Der Dämon des Himalaya (1935)

Well. I swore after 713 Prosit Posadku that I wouldn’t do this again, but here I am trying to make sense of a non-English-language film—led astray this time partly by the suggestion of more demons and more disaster than eventuated, but also by the seeming promise of having this film’s remake as a guide (which I sort of did; see below). As I understand it, a genuine Himalayan expedition undertaken in 1934 was financed on an agreement that its documentary footage would then be made available for the production of Der Dämon des Himalaya, and that staged portions of the film would be shot along the way. Moreover, several members of the expedition played versions of themselves, including Günter Oskar Dyhrenfurth, the geologist-explorer (and Olympic gold-medal alpinist [!]) who led it, who appears here as Professor Willes. The location shooting was mostly done in the Karakoram region of Kashmir, which was being explored and documented for the first time; while the expedition was also allowed to film in the Lamayuru Monastery in the north of India. Der Dämon des Himalaya is somewhat akin to the Germain mountaineering films of this era, except that it has more of a sense of doom about it than usual. Its story focuses on Dr Norman (Gustav Diessl), an ethnologist who collects Tibetan artefacts, including a particular demon-mask which terrifies Anne (Erika Dannhoff), the woman he falls in love with. Norman joins the Himalayan expedition, and all goes well until the team rests at a monastery, where they observe various ritual dances including one by a participant wearing a version of the same mask. Norman then has a vision of disaster overtaking the expedition… I may say I was never clear on what Norman’s dealio is, though apparently he has some sort of hang-up about the mask even before the encounter at the monastery, perhaps infected by Anne’s fears; the climactic events here seem to act as some sort of spiritual cleansing for him. Meanwhile the overarching plot involves the expedition being plagued by sabotage enacted by a demon-worshipping mole amongst the porters, but also being repeatedly being saved by the film’s most interesting character, Frau Willes. This intrepid lady is played by Jarmilla Marton, the wife of director Andrew Marton—whose name does not appear in the credits because, sigh, he was Jewish…

Flight To Nowhere (1946)

In Honolulu, a Korean businessman is murdered and a document stolen from his body… The Justice Department dispatches Bob Donovan (Jack Holt) to Los Angeles, where he makes contact with Hobie Carrington (Alan Curtis), a war-time colleague now running a charter-flight business. Carrington tells Donovan that he is done with that sort of work. Instead, he agrees to fly the Countess Maria de Fresca (Micheline Cheirel) to Death Valley, after she hints at a romantic dinner for two at the hotel. However, when the Countess arrives for her flight, she is accompanied by heiress Catherine Forrest (Evelyn Ankers), her brother Claude (John Craven), Jan Van Bush (Roland Varno), who is pursuing Cathy, and mining engineer Gerald Porter (Jerome Cowan). On the flight, the Countess occupies the co-pilot’s seat for a time before ceding it to Cathy. When the flight hits bad weather Carrington climbs over it, forcing his passengers onto oxygen—only to discover that the co-pilot’s line has been sabotaged: he dives rapidly to save Cathy’s life. In Death Valley, Carrington learns that a room at the hotel has been booked for him: Donovan is waiting there, and tells Carrington that one or more of his new acquaintances are involved in the struggle for possession of the stolen document, which reveals the site of a large deposit of uranium… “Nowhere” is right, as I’m sure I’m not the first one to say. Flight To Nowhere is a dull little crime-actioner which ought to be more interesting than it is, given that it was, apparently, the first post-war film to deal with the international trade in atomic secrets—but it does this so listlessly, the screenplay finally has to spell out its own point: “You can’t make atomic bombs without uranium!” The body of the film involves its characters all behaving as suspiciously as possible, the stolen document being re-stolen again and again, Carrington being hit over the head repeatedly (though not often enough), Jan Van Bush being pushed into a pool repeatedly (though not often enough), Carrington and Cathy falling in love for no particular reason, and finally murder—when Tom Walker (Gordon Richards), another mining expert and one of those to steal the document, is knifed to death and robbed in turn. Matters are further complicated when Carrington’s ex-wife, Irene (Inez Cooper), shows up, on her way to Reno to divorce the man who she abruptly divorced Carrington for during the war. An aspiring actress, Irene recognises “the Countess de Fresca” as Dolly Lorraine, a former showgirl, prompting Carrington to recruit her help in getting hold (for the second or third time) of the stolen document—the evident good understanding between the former spouses causing difficulties in Carrington’s burgeoning romance with Cathy… Despite all these complications, Flight To Nowhere manages only the occasional flicker of interest—with its suggestion that Claude Forrest is a literal traitor, let out of a Japanese prison camp after agreeing to hand over information about the uranium, and with location shooting in Las Vegas during that town’s earliest days. These details are offset by the perfunctory playing out of the film’s various subplots and smokescreens, and by the way it casually kills off the only character here I actually liked, and barely acknowledges it.

Storm Over Tibet (1952)

At the outbreak of WWII, director Andrew Marton left Europe, first for Great Britain and then for Hollywood, where he had a lengthy career making primarily action and adventure films. In 1952, working at Columbia, he undertook a remake of his own 1935 German production, Der Dämon des Himalaya, reusing the original film’s documentary footage of Tibet and India, casting more-or-less lookalike actors so that other portions of the earlier film could also be reused, and reworking the framing plot so that, while it still revolved around a demonic mask and a seeming curse on an expedition into the Himalayas, it concerned contemporary Americans. Towards the close of the war, air-force pilots David Simms (Rex Reason) and Bill March (Myron Healey) fly “The Hump”, the mountain route between India and China. As David packs at the end of his tour of duty, he and Bill come to blows over a mask that he has looted from a monastery on a mountain known as Amne Mandu, which Bill insists is a religious artefact and must be returned. Called to the plane that is to fly him out, David loads his gear and takes the co-pilot’s seat, only for the pilot to order him off because of his badly bleeding hand. Bill takes his place as co-pilot; the flight is rushed into the air, taking David’s gear with it. Via radio, Bill promises sardonically to send the mask back if it’s the last thing he does. However, matters soon become grimly serious when Bill reports the plane’s compass “going crazy”. To his horror, David discovers the plane is well off course and too low, heading straight for Amne Mandu… After the war, David’s return home is ruined by persistent guilt over Bill’s fate. Eventually, as a form of expiation, he decides to visit Bill’s widow and confess the truth; but Ellen (Diana Douglas) welcomes him so warmly, and speaks so happily of his friendship with Bill, he cannot do it. When the two begin to fall in love, David does tell Ellen the truth: she insists that he is blaming himself for a cruel trick of fate. The two marry and are happy, until one day they receive a package: David’s stolen mask, wrapped in Bill’s flight-jacket… From here, once David and Ellen have forced their way into a Himalayan expedition to discover if Bill could still be alive,  Storm Over Tibet essentially follows the plot of Der Dämon des Himalaya, with the new actors cut not-exactly-seamlessly into footage from the earlier film—so that this time it is David who has the vision of disaster, which he takes as a sign that he was always fated to die on Amne Mandu. The problem here is that David is so obnoxious at the outset, it’s impossible not to feel he is being justly punished—while his fate encompasses those who don’t deserve it: this is one of those films where a jerk learns a lesson, but only at the price of other people’s lives. All this makes Storm Over Tibet hard to enjoy, and it is finally most engaging in its details: the reused documentary footage; the various scientific reasons for the expedition, including altitude physiology and radiation research; that Harold Dyrenforth, one of the screenwriters of Der Dämon des Himalaya, plays Professor Faber here; and that Jarmila Marton once again plays the wife of the expedition’s leader—who is likewise again the most interesting character.

