Film Reviews by sb

FILM & REVIEW Zombies! Underwater Zombies! Nazi Underwater Zombies….created by Peter Cushing!- thought that might get your attention. Group of tourists boat gets rammed and sunk by a ghost ship. They make their way to an apparently deserted island where they find a decaying hotel with one inhabitant- Cushing with a clipped German accent surrounded by Nazi flags. It’s revealed at the end of the war having created super soldiers he escaped but as they were out of control he scuttled the ship….but now they are back…. I expected a piece of 70’s exploitation trash but this is really well made considering how cheap it cost. Relying more on brooding atmosphere and a haunting synth score this is lacking all the normal zombie gore but the zombies are really effective all dressed in identical SS uniforms with peroxide hair and sinister wrap around goggles - they way they emerge from the waves in quite sinister. Add in Carradine as the grouchy captain and Sheils in a very fetching bikini and you have something a lot better than I expected - so 3.5/5

FILM & REVIEW Lumet’s superb high tech heist thriller has Connery as Duke a safe cracker just out 10 years in the slammer and straight into the bed of his high class hooker girlfriend (Canon) in her very expensive paid apartment. He decides then and there to rob the entire building - and in the classic heist tradition lays out a plan, assembles the crew and carries out the robbery. These include The Kid (Walken in his debut) , a very camp jeweller (Balsam) and a Mafia thug (Avery) who the mob want whacked and support the heist in return for Duke carrying it out. What Duke doesn’t know but the audience do is that each contact he makes is already under surveillance by various law enforcement and Govt agencies. The irony is that they have no idea who he is and why he is contact with their target so remain blissfully unaware of the bigger picture. The heist itself is brilliantly staged with the events unfolding and intercut with the cops interviewing all the victims afterward so the narrative swings back and forth. The crew think they have the building to themselves but the cops have been tipped off and lie in wait outside…….. Connery is great in the role and it was the one that really launched his post Bond career and although Walken doesn’t get that much dialogue it’s still great to hear that Walken speech cadence even then . Ok by modern standards Balsams fag Jeweller may be questionable ( and he is referred to as that throughout) but as always he is terrific. The film is full of tapes, wire taps, surveillance cameras and bugs so fits into that whole 70’s Govt paranoia genre and Quincey Jones score is full of abrasive electronica - it really is a classic heist movie - 4/5

FILM & WATCHED Just out on MUBI so only general details - a seriel killer is cleaning the streets of prostitutes claiming he is undertaking Gods work. What gives the film its edge is its based on a real case in the Holy City of Mashhad in Iran and as the film unfolds it’s revealed that public opinion is wholly behind him - it’s only the determined work of journalist Rahimi (Ebrahimi) who forces the authorities to finally take action.. The killer is revealed straight away and we see a devoted family man with 3 children but who is driven to clean the filth off the streets - a kind of Iranian Travis Bickle with a loving family. Both leads (Banestni as the killer ) are very good with Ebramimi picking up best actress at Cannes. With the subject matter is is fairly grim throughout but very good at skewering the misogyny and hypocrisy of a society where woman sell themselves only because men buy them - powerful stuff - 4/5

FILM & REVIEW The 4th in the series of Westerns that Stewart made with Anthony Mann and although it’s fine on it’s own it doesn’t quite scale the heights of the others. This time Stewart plays Jeff arriving with 200 head of beef in Seatle and hooks up with his partner Ben (Brennan). Jeff is accused of murder so high tails it out on a riverboat upstream where he encounters Ronda (Roman). Arriving in Spokane he runs his cattle through town disrupting a hanging and annoys the local judge Gannon (Mcentire) who finds him not guilty of the murders but fines him the entire herd for the disruption. Jeff is hired by Ronda to help take food over the mountains to feed the gold rush in Yukon - he agrees but it’s all a ruse and he doubles back and steals back his own cattle. Together they head into Dawson which is over the Canadian border where Gannon can’t touch him. It’s a much changed town with the gold rush with money and trouble and killing on the rise. Jeff sells his cattle to Ronda and sets up his own gold claim with Ben but it’s not long before Gannon and his killers arrive to take over the town. Jeff has an interesting character arc in that he is a man on his own , minding his own business and won’t get involved as it’s nothing to do with him but as things develop he is forced to question this philosophy as events escalate. As I say it’s fine as it is but does tend to meander a bit in the middle and there is a love triangle and romance that kinda gets in the way although the way the finale is built is very good - so still 4/5

