Tag Archives: movies

[February 4, 1969] Potts, Caractacus Potts: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang


by Fiona Moore

The trees are down and the decorations put away, but the Christmas films are still clinging on at the cinemas. The splashiest of these, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, is a charming but over-long crowd-pleaser that can be best summarised as “James Bond, but for children.”

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang movie poster.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang movie poster

After all, it’s a screenplay by Roald Dahl from a story by Ian Fleming, produced by Cubby Broccoli, featuring a handsome protagonist who’s a mashup of Bond and Q, a love interest with a suggestively punny name, a magical car, glamourous footage of automobile races and international luxury travel, a cameo from Desmond Llewellyn, sinister Eastern Europeans who want to steal Western technological secrets….

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is actually two stories. The frame story involves Caractacus Potts, an Edwardian inventor (Dick van Dyke, who has fortunately decided not to bother attempting a British accent after his excruciating failure to sound like a Cockney in Mary Poppins). He is a widower with two children, whose inventions are charming and ahead of their time, including: a vacuum cleaner and a device for sending visual images by wireless; however, they fail to find a market.

He strikes up a friendship with Truly Scrumptious (Sally Ann Howes), daughter of a candy manufacturer (James Robertson Justice), who persuades her father to consider Potts’ latest invention, candy whistles called Toot Sweets, but when the whistles turn out to attract dogs her father is furious. Rejected, Potts decides to cheer up his children by buying and fixing up a roadster, which they name Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for the noises it makes, and takes the children and Truly on a seaside picnic, where he and Truly fall in love.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang fliesChitty Chitty Bang Bang takes flight

And then we get the second story, told by Potts at the seaside to his children and Truly. In this story, the gadget-obsessed Baron of Vulgaria (Gert Fröbe, who played Goldfinger in the eponymous movie) sees the car and vows to steal it. After a long sequence where two bumbling Vulgarian spies try and fail to do this, the Baron succeeds in kidnapping Potts’ father (Lionel Jeffries), an absent-minded caricature of British imperialism. Potts, Truly and the children come to the rescue in Chitty, which is able to turn into a hovercraft and an airplane as needed.

They land in Vulgaria to discover that the country has no children, by order of the Baron, and the sinister Child-Catcher soon kidnaps Potts’ children as well. Aided by a toymaker (Benny Hill, of all people) and a cave-ful of children hiding away from the Child-Catcher, Potts and Truly rescue the children and their grandfather and bring about a “free state” in Vulgaria.

The Baron and Baroness of Vulgaria from Chitty Chitty Bang BangThe Baron and Baroness profess their love for each other

Back in the frame story, Truly’s father hits on the idea of selling the candy whistles as dog sweets, and offers Potts a contract for the invention. The Potts fortune is made, and Potts and Truly can marry and live happily ever after.

The story-within-a-story was, to my mind, the weakest part of the movie. The Eastern European stereotypes were more than a little silly and boring, there was an unnecessarily nasty undercurrent of misogyny in that the Baron is constantly trying, and failing, to murder his wife for no good plot or character reason, and I’m really, really uncomfortable about the Child Catcher, a big-nosed bad guy who kidnaps children and takes them off to an unspoken but terrible fate. I’m also finding it a little difficult to imagine Benny Hill, a comedian best known for racy sketches about chasing pretty young women who are less than willing to cooperate, as a cuddly child-friendly character, but presumably the younger people in the audience won’t have this sort of contextualising detail.

Robert Helpmann as the Child Catcher
See what I mean? Scary, and arguably antisemitic

Another problem, to my mind, is that despite Chitty Chitty Bang Bang itself being the named star of the movie, featuring heavily on the poster and other promotional materials, and getting a long opening montage showing its original career as a racing car, it’s barely in the story. It’s over an hour before Potts finally gets around to building the thing, and, after two exciting flying and hoverboating sequences, it disappears for ninety per cent of the Vulgaria storyline. If, like me, you were expecting a story centred around a fantastic car, you’re going to be disappointed.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as a hovercraft
We do get a car-versus-boat naval battle though

On the more positive side, the music is absolutely delightful, with songs like the title track, “Truly Scrumptious”, and “Hushabye Mountain” likely to be long-lasting hits. They were composed by the Sherman Brothers of Mary Poppins fame, who clearly know their stuff. Potts’ machines were designed by British cartoonist and found-object sculptor Rowland Emett, and they are well integrated into the action: a sequence where Potts cooks sausage and eggs for his children using a variety of silly contraptions is worth the price of admission, as is a brief sequence with an apparently sentient vacuum cleaner.

There are plenty of opportunities for van Dyke to showcase his skills as a dancer, in particular one in which he pretends to be a live-size marionette in order to infiltrate the Baron’s castle. The Edwardian setting of the movie is in line with the current craze for a kind of fantasy-Edwardiana of straw hats and candy stripes. British comedy fans can enjoy watching out for cameos from the likes of Barbara Windsor, Arthur Mullard and Richard Wattis.

The "Toot Sweets" production number from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
The "Toot Sweets" production number, a candy factory fantasy to a catchy tune

However, at nearly two and a half hours, the movie is really far too long: there was a fifteen-minute intermission at the cinema where I saw it, which was just as well. I’m tempted to suggest that it should cut the Vulgaria storyline, but unfortunately that’s the only part of the movie with any real cinematic action, and without it you’d just be left with a cute but low-stakes love story about an inventor and an heiress. Three stars—most of them for the production, music and dancing.






[January 12, 1969] Taking French Leave: Playtime (a movie) and The Green Slime (a flick)


by Fiona Moore

Jacques Tati’s newest movie, first released in 1967 but only recently screened at the Institut Français in London, is a tremendous achievement, dealing with many of the same themes as his earlier movies but in a much subtler and cleverer way. Although the box office has apparently been disappointing, the film is gradually accumulating the critical acclaim it deserves as it makes its way around the world.
The main theme is similar to that of Tati’s earlier comedy Mon Oncle (My Uncle, 1958): the idea that technologically-focused modernity is a superficial, soul-destroying philosophy which is ultimately doomed to failure. Playtime, though, takes a more subtle and arguably less conservative approach.


Playtime movie poster

We find ourselves in a fantasy Paris which is nothing but glass, chrome and concrete office blocks: the famous landmarks of the city, such as the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, are only glimpsed in the reflections of windows. The theme is made clearer when we see a tourist bureau with posters advertising London, Stockholm, and Mexico, each with the same office building and a few superficial details (for instance Routemaster buses and Big Ben) to mark the supposed differences. We are in a futuristic fantasy world where every place is the same and the subtle, playful, unpredictable details have been erased. It isn’t an unhappy scenario: the streets are clean and no one is poor or sick. But the pleasure people take in it is superficial and vapid (a tourist exclaiming at a trade fair that “they even have American stuff!”), and they also don’t seem to know what they are missing.


The Eiffel Tower reflected in a window

The film opens in a building where the viewer is left for a long time with no idea as to its purpose: we see black and chrome sofas, glass frontage, small cubicles. An older couple converse in accented English; nuns pass by, as does a priest, and a nurse with a crying baby. Is it a hospital? A government office? Finally we see a man with suitcases and the nature of the building is revealed: it is an airport. Tati’s cinema persona Monsieur Hulot is changed, having shed his pipe and scarf and adopted a grey coat in place of his trademark brown macintosh, but a variety of other people wander around the story in M Hulot’s costume and are mistaken for him. We see office buildings full of filing cabinets which are revealed, when seen from overhead, to be cubicles; we see little dramas play out in an apartment building where all the walls are glass and face onto the street. At one point two groups of people in adjacent rooms watch the same television programme, completely unaware of this shared experience and unable to come together and commune over their enjoyment.


Apartment living: isolating and atomising?

Unlike the way in which Mon Oncle harked back to a nostalgic imagined past, however, Playtime sees the doom of this conformist, modernist approach as lying in the future. The glass-fronted modernity is fragile and superficial, and falls apart at the slightest pressure, and so can’t cope with the everyday fallibilities of humanity, whether M Hulot, who lopes and skips around an office building and a trade fair subtly creating chaos, or his female counterpart in the story, American tourist Barbara (played by Barbara Dennek), who is constantly getting separated from her tour, or even background characters like a group of glaziers whose window-fitting activities subtly become a dance routine, enjoyed by a crowd of Parisians watching them from the street.