All That Heaven Allows (1955)

Based upon the novel by Edna and Harry Lee. In the New England town of Stoningham, widowed Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) leads an unfulfilling life brightened only by the weekend visits of her college-age children, Ned (William Reynolds) and Kay (Gloria Talbott). She accepts an invitation from her best friend, Sarah Warren (Agnes Moorehead), to a party at the country club, something she has rarely done since the death of her husband. At a loose end, Cary takes notice of the man doing her yard work and invites him to have coffee. Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson) is unresponsive to her small talk until Cary mentions his work, and he then displays a knowledge and a passion that piques her interest. Later preparing for her evening out, Cary impulsively chooses a somewhat daring dress, which takes aback both her children and Howard Hoffer (Donald Curtis), who escorts her to the party: it also draws snide comments from group gossip, Mona Plash (Jacqueline deWit), and attracts unwanted advances from one of the clubmen, Harvey (Conrad Nagel). When Ron has completed her yard work, Cary goes with him to see his new tree nursery, and as he talks about his plans for the future, she is struck by his straightforwardness and sense of purpose. Over time, Cary is increasingly drawn to Ron’s unconventional lifestyle and friends; but when things between them become serious, she is faced with a choice that terrifies her… After the success of Magnificent Obsession, Douglas Sirk was asked by Universal to re-team Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson and re-do that film’s central romance—which, with a nine-year age gap between the two, was considered the height of daring. Otherwise, Sirk was given a free hand—and used it to create another of his excoriating dissections of American society. One of the main themes of All That Heaven Allows is exactly how nasty some nice people can be, and Sirk doesn’t hold back in his depiction of Stoningham’s country-club set as vapid, back-biting and prurient. They’re all so very awful – Sarah Warren somewhat excepted – that Cary’s desperate clinging to what amounts to her own chains almost makes her unsympathetic. The film’s other great theme is the emptiness of a life based on material possessions and social standing, which in Cary’s case is exacerbated by her sex. As Edward Scott’s widow, she has nothing and does nothing: she simply is. People keep remarking on how lucky she is to have her children—as if Ned and Kay were toddlers instead of young adults building their own lives—and they keep trying to force on her a new way of “filling her time”: television… (In all the movie industry’s ongoing war with the encroaching new technology, no-one ever put the boot in more savagely than Douglas Sirk does here.) But though she rejects the country-club existence that childless Sarah has reluctantly adopted, Cary has nothing to take its place and give her life some meaning. And into this void walks Ron Kirby, young, passionate, and – gasp! – flannel-shirted… The relationship at the heart of All That Heaven Allows has its challenges for the viewer, though we’re unlikely today to worry too much about the age gap; while the onlooking characters’ conviction that a woman of Cary’s age should be past wanting a physical relationship will only roll eyes. (The film tells us carefully that Cary married at seventeen, allowing us to assume that she is Jane Wyman’s own age, thirty-eight.) Cary’s attraction to Ron is easy enough to understand; his to her is rather more mysterious; and in fact, he comes across less like a real-life lover and more like a cosmic force sent to rescue her—though that rescue comes at the price of Cary stepping away from the only life she has ever known, and defying the class-snobbery-fueled condemnation of everyone concerned (and not concerned), particularly her children. It is a price she finds herself unwilling to pay… Though mocked or dismissed at the time as – quelle horreur! – “a women’s picture”, history has given All That Heaven Allows the last laugh: now considered one of Douglas Sirk’s best films, it is also his most influential, with a number of directors showing their admiration for it by riffing it in their own productions. (Ahem. As we shall see.) It certainly has all of Sirk’s virtues, including stunning cinematography and careful production design that reflects the film’s major themes (literally so: as usual, mirrors and other reflective surfaces tell their own story here). It is also completely straightfaced in its melodrama, and in its positioning of Ron as a kind of natural-born guru, drawing disciples simply by his example: he has never read Walden, we are told solemnly, “He just lives it.” And even if you can deal with all this, watching All That Heaven Allows is still an amusingly right brain / left brain experience: Ron’s friends are all so gosh-darn-nice and so gosh-darn-interesting, it’s impossible to believe in them (they even – gasp! – break the racial barrier, if only mildly); nevertheless, this little slice of idealised life is intensely appealing. And then there’s the matter of the old mill. Sirk always makes his characters’ homes an expression of their lives, and here he juxtaposes the chilly formality of the Scott house with Ron’s conversion of the abandoned mill near his nursery from a state of dereliction into a rustic palace for his intended bride. The results, courtesy of Alexander Golitzen, are simultaneously absurd and dazzling—-one of the masterworks of Hollywood set-design…and, oh my goodness, that final shot!

(Speaking of set design, some viewers may get a kick out of Cary’s street, which was a Universal standing-set used repeatedly over the years and is immediately recognisable…and which boasts the façade of what would later become the Bates house a few doors down!)

Hot Summer Night (1957)

The criminal gang led by Tom Ellis (Robert J. Wilke) robs a bank and kills a man before fleeing to their hideout near the small Ozarks town of Chatsburgh. Meanwhile, despite unexpectedly losing his job on a Kansas City newspaper, Bill Partain (Leslie Nielsen) goes ahead with his marriage to Irene (Colleen Miller); though the two agree to save expenses via a quiet honeymoon in a secluded cabin. Having gone to a gas station to pick up supplies, Bill reads about the robbery—and gets an idea about how to get his job back. He does not share it with Irene, instead pretending that he has had enough of the isolated cabin: she is hurt, but goes along with his stated desire to return to town. However, out on the road, Bill turns towards Chatsburgh… Despite Irene’s growing distress, Bill doggedly tracks a woman called Ruth Childers (Marianne Stewart), Tom Ellis’s mistress, who he once interviewed. Through her, he gains blindfolded passage into the gang’s hideout—but once in, it is soon clear he may never leave… Hot Summer Night is an odd sort-of crime drama—the crime takes place mostly out-of-film, with the central plot focused instead upon Bill Partain’s dangerous interaction with the gang, and later upon Irene’s desperate search for her missing husband. Around this, though the film’s setting seems to be contemporary, we have the Depression-era situation of a criminal gang becoming heroes to the disenfranchised: struggling Chatsburgh is devoted to Tom Ellis, and doesn’t take kindly to the thought of anyone threatening him; and when Bill – as far as she knows – simply vanishes, Irene finds herself confronted by a wall of silence… Bill, meanwhile, finds Ellis receptive to an opportunity to tell his story in his own words, but escalating tensions between the gang leader and his trigger-happy underling, Elly Horn (Paul Richards), end in Ellis dead and Bill held for ransom. The question is—having sacked him, will his former paper pay to get him back…? Hot Summer Night is a film replete with unsympathetic characters: Bill Partain is both selfish and reckless, and not even him being played by Leslie Nielsen (though that adds an amusing element) can make the viewer like him; while the very fact that Irene was dumb enough to marry Bill makes it hard to feel for her—though that said, her way of finding out where Bill is being held by the gang is, while dangerous, also extremely clever. Lou Follet (Edward Andrews), the local deputy, is the only other decent individual on display – though we might be inclined to wonder how he manages to hold his footing in Chatsburgh – except for the hotel cleaning lady (Helen Kleeb) who finally takes pity on Irene. The film also features Jay C. Flippen as another gang member, James Best as a gangster wannabe, and Claude Akins as a truck driver.

