December Films Update 4

Still catching up with ten more films from earlier this year

**** 

1. Gator Creek (2025)

In The Bayou (alternative name) of Louisiana the DEA raid a drugs lab, afterwards abandoning it so that drugs (and pre-cursors) leak out into the water. These make the local alligators aggressive. Some time later a group of friends go on a road trip to deposit one of their brother’s ashes off the Florida Keys. There is some tension. They pass a town where the locals are talking about disappearances and the gators. Then one of them reveals a surprise, they’ve booked them on a small plane to save time, despite the sister being afraid of flying.

There are several other passengers on the plane; inevitably it goes down in the swamps. The pilot, very sketchy, has not just skimped on the maintenance, he’s not bothered to file a flight plan. They try to hike out, full of arguments and blame, only to be attacked by alligators.

The film works through the expected steps, the alligator effects are of varying quality. There are one or two interesting character moments, and a couple of effective set pieces. However they are sadly few and far between.

Watch This: Quick, stripped-down alligator horror
Don’t Watch This: Too quick to make you care, too stripped-down to be interesting

2. The Scorpion King

Before the pyramids were built* Memnon is able to conquer the tribes with the aid of his sorceress Cassandra, who can foretell victory. Because of this the remaining free tribes won’t face him in battle. King Pheron hires the three surviving Akkadians to kill Memnon. These are Mathayus (The Rock), his half-brother Jessup and their friend Rama.

They’re immediately betrayed by Pheron’s son Takmet. In the camp Rama is killed, Jessup captured and Mathayus spares Cassandra; his reward is to be buried up to the neck in a fire ant pit. He escapes with the help of a horse thief and enters Gomorrah, Memnon’s capital. There he meets various eccentric characters and his assassination attempt on Memnon is thwarted when he has to save the comic relief child sidekick. They escape with Cassandra.

Mathayus gets poisoned with scorpion venom; Cassandra cures him. They meet with Philo, the eccentric experimental scientist and all head back to Gomorrah for a long and complicated final action sequence.

This is a fun adventure film, more fantasy than historical (it uses historic names places and concepts as though pulled at random from a bag). An early, charismatic performance from The Rock who excels as a pulpy Swords And Sorcery hero. Unfortunately the plot is thin, the villains annoying and the special effects not very special. The stunts and fights are generally good.

Watch This: Exciting, pacy adventure film
Don’t Watch This: Confused, relies on cliché, doesn’t make sense as either a Mummy spin-off or as the historical film it sort of pretends to be

* That this film has worse history than the Mummy films it has spun off of is a given so stop now if that does not interest you. Nevertheless, they use iron (steel) weapons and tools in what is supposed to be 2,800 BCE, still early in the bronze age. At one point a coin is given to someone, well before the invention of coinage. Obviously our anachronistic scholar should be given some leeway; the catapult is still 2,000 years early and as for the gunpowder that apparently comes from China, the less said the better.

3. The Odessa File

In Hamburg November 1963 Peter Miller pulls over his car to listen to a news report of the assassination of President Kennedy. Seeing an ambulance he follows it; he’s a freelance news reporter and smells a story. He discovers the ambulance has gone to pick up the body of Salomon Tauber, a Holocaust survivor who has committed suicide. He reads Tauber’s diary, learning about SS Officer Eduard Roschmann who not only oversaw the deaths in the camp in the Baltics, but how, when ordered to retreat, he emptied a ship of wounded soldiers to take his men, shooting the Wehrmacht officer who tried to stop him.

Miller tries to find out about Roschmann, but is stonewalled by the historic war crimes inspector. Learning he’s going to an event he sneaks in to discover a reunion where ex-SS are a bit indiscreet, a former general declaring that the people cry out for their leadership, the day is coming etc. Thrown out he realises he’s not getting anywhere with the authorities so goes to Vienna to consult famed Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal (real, an adviser on the film, here played by an actor).

