Film Review Catch Up 1

My idiosyncratic "post only one item a day (except when I post more)" system has once again overflowed, so to try and clear the decks before 2022 here are some films that I watched this year, and what I thought of them.

****

1. Knives Out

A country house murder mystery set in a country house owned by a murder mystery writer. This is as zany, unlikely and packed with unpleasant and unusual characters as any murder mystery film adapted from a golden age mystery writer. However the details and mechanics of the plot set it firmly in the 21^st century.

Does the film have anything important or interesting to say? Perhaps only that the country house murder mystery is not dead, and that a convoluted plot, good actors playing terrible people and a bit of style can still make an interesting film.

Watch This: For a clever fun old school murder mystery
Don’t Watch This: If horrid people and weird coincidences just annoy you

2. Machete Kills

Obviously complaining that this film is stupid and ridiculous, treats side characters as disposable, makes women sexy all the time while the men have occasional sexy scenes, and is very violent, all this is beside the point; that’s what this Mexploitation pastiche is.

And yet. The President sends Machete south of the border to confront a revolutionary with a split personality who is threatening to use a missile if the US interferes. Every encounter ends with violence, often with a gimmick antagonist and/or gimmick use of a machete. The revolutionary/criminal/secret agent has the missile attached to a heart monitor so if he is killed it will launch and the only one who can stop it is Voz, an American tech-billionaire. So far so good.

Voz is the villain of course, he has a giant henchman who is cloned, and he intends to colonise space, wrecking the earth in his wake in a plot that is a mash-up of Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me. But even in the techno-thriller hi-tech Bond world going to space was a step too far. For a gritty, violent cross-border action film it fits even worse.

There are a number of deft and clever bits of film-making which makes things like odd blocking, fight scenes that pause to allow everyone to get into place and just confusing edits more annoying than charming. They have gone out of their way to make the film appear stupid and bad and unfortunately this has made several segments genuinely bad. The film has little to say, but what it does is loud and clear. A disappointment that still has more heart than many slicker films.

Watch This: For some loud and occasionally funny fights and stuff
Don’t Watch This: If random decapitations are not for you

3. Monster Island

Billy Ford is a billionaire with exactly two employees* who has a plan to do some undersea mining. They find a monster. He’s threatened with fines which does not concern him** but then an inspector suggests they might take away his license so he brings her on board the team.

She’s studied geomorphology under a professor who used legends to inform her work, so they get her to join them. When the military fail to stop the monster (a giant starfish) they try to lure it to another monster to fight.

Oh the starfish monster shoots eggs everywhere which hatch very quickly into flying reptile monsters. It’s supposed to be set in New Zealand I think, and also a mockbuster in the slipstream of Godzilla: King Of Monsters.

Utterly forgettable, effects and monster passable if inconsistent, the low budget appearing in the sets and number (and quality of actors). I was mildly entertained for a couple of hours.

Watch This: Some people struggle with problems, there’s a bit of underwater stuff and monsters fight
Don’t Watch This: There are better monster films

* It’s possible the helicopter pilot is directly employed but I would think not. The film makes clear that the ship and crew have been chartered.
** “A fine is a price.”

4. The Detective

I. Frank Sinatra plays the titular detective, Sergeant Joe Leland of the NYPD (he gets promoted to Lieutenant as part of the events of the film). We are introduced when he is called to the apartment of Teddy Leikman, who has been murdered and mutilated. He was the son of a rich and important man, and also gay.

II. It’s 1968 and they’re going to take a look at gay culture through the lens of crime and policing. They track down Leikman’s boyfriend, a body-builder, who he had recently split up with. Leland gets a confession out of him, though no one is sure if it will hold up as he’s clearly disturbed. It does and he’s executed.

III. In the course of the investigation Leland gets Vice to raid the waterfront where they discover a bunch of men all jammed in the back of truck, which is unintentionally hilarious. When the Vice guy starts beating on them to get information Leland tries to get him to calm it down, eventually punching him when he won’t show respect.

IV. “Live and let live is my motto,” says Leland, the closest thing to the moral centre of the film. Indeed the film has more to say on the topic; one clue is finding mineral oil in Leikman’s apartment. When one of the squad suggests it’s a lubricant, another says that you want something thicker like Vaseline; quizzed on this he says that men and women use it too. More on this; Leland is separated from his wife because she is compelled to sleep around. It's as though the film is kind of saying “Yo, straight people are messed up too.”

V. Getting the confession leads to Leland’s promotion. Having seen this a black detective starts doing very aggressive interrogations, including stripping suspects, a technique he claims he learned from documentaries about Nazi concentration camps. Leland, not for the first time, is confronted with the moral compromises police work forces on him, as well as there being corrupt cops he can’t go after because those in charge want to protect the department.