Dr Zhivago (1965)

Based upon the novel by Boris Pasternak. Raised in Moscow by his parents’ friends, Anna (Siobhán McKenna) and Alexander Gromeko (Ralph Richardson), after being orphaned, Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif) trains as a doctor, though his vocation is poetry. Once qualified, Yuri is involved in the case of a woman (Adrienne Corri) who attempts suicide after discovering that her young daughter, Lara (Julie Christie), has been seduced by her own lover, businessman Victor Komarovsky (Rod Steiger). The matter erupts again when, at a Christmas Eve party at which Mrs Gromeko attempts to announce the engagement of her daughter, Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin), to Yuri, Lara storms the party and shoots Komarovsky, wounding him. As Yuri treats his injury, Komarovsky insists that nothing be done to Lara, and she is taken away from Moscow by Pasha Antipov (Tom Courtney), the passionate young revolutionary who loves her. When war breaks out, Yuri serves as a field doctor on the Ukrainian front. To his astonishment, he encounters Lara, who is serving as a nurse: she tells him that she enlisted in the first place to search for Pasha, who has gone missing. The two are strongly drawn together but resist an affair. When Russia withdraws from the war and revolution erupts, Yuri returns to Moscow, where he rejoins Tonya, their young son, and the widowed Alexander Gromeko; he discovers that their house has been taken over by the local Soviet delegates, and that the life he once knew has gone forever… David Lean’s filming of Boris Paternak’s novel of the Russian Revolution – still banned in its home country when the film was made – is a work of great visual power but lacking in emotional depth—ironically, we might feel, since the whole point of the project was to offer Lean the chance to tell a more intimately-focused story after the sweeping dramatics of Lawrence Of Arabia. In fact Dr Zhivago fails precisely where the earlier film succeeded, in merging the personal with the political; although some of this failure is squarely on Boris Pasternak. I have the same problem with this film that I do with the novel, in that I don’t believe in Lara as a real woman: she strikes me rather as an idealised but confused construct, all things to all men; and in making her the pivot of their respective narratives, Pasternak and Lean are left without a sufficiently sturdy base. Similarly, I struggle to believe that across the length and breadth of Russia, and through the depths of war and revolution, Yuri and Lara just keep bumping into each other. (Oh, yes, yes… “Fate”…) The other issue here is all on Lean and his collaborators: Dr Zhivago clearly does not want to engage with its own story, still less to take any ideological stance about the slice of history it is portraying. Nor does it want to deal with Yuri’s own feelings on the subject: that he is in sympathy with the revolution but unable to reconcile its aims with its means is a major aspect of the novel, and the point from which much of its assessment of these events stems. In avoiding all this, the film basically reduces the Russian Revolution and the subsequent civil war to nothing more than a series of unpleasant obstacles to the romance at its centre…assuming you consider an adulterous affair “romantic”. (I have a long history of siding with who writers and film-makers consider the “wrong” point in a triangle, and here my sympathies are all with Tonya.) Supplementing its studio shooting and the occasional necessary fake-snow scene with location filming in Spain, Portugal, Finland and Canada, Dr Zhivago does offer some astonishing visuals and dramatic set-pieces, but they don’t add up to a satisfactory whole. The cast’s mostly British accents are occasionally jarring, and Maurice Jarre’s famous theme is over-used and over-insistent, even allowing that it is supposed to represent the endurance of “the personal life” in the teeth of cold political dicta. The film also features Klaus Kinski, Gérard Tichy, Jack MacGowran, Noel Willman and Geoffrey Keen in small supporting roles; and it uses as a framing device the attempt by Yuri’s half-brother, Cheka officer Yevgraf Zhivago (Alex Guinness), to discover whether a certain young woman (Rita Tushingham) might be the daughter of Yuri and Lara.

The Hand Of Night (1968)

Also known as: Beast Of Morocco. On a flight between Lisbon and Morocco, Paul Carver (William Sylvester) is shaken awake out of a vivid though fractured nightmare of funerals and weddings, in which he is both bridegroom and mourner. Carver is startled to recognise the man seated next to him as part of his dream. Concerned for him, Otto Gunther (Edward Underdown) presses his card upon Carver and encourages him to drop in at his house. At the airport Carver slips away, travelling by taxi to a certain address—where he learns that the doctor he came to see died unexpectedly the day before… As he gets drunk, Carver contemplates himself as “a harbinger of death”. Deciding to accept Gunther’s invitation, he walks to his destination. On the way he encounters a street beggar called Omar (Terence De Marney), who speaks to him mysteriously of the light and the dark and the need to choose. While he waits for Gunther, Carver sees a beautiful woman in traditional dress cross the vestibule of the house—without being reflected in a mirror. Gunther welcomes Carver and explains that his party is to celebrate the discovery of a new valley of tombs: he introduces his assistant, Chantal (Diane Clare), and his partner, Leclerc (William Dexter), who Carver realises was also in his dream. During the evening, Carver glimpses again the mysterious woman, and impulsively follows her to a luxurious old palace, where she introduces herself as Marisa (Alizia Gur). Strange events follow—and the next day, Gunther and Chantal find Carver unconscious near the excavated tomb… This obscure British horror movie has a few things going for it – its Moroccan setting, its spin on the vampire myth, and its general air of weirdness – but ultimately it just isn’t very good. Despite The Hand Of Night’s serious intentions and the genuine tragedy at its heart – Paul Carver surviving the car crash that killed his wife and children – it founders on the character of Carver, who is so rude, so obnoxious to everyone, that in spite of his situation it is impossible to feel for him. There is little reason why Gunther and Chantal should take an interest in him, and none whatsoever why the latter should fall in love with him: very much on the contrary. But this of course is to set up the battle between light and dark for Carver’s soul, personified by Chantal and the mysterious Marisa. The problem is that Carver hardly seems worth their respective efforts. Strange things happen. People and places come and go. Carver has visions, and insists on the reality of Marisa’s palace – luxurious by night, a ruin in the daytime – and of Marisa herself. Meanwhile, Gunther and Leclerc open the newly discovered tomb, where an inscription on the crypt makes many thing clear… The Hand Of Night is ultimately a film of blown opportunities and poor artistic choices. Diane Clare and Edward Underdown are lumbered with indecipherable French accents, Terence De Marney is conversely suspiciously British as Omar, and though Alizia Gur looks the part as Marisa, she either can’t act or was directed to be as immobile as possible. The most interesting thing here, finally, might be a tiny unexplained detail: the nature of the doctor that Carver apparently travelled all the way to Morocco to consult, who we are left to infer might have dealt in assisted suicide.

The Haunting Passion (1983)

Julie (Jane Seymour) and Dan Evans (Gerald McRaney) move into their dream home on a rugged section of the Californian coast. In spite of this, the two face some challenges: Dan’s career as a professional footballer recently ended when he was unexpectedly cut; and he is uncertain and nervous about his possible new job as a sportscaster, an opportunity arranged by a producer-friend, Steve Roye (Terry David Mulligan). The various stresses have impacted the couple’s sex life, and though Julie is patient and understanding, Dan’s sensitivity creates a barrier between them. A drowsy Julie is later pleased when she feels herself being caressed—only for Dan to insist that she must have been dreaming. Alone the next day, Julie is disturbed by a strange, chilling sensation. It also affects her pet parrot, which in its panic strikes a window and dies. This incident coincides with a visit from the Evanses’ nearest neighbour, Thorne Abbott (Ivar Bonar); though in her distress, Julie pays no attention to his oblique remarks about the property. At a housewarming party, Julie confides some of her problems to her best friend, Lois O’Connor (Millie Perkins); she also arranges to do a portrait of Lois’s young daughter, Tracy (Ocean Hellman). In the middle of the girl’s first sitting, Julie is taken over by a strange force that compels her to sketch the face of a man she doesn’t know… The Haunting Passion is a mild but satisfactory ghost story carried by the competence of its cast and what strikes me as a reasonably daring premise for its time, in being built around the sexual dysfunction of an otherwise happily married couple. The real challenge here is not Julie’s ghostly lover, but Gerald McRaney as a professional footballer, even (yike!) forty years ago; though the screenplay acknowledges this by having his former coach comment on how his sheer determination overcame his lack of size. But with his self-image tied up in his career, Dan’s sudden cutting has left him humiliated, frightened and – as he puts it – “Not feeling very sexy.” His withdrawal from Julie coincides with the visitations of an unseen force more than willing to take his place; and the film walks a delicate line in the matter of Julie’s consent. (The forced sketch lets her off the hook in this respect.) Dan’s work absences create opportunities, leading to the film’s most deliciously daring moment, when he returns home in the middle of the afternoon one day to find Julie still asleep, naked and tangled in their sheets, and looking as guiltily post-coital as she possible could. In defence of herself, Julie goes hunting for the truth about the house’s history, and learns of a tragic love affair that played out on the property many years before… Though not at all scary (its one moment of real horror is the demise of Oliver the parrot, as much for its poor staging as its content), The Haunting Passion is an enjoyable little TV drama. The clarity of the ghostly manifestations at the climax is absurd—but then, I suppose they needed Dan to be left in no doubt about his wife’s involuntary “affair”. Ruth Nelson is effective in her one scene as one half of the doomed couple that set these events in motion; while Paul Rossilli is briefly seen as the other.

