Dark Power (1985)

The film starts with a young boy, aged about ten, walking through the woods with his toy bow and sucker-tipped arrows being chased by a pack of dogs. What! A boy aged ten in the 1980s should have made his own bow and nail tipped arrows and also had a belt full of pipe bombs! To be honest the dogs look more cuddly than vicious and I'd have been more afraid of being licked to death than mauled. Anyway, the snivelling and ill equipped boy is saved from his canine fate by an old beardy boy scout with a bull whip... Ladies and gentlemen I give you Lash Larue. Get used to the whip because he sure likes to use it! It was like party time at Madam Cyn's house during Parliament recess!

So the story is that an old man who kept some Toltec evil buried under his house dies and it's up to Lash Larue to put that genie back in the proverbial bottle. Unfortunately the house is soon let to four nubile young women and a creepy, racist brother. After that we just have to wait for the rather ridiculous killing to start.

The first half of the film almost like a show-reel for Lash Larue and that damned whip of his. Enough with the fucking whip! Plus his wise old man shtick gets a little tiring after a while.

There's a fair amount of "everyday racism" and a few n-bombs and I was hoping that the perpetrators were to be quickly dispatched as punishment. No, it took far too long. In fact it took way too long for any of them to die. Every one of these little bastards seemed to have stepped straight out of a shitty Porkies rip-off. At one point one of them flosses her teeth! Why do that on camera? Why not have a shit as well? Please stop it!

The four Toltec zombies are terrible with some of the worst masks and outfits I've seen in a horror film. Their bows seem to have strings made from underwear elastic, most of the killing scenes are pretty disappointing, and the comedic zombie routines were utterly misplaced. And that fucking xylophone that played when ever they were on screen drove me nuts! Plus that house must have the best sound insulation ever to stop the girls inside from hearing the zombie shenanigans going on outside.

Then, at long last Lash Larue and that fucking whip turns up to save the day. What do we get? Fucking "cavalry charge" music! That's right, a bearded white man turns up to save the poor women from the Native Americans with a trumpeted charge and a whip! Oh dear. A little while later, during a very, very, very dull bull-whip duel, he even calls one of the zombies "boy". As far as saving the day goes I don't think you could get any more racist unless there were a few burning crosses on the lawn.

Dark Power's biggest problem though is that its nearly 50 minutes until you see any blood! Simply inexcusable!

Unfortunately the picture on my Dead of Night DVD was bright and clear with reasonably clean audio, although the soundtrack does tend to drown out the dialogue a little.

Rubbish. Do yourself a favour and pass this one by. Anyone want to buy a DVD?

Letterboxd Review

Freak (1999)

From the deepest darkest recesses of my DVD collection comes Freak, a film, apparently so obscure that only two people on Letterboxd have watched it.

Reading the synopsis on the back of the case:

"It was twenty-five years ago that the horror began; a hideously deformed, physically deformed and brutalised 9-year-old boy murders his tyrannical and abusing mother. Now the horror is about to start all over again..."

This all sound very familiar! Come on, how bad can it be?

The film starts, as in the description, with a young boy being treated like shit by his mother. The mother is suitably nasty and after giving birth to another child tosses it in a brazier to burn. This seems to be what tips her son over the edge and he brutally kills her by bashing in her head with a large rock. Off to the loony bin with you young man! Nine years later (not the 25 reported on the DVD case) he escapes whilst in transport and heads home and straight into the path of a young woman and her kid sister.

Freak is a pretty atmospheric film, with subtle Dutch angles, low shots of the boy's spooky house, shadows and a good soundtrack. Much like Halloween (an obvious influence), Freak is definitely all about atmosphere and tension, although the aforementioned mother killing scene is nicely gruesome.

There are a few silly plot-holes - like why would someone have a shotgun and shells rolling around in the back of an open pickup, and why didn't the killer take it with him? Also, just like in Halloween, the killer mysteriously knows how to drive a truck even though he's been locked up for the past nine years! There is also some unnecessary exposition from a psychiatrist's tape recording. The previous scenes covered most of it quite well enough and I felt it wasn't really needed.

