Film Catch Up April

Last year I waited until December to catch up with film reviews, leading to 17 catch up posts. Well let's not do that, especially since I haven't finished reviewing the films I watched in 2023. Do these ten films finish the year up? Ha ha, no.

****

1. The Deep (1977)

A couple (Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset) are diving off Bermuda when they discover a wreck. They pick up an odd ampoule and also a gold medallion. They consult a local historian and treasure hunter (Robert Shaw). He reckons a storm has shifted the wreck of the Goliath that sank in WW2, which is off limits due to explosives on board, and that this has uncovered a Spanish wreck, possibly a treasure ship.

The ampoule, shown in the dive shop, draws the malign attention of a local gangster (Louis Gossett Jr). It’s medical morphine from the Goliath, and he can sell it. He terrorises the couple, but the treasure hunter has his own men and they negotiate; collecting the morphine for him for a fee, and using that to cover their recovery of the treasure.

There’s a lot of underwater scenes, and several fights and chases on land. One particular setpiece is that the gangster and treasure hunter agree to meet at a cricket match – in public, neutral ground.

Watch This: Suspenseful underwater treasure hunt, with some good detective work on the ships
Don’t Watch This: Some weird people hang around underwater, tangle with criminals

2. Deathstalker 2

Deathstalker is an infamous thief and warrior. He meets Reena The Seer who is in disfavour after predicting bad things for the king, and saves her from some guards while on his way to the tavern. The two join up when she predicts a fortune for him.

She’s actually Princess Evie; the sorcerer Jerak and his sidekick the warrior Sultana have overthrown her, creating a clone to rule in her stead. They need a constant supply of people to sacrifice to keep her alive, but now Jerak thinks he’s got a way to make it permanent – by using the original Evie.

Deathstalker and Reena/Evie travel through various dangerous places having quips and fights. In the land of women he has to fight Gorgo, a female wrestler bigger than him. There’s lots of innuendo and also some boobs, plus Deathstalker is often without his shirt. Some of the stunts are pretty good.

This is a comedy, a parody of swords and sorcery films. Perhaps unfortunately the film mostly ignores its own best joke, that everyone is a modern day American under a paper thin pseudo-medieval layer.

Watch This: Sporadically amusing swords and sorcery adventure
Don’t Watch This: If you aren’t entertained by stupid jokes it looks rather cheap

3. Salem’s Lot (1979)

Writer Ben Mears returns to his hometown, the quiet Maine town of Salem’s Lot (formerly Jerusalem’s Lot). He intends to write about the Marsten House, which sits atop a hill, overlooking the town, and has many tragic stories told about it. It has recently been bought by Mr Straker (James Mason) who will be opening an antiques store in town, in partnership with a as-yet-to-appear Mr Barlow.

Mears reconnects with people, learning about how life has moved on in the town. He visits his old school teacher, sees the kids practicing for the pageant detailing the history of the town. He starts dating Susan, the daughter of the doctor, which brings in some connection later when people start falling ill. There’s a trucker whose wife is cheating on him with the real estate agent, and a gravedigger with a dog, and the boarding house owner. This is a two part mini-series, so uses the full first part to give us a picture of this small town, before a mystery crate is shipped into Boston and Straker hires the trucker to collect it. He turns the job over to two other guys to catch his wife cheating.

What’s in the crate? It’s Barlow who is a vampire. The film doesn’t bother telling us what vampires can do, or their limitations. They just show us! No one quite believes as a contagion spreads. Based on a Stephen King novel I’ve not read, the leisurely approach lets us see exactly what this small town is like – petty, not quite as wholesome as it likes to appear but generally fine – before the supernatural horror arrives.

Watch This: Stylish bloodsucking thriller
Don’t Watch This: No real surprises

4. Serpico

Frank Serpico joins the NYPD, has some ideas for community policing, no one’s that interested so he joins the fingerprint bureau because they claim it’s a good way to get to be a detective. It’s not really. He gets a girlfriend who is a dancer and hangs out with artists and performers. Eventually he realises this is a dead end and gets himself transferred out. It’s the late 60s and he’s grown out his hair and moustache to go plainclothes. He gets shot at while making an arrest when not recognised by other police.

