September Film Update 3

Ten more films I saw earlier this year.

****

1. Carry On Don’t Lose Your Head

It’s the Terror of the French Revolution and Citizen Camembert (the big cheese of Robespierre’s police, Kenneth Williams) and his idiot sidekick Citizen Bidet (Peter Butterworth) are executing aristocrats. In England effete aristocrats Sir Rodney Ffing (Sid James) and Lord Darcy Pue (Jim Dale) decide to disguise themselves and rescue French aristocrats, Ffing taking on the persona of The Black Fingernail, his sign being two fingers raised, one with a black fingernail*.

The film progresses through some daring and amusing escapes, as The Black Fingernail makes a mockery of Citizen Camembert. This culminates with the rescue of the Duc de Pommfrit (Charles Hawtrey) under his nose, the Duc spirited away across the channel. Robespierre threatens Camembert and Bidet with the guillotine and they redouble their efforts. Narrowly missing the Fingernail they catch Jacqueline (Dany Robin), who helped him escape, Ffing having given her his locket.

Camembert, Bidet and Camembert’s paramour Desiree (Joan Sims) go to England to uncover the Fingernail using the locket to draw him out, though Desiree actually wants a titled husband. They follow the Duc to Ffing house where there’s a great ball and much plotting and nonsense. At the end of the night Ffing has got Desiree’s assistance in return for promising her a titled husband (she thinks he means himself) and challenged Camembert to a duel. This ends farcically, giving Ffing and Lord Darcy a headstart to go to France and rescue Jacqueline.

The trap is set in a mansion with plenty of guards, furniture, stairs, chandeliers etc for a swashbuckling finale. And it’s not bad, for all the silliness they get into the fighting, Jim Dale in particular very good. Some of the more extravagant stunts aren’t so good but everyone is competent with a sword in hand (except Bidet, deliberately). In fact the physical jokes may be the best part of the film, messing about with the guillotine, the Fingernail’s disguises, some ridiculous stuff with too many guards in a carriage. Making fun of aristocrats has held up fairly well, maybe the French take it on the chin a bit. Anyway one of the better historical Carry Ons.

Watch This: Silly yet amusing historical fictional parody
Don’t Watch This: Farcical interpretation of an already ridiculous fictional character

* A parody of The Scarlet Pimpernel.

2. Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade

In 1912 a Young Indiana (“Indy”) Jones fails to prevent graverobbers from stealing the cross of Coronado, in part due to his father’s indifference. In 1938, now a grown man and an archaeologist, he’s able to seize it back off the coast of Portugal. Returning to his university he is contacted by Walter Donovan, a wealthy man who has been financing the search for the Holy Grail. Indy explains that it’s his father Henry Jones who is the grail expert and Donovan reveals he was financing Jones senior, until his disappearance in Venice.

Checking his post, Indy realises his father has sent him his grail diary, with all his research on the grail, so he must have felt himself in danger. Indy sets off, along with his boss, the much more academic Marcus Brody, an old friend of his father. In Venice Jones senior’s colleague Elsa Schneider takes them to a library that used to be a church, where Indy realises that his father wasn’t looking for a book, but for the grave of a crusading knight who found the grail. They find the grave and learn that the path begins in Alexandretta (now in Turkey, then in the Republic of Hatay) but are attacked by mysterious men. These turn out to be from the Brotherhood Of The Cruciform Sword, a grail protecting secret society; after Indy saves the leader he tells him if he wants his father he’ll find him in a castle in Austria.

Indy gives Marcus a copy of the map from the diary, sends him to Alexandretta to rendezvous with Sallah, his friend from Raiders Of The Lost Ark. He and Elsa head for Austria and infiltrate the castle to discover it’s a Nazi base. Finding his father, Indy then discovers that Elsa is a Nazi, and then that Donovan is also working with the Nazis, though for his own reasons. Elsa takes the diary to Germany. Indy and Jones Senior escape, realise they need more than the map, so follow her to Germany to recapture the diary, then escape in an airship, leading to a spectacular air chase.

In Hatay Marcus and the map have been captured by Nazis, and Donovan outfits an expedition with the assistance of the local authorities. Indy, Jones Senior and Sallah plan to rescue Marcus, only to be interrupted by the Brotherhood Of The Cruciform Sword. A spectacular chase/fight ensues and they succeed. Arriving at the grail site after Donovan and his expedition, they observe several failures to get past the traps. Captured, Donovan shoots Jones Senior, to force Indy into the tomb to get the grail as only that can heal a mortal wound. Indy has to contend with traps, occult forces and the Nazis.