At one point there's a very, very brief shot (less than a second) inserted into a scene of the protagonist being chained up in a van. I assumed this was an editing fuck-up but after watching in slo-mo I discovered that the insert was of the child being chained by his mother. A nice touch, just a shame they didn't make it a little more obvious by increasing the length of the edit by a second or two. These brief flashbacks are a frequent occurrence throughout the film (luckily they are a little longer) and work very well in tying the killer's mental state to the abuse he suffered as a child.

The performances range from quite good to adequate and Amy Paliganoff plays a great Laurie Strode like, proactive, female lead, but the real star is Spider the ferret! I have a real soft spot for ferrets and their floppy ways. The killer is played by the film's director, Tyler Tharpe.

Freak is a nicely atmospheric and effective low budget slasher heavily influenced by Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre while still retaining its own distinct feel. It's only 75 minutes long and occasionally it does drag a little in places. It could have done with a little more plot substance and a little more tension during the long driving sequences. Some parts are a little out of focus and fuzzy, some are over-saturated and some are very dark. I guess most of these we caused by a limited lens and film choice (I got the feeling that it was shot on various film stocks). The sound is pretty muffled in places and has some occasional unwanted background noise due, I guess, to badly placed mikes.

Not bad at all and it's available on Amazon for £0.01!

Letterboxd Review

Black Belt Jones 2 (1978)

A giant diamond has been stolen and it's up to ex-CIA agent Lucas to get it back. Fists, legs and boobs abound!

Black Belt Jones 2 stars Jim "Enter the Dragon" Kelly and Tao-Liang "Flash Legs" Tan and is directed by Tso Nam Lee who also gave us the Brucesploitation classics Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger and Fist of Fury 2. This cheap flick combines a little Blaxploitation, martial arts and a basic crime thriller plot in one cheesy package. Note, however, that it has nothing at all to do with the original, Robert Clouse directed, Black Belt Jones.

My DVD came from Moonstone and seems to be transferred from a dirty film source in a pillar-boxed 4:3 ratio. The dialogue is pretty badly dubbed and it also has those wonderful "THWACK" sounding contact noises. Just the way I like 'em!

The film and the action starts immediately... I mean straight away, like the film had already been running for 10 minutes and I'd somehow missed it. No trailers, no menu, just...

Gang leader: "What do you want?"
Tin-hao: "Is that one-eyed bastard here?"
Gang leader: Who the hell are you? You dare call our boss that?
Tin-hao: You bums obviously don't know me!
Gang leader: Oh I know you! You're one of Lu's men, the one they say can kick like a mule.
Tin-hao: Well, if you know who I am, then that's the best that can come out!
Gang leader: Watch out, you're on our turf now.
Tin-hao: I couldn't give a shit who this area belongs to. Where I am always belongs to me.
Gang leader: Well then, maybe I want to find out if that's the truth? Hippy!

To be honest I wasn't sure about the "Hippy" as that part of the dialogue was a little garbled but I like the idea of someone calling a Saturday Night Fever dressed Tao-Liang Tan Hippy.

Jim Kelly's acting ability hasn't improved since Enter the Dragon and in fact it seems to have somehow gotten worse (this could possibly be due to having to dub his own voice). Then again, who gives a fuck? He's tall, black, cool and cocky as fuck, even though he does look like a tennis pro on occasion. His karate based fighting is pretty good and in the later scenes really quite impressive, but it plays second-fiddle to Tao-Liang Tan's explosive legs and ultimately it's the Asian actors who shine in this film.

Korean born Tao-Liang Tan is great as Tin-hao, your typical gangster with a sense of honour. His fighting is excellent with some terrific leg work. Interesting fact: Tan taught Bruce Lee's daughter, Shannon.

Chan Sing plays Lu the gang boss and has an impressive presence and a great moustache. I'd say he's the best actor of the lot.

Hong-Kong favourite Bolo Yeung even pops in for a few scraps and an argument with a ship's chef over some pet rabbits. The highlight however is when Yeung taunts Tin-hao with some atrocious singing!