(It occurs to me that this film is basically the godawful TNG episode “Sub Rosa” done right.)

Kickboxer (1989)

After Eric Sloane (Dennis Alexio) wins the official heavyweight kickboxing world championship, he boldly declares his intention of taking on Thailand next. He travels to Bangkok with his younger brother, Kurt (Jean-Claude Van Damme), who is also his training partner and cornerman. All goes well until Kurt sees his brother’s opponent, Tong Po (Michel Qissi), training against a concrete pillar: terrified, he tries to dissuade Eric from fighting, but only makes him more determined. The fight goes as Kurt feared, with Eric badly beaten: he throws in the towel but Tong Po ignores it, delivering a final, illegal blow that leaves Eric immobilised. As Tong Po celebrates, the fight’s organisers simply dump Eric in a back alley. Winston Taylor (Haskell Anderson), a former Specials Ops soldier, comes reluctantly to the Sloanes’ rescue, driving Eric to the hospital, where it is confirmed that he will never walk again. Enraged, Kurt goes looking for someone to train him in Muay Thai, so that he can avenge his brother… After the unfortunate experience of Cyborg, Jean-Claude Van Damme returned to the security of mixed martial arts in Kickboxer, which basically takes a number of the allegedly true situations of Bloodsport and reworks them into another story of an American fighter taking on Thailand’s best for glory and revenge…mostly revenge. “American” in this case is a term used loosely: amusingly enough, this film pulls a Parent Trap and has Eric and Kurt Sloane raised apart by their separated parents, in order to explain away JCVD’s accent. However, our point remains valid, as Kurt Sloane transforms himself from his brother’s cornerman and #1 fan into an even better fighter in order to take on the terrifying Tong Po. As always, the highlight of Kickboxer is not its climactic fight, but rather the lengthy training sequence that precedes it, with Winston Taylor connecting Kurt with Muay Thai Kru Xian Chow (Dennis Chan), who puts him through the expected wringer. Other complications pad out the running-time: Kurt gets involved with Xian Chow’s niece, Mylee (Rochelle Ashana), after he beats up the goons sent to collect protection money from her—wrecking her small shop in the process. In one of the film’s best touches, far from being grateful to Kurt, she is furious with him…although she later, ahem, gets over it—leading in turn to the film’s worst touch, when Mylee is abducted and raped by Tong Po in order to raise the stakes even further. (And she doesn’t tell Kurt, so what was the point!?) Meanwhile, Tong Po’s manager, Freddy Li (Ka Ting Lee), borrows big money from a local crime boss to bet on his boy, and tries to force Kurt to throw the fight by kidnapping the now-wheelchair-bound Eric… If you can ignore its occasional nastiness and its bizarre racial (mis)casting, Kickboxer is sufficiently dumb fun, not least Kurt and Tong Po fighting “the ancient way”, with their hands wrapped in hemp covered with glass-studded resin. For me, though, even this pales beside the film’s simply astonishing dancing-cum-fighting sequence—which, to his great credit, JCVD has occasionally been willing since to reprise.

(ETA: including on Conan O’Brien).

The Haunting Of Seacliff Inn (1994)

Putting a rocky past behind them, Susan (Ally Sheedy) and Mark Enright (William R. Moses) go looking for a coastal property to convert into a bed-and-breakfast that they can run together. They have selected one potential purchase, but as soon as she lays eyes on a certain house high over a rocky shore, Susan feels drawn to it—stubbornly insisting upon visiting it, even though it is not for sale. The owner, the elderly Lorraine Adler (Maxine Stuart), is sympathetic to Susan’s sudden passion, but tells the Enrights firmly that she will be staying in her house until she is carried out… Hearing the next day of Lorraine’s fatal accident, Susan at first recoils from the idea of acquiring her house under such circumstances; but two months later, she and Mark are the proud owners of what they re-christen “Seacliff Inn”. They begin the necessary remodelling work with a team of builders. Taking a break, Susan goes for a walk along the rocky shore and is frightened when she finds herself being tracked by a huge black dog, which then mysteriously disappears. That night, although Mark sees and feels nothing, Susan becomes aware of a strange presence in the house… The Haunting Of Seacliff Inn is a very weak made-for-TV ghost story, much more concerned with Can This Marriage Be Saved? than offering up anything scary. Our back-story is that Susan was a career-focused workaholic, while photographer Mark had an affair during one of her many absences: the inn is supposed to be a joint healing project, but Susan’s ongoing trust issues plus her sensitivity to whatever is going on in the house, combined with Mark’s sceptical, you-and-your-imagination attitude, soon drives a wedge between them. A few very mild incidents (with one exception: see below) occur, finally sending Susan on a quest to learn the house’s history. Meanwhile, the mysterious and sexy Sarah Warner (Lucinda Weist) turns up out of nowhere, claiming to be a writer looking for a quiet place to work, and becomes the inn’s first guest—also putting the moves on Mark… Nothing much happens in The Haunting Of Seacliff Inn until its final phase, when the ghostly presence within the house tries to possess Susan, with Mark and helpful neighbour Dorothy O’Hara (Louise Fletcher) undertaking a desperate rescue mission. The film is interesting only in its details—chiefly its gorgeous Mendicino setting—though for some of us, its main highlight is two brief scenes in which Susan scans newspapers on microfiche at the local library (yes!), while Mark in turn sees something unnerving while developing some photos (YES!!). We’re also left to ponder the broader implications of the story’s ending, which—well, lets just say that I doubt Mark and Susan’s insurance company will take things quite as casually as do the local police.

(Note to makers of This Sort Of Film: can you please stop killing an animal in lieu of a human body count?)