VI. Investigating a suspicious suicide that had been ignored by the police Leland uncovers corruption in the Borough Planning Board, one that ensures that hospitals don’t get built and slums don’t get replaced, keeping the city the terrible place that breeds desperation. (Gentrification brings its own problems and allows the developers to make their own outrageous profits but still, the board is making money by not doing its job).

VII. In the final reveal Leland discovers some tapes that the suicide made talking to a psychiatrist friend. There’s a number of rather dubious bits – “You told me there’s no such thing as a bisexual, only a homosexual without conviction,” which I would contend is not a position to be taken seriously. Anyway he goes to a gay bar to try and get it out of his system, hooks up with Leikman and kills him when Leikman says he knew he was gay as soon as he saw him. Though to be fair the fact he’d gone to a gay bar, which was down a gay alley filled with gay men, would probably have been a clue. In any case this tape proves the fraud and also proves that Leland got the wrong man convicted, leading to the last of the film’s moral quandries.

VIII. Sinatra and the filmmakers were trying to make something serious and gritty and I guess they succeeded. Indeed police corruption and brutality, corrupt land deals and a look at gay culture – whoever has the rights should pitch it to one of the streaming services. Which is not to say that it feels modern – the delivery and framing is not.

IX. In an interesting bit of trivia, the film is loosely based on a novel of the same name by Roderick Thorp. Thorp later wrote a sequel, Nothing Lasts Forever, which was the basis for the film Die Hard, though it looks as though both adaptions took their stories in different directions. Still, imagining this film with Bruce Willis’s John McClane is an interesting thought.

Watch This: For a gritty crime movie that examines several topics still of interest
Don’t Watch This: They had some weird ideas in the 60s didn’t they

5. The Fury (1978)

Robin, the son of an ex-spy, Peter, is telekinetic. His father old agency stages a terrorist attack to get hold of him which succeeds but leaves Peter alive. Sometime later in Chicago he learns of a psychic girl, Gillian, who may be able to help him find his son and get her back.

Gillian has visions, can control a model railway with her mind and when she gets upset people around her start bleeding. As the film goes on the psychic powers of both Robin and Gillian become more violent and bloody, culminating in someone exploding in a shower of blood.

There’s a couple of good spy bits, including when they track Peter to his hotel and he escapes out the window, across the elevated railway (I’ve looked this up it’s called the “L” in Chicago) into an apartment. There he takes hostage a couple, but is welcomed by the mother/-in-law who feeds him, helps him improvise a disguise and promises not to let the others loose until he’s got away.

It’s both a spy thriller and a supernatural horror film and that’s not exactly a problem; the slow burn as Gillian is taken to the Paragon psychic research institute is balanced by Peter’s increasingly desperate action sequences as he keeps ahead of the goons after him, people start randomly bleeding and Peter slowly gathers intelligence. But it ends tragically and bloodily.

Watch This: For a 70s supernatural thriller with lots of blood
Don’t Watch This: If you want any deep meditations on intelligence work or psychic powers

6. The Quiller Memorandum

In this 1966 spy thriller Quiller is sent to Berlin to find out about a resurgence of Nazis. Following up on the leads left by his murdered predecessor he investigates a swimming baths, a bowling alley and a school where a war criminal was discovered. There he meets and flirts with Inge, who talks about the Old Germany and the New Germany.

He’s captured, drugged and interrogated. Then, after being told he is to die, he wakes up on the river bank. It becomes clear that each side is trying to discover the other’s base, to destroy it. He calls Inge and they have sex, following which she gets a (supposedly) ex-neo-nazi friend to lead them to the base. There is then a cat-and-mouse chase through Berlin, with Quiller finding that every escape route is cut off, in an effort to get him to lead them to his base.

The film builds slowly to a fever pitch of paranoia, with Quiller not sure who to trust and the affably villainous Oktober (Max von Sydow) increasing in menace.

Watch This: For a neo-noir 60s spy thriller
Don’t Watch This: Seeing a guy deliriously not answer questions for quite a long time does nothing for you

7. Ape Vs Monster

A mockbuster that uses Godzilla Vs Kong as it’s inspiration, though it has gone very far from any of the actual films. Anyway back in the 80s a joint Soviet-American mission put a chimpanzee into orbit, now it’s back and covered in a weird green goo that makes creatures grow. Both the ape, Abraham, and a Gila Monster are effected by it. But there’s more to it than that.

As a result of both budget and COVID, most of the film is people in rooms arguing, leavened with several modestly impressive CGI shots of the ape, the monster and the third force behind all this, which I guess I won’t spoil for some reason. In addition there are a handful of outdoor scenes. To give you the idea of what’s going on, when the capsule lands they don’t let the scientist character near, saying they need to “secure the perimeter”. The troops doing this are a team of five, who all close in on the capsule from one side. They are “heavily armed” by which they mean one of them has a rocket launcher which he keeps aimed at the capsule from about five metres. In case you don’t know, this is a bad way of securing the perimeter and deploying your heavy weapons.