In this film Indy has something new – someone to tell him off he actually has to listen to. (Marion in Raiders is his ex, so it’s just bickering; Willie in Temple isn’t used to adventures and can be ignored). It’s fun to have an evil woman – and a betrayal. And also a third force, the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword, even if they mostly act to complicate the Jones’ boys race with the Nazis. It’s almost like this is a slightly more grown up film, a bit more sophisticated.

Not very though. It is still a pulp adventure, dedicated to spectacular stunts, thrilling fights, silly jokes and some last act occult spookiness.

Watch This: Exciting adventure, slightly cleverer than it needs to be
Don’t Watch This: People get punched, shot, run down, killed by birds, fall over cliffs, killed by time etc

3. Fiddler On The Roof

In Tsarist Russia in the early 20^th century Tevye (Topol) is a poor Jewish milkman with five daughters. Tevye explains that the Jewish community is like a fiddler on the roof; precarious yet joyful, and held together in balance by tradition (they sing a song about it). Specifically the danger is harassment or even a pogrom from the non-Jewish neighbours, also grinding poverty.

The matchmaker has found a husband for Tevye’s eldest daughter. It’s Lazar the butcher, much more affluent, also much older than her (probably Tevye’s age) and a widower. Tevye’s wife is pleased with this match. However the daughter is in love with her childhood sweetheart Motel the tailor, who is poor, but plans to buy a sewing machine. They convince Tevye to break the match with Lazar and let them marry. He claims to his wife he had a prophetic dream to convince her.

Meanwhile Perchick, a student from the university in Kiev has arrived in town; Tevye invites him to stay with them in return for tutoring his daughters (despite being poor Tevye is generous, and partly as a result on good terms with everyone including the village constable (non-Jewish)). Perchick is modern, secular. Eventually he and the second daughter get married; he gets into trouble with the authorities and is sent to Siberia.

The third daughter is in love with a non-Jewish farmer and this is one step too far for Tevye. He often soliloquises, speaking to himself, god, or us the audience. In this case when he looks for “on the other hand” he won’t have it. The third daughter defies him, converts to Christianity and marries him.

In the end the Imperial Authorities order all the Jews to leave the town in three days. The community scatters, much like Tevye’s family. Is this because of the flouting of tradition? It’s worth noting that whenever the Rabbi gets consulted he usually says that there’s no law against it. Anyway on their way down the road Tevye spots the fiddler and invites him to join them (they’re going to America).

It's a musical! Do we need a three hour adaption of this stage play about a man, his wife and daughters, and how their marriages fail to fit in the community? There are some excellent scenes, some good songs and some magnificent set pieces. So I guess yes we did.

Watch This: Enjoyable musical with some classic songs
Don’t Watch This: Annoying family find themselves overtaken by events, love, keep stopping to sing and dance about it

4. The Nudist Story

Jane Robinson has been managing her grandfather’s company, proving herself a hardnosed businesswoman despite her youth, with the help of advisor Stephen Blake and her Aunt Meg. Her grandfather dies and estate duties require something be sold. They decide to lose some of the property including her grandfather’s one eccentricity, the Avonmore Sun Camp, a nudist resort.

Lawyer Bob Sutton, his brother Tim Sutton and sister-in-law Carol Sutton are all nudists at the camp, which was let at very generous rates. They nominate Bob to talk to Jane to try and get an extension on their lease. Also at the camp is Gloria Phillips, who is clearly attracted to Bob, though he is lukewarm in his response.

Bob tries to convince Jane to let them keep the camp. However she has to show she’s a hard-nosed businesswoman and not swayed by sentiment, also being naked is disreputable. Bob invites her to tour the camp, to show her that in fact everything that happens there is respectable. To show fair-mindedness she comes (asking on arrival “will I have to…” and Bob explains that she can wear what she wants (keeping his own shorts on for her comfort).

Inevitably she is charmed by the camp and returns, joins, and becomes a nudist. However things are not as simple as that. Until she is 25 Aunt Meg has veto power over the business and estate, and Aunt Meg won’t change her mind without Stephen Blake’s say so. It had been assumed by everyone that eventually Jane and Stephen would get married, but now she’s attracted to Bob Sutton to the annoyance of Gloria.