Crimson Tide (1995)

As Chechnya struggles for independence, a rebel Russian military faction seizes control of a nuclear missile installation. The US responds by deploying USS Alabama, a ballistic missile submarine under the command of Captain Frank Ramsey (Gene Hackman), with standing orders to launch a pre-emptive strike should the rebels fuel their missiles. Lieutenant Peter Ince (Viggo Mortensen), the Alabama‘s Weapons Officer, and Lieutenant Commander Ronald Hunter (Denzel Washington) are called to duty, with the latter a last-minute replacement for Ramsey’s Executive Officer. Though Ramsey tells Hunter he doesn’t want a “kiss-ass” for his EO, the men’s clashing styles soon create tension. When Ramsey uses the moment of a fire in the galley to run a missile drill, Hunter is critical of what he views as unnecessarily endangering the submarine, particularly when one of the crew suffers a fatal heart attack; Ramsey argues that the men must be able to act efficiently regardless of the prevailing circumstances, and reprimands Hunter for public dissent. The Alabama receives an Emergency Action Message ordering the vessel to fire on the rebel base. However, as the men scramble to prepare, a second message follows—but is cut off, received incomplete, when an attack by a Russian submarine damages communications. Ramsey continues to follow the first orders, and the preparations to launch missiles continue—only for Hunter to deny his concurrence, insisting that they wait for confirmation… Directed by Tony Scott, Crimson Tide is an effective military-hardware suspense thriller wherein escalating international tensions ultimately run second to those escalating within the confines of the Alabama. Though this film is properly in love with its submarine set and all of the boys’ toys inherent to it, its most fundamental pleasure is watching the two heavyweight stars at its centre slug it out—with nothing less than the fate of the world at stake. The screenplay by Michael Schiffer – based upon the mirror-circumstances on the Soviet submarine B-59 during the Cuban Missile Crisis – carefully balances the conflicting personalities, experiences and attitudes of Ramsey and Hunter and allows each of them to state his case for proceeding or not, without pushing a stance upon the viewer. When Hunter takes the drastic step of relieving Ramsey of command when the latter tries to circumvent the two-man launch protocol, a yardstick of sorts is offered in that Walters (George Dzundza), Ramsey’s deeply loyal Chief of the Boat, sides with Hunter—loathing himself, but likewise determined to go by the book. Amusingly, at least at this distance, it feels like the film-makers were somewhat afraid that Hunter’s reluctance to launch nuclear missiles might make him seem weak or cowardly: in addition to the standing crisis, the screenplay proceeds to pile onto the new commander’s shoulders a series of life-or-death emergencies by which he can prove his credentials—first a deadly battle with the attacking submarine, then a desperate struggle to save the Alabama, which comes at the cost of lives. And while these events are playing out, a cadre of crewmen led by Supply Officer Robert Dougherty (James Gandolfini), Communications Officer Roy Zimmer (Matt Craven) and Operations Officer Darik Westergard (Rocky Carroll) plot to break Ramsey out of his cabin confinement and return him to command… The literal battle between the two crew factions and the battle of wills that drives it, all in the shadow of a threatened nuclear holocaust, make Crimson Tide a gripping mix of action and suspense. The film also features Jason Robards as the admiral overseeing the inevitable naval inquiry, and Rick Schroder and Ryan Phillippe may be glimpsed amongst the crew. The screenplay, meanwhile, serves up a raft of pop-culture references courtesy of an uncredited Quentin Tarantino, which frankly I could have done without. (Okay. I’ll allow the Silver Surfer exchange.)

Point Last Seen (1998)

Based upon the book by Hannah Nyala. Although devastated by the abduction of her two children by her violent, controlling ex-husband, Kevin (Kevin Kilner), professional tracker Rachel Harrison (Linda Hamilton) takes on the case of nine-year-old Mandy Ellis (Nicole Barrera), who has wandered away from a campsite into the desert. Though deeply concerned for her, Rachel’s partner, Frank (Sam Hennings), who is also a part of the search-and-rescue team, focuses on his own job of mustering and deploying resources. Rachel talks with Mandy’s frantic mother (Dana Reilly), and comes away with an idea of the shoes Mandy was wearing and the tracks she is likely to leave. Having found the girl’s trail near the campsite restrooms, Rachel strikes out into the desert—trying to put aside her fears for the safety of her own children to focus on the search… Point Last Seen is one of those awkward made-for-TV movies that you know is based on a true story and which you therefore hesitate to criticise as you otherwise might. While the twin stories it tells are both harrowing, as a movie this drama is strangely lacking in effect, in addition to suffering from certain of its artistic choices. Half of the film’s narrative deals with Rachel’s search for Mandy, her high-focus, painstaking methods frustrating some of her fellow-trackers and leaving her as the sole agent on the ground—with Rachel refusing to come in for the night despite Frank’s concerns, and then soldiering on to the point where she is endangering herself. Periodically the film flashes back to Rachel’s abusive, terror-filled marriage and her subsequent battle for custody of her children, which is where its issues start in earnest. “Young Rachel” is played by Kieren van den Blink, who looks nothing like Linda Hamilton, emphasising that the film’s timeline seems off. Meanwhile, the dramatic transition in Rachel’s life is conveyed by lengthy internal monologues presumably taken from Hannah Nyala’s non-fiction account of her own real dramatic transition from victim to rescuer. (The outrageous latitude granted by the legal system to Nyala’s ex both prior to and after the events depicted feels like TV-movie invention, but sadly seems to be true.) All of this is serious and well-intentioned, but it just doesn’t work. In particular, Rachel / Hannah’s verbal account of training herself as a tracker is unsatisfactory, and might have made for better flashback material than what we are given. These parallel narratives are themselves punctuated by Rachel’s telephone interaction with Coreen Davis (Mary Kay Place), the agent in charge of tracking down Kevin and the children. Rachel is still tracking Mandy, painfully aware that time is running out for the little girl, when she learns that Kevin has been found and arrested—but that there is no sign of the children…

Far From Heaven (2002)

In 1950s Hartford, Cathy (Julianne Moore) and Frank Whitaker (Dennis Quaid) lead a seemingly perfect suburban life: Frank is a sales executive with the Magnatech corporation, while Cathy works at building a showpiece home for him and their children, David (Ryan Ward) and Janice (Lindsay Andretta). Cathy is shocked and confused when Frank phones one evening to say he needs her to collect him at the police station, but accepts his assertion that his arrest was merely a misunderstanding. The Whitakers become the subject of a society article proclaiming them “Mr and Mrs Magnatech”, as best representing the ideals of the company. While being interviewed, Cathy is unnerved to see a strange black man in her yard: she rushes out to confront him, and learns that he is Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert), the son of her previous gardener. Hearing that Mr Deagan has died, Cathy impulsively puts a consoling hand on Raymond’s shoulder: observed, it leads to a remark in the published article about her “kindness to Negroes”. Cathy is concerned but sympathetic when Frank’s work keeps him longer and longer from home; she has no idea that he is actually slipping away to a certain hidden bar in a dark corner of Hartford. Then, one night, Cathy takes Frank’s missed dinner to his office where, she supposes, he is working late—and finds him kissing another man…Self-evidently drawing upon Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven is both a tribute to its forerunner and an exposure of its age- and class-based angst as almost embarrassingly trivial. Managing the not inconsiderable task of being even more stylised than its model, the film portrays life in 50s suburbia as a form of performance art played out for the benefit of friends and neighbours, a wholly artificial world of mindlessly repeated social ceremonies where any straying beyond the most rigidly imposed boundaries is met with utter condemnation. Yet the horror at the heart of Far From Heaven is less this than the obliviousness of its protagonist to the narrowness of the rails on which her life runs: Cathy is not frustrated, not unfulfilled; it has never occurred to her that there might be another way of living—and it doesn’t, until the walls of her hermetically-sealed existence suddenly crumble in the face of the revelation about Frank. Recoiling from a transgression of the rules that, if revealed, will mean the destruction of everything she holds dear, Cathy stumbles into a transgression of another kind—and unlike Frank, does so publicly… While I appreciate Far From Heaven as a work of visual art, which it certainly is – the production design and cinematography are stunning – and even more for its uncompromising deconstruction of the myth of the 1950s, I do have some problems with it. Haynes’ depiction of “The 50s” is so exactly what pop cultural history has taught us to expect, it is hard not to read a note of burlesque in the film’s mise-en-scène, which feels at odds with its harsher elements. Likewise, Julianne Moore’s performance as Cathy occasionally suggests there’s no there there: her Stepford Wives-ish perfections are hard to reconcile with her later behaviour; though I suppose the inference is that the seismic shock she experiences shakes loose all sorts of previously unrecognised needs and desires. Raymond Deagan’s motivations are also hard to pin down. He is certainly too forgiving of what Cathy does not mean to be, but is, her patronising attitude; and while we might understand his impulse, in the face of Cathy’s tactless inquiry as to what it feels like to be, “The only one in the room”, to show her—he must understand what the consequences of his actions are likely to be, not just for himself, but for his young daughter, Sarah (Jordan Puryear); and it is she who ultimately pays the price of what we can hardly even call a dalliance. The underlying irony here is that Frank’s secret is so very secret – so literally unimaginable – that he is able to disguise it as something else; but for a would-be interracial couple, there is nowhere to hide. In this context, the ending of Far From Heaven involves what strikes me as improbably decisive action Frank’s part: a future in which he and Cathy, though utterly alienated from one another, continue to perform for the gallery seems much more likely.

