Moby Dick (1930)

After a three-year voyage, the whaling ship Mary Anne sails into New Bedford. While friends and family look anxiously for loved ones, some of those gathered, particularly the women, gaze upwards into the rigging, at the reckless acrobatics of harpoonist Ahab Ceely (John Barrymore). One of those enthralled is Faith Mapple (Joan Bennett), who has come to the docks with Ahab’s brother, Derek (Loyd Hughes). Once on land, Ahab is deeply smitten by Faith and, while usually a womaniser and a rowdy drinker, he begins to temper his behaviour. However, circumstances convince him that Faith is really in love with Derek; and it is only on the verge of his departure on another voyage that she is able to convince him otherwise: the two exchange promises. Out at sea, Ahab harpoons the notorious “white whale” known as Moby Dick, but he and his crewman have their boat wrecked by the animal. As they swim desperately for safety, Ahab is pursued and attacked by the whale, losing his left leg. Though he survives, the injury leaves Ahab ashamed and embittered—and increasingly certain that Faith cannot now love him… While John Barrymore’s desire to star in a version of Herman Melville’s seminal novel persisted into the sound era, he got no further than participating in a remake of The Sea Beast—or in other words, in another version of Moby Dick in which fully two-thirds of the running-time are given over to a tedious love-triangle. (I seem fated – or condemned – to watch that sort of thing at the moment.) Moby Dick is much shorter than its predecessor but its land scenes feel interminable. Barrymore gives us a rougher, less romantic Ahab than did the earlier film, and while that’s probably more appropriate, you can’t for a moment imagine what a proper Bostonian miss like Faith Mapple could see in him…even aside from the one-night-on-land, three-years-away nature of their “relationship”. Ahab’s loss of his leg does him even more psychological damage than physical: he convinces himself that Faith must be repulsed by him and translates her involuntary recoil into a self-fulfilling prophecy—albeit one helped along by the jealous Derek, who takes the opportunity to make Ahab go on believing the worst of Faith after she foolishly asks him to act as go-between. Convinced that he has lost his love, Ahab’s thoughts turn to revenge upon the whale—and he will let nothing stand in the way of his quest… In the end, there are really only two reasons to watch Moby Dick. One is that it offers a rather splendid Queequeg, played by Noble Johnson, with “the heathen” becoming the closest thing Ahab has to a friend. The other is the contradictory nature of the whale footage. Moby Dick is realised here through some truly goofy model work, so that it is impossible not to giggle delightedly through the film’s two big dramatic on-water scenes—at first. The rug is pulled from under us via a couple of instances of genuinely shocking bloodshed, one human, one cetacean. The scene in which Ahab loses his leg features an explosion of blood in the water, and the subsequent cauterisation of his wound is jolting. Conversely, when Ahab catches up with Moby Dick, both his plunged harpoon and the whale’s blowhole give rise to literal geysers of blood. Whether these moments are worth watching the rest for is debatable, but you certainly won’t forget them.

Menace (1934)

Based upon the novel R. I. P. (aka Menace) by Philip MacDonald. In British East Africa, Freddie Bastion (Ray Milland) accepts an invitation to dinner and bridge from Helen Chalmers (Gertrude Michael), with whom he is infatuated, though this means leaving his duties supervising at a dam and requires a short flight in his small plane. He stops briefly at the house he shares with his two sisters, where he hears about their concerns for their other brother back in England. During the card game, in which Bastion and Helen play against Colonel Leonard Crecy (Paul Cavanagh) and businessman Norman Bellamy (Berton Churchill), the threatened storm breaks even more violently than anticipated. Bastion insists upon trying to fly back, but while he is in the air he sees the dam collapse—the waters sweeping away everything in their path including his own house. His response is to sabotage his plane… The local police inspector (Montagu Love) sends an account of the tragedy to Tony Bastion in England. Already unstable, the loss of his family drives Bastion into an asylum—from which he escapes two years later with revenge on his mind… Menace is a brisk little thriller – running under an hour – that gets its effect from concealing the identity of Tony Bastion—leaving the viewer to try and spot the killer from amongst the group of people gathering at Helen Chalmers’ new house. (British accents abound here, but we’re supposed to be in Santa Barbara.) Having each received letters informing them of their impending deaths and in which order they will happen, Helen, Crecy and Bellamy reunite—soon to be joined by agency butler, Skinner (Halliwell Hobbes); Helen’s sister, Gloria (Arletta Duncan), and her boyfriend, Andrew Forsythe (Robert Allen); elderly neighbour, Sybil Thornton (Henrietta Crosman), and her visitor, Ronald Cavendish (John Lodge); and Crecy’s chauffeur / manservant, Wilcox (Forrester Harvey). Soon a threatening letter is found pinned with a knife, under circumstances that make it clear that the killer is inside the house… This is, I gather, a very much altered and simplified version of its supposed source novel—and in fact feels much more like something emanating from Mary Roberts Rinehart, particularly when the elderly but energetic Sybil Thornton shows up, very much enjoying the situation (and why not? – she’s neither killer nor killee). Menace is interesting chiefly for its dearth of sympathy characters, making it something of a forerunner to the much-later slasher movie: we don’t care who lives or dies so we can concentrate on trying to identify the murderer. There are some improbable moments along the way, including Leonard Crecy just shrugging off a knife in the back, and Forrester Harvey’s Wilcox goes perilously close to Odious Comic Relief-dom; but on the other hand we have Ray – billed as Raymond – Milland in a brief but important early role, and there’s a cute dog.

The Devil’s Playground (1937)