The plot of Black Belt Jones 2 is simple enough with a few plot twists to keep thing interesting - just enough to hang 90 minutes of kung fu action onto.

The soundtrack is flute led funk with lot's of groovy percussion. There's also a couple of Suzi Quatro tracks in a strip-club scene!

The final fight scenes are really very good, with some great choreography; they're athletic, fluid, well filmed and they use the environment and props well, with Tao-Liang Tan versus Chan Sing being the stand out of the whole film, although Kelly's big fight proves he was no slouch either. Sure there's the usual problem of punches and kicks not connecting enough but overall I was really impressed!

Black Belt Jones 2 is nicely paced, has competent camera-work and editing, some ropey dialogue, strippers, boobs, a few hairy bushes, great action scenes, tattoos that appear and disappear at random, an hilarious chess analogy, a Crank 2 style drug fuelled striptease, and a bizarre rape scene with Formula One stills inserted into it.

Don't expect a restored Asian classic with 5.1 sound and lots of  extras (scene selection is all you get with the Moonstone release). This is a pretty good action film with little slack that'll keep you entertained for its 90 minute runtime. Far better than I thought it would be.

Recommended!

"Your Chinese legs aren't bad"
"Why, thank you. How does defeat taste?"

Letterboxd Review

127 Hours (2010)

I've had this Blu-Ray since it came out and still hadn't watched it, even though it features climbing and I'm a bit of a climber. Time to put that right.

An ill equipped man trapped by his own stupidity, looses his arm in a beautifully shot canyon.

James Franco plays Aron Ralston, a Sisyphus like "Xtreme" sports man-child driven by his own arrogance to spend a week pushing at a boulder. Therein lies the problem for me; I really dislike that particular portrayal of climbing and the outdoors life. Self-absorbed, baggy clothes wearing, techno-listening, photo-opportunists taking stupid risks just to grab a sponsorship deal and look cool.

I got that the film was using his near death experience show Ralston what a shallow and lonely person he had been and that he needed to change to survive. This could very well be the reason that he stupidly told no one of his trek - he had no one to tell, and for this I feel truly sorry for the man. I sincerely hoped that he took this experience and became a more humble and grounded person... but no, the first thing he does when free is to take a fucking selfie! Then onward to the speaking tours, publishing deals and, of course, this film. In fact the most telling sequence in the film is of Ralston pretending/hallucinating being on a talk-show as the special guest.

Enough of my moaning, how was the film itself? I found the photography, while beautiful, was a little too kinetic and hyperactive for me. Split-screen, dropped frames, sped-up film. This is everything I want to leave behind when climbing (although really, this is more scrambling than climbing). Give me focus and peace any day.

James Franco's performance is great, flawless really. It's just that I don't like the person he's playing.

The plot? Like all films that rely on an impressive set-piece at the end, it must have enough substance during the journey to keep you interested. Personally, I don't think 127 Hours had that - a few flashbacks doesn't make a story. I was either bored or irritated for the majority of the film.

One shot that really did annoy me for it's cheapness was of Ralston preparing for his trek and searching on a high shelf for his Swiss Army knife. His hand flaps to either side trying to find the elusive knife before he gives up and decides to go without it.

As for the soundtrack. Playing Lovely Day over Ralston struggling against his bolder does not make you clever. It's the sort of simplistic cinematic shorthand that I hate.

What should have been an interesting film about the dichotomy between temporary pain and long term survival ended up with me wanting him to cut his throat and not his arm.

So, what did we learn? If you're going trekking, climbing, skiing, diving, hunting or whatever; tell someone where you are going and when you'll be back and just remember kids: perfect planning prevents piss poor performance.

Style over substance and my least favourite Danny Boyle film.

Letterboxd Review

The Guts and the Glory: The Motörhead Story (2005)

Phil Taylor, the original Animal, is dead!

Years ago my kids had two guinea pigs: Fast Eddie and Lemmy. I always felt bad that I never let them get Philthy Phil and complete the line-up of the greatest guinea pig rock 'n' roll band of all time!

I missed seeing Motörhead in 1983 through lack of funds but finally saw them in '91 with Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor on drums in the Guildhall in Portsmouth (with Wolfsbane if I remember correctly).

