Film Reviews by Steve

Ambitious adaptation of Henri Charrière’s bestseller relating his escapes from draconian French penal colonies between the wars. His claimed innocence is hardly a factor; this is an unusually sadistic punishment for anyone. For an hour or so, Franklin J. Schaffner authentically conveys a formidable impression of its dehumanising horror.

It was shot in Jamaica and some actual locations in French Guiana. And it looks extremely convincing. It begins as a polemic against the cruelty of the system, and a tribute to the indomitable spirit of one man who refuses to give in… Which was irresistible to what remained of the late ’60s counterculture.

This was a huge box office success, though less popular with the critics. Steve McQueen in the title role contributes what is usually regarded the best acting of his career. Yet, while he’s an iconic film star, he hasn’t the gravity to sustain the performance and so, when the narrative unravels in the later scenes, he becomes absurd. The director’s exploration of the heroes’ interior life is clumsy.

Dustin Hoffman plays the supporting part of Papillon’s friend as a broad caricature. The screenplay (co-written by Dalton Trumbo) is uncomfortably comical as if they lost their nerve over how grim all of this really is. Eventually it feels incongruously like an early ‘70s buddy picture. This is a sincere adaptation, meticulously produced. But the years have not been kind.

Evocative period adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s classic crime novel which makes one really odd creative decision; the screenplay remains faithful to the author's chaotic, convoluted narrative, but leaves out most of the celebrated dialogue. Still the plot* is tided up effectively, and the new wisecracks and voiceover are witty, and suitably Chandleresque.

Impossible not to compare this with Edward Dmytryk’s version. This approximates the atmosphere of the 1944 film noir, with the neon and the muted colour palette. And everything happens at night. The support performances are better in Murder, My Sweet, but they’re ok here, with Jack O’Halloran a decent Moose Malloy.

The femme fatale role is diminished, but Charlotte Rampling is fair exchange for Claire Trevor. Robert Mitchum is perfect casting as Chandler’s legendary detective. He was born to wear the trenchcoat; but this is 20 years too late. It’s a tired performance, yet this suits Philip Marlowe's pessimism. And the star is a master at the tough, sardonic dialogue.

This version captures Chandler’s vision of Los Angeles, with its social division and corruption and phoney glamour; where bums and drifters and call girls come to reinvent themselves. It’s ideal for fans of the novel and adapted with visual style and a cool jazz score. It’s mostly forgotten, but one of the better neo-noirs of the ’70s. 

*There is some period racism.

Haunting, downbeat and largely plotless arthouse expressionism, which is more engaging than that sounds! Though it’s set among the left behind rural poor, this isn’t political neorealism, but a reflection on the interior emptiness of an aimless drifter as he adapts to a new reality of being alone.

This is the greyest film ever made! The dense, polluted fog of the Po Valley weighs heavily on the disillusioned wanderer… and the audience! It’s a philosophical mood piece which establishes Michelangelo Antonioni's signature themes of isolation and alienation.

It feels odd that Hollywood film noir heavy Steve Cochran plays this hollow man who can find no solace or meaning. On the road he encounters women who are also distressed by the existential fog. Dorian Gray (maybe cast for her surname!) as a sexually frustrated petrol station attendant is particularly memorable.

And Lyn Shaw as a heartbreaking sex worker. They are all lost souls adrift of politics and commerce. Nothing much happens except the protagonist is slowly submerged in his grey despair. The melancholy piano scores his fading sense of purpose until the inevitable conclusion. This is gloomy stuff; even for Antonioni. 

Languorous arthouse enigma often rated the best film ever made in Australia. Which is fair enough. What most resonates is the romantic aura of gauzy nostalgia- set in 1900- merged with a vague impression of supernatural threat. This is mainly achieved through the stunning cinematography.

And the sound mix also captures the numb serenity of a hot summer’s day, augmented by the ambient soundtrack and strange atmosphere of the locations. Plus the period costumes and set decor. This is an eerily beautiful film. The cast of girls who go missing on a school picnic, feel insubstantial, ephemeral. Lost in a trance of unconscious ritual.

Peter Weir skilfully employs all the tools of cinematic art to suggest a series of themes which are never quite resolved: the sexual vulnerability of the unwary children; the incongruity of aristocratic privilege in a wild and enchanted landscape; and a sense of humanity, transient against the vastness of prehistory.

The Aboriginal people hardly feature, but their absence haunts the film. The events are presented as a true story, though it is adapted from a novel (by Joan Lindsay). It feels authentic, yet magical. Almost horror. Almost science fiction. This is the masterpiece of the Aussie New Wave.