Wiesenthal tells Miller about ODESSA, an organisation of ex-SS officers (disputed in reality – although there were organised escape routes for former SS after the war, it’s the name given to these various efforts by American investigators), which plans to build missile guidance systems for Nasser in Egypt to use against Israel. Leaving, he’s intercepted by Mossad, Israeli intelligence. Convincing them he’s not trying to harm Wiesenthal, they decide to work together. When a former SS soldier dies, Miller takes his place, drilled on his identity.

Aware that Miller is investigating them, they attempt to find out what he knows, attacking his girlfriend Sigi. A friendly policeman (who let him have Tauber’s diary) gives her protection, but as it turns out the woman he moves into her flat is an ODESSA agent. Miller, aged and disguised somewhat oddly, contacts the General, asking for a new identity. He makes the mistake of calling Sigi, then goes to the ODESSA forger. There he successfully gets hold of the forger’s file of new identities, dodges an ODESSA assassin and insists on confronting Roschmann before handing over the file to Mossad.

This is a good thriller, though there are several unlikely leaps and coincidences as the film progresses. Two hours after Miller receives the diary we get a personal motive – as though Roschmann and the SS’s crimes aren’t enough. Well maybe not to risk your life, but once he’s on their radar he’s committed I guess. Anyway, not a first rate thriller of the period, or even a first rate Fredrick Forsyth adaption, but the bar is pretty high for that.

Watch This: Tense period thriller
Don’t Watch This: A lot of inexplicable events and pretending to be a Nazi

4. On The Waterfront

Terry Malloy is asked to get his friend Joey to go to the roof of their apartment building on the pretext of a pigeon from the loft he keeps there. Joey is thrown off and killed. It’s revealed that Joey was going to testify to the Waterfront Crime Commission. Terry goes to confront Johnny Friendly, mob boss and union president of the longshoremen. He thought they were just going to talk to Joey. He reminds Friendly that his prizefighting career ended after he threw a fight for Friendly. At the suggestion of Terry’s brother Charley, Friendly’s right hand man, they both threaten him into silence, and bribe him with an easy job.

Joey’s sister Edie and Father Barry try to rally the dockworkers to stand up to their corrupt leadership. Friendly sends Terry to report, but the meeting breaks up when other workers make threatening sounds outside and Terry helps Edie escape, missing Father Barry convincing another worker to testify. Terry’s taken off his cushy job and the worker is killed in a staged accident, a load dropping onto him in a ship’s cargo hold. Father Barry gives a fiery speech after giving him last rites.

Between his feelings for Edie and Father Barry’s conviction Terry considers testifying when he’s subpoenaed. He confesses his part in Joey’s death to Edie who leaves him. Friendly sends Charley to offer Terry a job to not testify. Terry is tired of all this, which has ruined his life so refuses and Charley is murdered. Terry seeks revenge but Edie and Father Barry convince him to testify instead. With the law closing in Friendly still has enough authority to blacklist Terry from work until Terry finally confronts him.

This film looks great, really gets into the community down at the docks. Brando’s acting is excellent. It’s perhaps a little dated, stilted occasionally, but still worth watching.

Watch This: Excellent and classic gritty dockworker crime drama
Don’t Watch This: Guy gets caught up in corruption is too naïve to get out

5. Serena (1962)

A woman is killed with a shotgun in a cottage in the Surrey countryside. The cottage being occupied by Ann Rogers (Honor Blackman) Inspector Gregory goes to visit her estranged husband Howard Rogers. When they go to investigate the body, the face is disfigured, and Rogers can’t find a distinguishing birthmark.

Rogers has an alibi, though slightly suspicious; he was shooting game forty miles away on a farm with his model/friend/girlfriend Serena Vaughn. Rogers was seen, but Serena went off on her own – for just enough time to have got there, committed the crime, and got back. When the police try to find Serena, she has vanished, moving out of her rented room. Fortunately Rogers has a finished portrait of her the police can use to identify her.