While navy diver Jack Dorgan (Richard Dix) is placing an explosive charge on a wreck, debris shifts and severs his airline. Immediately, Dorgan’s best friend, Bob Mason (Chester Morris), goes to his rescue: the impulsive act requires Mason to recover in a hyperbaric chamber. After the friends enjoy shore leave in Manila, they are separated when Mason is ordered to undergo submarine training in Honolulu. Dorgan, based in San Diego, follows through on a long-held ambition and buys himself a house, much to the amusement and mockery of his more footloose naval colleagues. Eventually, Dorgan’s loneliness drives him to the unfamiliar environs of a local dance hall, where he falls prey to one of the professional dancers, Carmen (Dolores Del Rio): he believes her invented history of poverty and struggle, and begins taking her out—finally proposing marriage. The ceremony is barely over before Dorgan is ordered back on duty, to help salvage a ship that has run aground. Carmen takes advantage of his absence to return to the dance hall—where she meets Bob Mason, home on leave… The Devil’s Playground is a fairly close remake of Frank Capra’s 1928 silent production, Submarine—meaning that it suffers from all the same flaws and exasperations; though it has a few extra points of interest, too, in addition to being shorter. The love-triangle business still takes up far too much of this alleged sea drama; and its equally alleged hero still distinguishes himself with his incredible dickishness towards the end, when he initially refuses to use his diving skills to rescue the men trapped in a stricken submarine. However, it is where the two films diverge that The Devil’s Playground gets interesting. A decade on, the film does offer a bit more, and more convincing, submarine footage; and the disaster itself is more convincingly handled. After colliding with a drifting derelict, the vessel initially settles on a shelf, and most of the crewmen are able to escape through the hatch using “artificial lungs”; leaving about a dozen men trapped below when the ship slips again and drifts to the bottom, settling in some 300 feet of water. One of them is Bob Mason… Surprisingly for a post-Code film, albeit only a B-movie which presumably slipped through a crack, the Mrs Jack Dorgan of this production is more morally dubious than her pre-Code sister: her dance-hall behaviour is more calculatedly deceitful, and she and Dorgan aren’t even, ahem, properly married before she’s off and cheating with Mason; while Mason himself is also a harder case, seeing it only as a fling with no emotion involved, though Carmen falls for him. The scene in which Dorgan catches the two of them is rather absurd here – he really thinks his best friend would make a pass at his wife in the ten seconds he’s out of the room!? – but this is offset by the fact that, in the film’s best moment, it is Carmen herself who finally galvanises Dorgan into action, telling him the whole truth and berating him as a fool and a coward for his willingness to let the trapped men die to revenge himself on one: “Yes, I’m rotten; but what about you?”

(This may not be much of a film in itself, but it’s a giver in other respects: see also WANT!!, as well as Spinning Newspaper Injures Printer, Parts 1 and 2.)

633 Squadron (1964)

Based upon the novel by Frederick E. Smith. Resistance leader Erik Bergman (George Chakiris) is smuggled out of occupied Norway and into Great Britain, carrying with him vital information. Meanwhile, the men of 633 Squadron of the Royal Air Force look forward to some leave after completing a run of dangerous missions; but when Wing Commander Roy Grant (Cliff Robertson) is summoned into the presence of Air Vice-Marshal Davies (Harry Andrews) and Group Captain Barrett (Donald Houston), he is informed that the 633 has been chosen for a dangerous but imperative assignment. Introduced to Bergman, Grant learns of a factory in Norway producing the special fuel needed for the new German V-2 rockets. In order to destroy the factory, it will be necessary to bomb below an overhanging cliff, requiring in turn low-altitude flying over a fjord and past Nazi flak-towers. The resistance is assigned the task of destroying the towers, while Grant and his men relocate to Scotland for training—being given only seventeen days to prepare… Though drawing upon various real-life missions involving the RAF’s so-called “Mosquito Squadrons” and the resistance operations which provided information about the development of V-weapons, 633 Squadron offers a fictionalised account of attempts to set back the German rocket program in the period leading up to D-Day. The film overall is a strange mixture of the clichéd and the unexpectedly grim, although the former predominates. This is most evident in the central bromance that develops between Bergman and Grant, the former an idealist doing everything for country and family, the latter a cynical loner for whom the war is “just a job”: place your bets now for whose attitude prevails. Likewise, Grant’s disapproval of war-time relationships – one subplot here involves the hasty marriage of one of Grant’s men and his WAAF girlfriend, which has predictable consequences – fails to outlast his first meeting with Bergman’s sister, Hilde (Maria Perschy), who takes the opportunity of his liaison work to reunite with her brother after three years of separation. When word is received that the resistance is struggling to recruit enough men for its side of the mission, Bergman insists upon returning to Norway to try and contact another unit of the underground. He is parachuted in and reunites with his men, but a German attack decimates the cell and leaves a wounded Bergman in the hands of the Gestapo. When word is received of this in Britain, the consequences are two-fold: the mission to Norway is brought forward, and Grant is ordered to stop Bergman talking under torture in the only way possible… This middle stretch of 633 Squadron is the most effective part of the film; the rest is too often predictable, though the climactic sequence is horrifying. The casting of George Chakiris is jarringly odd, but interestingly Cliff Robertson’s Grant is supposed to be American, rather than the usual substitute-Canadian: he is presented as a former barnstormer who joined the Eagle Squadrons after the declaration of war. The 633 also features an Australian (John Meillon) and an Indian (Julian Sherrier) amongst its pilots. Probably aviation buffs will get the most out of this production, which features copious footage of the squadron’s de Haviland Mosquitoes in action: the extended training sequences are effective and scary, as Grant and the others fly through rugged Scottish terrain, working at hitting a tiny target before pulling up sharply to avoid the surrounding cliff-faces. The training itself is not without casualties, and a German raid on the air-base damages the unit still further; so it is finally a reduced squadron that sets out on its fateful mission—word being received at the last minute that the Norwegians have been unable to carry out their attack on the flak-towers…

Fear Chamber (1968)

Original title: La camara del terror (The Room Of Terror); also known as: The Torture Zone. To test the theory of Dr Karl Mantell (Boris Karloff) about an intelligence beneath the earth, his daughter, Corinne (Julissa), and his assistant, Mark (Carlos East), descend into a crevice near a volcano, where they discover what appears to be a living rock… A young woman applying for assistance to the Beneficent Foundation finds herself, in the middle of the night, undergoing a terrifying experience in which she is threatened with snakes and spiders, pursued through a cavern by strange individuals, and finally witnesses the ritual sacrifice of another woman. When she herself is dragged to the altar, she faints—only for her persecutors to carry her swiftly to an operating-room, where a certain fluid is extracted from her body… As the fluid is fed to the living rock, Dr Mantell, Mark, Corinne and Mantell’s nurse / assistant, Helga (Isela Vega), debate the rock’s nature: whether it is truly alive, whether it is an ancient intelligence—and what secrets it might reveal to them… The first of the four Mexican / American co-productions made by Boris Karloff towards the end of his life, mixing footage shot by Juan Ibáñez with scenes featuring a mostly immobile and visibly ill Karloff overseen by Jack Hill, Fear Chamber is a bizarre mixture of mad science, batty technobabble, sleaze and dullness—though alas, the latter two “qualities” finally win out over the first two. As long as the film focuses on SCIENCE!! it is sufficiently amusing, with circular arguments over the nature of the entity, which is posited as everything from a mere “radio transmitter” to the source of “the secrets of the universe”; no hint given as to what the thing was eating before it was brought to the surface, nor how the scientists discovered its taste for fear hormones from, specifically, underwear-clad women; and an ongoing debate over whether to publish or to hand everything over to “the Institute”—no consideration being given to the fact that either would require the revelation of the whole construct-a-fear-chamber-torture-women-do-illegal-surgery-sometimes-kill-them aspect of the project, which indeed our “heroes” are outrageously casual about. There are a few other bright spots here, including the sheer absurdity of the Beneficent Foundation / Fear Chamber concept (one wonders in passing where they got the funding for that), the weirdly colourful décor in the lab, and of course Karloff himself—and while this is offset both by the discomfort inherent in his involvement and his obvious physical fragility, his professionalism and class are still 100% in evidence. Ultimately, however, Fear Chamber manages to be both nasty and boring, with an over-abundance of dragged-out scenes in which Helga and the inevitable “backwards” assistant, Roland (Yerye Beirute), having fallen under the sway of the entity, serve it up a series of victims.