M Hulot observing office work

The film’s message is encapsulated in a long, climactic sequence in a fancy restaurant whose superficial efficiency and organisation is a façade. We see a beautiful oasis of elegant food and décor, but when the backstage areas are revealed, we discover that the restaurant is still being built, that the waiters are swapping jackets to hide stains and damage, that the kitchen is chaos. The introduction of M Hulot breaks the boundary between front and backstage and sends the whole thing into a joyous spiral of anarchy: the glass door shatters, the ceiling decoration falls down, the decorous bossa-nova music turns into wild jazz. The lighting fixtures break. Random people wander in off the street. Chairs fall over. Waiters trip. A plastic sculpture of an airplane melts. A wealthy American businessman declares one section of the room his private bistro and invites tourists and workmen to eat and drink at his expense. A drunk is ejected and walks straight back in. The austere and ordered modernity is undermined from all sides.

The car carousel makes Paris playful again The car carousel makes Paris playful again

Afterwards, the patrons walk out into a transformed city, one which still includes the office blocks and grey concrete, but where the cars are now colourful, the buildings hung with bunting, and cheerful shops selling cheeses and scarves have replaced the trade fair. M Hulot buys Barbara a gift but, being unable to give it to her, delegates one of the Hulot impersonators to do it. Tati’s direction wittily turns a roundabout into a carousel, a car mechanic’s shop into a fairground ride. The message is not to destroy technological modernity, but to subvert it, and to find ways of making it joyful and playful. Five stars. Go and see it—if you don’t speak French don’t worry, most of the dialogue is in English and the physical comedy carries the action.



The Green Slime movie poster

From the sublime to the ridiculous! The other film I saw this week is the recently-released SF-horror The Green Slime, a Japanese production filmed in English with American and European actors. The plot involves a spaceman, Jack Rankin, sent up to a space station commanded by the man who has stolen his girlfriend, to lead a mission to destroy an asteroid which threatens Earth. In doing so, however, he and his crew accidentally bring back some of the titular slime which, when exposed to radiation, develops into alien monsters which must be fought while the two men and their love object reconcile their romantic interests.

I give this film more points than most reviewers because of the, possibly unintentional but definitely hilarious, Freudian message: a man’s jealousy over his ex-girlfriend’s new relationship causes him to unleash, through the medium of green slime, one-eyed tubular monsters onto the universe, and it’s up to him to bring them under control again. The modelwork is good and the characterisation unsubtle, giving the series the feel of what might happen if Gerry and Sylvia Anderson decided to work with live actors rather than puppets (as I’m told is soon to be the case), but without the budget of a Century 21 production. Definitely one to watch only when inebriated and in the right company, but very fun under those circumstances; I'm not sure if I was supposed to laugh all the way through it, but I did. One and a half stars.






[December 18, 1968] Sex, Drugs and Boris Karloff: Curse of the Crimson Altar


by Fiona Moore

Much as I enjoy the jollity of the festive season, I’m also firmly of the opinion that there is nothing better than a ghost story—or, failing that, a horror story—at Christmas. So I was quite delighted to learn my local cinema would be showing the latest British horror movie, Curse of the Crimson Altar.

Curse follows in the footsteps of this summer’s Witchfinder General in being a film where the horror is not supernatural but psychological, suggesting that this genre may be coming into fashion. Although the biggest creative obstacle Curse has to overcome is that someone behind the scenes, or possibly in the censor’s office, has meant that the actual catalyst for the horror remains subtextual throughout.

At the start of the movie, we get a quote from an unnamed “medical journal” about the influence of psychedelic drugs on the human brain: “drugs of this group can produce the most complex hallucinations and under their influence it is possible by hypnosis to induce the subject to perform actions he would not normally commit.” Thereafter, we get no reference to drugs at all, but it should be fairly clear to the viewer how we should interpret the proceedings.

The plot involves an antique dealer, Robert Manning (Mark Eden), going in search of his brother Peter, who has disappeared on an expedition to hunt for salable stock, sending Manning a single candlestick, a witchfinders’ bodkin, and a cryptic note on notepaper from a country estate, Craxted Lodge in the town of Greymarsh. Arriving at the estate, Manning finds Lord Morley (Christopher Lee) and his niece Eve (Virginia Wetherell) gearing up for a local Bonfire Night-type holiday, celebrating the anniversary of the burning of a local witch, Lavinia Morley (Barbara Steele), the Black Witch of Greymarsh. They claim never to have met Manning’s brother, but invite him to stay with them while he investigates. Manning begins suffering from strange erotic dreams about Lavinia Morley and sleepwalking episodes, and, with the help of a local historian and occult enthusiast, Professor Marsh (Boris Karloff), discovers he is descended from one of the people who sentenced Lavinia to death. Someone is out for revenge, but who, and how, and why?

Lascivious Lavinia as played by Barbara Steele
Lascivious Lavinia as played by Barbara Steele

The movie boasts a lot of familiar names behind and in front of the camera, being scripted by Henry Lincoln and Mervyn Haisman, creators of Doctor Who’s Great Intelligence and Yeti, and featuring Roger Avon, Michael Gough and scream-queen Barbara Steele in supporting roles. Gough in particular does a great turn as a manservant who is either under the influence of malign spirits, or else doped to the eyeballs, at all times. The casting of Lee and Karloff, both seasoned horror veterans who usually play villains but have turned their hand to more benign roles, keeps the suspense going as to who is behind the sinister events, and there's a cute nod to Karloff's role when Manning remarks that he feels “like Boris Karloff might pop up at any moment” shortly before, in fact, he does.

Michael Gough as a zombie manservant.
Michael Gough as a zombie manservant.

In many ways the story feels a little like an episode of The Prisoner or The Avengers, involving as it does a villain who is using psychedelic drugs and mind games to wear down an unsuspecting victim. The fact that the script can’t directly say that drugs are involved also helps to make the events more ambiguous, suggesting for most of the movie that Manning might really be haunted by the vengeful spirit of Lavinia Morley. The imagery of the dream sequences is very much drawn from British folk culture, with sinister figures in animal masks and references to the witch-hunts of the 17th century.

Unfortunately, the story is also a little uneven, with a long prurient episode featuring Eve having a debauched party with her young artist friends apparently going nowhere; presumably the intention was to suggest that Eve might be behind, or at least complicit in, the implicitly drug-fueled activities which follow, but it mostly seems to be included to cater to the crowd of people who like to tut about modern youth going wild while secretly enjoying the orgy scenes. Similarly I found the dream sequences more laughable than erotic, with supposed demons and witches walking around clad in strips of imitation leatherette. There are also some gaps in the narrative, which I won’t detail in order not to give away the denouement, and the ending felt rather rushed to me.

Another tedious sex party, ho hum. Another tedious sex party, ho hum.

All in all, I’d say this is a solid if uneven horror story that keeps the viewer guessing for a long time, and suggests that the non-supernatural horror based in British folk mythology is here to stay.

Three and a half stars.


I’d also like to devote a little time to the B feature on the night I saw Curse of the Crimson Altar, a short and cheap SF-horror from 1964 entitled The Earth Dies Screaming, directed by the supremely talented Terence Fisher. The scenario is straight out of John Wyndham: a test pilot, returning from a high altitude flight, discovers that almost everyone else on Earth has been killed—apparently through some kind of gas attack, as the few survivors are people who, for one reason or another, were not breathing the atmosphere at that point. Less Wyndham-esque are the eerie, silent robots now stalking around the deserted Earth, who bear such a strong resemblance to Cybermen that one wonders if it is simply coincidence or if Doctor Who’s design team had been at the movies before working on “The Tenth Planet”. The robots also have the ability to turn anyone they shoot into grey-eyed, mindless creatures who do their bidding.

See what I mean? That's a Cyberman, that is.
See what I mean? That's a Cyberman, that is.

Our hero joins a band of survivors seemingly calculated to provide optimum drama (society woman; hedonistic good-time couple; sinister man in a mac; teddy-boy mistrustful of anyone over 30 and his heavily pregnant young wife) and collectively they attempt to figure out how to survive and to stop the robots, despite the conflicting agendas in the group.

While suffering a little from uneven pacing and characterisation (the teddy boy, for instance, suddenly overcomes his suspicions of the establishment for no reason other than plot convenience), this is a pleasingly eerie 62 minutes. I quite like the sub-genre of apocalypse stories that just focus on a small group of people trying to cope with their changed circumstances, and the parallels with the aftermath of a nuclear war are clear without being didactic.

