephanie being standoffish, and the villains of the film, the Cycle Lords, a motorcycle gang turning up, he becomes secret masked motorcyclist Cool Rider to win her heart. Meanwhile the T-Birds all employ Michael to do their essays for them, as they’re rubbish at schoolwork.

This all takes place in the run up to the talent show, which the Pink Ladies want to win because they’re into it, and the T-Birds do because they want the records that are the prize (this, like the film Grease, is a musical). When Cool Rider appears the T-Birds chase him and he appears to vanish into a ravine. However at the very end of the school year, at the graduation luau (?) when the Cycle Lords attack, Cool Rider reappears, defeats them and reveals himself to be Michael for a happy ending.

This is very silly, with the plot of the film essentially being boys trying to seduce girls and girls hanging out and putting on a show. Do any of the songs stand out? I can’t say they did. That Stephanie wants to be her own woman, not a T-Bird’s chick is interesting, but then she immediately falls for Cool Rider, of whom all she knows is that he rides a motorcycle. As I said, very silly.

Watch This: High school musical (no not that one) sequel (no not that one) with a few good stunts, songs and ideas
Don’t Watch This: Sex by deception, a plot that makes no sense and long unfunny smutty songs

2. Death Becomes Her

In 1978 aging actress Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep) steals Ernest Melville (Bruce Willis), the plastic surgeon fiancé of her writer friend Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn). Helen becomes depressed, obese and is committed to a mental hospital. Fourteen years later Madeline is worrying about her aging and fading looks; Ernest is an alcoholic who now is a mortician, making damaged corpses look okay. They are miserable though rich. Invited to Helen’s book launch, Madeline tries to get beauty treatments but has reached the limits of conventional (even dubious) work; she is given a card of Lisle von Ruhmann (Isabella Rossellini) who specialises in rejuvenation.

At the book launch Helen, though over 50, appears slim, fit and young. Jealous, and rejected by her lover, Madeline goes to see Lisle. Lisle claims to be seventy two though appears much younger and gives Madeline a potion of eternal youth, warning her to be careful, and to vanish after ten years as otherwise people would notice. Meanwhile Madeline has gone to her home, seduced Ernest and convinced him to kill her.

Madeline and Ernest argue, he pushes her down the stairs, has a change of heart and takes her to hospital. Medically she’s dead, but is still walking and talking. When they get home Ernest uses his skills to repair her. When Helen arrives Madeline kills her, but she survives, having taken the potion. Ernest repairs her too but plots to leave; realising they will need his skills they kidnap him and take him to Lisle’s mansion for a ridiculous finale. It’s a comedy!

A comedy about terrible people doing terrible things, and also about aging, jealousy, vanity and looks. Often very funny, occasionally insightful and horrid.

Watch This: Terrible people want eternal youth, get it good and hard
Don’t Watch This: Maiming, murder, revenge etc

3. Tennis Court

Hammer House Of Mystery And Suspense

Maggie and Harry Dowl inherit a house in the English countryside. One curious feature is an indoor tennis court inside a large barn. The daughter of the vicar and her friend inspect it and have a strange experience there. More goes on and people are attacked by balls and nets.

During WW2 Maggie’s mother lived here. Two RAF pilots courted her, playing tennis. Then one crashed horribly.

This is connected, though the secret of the haunting has a twist. A creepy story that gets quite horrid when the paranormal investigator is called in.

Watch This: History reaching out to the present in terrifying ways
Don’t Watch This: Indoor tennis is bad enough without people being killed for it
The Last Hammer House Of Mystery And Suspense: However due to my inefficiency I've missed The Sweet Smell Of Death so a final accounting for the series will have to wait for that.

4. Lisa Frankenstein

Lisa Swallow’s mother was killed by an axe murderer; she spends a lot of time in a graveyard at the grave of a pianist and spurned lover who was killed by lightning in 1837. Her father re-married to Janet, a psychiatric nurse, who has a daughter Taffy, Lisa’s age. Taffy’s trying hard to be a sister, Janet hates Lisa.

Taffy takes Lisa to a party where things go wrong, she’s awkward with her crush, is drugged and sexually assaulted by a classmate. She goes home through the cemetery, talks to the grave. The grave is truck by lightning and the man returns as a zombie, mute, dirty, missing body parts. He follows her home causing chaos, when Lisa recognises who he is she hides him in the closet. She blames the damage to the house on a break in. Janet doesn’t believe her, claiming she’s acting out to get attention and should be committed.