(More on this film in Moments.)

Deathcheaters (1976)

Business partners and best friends Steve Hall (John Hargreaves) and Rodney Cann (Grant Page) put skills developed as commandos in Vietnam to good use working as stuntmen, a profession that also feeds their taste for danger. One day, while filming a commercial, they witness a car chase that ends with the police car incapacitated: jumping into their high-powered dune buggy, they go in pursuit of the fleeing criminals, finally cornering them at a suburban shopping mall. Steve and Rod are unaware that the entire incident has been a set-up: a test… Taken from his beachside apartment at gunpoint, Rod learns that Steve has suffered the same indignity. However, this is merely an over-emphatic way of bringing them into the presence of government operative Mr Culpepper (Noel Ferrier), who offers the two all the excitement and danger they can stand in the form of a freelance undercover operation, infiltrating the island stronghold of a Filipino war-lord… After The Man From Hong Kong, writer-director Brian Trenchard-Smith and stuntman Grant Page reunited to make this Sydney-filmed, stunt-based action movie, which benefits from both Page’s expertise and the easy camaraderie of everyone involved, which shows very clearly on the screen. While the stunt-work is the main attraction here, Deathcheaters also maintains a deadpan sense of humour throughout, as well as offering a few unexpectedly refreshing touches. Steve and Rod are basically joined at the hip, yet the former’s recent marriage to Julia (Margaret Gerard, aka Mrs Brian Trenchard-Smith) causes no ripples; nor does Julia interfere with the partnership or try to stop Steve doing what he does—even when that is undertaking a covert mission in which, ahem, the Australian government has no involvement. Despite appearances, this film wasn’t all fun and games to make: John Hargreaves got injured along the way, leaving Grant Page to do the heavy lifting during the main action sequence, which finds Steve and Rod evading the war-lord’s security forces and stealing some critical documents before racing the clock to make their submarine rendezvous… While its action content is broadly entertaining, Deathcheaters will probably play best to an audience of the right age and background to appreciate its inherent absurdities—a car chase ending up at the Warringah Mall, for instance, or Matraville standing in not altogether convincingly for the Philippines. Noel Ferrier is surprisingly funny here as government sp00k Mr Culpepper – if that is his real name (it isn’t) – though he does suffer the indignity of being billed below the dog playing Rod’s basset hound, Bismarck. The supporting cast is full of familiar faces – Drew Forsythe, Ralph Cotterill, Vincent Ball, Roger Ward, Chris Hayward – while producer Richard Brennan (also in Peter Weir’s Homesdale) has three separate cameos here, and Brian Trenchard-Smith two. Deathcheaters also offers a devastating visual joke aimed at then-prime minister, Malcolm Fraser—as well as a very early public outing, in the form of Steve and Rod’s company name, for a certain contentious phrase.

Backroads (1977)

In the far west of New South Wales, an indigenous man called Gary (Gary Foley) finds his car vandalised. As he contemplates the wreck, he sees a white petty criminal called Jack (Bill Hunter) making a move on another car which has been left unattended: on impulse, he helps distract the owner and then jumps in as Jack accelerates away. The two men go on a low-level crime spree in the nearby town before cruising the area’s deserted backroads, finally opening up to one another about their lives… The first film directed by Phillip Noyce, Backroads was carefully kept under an hour’s running-time in accordance with the peculiar requirements of government-funded production in the early days of the reviving Australian film industry. An hour is enough, however, for this rough but confronting narrative to make its points about race relations, poverty, crime, government responsibility and the uncrossable lines that existed – exist – in Australian society. Subtle it isn’t, but then, it isn’t a subtle topic; and today, Backroads stands as a depressing reminder of how little some things have changed fundamentally over the last fifty years. Shot predominantly around Bourke and Brewarrina by a then-neophyte Russell Boyd, and featuring footage of the real “Dodge City” indigenous reserve, the film consists mostly of Gary and Jack driving, talking and drinking. Along the way, they collect Gary’s Uncle Joe (Zac Marton) from the reserve, a hitchhiking French backpacker called Jean-Claude (Terry Camilleri), and a disaffected woman, Anna (Julie McGregor), who simply walks away from her life—eventually losing the latter two: Jean-Claude is unceremoniously thrown out of the car when he refuses to put up with being called “wog” by Jack (“They can’t accept anyone different,” the indigenous man says to the European visitor); and Anna strands the other three when they start playing with their guns. The latter incident prompts a second episode of car theft, this one accompanied by an impulsive act of violence and ultimate disaster…

Strange Behavior (1981)