Chic thriller set on the French Riviera which like many films of its time, aspires to be To Catch a Thief (1955) but falls some way short. No VistaVision or A+ stars. Or Alfred Hitchcock... But this is still stylishly directed by John Guillermin with a few really eye-catching flourishes.

And the sports cars on the coastal roads of the Côte d'Azur look cool, even in b&w. The cast is decent with Stewart Granger as a suave film producer having an affair with his sexy Italian leading lady (Gianna Maria Canale) who ends up with a knife in her back and all the evidence pointing at him...

There are a couple of Oscar winners in support with Donna Reed underused as the jilted wife and George Sanders excellent as a slimy villain. Michael Shillo is a bonus as the inscrutable continental detective. We also get a quick glimpse behind the scenes of a trashy ’50s film production.

The twisty plot is implausible, but that’s only to be expected. The production looks like there was a decent budget. Plus suspense, Mediterranean locations, nice clothes and a chillout jazz soundtrack from Johnny Dankworth. Everyone on set said Granger was a nightmare, but they all still turned in a glossy, sassy thriller.

Disappointing later Billy Wilder comedy which takes an already slender premise and stretches it over 144 minutes. Jack Lemmon plays a wealthy US business executive who travels to Italy to claim his father’s body for burial. And discovers that he was conducting a long affair with a lower class English woman, whose corpse is collected by Juliet Mills.

Essentially it’s the familiar story of an uptight wage slave liberated by the beauty and culture of Italy. And the more pastoral way of life. Which always works, except this time. While the location shoot around Naples is alluring, there are multiple problems. Jack Lemmon is usually so reliable at giving unlikable characters just enough charm to be sympathetic….

But his irascible corporate entitlement is too maddening. The American abroad comedy is incredibly patronising towards the foreign stereotypes. Apparently, they can’t make decent coffee in Italy! Also the 66 year old director feels prurient and old fashioned in his use of nudity and swearing.

It isn’t a disaster. There is some decent topical humour; which is even mildly subversive. Clive Revill is convivial as another of the director’s wily finaglers. Unfortunately, though the source Broadway play is opened out skilfully, Wilder develops some scenarios purely because the relaxed censorship of the 1970s now permits. And in doing so, exposes a lack of taste. 

Landmark Italian western which turned the whole of Sergio Leone’s Dollar trilogy into a ’60s cultural phenomenon. Although as it takes Clint Eastwood until the final scene to wear the iconic poncho, perhaps there was only a late attempt to align it with the earlier films. This is usually acclaimed as the best of the three.

And it feels like A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965) were preparation. The Leone style is now fully evolved from the start: the extreme closeups, the extended pauses, the sadistic violence and the idiosyncratic fusion of period realism with pop art visuals. Most of all, Ennio Morricone’s legendary soundtrack, a mix of mariachi and ambient atmospherics.

Eastwood isn’t as dominant this time around and shares the spotlight with Lee Van Cleef, as the relentless sociopathic killer, and Eli Wallach, as the squalid, ratlike survivor. The three are in pursuit of buried treasure. But it’s an episodic narrative with more subplots than a tv soap opera. We get some thematic content about the futility of war and the wretchedness of greed.

But plenty of laconic humour too. There’s an epic three hour running time, and during the civil war battle scene, it attains a visual grandeur of scale, which the director carried into his masterpiece, Once Upon a Time in the West (1968); only Leone himself ever made a better western. It’s hard to overstate how influential it has been, particularly now…

Lesser, low budget British sci-fi which, like its title, feels spliced together from other better pictures. It takes most from the Quatermass series, and like those films was initially made for tv. Though this does less to disguise that origin. So there are only a two or three locations, and rudimentary special effects.

This was an independent production directed by Hammer stalwart Terence Fisher and features their perennial stars, Peter Cushing- in a cameo- and Christopher Lee. And it is these three who give it some quality. The narrative is driven by the heat which prompts the locals to behave in ever less predictable ways.

Lee plays an irascible boffin who suspects the unseasonal high temperature on a remote island is caused by preparation for an alien invasion. So the tiny community comes together to repel the glowing intruders who feed off light and burn their victims to ashes. But who have the usual fatal flaw.

And this scenario works yet again. It is padded out with a love triangle between a macho writer (Patrick Allen), his doormat wife (Sarah Lawson) and sexy secretary (Jane Merrow) who keeps on getting so hot she has to strip off. But there is zero nudity, or gore. The US release was called Island of the Burning Doomed which might be the most hyperbolic film title ever! 