Then Ann turns up, explaining that she had let a friend, Claire Mathews, stay in her cottage. It seems that Howard and Ann were attempting a reconciliation, as shown by Howard bringing out a portrait of Ann. While staying in Howard’s studio, someone tries to attack Ann; the police suspect the jealous Serena, but she seems to have vanished.

Yet Inspector Gregory can’t quite make all the pieces fit. The mysteries all point at Serena, but he’s not convinced by either Howard or Ann. There’s something he’s missing. Ann, a Roman Catholic, had refused a divorce, so Serena had taken it into her own hands. And Ann and Howard were reconciling, so Serena… but this seems too much. And where has this Claire Mathews come from?

Watch This: Fun murder mystery
Don’t Watch This: To modern viewers the twist reveals itself very easily; also a woman gets shot in the face

6. Rebecca (1997)

A young woman (Emilia Fox, the character is initially not named, later known as Mrs de Winter) is the paid companion of Mrs van Hopper (Faye Dunaway) in Monte Carlo in 1927. She meet Maxim de Winter (Charles Dance) a wealthy widower, the two fall in love and in a whirlwind romance get married. She uses their wealth to use make up and dress elegantly, but that annoys Max, who liked her as an ingenue. They return to his home, the Cornish estate and great house of Manderley. Mrs de Winter is intimidated by the size of the house, and especially by Mrs Danvers, the housekeeper (Diana Rigg). No one wants to mention Max’s first wife, Rebecca, or sailing, which is how she died. They are in the inland facing rooms; Mrs Danvers keeps the sea-facing rooms of Rebecca’s suite as they were when she died as she has an obsession with her.

Inevitably things go wrong, at a fancy dress ball Mrs Danvers encourages Rebecca to get a costume based on a portrait of a de Winter ancestor, only for it to be revealed that Rebecca did it too causing Max to go into a fury. Rebecca’s cousin visits, though Max insists that he not, Mrs Danvers letting him in. Despite several reconciliations – that mostly take place in bed – Mrs de Winter feels she’s failing Max, that she can’t live up to the example of Rebecca.

This isn’t what’s happened, as is revealed when a ship runs aground and a diver finds Rebecca’s yacht. Disconcertingly Rebecca’s body is discovered within, which is a problem as Max identified a washed ashore corpse as hers. Max confesses to his wife; Rebecca was unfaithful to him. One night, when she return from late from London he confronted her in her beachside cabin where she claimed that she was pregnant with another man’s child who would inherit Manderley. In a fury he strangled her, put her in the cabin of her yacht, drove holes in the hull, then abandoned it to sink, later misidentifying a body that washed up.

At the inquest things swing back and forth between incriminating Max and exonerating him, eventually giving a verdict of suicide. Rebecca’s cousin has a letter from her dated the day she died that looks odd, doesn’t sound like a suicidal woman. In the end they discover she went to a doctor; the cousin guesses she was pregnant and Max killed her. It turned out she had cancer and goaded Max into killing her, though the official story remains suicide. Returning to Manderley they discover it on fire; Mrs Danvers, as ever in love with Rebecca, was called by the cousin and has decided to burn it down in despair, rage, revenge etc. Max tries to rescue her, is injured. Max and his wife leave Manderley to spend the rest of their lives quietly abroad.

How does this compare to the 1940 classic Hitchcock directed film? There are moments where the greater length comes into it's own – this is a two part mini-series. The initial romance, still whirlwind, has time to develop and before they get to Manderley Max has started to show his controlling temper. Decompressing the events lets us spend time with some of the supporting cast, and a 1997 after-the-watershed British TV show can make it explicit that despite their problems, the de Winters are having sex to paper over the cracks.

This dramatises Rebecca, having her played by an actress who appears briefly in flashback, which the 1940 film did not, leaving her an unseen presence, a space between Danvers, Max and the cousin. Formally, the new Mrs de Winter doesn’t have a name of her own, while Rebecca, being dead, has no appearance. Having her appear adds nothing.