This short (65 minutes) documentary is totally worth it just to hear the bickering between Phil and Lemmy. It's really just a load of anecdotes strung together, but what fucking anecdotes they are! Informative and really fucking funny. To be honest though the documentary, just like life, gets a little dull when Phil leaves. Luckily he's back soon enough and everything's right again.

5 stars just for Phil, an awesomely fast, powerful and influential drummer who will be sorely missed. Bye, bye Phil, you little rat bastard.

"This is no reason to cover a man with cheese!"

Letterboxed Review

The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974)

I watched the Raro Video DVD in Italian with English subs, and oh joy, the DVD is one of those "I'm going to vibrate your DVD player until you go fucking crazy" discs!

So, are we ready to head down the rabbit hole? There may be a few small spoilers on the way.

Influenced by the first two films in Polanski's Apartment Trilogy (Repulsion [1966], Rosemary's Baby [1968]), the occult films of the late 1960s (Night of the Eagle sprigs to mind), a touch of Gaslight [1940/1944] and the psychology hidden behind Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Perfume of the Lady in Black is a gialli that plays with the standard elements of the genre to give us a hallucinatory psychodrama instead of a slasher flick. Yes it has certain well-known giallo motifs: light/shadow, architecture, mental collapse, hallucinations, the macabre, sex/violence, mirrors and glass, spiral staircases, and of course J&B Whiskey; but don't go expecting a black gloved killer and an ending that wraps everything up in a nice neat package.

Mimsy Farmer plays Silvia, a chemist who begins to see visions of her dead mother and flashbacks to her life as a child, her mother's suicide, abandonment by her father and abuse by her mother's lover. Slowly her world starts to crumble but is it her memories or a bizarre conspiracy that causes her breakdown.

Yes, The Perfume of the Lady in Black does borrows liberally from Rosemary's Baby but this is very much it's own film and to suggest otherwise does it a great disservice. The theme of witchcraft and the paranormal is introduced subtly and from various sources: the wind rustling through the trees whilst Silvia looks at her mother's grave, the black cat, small incidental conversations witchcraft, the clairvoyant, a thunderstorm. We get the idea that something supernatural is involved but it's never actually stated as such. The same goes for the conspiracy; friends and family act a little oddly, strangers glance knowingly, coincidences abound, but nothing is too obvious. In fact we start to feel as paranoid as Silvia.

Throughout the film we have the idea of dreams as reality. A cat seen in a vision later appears in real life, likewise with a vase and this is where my earlier reference to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland comes in. At one point in the film Sylvia, in effect, grows smaller as she conjures a vision of herself as a child who then accompanies her throughout the last third of the film. Even the Mad Hatter's tea party makes a horrific appearance. Just like Alice, Sylvia builds her own world from the crumbling bricks of her psyche and in this world everything is a little skewed and off centre.

Childhood is another major theme throughout and Farmer portrays Sylvia as innocent and childlike, from her waif-like appearance (Rosemary's Baby again) to the toys (small doll, model theatre, Mickey Mouse clock, the Alice in Wonderland book) she still keeps from her childhood. During a game of tennis, she pricks her hand on a nail (a fairytale needle or thorn if ever there was one) and her boyfriend's business partner "kisses it better". There is even the proverbial "monster under the bed" in the shape of her mother's lover. This all leads slowly towards the inevitable corruption of childhood and her final break from reality. We know her mental collapse is complete when, in a taxidermist's, she writes her childhood address down in a hesitant child's handwriting. Unfortunately all this leads to the greatest crime and the destroyer of innocence - paedophilia. Firstly implied in a vision and then later it becomes reality when, as an adult, she is raped by the same man from her vision; her dress, mental state and the way she cowers makes her a child again.

Oddly, at the end of the film she sprays herself with perfume and dresses like her mother. She replaces her mother and is the parent to her hallucination of the child Sylvia. She becomes her own mother.

Anyway, I'll leave it there before I give too much away.