Gloria contacts Stephen and they construct a plan. While Bob is away in Edinburgh on business Gloria charms the doorman of Bob’s building into letting her into his flat. Then they send a message for Jane to visit him. When Jane arrives she finds Gloria in a state of undress – a filmy nightie over bra and pants because being nude would not be incriminating enough.

Eventually they discover what has happened, invite Aunt Meg to view the camp to see it’s nice (though Aunt Meg, an elderly woman, is not converted to nudism), Avonmore Sun Camp is saved and Bob and Jane agree to get married. A charming gentle, nudist propaganda film. It goes out of it’s way to avoid having a close up of anyone’s genitals, though we are left in no doubt that they’re in the all together, and in the long shots there’s lots of naked people playing games etc.

Watch This: Charming film about how getting your kit off is normal, healthy and not perverted
Don’t Watch This: Preachy film about how getting your kit off is normal, healthy and not perverted

5. Cleaner (2025)

Joey is late for work. Her autistic brother Michael has been kicked out of the sheltered home he lives in for hacking into the records and proving fraud. They had an abusive father and as a child Joey used to climb out the window when he started on Michael. In any case they’re the only family for each other now, so she takes him to her job at One Canada Square London, a big skyscraper that (in this film) houses Agnian Energy.

Joey’s job is a window cleaner, which is a big and vertigo-inducing task on a 230m tall building. She leaves Michael with Big Ron in security, who brings him a drink and takes his phone to charge. Joey sasses Gerald Milton, the grumpier brother of the pair who run Agnian, cheeks her boss and goes to work swinging around in her harness. The boss is unimpressed, insists she makes up time and also clean up a disgusting bird strike. She tries to pass this off on her co-worker Noah, but he’s wise to her tricks.

This is the night that Agnian have a big shareholder meeting and they’re trying to greenwash their work, talking about sustainability and environmental protection (having to be nice is making Gerald grumpy). It’s Meso-American themed, including performers with masks. Perhaps inevitably the performers in masks are actually an environmental activist group called Earth Revolution. Their leader Marcus Blake intends to take the senior officers of the company hostage, including Geoffrey and Gerald (discovered having sneaked away to have sex), and have them confess to their crimes which include the murder of an Earth Revolution activist in prison in the Central American country they’d polluted. (Earth Revolution’s modus operandum is for one member to surrender after an operation and put all the evidence of wrongdoing out in the trial). Amongst the Earth Revolution team are workers in the building, including Noah. His group kill several people including Joey’s boss in the building monitor room.

Joey is a former soldier who qualified for the Special Reconnaissance Regiment but quit after beating up a bullying misogynist fellow soldier. This is, then, the bulk of the film, as Joey finds herself stuck outside while terrorists seize control of the building, which has both some of her friendly co-workers and her brother in. Initially Joey tries going down, in time to witness some of the events at the receptions, then up, to see some other events. She alerts people outside the building and Noah realises she’s out there and tries to get the police to shoot her. Fortunately she’s able to talk to the Superintendent in charge and convince her she’s not a part of the plot. However with hostages the police are unable to enter the building.

Inevitably things spiral out of control; Blake’s violent, extreme, but non-lethal plan is usurped by Noah’s faction. It turns out Noah’s an anti-humanist, who believes humans are a blight on the Earth and should be wiped out; it’s his intention that no one gets out and has a heartbeat monitor linked to explosives on the hostages.

Is this then, essentially, a remix of remixes of Die Hard? Reductively, yes. People have been making Die-Hard-a-likes for thirty five years and we’re able to efficiently move through the bits that the film isn’t interested in. So it is interested in Joey struggling with her brother, she knows she can’t care for him which is why he was in the home even though he doesn’t like it, how she’s honest about the problems but also not berating with him because that won’t help or work. The film has no sympathy for the murdering, polluting people who run the Energy company, and mixed feeling about Earth Revolution. Noah’s intriguing, timely sui-genocidal ideas are clearly explained, making his vicious, self-and-other-destructive plans come into focus – and so a classic silly villain make sense in his own terms.