Also known as: Dead Kids, Small Town Massacre, Shadowlands, Human Experiments. Bryan Morgan (Bill Condon), the teenage son of the mayor of Galesburg, is brutally murdered while home alone—apparently by another teenager. The case falls to Police Chief John Brady (Michael Murphy), himself the widowed father of a teenage boy, Pete (Dan Shor). Though only high-schoolers, Pete and his friend, Oliver (Marc McClure), attend a psychology lecture at the local college on behaviour modification: Gwen Parkinson (Fiona Lewis) performs a demonstration accompanied by a film of her late boss and mentor, Dr LeSange (Arthur Dignam). Afterwards, Oliver takes Pete to meet Dr Parkinson, who accepts him as a test subject for her experiments. Meanwhile, Bryan Morgan’s body is found—having been disguised as a scarecrow and left hung up in a field. During a teenage party, a young couple slips away to make out, only to be attacked by a masked killer: Waldo (Jim Boelsen) is savagely stabbed to death, but Lucy (Elizabeth Cheshire) escapes, finally being rescued by Pete and the other party-goers. The killer flees—and, once alone, pulls off his mask to reveal himself as Oliver… The first collaboration between Michael Laughlin and Bill Condon – the latter still young enough to cast himself as the film’s first victim – Strange Behavior is strange indeed, riffing simultaneously on contemporary slasher movies and the mad doctor films of the 1930s while managing to be a third unrelated thing: which is to say, it’s very hard to describe. The film’s deliberately off-kilter feel is partly the result of being an Australian co-production shot in New Zealand, with cast extras doing accents from the former and the latter resulting in a sort of 50s-haze version of Illinois—this in turn jarringly offset by stabbing, dismemberment and a needle in the eye, thank you so much. While John Brady investigates the sudden rash of murders in his small town, Pete becomes the subject of Dr Parkinson’s clinical trials; and the new confidence promised him by the scientist leads to a relationship with Caroline (Dey Young), who works as a receptionist at the clinic. Meanwhile, Brady’s investigation plus his own personal history lead him to suspect not only that one of Dr Parkinson’s test subjects might be the killer, but that the notorious Dr LeSange could still be alive. Brady forces his way into the clinic to confront the scientist—unaware that Pete is in one of the test rooms, strapped into a chair, and becoming an experimental subject whether he likes it or not… Strange Behavior is consistently interesting, though also flawed. Its cast of interchangeable young people sometimes makes it hard for the viewer to keep up with who is doing what, and the film’s second act is drawn out to unnecessary length. There is also too much obliqueness about exactly what Dr LeSange is supposed to have done—assuming that his crime isn’t simply being, ahem, too close to the late Mrs Brady. However, Fiona Lewis is amusingly chilling as Gwen Parkinson (her appearance tends to come as a shock: it became the model for Sean Young in Bladerunner the following year); and Arthur Dignam makes a splendid mad scientist, once John Brady’s suspicions about his death having been exaggerated come to fruition. Though second-billed as Brady’s patient girlfriend, Louise Fletcher really only has a glorified cameo—though she handles very well the dialogue scene in which Barbara explains to Pete and Caroline Brady’s history with LeSange and the clinic. Veteran character actors Charles Lane and Scott Brady also show up in supporting roles. Michael Laughlin and Bill Condon went from this to the even weirder Strange Invaders.

Runaway (1984)

His career hindered by a fear of heights that once allowed for the escape of a killer, police sergeant Jack Ramsey (Tom Selleck) is part of the “runaway squad”—assigned to respond when the robots ubiquitous both domestically and commercially malfunction. Though the squad’s work is often looked down upon as soft or unimportant, Ramsey takes it seriously and has undergone training in many aspects of computer technology and robotics. Karen Thompson (Cynthia Rhodes) is assigned as Ramsey’s new partner. Their first jobs together are standard, but all that changes when the first robot-involved homicide occurs. The police are called to a house where most of a family has been killed—with the father, David Johnson (Chris Mulkey), alone escaping, and a ten-month-old baby left behind. Ramsey decides to infiltrate the house alone: despite several close calls, he finally succeeds in disabling the robot and rescuing the baby. However, once outside, his finds that Johnson has fled the scene. Though Johnson swore that he had done nothing to modify the robot, technical inspection by Ramsey and police expert Marvin James (Stan Shaw) discovers an implanted chip capable of overriding the robot’s safety programming… Set in the far-flung future of 1991 – apparently – Runaway is a typical Michael Crichton effort in that it manages to blend thoughtful, justifiable criticism of over-reliance on technology with bat-shit insane versions of same in a way that undermines his entire point: the sight of a small squat metal box literally wielding a handgun provokes giggles rather than terror. (Though maybe it was meant to? – I presume it was a deliberate choice that the gun is a magnum.) The film is likewise typical in that, even earlier than its halfway mark, it basically gives up on its own premise and converts into an action film / chase thriller, albeit one with a heavily tech framework. (Very like the last update’s Xchange, in fact.) The film’s prediction of, effectively, “smart” household gadgets is interesting, and you have to love both the deadly robotic “spiders” and the bullets that, as Marvin James puts it, literally have your name on them; but on the other hand there are touches like robots doing heavy or dangerous work such as construction, without any consideration of the economic flow-on. In any event, most of this gets pushed aside for a more generic battle between Ramsey and evil genius Charles Luther (Gene Simmons): the latter using his skills to monitor, track down and kill anyone who gets in his way, including one-time partner Jackie Rogers (Kirstie Alley), who makes the unwise decision to steal the master template of the killer chip. Ramsey’s battle with Luther becomes even more personal when, in order to control the determined cop, Luther abducts his young son, Bobby (Joey Cramer)… The second half of Runaway is almost a check-list of clichés, and Gene Simmons’ sneering and glowering – and occasional evil grinning – gets tiresome; but overall it is sufficiently entertaining if you’re in an undemanding mood. Tom Selleck is easy to side with, and Cynthia Rhodes gives a fair performance as Karen—though she does finally pull what I still think of – unjustly, I suppose – as a “Penelope Ann Miller”, turning up to a crisis in a flowing dress and spike heels.

Appointment With Death (1988)

Based upon the novel by Agatha Christie. When her husband dies, Emily Boynton (Piper Laurie) discovers that he belatedly made a new will dividing his property between his four children and herself; but with her knowledge of dishonest conduct by his lawyer, Jefferson Cope (David Soul), she is able to arrange for that will to disappear… With no direct inheritance, the adult Boyntons – step-children Lennox (Nicholas Guest), Raymond (John Terlesky) and Carol (Valerie Richards), and Mrs Boynton’s own daughter, Ginevra (Amber Bezer) – are forced to live on Mrs Boynton’s bounty. At her command, they travel together as a group that includes Lennox’s wife, Nadine (Carrie Fisher). In Trieste, Raymond becomes smitten by newly qualified young doctor, Sarah King (Jenny Seagrove), who has already met an old friend there, the private investigator, Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov). Meanwhile, Mrs Boynton is enraged and suspicious when Jefferson Cope arrives; he, secretly, is involved with Nadine. During the subsequent shipboard journey to the Holy Land, Poirot sees and overhears things which make him suspect that murder is in contemplation—and during the party’s stay near an archaeological dig in Qumran, his worst fears are justified… In spite of its splendid cast and location filming, Appointment With Death is disappointing—a much dumbed-down and simplified version of one of Agatha Christie’s more disturbing novels. Mrs Boynton is awful, yes—but she comes across merely as a nasty braying bully, not the expert and practising sadist of the book, whose hold on the younger Boyntons is psychological far more than merely monetary. Furthermore, the always questionable casting of Peter Ustinov in this series of films reaches perhaps its nadir here: his accent is all over the place, and really, if you didn’t know he was supposed to be playing Hercule Poirot, there is little in his characterisation to suggest it. More specifically, the staging of the murder makes it rather too obvious who the guilty party must be; while the critical scene in which Sarah King confronts Mrs Boynton is also botched. All this, of course, is responding to the film as an adaptation; if you can put this aside (or haven’t read the book), you might find this reasonably entertaining. The centrepiece murder remains more or less the same, with Mrs Boynton found dead after sending her family away for the afternoon for a series of walks—and each of them returning to camp separately, giving them all of them opportunity as they certainly had motive; but which is the guilty party…? The cast of Appointment With Death also includes Lauren Bacall as Lady Westholme, American ex-pat and now more-British-than-British; John Gielgud as Colonel Carmody, the British envoy; Hayley Mills as archaeologist Miss Quinton; and Michael Craig as Lord Peel—with the screenplay using the debate over the partitioning of Palestine as its backdrop. The film was, of all things, a Cannon production—which explains both its use of Israel as a stand-in for Qumran, and its various inadequacies.

