Film Review Catch Up 3

At last we come to the end of the catch up, with three black and white and three colour films I watched in October.

Hmm.

****

1. The Four-Sided Triangle

There’s two boys and a girl growing up in the village. One of the boys is the son of the local squire. The two boys grow up and go to university; the girl goes off to America.

The boys come back with a big science idea. It’s a replicator, a machine that uses the equivalence of energy and matter to re-create whatever is in one chamber in the other. The girl also comes back having failed at various careers. Together they succeed in being able to replicate things.

There is of course a love triangle, though this being a 1950s black and white British science fiction film it’s not an equal triangle (and indeed why should it, but anyway, my point is that the bond between the two men is not of a romantic sort). Of course if you’ve got a replicator then maybe the triangle doesn’t have to be broken* when the young lady chooses…

Focusing on the relationships there’s almost a subplot about how the replicator will be used (our idealistic scientists are thinking of rare drugs, medical equipment, things for all mankind; the uncle in the civil service has them put it under the control of the government and maybe not every use will be so high-minded) but the film is interested in human beings more than scientific ideas. Slow paced for modern audiences, with lots of scenes where nothing happens except machines are adjusted for several minutes.

Watch This: Old school scientific romance
Don’t Watch This: The ideas have been replicated more interestingly since

* Perhaps this is just me but I always assumed that in a “love triangle” the people were at the corners and the relationships were represented by the lines, the film being better named “The Four-Cornered Triangle”.

2. Trapped

The US Secret Service (no connection to the Gerry and Sylvia Anderson TV series) discover some counterfeit currency which seems to be the same as some made by a convicted forger. They interview him and offer him a deal, to help them track the people using his plates. They fake a breakout, then he betrays them, slips the agent with him and escapes.

But they expected this and are watching and tapping his girlfriend. The forger makes contact with the counterfeiter and they introduce an agent to buy some fake money. However the first handover is a fake, putting an enormous undercover operation to waste (the agent in charge is painting a sign on the window across the street that says “Fancy Carrots 2 for 15c” which I found very funny).

Things spiral out of control into a violent and quite gruesome finale. Made with the co-operation of the US Treasury Department there is no doubt where the film’s sympathies lie. A twisty thriller with very little on the actual mechanics of forging or passing off counterfeit bills.

Watch This: A crime and police story with a handful of clever ideas
Don’t Watch This: A slow, black and white crime film with ridiculous twists and turns and coincidences

3. The Brain That Wouldn’t Die

Dr Bill Cortner saves a patient using experimental techniques after his father, also a surgeon, declares they can’t be saved. His methods are too risky to use except in emergency. Bill then takes the weekend away with his girlfriend Jan Compton, a nurse, and drives badly and far too fast, causing an accident that decapitates her. Taking the head to the family house in the country, he and his assistant succeed in keeping the head alive. He goes back out to look for a body to transplant it on.

The film is then divided into two differently creepy sections. In one, Bill goes around town trying to get a woman with a body he likes to trick them out to the country house and kill them to save Jan. In the other, back at the house, Jan is driven mad by her circumstances, tries to convince the assistant Kurt to let her die. But Kurt has a damaged hand and Bill has promised to repair it when he prefects his techniques.

There’s another inhabitant to the house, behind a locked door in the laboratory. Jan can sense them, and even communicate.

A genuine sense of menace in each of the parts despite the threadbare nature of the plot and ridiculous sets and set-ups; it falls apart a bit when the door actually opens.

Watch This: A creepy black and white old school horror science fiction film
Don’t Watch This: It’s weird and slow and silly
Apparently: The copyright notice was defective making it public domain, at least in the United States so you can find it on Youtube

4. Footsteps In The Fog

It’s the start of the 20^th century (in this 1955 film) and a maid (Lily) realises that the master of the house (Lowry) has poisoned his wife. She decides to blackmail him.

This doesn’t go smoothly. First she takes the jewels, then she insists that he make her housekeeper. The other servants (cook and butler) quit, the nuances of class and seniority along with her attitude making working under her unsupportable. Then the master of the house decides to kill her, but in the fog makes a mistake and instead kills the wife of the neighbourhood constable.

There follows an investigation and trial, or rather the magistrate’s hearing before he’s put on trial. Lily’s testimony gets him off, and she explains to him that her sister has a letter in the event that something happens to her. Maybe she should have started with that? Just saying.

Lowry promises they’ll go to America where they can get married and start a new life. Of course the dominoes start to tumble and his last plan to get rid of her goes wrong, though not without wrecking everything for everyone. It’s almost Edwardian-noir like that!

Watch This: An old-fashioned crime thriller with some fun twists
Don’t Watch This: Cold-blooded murder cut with unexamined class prejudice doesn’t do it for you

5. Wonder Woman 1984

Diana Prince is working in the Smithsonian in Washington DC. It’s 1984 and she occasionally superheroes, stopping a robbery. Recovered from the robbery is a magic wishing stone which is sent to her colleague Barbara Minerva to be identified. They both make wishes, Prince for her dead lover Steve Trevor, Minerva to be like Prince. Minerva is surprised to discover that she gains superpowers.

After the stone is Maxwell Lord, whose oil-Ponzi scheme is on the verge of collapse. He figures out a way around the cost of the wishes, coming up with a clever and novel wish-for-infinite-wishes plan.

The wishing stone has brought down civilisations before (apparently) and now it’s going to do the same, except now we have a global civilisation so it’s going to break everyone. Except Thermyscria presumably, as they don’t have television.

I’ve seen a bit of talk about how Steve takes over someone else’s body and he and Diana don’t consider that a problem, a serious ethical breach. It’s like Diana had her dearest wish granted and doesn’t care to count the cost, a recurring motif in the film! In the end she does the right thing and convinces everyone in the world to do the right thing. And then she vanishes from history until Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice.

Watch This: A moderately entertaining superhero film whose climax relies on inspiring people rather than beating people up
Don’t Watch This: More than one sequence seems tangential to plot, theme or character creating a meandering feeling to the film
Previously: I have pondered the mystery of Steve Trevor III

6. The Devil Rides Out

Two men go to visit the son of an old friend and discover that he’s hosting the meeting of a cult, a coven of dark magicians. The Duke de Richleau (Christopher Lee) realises that everyone’s soul is in danger and he and Rex Van Ryn kidnap the son, Simon Aron, to get him away from the influence of the leader Mocata (Charles Gray)*.

There follows a back and forth struggle between Richleau and Mocata over Simon and also Rex and Mocata over a female member of the cult, Tanith, to try and save them before they are initiated. Several supernatural and menacing beings are summoned and in the finale Richleau uses white magic while Mocata summons the Angel Of Death.

There’s a satisfying climax, that is then slightly undercut as the worst things that happened are restored by a miracle. Based on a Dennis Wheatley novel it somewhat conflates lurid fake-satanic nonsense with real rituals (leaning heavily on Alistair Crowley). There are also a dozen excellent pre-WW2 cars for those who like that sort of thing, and several car chases and fights.

Watch This: An exciting horror adventure with two really good and imposing leads
Don’t Watch This: Wheatley’s brand of occult rubbish does nothing for you

* Both Lee and Gray played Bond villains, Lee as Francisco Scaramanga in The Man With The Golden Gun and Gray as Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever. Interestingly Gray had previously played Captain Henderson in an earlier Bond film You Only Live Twice, in which he is murdered, and Blofeld is played by Donald Pleasance. Blofeld has had appearance altering plastic surgery in Diamonds Are Forever and purely for my own amusement I have assumed that Henderson’s file photo got mixed up with the plastic surgery details.