Lisa and The Creature (how he is credited) try to learn from each other, Lisa becoming more confident and borrowing Taffy’s clothes. Taffy’s tanning bed, damaged so it gives electric shocks, becomes key to helping The Creature. Learning that Janet is trying to commit Lisa, The Creature kills her, takes an ear to replace his own, and has Lisa sew it on before going in the tanning bed to bring it to life as part of his body.

The film then moves through other bad people being killed (or otherwise) and having body parts taken, plus several scenes of people dressing up. It’s an addition to the teen zom-rom-com corpus, and not the worst of them.

Watch This: Fun, sprightly horror comedy
Don’t Watch This: Shifts tones at random, going for jokes to defuse horror and grossness instead of character-comedy

5. Swede Caroline

A documentary film maker looking into agricultural pollution stumbles onto controversy at the country’s most prestigious big vegetable competition. There are two growers who duke it out for biggest marrow every year, but this year there's a new challenger, Caroline is there with a very big marrow. It’s disqualified by the judges for a hairline crack to the stoic annoyance of Caroline and the loud complaints of her friend Paul.

Going back to see Caroline, we learn a bit about her. She’s a divorcee (though she tells everyone her husband’s dead), she got into veg growing, encouraged by her neighbour Willy, who it turns out was given a five year ban from big veg growing. She’s currently working for a private detective couple, taking notes at a court case involving a big company who want to demolish the community centre; the couple are also notorious for sex parties. Then there’s a break in and theft of her marrows, being grown from the seeds of her enormous one from last year.

This rapidly gets out of hand, with Paul (an online conspiracy theorist), Willy and Caroline trying to find out who stole the marrow plants. Things get stranger and distinctly less legal before the twist where the private detective couple go missing and people attack them. Would anyone really go this far for a big marrow growing competition?

It's a comedy, a mockumentary. Some of the best jokes are the subtle ones, and the acting is generally very good, especially when people, knowing that they are being filmed, put things on a bit. Occasionally the film breaks the framing, with shots that make no sense for a documentary, something that should only bother nerds like me.

Watch This: Low key comedy with some very good comic performances
Don’t Watch This: Breaks the mockumentary frame several times, also who cares about vegetables

6. Day Of The Jackal (1973)

It’s 1962 and following France granting independence to Algeria (real) President Charles de Gaulle (real) is targeted by the OAS (Organisation armée secrete, real) a paramilitary terrorist group mostly made up of former French soldiers who disagree with Algerian Independence. Their assassination attempt (real) fails and many OAS members are arrested. Colonel Bastien-Thiry (real) is sentenced to death for the attack; claiming that the sentence will not be carried out as no troops in a firing squad would shoot; he’s executed.

On the run in Austria the remaining leaders of OAS realise their organisation might leak, so decide to hire a British professional hitman who is codenamed “Jackal” (Edward Fox). He wants $500,000, as this will be a career-ending hit, he will have to disappear afterwards. They agree on terms half in advance, half on completion (this arrangement is repeated several times by the Jackal). To get the money OAS perform a number of bank robberies, drawing the attention of the police.

The OAS leadership holes up in a hotel in Rome, with only one member collecting the post. The Jackal makes his preparations, getting a special gun made that will fit inside metal tubes, having false documents made, and visiting Paris where he duplicates a key. In a notable sequence the Jackal buys a melon and takes it out in the country to adjust the rifle sights. The passport forger attempts to blackmail the Jackal, who kills him.

Alerted by the robberies, the French Action Service (real) kidnap the OAS postman in Rome and torture him; he dies but not before giving away the plot and the word Jackal. The French Interior Minister convenes heads of the various French security state, and at the recommendation of the Police Commissioner appoints his deputy Claude Lebel (Michael Lonsdale) to head the investigation. Without a specific threat de Gaulle refuses to make any changes to his schedule.

The rest of the film is then a cat and mouse game between Jackal and Lebel. Trying to find out the identity of the Jackal runs into a number of dead ends. The British find a loose end and dig through the passport records; after a close escape the Jackal seduces a woman rather than stay in a hotel, kills her and changes his appearance. Later he picks up a man in a Turkish Bathhouse in Paris, goes back to his flat and kills him before having sex, hiding out there.

Lebel meanwhile realises there is a leak in the security apparatus; he tracks it down but as the end of it is a phone number that the Jackal calls this doesn’t help find him. Realising the date, he intuits the assassination will take place at the commemoration of the liberation of Paris in WW2.