Blind Justice (1994)

US Cavalry officers escorting a shipment of government silver fall foul of Mexican bandits led by Alacran (Robert Davi) and end up besieged in the small town of San Pedro; they take refuge in the church, to the anger of Father Malone (Ian McElhinney). Determined to starve the soldiers and the town into submission, Alacran leaves four of his men, including his son, Hector (Jason Rodriguez), to guard the one road into San Pedro. Canaan (Armand Assante), a former soldier left almost blind by his Civil War service, is stopped outside of San Pedro but, since the others do not regard him as a threat, manages to shoot and kill three of the four guards; he then rides on into town with the bodies of the dead men. Assuming that his arrival means he is in league with Alacran, Sergeant Hastings (Adam Baldwin) and his men attack Canaan, but former army nurse Caroline (Elisabeth Shue) intervenes. To her astonishment, she discovers that the bundle which Canaan carries is a baby: he tells her that he promised to deliver the child to her mother in a small town called Los Portales. Seeking a guide for himself and help with the baby, Canaan stops in the town, only to be caught in the escalating violence… An HBO production, of all things, Blind Justice is one of the crop of revivalist westerns that appeared across the late 80s and early 90s, but separates itself from the rest in terms of its peculiar tone. The film feels like nothing so much as the remake of a spaghetti western. It isn’t—but it certainly draws upon the even stranger 1971 production, Blindman, which was itself influenced by the Japanese films featuring Zatoichi (one of them involving a baby); while its basic scenario is that found in A Fistful Of Dollars, with a stranger riding into a town beset by warring factions equally in the wrong—this in turn lifted from Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. The trouble with all this referencing is that it keeps putting the viewer in mind of more interesting things than Blind Justice ever manages to be. This may be an odd criticism but, given its central premise, it needed to be weirder—or at least less grounded. It basically plays its premise straight rather than endow Canaan with any quasi-supernatural abilities, which makes his expert gunslinging more than usually difficult to swallow. Rather than doing anything to resolve the situation in the town, Canaan tries to exploit it—offering to ride for reinforcements for the soldiers in exchange for a slice of the silver shipment. By this time he has managed to enrage both of the opposed factions about equally; and though the ambush staged by Hastings and his men fails to stop him, Canaan soon finds himself in the vengeful hands of Alacran… As a western, Blind Justice is sufficiently watchable: it evinces a suitable level of cynicism about pretty much everything (there are no good guys here; even the beleaguered townspeople are nasty bigots), and there are shoot-outs and betrayals and massacres and revenge; but there is also a sense of something lacking despite an air of commitment and an impressive cast that also includes M. C. Gainey, Titus Welliver, Danny Nucci, Jimmy Herman and Jack Black.

(A little research suggests that screenwriter Daniel Knauf was also drawing here upon the Jonah Hex comics.)

White Mile (1994)

As his lead advertising man Jack Robbins (Peter Gallagher) and new hire David Koenig (Bruce Altman) struggle to impress executive Andy Thornell (Dakin Matthews) with their campaign ideas, Dan Cutler (Alan Alda), the head of the firm, arranges a corporate adventure trip intended to test his people and build connections with the firm’s most important clients. To his own employees, Cutler reveals his plans for white-water rafting on a notorious stretch of river in the Canadian wilderness known as “the White Mile”; however, his invitation to various of his firm’s clients does not reveal the potential dangers of the exercise; while that extended to former firm executive Nick Karas (Robert Loggia) makes the expedition sound like a fishing-trip. Once in the wilderness, it becomes evident to Robbins that Cutler has very specific ideas about how the rafting is to occur: he overhears him pressuring hired guide Ed Miller (Eric Magneson) into keeping his people separate from the tourists who want to raft the river, and placing all of his group into a single boat, though this creates an overload situation. Having allowed his group a day to choose between less intense rafting and fishing, Cutler gathers them for the main expedition and, after some hasty, ill-attended-to safety instructions, the group ventures out… A far more typical HBO production, from back in the days when the company’s stock-in-trade was award-bait TV dramas, White Mile is based upon the true story of the disastrous 1987 rafting-trip arranged by the Chicago advertising agency, DDB Needham, which resulted in five deaths and led to a lawsuit brought by one victim’s widow. While overall the film works to dissect the toxic corporate environment and the various pressures, overt and covert, that can be brought to bear in it, the script by Michael Butler plays pretty fair with the character of Dan Cutler, via such details as the rafters’ inattention to the safety lecture given prior to setting out, and the genuine enthusiasm of some of them for the venture. However, along with this we watch the deliberate creation by Cutler of an atmosphere in which saying ‘no’ is not an option: David Koenig wants nothing to do with the venture and says so to his colleagues; but as the new guy at the firm, he is well aware of what a refusal will mean to his career. White Mile is a film of two halves, the first working towards the inevitably tragedy on the river—this looks like it was insanely dangerous to make, even though we know it must have been largely the work of stunt-people on a different stretch of water—and the second dealing with the lawsuit brought against the company by Gena Karas (Fionnula Flanagan) in the wake of her husband’s death, which turns on personal versus corporate responsibility. The screenplay’s dramatic pivot is Jack Robbins, who must decide whether to defy his boss and testify on behalf of Gena… At the time of White Mile’s first broadcast, all eyes were on Alan Alda’s performance as Dan Cutler: in spite of his established nice-guy persona, Alda can do nasty very well indeed—though this, judging by the shocked reactions back then, may have been the first time he really let rip; the results secured him a Golden Globe nomination. On the other hand, the casting of familiar faces in the small roles of the doomed executives is just distracting—with Ken Jenkins surviving, but Max Wright and Robert Picardo not. (So you’ve been warned.)

