October Films Update

10 films I watched earlier this year

**** 

1. The Woman Who Came Back (1945)

Returning to her hometown in New England Lorna Webster has an uncanny encounter with an old woman dressed in black, following which the bus she’s on crashes into the lake. Lorna is the only survivor; they find 11 bodies but not the old woman who no one else recalls. Lorna is attended by her ex-fiancé, the town doctor Matt Adams, who she jilted two years ago. Now she’s back in her grandfather’s house.

Lorna is the last living descendant of Elijah Webster, who burned witches at the stake. Strange things start to happen around her. Flowers wilt, and young Peggy, Matt’s niece, goes missing and falls ill. Increasingly disturbed Lorna looks through Elijah’s papers, which include a discussion of how a witch can possess people, the spirit jumping to the nearest young woman who will gain her dark powers.

Blaming herself, the townsfolk also blame Lorna. Matt however tracks down Elijah’s journal where he admits to forging confessions; also the body of the old woman is washed up. Matt goes to reassure Lorna, only to find her house besieged by locals, keen to put an end to the witch.

Watch This: Spooky horror film
Don’t Watch This: A bit slow, not that horrific, hard to feel sympathetic for Lorna

2. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

An IMF agent is killed by an assassin who steals Russian nuclear codes. IMF agent Ethan Hunt is in a Russian prison; to deal with this emergency he’s broken out along with Bogdan, someone who is loosely connected with the global apocalyptic secrets trade. Hunt is teamed up with Jane Carver, the assassinated IMF agent’s partner (both spy and romantic) and Benji Dunn, returning from M:I III and promoted to field agent. The information they need is in the Kremlin so they break in. This goes wrong; “Cobalt”, the man they are looking for has also entered the Kremlin to destroy the records of his existence, which he does, also setting off a bomb for which Ethan and his team are blamed. Ethan is arrested by a Russian agent but escapes.

Ethan meets with the IMF secretary (the boss) and his assistant, analyst William Brandt. Cobalt is identified as Kurt Hendricks, a nuclear strategist and intellectual who believes that nuclear war between America and Russia is desirable as new civilisations and developments require old ones to be cleared away. He used the bomb in the Kremlin as cover to steal the device he needs to use the launch codes as well as delete data. Due to Ethan being blamed for the attack, the IMF has activated “Ghost Protocol” which means they have officially been shut down and are operating without support (again). The IMF secretary is killed shortly after telling him to stop Hendricks.

Having learned the nuclear codes are being sold in Dubai, the team head there. Wanting both the codes and to be able to find their way to Hendricks they duplicate the hotel room, sending the buyers to their room where they impersonate the seller, and simultaneously go to the sellers’ room where other members impersonate the buyers. This goes wrong; starting with Ethan having to climb on the outside of the Burj Khalifa, having to provide real codes rather than the fake ones they wanted, the seller being killed and the buyer escaping into a sandstorm.

There’s one final piece to be able to use the codes and the launch device to launch a missile, and that’s access to a Russian satellite. Or in this case, an ex-Soviet satellite that’s been sold off to an Indian telecommunications tycoon. The team head for Mumbai to prevent this, bringing in another M:I element that hasn’t yet appeared in the film – infiltrating a fancy party.

This is a solid entry, using all the elements of the films in the series. It’s here that the villains get more esoteric. The bioweapon in M:I II is world-threatening, and the mysterious Rabbit’s Foot in M:I III is assumed to be. But in each case people want to sell it, to make a profit, to have it available. They aren’t hard-times-make-strong-men, burn-the-forest-to-clear-for-new-growth weirdos. Hendricks wants nuclear war! The action sequences remain very good, swapping out tech guy Luther Stickells for Benji Dunn is less interesting. But Stickells makes a brief re-appearance at the end, dealing with some of the (ahem) fallout of the mission, and one final deception pays off Brandt’s backstory and a dangling thread from M:I III.

Watch This: Action spy thriller with charm, stunts and momentum
Don’t Watch This: Violent clowns come up with increasingly stupid ways to stop omnicidal psychopaths

3. Gladiator II

Once there was a dream of Rome (see Gladiator) but now it’s under the rule of the tyrant twin emperors Geta and Caracalla. Julius Acasius, Roman General and husband of Lucila, daughter of former emperor Marcus Aurelius, invades Numidia, winning a great victory. Amongst those captured include Hanno, who is bought by gladiator stable master Macrinus after a trial fight against baboons.