Three stars.





[September 28, 1968] Intelligence Ain't All It's Cracked Up to Be: Charly


by Jason Sacks

So far, 1968 has been an exemplary year for science fiction films. Filmgoers have had a chance to watch psychedelic, universe-spanning science fiction with 2001: A Space Odyssey and adventure science fiction with Planet of the Apes and buxom science fiction with Barbarella. And now we have down-to-earth, humanistic – and surreal – science fiction with the new film Charly.

Cliff Robertson stars in the new film version of the already-classic Daniel Keyes novel, which Victoria Lucas gave five stars to back in ’66. And while this film isn’t nearly as good as the novel, Charly still is a clever movie, somehow both a real change-of-pace and a film very much of its moment.

(If you’re confused by that contradiction, dear reader, stick around and I’ll explain myself to you.)

Picture 1 of 1

As we come to know him, Charlie Gordon (as the book names him; the movie calls our lead character Charly) is a man with the mind of a small child. He’s mentally impaired, with a low IQ, a childlike take on the world, and a temper to match his frustrations. When Charly is offered the opportunity to become the subject of an experiment to give him super-intelligence, he jumps at the chance. But Charly soon discovers how brilliance and happiness don’t always go hand in hand, and his new intelligence just makes him feel deep angst.

Victoria loved the book for its unique epistemological structure and the way writer Keyes gives the reader deeper insights into Charly’s perceptions of the events which happen to him. That subjective nature gave the book a certain amount of pathos which makes the novel embed itself into readers' minds.

Of course, no film can simulate the effect of a series of journal entries, so we are forced to get by with the events which play out on the screen.

Robertson in this film feels like Fredric March starring in a kind of odd version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In this case dumb Charly is a kind of monstrous identity. Not because of his low IQ, but more because dumb Charly acts weirdly. He feels like someone we don’t quite comprehend because he’s so different from most of us.

Robertson method-acts and method-acts all throughout this film, seeming to inhabit Charly’s body and mind. When he has a low IQ, he seems twitchy and odd, a man distorted and damaged by his impairment. It’s a grand, actorly performance, a transformation on the screen, but somehow I just never connected to Charly's humanity. It feels a bit much. For instance, Charly acts kind of jolly when his coworkers at a bakery play a nasty prank on him, and Charly's penmanship feels a bit like gilding the rose on his disabilities.

The prank-playing bakery coworkers

There are some quite moving scenes, though. One which really stands out happens when Charly attends a class with other severely disabled people. He's the only adult in a room full of children with Down's Syndrome and other disorders. The kids are filmed realistically and respectfully while Charly comes across as a real freak. This wonderful sequence gives the character some real pathos, an undercurrent of sadness which helps to explain his transformation.

Charly playing with kids

Robertson delivers the kind of performance which feels like it’s specifically planned to garner its actor an Oscar nomination. There’s nothing really wrong with aiming for a precious golden statuette, but his performance does seem a bit calculated somehow. I felt like Robertson seemed too smart for the dumb Charly, planned out rather than spontaneous, considered rather than active in his scenes.

The best parts of this film are when Charly is transitioning to becoming smart. He hides out from people, seems to be really beginning to think through his experience, and we can actually see signs of emerging intelligence in these scenes.

As you might imagine, this sequence is where Robertson's calculated performance shines. Here we see the intelligence at work and feel we are watching a real person as Charly figures out how to live in his new experiences.

And then the movie takes a decided turn for the weird when Charly actually does become smart. At first he seems happy to be able to both lead seminars and be the lead subject them. His newfound genius brings intellectual intelligence but not emotional maturity nor insights into the world around him. Charly learns he may have actually been happier when he was innocent about everything which happened around him.

Charly begins to become paranoid, and his paranoia plays out in a series of increasing surreal sequences in which he imagines himself leading a motorcycle gang, endlessly professing love for his psychologist Alice (well played by Claire Bloom), and some oddly brilliant split-screen effects.

Charly even includes an undercurrent of paranoia in Charly's actions, as if he's being watched as part of a government conspiracy. Of course, he may actually be surveilled but we only see the paranoia from Charly's viewpoint, never from an objective viewpoint which might actually provide context for Charly's actions.

We even get a double-exposure shot in which director Ralph Nelson shows Charly running away from his old self, a very over-the-top bit which unfortunately made me laugh. This surrealism is just a bit too much for the narrative structure Nelson has set up in the first half and the movie threatens at times to teeter and  fall under the weight of his ambitions.

I do have to mention the excellent soundtrack by Ravi Shankar. The music in this film feels both exotic and comfortable, a fascinating mix of west and east which helps to elevate this film, and certainly gives the soundtrack a very contemporary feel.

Charly is a fairly conventional film in its first half and a determinedly surreal film in its second half.  Nelson seems up to the task in the first half but pretty much falls on his face in the second. It's somewhat worth watching for Cliff Robertson's interesting performance. I think his performance will be discussed come Oscar season. And though I only kind of liked this movie, it would be fun to see an Oscar won by a lead actor in a science fiction movie.

Three stars.






[August 30, 1968] TV or Not TV, That is The Question (They Saved Hitler's Brain and Mars Needs Women)


by Victoria Silverwolf

Big Screen, Small Screen, and Somewhere Between

Not all movies show up in theaters. Movies made for television began a few years ago, at least here in the USA, with a thriller called See How They Run. There have been quite a few since then.

A similar phenomenon is the fact that theatrical movies are frequently altered for television. Of course, films are often cut for broadcast, either to reduce the running time or to remove material deemed inappropriate for the tender sensibilities of American viewers.

But did you know that new footage is sometimes added to movies before they show up on TV? That's because they're too short to fill up the time slot allotted to them.

An example is Roger Corman's cheap little monster movie The Wasp Woman. In theaters, it ran just over an hour. On television, new scenes increased the length by about ten minutes.

Wasting time in front of the TV screen recently, I came across such an elongated theatrical film, as well as one made for television only. Let's take a look at both.

They Saved Hitler's Brain

This thing began life in 1963 under the a much less laughable title.


Anybody who went to see this movie pushed the panic button.

The Madmen of Mandoras (somehow they lost the word The on the poster) was a low budget flick that lasted about an hour (although it probably seemed a lot longer than that if you were stuck watching it.)


Dramatic lettering, dramatic clouds.

New stuff was added to the beginning of the film to make it long enough to show up on TV. Unlike The Wasp Woman, they gave it a new title.


Apparently, the American television audience needs everything spelled out for them.

That gives away the movie's only plot twist, but at least it's truth in advertising.

Let's get the new stuff out of the way. We begin with a scientist carrying some important papers out of a lab.


Secure scientific facility or local high school?

The guy is almost immediately killed when his car blows up.


Exploding car number one.

The fellow was carrying the formula for an antidote to a deadly gas. Somebody doesn't want that information to get out.


Big news!

This event draws the attention of some kind of intelligence agency. The boss (who turns out to be working with the bad guys, although that doesn't really have much to do with the plot) assigns a couple of operatives to investigate the incident.


Secret agents or college students?

The man's long hair and mustache and the woman's short skirt provide evidence that we're not in 1963. Don't get too attached to these characters, because pretty soon the woman is shot dead and the man is killed another way.


Exploding car number two.

At this point, we go back to the original movie. After demonstrating the deadly power of the gas by showing a film of an elephant lying down, the scientist who knows the antidote for the stuff and his young beatnik daughter are kidnapped.


It's quite obviously just taking a nap.

Our nominal hero is the husband of the scientist's older daughter. Some guy reveals enough information to the married couple to send them off to the fictional Latin American nation of Mandoras (you know, the place where they have madmen) before getting shot dead. The protagonists deal with the problem of his corpse by stuffing it in a phone booth.


"When in Mandoras, stay at the luxurious Mandoras Hotel."

Another guy shows up and provides exposition. It seems that a team of Nazi doctors worked to preserve the Führer for future use at the end of the war. (In other words, They Saved Hitler's Brain.)


"We must save Charlie Chaplin's life!"

The two lovebirds act like ordinary tourists despite this remarkable bit of information. They happen to run across the younger daughter in a local nightclub. The kidnappers gave her some money and told her to have a good time, as long as she didn't contact anybody at home. She seems perfectly fine with this arrangement, despite the fact that her father is still in the hands of the bad guys.


Little sister doing the Twist, proof that we're in 1963.