The Bridges Of Madison County (1995)

Based upon the novel by Robert James Waller. After the death of their mother, Carolyn (Annie Corley) and Michael Johnson (Victor Slezak) meet at their parents’ Iowa farm to talk with her lawyer. They are puzzled by the contents of their mother’s safety-deposit box, and shocked when they discover her journals from more than twenty years before which reveal her closely guarded secret… Iowa, 1965. Francesca Johnson (Meryl Streep) sees her husband, Richard (Jim Haynie), and her two children off to the Illinois State Fair with a guilty sense of relief, looking forward to five days alone. Her peace is disrupted when a strange vehicle pulls into her long driveway bearing photographer Robert Kincaid (Clint Eastwood), who has gotten lost while trying to locate one of the covered bridges of Madison County. Kincaid gratefully accepts her offer to go with him and direct him. At the bridge, Francesca is struck by Kincaid’s enthusiasm for his work and his quiet professionalism: she reacts with mingled embarrassment and pleasure when he also photographs her as she emerges from the shadowy interior of the bridge. Back at the farmhouse, as they talk over iced tea, both Francesca and Kincaid are aware of an intense attraction—but also of the obstacles and dangers in their paths… This adaptation of Robert James Waller’s flimsy novella – which, like Erich Segal’s Love Story, seems to have been viewed differently from a conventional romance novel simply because it was written by a man – is elevated over its source material by the star power involved and the obvious sincerity of its production, but still feels like it is resting on some fairly flimsy supports. Necessarily expanding on Waller’s insular narrative, The Bridges Of Madison County is situated within the framing device of the discovery by Francesca Johnson’s children of their mother’s four-day love affair and their attempt to come to terms with the feeling that the woman who raised them was in some ways a total stranger to them. Similarly, since the novella has Francesca and Kincaid effectively recognising each other as their soul-mate at first glance, the film offers a more wary, less immediate evolving of the affair—with far greater doubts expressed about the relationship, at least by Francesca, and a far greater emphasis generally upon her deep if habitually unspoken disappointment with her narrow and unsatisfying life. The inherent brevity of the affair only increases its intensity; it also forces upon Francesca the need for an immediate decision: whether to abandon her family and pursue her late-life passion or to reject the new possibilities opened up by her involvement with the devoted but footloose Kincaid… The Bridges Of Madison County isn’t exactly my sort of thing (not a high enough body count, for one thing), but I can appreciate its virtues. Meryl Streep shines as Francesca, but I don’t find Clint Eastwood – directing himself as Kincaid – particularly well-cast here: for what it’s worth, I kept seeing Robert Redford in my head, and not just because of the Out Of Africa reunion thing. (I was also genuinely annoyed to discover that Clint had given himself billing—over Streep doing an accent!? – I don’t think so…) The film was shot on location and its visuals are impressive; so too the unexpectedly jazz-based score, the work of Lennie Niehaus.

Crocodile (2000)

Brady (Mark McLachlan) and Duncan (Chris Solari) drive towards Lake Sobek, where they are to board a houseboat for Spring Break. A car carrying more of their friends passes them, and along with Foster (Rhett Jordan) and Hubs (Greg Wayne), Brady is appalled to see Sunny (Sommer Knight), with whom he had a brief, bitterly-regretted fling: he berates Duncan for inviting her, when his girlfriend, Claire (Caitlin Martin), will also be coming. At the boat, Kit (D. W. Reiser) and Annabelle (Julie Mintz) are waiting, and Claire soon arrives. The group buys beer, and is subject to a stern lecture from Sheriff Bowman (Harrison Young) about their behaviour. However, they party hard both on the water and on land; finally building a bonfire, they gather round while Kit tells the story of a hotelier called Harlan who, a century before, imported an crocodile which he believed to be the avatar of the Egyptian god Sobek, attempting to build a cult around it. The locals ran Harlan out and torched his hotel, but the crocodile, known as “Flat Dog”, escaped… Meanwhile, fishermen Harvey (Vern Crofoot) and Arnold (Larry Udy) bemoan the closing of a local fish cannery, which they blame on environmentalists. When they stumble over a nest of huge eggs, they begin smashing them as a kind of retaliation—only to be attacked by a gigantic crocodile… Crocodile is a depressingly awful killer-animal film, made all the worse by our knowledge of Tobe Hooper’s involvement. Part of the problem is evident from that synopsis: the film is overpopulated, and its characters – using the term loosely – spend what feels like an eternity being very loud and very obnoxious before the crocodile finally attacks them—and respond to that by becoming even louder and even more obnoxious. Duncan, indeed, is completely loathsome: not since Mekhi Phifer’s Tyrell Martin in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer have I so desperately wanted to watch someone getting brutally killed in graphic detail; but this film manages to add insult to injury in that respect by, in effect, ripping off Anaconda. The crocodile effects here are less than brilliant, blending some CGI with a rather jerky full-sized model for the whole-body shots, and a not-matched-for-size-or-colour head for the close-ups; though frankly, by the time it gets to work thinning the herd we’re not really in a mood to quibble. The only touch I really liked is the script’s explanation for the behaviour of the animal, which is (in traditional killer-animal-film style) killing but not eating its human victims: this “rampage” is ascribed to its fury over the destruction of its nest and eggs. Although there is collateral damage along the way, the young people who survive the first attack on their houseboat become the crocodile’s main target after Hubs stupidly hides an egg in Claire’s backpack, meaning that wherever they go, the enraged animal tracks them… There’s not much to be said for Crocodile, which apart from its titular beastie offers only glimmers of entertainment—firstly in its weird, pro-gator / anti-croc agenda, and secondly in its ongoing game of Will Princess Survive? – Princess being the yappy little floor-mop dog owned by Annabelle, which spends the entire film having encounters with the crocodile and being placed in situations of escalating peril—and the very fact that I could wring any enjoyment out of that scenario should tell you everything you need to know about the rest.

(Hmm. My second recent evocation of I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something…)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