Still, if it follows a formula, it’s well-executed, has charm, uses the skyscraper setting well, and has good central performances. It can’t quite engage with all the many issues it’s ostensibly about, most of them being ways to inform us about the characters, or foreshadowing for specific plot developments. Extremely competent and likeable.

Watch This: Well-constructed, well-executed, timely thriller
Don’t Watch This: So well-constructed we can see the payoff to every throwaway line, also not for people who don’t like violence or heights

6. The Dark Eyes Of London (1939)

Dr Orloff (Bela Lugosi) runs a life insurance brokers, he also offers loans secured on those life insurance policies; he also also sponsors and is the medical supervisor for the Dearborn Home For The Blind. Several of his clients have ended up dead, and have left their life insurance to the Dearborn Home For The Blind. After the latest body is fished out the Thames a senior policeman assigns Detective Inspector Larry Holt, though he doesn’t seem to hold out much hope he'll solve the case, if there is one. Holt is also assigned a comic relief assistant, Lieutenant Patrick O’Reilly, an American police officer over here to see what the Met does.

Diana Stuart, the daughter of one of the deceased men, comes to see Dr Orloff who commiserates and offers her the job as seeing eye secretary to Dearborn. There’s a lot of stuff about a braille machine, the blind men doing various work and Dr Orloff’s cures for things which include electroshock therapy. It seems he might have been run out of his own country for unethical experiments.

The police circle around Orloff for a while, and Diana becomes suspicious of what goes on. Eventually the secrets come out, it turns out that Jake the mute, brutish blind man is being used by Orloff to murder people, he can hide things in the Dearborn home because the blind men can’t see, also he can keep on with his weird medical experiments.

In all a bit of a grab bag of a horror film. Orloff wants money AND to do medical experiments AND to flirt with Diane, maybe. The American has a couple of good fun bits, but mostly back at police headquarters where they figure out approximately none of the plot. They start with cui bono and stick to that, but can’t prove anything. Blind people are just people, also they deserve our sympathy, also they can move through society with some accommodations, also they’re a bit creepy. Being dumped in the Thames is scary (this bit is pretty true, even if it’s a set and we don’t get to see the river).

Watch This: Bela Lugosi manages to pull off all this villainy with his sinister charm
Don’t Watch This: Stupid double identities, ridiculous police investigations, thinks blind people are inherently suspicious

7. The Tell-Tale Heart (1960)

Edgar Marsh is shy, watches prostitutes but won’t talk to them. He observes his neighbour Betty Clare, discovering he can watch her getting undressed from his window. He introduces himself, pushing his acquaintance on her.

His efforts to court her run aground when his more interesting friend Carl Loomis turns up and the two of them hit it off. When he spots Carl and Betty together across the way he falls into a funk, rising when Carl comes to visit and beating him with a poker and burying him under the floor of his piano room.

Here the very loose adaption of the Edgar Allen Poe story comes in. Edgar keeps hearing a heartbeat, which he identifies as Carl’s. First the metronome in the piano room, a dripping tap, a swinging chandelier. He feels the guilt, can’t understand why no one else can hear it.

This is a slightly slow and mannered story, meticulously laying in each element. The opening warns that if you are of nervous disposition you should close your eyes when you hear some sounds, which effectively suggest to us that something gruesome is happening when we hear that sound.

Watch This: Slow, grindingly tense story of obsession and guilt
Don’t Watch This: Even for a black and white 1960 film based on a 19^th century story it takes ages for anything to happen.

8. The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue

George is driving his motorcycle to the Lake District. Filling up at a petrol station his bike is damaged by Edna. He convinces her to give him a lift. She’s on quite an urgent mission though, going to her sister’s cottage. They get lost. George goes up a track to a field where Ministry of Agriculture scientists are trying an ultra-sonic insect killing device, gets directions. Edna is attacked by a man, runs away; when she and George return to the car he’s gone.

At the cottage Kate, Edna’s sister, has been left by her husband Martin who is photographing plants by a waterfall. Kate is a heroin addict and has managed to get hold of some; just as she’s about to use it she’s attacked by the man from earlier. Kate runs to Martin, who is killed by the man. She meets Edna and George who drive into town and report the attack.

The Police Inspector suspects the three did it, tells them not to leave town. Kate has a breakdown and is hospitalised. Weird things are going on in the hospital, the babies bite and scratch. George has the film from Martin’s camera and gets it developed. The photos show a vagrant who previously drowned; the police inspector then arrives to confiscate the pcitures, telling them he was saving the police the cost of development. He has one of his constables follow them.