The final section has some extraordinary footage of Michael Lonsdale and other actors moving through a crowd and parade (it was in fact Bastille Day (real) they filmed it on, having got permission to work within the police lines). For that matter the locations are all magnificent, especially the Parisian ones. The scene when the ministerial cars, all Citroen DS’s, line up is striking. The methodical yet bold nature of both the Jackal and Lebel, the two not quite mirror images is notable. If, perhaps, we have no doubt of the ending (we know our (real) French history), it is in how exactly we get there that the film holds out attention, and in the images that it shines.

Watch This: Classic assassination thriller that manages to combine mystery, process and some great setpieces
Don’t Watch This: Guy spends a lot of time trying to shoot de Gaulle for one of his better actions

7. The Radleys

The Radleys live quietly in a small town. The teenage children leave their father’s birthday party to join the local kids up on the hill. When Clara leaves she’s followed and assaulted by one of the boys. She retaliates, killing him and drinking his blood. The parents reveal to their children a secret; they’ve a family of vampires (non-practicing).

Things get out of control and the father Pete Radley (Damien Lewis) calls his brother Will Radley (also Damien Lewis) to help clear up the mess and, as a practicing vampire, to help the kids learn about vampiring. Rowan, the son, becomes more confident and intrigued by his cool uncle; unfortunately his crush is the son of a former police officer who retired because of vampires and is tracking vampire reports.

At it’s best the contrast between the uninspiring, boring Damien Lewis and the cool but evil Damien Lewis is interesting, and some of the jokes are good. Most of it is about trying to fit in, and a little bit of resisting temptation (addiction).

Watch This: Funny and fun twin vampire film
Don’t Watch This: No especially inspiring twists on vampire stories, and too unfocused to make interesting allegorical points

8. Enter The Dragon

Lee (Bruce Lee) is a Shaolin monk in Hong Kong recruited by British Intelligence. Han is a former Shaolin monk, now an international criminal (drugs and prostitution) who owns an island of disputed jurisdiction (it’s 1973, Hong Kong is British). Han does not allow guns, does have a martial arts school and runs a martial arts competition. Lee is to go to the competition and find evidence so they can convince the other party with an interest (presumably the People’s Republic Of China) to raid and arrest Han.

Before embarking Lee discovers that Han’s men, including O’Hara, killed his sister, though not before she gives O’Hara a cool scar. There are a variety of other martial artists on the boat, notably Roper and Williams. Roper is a white American, has a lot of luggage, owes gambling debts to the mob. Williams is a black American, and on the run from the police due to activism. The two know each other and run a scam where they lose a fight until the other gets good odds to bet on them.

The competition begins; after the first day the competitors are offered a girl for the night (all the competitors are men). Roper picks Tania, Han’s assistant. Williams picks several women, the joke being that his sexual stamina is as great as his fighting. Lee picks Mei Ling, an undercover agent who had been unable to report back; she explains some of the set up.

The film progresses approximately as we might expect; between competition bouts Lee sneaks about uncovering the island’s secrets. Han incorrectly thinks it’s Williams sneaking about and beats him to death with his iron hand. Han has the guards who failed to stop Lee executed by Bolo, his giant enforcer. Lee fights O’Hara who cheats, but is beaten and killed. Han tries to recruit Roper to his organisation; when he's given the job of killing Lee he instead joins him leading to the final sequence, which includes a giant martial arts fight between hundreds of Han’s students and escaped prisoners, and Lee chasing Han through a mirror maze.

Classic martial arts movie that made Bruce Lee’s reputation, in part because of his untimely death soon after. I recall being told in school that Bruce Lee died because he was 100% fit and then tried to get fitter (this was someone in my class passing on information from an older brother, not part of a lesson). Fortunately I have never been 100% fit so that isn’t a danger. The point however is that this is the martial arts movie that people making martial arts movies had in mind, whether measuring themselves against it, or doing things that were in opposition to it. And for all it’s simplistic and silly plot and stereotypes the action is good and there’s a raw energy to it.