Since we're in a nightclub, we have to kill time with a dance act. After all, we have a whole hour of movie to fill.


A little something for the leg men in the audience.

Somehow or other our heroes wind up in the secret headquarters of the Madmen of Mandoras. Dad is being tortured with bright lights and loud noises in an attempt to get him to reveal the secret of the antidote. Like a lot of other things in the film, this doesn't make much sense, since the bad guys just want to stop the antidote from being used.


"Let me out of this movie! I can't stand it any more!"

Then we get our big shock scene, which might have been surprising if the title didn't give it away.


As an example of the film's close attention to detail, note that the swastika is backwards.

Obviously the bad guys are familiar with The Brain That Wouldn't Die.


A jarring scene (sorry.)

Adolph isn't very expressive throughout the movie, but once in a while he shows some emotion.


"I am amused by your consternation."

After a lot of running around, the bad guys are defeated.


Car explosion number three.

So much for the Fourth Reich.


Adolph turns into a wax dummy when he burns up.

A dreary little spy movie, notable only for its silly premise.

One star.

Mars Needs Women

Director Larry Buchanan made some very cheap films during the past few years. Starting last year, he's been responsible for extremely low budget color remakes — uncredited, of course — of old black-and-white science fiction and horror films. These are intended to be sold directly to television. Zontar, the Thing From Venus, for example, is obviously based on Roger Corman's 1956 flick It Conquered the World.

His latest effort in this vein is, in my opinion, very loosely inspired by the beach movie Pajama Party (which doesn't actually take place on the beach, but you know what I mean.)

Don't believe me? I don't blame you, but I'll provide some evidence in a bit. Let's get started.


Even the titles are cheap.

We start with a few scenes of women suddenly disappearing, whether they're playing tennis, at a restaurant, or taking a shower. Don't pay any attention to this, as it never comes up again.

The plot really starts at a government facility.


Does NASA really need a lot of decoding?

They get a message from outer space that says — you guessed it — Mars Need Women. Thanks for reminding me what movie I'm watching!

A Martian appears from nowhere, without even the shimmering effect seen on Star Trek. His name is Dop, and he's played by Tommy Kirk, star of some Disney movies. He also played a Martian named Go Go in — a-ha! — Pajama Party. Coincidence? I think not.


"Make fun of my name and I'll disintegrate you."

Dop explains that some kind of problem with the Martian Y chromosome has resulted in men outnumbering women by one hundred to one. (That's a lot worse than Five to Twelve.)

The Martians would like to have five Earth women volunteer to journey to the red planet to solve the problem. (I'm not a geneticist or a mathematician, but that seems like an awfully small number to repopulate a whole planet.)

No dice, so we get some scenes of military types communicating on the radio.


This speaker gets so much screen time it's practically a guest star.

There's also a bunch of stock footage of planes flying around.


"I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth . . ."

This accomplishes nothing. The Martians decide to land on Earth and grab five women themselves. (Like I said, forget about their ability to just make women vanish.)


The Martian spaceship, not to be confused with the Enterprise.

Five Martians hide out in an abandoned ice factory and make plans.


"We will conquer these puny Earthlings with the advanced technology of flashlights and headphones."

First they have to disguise themselves as Earthlings. This requires some criminal activity. A gas station supplies cash and a map of the city. (I would have thought the Martians would be advanced enough to find their way around, but I guess not.)


"I sure hope this place has a men's room."

Next is borrowing a car. So much for using their power of teleportation for getting from point A to point B.


"Oh, cool, it's got AM/FM radio."

Then they need some clothes. This leads to a scene in which they reveal that Martians gave up wearing ties fifty years ago.


"Would this be too dressy for a kidnapping?"

Dop and one of his buddies spot an announcement for a lecture by a brilliant scientist. We're told that her book Space Genetics won a Pulitzer Prize.


A lecture on sex in space? Must be a science fiction convention.

Doctor Marjorie Bolen is played by Yvonne Craig, best known for playing Batgirl on the popular Batman TV show. So the audience can tell she's a genius, she sometimes wears spectacles.


"Why Doctor Bolen, you're beautiful without your glasses!"

Pretty soon Dop and Bolen (sounds like a law firm) are on a date at a local planetarium. Guess what's on display.


Irony!

Meanwhile, the other Martians stalk their intended targets. The first is an exotic dancer.


A guy far away from home? Of course he goes to a strip club!

Next is an airline stewardess.


"Coffee, tea, or me?" (Yeah, I stole that from the title of a recent book. Sue me.)

Third is a homecoming queen.


"Two, Four, Six, Eight, Who Will We Repopulate?"

Last is a painter. That doesn't quite fit with the other three, who are typical male fantasies of desirable women, but I guess they needed some variety.


"I call this one Portrait of the Artist as an Impending Victim of Abduction."

Naturally, the disappearances are big news.


"Oh, look what's showing on TV tonight."

The authorities seem powerless to stop them.


"Martians, Shmartians, let's see what Little Orphan Annie is up to."

Suffice to say that romance blooms between Dop and Bolen, even though we're told Martians gave up love long before they gave up ties. The kidnapped women are rescued and the Martians go home, apparently to face the extinction of their species.


"Let's see, Mrs. Marjorie Dop. Nah, it would never work."

A very silly film indeed.

One star.

Surely there's something better on television than these two losers.


Maybe not.






</small

[August 22, 1968] Vive de Gaul– Asterix the Gaul Movie


by Fiona Moore

At an event at the Institut Français in London recently, I was able to see the newly-translated animated film Asterix the Gaul (made in 1967, but only released in English this year). While it’s not a great adaptation, it is nice to see a series that’s only growing in popularity in the French-speaking world getting wider exposure.

Asterix the Gaul movie poster
Asterix the Gaul movie poster

In case you’ve missed the Asterix phenomenon, some background. Asterix le Gaulois, or Asterix the Gaul, is a Franco-Belgian comic from the writing and drawing team of Goscinny and Uderzo, originally serialised in 1959, with the first album coming out in 1961. Since then it’s only become more and more popular, with the ninth album, Asterix et les Normands (Asterix and the Normans) reaching 1.2 million sales in its first two days of release earlier this year.

On the face of it, Asterix might seem an unlikely hit. The story is a humourous historical fantasy, starting with a “what if…” premise to the effect that, after Caesar conquered Gaul and, as any schoolchild studying Latin knows, divided it into three parts, a small Gaulish village remained unconquered, due to their druid having invented a magic potion that gives the drinker super-strength. Our protagonist, Asterix, is a diminutive but sharp-witted warrior; his best pal is Obelix, a giant who has permanent super-strength due to having fallen in a vat of magic potion as a baby. Together, they have adventures traveling around Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, resisting Romans and meeting interesting, if frequently ethnically stereotyped, people.

Asterix' pal Obelix is a menhir salesman. He's barely in this story.
Asterix' pal Obelix is a menhir salesman. He's barely in this story.

However, if you have a chance to read the albums, you can see the appeal. The puns are thick, heavy and groanworthy (particularly as regards the character names: the Gauls all have names ending in -ix, meaning we get people called Assurancetourix and Abracourix, and the Romans in -us, giving us Humerus and Fleurdelotus), and the anachronism humour nonstop. Additionally Goscinny and Uderzo have a lot of affectionate fun with projecting stereotypes of modern European nations back onto their Roman past equivalents. The story of plucky, likeable people resisting an oppressor is one with relevance to all political stripes. The Romans are always comically stupid and the violence cartoonish, keeping the tone from getting too heavy for children.

Asterix and Panoramix resisting Roman oppression
Asterix and Panoramix resisting Roman oppression

The series has appeared in English translation twice before now, both times in English children’s comics (Valiant and Ranger) and on neither occasion faithful, transporting the action to ancient Britain in the apparent belief that British audiences would be incapable of sympathising with French characters. However, word at the Institut is that an approved translation by Anthea Bell is currently in production and should be released next year.

Our hero was described in one English translation as an "ancient Brit with bags of grit." No, really.
Our hero was described in one English translation as an "ancient Brit with bags of grit." No, really.

The film Asterix the Gaul is a 70-minute animation, apparently originally planned as a telemovie but instead winding up in cinematic release. The visuals are, for the most part, decently done, and it has a jaunty theme tune by Gerard Calvi. The English voice cast are for the most part adopting American accents (the main exceptions being Stopthemusix the Bard and Julius Caesar, who are both using British received pronunciation), which seems an odd decision as French comics popular in other markets, such as Tintin, don’t generally do well in the American sphere, and it might be better to try and sell to the wider English-speaking world.