Someone offers to cut him in on a bribe, and when he reports it the superior suggests he keeps it. He gets a politically connected buddy to transfer him to a precinct that they reckon is squeaky clean. It turns out they’re actually more organised about taking payoffs from businesses and drug dealers so no one sees it.

They try to report it through the chain of command, and a captain claims he’s taking it seriously. Nothing happens. Eventually they take it outside the Police Department to the District Attorney, a big no no, and something actually happens. But they refuse to make this as big as it needs to be so Serpico goes to the press. The true extent of corruption is revealed. Then, on a drug bust, Serpico is shot when his team doesn’t back him up.

It's based on a true story, which helps explain the rambling nature of it in the first half. We’re not just interested in corruption in the NYPD, we’re also interested in Frank Serpico, an ordinary guy who refuses to go along to get along with the institutional corruption. He’s played by Al Pacino, he’s a guy who doesn’t want to compromise and so inevitably comes up against trouble, in his personal life and as a policeman.

Watch This: Gritty 70s crime drama
Don’t Watch This: Several strands go nowhere

5. The World Is Not Enough

James Bond retrieves some money from a lawyer in Bilbao, tries to get information, but then goons try to kill him and he must make a spectacular escape. Returning to MI6 headquarters the money is returned to Sir Robert King, who paid for a stolen report that got an agent killed. Unfortunately the money has been doped with explosives and King is killed. Bond spots the lawyer’s secretary/hitwoman out on the river, has an action-packed boat chase down the Thames, ending in the hitwoman killing herself in a hot air balloon above the Millenium (now O2) dome. Opening credits roll!

Robert King was building an oil pipeline; now his daughter Elektra King* is continuing it. M, Bond’s boss, was a lifelong friend of Robert (they read law together at Oxford). When Elektra was kidnapped by mysterious-anarchist-terrorist-for-hire Renard, he asked M for help; she refused to pay the ransom thinking they could find Elektra. Instead Elektra escaped on her own. Feeling guilt at this and also getting Robert killed M sends Bond to protect Elektra.

Out in Azerbaijan things get complicated. Bond’s been told not to tell Elektra they suspect Renard. When there is an assassination attempt (a hit squad in “para-hawks” – propeller-powered snowmobiles with paraglider chutes) she starts to wonder what MI6 knows. Then when Bond goes to a casino to talk to his contact Valentin Zukovsky (returning from Goldeneye), Elektra leaves her secure mansion and immediately loses a million dollars. There’s a lot going on!

Suspicious of Elektra’s security chief Bond follows him and inadvertently stumbles onto Renard’s plan to steal a nuclear weapon from a decommissioning plant in Kazakhstan. After some confusion he teams up with Dr Christmas Jones, a humourless nuclear weapons expert inexplicably** dressed like Lara Croft from Tomb Raider. The film descends into a rather confused set of revelations and double crosses, Bond attempting to save oil pipelines (“what do you believe in – preservation of capital?” asks Renard in his most (only) anarchist statement).

Possibly the most Roger Moore style of the Brosnan Bonds, combining both watercraft AND ski shenanigans, with Renard*** equalling the best of that eras villains. Yet there’s a grimness to it, M’s willingness to sacrifice people here mixed with regret over the cost to them becomes incoherent, especially when her efforts go wrong. Bond shows one or two moments of actual emotion, of sadness.

Watch This: Spy thriller with some fun performances that has aged hilariously
Don’t Watch This: A state-sponsored hitman working for an oil billionaire is our hero in a ridiculously convoluted adventure

* Naming your daughter Elektra is a bold choice.

** Very explicable

*** Renard is potentially a very silly villain – he’s been shot in the head and so can’t feel anything as is brought up in every conversation with or about him – but Robert Carlyle portrays him as a man of deep emotion, who feels everything. Just not physically. Because he’s been shot in the head so he can’t feel anything.