Ascius’s victory is celebrated with games in the colosseum, after which he asks to retire to spend time with his wife. The emperors refuse, planning wars in the East. Macrinus brings Hanno to a party where he fights and wins against the emperors' champion, then quotes Virgil to them, proving himself cultured as well as valiant.

Several gladiatorial fights ensue, with plotting in between. Hanno is Lucius Verus, the son of Lucila, sent away to stay safe after the fall of Commodius. Lucila and Ascius plot against the increasingly erratic emperors, who have Hanno and Ascius fight, with Hanno refusing to execute him which causes a riot. Macrinus warns Caracalla his brother will blame him for the riot to maintain power so Caracalla kills Geta and blames him for the riot. He names his pet monkey Dondus consul, and also Macrinus. The senators acquiesce to this as Macrinus promises to restore order, taking control of the Praetorian Guard.

There is inevitably betrayal, spectacular fights, tragic deaths, the evocation of Maximus the eponymous gladiator of Gladiator and stirring speeches. The history is somehow worse than in the first film. The fights though, and the stern, vengeful, barely-controlled fury of the fighting actors, those remain. Denzel Washington’s Macrinus holds it together as a villain, bound between ambition, lust for revenge and navigating the currents of politics under increasingly mad emperors.

Watch This: Exciting ancient-Rome themed action film
Don’t Watch This: Violent, silly, very poor history

4. Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter

Maria Frankenstein, granddaughter (?) of Victor Frankenstein has moved to the American West as it is notorious for lightning storms on the prairie* with her brother Rudolph. There she continues her experiments, kidnapping Mexican immigrant children, replacing their brains with artificial ones and then attempting to electrically resurrect them to use as slaves. This keeps failing, due to Rudolph poisoning them as he thinks this is bad (to be clear this is bad but perhaps he might intervene before the children are kidnapped and experimented on). The town is failing, due to the children being kidnapped. The Lopez family, including daughter Juanita, flee.

In the next town Jesse James and his huge if dim-witted sidekick Hank Tracey win a bet. They go on to meet Butch Curry, the leader of an outlaw gang known as The Wild Bunch (no relation). Both the James gang and the Wild Bunch have fallen on hard times, between them they muster a total of five men. However they have information on $100,000 travelling on a stagecoach, including the details of how the coach gets through the most likely ambush spots. Unfortunately Lonny, Butch’s brother, sells them out for the reward on Jesse James and the ambushers become the ambushed. The other two Wild Bunch are killed, Jesse and a wounded Hank escape. They encounter the Lopez family and stay with them to tend Hank’s wound.

Hank dying, Juanita guides them back to her town, to the Frankensteins. Maria agrees to help, but intends to turn Hank into a monster. Maria turns away Lonny and the Sheriff. She tries to seduce Jesse, fails. She then sends Jesse into town with a note to the pharmacist, but it betrays him and he has to escape, killing Lonny in the process. She successfully operates on Hank, discovers Rudolph trying to poison him and has Hank, now under the name Igor, strangle him. Jesse returns, to be captured, Hank no longer recognises him. Realising something is wrong Juanita informs the Sheriff of events, then returns herself to rescue Jesse.

On the one hand this is a fairly standard Western whose explicit knowledge of the history of the James gang show that the choice to have Jesse James survive the end is deliberate – but for what reason? On the other a fairly standard mad scientist horror film with some inherently interesting strangers turning up at the door. The title promises a lot, but I think we’re all wise to this. It’s a western/horror crossover with little ambition to do more.

Watch This: Old-school Western and Horror crossover
Don’t Watch This: Old-school Western and Horror crossover

* This film is, presumably, set in 1882 due to it taking place shortly after the downfall of the James gang, which Jesse here survives, rather than being assassinated. He’s not brought back from the dead by Maria Frankenstein! But this is beside the point; electricity generation is at this very moment taking off from minor individual generators to big central ones. Edison is marketing his lightbulbs. If Maria had been a year later and passed through New York… ah well.

5. Ice Cold In Alex

It’s the second world war and in Tobruk Captain Ansom, in command of a company of ambulances, is breaking down, drinking too much. He’s ordered to withdraw before the expected upcoming siege. Two female nurses, Murdoch and Norton, get separated from their unit so Anson and Sergeant Major Pugh are delayed, separated from the rest as they pick them up in Ansom’s ambulance “Katy”. Pugh also manages to lose his toolkit. On the road out of Tobruk they encounter South African Captain van der Poel, who has a big pack which has gin in it; they agree to give him a lift.