In addition the Russian scientist flies a helicopter which they refer to as an Apache, a US military helicopter, a puzzling choice for a Russian national. It is an Apache some of the time, when fighting the creatures, but it also ferries several people about and becomes a different helicopter in the footage shown. Look, I don’t expect much from this film but this could be simply solved by not naming the type of helicopter or making up a cool new one.

There’s some tearful family reunion, friendship and betrayal, cowardice and bombast and a small amount of politics. None of it ever rises above mildly interesting. There’s a little tension raised but all in all the acting and pacing is quite mediocre.

Watch This: For a giant ape occasionally fighting a giant gila monster
Don’t Watch This: For any actual insight into monster films

8. The Mummy (1959)

In 1895 in Egypt John Banning (Peter Cushing) has broken his leg in the course of digging up the tomb of the Princess Ananka, leaving his father and uncle to continue the dig. Despite being warned by a mysterious fez-wearing local, Mehmed Bey, they break in, find the Scroll Of Life and then the father is attacked while alone and falls into a catatonic state.

Back in England three years later he comes out of his trance and claims that by reading the Scroll Of Life he brought back to life the high priest Kharis (Christopher Lee). Kharis had been mummified alive in the tomb for trying to bring the princess back to life. He will hunt down everyone who desecrated the tomb. No one believes the father.

Mehmed Bey has brought the Mummy to England to take his revenge. Things go wrong, ranging from drunken carters dropping the sarcophagus in a bog to Banning’s wife Isobel (Yvonne Furneaux) closely resembling Princess Ananka (also played by Furneaux). The police, as might be expected, are baffled when the murders begin.

This is a classic Hammer horror, the outdoor sets unconvincing, a distinct scent of xenophobia, some excellent performances, a good-looking actress in her nightie, a true rising dread, and love undying being part of the solution. Cushing does his convincing turn as a Victorian scholar forced to investigate the uncanny (with a limp) and if we’ve seen it before it doesn’t matter, it’s still good.

Watch This: For an old-fashioned horror film with scares and frights
Don’t Watch This: A bunch of late 19^th century imperialist tomb robbing and English countryside murders is boring.
If You Like Mummy Films: My review of The Mummy (2017), and Blood From The Mummy's Tomb

9. Dr Who And The Daleks

Ian (Roy Castle) visits his girlfriend Barbara (Jennie Linden) at the house of her grandfather, the eccentric Dr Who* (Peter Cushing). Who has invented a TARDIS, a machine that looks like a police box, is bigger on the inside than the outside, and can travel in space and time. Ian, Who, Barbara and Who’s other granddaughter, Susan (Roberta Tovey), take it out for a spin.

They arrive on a mysterious planet. Who fakes a breakdown in order to explore. It turns out that there was a nuclear war some time ago and there is a city inhabited by Daleks, who live inside armoured pepperpots and yell and want to kill everyone. However they discover a drug that had been left anonymously at the door of the TARDIS that blocks radiation poisoning.

This is the work of the Thals, the historic enemies of the Daleks who have given up war for peace. A variety of capture and escape shenanigans take place and Who, in a significant change from his small screen version, encourages the Thals to stand up and fight.

This big screen version of Dr Who has some good if dated looks; compared to small screen Who it’s not bad at all, especially the interior of the Dalek city and the Thal makeup. Yes, they’re just glam-rock humans, but I like it. A curiosity for Who fans, a fun bit of sixties science fiction.

Watch This: For a bit of Who, Dalek action
Don’t Watch This: His name is Dr Who? Roy Castle does slapstick? Where’s Davros?

* This character is an old-fashioned 20^th-century Englishman rather than the alien Timelord you might have expected

10. The Amazing Transparent Man

A 1960 black and white science fiction B-Movie. A safecracker is broken out of prison to work for an ex-army major. He has kidnapped a scientist who has invented a machine that makes people (and guineas pigs) invisible. He’s holding the scientist’s daughter prisoner to make him work. He gets the safecracker to steal nuclear material for the invisibility machine. He intends to use it to make an invisible army and conquer the world.

The safecracker just wants money, and maybe he and the woman who works for the major will just rob a couple of banks and quit, or maybe it will turn out the invisibility machine and radioactivity will kill people who use it. The fact they run the ray from another room behind a foot thick heavy door ought to be a clue.

Some moderately good invisibility effects do not lift this above the basics of the concept. It feels very like an over-extended Twilight Zone episode, right down to a character posing a moral question at the end.

Watch This: For a silly film about invisible shenanigans
Don’t Watch This: If I want to see, or rather not see, invisible crimes, there are better films