6. Caddyshack

Danny works as a caddy at the Bushwood Golf Club, saving to go to college. Mostly he caddies for Ty (Chevy Chase) a man of leisure, but he needs the approval of Judge Smalls, one of the club’s founders, to get a caddy scholarship. Danny has a girlfriend Maggie. Judge Smalls has a wife, who appears to be credited as Mrs Smalls, which seems something of an oversight as she gets to do quite a bit of disapproving of shenanigans, a small but important role in a film about golf club shenanigans. Also with Judge Smalls for the summer is his grandson, the dull and rude Spaulding, and his niece Lacey, sent here for the summer because she gets boys in trouble (by having sex with them).

There’s two wildcard characters to throw into this sit-com brew to make it explosive. First Carl (Bill Murray) the assistant groundskeeper, who hangs about not quite commenting on what goes on, and whose greatest enemy is the gopher. Secondly Al Czervik (Rodney Dangerfield), a brash real estate developer who annoys Judge Smalls with his loud building work next door even before he turns up and loudly annoys everyone*.

A comedy film that moves through various setpieces, everyone getting a chance to be kind of horrible, Danny being put upon by Judge Smalls and everyone mocking him for sucking up to him. Ty refusing to do anything, except be seduced by Lacey at one point, also play golf. And Al just acts like a jerk, right up to the final sequence when he challenges Judge Smalls to a golf match with illegal betting, and bribes the umpire (the doctor) to keep it fair.

It's generally funny, even when it’s gross or in bad taste, and the best scenes are hilarious.

Watch This: Ludicrous, entertaining loosely plotted golf club comedy
Don’t Watch This: People being dicks and playing cruel pranks and worse

* For some reason I’d never seen the start of the film until now, always coming in sometime during caddy day, so I’d always assumed that Al had started normal and been annoyed by Judge Smalls. Nope, he’s a dick from the start, insulting the club, demanding the Judge get a move on, insulting his hat etc.

7. Eyes Of Laura Mars

Laura Mars (Faye Dunaway) is a New York fashion photographer. Her pictures took a turn to the violent two years ago when she began seeing murder scenes in her dream. This leads to a book of her photography The Eyes Of Mars* and a controversial exhibition. Before going she has a dream about a woman killed in an apartment, the scene being first person as though through a camera, or perhaps through their eyes. At the opening of the exhibition she’s informed that editor has been killed, her eyes put out.

Later she’s doing an outdoor shoot when she has another vision and she heads over and stumbles onto the crime scene. As it turns out the victim is involved with her ex-husband Michael. All these seem like coincidences to the police and to Laura’s friends/acquaintances/co-workers, but Lieutenant John Neville (Tommy Lee Jones) shows her crime scene photos that match some of her violent fashion shots.

There are more visions and more attacks. Each time they come closer to Laura, attacking someone she knows. The police want to talk to her ex-husband but he evades them. There’s a mystery at the heart of this, one that can’t be explained by what Laura sees. A stylish supernatural thriller that manages to hold up the seriousness of the situation despite the unlikely events

Watch This: Clever, well shot, well acted film of murder and visions
Don’t Watch This: Laura’s visions are neither explained nor do they explain anything

* I think this is a pun on The Ides Of March, otherwise why not give the book the same name as the film?

8. Fist Of Fury

It’s Shanghai in the early 20^th century. Chen Zhen (Bruce Lee) returns to his martial arts school intending to marry his girlfriend. He discovers that the master of the school has died. He takes it hard, harder than the rest of the school who are taking it quite hard. At the funeral a rival Japanese martial arts school turn up, a translator challenging them, including slapping Chen. They present an insulting sign, declaring they’ll eat the words if anyone dares fight and defeat him. No one does, it’s a funeral, also the historical context (see later).

Chen Zhen then goes to the Japanese martial arts school to return the sign, beats up every student there on his own and then they literally eat the sign. On the way back he walks through a park but he’s told to clear off as there is a sign forbidding dogs and Chinese. But then a Western woman is allowed in with her dog and a Japanese man suggests he behave like a dog to get in. Chen Zhen then beats up all the Japanese and breaks the sign.

And now the history which is only hinted at! After some disasterous wars the Chinese allowed foreign concessions, zones where various Western powers were in charge in coastal cities, including Shanghai. Following the 1895 Sino-Japanese war, the Japanese were allowed concessions too. Hence the Chinese being treated as second-class citizens.