Centipede! (2004)

In India, a student persuades her boyfriend to enter a deep cavern with her, where she wants to collect samples—and neither of them make it out again… Before the wedding of David Stone (Larry Casey), his best friend, Jake (Trevor Murphy), persuades him into an unusual “bachelor party”: reuniting with his old group of adventuring friends to go caving in India. Arriving, the two meet up with Sara (Margaret Cross), David’s ex who is now in a relationship with Dirk (George Foster), the latter’s brother Owen (Matthew Pohlson), Zoe (Danielle Kirlin) and Matt (Steve Herd). Along with their guide, Kafi (Satish Sharma), the group travels to the Shankali Caverns beyond Hyderabad. Camping above ground for the night, the friends listen to Kafi’s spiel about the dangers of the caverns and the legends associated with them, and prank the bug-phobic Owen; while Jake hints to Sara that the expedition might be a chance for her to get back with David, though she rejects the idea. The following day, the adventurers repel into the depths of the caverns and begin to explore, before settling down for the night—and a little partying. Shy Matt wanders away, exploring a nearby cave where he finds a discarded backpack, flares and various electronic devices, but no sign of their owner. Hearing a noise, he begins to look around with his night-vision goggles—and screams in terror as something attacks him… Unfortunately, Centipede! seems to have expended all its original thought in coming up with its monster (though not strictly the first such movie, it seems to be the first western one) and then adding an exclamation point to its title. Otherwise it’s a rather dreary little production that suffers from all the usual faults associated with this sort of film-making. The chief one is that it is annoyingly overpopulated while giving the viewer no reason whatsoever to care whether any of these people live or die; still less who they might hook up with. (David spares not a single thought for his fiancée once he lays eyes on Sara again; but then she has a snooty English butler so the hell with her I guess.) As the crisis mounts, the screenplay devolves into a lot of screaming and swearing and being awful to one another, as the characters are picked off in a reasonably predictable fashion. Centipede! was actually filmed in India but makes very little use of its settings, plus its few Indian characters speak English even amongst themselves. Caving is hardly my area of expertise, but there are several reviews out there decrying every aspect of the characters’ procedure as both reckless and wrong; while even I can tell that the underground scenes have both far too much and too little light—that is, much more than there should be under the circumstances, but not enough that we can actually see what’s going on. That just leaves the monsters; and like Mega-Scorpions, Centipede! blames its giant critters on illegal dumping. It is an interesting choice, I guess, that the giant centipedes were mostly rendered through models and puppeteering, with only some supporting CGI; but it doesn’t make them particularly convincing. They just don’t move the way they need to, and there is not nearly enough leg-action. Anyone who is a bit centipede-phobic – and I know you’re out there – might get more out of this than the average viewer, but otherwise there’s not much here to recommend.

(PSA: It doesn’t matter how many specific signifiers you use, a search for this will keep bringing up The Human Centipede…)

Parasite (2004)

Activists break into a secure facility owned by Carmine Oil and escape with files proving the company’s environmental violations. Executive Richard Reiser (Nicholas Rawlinson) contacts Dr Christine Hansen (Saskia Gould) in South America, pulling her off her current project and advancing the testing of her experimental oil-dissolving enzyme some four months ahead of schedule. Despite her protest that the enzyme is nowhere near ready for field testing, Christine is dispatched to an abandoned oil rig in the North Sea. Preceding her is a demolition / deconstruction crew led by Jacob Rasmussen (G. W. Stevens) and including a replacement engineer, Gary Decker (Luke Spencer), who becomes unnerved by the horror stories of previous jobs told by mechanic Kim Delaney (Margaret Thompson). Rasmussen becomes enraged when he discovers that Decker is secretly drinking; however, his own state of secret guilt and stress over fatal incidents, coupled with Christine’s delayed arrival, leads him to ignore the safety instructions for the experimental cleaner and mix it at full strength: assuming that this will simply get the job done faster. Donning their protective gear, the team begins spraying the rig with the solution—exposing a tiny, worm-like creature living in the vents to the substance in the process… Parasite is a film with a few good bits, but which is ultimately scuppered by its unnecessary length (it’s not long, just too long) coupled with its overly familiar scenario of people running around in the dark, wriggling through vents, and dying horribly at the teeth of an unconvincing monster. The film’s set-up is one of its issues: it isn’t clear how testing the enzyme, even if it’s successful, is going to offset the damage done to Carmine Oil by the exposure of the company’s darker secrets; but of course this scenario is simply intended to strand and isolate the characters where a storm can finish the job by cutting off communications. Before that happens, the activists arrive and take Christine and the clean-up crew hostage—leading to the unsurprising revelation that Christine used to be one of them, and that their leader, Mickey (Conrad Whitaker), is her ex. (Because I haven’t seen a film about an estranged couple reunited by fighting a monster in, ooh, days.) Meanwhile, the small toothy thing in the vents – which is, note bene, present before the experimental enzyme starts messing with its “genetic infrastructure”, as the ignored safety instructions phrase it – is becoming a lot less small and a lot more toothy… It probably goes without saying that Parasite‘s “science” is completely absurd. There’s some muttering about bacteriophages that is best not examined too closely, while the entire point of parasites is that they don’t kill their hosts…at least not directly; not until they’ve reproduced. But why sweat details like that when the alternative is eviscerations and decapitations? Still, there are a few touches here that suggest a bit more thought than usual (though any real ambition seems to have gotten lost amongst the film’s five [!] writers): the green activists are explicitly not eco-terrorists, and the script sympathises with their motives without approving their methods; while Christine’s argument for changing things from the inside is also allowed to stand. (Mind you, both stances literally go up in flames when push comes to shove.) Mechanic Kim and her opposite number, the exceedingly muscly but unexpectedly sensitive Gio (Oliver Price), get some good character moments; though the former pays for hers by flashing her boobs and running around in the traditional action-girl white tank-top. The rest is predictable and rather tedious, with the monster picking off the supporting cast while Christine and Mickey hunt for a way off the rig.