The plot more or less follows that of the comic album Asterix le Gaulois, the first adventure in the series. Roman centurion Phonus Balonus (Caius Bonus in the original comic), wanting to know the secret of the Gauls’ super-strength, sends a spy into the village disguised as a Gaul. Upon learning that the secret is the potion brewed by druid Panoramix, the Romans kidnap him, with Phonus Balonus planning to use his strengthened legions to become Emperor. Asterix sneaks into their camp with a view to rescuing Panoramix, but, on finding his friend in good spirits and having fun winding up the Romans, Asterix surrenders and joins him, with the pair living a luxurious life at the Romans’ expense. Finally Panoramix pretends to give in, but in fact brews a potion which makes the drinkers’ hair and beards grow uncontrollably. Realising that they can’t keep the gag going indefinitely, Panoramix pretends to brew an antidote, while also secretly furnishing Asterix with a small amount of magic potion. When the pair make their escape, they run into Caesar himself, who has come to investigate the mysterious goings-on in person.

Julius Caesar does not approve of Panoramix' beard-growing potion.
Julius Caesar does not approve of Panoramix's beard-growing potion.

The decision to adapt the first book in the series, and without the input of the creators, is arguably the film’s biggest problem. A lot of the running gags and characters which have contributed to the series’ appeal, such as Obelix’s tiny dog Idéfix and the ongoing feud between fishmonger Ordraflfabétix and blacksmith Cétautomatix, were worked out in later volumes, and the story feels thin without them. Although Asterix has never exactly been known for its female characters (there are exactly two women regulars, both stereotypes and only one having an actual name), in the film the village seems to be a homosexual commune, with no women or children at all. Goscinny and Uderzo were reportedly very unhappy with this movie, and it’s a shame they weren’t involved, as they could have revised their earlier story to include this later material.

The translation is generally serviceable. The punning names are retained and even arguably improved, with the bard Assurancetourix becoming Stopthemusix and Abraracourcix the chief becoming Tonabrix. The narration has a few heavy-handed gags like “Caesar had a lot of Gaul,” and there are more subtle jokes for those who remember their classics, like Phonus Balonus proposing to his second-in-command Marcus Sourpus that they form a triumvirate (not knowing that a triumvirate is, by definition, made up of three men). There’s a long and rather unfunny sequence with a singing ox-cart driver that feels like it’s just in to fill time, but there is also a blink-and-you-miss-it moment where Panoramix appears to be gathering marijuana in the woods.

That's some suspicious-looking smoke. Panoramix.
That's some suspicious-looking smoke. Panoramix.

All in all, while it’s not the best introduction to the series, it gives English-speaking audiences a general flavour. It’s good to see a cartoon series where the main character lives by his wits more than his fists, and where bullies are shown as hapless incompetents who can be defeated by ridicule. Reportedly a new film is in production, based on Asterix et Cleopatre (Asterix and Cleopatra), with the creators’ full involvement, and I look forward to seeing if it is an improvement.

Two and a half stars.





[July 28, 1968] Once Upon A Time, Or Maybe Twice… (Yellow Submarine)


By Jessica Holmes

Yellow Submarine is a weird film. Directed by George Dunning and produced by Al Brodax and King Features, the latest Beatles movie is a bit different from the previous live-action offerings. For one, it’s animated, and for two… the Beatles are barely even in it. I mean, they’re in it as characters, and in person in a very brief cameo at the end, but the four themselves don’t actually voice their animated counterparts. I’m sure they’re busy smoking whatever the hell made them come up with Revolution No. 9. But that’s not the weird bit.

The weird bit is the content of this film.

Think ‘Alice In Wonderland’ if Alice sampled a rather more special kind of mushroom.

It's All In The Mind, Y'Know

Strip back all the surrealism and Yellow Submarine is a pretty straightforward adventure. The idyllic realm of Pepperland comes under attack from an army of Blue Meanies, prompting one of the inhabitants, Old Fred, to go and find help. He goes off, recruits the Beatles, then they journey back together through various locales so they can defeat the Blue Meanies through the power of music. Cue awkward live-action cameo, roll credits.

But of course, we’re not really watching this for the plot, are we?

Yellow Submarine is like a dream. As such, it operates on dream logic. Old Fred (Lance Percival) stalks a depressed Ringo (Paul Angelis) through the streets of Liverpool in a flying submarine. Ringo’s house is bigger on the inside, and has doors that open onto many different locations. John Lennon (John Clive) is Frankenstein’s Monster. George Harrison (also Paul Angelis) can manipulate reality with his mind. Paul (Geoff Hughes)… Paul’s actually pretty normal.

Their journeys take them to the Sea of Time, where they age backwards, forwards, and back again, then to the Sea of Science, where… nothing happens. Really, nothing. There’s a decent tune in this section (‘Only A Northern Song’) but it doesn’t even have any much video to go with it. It’s just soundwaves accompanied by pictures of the group. It’s an out of place sequence in a film of out of place sequences.

The weirdness immediately starts back up as the submarine sails into the Sea of Monsters, where they encounter creatures that Hieronymous Bosch would be proud of. There’s the purple elephant thing which is so ugly they bully it until it cries. There’s a pair of Kinky Boots. There’s some stuff I have no name for, and creepiest of all, a vacuum monster that goes around sucking up all the other creatures.

Ringo accidentally ejects himself from the submarine, and the others have to rescue him by deploying the submarine’s cavalry company. There’s a button for everything. Unfortunately for them, the vacuum monster immediately slurps them up, before slurping up all the other monsters, then the actual backdrop of the film, and finally itself, leaving the submarine stranded in an endless white void. They are…nowhere.

But they aren’t alone. Enter Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D. (Dick Emery) a peculiar little nowhere man who speaks entirely in rhyme. He offers them a hand with their engine, and in return,Ringo, feeling sorry for the little guy’s loneliness, invites him to join them aboard the submarine.

They don’t get far before breaking down again in the foothills of the headlands, and the submarine (with Old Fred still aboard) flies off without them when they get out to fix it. So they might as well squeeze a song in. The ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ sequence isn’t exactly plot heavy (it’s mostly just rotoscoped imagery of dancing girls) and really doesn’t have a thing to do with what’s going on, but it’s undeniably gorgeous to look at.

From there the group follows a trail of pepper to the Sea of Holes, an infinite white void filled with black holes. Three dimensional space works a little differently here. It’s as the laws of physics had been written by M.C. Escher.

Jeremy gets himself captured by a Blue Meanie, and the group eventually find a hole to the Sea of Green, and find themselves at last in Pepperland… which is decidedly lacking in green of late.

The Blue Meanies hate colour, and music, and life itself, so they’ve taken it upon themselves to cure Pepperland of these ailments.

The Beatles revive the mayor of Pepperland with a snippet of song, restoring him to life and colour, and reunite with the submarine and Old Fred. The old mayor comments that the Beatles bear an uncanny resemblance to Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and theorises that if they were to disguise themselves, they might rally the people to rebel against the Meanies.

And cue the music! I think you can guess what song they start with. The Meanies hate it, of course, but the tune brings life back to Pepperland. The group even manage to find and revive the real Lonely Hearts Club Band, teaming up with them to take the fight to the meanies. Oh, and Ringo rescues Jeremy.

Faced with the combined power of the Beatles and the Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Meanies turn and flee, despite their Chief’s exhortations. Jeremy transforms the Chief Meanie with the power of rhymes, and John extends the hand of friendship to the band’s defeated foes. The Meanies accept, and everyone joins in for a final dance party. All’s well that ends well, and here come the end credits.

But first, we must indulge the real Beatles in a clumsy cameo. The absolute flurry of puns and wordplay that are present in practically every line of Yellow Submarine are no less present here, and no less painful. With newer and bluer Meanies being spotted in the vicinity of the theatre, the Beatles sing us out.

Not Quite Right

So, sounds like a cheerful, colourful, fun little romp, right? Wrong. This film is unsettling.

And it starts barely a couple of minutes in with the arrival of the Blue Meanies.

Good grief, the Blue Meanies.