The creepiness of the supporting characters is perfectly handled. They're not spooky in that John Carradine "You're all doomed" way, it's more subtle with little gestures, glances and demeanour that makes you shiver.

Beautifully shot by cinematographer Mario Masini with bright, hyper-real colours (I've no idea what they shot on but it's got that lovely Eastman or Technicolor feel). I wouldn't be surprised if Argento watched this film before making Suspiria as it's a real kaleidoscope of colours.

The score is suitably menacing with discordant violins and some well judged silences. There is some nice use of diegetic sound during a scene in a shop.

There is no black gloved killer in The Perfume of the Lady in Black, but it is definitely gialli of the highest order and I loved every minute of it.

"Life, what is it but a dream?"

Letterboxd Review

The DPP Section 3 Buying Guide

I've added a new Buying Guide for the titles on the DPP Section 3 list. The page is a little on the large size and I did consider breaking it down into smaller chunks, but I think I'd rather wait a little while and have everything on the one page rather than flipping back and forwards between tabs.

You'll find a link to the Buying Guides in the "Pages" section in the right-hand column and I've also included a link in this post that goes directly to the DPP Section 3 list.

I hope you find it useful and if you spot any errors or know of better releases, please let me know.

DVD & Blu-Ray Buying Guides

I've just added the first in a series of DVD & Blu-Ray Buying Guides. These guides should help take the hassle out of sorting through the various releases for a film. At present there are guides for the DPP Video Nasty list, which I've separated into two lists: The DPP 39, for the prosecuted films, and The DPP 33 for the non-prosecuted films.

In future I hope to add guides for the DPP Section 3 list, individual directors (Argento, Bava, Fulci spring to mind) and genres (Gialli, Poliziotteschi).

You'll find a link in the "Pages" section in the right-hand column and I've also included a couple of links in this post.

I hope you find them useful and if you spot any errors or know of better releases, please let me know.

Milano Calibro 9 (1972)

This review is for the Arrow Video Blu-Ray with the Italian soundtrack and English subtitles.

A simple story of a missing $300,000 which the local mob, headed by il Americano, assumes has hidden by Ugo. Recently released from prison, Ugo must either find the money and clear his name with the Americano or die. As if that's not enough, Ugo has to deal with the local Milano fuzz.

Milano Calibro 9 is an Italian crime thriller from '72 with a super cool title (damn those Italians and their titles!) and it is not your average Poliziotteschi - this film adds a dash of socialism to the mix of guns, money and girls.

Gastone Moschin is terrific as the morose Ugo. While everything around him is exploding he somehow manages to be the calm in the eye of the storm. Even when getting slapped around you know that there will be payback, even if you're not entirely sure how or when. Of course we need a hothead to play against taciturn Ugo and that is ably supplied by Mario Adorf's Rocco. A veritable whirlwind of energy, wisecracks, gurning and one of the dirtiest laughs I've heard on screen. He reminded me of a cross between George Cole's Flash Harry from the St. Trinians films and Pops from the League of Gentlemen - a scenery chewing spiv! Then we have il Americano, played by guess who? Only fucking Hart to Hart's Lionel Stander!

So where does the socialism come from? The police! We have the usual incompetent police force, but this time it's not their stupidity that stops them from solving the crime, it's their inability to work together without bickering over politics. We have one detective who believes in the capitalist economy and the other who wants prison reform and the re-distribution of wealth. This is also mirrored with the differences between il Americano (the capitalist) and Ugo (the socialist).

Another interesting theme is the way the film juxtaposes the traditional against the modern, with Ugo's old boss Don Vincenzo, now living in a crumbling tenement with his ageing enforcer Chino, against il Americano's brash young thugs. The director could also be showing us the effect of American influences on Italian society (the old traditional Don in poor health, blind and with no influence versus il Americano).

To balance the political message we have the usual Poliziotteschi action sequences including the novel use of dynamite to get rid of some bodies. There are black Mercedes', shoot-outs, explosions, punch ups and go-go dancing. Even J&B Whisky makes makes several, hilariously obvious, appearances.