Heading out into the desert they encounter several hazards, a minefield, artillery, and a breakdown in which van der Poel’s strength prevents disaster. Twice they encounter German units, during one of which Norton is shot, later dying. Both times van der Poel manages to talk his way out of it (they are unarmed and the Germans are too busy to take prisoners) but this is suspicious, and the second time he shows them his backpack. After Norton dies Anson swears off drink, until he can have an ice cold lager in Alexandria, where he proposes buying all of them a drink.

Finding the coast road cut off they head deeper into the desert, refuelling at an oasis where the Long Range Desert Group are preparing to operate behind enemy lines. Anson is going to take them across the Qattara Depression, a low-lying desert/salt marsh (real). Suspicious of van der Poel, who didn’t know how the British troops brew up (make tea) (I don’t think they explain or show but it’s using gasoline poured in a fuel can filled with sand, the top has holes pierced, then lit to heat water in another can on top quickly) and who never lets anyone look into his pack, Pugh follows him when he goes out in the dark, presumably to go to the toilet. Taking him by surprise he falls into quicksand and loses the pack.

Without evidence, and in the middle of nowhere, Anson won’t take action. And just as well, as they need van der Poel to get up the slope out the depression, as Katy can’t do it without them using a hand crank on the steepest section. Arriving in Alexandria, Anson gets them to the bar, buys them all a lager. The military police turn up, earlier than Anson arranged. Anson orders them out, then explains; they know van der Poel is a German spy, but if they tell them his real name, he’ll be a prisoner of war rather than shot for espionage; the real enemy on their trip was the desert (except for Norton who was in fact shot by the Germans, partly because of Anson’s recklessness).

This is a good war adventure film, the characters all having to face their own strengths and weaknesses in their struggle with the desert. That they all depend on one another, despite their distrust, including of themselves is excellent.

Watch This: Some nice performances and a bit of quiet heroism and endurance
Don’t Watch This: Long drive in the desert

6. Rebecca (1940)

On the south coast of France a young woman (character not named at this point*, Joan Fontaine) sees Maxim de Winter (Lawrence Olivier) standing on the cliffs, as though contemplating suicide. She calls out and he leaves her. Later at the hotel where she is the paid companion to Mrs Van Hopper they encounter Maxim, who Van Hopper knows, and he makes polite conversation. Mrs Van Hopper falls ill and Mr de Winter invites the young woman out on excursions which she conceals from her employer. When Mrs Van Hopper prepares to leave Maxim proposes, which the young woman accepts. Mrs Van Hopper is surprised and warns her that Maxim is looking for a distraction after the death of his first wife, Rebecca, and that she is not equipped to be the mistress of his house, Manderley.

Married, they go to Manderley, a great house by the sea in Cornwall, where it becomes clear she is not equipped to be it's mistress. The housekeeper Mrs Danvers is still loyal to Rebecca, meanwhile Maxim is constantly being reminded of Rebecca’s death (in a boating accident). Jack Favell, Rebecca’s cousin, keeps turning up and suggesting they keep things private between them. Things come to a head when they hold a costume ball and Mrs Danvers suggests going as one of the ancestors in the portraits; inevitably this was a costume that Rebecca wore and Maxim turns his wife away in tears.

Fleeing upstairs to Rebecca’s bedroom Mrs Danvers tells her she can never be like Rebecca, can never take her place, why, she might do better to throw herself out the window to her death. At that very moment an alarm is called out, a ship has run aground and several of the men go to join the rescue. This turns out to have disturbed a yacht that was on the bottom, Rebecca’s yacht. And to everyone’s consternation Rebecca’s body is found in the cabin, when Maxim had previously identified a body as her.

Maxim confesses; his marriage to Rebecca was a sham, she had never been faithful to him. She had implied she was pregnant by another man, probably Jack and so Manderley would pass out of his line. In the argument she had fallen and struck her head, dying. In a panic Maxim had put the body on the yacht and scuttled it, identifying another body when it washed up.