Red Riding: In The Year Of Our Lord 1974 (2009)

Based upon the novels by David Peace. After a failed sojourn in London, Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield) returns home to Yorkshire—partly for his father’s funeral, mostly in pursuit of a job as crime reporter for the Yorkshire Post. His arrival coincides with the disappearance of a nine-year-old girl, a story which becomes his first assignment. Conversation amongst his family and friends alerts Eddie to the fact that two other young girls have disappeared over the previous few years, all in the same vicinity. He pitches the story to his editor, Bill Hadley (John Henshaw), who arranges for Eddie to meet with senior police officer Bill Molloy (Warren Clarke): warning him, however, to do nothing to antagonise Molloy or jeopardise the paper’s relationship with the police. That night Eddie goes out for drinks with his colleague, Barry Gannon (Anthony Flanagan), whose own obsession is the network of corruption he believes exists not just in Yorkshire but across England; though Eddie dismisses most of what he says as paranoia. Eddie is sent to cover the overnight torching of a travellers’ camp: Barry later tells him that the land in question is earmarked for the new development of local magnate John Dawson (Sean Bean), and suggests that the police may have been complicit in the arson. Eddie meets with Molloy but finds him aggressive and unhelpful, though this only fuels his decision to look deeper into the missing girls. He is pursuing interviews with the parents when the latest victim is found: she has been raped and murdered, and left with swans’ wings stitched to her back… David Peace’s Red Riding quartet has been condensed into a trilogy of TV movies of which this – 1974 for short – is the first. This is an unrelentingly grim portrait of the north of England in the mid-70s, so much so that the temptation is to reject it as just too much, to conclude that things couldn’t possibly have been this bad…while fearing that this is exactly how bad they were. The trilogy’s eventual use of the Yorkshire Ripper case is its most publicised aspect, but this gives a misleading sense of it overall: its reach is much broader, depicting the society that could spawn such a killer and the circumstances that let him flourish. 1974’s keynote moment is a speech by John Dawson, in which he decries all the elements he believes are ruining England for “us lot”—a scree encompassing Paddys, wogs, niggers, gyppos, poofs, perverts and women; that the person making this speech may himself be a serial killer is almost a minor detail in this, the north of England, where – as a corrupt copper later tells Eddie – us lot “do what we want”. But even its pugnaciously ugly mise-en-scène is not the greatest challenge to the viewer in 1974, which is rather the lack of anything or anyone at all to cling to. The only tiny ray of light here is Barry Gannon, an outsider both in that he is a journalist with ethics and a member of the small, justifiably frightened local gay community; but even Barry himself knows he is on borrowed time. Eddie Dunford is an unsatisfactory substitute: arrogant, self-satisfied without cause and weirdly oblivious to the realities of life in his hometown (how long was he away?), even his investigation of, first, the child murders, and later John Dawson’s doings generally, a campaign punctuated by a series of escalatingly savage beatings from the police, has less a sense of fighting for justice than of, “You can’t tell me what to do”; though as it turns out, they can… Viewed in isolation, 1974 is off-puttingly bleak and depressing; which is not to say that the trilogy in toto is any less so, rather that it offers a more satisfying and organic whole, which makes its challenges easier to accept…at least a bit.

The Limehouse Golem (2016)

Based upon the novel Dan Leno And The Limehouse Golem by Peter Ackroyd. London, 1880. A series of grotesque murders is committed by an unknown perpetrator dubbed “the Limehouse Golem” by the press, after a book describing the legend of the golem is found by the body of a Jewish victim. The case is assigned by Scotland Yard to Detective-Inspector John Kildare (Bill Nighy), whose career has stalled due to rumours about his personal life: Kildare understands that he is being set up to fail, with no-one expecting the killer to be caught. Meanwhile, actress Elizabeth Cree (Olivia Cooke) is arrested for the murder of her husband, playwright John Cree (Sam Reid), chiefly on the spiteful testimony of the housemaid, Aveline (María Valverde). Her trial becomes a public scandal, with the prosecution dragging out the story of her abused childhood and sordid upbringing. Working with Constable George Flood (Daniel Mays), Kildare discovers that the copy of Thomas De Quincey’s Murder Considered As A Fine Art held by the Reading Room of the British Museum has been used as a diary by the Golem, with dated entries describing the murders inscribed over the printed text. Seeing that the last entry was written on the day of the Golem’s most recent murder, Kildare concludes that one of that date’s visitors to the Reading Room must be the Golem—and the list includes John Cree… Sometimes incorrectly categorised as a horror movie, Juan Carlos Medina’s The Limehouse Golem is rather a bloody slice of faux-history that exposes the underbelly of Victorian England as a place of endemic sexual deviance and violence. The film captures the essence of its source, a typical Ackroyd work that blends real historical figures and true crimes into a narrative that is simultaneously grimly accurate yet infused throughout with a sense of heightened reality, and just a hint of tongue-in-cheek—seen predominantly in a scenario that makes murder suspects out of both George Gissing (Morgan Watkins) and Karl Marx (Henry Goodman). The greatest liberty, however, is taken with the life and career of musical-hall artist Dan Leno (Douglas Booth), who here is depicted as performing predominantly cross-dressing acts that serve as a commentary upon the film’s central scenario of violence, gender roles and the relations of the sexes. Trading upon the audience’s knowledge of Jack the Ripper (still eight years in London’s future in this version of events), The Limehouse Golem follows Kildare and the dogged though slightly wary Constable Flood – who has been warned that his superior “isn’t the marrying kind” – through the scenes of the Golem’s bloody and seemingly senseless crimes, which encompass men and women, adults and children, Christian and Jew. The murder spree’s only coherent note its reproduction of the notorious Ratcliff Highway murders of 1811, a clue that sends Kildare to the British Museum, and from there to the prison cell in which Elizabeth Cree is held while her trial moves inexorably towards her conviction and execution… As with so many British productions, The Limehouse Golem offers a meticulous reproduction of its setting and finely detailed sets and costumes. The cast is also uniformly fine, though as the film progresses it becomes increasingly a double-act—with Bill Nighy and Olivia Cooke both excelling as Kildare and Lizzie. The latter’s personal history, her rise from poverty and degradation to the safety of the music-hall backstage and then to the stage itself, before the fatal misstep of her marriage, is intercut with Kildare’s investigation: the two plot-threads becoming increasingly intertwined as Kildare’s suspicions of John Cree grow. Coming to believe that Lizzie did indeed murder her husband upon discovering that he was the Golem, Kildare devotes more and more time to her—growing obsessed not just with solving his case, but with saving her life… My major criticism of The Limehouse Golem is that it is one of those narratives that really piles too many twists into its climax, though this is not exactly an uncommon fault. It may also rely a bit too much on assumed knowledge, with the very accuracy of its detail making serious demands upon the viewer. However, the film offers numerous memorable touches—and despite all its grotesqueries, the most memorable of all might be Olivia Cooke’s radiant face, when the young Lizzie is first exposed to the wonders of the music hall.

(The Limehouse Golem is dedicated to Alan Rickman, who was originally cast as Kildare but had to pull out when his health failed. Bill Nighy is splendid in the role, but still…)

Ghost Killers Vs. Bloody Mary (2018)