Back to the plot. The Japanese school attack the Chinese one, and with Chen Zhen away it goes badly for the Chinese. The Japanese insist they turn Chen Zhen over to them. They decide to smuggle him out of Shanghai, but then he discovers that the master was poisoned by the cook; following this he goes on a murderous roaring rampage of revenge. Things start to get out of hand, and people start getting killed on all sides, with the police and troops getting involved.

It's slightly awkward as a film, exciting stunts and high energy martial arts in brightly lit rooms, with a revenge plot and some historical prejudice and injustice, all pushed together. The iconic ending perhaps sums it up. Spoilers though.

Watch This: Excellent martial arts and a little historical truth
Don’t Watch This: Before going on revenge dig two graves, but don’t use them just hang your enemies from the lamp post

9. Mansion Of The Doomed

Nancy is in a car accident and loses her sight. Her father Leonard is an eye surgeon; introduced with qualms about the experiments of a colleague in another research hospital he now embraces them and goes farther. His assistant Katherine drugs Nancy’s fiance, another doctor, and they transplant his eyes. Nancy regains her sight, but then it begins to deteriorate.

So to the grim middle section of the film as Leonard and Katherine find new victims, drug them (usually using wine) and take their eyes, then imprison them in the basement. Eventually this goes wrong, with two of the victims escaping, one recaptured, the other getting killed in traffic. Katherine wants to kill them, but Leonard insists that when he perfects the technique he will be able to restore their sight.

The police come calling; Leonard being local and an eye specialist the detective wants to know his opinion on a woman who has had her eyes surgically removed. On duty, the detective avoids drinking drugged wine. The film then staggers to a gruesome and ironic end.

If you want shots of people made up to look eyeless, also hopeless, angry, generally horrified, then this film has them. Leonard does a good job as the desperate father who slides into delusion. Everything else is rather silly eye-themed horror.

Watch This: Gruesome eye-themed horror
Don’t Watch This: Gruesome eye-themed horror

10. Willard

Willard lives in a big house with his overbearing mother. She holds a twenty-seventh birthday party for him, but all the attendees are her friends. They tell him he should be more assertive at work. He’s picked on by the boss, Al Martin; the company used to belong to Willard’s father but he managed to lose it to Al when he died. Martin wants the house as well.

Leaving the house during the birthday party Willard meets a rat and feeds him cake. After initially following his mother’s instructions to kill the rats, Willard instead rescues them, having them escape drowning by climbing a plank. His two favourite companions are a white rat he calls Socrates and a bigger black rat called Ben.

Al gets Willard an assistant, Joan, and refuses to give him a pay rise. Willard takes to bringing Socrates and Ben with him to work. In retaliation for Al’s refusal to promote or increase his pay he sends rats into Al’s house disrupting a fancy party.

Willard’s mother dies; everyone thinks he should sell the heavily-mortgaged house to Al, but he refuses because all his rat friends live in the cellar. Feeding them is getting expensive, but he hears one of Al’s friends boasting about the cash he’s taking with him on a trip, so he sends the rats to invade their home and steals the money. Joan, worried that he’s alone, gives him a cat as a companion, which he discreetly gets rid of.

The rats are finally spotted at work, and Al kills Socrates. To pressure Willard to sell the house, Al fires both him and Joan. Willard brings the rats to the office at night when Al is working late. He confronts Al, who attacks him, the rats in turn attacking Al, who falls from the window and is eaten by the rats. Willard turns against them, tries to kill the rats, and thus we find our way to a ratty ending.

The bullying boss (Ernest Borgnine) is good, a petty tyrant who is one step ahead of everyone, and whose glad-handing and doing favours has made the company (a foundry) successful. The rats are also pretty good. This is, I’m afraid, before the time that No Animals Were Harmed In The Making Of This Movie so I do not know how humane the training was. They are cute, clever, and frightening, perhaps best in scenes when no one realises they’re there and just getting on with their rat life.

Watch This: Slow burn rat horror
Don’t Watch This: If Ratatouille is as much rat action as you want