Watch This: Foundational martial arts movie with unmatched fight sequences
Don’t Watch This: Ridiculous set up, cartoonish characters

9. Color Out Of Space

Hydrologist Ward Phillips (Elliot Knight) encounters Lavinia Gardner (Madeline Arthur) doing spells by the lake; she informs him he’s on private land and should leave, then rides off on her white horse. Back at the farm we meet her family; her father Nathan (Nicholas Cage) who inherited the farm and is trying to grow vegetables and raise alpacas; her mother Theresa (Joely Richardson) a cancer survivor who is trying to do her high-powered finance job remotely and fighting with satellite or internet or something; teen brother Benny and youngest brother Jack. That night a meteorite crashes on the farm.

Ward, the mayor and sheriff all come to look at it; later it vanishes. The local TV news come out, and make Nathan sound like a UFO nut. Ward doesn’t like the look of the water and warns them off it. He also talks to Ezra, a squatter on the land, who speaks obliquely about weird things that only make sense if you know what genre of film you’re in. Jack seems interested in the well, claiming he has a friend in it.

Distracted, Theresa cuts her finger off while making dinner. Nathan takes her to the hospital; strange things occur while they’re away, Benny losing time, the phone not working, Jack seeing strange things in the well. When they get back Nathan uncharacteristically shouts at them, blaming Lavinia and Benny for the alpacas being out and Jack being strange.

The plants become dessiccated. Lavinia tries to cast a spell from the Necronomicon to protect them. The “Color”* emerges and when it strikes it merges animals together, including Theresa and Jack into a hideous single creature. From here events escalate, with Ward returning to try and stop anyone drinking the water and especially building the dam that will create a reservoir for the city of Arkham and more while the Gardner family are taken over by the Color.

A loose adaption of H P Lovecraft’s The Colour Out Of Space , this takes many of those ideas, mixes them with some others and throws some gruesome gore and monstrous body horror into the mix. The occasional grasp at the idea of something from outer space being so strange it changes people, time, space, the nature of reality etc keeps falling back to churning flesh and weird colours. Which is probably all that can actually hoped for, despite the best efforts of the film.

Watch This: Weird and compelling horror, cycling through several modes of strangeness
Don’t Watch This: Lots of mutilation and no one comes out unscathed
An Adaption: See also Die, Monster, Die for another adaption of The Colour Out Of Space, where the colour is green

* They struggle to describe the colour (or “Color”). It’s a pinky-purple.

10. Prey

On the Great Plains of North America in the early 18^th century Naru, a young Comanche woman, wants to be a hunter like her brother Taabe; she’s pretty good at healing and everyone thinks that’s what she should stick to. She and her dog are hunting when she sees a thunderbird. But because we know what this film’s about we know it’s actually a spaceship with a Predator from the Predator film series.

No one is interested in her thunderbird but her brother lets her join a party looking for Pahi who has gone missing, believed attacked by a cougar. They find him and she binds his wounds and gives him a herb that lowers body temperature to stabilise him until they can get him back. She leaves them, discovering weird tracks and a skinned rattlesnake, she rejoins the hunters of the cougar. Distracted by the Predator weirdness she has to be carried back to camp by Taabe; he later returns with the Cougar and get made a chief for his exploits.

Naru knows there is something going on in the woods and goes looking. She’s attacked by a grizzly bear and the Predator kills it. She meets up with a hunting party sent to find her, and they are killed by the Predator. She’s then caught in a trap and is captured by French voyageurs – fur hunters who were responsible for a massacre of buffalo.

They attempt to use Naru and also Taabe as bait to capture the Predator but this doesn’t work. The interpreter is injured and she uses the body cooling herb to help him in return for him teaching her how to use a flintlock pistol. When the Predator returns he can’t see the interpreter due to low body heat (he’s killed anyway when the Predator treads on his wound and he screams).

This sets us up for the classic finale to a Predator film, in which the humans use what they have learned about the Predator against it. Yet by simply moving the time and place we subtly shift focus on the film, bringing different themes forward. Naru is hunting because she wants to be a hunter, more respected, and for that needs a trophy – like the Predator. Yet she keeps failing, though she is smart and adaptable. Meanwhile Taabe has proven himself, he hunts for the benefit of his people, and gains respect for that. The French, interlopers, hunt wastefully – yet is this not the Predator too? By bringing horses and guns to the Great Plains they will transform the Comanche. What will the intervention of the Predators do to the development of humanity? (See Alien Versus Predator for the answer (not much))

Anyway this is a good film, a good Predator film. I saw the Comanche-and-French language version with subtitles.

Watch This: Young woman comes of age, fights a monster
Don’t Watch This: Animals and people being mutilated left right and centre