It’s not just their concept that’s creepy. Sure, sure, a villain that hates everything good and nice and is relentlessly negative. We’ve seen all that. But they are deeply unnerving to look at with their too-wide yellow grins. The Chief Meanie (also Paul Angelis…poor man, give his vocal cords a break!) is by far the creepiest. I have to give a nod to Angelis and his vocal talents for creating such a nightmare. He goes from a sickly sweet sing-song tone to irate shrieking at the drop of a hat. It gets my skin crawling.

As if the Chief Meanie wasn’t bad enough on his own, there’s his Dreadful Flying Glove to think about. It’s…well, it’s a glove. A giant, angry-looking, sentient glove that chases people across Pepperland. Sounds ridiculous? Sure. But it's a rather dreadful looking thing.

Outside of Pepperland, the seas offer plenty of discomforts. There’s obviously the Sea of Monsters with its various grotesques, but I found ‘nowhere’ to be quite creepy too. Just the idea of being alone in an infinite white void with nothing but my own thoughts for company… it gives me the shivers. I am perhaps just projecting, but I would hazard a guess that a fair few people share my feelings.

You’re not even safe from the surreal and uncanny on dry land, as Liverpool is no less peculiar. There’s an art shift in the Liverpool sequence, where the people are not drawn, but composited in from highly processed photographs and film stock. The colours are minimal, and most living things are completely static. Those that are not static are trapped in short loops of actions as the submarine passes them by. We even see someone perched on the ledge of the uppermost window of a tall building, as if about to leap. Towards the end of the sequence, there are hundreds of people on rooftops. All this, to the tune of ‘Eleanor Rigby’. It’s painting a depressing picture of the home-town of the Beatles, to say the least.

Then you’ve got Ringo’s house, and I do not like that place. He keeps a Monster around, sure, and that’s a bit off-putting, but there’s something more subtle about the place that unnerves me a lot more. It does not feel like a place where people belong. There’s a long hallway with dozens of identical doors, each opening onto a different locale entirely—even onto oncoming trains. It’s vast, and quiet, and you could get lost for hours or even days, and I don’t think anybody would be coming to find you. It’s that sort of place. There’s a palpable absence of humanity.

I searched around for the right word to describe what this film actually made me feel. ‘Unsettled’ feels too vague. It just means that I feel different from my normal emotional state. ‘Scared’ is over the top. It’s not scary. And ‘creeped out’ is too simple. It’s not all creepy. Some parts are beautiful. I think my response ultimately comes down to the atmosphere of the film. And that atmosphere is one of loneliness.

Ah, Look At All The Lonely People

There is something about this film that positively oozes an atmosphere of isolation and loneliness. Even in colourful Pepperland at the start of the film, though there are crowds of people, they’re almost entirely static and lifeless. The Mayor is at least animated enough to play the violin, but even then he’s more interested in that than in fending off the Blue Meanies or trying to escape from them. There’s precious little humanity to be found here. I think something was wrong with Pepperland long before the Blue Meanies ever showed up.

Of course, once they do, what little semblance of life there is soon goes away.

The Liverpool section, as with all the musical sections of the film, is essentially a music video for the song ‘Eleanor Rigby’, and it’s as lonely and depressing an image of the city as I have ever seen. That’s the thing with big cities—everyone lives on top of one another, but you don’t really know each other, and so you even feel alone in a crowd of people who all feel exactly the same way. ‘Look at all the lonely people’, indeed.

Ringo even says so himself.

Liverpool can be a lonely place on a Saturday night, and this is only Thursday morning.

And he would know a thing or two about loneliness, living in his cavernous house, under the same roof as his bandmates and yet with the four of them isolated from one another.

Starting to notice a pattern?

In the Sea of Monsters, the vacuum monster eventually finds itself completely alone. And so it consumes its own body. In Nowhere, Jeremy has lived his whole life by himself. Though he seems initially content with his way of life, when the Beatles are about to leave him behind, he breaks down sobbing. He’s utterly pitiful, and utterly alone.

Everyone in this film… is lonely. Scratch the surface of the colourful surrealism and catchy tunes and you’ll find a deeply melancholy undercurrent to the whole thing.

How could it fail to rub off on the audience?

Final Thoughts

Heinz Edelmann’s art direction is stunning. The extraordinary psychedelic presentation is really the key to making this film work. It’s bright, beautiful, and occasionally frightening. There’s bold, bright pop art style elements (think Warhol), but also grotesque creatures that would fit well within the pages of a medieval bestiary, or perhaps in a Dali. I’m sure the unique visual style will make this a hit with anyone with an appreciation for psychedelic art—or psychoactive substances.

Music-wise, what can I say? It’s the Beatles. If you like the Beatles (which I do), you’ll like the music. There’s a nice selection of tracks from their previous albums, and also a couple of new songs. I say new, but I’m pretty sure they’re unused tracks from previous albums. The B-sides’ B-side. Still, even if ‘All Together Now’ is not their strongest offering, it’s definitely catchy.

The band’s music might be what people are coming to this film to hear, but let’s not forget the rest of the soundtrack. ‘Fifth Beatle’ George Martin’s score is lush and romantic, tying the film together with dreamy orchestral interludes.

Finally, here’s a miscellany of thoughts about Yellow Submarine I had that don’t really relate to anything else:

The live action bit at the end is really weird. And I don’t mean surrealist weird, I mean ‘deeply awkward and filled me with a sense of vicarious embarrassment’ weird. It’s probably there to fulfill contractual obligations, but they could have at least tried to act less awkward than a group of unprepared teenagers giving a school presentation. I suppose it was at least appreciated by those people who lose their minds at the very sight of the Beatles.

As for the animated version of the group, I thought the voice actors did a very good impression of them. It’s just a shame that they all sounded bored out of their skulls throughout the whole film.

You’d have thought the jokes might have coaxed some life out of them. There’s enough of them. A veritable smorgasbord of agonisingly painful wordplay. Particularly excruciating highlights include:

“I can’t help it. I’m a born lever-puller.”

And:

“Are you blueish? You don’t look blueish.”

Oh, and of course the Rimsky-Korsakov/Guy Lombardo joke which took me far too much effort to understand, and when I did, it still wasn’t actually funny.

I could go on, but I shan’t. I'm not a cruel woman.

Lousy jokes aside, this is a movie I’m glad to have seen. I wasn’t sure if I liked it at first, but once I stopped trying to make sense of things and just went along for the ride, my appreciation of the film went right up.

This strange, beautiful film will surely be a hit with all the lonely people. Sure, it’s often melancholy and alienating. But it also offers hope.

In the end, how do the Beatles win? Not with combat prowess, but good old peace, love and rock n’ roll. Even the Blue Meanies benefit from hearing the band’s message. They just needed to abandon their relentless negativity and accept what was freely offered. Thanks to the Beatles, Pepperland is livelier than ever.

To defeat the forces of misery and loneliness… all you need is love.

(Four stars out of five)




[July 26, 1968] A lost pair of hours… (The Lost Continent)


by Joe Reid

The Lost Continent is a movie that leaves me feeling unrewarded for the investment of my time towards it.  The premise of the movie is interesting, that being that there is a place on Earth that is so dangerous to mankind that no people could survive there.  The thought of seeing brave heroes struggle against the odds and monsters of all types to fight for a noble cause, sounds like it might be a good time.

This is where our expectations disappoint us.  Sure, the monsters looked like papier-mâché floats on tracks, but I'm a cinematic veteran.  I can overlook such minor issues.  No, there are three things that would have changed my opinion on this movie, had they been different, three P’s actually.  They are, People, Placement, and Purpose.  Had just two of those P’s been different, we could have had an endearing movie.  Had just one P been different, I would have considered my time spent justified.


– A group of good looking bad people.

Starting off with the people.  The anchor to any story is character based.  The characters in this story are all awful people.  There is not one good person among them.  The movie starts off showing an event that occurs at the very end, then it begins in earnest with the introduction of all the characters for the movie’s proper beginning.  It’s set on a ship setting off on a voyage on a dark and stormy night.  We met the captain and crew and several of the passengers.  They are smugglers, embezzlers, thieves, bullies, drunkards, and gamblers.  Among this lot I couldn’t find one decent person who might shine as the hero of the story.  Hence, I was left with no one person to root for.  It might have been acceptable if some characters began reprehensible and later had a change of heart, but that was not the tenor of this cast, where most start as bad people, only to later in the story transform into a slightly different ilk of bad.


– Someone please help this man!