FILM & REVIEW Robert Siodmak is famous for making dark Noirs with a particularly bleak take on the human condition. This then is quite a departure - Chandler plays Vic who was born in Italy but has spend most of his life in New York. He has recently served 5 years for a 100 grand heist and has now been deported back to Italy. The money was never recovered and his partner follows looking for his share…..Vic refuses saying having done the time and never squealed the full amount is his. He travels back to his home town and gets taken in by his kindly Uncle who thinks he’s something big in the US Govt a fiction Vic is only too glad to maintain. He also meets and woos a widowed Countess who provides for the poor and this sparks an idea. He cannot have the cash sent from New York as the cops are watching so he arranges for all the money to spent on food and shipped over. Once it arrives he plans to steal it and sell it on the black market and convert it back into cash…..but by now he has fallen in love with town , the people and in particular the Countess…… FIlmed entirely on location making great use of the Italian landscape with Chandler as the rugged anti- hero and Toren as his romantic foil. As I say its miles from the normal Siodmak stuff but works just fine on its own terms - 4/5

FILM & REVIEW Brooding and not a little disturbing chiller set in the rotting post industrial outback of Oregon. Russell plays Julia a school teacher who has moved back to be with her Sheriff brother Plemins and it’s revealed they both share a dark past. She gets increasingly concerned about Lucas (Thomas) one of her pupils whose younger brother isn’t in school and whose Father is known to the cops as a Meths Cook. She suspects something is very wrong at home…….and that is all I am saying as it works best not knowing which route it will take. Copper builds the atmosphere quite slowly with an increasing sense of dread and the way he ratchets up the tension is very effective. It’s produced by Guillermo Del Toro and fits very will into his oeuvre and can be really quite disturbing at times……very good indeed ??4/5

FILM & REVIEW Early Anthony Mann film and a cracking little noir it as well. O’Keefe plays Joe who is in prison having taken the rap for his boss Rick in return for a payoff of 5O G’s. It’s arranged for him to bust out but Rick (Burr) reckons his chances of survival are slim thus taking care of Joe and the cash. But against all odds he makes it and heads back towards San Francisco with his girl Pat (Trevor). On the way to switch cars they take Ann (Hunt) who has been following Joe’s case and is also in love with him so the scene is set for all 3 to hit the road. So he has the cops after him and Rick as well in the person of Fantail (Ireland) while the two girls bicker over Joe while the net closes in… It’s unusual in that in uses a hard boiled voice over but from Pat’s perspective so we learn a lot from the female point. Both actress’s are very good - Trevor is hard as nails whereas Hunt is much more the innocent abroad and Trevor realises she is in danger of losing Joe. Burr is excellent as the sadistic bad guy and for it’s time it’s quite brutal and lensed by the great John Alton who uses the swirling dock fog in the finale to great effect…a real little cracker - 4/5

FILM & REWATCH A welcome rewatch for Eastwoods masterpiece which is just one of the best Westerns ever made. Sure we all the know the story so just going to pick on some observational points. Love the pacing - although you know the finale will be one of bloody violence Eastwood takes his time in building the characters, narrative and astmosphere. The way he keeps maintaining he isn’t the same man any more you know someone like him can never escape their past. I love how it’s undermines the mythology of the Western - at the end of Liberty Vallance we are told if you have the facts and the legend - print the legend - but this reverses this using the naive author to highlight that there nothing noble about gunning down another man and the mud and the rain and the gloomy interiors all enhance this. You can see it as a feminist western where women are there to be used and no one cares if things get ugly so they take matters into their own hands to seek retribution. Eastwoods regular cinematographer Jack Green underlights the interior shots with a counterpoint to the glorious landscape and won an Oscar for it. The performances are superb - Eastwood underplays until the finale with fine support from Freeman and Harris with Hackman giving one of his best roles as the brutal lawman. David People’s script is equally excellent managing to see a final moral undercurrent to all the brutality……it really is a superb film - 5/5

FILM & WATCHED Just out on Netflix so no real detail -a really interesting if unremittingly grim post apocalyptic ecological tale. It’s a film where ideas and concepts are to the fore which makes a refreshing change where CGI is used to support rather that dominate the narrative. It’s got a remarkably mature central performance by Raffiella Chapman who is still only 15 with Marsden at his menacing best. Visually it takes some cues from Stalker and is very effective at world building with some very thoughtful points. But dear god it’s bleak……reckon you have to the right frame of mind to appreciate it - 4/5

FILM & REVIEW https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084335/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_9 Costa-Gravas’ superb political drama set during the 1973 military coup in Chile that brought Pinochet to power. Spacek plays Beth married to Charlie whose a very naive young man who writes children’s books. In the early days of the coup he dissapears and Beth is joined by his Father Ed (Lemmon). Ed is a very conservatism devout Christian who dissaproves of Beth and the leftist liberal views she holds and at first blames her for Charlie’s dissapearence The two set out to discover his sons fate but as the horrors around them become more apparent and the fact that Charlie without realising it at first has been privy to the deep American involvement in events draws them closer. The US Embassy seems to be helping but it soon becomes clear they are doing this to stop Ed digging deeper. Both leads are superb with Lemmon giving the performance of his career (winning best actor at Cannes) . It’s a wonderfully complex performance as Ed begins to realise that the thing he holds most dear - the American Way of Life - is the one thing that has led to his sons murder……. The recreation of the coup (filmed in Mexico) is very well achieved and it’s a key film of the genre - 5/5