Watch This: Languid, good-looking classic adaption
Don’t Watch This: Takes a long time to get to the twist, suffers by comparison to the one made 57 years before 

7. Our Girl Friday (1953)

A cruise liner collides and four mismatched survivors find themselves on a desert island. Sadie Patch (Joan Collins), an heiress whose insistence on saving her dress for the rescue so she appears fashionable has her running around in a bikini made from a striped jersey. Professor Gibble (Robertson Hare), whose lectures on how people should return to nature contrast with his poor showing on the island, also he insists that everyone remain chaste. Jimmy Carrol (George Cole), a journalist, who is generally unhappy with everyone else’s efforts and suggestions. Pat Plunket (Kenneth Moore), a stoker on the ship, who is the most practical of them, also easygoing and likes a drink (they find a bottle of booze and bury it to avoid him getting drunk).

Gibble decides he’s in love with Sadie, argues with Carrol. Sadie decides this is all ridiculous and moves to the far side of the island. Due to a misunderstanding Gibble believes that Sadie and Pat are having sex. They get Pat drunk on the booze, only to realise nothing of the sort has happened. This is plainly ridiculous so Sadie returns and takes over as leader. Unhappy, the men decide to go on strike, and she declares the only solution is for her to marry one of the men. They draw straws; Gibble gets the short but tries to convince Pat to take his place. They’re rescued; Sadie claims she and Pat have been intimate and demands the captain marry them. At this moment the ship, everyone distracted by these events, collides and sinks.

A light-hearted 1950s comedy, asking us to be shocked at how things break down on a desert island while also winking and asking, if propriety is ridiculous when cast away, then how much sense does it make in society? Three of the four leads are excellent, and Gibble holds his own as a stock character.

Watch This: Fun 1950s comedy
Don’t Watch This: Obsessed with sexual continence and Joan Collins in a bikini is not such a novelty

8. The Surfer

The Surfer (Nicholas Cage) a successful business guy of some sort takes his son to Luna Bay to surf. He has a surprise; he’s buying his father’s house up above the bay. However the locals don’t let strangers surf on the beach, even though it’s public. The Surfer stays in the car park, waiting to close the deal.

The locals are hostile. Scally, their leader, a surf guru, has control of them, but it’s the younger ones who hassle people. A Bum in a broken down station wagon tells him that the local surfers killed his son and stole his dog. The Surfer gets calls saying he needs more money for the house, that he needs to go back to his office for a deal, from his estranged wife who is getting engaged and having a baby with someone else. They all tell him to give up on his dream of getting the house.

Things start to go wrong, his surfboard is stolen and when he complains it becomes clear the policeman is inclined to the locals. His car is stolen, his phone runs out of charge. He tries to get the snack bar guy to charge it so he can pay for things. The water fountain is filled with (probably) dog poop. He looks ragged, unkempt. He sneaks down to the surf hut on the beach, sees a strange ceremony. The Bum hides a gun. He lives out of the station wagon.

I write it like this (out of order, I can’t recall exactly) as the film is looking to dislocate you. The more that The Surfer goes downhill, the more he resembles The Bum. What is delusion and what it real? The ending has to give answers, and is as deranged and violent as the rest. I didn’t enjoy the film, but I did appreciate what it was aiming to do – and it hit every mark it set for itself.

Watch This: Dark psychological thriller about dislocation and obsession – on the beach
Don’t Watch This: Generally unpleasant, also grimly violent

9. The Key (1958)

It’s 1941 and David Ross (William Holden), a former tugboat captain has been pulled out of the Canadian Army and put into the Royal Navy. The Battle Of The Atlantic is raging and they need crews for deep sea tugs who rescue damaged ships out at sea. This is very dangerous; the tugs are poorly armed, slow, and very slow when towing, also the U-boats often hang around and aircraft come back for a second attack. The U-Boats can use their deck guns as the pom-poms on the tugs are unreliable and inaccurate. Ross’s predecessor on W88 committed suicide; however each tug has two crews to allow them to operate at any time so the other Captain, Van Dam, a Dutchman, gives him tips.