– No thanks. We’ll just watch him die

So, if we start off with bad people, what could be worse?  The answer to that is bad people in bad places and the lost continent is a bad place.  As our band of miscreants arrive in the bad place we find that the vegetation and wildlife are very intent on killing humans.  Just note, the "placement" that I referring to isn't just the setting.  What I allude more to is the stationary placement that all of these bad folks adhere to when other are being attacked by monsters and being killed.  Whereas a hero might step and try to fight off monsters, our characters stand back and watch, rooted in place.  They don’t care enough about other bad people to risk life and limb to help them.


– bad place


– more bad people.

Lastly we come to the topic of Purpose.  As our band of malcontents make shore in the bad place they come to learn of the true monsters that exist in the lost continent. When they are revealed, our “heroes” decide to engage in an war with them.  The question is, why?  The purpose that our characters fulfill in the story is never clear.  It is a case of bad people in a bad place doing things for no reason.  Had any of the three listed factors been different, we would have had a different movie.  A more enjoyable movie.  Instead, we are left with a feeling of emptiness as the Lost Continent amounts to a bunch of lost time.

2 stars.






[July 24, 1968] Peter Cushing and the Women (Frankenstein Created Woman and The Blood Beast Terror)


by Fiona Moore

The Cinderford Palace Cinema is currently holding a Peter Cushing retrospective, celebrating a career that has included roles as diverse as van Helsing, Sherlock Holmes, Winston Smith and an odious Oxford student out to get Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (no, really). I’m taking the opportunity to review their double bill of Frankenstein Created Woman (Hammer, 1966) and his most recent movie, The Blood Beast Terror (Tigon, 1968).

Frankenstein Created Woman

Hammer Studios’ take on the Frankenstein franchise differs from the American one in that the focus is not on the monster, but on the man who created it. The monster doesn’t survive beyond the first movie, and the subsequent films, including this one, instead follow the career of Doctor Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) as he continues his experiments in reviving the dead while staying one step ahead of the law.

Victor Frankenstein leading his collaborator, Hertz, into corruption.
Victor Frankenstein leading his collaborator, Hertz, into corruption.

In Frankenstein Created Woman, Frankenstein, aided by local doctor Hertz (Thorley Walters) and Hertz’s assistant Hans (Robert Morris), develops a means of capturing the soul at point of death. When Anton (Peter Blythe), a rich bully, murders the town innkeeper and frames Hans for it, Frankenstein exploits the situation by using the executed Hans’ soul to test his new procedure. The innkeeper’s daughter, Christina (Susan Denberg), who is also Hans’ lover, commits suicide, and Frankenstein, naturally enough, decants Hans’ soul into her body. Christina then goes on a murder spree, killing Anton and his friends, before finally killing herself a second time.

The result is a surprisingly nuanced take on marginalisation and prejudice, particularly as regards women. Both Hans and Christina are shunned by the villagers and bullied by Anton’s clique: Hans because his father was executed for murder (a death Hans himself witnessed as a child) and Christina because she has a prominent scar on her face. However, they find comfort and love with each other. Christina is continually underestimated and belittled by everyone around her: when the murders start, even Frankenstein assumes that it is Hans’ soul working through her body, but the film itself is much more ambiguous, making it clear that Christina is at the very least a willing participant, and possibly the one wholly responsible. At the end of the film, when Frankenstein confronts her and tells her that she is not responsible for the murders, saying “let me tell you who you really are,” Christina responds “I know who I really am.” Without intending it, Frankenstein has empowered her, and, although Frankenstein may think he understands her, he, like everyone in the story, has underestimated and misjudged her.

To add insult to injury, Frankenstein fixes Christina's scar when he restores her. Meaning he could have done that at any time, but didn't.
To add insult to injury, Frankenstein fixes Christina's scar when he restores her. Meaning he could have done that at any time, but didn't.

The direction of the movie is also rather clever: the murders are implied rather than shown, and the director, Terence Fisher (known for other Cushing outings like The Curse of Frankenstein [1957] and Dracula [1958]), throws in little bits of foreshadowing like having the guillotine visible in the background just before Hans is framed for the innkeeper’s death. The villains are believably nasty, reminiscent of the violent young men in the novel A Clockwork Orange. Finally, Cushing gives a brilliant performance as Victor Frankenstein that highlights the character’s charismatic evil, unintentionally corrupting everyone with whom he associates.

Four out of five stars.

The Blood Beast Terror

I was particularly interested to see this one as it is the sole film by Tigon British Film Porductions prior to their astounding folk-horror piece Witchfinder General. While it’s ambitious and interesting, The Blood Beast Terror is unfortunately nowhere near Witchfinder General’s league.

The movie’s plot is an attempt to meld no fewer than three horror subgenres: the vampire film, the were-beast film, and, of course, Frankenstein. Cushing plays Quennell, a detective investigating the strange deaths of a series of young men, seemingly mauled by a bird of prey. His investigation leads him to a lepidopterist, Carl Mallinger (Robert Flemyng) with a beautiful daughter, Clare (Wanda Ventham). After a few unconvincing red herrings, it becomes evident that Clare is not Mallinger’s daughter per se, but a monstrous hybrid of a human and a moth, who drinks human blood. She and her creator flee into the countryside, where Mallinger attempts to create a mate for her, but Quennell tracks them down.

This movie's got some notable supporting actors too, for instance Kevin Stoney as an evil manservant.
This movie's got some notable supporting actors too, for instance Kevin Stoney as an evil manservant.

The movie gets points for playing against traditional horror film clichés, though it then loses some for not doing so to a satisfying conclusion. For instance, the movie plays against type by giving us a female vampire who preys on men, and a female Frankenstein’s Monster-figure who desires a mate as much as her male counterpart does.  However, it doesn’t really follow through thematically, failing to explore the implications of reversing the gender roles, and, where the Monster’s pathetic need for a companion humanises him, Clare’s desire for a male of her species is dealt with perfunctorily and unsympathetically. The writer also seems uncomfortable with the lack of a female victim, but, rather than exploring the implications of men as victims—or perhaps considering more subtle ways in which Clare might be seen as a victim of society, as with Christina in Frankenstein Created Woman—instead shoehorns in a daughter for Quennell to provide some end-of-movie rescue action.

The movie has a few other problems. There is an unsubtle amateur drama sequence which draws the parallels between Clare and Frankenstein’s Monster, and which could have been half its length. There are some inconsistencies and inexplicable points, e.g. when a young naturalist turns up dead near Mallinger’s house, he denies ever having known the man, when a simple investigation would have showed that he visited him the previous night. The monster is eventually killed in a way that is so obvious I was surprised they chose that path.

Two and a half out of five stars.

There's also a cameo by music-hall comedian Roy Hudd, which goes about as you'd expect.
There's also a cameo by music-hall comedian Roy Hudd, which goes about as you'd expect.

The two movies are a good match in that they both explore women’s roles in horror and particularly females as independent entities, though Christina is a much more interesting and complicated figure than Clare, and is treated more sympathetically by the writers. Peter Cushing shows the subtlety of his acting ability, in that both Frankenstein and Quennell are severe, obsessive men on a mission, but one is a cold, cruel psychopath while the other genuinely cares for the people under his protection. Overall, I’d recommend Frankenstein Created Woman to people who like a good, thought-provoking psychological horror, but The Blood Beast Terror is mostly of interest to Cushing completists.






[June 22, 1968] The Devil, you say (Rosemary's Baby)


by Amber Dubin

It seems appropriate to mention expectations when discussing a film with such a pregnant subject matter (pun intended). Mine were fairly low to start because I am not a fan of horror movies. This is because the scares from horror films usually suffer two major foibles: the ridiculous and the cliché. Outside of Halloween festivities, I have little patience for silly looking, poorly costumed monsters. I also dislike when a film relies too heavily on violent/grotesque imagery to get a rise out of its audience. It was through this biased lens that I viewed Rosemary's Baby; though I went in expecting disappointment, predictability and lack of inspiration or fear, I was proven wrong on all counts. Rosemary's Baby has a spine chilling relatability that creeped into my psyche and won me over, despite my pessimistic attitude toward it. It has the uniqueness and incontrovertibly high quality writing that give it all the makings of a timeless horror classic.