Long, complex POW drama adapted from a bestseller by James Clavell, which feels realistic, while also haunting and poetic. It is set in a Japanese jungle camp, from which there is no possibility of escape. The allied soldiers revert to a primitive tribal state which is antagonistic across every possible divide.

Its fundamental weakness is there is no overarching narrative; this is an episodic scrutiny of the psychological trauma of the prisoners. George Segal leads an ensemble cast as the finagler who runs the camp like his own private racket; a role that has become something of a cliché.

But this digs deeper, into issues of class, nationality, sexuality and politics. James Fox is affecting as a clever but naive English blue-blood who gets snagged up in Segal’s circle of racketeers. James Donald arguably steals the picture in a cameo as a wise, phlegmatic doctor, weary of despair. Tom Courteney is unconvincing as a resentful tyrant without status.

It’s stunningly edited and photographed in b&w, with an evocative score by John Barry. This might have been big with the ‘60s counterculture as it is anti-authoritarian. But it flopped and took a while to find an audience. Maybe it would be more celebrated if not by a stalwart director like Bryan Forbes, yet this is an arthouse masterpiece.

This is regarded as the last in the long cycle of gothic horror from Universal studios, and has genre superstars Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr. on board, though in support roles. It’s a period melodrama with sadistic undertones, grafted onto an adventure film.

Richard Greene plays a swordfighting avenger tracking two friends who vanished while visiting a malign German Count (Stephen McNally in an eyepatch). On entering his black castle, the hero gets snagged up in his host’s thrill seeking bloodsports while recklessly romancing the imperilled Countess (Paula Corday).

And so on. The production benefits from the gothic set decor borrowed from the superior The Strange Door, released the previous year. It is full of shadowy atmosphere, with the secret passages, the spooky old crypt and the fiendish alligator pit which guards the escape route from the dungeons.

Greene is a fair swashbuckler and McNally a persuasive aristocratic villain; a psychopath with unmoderated power. Though the hero is actually an ivory hunter! Nathan Juran’s debut job of direction sometimes plods, but it looks great and Karloff is wonderfully insidious. It’s a minor programmer but still viable entertainment.

MAN-MADE MONSTER

This low budget Universal sci-fi/horror clearly borrows from Frankenstein a decade earlier. Yet also feels at least ten years ahead of its time; more like a drive-in feature from the ’50s. It features Lon Chaney jr’s debut in the genre as an oddball idiot who can survive huge amounts of electricity without obvious harm…

Only to run into Lionel Atwill playing a mad scientist intent on creating a prototype for a super-race by plugging him into the mains. Future generations would adapt this idea with atomic and then computer technology. But this is the ’40s and Chaney spends the second half of the film glowing like the Ready-Brek kid.

Despite the B picture resources, this effect is really quite impressive. And surely the stuff about the army of automatons is intended to reflect the Nazis? As usual, Atwill is the standout, just edging out Corky the dog, who is way ahead of the rest in noticing something is going badly awry.

It’s a cheap shocker obviously directed with an eye on the clock. The support cast is mundane, aside from Corky. But some care has gone into the action set pieces and it builds to an exciting climax as the electrical man goes berserk. It’s entertaining, and you will learn plenty about ‘electrobiology’. 

MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS

Standard sci-fi/horror for the '50s drive-in crowd, elevated by a superior production from Universal studios, rather than shoddy trash from poverty row. There’s a competent crew led by genre legend Jack Arnold. And a fair cast which gets the balance between seriousness and sendup just about right. But the crazy plot is the same sort of hokum.

Arthur Franz plays a hot biology professor who gets contaminated by a prehistoric fish and periodically transforms into an angry, homicidal caveman. For complicated reasons involving atomic radiation. The dialogue works hard to convince us this might actually happen. But it’s dumbed down Jekyll and Hyde.

And the Prof wakes up at the centre of a zone of destruction, wondering what just happened… Being low budget campus sci-fi, there are teenage hunks (Troy Donahue) and babes (Nancy Walters). But they are relatively well behaved, not wild for kicks. Most of the mayhem happens to the grownups.

We don’t get to see the monster until the climax, which is a good thing, as it’s a terrible rubber mask. The days of Jack Pierce rising at dawn to paste yak hair onto the star are long gone. Sadly. The effects are prehistoric. Of course this is all completely idiotic, yet surprisingly fun. And not because it’s bad. This is decent nonsense.