At the office meeting the boss (Bernard Lee!) he meets an old friend Captain Chris Ford (Trevor Howard), who takes him back to his flat. (Ross's billet in a hotel is a backroom with bunks). In the flat is Ford’s lover Stella (Sophia Loren), a Swiss-Italian refugee who rarely leaves. It seems that her fiancée, a tug captain, was killed just before their wedding. Another captain had taken over the flat; he had left The Key to the flat with Ford in case something happened to him, to look after her.

After taking W88 out and being harassed by a U-Boat until within range of the freighter’s guns, Ross returns to discover that Ford has proposed to Stella. Ford goes out on a mission and is killed, having left the key with Ross. He moves in though they don’t sleep together. She puts away the photos of her first love and becomes happier, going out to the market, looking for work. She asks Ross to marry her and he accepts.

The US enters the war and now American freighters are attacked. One is hit and keep transmitting, against orders (it attracts the enemy). Rumours say that the U-Boat that keeps harassing them is a training vessel, originally French, and the captain uses the tugs as targets for his crews, just fast enough to be challenging, not armed enough to be dangerous. The gun keeps jamming despite Ross’s efforts; the armoured shutters for the wheel house haven’t come despite Van Dam’s efforts. This ought to be Van Dam’s mission but he can’t be found. At the last minute Ross hands The Key over to Kane, Ford’s former first officer, now captain in his own right.

Attacked by the U-Boat, damaged, Ross orders the crew to abandon ship and rams the U-Boat. He’s reported lost at sea. He returns, punches the American captain who explains that their radio was damaged so they couldn’t receive, and the chart room was destroyed in the first attack so they couldn’t read the sealed orders that tell them to report then keep radio silence. He goes to the flat, discovers Kane already there, thinking him dead. Stella throws them both out. Later that night he learns Stella has caught the train to London and he races after her.

The high concept idea of a woman passed along with a flat, accepting what comes along because the worst has happened is interesting, Stella’s passivity always threatening to break. Meanwhile a lot of very exciting naval action. And in between the sheer inconvenience of wartime life, the tugs are vital but far down the priorities, the crews skilled and important and treated expendably, even housed and fed poorly. They keep drinking at the (dry) recreation hall with smuggled in booze, where everyone is a bit frantic, emphasising the fragility of everything.

Watch This: Interesting wartime drama, with the contingencies of war breaking down social taboos, only for love, anger, and miscommunication to add up to something compelling
Don’t Watch This: Tugboat captains inherit a flat and Sophia Loren from each other??!?

10. Adventures Of A Plumber’s Mate

Sid South is a plumber, he owes a lot of rent and worse owes £900 to some bookies who are threatening to beat him up. He also treats the woman he wakes up with badly, firstly being rude to her, then riding off on his motorbike with her dress caught on it leaving her naked. He goes out on a call to change a toilet seat for a woman whose husband is getting out of jail the next day. However she locks him to the headboard in an effort to have kinky sex with him, only to get a phone call her husband is getting out today. Sid manages to escape and sells the toilet seat at an antique shop, only to then discover that is where the husband hid the loot from the robbery. Perhaps inevitably it turns out that the toilet seat gets sold to a police detective.

As well as going out on a couple of plumbing jobs which inevitably end up in some sort of escapade, to raise the money for the bookies Sid takes some jobs from Dodger (Willie Rushton). These are inevitably criminal, Sid using his plumbing knowledge to talk his way in as some sort of inspector, only for the crime to go wrong. Sometimes these get vaguely sexy too.

This 1970s British sex comedy manages to not only be mostly unsexy and unfunny – something the genre has always struggled with – it also gives us a thoroughly unlikable protagonist. Though often unwillingly dragged into a compromising situation as events progress, he owes money due to gambling before the film starts and opens by being unpleasant to his lover, annoying to the boss and generally a thoughtless cad. Perhaps thankfully this ended the “Adventures Of…” series.

Watch This: One or two funny scenes, a couple of well-known actors doing a decent job
Don’t Watch This: Charmless look at an appalling yob