The slow boil of discomfort begins as we open to an off-putting lullaby, mournfully serenading the viewer as we zoom into a gloomy, dismal, old city skyline. The first couple of scenes increase the viewer's sense of unease by limping along at a clunky and awkward pace into a world that just barely makes sense. The young newlywed couple at the center of the story, Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes), are introduced as they enthusiastically acquire an apartment even though it's clearly run down, overstuffed and not move-in ready at all. Their reactions continue to be disjointed from reality in the subsequent scenes as we are introduced to their old and new friends. They proceed to have very awkward and/or inappropriate conversations with each of them, starting with Hutch (the family friend who brings up some very odd subjects over dinner) and ending with a first meeting with their neighbor Terry (who wastes absolutely no time launching into her sordid past of drug abuse with someone she has not even known for a full hour over laundry with Rosemary). The couple proves to have similar lack of social grace around each other, when their first night they spend at their creepy new apartment, they are eating off a blanket on the floor because they have no curtains or furniture and Rosemary awkwardly declares, "Say! Let's make love" completely apropos of nothing. Personally, I think the subsequent silent disrobing and intertwining of bodies to be not only shocking, but (and deliberately) decidedly un-sexy.


Not the models for marital bliss

It comes to pass that all this awkwardness is by design, as it serves to innure the viewer for strangeness that piles on with every scene and every new character introduced. Like the proverbial frog that gets cooked alive in slowly boiling water, both Rosemary and the viewer are slowly made comfortable with painfully uncomfortable circumstances, and we don't realize what's happening until it's too late.

In the first shock of the movie, the couple go on a late night stroll in order to avoid over-hearing what sounds like chanting coming through the paper-thin walls. As they return from their ramble, they are shocked to find a crowd surrounding the bloody corpse of Terry, the overly chatty girl Rosemary met earlier at the laundry. The elderly couple that Terry was living with react normally to her sudden "suicide" at first: expressing shock and grief when they introduce themselves to the Woodhouses as their neighbors, the Casavets. The next day, however, when Mrs. Casavet appears at Rosemary's door, her behavior is anything but normal. The older woman barges into Rosemary's place and goes through it like she owns it, speaking in nonsensical run-on sentences that are off putting and yet Rosemary doesn't react at all. Yet most unnerving is when she casually mentions having Terry cremated and bequeaths Rosemary with Terry's foul-smelling "good luck charm" that must not have been lucky enough because Terry was still wearing it when she died.


Dead women's necklaces make great house-warming gifts

It is with this bizarre house-warming gift that the Casavets begin their campaign to integrate themselves into every waking moment of Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse's lives. Guy is initially reluctant to even meet them, but once he and Mr. Casavet bond over cigars they become fast friends. Bizarrely, Guy becomes so close with the septuagenarian at one point that he begins going over their neighbor's house even without Rosemary with him. It is important to note here that, for me, the most upsetting part about this movie is the way the Woodhouses talk to each other. Like many couples, they at first appear to be hopelessly in love, but as you get to know them throughout the film, their relationship is rotten to its core. Guy proves himself to be a selfish, mean, horrible man. Rosemary, in her desperate attempt to justify her continued adoration of him, consistently makes excuses for his bad behavior. The most egregious example of this dynamic comes when they decide to start trying for a baby (basically so that Rosemary will have something to do when Guy is off auditioning for roles). By apparent coincidence, the first night they are set to start trying, Rosemary's neighbor gives her a homemade dessert that makes her almost collapse afterwards.


If you ever find yourself waking up like this, it's time for a divorce

The following night Rosemary is in a fitful sleep where she dreams of being assaulted by the devil while all of her neighbors stand around her naked and chanting. She wakes up naked and sore with her back scratched up and when questioned, her husband says he 'didn't want to miss the baby-making night.' I had an almost identical level of revulsion as Rosemary when faced with the realization that her husband would take such liberties over her body without her knowledge or consent. It turns out that night marked the conception of a very difficult pregnancy, one which not only sees the steep decline in their marriage, but also Rosemary's sanity and health, while she slowly becomes completely subjugated by the incessant presence of the Casavets in her life. Bounced between her husband and her intrusive neighbor, her self-esteem is whittled down to nothing as she is constantly insulted and isolated from her own family and friends. Her husband refuses to look her in the eye for weeks, and when she gets an adorable haircut to feel more fashionable, the first thing out of his mouth is "You look horrible! This is the worst decision you've made." Ever the non-supportive, selfish man she married, Guy uses her new "hideous" hairstyle to ignore her even more as her pregnancy progresses, throwing himself into his acting career as if nothing else matters.


Despite being thoroughly mod, this look deeply displeased Rosemary's husband

Rosemary's husband and neighbors add insult to injury when they convince her to change the doctor she goes to for regular check ups, and he repeatedly ignores her pleas for help when she has unusual pains, telling her every concern she has is in her head. At one point, she rebels, throwing a huge house party with friends she hasn't seen in years, against the wishes of her oppressors. Her friends are appropriately horrified to see what she looks like, seeing how pale she is and how sunken her eyes. Breaking down into tears, she confesses that she's been in horrible pain since the beginning of her pregnancy and can't believe this level of agony is normal.

Her friends literally lock her husband out of the room and validate all of her fears, telling her how her husband and Doctor are treating her is not at all normal and she needs to get out of there as soon as possible. It appears to already be too late, however, as when the pain lessens the next day, she second-guesses her friends and settles into the routine set by everyone else in her life. The way this party resolves reveals itself to be the first in a trend of stranger and stranger happenings in the background of Rosemary's pregnancy. Little by little, every contradictory voice in her life is silenced, beginning with the party go-ers and ending with Hutch the family friend from the beginning.


A desperate call for help that goes unanswered

Hutch's re-entry into Rosemary's life triggers a headlong fall down a rabbit hole of conspiratorial theories and occult explanations for the increasingly bizarre behavior of Rosemary's doctor, neighbors and husband. Within hours of his visit to Rosemary's house, he vows to do research on her neighbors and then almost immediately falls into a coma he never wakes up from. Speaking from beyond the grave, he wills her a book about witches, filled with secret messages implying that the Casavets belong to a well established coven that's been in the area for ages. Thus ensues a Rosemary's frantic bout of research, which leaves the viewer wondering whether she's actually figuring out what's going on or completely losing her mind.

The moment of truth comes when she finally presents her findings to a new doctor, only for him to turn her over to the custody of her original doctor and her husband, as a raving lunatic. She is instantly proven right in her suspicions, though when she gets home and the entire coven is in her apartment and descends upon her, pinning her to her own bed by sheer force of numbers. Horrifyingly, she is induced into a coma by her mad-scientist doctor, and when she wakes again she is told she birthed and lost the baby. Because she rightfully believes no one around her at this point, she starts deceiving her captors by pretending to take the "medicine" they feed her and feigning ignorance as to why they take her breast milk "to be thrown in the trash." After days of placating them, she arms herself with a huge kitchen knife and follows the crying noises she's been overhearing sporadically through the walls. She finds an entrance to the neighbor's apartment in the back of one of her closets and stumbles into a room full of people gathered for a baby shower that she wasn't invited to.


Mia Farrow out-doing herself

In the performance of a lifetime, Mia Farrow approaches the black curtained bassinet adorned with an upside down cross in the center of the room. Leaning over its side, her eyes absolutely bulge out of their sockets in an expression of pure, abject terror. Recoiling, she screams, "what did you do to its eyes?!" The gathered crowd enthusiastically exclaim that her child has its father's eyes and erupt into a cacophony of "Hail Satan"s. Dazed, Rosemary stumbles around the room, receiving no comfort from the callous scheming coven as they alternatively mock and jeer at her. Her husband even has the nerve to come up to her and tell her why he signed them up to this whole situation, explaining that "it'll just be as if you lost the baby" and "this will be so good for my career." I believe Rosemary speaks for all of us by promptly spitting in the man's face and shutting him up. In the end, she tentatively approaches the bassinet again because one of the other party guests is shaking it too hard and causing the infant within to cry. You can see the heartbreaking mixture of confusion, fear and motherly love play across Rosemary's face as she resigns herself to some level of acceptance of this situation and the same creepy lullaby that began the film croons over us as we fade to black.


A movie for the ages

This film had so many iconic moments and scenes. If this isn't Mia Farrow's break-out role, then I know nothing of quality acting. I expect great things from her in the future. The script, score and plot were also a cut above. I began my viewing thinking it bizarre and ungrounded and within 15 minutes, I was enthralled, on the edge of my seat and just as anxious to find out what fresh Hell Rosemary was going to be subjected to, even as I was disgusted and disturbed by what she had already endured. Rosemary's Baby is a true tribute to the horror genre and made a believer out of this skeptical critic.

5 stars.