Based upon the novel by John le Carré. Suspecting the presence of a mole at the highest levels of his organisation, the head of British Intelligence, known as “Control” (John Hurt), sends Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) into Hungary in search of information. However, the meeting is a trap… In the wake of this disaster, Control is forced into retirement, along with his right-hand man, George Smiley (Gary Oldman); Control dies soon afterwards. Percy Alleline (Toby Jones) becomes the new head of Intelligence; Bill Haydon (Colin Firth) is his deputy, with Roy Bland (Ciarán Hinds) and Toby Esterhase (David Dencik) their main lieutenants. Between them, the group had already made a play for power with the establishment of “Witchcraft”, a program for receiving Soviet intelligence from a secret source. Having worked amongst Russian trade delegates in Istanbul, seeking spies and potential defectors in the mix, field operative Rikki Tarr (Tom Hardy) contacts permanent undersecretary Oliver Lacon (Simon McBurney) and warns him about a possible mole. Aware that Control, too, believed this, Lacon contacts Smiley and asks him to conduct a secret investigation. Smiley recruits his organisational protégé, Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch), with outside assistance from analyst Connie Sachs (Kathy Burke), who he learns was forced into retirement after also raising questions about a mole, and retired Special Branch officer Mendel (Roger Lloyd-Pack). Smiley begins by examining the evidence collected by Control before his death, and discovers that his suspicions rested upon five men: Alleline, Haydon, Bland, Esterhase—and himself, Smiley… Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is an example of the kind of first-class film that the British do with seemingly ridiculous ease—assembling a quietly brilliant cast of actors, each of whom disappears into his or her character, and creating a gripping suspense story out of what is, in its entirety, almost an intellectual exercise. This is a spy thriller, but not as we usually know such things: in place of gun-play, gadgets and action scenes, the screenplay by Peter Straughan and the late Bridget O’Connor (to whom the film is dedicated) offers a painfully personal story of loyalty, doubt and betrayal: one encapsulated by George Smiley’s reaction upon discovering that in spite of their years of intensely close work, Control was still capable of suspecting him of being the mole. Physically, Gary Oldman was a curious choice for Smiley; in spirit, he was perfectly cast as the quiet, watchful, incorruptible government agent whose one weakness lies outside his work, in the form of his serially unfaithful wife, Ann (Katrina Vasilieva). Smiley makes contact with Rikki Tarr, who tells him of a Soviet agent, Irina (Svetlana Khodchenkova), who asked for asylum in exchange for the identity of the mole: soon after he reported this to London, the local station chief was murdered and Irina was imprisoned; he, Tarr, has lived in fear of his life since. In response to this, Smiley sends Peter Guillam on a dangerous mission: to steal the official logbook from the night in question, in order to discover who may have received Tarr’s message and acted upon it… The body of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy deals with Smiley’s step-wise hunt for the mole, and the associated revelation that Operation Witchcraft is itself an elaborate ruse intended to create a pipeline via which false information could be fed to the Americans. Meanwhile, we also learn that Jim Prideaux survived both shooting and torture in Hungary – survived physically – but with a consuming desire to revenge himself upon the man who betrayed him, and his country…

Amityville: Vanishing Point (2016)

Defeated! – defeated by an Amityville film, how humiliating. In my defence, there’s precious little of Amityville about this one – far less than even its immediate franchise predecessors offer – which is instead a piece of low-budget experimental film-making by the then-eighteen-year-old Dylan Mars Greenberg, and which serves as much as a showcase for her musical friends as anything else; though the film itself seems to be striving for a Lynchian vibe. Occasionally the cinematography and compositions in Vanishing Point manage to be interesting, but the dialogue runs the gamut from pretentious to puerile (if in doubt, just say “fuck” a lot), and the whole thing finally has the air of a self-indulgent home movie. I’m hesitant to assert that anything definitely happens in this film, but— A woman dies in a boarding-house in Amityville, or maybe she doesn’t, or maybe it’s her spirit wandering around. A man claims to be an FBI agent investigating the case, but almost certainly isn’t. A cult might be involved, but perhaps not. There’s a music club, and a cemetery, and a basement. There are ghosts, I think. Lloyd Kaufman has a cameo. People die by garotte and hammer. There’s lesbian sex and baseball-card masturbation—the latter graphic though (as the credits assure us) prosthetic supported. The word “Amityville” appears once on a rough piece of wood advertising the boarding-house, and occurs once in the dialogue. Maybe twice. I have a headache.

Only The Brave (2017)

Based upon the article No Exit by Sean Flynn. In Arizona, municipal Fire and Rescue Crew 7 struggles to accept their exclusion from wildfire fighting. When the prediction of supervisor Eric Marsh (Josh Brolin), that a fire will change direction and destroy homes, is ignored but proves correct, he vents his frustration to Duane Steinbrink (Jeff Bridges), a fire chief and a close friend. Steinbrink agrees to press for an opportunity for Crew 7 to become certified as “hotshots”, qualified to fight wildfires. Filling a slot in his team, Marsh gives a chance to Brendan McDonough (Miles Teller), a recovering addict determined to turn his life around and provide for his baby daughter. The decision does not sit well with team captain Jesse Steed (James Badge Dale) or crewman Christopher MacKenzie (Taylor Kitsch), both of whom give McDonough a rough ride; but he proves his worth and skill through a grueling training regime and becomes a valued team member. During a wildfire deployment, the team gets its chance for certification, but Marsh butts heads with the assessor, Hayes (Ralph Alderman), disregarding his insistence on certain tactics and backing his own judgement. Though Marsh is certain that his behaviour has destroyed his team’s chances, word comes that Crew 7 has been certified. Over the following months, the Granite Mountain Hotshots deploy all over the country; but it is a wildfire in their own territory that puts the men to the ultimate test… Like Deepwater Horizon and The Perfect Storm before it, Only The Brave is not a disaster movie because it deals with a real-life disaster: the Yarnell Hill Fire of 2013, which killed 19 out of the 20-man Granite Mountain Hotshots crew attempting to fight it, the worst single-day loss of life in the profession since 9/11. The film is extremely well-made and deeply sincere, and was praised by the critics at the time of its release—but became a significant box-office failure. The reason for this is, I think, obvious; and while it always feels churlish to criticise a production like this, I do believe that it would have been more successful if it had been structured differently. Only The Brave is a long film and it tells its story chronologically—which, after two-plus hours of training montages and bonding and camaraderie, makes its rapid climactic tragedy feel like a sick cosmic joke, and the film even more impossible to “enjoy”, if that is ever the right word to use. (There is also the fact that no-one knows why the team was where it was when disaster overtook it—and never will know.) Opening with the tragedy – and perhaps with word that there is only one, unknown survivor – before flashing back to the building and training of the team, may have been less punishing for the viewer. All that said, this is a powerful and often moving production, with its focus on the courage and dedication of the firefighters—though acknowledging too the intense strain placed upon their families. The fire scenes were created through a mixture of reality and CGI and are convincingly terrifying. One issue, perhaps, is that only a couple of the hotshots come across as individuals, though the end credits pay scrupulous tribute to all of the men equally. Josh Brolin and Miles Teller both give very effective performances; while Jennifer Connolly, as Eric Marsh’s devoted but fiercely independent wife, Amanda, also makes an impact.