Coruscating polemic aimed at corporate America which doesn’t attempt to disguise its origins as a low budget TV play, but makes its threadbare claustrophobia into a virtue. For aficionados of political cinema, this may be the great forgotten film of the decade. Easy to imagine it inspired David Mamet.

Van Heflin plays the small town nice guy appointed to the board of a New York firm by its sociopathic chief executive (Everett Sloane) to lead human resources. And covertly edge out the New Deal philosophy of a traumatised company man (Ed Begley). Because big business operates like a shark, without conscience.

The big asset is Rod Serling’s brilliant, deadeye script which communicates the social Darwinism that operates the levers of US free enterprise. There’s an astonishing scene when it becomes obvious that the newcomer’s stay-at-home wife (Beatrice Straight) is easily as ruthless as the boss. And today would be in the boardroom herself.

It’s ultimately ambiguous whether the newcomer gets assimilated into the detached pragmatism of malign executive culture. This is pessimistic political noir and doesn’t generate much hope. It’s is a realistic and devastating analysis of US capitalism, even though filmed in the time of McCarthyism.  

Hardboiled cult heist picture, which is Jean-Pierre Melville’s personal homage to Hollywood film noir, and has itself proved an influence on other directors- including the Nouvelle Vague. However there isn’t an expressionist look. The lighting is mostly natural. There are no shadows of entrapment.

Maybe its tawdry greyness suits this story of a high roller fallen on hard times. Parisian criminal Roger Duchesne (in the title role) plans one last job, to rob the casino at Deauville, so assembles a team of deadbeats to execute the caper. Naturally, his plan falls apart on the big day...

There is the obvious influence of year zero heist noir, The Asphalt Jungle (1950), though this isn’t flattered by the comparison. The main problem is Duchesne lacks charisma and the support cast is anonymous in underwritten roles. Isabelle Corey stands out as the mercenary teenage moll. She is beautiful and sexy, but more of a model than actor.

This is much more salacious than US noir. It is ultra-lowkey, barely stirred by the soundtrack of nocturnal jazz. There is plenty of genre pessimism and Paris by night. Melville directs with the élan he brought to all his critically adored crime films. It’s très cool, but not in the class of The Asphalt Jungle. 

Delirious and deliciously debauched adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's 1864 locked room mystery. And rather than underplaying or updating the 'tache twirling Victorian melodrama, this revels in its gothic excess. There is clearly some talent on board.  Yet if they cut the budget and the shooting schedule, there's a Tod Slaughter B film left.

After her father's death, a naive but spirited teenager (Jean Simmons) is exposed to the doubtful solicitude of her wicked, avaricious Uncle Silas (Derrick De Marney) and his menagerie of human grotesques. If she doesn't make it to legal age, the inheritance passes to this grasping, murderous relative. So is moved from her comfortable home into his cobwebby, derelict castle.

Nothing is in moderation. The orphan is sweetly innocent. De Marney makes a spidery villain. His son is a bewhiskered blackguard and the female accomplice a hideous, cackling harridan. The huge coachman is mute, the dialogue is ripe, and the climate given to thundery storms. While the photography is impressive, the expressionism is unsubtle.

And yet it is extremely enjoyable. This kind of melodrama usually gets a meagre budget, this is well mounted with fine sets. It is fortunate to feature a future star, with 18 year old Simmons in her first lead. If everyone else overacts, then that is the style. Director Charles Frank is obscure, but he has an eye for detail. It's a kind of guilty pleasure.

Creaky, old fashioned gothic melodrama loosely based on an early short story by Robert Louis Stephenson. The plot is slight and outré and implausible, but still functional, augmented by the rich period set design, with the shadowy secret passages, devious torture devises and the dark, dangerous dungeons.

The ripe dialogue is effective in the context. But best of all are the theatrical, scenery chewing performances. And that’s mostly Charles Laughton as an insidious ham… who plays a decadent, malign French aristocrat intending to punish his imprisoned brother by making his lovely daughter (Sally Foster) marry a dissolute waster.

Richard Stapely is charismatic as the latter, enough to suggest he might have developed into a B-picture Errol Flynn. Except this kind of film was in decline and Universal horror production about to be turned over to sci-fi. Boris Karloff has a minor role, but brings some old school class, and memorably takes a full 10 minutes to die from bullet and stab wounds!

Everyone enters into the spirit… It was made in a co-production with The Black Castle (1952) which is similar, but not as good. My hunch is this was intended for the teenage horror crowd, which no longer exists for this sort of period melodrama. But it’s still fine entertainment for aficionados of the virtues of the classic studio era.