Original title: Exterminadores do Além Contra a Loira do Banheiro (Terminators From Beyond Vs. The Blonde In The Bathroom). With their attempts at monetising their online videos failing and the rejection of their TV pilot, would-be ghost hunters Fred (Léo Lins), Jack (Danilo Gentili), Caroline (Dani Calabresa) and Túlio (Murilo Couto) face the awful possibility of having to get real jobs. At the last moment they are called to a local high school, where rumours of a haunted bathroom have the students terrified. The principal (Sikêra Junior) explains to the four that while of course the stories are nonsense, to quell the panic he wants them to spend the night at the school and then announce to the kids that they have banished the spectre. A deal is negotiated, and the four set about their task as they always do: by forcing the protesting Tulio to dress up as the alleged blonde ghost for their cameras. While Fred shoots establishing footage in company with volunteer teacher Mrs Helena (Bárbara Bruno), Jack sets up his equipment in the supposedly haunted bathroom—where blood from a mirror and a flash of a spectral figure panic him into smashing the glass. Immediately, all over the school the lights flicker wildly—and then go out… This Brazilian horror-comedy has its moments, but ultimately Ghost Killers Vs. Bloody Mary is both too much and too little. While at times it successfully pokes fun at online influencer culture and those ubiquitous TV ghost-hunting shows, and while some of its horror movie meta-humour works, its everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach eventually becomes tiresome and ugly. The gross and the gross-out prevail here: with its buckets of blood and its literal toilet humour – and worse – the film seems to be striving for early Peter Jackson but lacks any such coherency; furthermore, with respect to both its individual jokes and its overall narrative, it just doesn’t know when to quit. There’s also a misogynistic streak here, with the tone set early by the shockingly casual killing-off of the team’s only female member. This scene is, however, in keeping with the film’s opening sequence, in which a young boy successfully invokes the ghost allegedly lurking in the school’s bathroom and is bloodily attacked by it: a sequence played straight, and one that sets up expectations that are not met. Instead, Ghost Killers Vs. Bloody Mary serves up far too much “comical” running around and screaming, and conversely too much sheer nastiness for its own sake—though that said, I am definitely not the film’s target audience and YMMV. The name “Bloody Mary” is used here as a convenient translation of the actual spectre, “Cotton Girl”, real name: Caterina, who is supposedly the spirit of a thirteen-year-old girl bullied into suicide many years before. The ghost having been, as we know, called up by a version of the familiar ritual, Jack and Fred ignore Tulio’s Occam’s-razor suggestion that they banish her by performing the ritual in reverse, and instead set about doing everything wrong in their escalatingly bloody battle against the ever-more powerful and vengeful entity…

Secrets In The Water (2021)

The apparently charmed life of teenager Mia (Lexi Jayde) receives another boost when she wins a scholarship for a month-long sojourn in Paris, studying art. Mia’s mother, Laura (Cerina Vincent), plans a celebratory dinner with her daughter’s best friend, Bailey (Emily Skinner), and her own close friend, Alani (Keikilani Grune). However, Mia does not show up… When Laura calls the police, the measured response of Sheriff Evans (Brian Krause) infuriates her. She and Bailey go hunting for Mia, contacting all her other friends and searching the places she is likely to go, but finding nothing. They are still searching two days later when a body is found on the beach… Devastated, but unable to plan a funeral until Mia’s body is released, Laura arranges a memorial. Having learned already that Mia was being harassed by the attentions of Kia (Mark Medeiros), when she sees another boy lurking nearby Laura overreacts, chasing after him as he flees the ceremony. It is left to Bailey to reveal that, over her mother’s interdiction, Mia had been involved with Kaleo (Chad Mann) for some time—and that that was not her only secret… Secrets In The Water is an absurdly bad made-for-TV movie, with a plot that requires everyone to behave as stupidly and as rashly – or in the case of the police, as incompetently – as possible, in order for its storyline to play out. The plot turns on Sheriff Evans simply handing back to Laura a backpack of Mia’s possessions found near where her body was discovered—including her phone, which the police do not bother to access, and which is of course stuffed full of evidence: prompting Laura and Bailey – not unreasonably from one perspective – to start their own investigation. Though their relationship was depicted at the outset as close and loving, it turns out that Laura knew absolutely nothing of what was going on in Mia’s life: not that she had a boyfriend; not that naked pictures of her had somehow found their way to the entire student body of her school; not that she was conducting a dangerously volatile feud with fellow art-student Gretchen (Taylor McCumber), who was also up for the scholarship. When Kaleo is found dead leaving a confession / suicide note, the police close the case; but there are more twists to come… Only the spiraling ridiculousness of Secrets In The Water is a reason to keep watching it; that and, perhaps, its setting. Though not identified in-story, this was largely filmed around Lanikai Beach on Oahu, with sweeping sands and dazzling blue waters in the background of most scenes; though the high winds caused some issues for the female cast members: it’s hard to emote properly when you keep having to stop and push your hair out of your face. This is also one of those films where everyone seems to live in an immaculate mansion, from the genuinely well-off Laura and Mia, to bowling-alley attendant and would-be pro-surfer Kaleo, to “trailer trash” Bailey and her mother and step-father. (Her words, not mine.) Meanwhile, the plot’s dependence on the ubiquity of the cellphone is a negative highlight: I know that some people do seem to film everything, but still—I’m not sure that filming yourself committing murder is really a good idea…

(Amusing to note that the few reviews of this out there seem less interested in Mia’s murder than in debating the real nature of the relationship between Laura and her BFF, Alani…)

R.I.P.D. 2: Rise Of The Damned (2022)

Red Creek UT, 1876. As an eclipse darkens the skies, goldminer Otis Clairborne (Richard Brake) uncovers a fiery pit beneath the ground, from which a strange force emerges—and engulfs him… A month later in Wyoming, Sheriff Roycephus Pulsipher (Jeffrey Donovan) is at the train station to meet his returning daughter, Charlotte (Tilly Keeper), and her fiancé, Angus (Richard Fleeshman), when the Samuels gang attacks. After securing Charlotte’s safety, Roy shoots it out with the gang, but his bullets have little effect. Then a hidden assassin shoots Roy in the back… Disoriented and sick, Roy finds himself facing Hano (Kerry Knuppe), who convinces him that he is in fact dead, and explains to him that he has been recruited as an agent of the Rest In Peace Department, charged with eliminating “Deados”: souls of the dead that have possessed human beings. Grasping only that he will have the chance to see Charlotte again and avenge his own murder, Roy signs up without reading the terms of his contract. Back on Earth, he finds himself partnered with the sword-slinging Jeanne (Penelope Mitchell), who must divert him from his personal concerns and into a battle to close the gates of Hell… They really will make a sequel to anything, won’t they? – or in this case a prequel to the long-forgotten and little lamented R.I.P.D. Even granting that Jeff Bridges’ performance as undead gunslinger Roy Pulsipher was the best thing about that, we hardly needed an origin story—still less one that doesn’t even bother to accord with what we were told in the earlier film. The relationship between R.I.P.D. 2 and its predecessor is rather an uneasy one, with the Deados being recast as damned souls that have escaped from Hell, good people rather than sinners seeking redemption being pressed into serving the R.I.P.D., and the conceit of the agents being given new visual “identities” so that they cannot be recognised by the living, excusable in the first film only because of its amusing deployment of James Hong, here made the basis of some smug and rather cringey social commentary—with Roy and Jeanne both having women of colour (Rachel Adedeji and Evlyne Oyedokun, respectively) as their avatars. (We might be inclined to wonder why Jeanne, who has been doing this for over four hundred years, needs an avatar.) Jake Choi as Slim Samuels, the “good” member of the outlaw gang, operates in the same area. Though its western setting means that it is necessarily less of a Men In Black rip-off than was R.I.P.D. (though the scene in which Roy is armed for his new duties is wilful in its copying), the film struggles to find much of substance to do with it—settling for that timeless choice of unimaginative screenwriters, the threatened end of the world. Possessed by no-one less than Astaroth himself, who plans to create and rule a Tenth Circle of Hell on Earth, Otis Claireborne has his underlings rounding up a work-squad of humans, whose job is to open up a portal to Hell, something possible every quarter-century under the correct astronomical conditions. Roy and Jeanne’s quest to prevent this crosses paths with the former’s personal mission when they discover that the Samuels gang are Deados in Claireborne’s service, and that Angus is one of the kidnapped human workers… In setting the bar so much lower than the earlier film despite its apparently higher stakes, R.I.P.D. 2 is perhaps less annoying; though it’s mostly just forgettable, with nothing new or memorable about its special-effects sequences. Otherwise, a few mild chuckles are offset by too many winceworthy moments.