Paranormal Investigation (2018)

A group of student friends begin experimenting with a Ouija board, and seem to contact a spirit. When Dylan Duval (Jean-Baptiste Heuet) asks the spirit how it died, he is thrown violently from the board and suffers a seizure. He recovers—but his behaviour alters drastically… Dylan’s parents reach out to paranormal investigator Andrei (Andrei Indreies), who agrees to look into the situation. He begins by interviewing the others who were present – Effie (Effie Rey), Antoine (Antoine Rodriguez) and Catalin (Catalin Morar) – and while he finds among them no consensus that Dylan is possessed, they are unanimous about the change in him. With permission from the Duvals, Andrei sets up a bank of cameras within their house, determined to capture Dylan’s behaviour and understand its cause… Perhaps the only truly unexpected thing about Paranormal Investigation is that it is French; that, and how very little new material it brings to the table, considering its appearance this late in the game. Despite its second-half diversion into The Exorcist, the film chiefly copies the Paranormal Activity formula, with most of its content made up of images taken from infra-red cameras installed around the Duvals’ house, though supplemented by Andrei’s filming of himself for – we gather – his web-based “investigation” show. This is consequently more a faux-documentary than a found-footage film per se; although given its climactic scene, I suppose the footage must have been “found” at some point… The most commendable aspect of Paranormal Investigation is the seriousness with which it goes about its business, trying realistically to present how an investigation might be undertaken, and even working to head off the usual criticisms of such films (“Why were you filming?” Andrei asks Catalin during their first meeting; “why did you keep filming?”). There is also a genuine attempt to garner sympathy for both Dylan himself and his parents, who become the target of their son’s altered nature. Unfortunately, this very realism draws attention to the film’s basic poverty: Andrei is a one-man operation (even messing with the Ouija board alone while conceding to his camera the dangers of doing so); and so, even more damagingly, is Father Tamaio (Jose Atuncar), called in to do an exorcism when the evidence for Dylan’s possession begins to mount. But the film’s major failing is that when all is said and done, nothing very much happens here—and this in spite of the identity of Dylan’s inhabiting spirit, which is either the film’s most daring touch or its crowning bad-taste moment, according to individual judgement. There is even an absence of jump-scares, which might be another reach for realism but leaves the results rather dull. And on the few occasions when something actually does happen, the plethora of cameras somehow fails to catch it; the final scene, in this respect, is unforgivable…

It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Murder (2022)

Also known as: Christmas Inheritance. After her boyfriend breaks up with her over her long work hours, Diana Hart (Cristine Prosperi) learns that the elderly woman who she always thought of as her aunt has died in a fall down the basement stairs of her house. Preparing to attend the funeral, Diana tells her best friend and receptionist, Riley (Angelie Simone), that she feels guilty for neglecting Aunt Tippy while setting up her business. She also explains that Tippy was no blood relation but the neighbour of her grandparents; however, they became close after she was welcomed into Tippy’s home as a child. Upon arrival, Diana is disturbed to discover Tippy’s housekeeper, Mrs Hobart, vigorously cleaning the basement floor: she begins to ponder the unlikelihood of the vital and careful Tippy falling down stairs. After being settled into the house by Brianna (Erin Gray), Tippy’s neighbour and best friend, Diana calls on Detective Parks (Kelcey Watson) to express her doubts, but he assures her there is no evidence of anything but an accident. After the funeral, Diana is reunited with her ex-boyfriend, Matt (Travis Burns), who was also Tippy’s lawyer: she is astonished to learn that she has inherited the entire estate. Deciding to sell the house, Diana begins to pack up its contents with Matt’s help—realising along the way that certain valuable items are missing… As you would appreciate, Christmas is the least fruitful time of the year in terms of my sort of movies; so I was both amused and grateful when this absurd little anti-gem turned up on Lifetime. On one hand, It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Murder is a typical effort of the latter, with its spunky protagonist turning amateur detective in an attempt to prove murder: she and Riley, the inevitable Sassy Black Friend, share a passion for true-crime podcasts; on the other, it really wants to be a Hallmark Christmas movie. (It was made, fittingly enough, by a company called “Hybrid”.) Consequently, all the characters have to do double-duty as feelgood-movie stereotypes and murder suspects. This is particularly delicious when it comes to Matt, who – except for the absence of a flannel shirt – is The Small Town Boyfriend She Left Behind with a vengeance…while becoming Diana’s prime suspect along the way. While she and Matt pack up the house, Diana realises that the elaborate Christmas figurine village that Tippy always set up is missing. Consultation with local expert Jerry (Joe Finfera) confirms that the figurines were extremely valuable; he also tells Diana that he has bought several of Tippy’s items over the past year in what he believed to be legitimate sales. Diana realises someone has been robbing Tippy—and that as she first suspected, her death was likely not an accident at all… Along with Matt, Brianna and Mrs Hobart, It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Murder offers up Larry (Robert Donovan), Tippy’s ex-husband, and Lloyd (Eric Roberts), her previous attorney, as additional suspects. Diana pretty much denounces them all in turn to the oddly patient Detective Park—but when she gets too close to the truth, she finds her life in danger…

The Ritual Killer (2023)

In Rome, police led by Inspector Lavazzi (Giuseppe Zeno) try to apprehend the prime suspect in a case of serial mutilation murders, but he escapes leaving a bloody trail in his wake… In Clinton MS, homicide detective Lucas Boyd (Cole Hauser) is cleared by a board of inquiry into the death of a suspect in a child abuse case, but both his partner, Detective Kersch (Murielle Hilaire), and Captain Marchand (Peter Stormere) make it clear they have their doubts. When the mutilated body of a teenage girl is pulled from the water, Boyd and Kersch learn that certain body parts were removed prior to death. A similar case, involving a young boy, follows: this time the detectives are confronted with evidence of a ritual killing, including writing on the wall and some strange items at the scene. Initial investigation leads Boyd to Dr Mackles (Morgan Freeman), an African-born anthropologist with expertise in ritual practice, who after some initial reluctance to become involved tells the detective about Muti, in which the excision and subsequent consumption of particular body parts is believed to convey specific powers… Yet another of the bastard children – or I guess by this time, grandchildren – of Se7en, The Ritual Killer is a dismayingly uninvolving film which struggles to hold the viewer in spite of its outré subject matter. Poorly written and poorly structured, and with more than a whiff of outright racism about its premise (for which, I would surmise, the research went no further than the two paragraphs of information into Muti murders to be found on Wikipedia), its scenario jumps between Rome and Clinton – or perhaps I should say, “AMERICA!”, as Detective Boyd insists on doing – with little care taken to join the dots, as two separate teams of detectives have enormous trouble tracking down a suspect with a habit of casually killing anyone who gets in his way, in addition to his ritual murders. Mind you, “teams” is a bit inaccurate: after Detective Kersch gets a Heroine’s Death Battle Exemption^©, when Randoku (Vernon Davis) somehow fails to kill her as he has done all the others, Lucas Boyd starts plunging into potential murder scenes sans back-up and generally doing everything to ensure his suspect’s escape. This is entirely par for the course: it’s hard to know how The Ritual Killer wants us to view Boyd, for whom “troubled cop” is an inadequate descriptor, after he is introduced almost casually murdering a man he’s been sent to arrest. Cole Hauser does what he can, but sadly Morgan Freeman barely makes an impression as Markles; and while Vernon Davis is a threatening presence as Randoku, no-one else registers. The film finally builds to a double-twist ending of sorts, one of them so grotesque as to be perversely funny (even to this viewer, which should give you a hint).