Some favourite moments: Rocco silencing his punch by pushing a pillow against someone's face; the aforementioned dynamite scene; the swimming pool shot towards the end looking remarkably like the scene from Magnum Force (even though that film came out a year later); the way Chino doesn't throw his pistol away (a la Hollywood) when it's empty.

Possibly my favourite scene though is when Chino fights Rocco and his hoods. Rocco finds out that it is Chino (and by implication Don Vincenzo) he is fighting and even though Chino is obviously washed-up, Rocco still gives back the money he stole from Ugo and asks permission to leave the apartment. Money and influence comes and goes; reputation is everything in Milano Calibro 9.

The film is economically shot and very nicely paced. The performances are excellent all round and the soundtrack is full of strings, heavy bass, flaming guitars and flutes. Groovy, with a heavy Euro-funk vibe that manages to not come over like a continental Starsky & Hutch. The Arrow Blu-Ray is excellent with no noticeable DNR and a nice subtle grain.

Whichever way you look at it Milano Calibro 9 is a fine film with hidden depths.

Harvest Lake - Pre-release of Scott Schrimer's new film available for order

A pre-release of Scott Schirmer's latest film, Harvest Lake is available to order now. It's a very limited run of 250 copies that that can be signed by the director and producer. Here's the specs:

• The uncut version of Harvest Lake on a glass-mastered, region-free blu-ray disc (not a BD-r) in 1080-p high definition
• EXCLUSIVE Artwork: Cover wraparound featuring teaser poster art by Erik Wilson, hand-numbered (1 through 250) on the back
• EXCLUSIVE Timing: Ships in January, at least two months ahead of our festival premiere and any other release of the movie
• EXCLUSIVE Bonuses: 2nd disc (DVD-r) featuring The Day
• Joe Left short film by Scott Schirmer, Switch short film by Brian K. Williams, and a one-hour round table discussion about horror and indie filmmaking with Schirmer, Williams, and FX artist Arthur Cullipher
• EXCLUSIVE Recognition: Your name will be included in the ‘Special Thanks’ section of the film’s end credits and on IMDb!
• Audio commentaries with the cast and crew
• Behind-the-scenes featurette
• Option to have the front cover autographed by Scott and Brian
• 2 x 6″ full-color vinyl bumper sticker “I Got Wet at Harvest Lake”

Order the Blu-Ray here

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Avengers: Age of Ultron is Joss Whedon's response to the mass carnage of Zack Snyder's Man of Steel.

Where Snyder treats collateral damage as a necessary inconvenience (a la Michael Bay and American foreign policy), Whedon goes to great lengths to save innocents, even if it means risking the lives of his heroes, and surely that is what being a hero is all about. The main question that Age of Ultron asks is whether the sacrifice of a few to save the many can ever be justified? Take, for example, a city under siege; the besieging army promise to stop the attack and in the process save many thousands of lives if the inhabitants deliver to them a single child, in the knowledge that he will be killed. How much is their lives worth? One child, two, one hundred? In other words, if we are prepared to sacrifice a single life to save many then we may as well kill a hundred.

The film is well paced with a much needed quiet 2nd act and a frenetic finale that builds the action over several set pieces rather than rely on the multiple endings so prevalent in action films (yes, Bay and Snyder, I can see you both giggling at the back. See me after class!).

It's nice to see Black Widow and Hawkeye take centre stage and Whedon ground the film with a pair of non-radioactive, superpower-less mortals. Empathy is important in a film and this is always going to be a problem in a superhero movie, but in Age of Ultron we have Black Widow and Hawkeye to act as our empathetic surrogates; we are Hawkeye and Black Widow and they do us proud.

James Spader hams it up just the right amount and seemingly channels Adam West for his portrayal of Ultron. The rest of the cast continue as normal but with a little more depth and humanity than previous films, with Thor questioning his godhood and a growing relationship forming between Romanoff (Black Widow) and Banner (Hulk).

Action-packed and funny in just the right places, Age of Ultron is a superhero film that for once doesn't focus on super-powers and instead on love, compassion and sacrifice. A very human superhero film indeed.