No longer having to keep up to an impossible standard Mrs de Winter convinces Maxim to stick it out and not give up, despite Jack trying to blackmail them, some difficult questions at the inquest and Mrs Danvers’ implacable hostility. The rather complex final sequence reveals Rebecca’s ultimate secrets and then a suitably apocalyptic ending. A little muted and mannered as might be expected for a film from 1940, but a clever thriller that implies things even louder than if they had been able to say them explicitly.

Watch This: Classic thriller, entwining standards, class, money and trust
Don’t Watch This: Full of betrayal and hate

* She is referred to as “Mrs de Winter” later in the film

7. Transporter 2

Frank Martin, the transporter from dimly remembered film Transporter, is the driver for a family in Miami. Specifically he’s the driver for the young son Jack. Jack's mother Audrey seems to have troubles and be attracted to Frank; her husband Jefferson is busy with his work, arranging a conference to tackle drug smuggling. Frank’s friend, comic relief French policeman from Transporter is coming to visit him.

Taking Jack to a medical appointment Frank realises things are wrong. The staff have been killed and replaced by mercenaries led by murder-happy Lola. After an extended fight they escape, only to be intercepted at the gate of the house; threatened with a sniper Frank has to follow instructions, letting Lola in the car and delivering Jack to Gianni the mercenary leader and Lola’s lover. Frank manages to escape, returns to the doctor’s office and finds a mystery syringe they were trying to inject Jack with.

The French policeman was picked up by the US Marshals at Frank’s apartment; deciding he’s nothing to do with the kidnapping they leave him free to walk about the office. Frank calls him and he’s able to get access to the computer files, leading Frank to one of the mercenaries. Pretending to inject him, Frank follows him to a laboratory where he discovers the kidnappers have infected Jack with a deadly virus, so that it will spread to Jefferson and so on to the anti-drug smuggling conference to incapacitate the anti-drug police chiefs of the world.

The film then goes through a variety of fights, car related stunts, antidote weirdness (Gianni injects himself with the entire supply to prevent Frank killing him) a horrible death for Lola and one or two good jokes. This, we’re told, is Frank doing a favour covering for a friend, in between his normal Transporting jobs. Since the film is followed by Transporter 3, I suppose this is literally true.

Watch This: Car-focussed action film
Don’t Watch This: Silly, over-the-top violence

8. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Thirty six years after the events of Beetlejuice Lydia Deetz has a paranormal TV show, an estranged daughter Astrid, a husband who died in the Amazon and a boyfriend/TV show producer Rory. Lydia can see ghosts, Astrid thinks she’s a fraud. Lydia has a breakdown while taping and thinks she sees Betelgeuse in the audience. Then her stepmother Delia calls; her father Charles was killed by a shark.

They return to Winter River and the house from Beetlejuice to bury him. Rory imposes on Lydia, getting her to agree to marry him on Halloween. Astrid meets a boy, Jeremy, who invites her to spend Halloween with him.

In the afterlife Betelgeuse is now the manager of a call centre, his employees all being shrunken headed people. An accident frees his dismembered ex-wife Delores, who sucks the energy from the dead. Detective Wolf Jackson, in life an actor who played detectives, is on the case and warns Betelgeuse, who comes up with several unlikely plans to escape her.

There are several moments of people nearly saying “Beetlejuice” three times and summoning him. Then Astrid discovers Jeremy is a ghost. He claims he can take her to the afterlife to see her father. As he takes her there Lydia learns from the real estate agent that the house is empty and Jeremy killed his parents twenty years ago. She arrives there to learn that he’s tricked her into taking his place so he can return to life.

Lydia summons Betelgeuse and makes a deal to marry him in return for his help saving Astrid. Betelgeuse blows open a hole between the afterlife and this world, disguises his employee Bob as himself and takes Lydia on a tour of the Afterlife looking for Astrid before she gets on the Soul Train to the Great Beyond and Jeremy gets his visa stamped irrevocably. Both Wolf and Delores are on their tail.

From here events accelerate, bringing the Soul Train, dead characters, all the various people chasing Betelgeuse, the live characters and sandworms from Titan the moon of Saturn (?) together, first in the afterlife, then in a cataclysmic interrupted wedding scene in the waking world. Does this satisfy, every hint and zany aside paying off? Or is it exhausting, stunt after joke after musical number after trick, after magical control, after confession, after legalistic objection? A bit of both I think. In this way very much like the original.