FILM & REVIEW Don Siegel’s cracking spy thriller has Caine as Tarrant a serving MI6 officer whose son David is kidnapped by Drabble (Vernon). He demands very specific ransom in diamonds which is the exact amount that Tarrant’s boss Harper (Pleasence) has only just purchased for operations so someone is working on the inside. Harper explains that they can’t pay up forcing Tarrant to take control and pretending on the phone to be Harper gets the bank to hand over the diamonds to him. To complicate things Drabble has set Tarrant up to it look like he is the one who set the whole thing up so he has to not only rescue his son but evade the authorities whilst exposing the real traitor. Caine is terrific as always with Suzman as his long suffering estranged wife with Pleasence as his fastidious boss and Vernon as his most velvety menacing. Some great action set pieces and great use of the central London locations with the human cost acting as a counterpoint to the murky machinations of the spy genre. One of my favorites - 4/5

FILM & REVIEW Aka The Dark Mirror. Siodmak’s excellent psychological Noir - a respected doctor is found with a knife in his back and a young woman is seen leaving the apartment. She is identified as Terry Collins and two witnesses swear that they saw her that night - but she maintains she was in a park and has several other witnesses to confirm this . How could she be in two places at once ? The answer is revealed when the bedroom door opens and her identical twin sister Ruth comes out - both played by De Haviland. They stick to the alibi but although the detective Stevenson (Mitchell) is convinced one is the killer he can’t prove which one…..so the case collapses. He engages psychologist Scott [Ayers) to run Rorchard tests and begins to suspect that Terry is far more unstable than she first appears and deliberately falls in love with Ruth to see how Terry will react……. DeHaviland is superb in the dual lead - in public they appear identical but in private Terry is the dominant one and way she plays mind games on her weaker sister is quite chilling - so much so that you begin to be able to tell who is who just by a small gesture. Siodmak made several noir’s in the period and this is one of his best….4/5

FILM & REVIEW Anthony Mann’s cracking hard boiled noir has Randolph as Clara who runs a beauty salon with a numbers racket in the back shop. She and her boyfriend Duke (Ireland) conspire to set up a fake robbery to rip off their boss but it goes wrong and Duke’s partner and a cop both get shot. Duke gets his dying partner to set up innocent boy Steve to take the wrap and the cops are convinced they have their man. His sister Rosie (Ryan) sets out to prove his innocence with a sympathetic cop begining to come round to the same conclusion. Rosie embarks on a very dangerous cat and mouse game with Duke to uncover the truth. On the one hand it’s the old Wrong Man story but it’s a solid cast - Ireland is a very menacing heavy with Randolph as the hard as nails broad who cracks under the pressure and Ryan is excellent risking her own life to save her brother. A razor sharp script and some terrific noir lighting and it achieves all this is a sprightly 72 minutes…..4/5

FILM & REVIEW https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063501/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_ Sergio Sollima’s legendary Western a print of which I have been after for ages… Van Cleef plays Corbett an aging but still lethal bounty hunter who is engaged by a railway baron Barnes to hunt down and bring to justice a Mexican farmer called Cuchillo (Millian) who is accused of the rape and murder of a little girl. In return Barnes will support Corbett in a run for the Senate so the hunt is on.. Cuchillo proves more than a worthy opponent using all the wiles at his disposal to evade capture leaving Corbett more and more frustrated and the hunt crosses over into Mexico which complicates his task even more… Van Cleef is as always excellent with Mullian in his breakthrough role and who would become a stable of Italian cinema fooling everyone one with his simple farmer routine. The film does take a while to settle down - the first third is a little uneven with a couple of sequences that don’t add much to the plot but once the border is crossed things improve with the final third coming to a thunderous conclusion. Fine score by Morricone and it’s a really great restoration with stunning use of the Spanish landscape - 4/5

FILM & REVIEW Siodmak’s seminal noir which I reckon is about as close to perfection you can get in cinema. 2 menacing killers arrive at diner in a small town in New Jersey looking for the Swede.(Lancaster in his debut). He’s off sick after a chance encounter but when his work mate tries to warn him he is indifferent- it’s almost as is he knew it was coming and almost welcomes it. His will bequeaths a life insurance policy to a chambermaid in Atlantic City which piques the interest of insurance investigator Reardon (O’Brien) who slowly over a series of complex flashbacks pieces together what led to the Swede’s murder. He was a washed up boxer who one night meets Kitty (Gardener) and one glance from her and we know he’s doomed. He takes the rap for some stolen jewellery and once released gets involved in a major heist that ends up with everyone double crossing every else……setting in motion the almost pre-ordained fate that awaits him. Based on a Hemming story it’s co-written by an uncredited John Huston with a supurb muscular performance from Lancaster and Gardener smoulders as only she can with O’Brien forensic in his investigation. This was the film that launched both their careers and although the multiple flashbacks are a staple of Noir the way it’s constructed is just superb - 5/5