They go to the graveyard the vagrant was buried in. In the chapel is a half-eaten meal and noises down in the crypt. They go down, discover an empty coffin, are locked in. The vagrant, now a zombie, attacks, bringing other bodies to life. They escape, coming out in a freshly dug grave (?). The constable arrives, can’t hurt the zombies, they barricade themselves in the church. The constable tries to go and get his radio, fails, is caught and eaten. George finds an oil lamp, and sets fire to the zombies and they make an escape.

George thinks it’s the machine, and goes to warn the Ministry of Agriculture people. They don’t believe him and are going to make it work over a five mile radius, so he starts breaking it. The police inspector discovers the bodies, including of his constable, and comes to the conclusion that Edna and George are cannibal Satanists and issues shoot on sight orders.

The five mile radius now reaches to the town, the hospital and the morgue, leading to the final showdown we’ve been promised by the title. An early zombie film with some interesting setpieces and the backdrop of the Lake District.

Watch This: Interesting British zombie film, deeply implanted into the countryside
Don’t Watch This: Lots of silly zombie scares

9.  She (1984)

Twenty-Three Years* after “The Cancellation” Tom, his friend Dick and sister Hari are travelling a post-apocalyptic land when they are attacked by a tribe called the Norks. Hari is captured. Going after her Tom and Dick find themselves in the land of the Urechs, a matriarchal tribe, ruled by the immortal She, inspired by the H Rider Haggard novel apparently.

Tom and Dick escape (twice) and She and her lieutenant follow them. In the lands of another, weirder tribe, Tom and Dick are captured again, and She hears a prophecy. Finding Tom and Dick again, she decides to release and join them and they continue to try and find the Norks and Hari.

They go on to encounter other tribes, each with their own weird mutant power and supreme god-leader. (She also ruled as the immortal god-queen of the Urechs). Godan can levitate people so they can’t attack; he takes She as a lover to the jealousy of his second in command who betrays him. They enter what seems to be an idyllic, pre-Cancellation party, only for the guests to be revealed as vampires. On the bridge to the Nork stronghold is Xenon, who is very annoying, and that’s before parts of him that are cut off grow into clones to create a whole squad of Xenons.

This film is not good! Occasionally the fights are interesting, some of the high concept tribes are amusing before they go on too long. They talk about the lands beyond as though they might be regular places or legendary or maybe not effected by the Cancellation. The use of She, from H Rider Haggard is mostly just in the name and the idea of a goddess-queen. They don’t even refer to her as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, which would have actually improved some of the confrontations with the other kings. A lot of post-apocalyptic barbarian nonsense.

Watch This: Sword-swinging psychic mutant battling adventures
Don’t Watch This: Makes no sense at all

* So presumably around 2007-8

10. Ronin (1998)

A group of former military and government agents are brought together by Deidre an IRA operative in Paris. Their job will be to steal a suitcase. There’s a couple of Americans, Sam (Robert de Niro) quietly competent, Larry, a driver. A Frenchman Vincent (Jean Reno); a loudmouthed Englishman Spence (Sean Bean); and German tech guy Gregor. Because it’s 1998 the tech, including digitised maps that show where cars are, are a little quaint and dated.

They make preparations though details are few. They buy some weapons, though this turns out to be an ambush and Spence is revealed to be a fraud, and is dismissed. Deidre’s handler offers the information that the suitcase is in Nice and the Russian mafia are bidding for it. The team move down to Marseilles and put together a plan despite Sam’s complaints that they don’t know enough and don’t have enough people.

There’s a spectacular sequence in which they chase down the suitcase, at which point the team falls apart. One of them betrays them to try and sell the suitcase to the Russian mafia, Deidre’s handler gets involved, which is not to the remaining team’s benefit, and it turns out that everyone has an ulterior motive.

A stylish gritty thriller, from the period between the end of the cold war – where do you think all these old spies, Russian mafia, black market weapons are coming from? – and the start of the war on terror. Something that perhaps dates it more than the technology. Some good, solid performances, along with twists and turns that come from nowhere but seem inevitable.

Watch This: Dark enjoyable crime thriller with some excellent actors
Don’t Watch This: Mercenaries cause havoc in France