Watch This: Madcap comic gothic spooky adventure
Don’t Watch This: Very silly

9. Midsommar (2019)

At midwinter, Christian is thinking of splitting up with his girlfriend Dani, she’s too needy and clingy and is worried about her sister. His various grad-student lad-friends agree, thinking she’s a downer. As it turns out she’s right to worry; her sister kills herself and her parents.

Dani and Christian stay together, though Christian hasn’t told her of his plans to go to Sweden with his friends Mark and Josh, to stay with Swedish friend Pelle at his commune. There’s a nine-day midsummer festival going on (it turns out this is the great festival that takes place once every 90 years*). Josh, studying anthropology wants to do some research. Mark wants to get laid.

The commune is a bit weird, but mostly lovely, they get high on mushrooms and are welcomed. Then the two eldest members come to a ritual meal, and afterwards are followed to a cliff. At the end of their life, having completed their 72 years, they jump. The first dies on landing, the second is badly injured, the watching crowd echoing his cries of pain until he is killed with a hammer.

Some other strangers decide to leave, though one goes missing first. Josh, attempting to learn more of the commune, looks in a forbidden book. Pelle explains that although they are remote, members in their summer period go out into the world (like he has) which prevents inbreeding. On the other hand a disabled member of the commune is the prophet and one of the elders explains that they deliberately inbreed to make sure they always have a prophet. Mark keeps making faux pas. Christian is brought into a ritual to impregnate one of the commune women. Dani is brought into the dance, an endurance ritual to crown the May Queen, that commemorates how they danced when the devil played the fiddle and killed them all.

This is a horror film, and in particular a horror film about cults. Things are off from the start, but the people brought in are directionless, or lost, or hurting, or driven. They see the things that are off and they see the nice stuff, the carefree community, the togetherness and the rural idyll. So they’re brought in and by the time they see the darkness at the heart they’re already complicit. Why not go all the way?

Watch This: Clever, beautiful exploration of getting drawn into horror
Don’t Watch This: Gruesome deaths, people making bad choices

* The commune divides the inhabitants into age classes, 0-18 being spring, 18-36 summer, 36-54 fall and 54-72 winter. What happens after you get to 72? [Pelle does a throat cutting gesture] In any case, that’s one more season than the total of 72 for a lifetime, something never explored but left in plain sight.

10. Bluebeard (1972)

Baron Kurt von Sepper, WW1 air ace, had an accident that coloured his beard blue. Now in 1930s Austria he courts and marries Greta. They go on a hunt together* where for reasons unexplained at this point in the film he shoots her.

Later he marries American singer Anne, only for odd things to occur. A servant brings out the corpse of von Sepper’s mother. There are weird and creepy photographs. Eventually Anne finds her way to the forbidden room to discover the frozen bodies of von Seppers previous lovers.

Von Sepper then details all of them, he killed Greta because she threatened to reveal his war wound had prevented him from consummating the marriage. Elga, who sing annoyingly all the time. Erika a model inexperienced in love, who hired a prostitute to teach her, only for the two women to immediately have sex with each other (both women are killed). Magdalena, who planned to take orders as a nun, but was promiscuous (played by Raquel Welsh whose prominence in the promotional materials is not matched by her screentime). Brigitte, an outspoken feminist who enjoys masochism. And Caroline, who appears innocent, but is very spoiled.

Meanwhile von Sepper and his friends are keen supporters of the Fatherland Front**, and he is distracted from his efforts to deal with Anne by politics, specifically carrying out a pogrom in a Jewish quarter while unrest and strikes go on. The film attempts to treat this political background seriously, but it loses out to the much more interesting series of courtships and murders of beautiful women. And those start to get a bit monotonous – we aren’t in the dark as to which of them will be the last, as they’re all flashbacks. This, of course, gives Anne some clues as to his secrets, and so to a violent resolution.

The film swings between scenes of camp, naked beautiful women, bizarre murder tableaus and villainy, but none of them really convince (maybe the women). A curiosity of a horror film.

Watch This: Entertaining horror filled with beautiful European actresses and Richard Burton in a ridiculous blue beard
Don’t Watch This: Long, violent, treats the women as props, and frankly everything else as well

* Animals WERE harmed in the making of this film; several animals are shot in the hunt, and they collapse a bridge under a horse and cart, the horse obviously unhappy with the situation. 

** An authoritarian Catholic-Nationalist party, opposed to the Austrian Nazis as they did not wish to be subsumed by what they saw as Protestant-dominated Germany.