Letterboxd Review

John Wick (2014)

I'd heard many great things about John Wick and how it was a much needed shot in the arm of the action genre. Well, I waited and waited and waited for the bloody UK Blu-Ray to come out and hoped that it would be worth it. I'm glad to say that it was good... very good indeed.

Canoe Reaves plays ex-hitman John Wick. A man whose violence is tempered by the dog that his recently deceased wife left him. Let's just hope that nothing bad happens to the dog, eh? Enter the villainous Alfie Allen and let the blood, guns and Canoe's brooding stoicism loose!

At times reminiscent of a John Woo film, the film is beautifully shot and lit with an almost minimalist feel to it, especially during the first half where even the soundtrack is muted and abstract. Then slowly it builds into a frenzy of high-octane guns, fists and pounding techno-beats (supplied by Tyler Bates). Canoe does what he does best and stays quiet for most of the film and instead looks damn cool in a sharp three-piece and tie carrying a suitcase full o' guns. Michael Nyqvist plays a great, if clichéd, eastern-european villan and Alfie Allen is perfect as the son that we would dearly love kick in the balls. The stand-out though has to be the wonderful Ian McShane in a cameo as Canoe's fixer.

John Wick combines the flowing Kung Fu of The Matrix, the brutal close-up fighting of the Bourne films, the balletic gun-play of Hard Boiled, and the force of nature that is Lee Marvin's Walker in Point Blank.

If there's one con it's the over reliance on that CGI blood-spray effect. Can we please go back to blood-packs and squibs!

Jolly good show Canoe!

Letterboxd Review

Blow Out (1981)

A sound-recordist accidentally captures the killing of a US presidential candidate on tape.

I haven't seen Blow Out since the 80's and bought Arrow's release to pack out an order so that I got free shipping. I really couldn't remember much about it and wasn't expecting much from a re-watch. Well, that'll teach me to be presumptuous!

Blow Up is De Palma's ode to giallo and specifically the films of Italian maestro of the macabre Dario Argento. De Palma's trademark style (over substance according to some) fits hand-in-glove with giallo. We have De Palma's usual red and blue neon reflected off of rain covered streets, but this time they have a distinctly Argento feel to them. Then there's the killer POV shot, the dreamlike night-time scene with an owl and a frog, the non-police investigator (a sound recordist), the use of architecture and glass, several moronic police officers who will not listen to the investigator, the gloved killer, even J&B Whisky makes an appearance. Even the relationship between sex and death is covered with the orgasmic killing at the end of the film.

But, I hear you say, where the knife? The knife rather neatly bookends the movie in the film-within-a-film. This allows De Palma to include one of the most notable giallo devices without being tied down to a well worn cliché - remember this is post-Halloween 1981.

There are a couple of issues. Firstly a couple of the sequences are overly long and badly needed trimming; this would have tightened up the whole pace of the film. For example, the Nancy Allen and Dennis Franz near-rape scene could have done with several minutes being sliced out. Secondly, some of the music choices were pretty bad. Not Last House on the Left bad, but poor none the less.

Nancy Allen is wonderful as the young and naive honey-trap, Travolta capitalises on his good looks without coming over as smug and handles his role well, and John Lithgow plays weird and deadly so well!

And that end! Travolta's character using a woman's dying scream in the slasher film-within-a-film really is something Argento would have come up with.

Good stuff!

Letterboxd Review

The Usual Suspects (1995)

WARNING: The following review will contain a major spoiler for the few fools left that have not seen The Usual Suspects.

A serendipitous evening of film! I first re-watch The Usual Suspects (a homage to film-noir) and then decide to watch Blow Out (a homage to giallo) without meaning to place them together at all. Spooky!

For some reason The Usual Suspects didn't stand out as film-noir the first time I watched it, but on this viewing it hit me like a lead-filled sap to the back of the neck. The shadows contrasting with occasional bright sunshine, a convoluted plot, revenge, wonderful camera angles (downward, upward and over shoulder), an edit to a downward shot of a cup of coffee, deep focus shots, the story told in flashbacks with a voice-over by an unreliable narrator. There was only one thing missing... a femme fatale.

Here comes the spoiler... are we ready?... last chance... Verbal Kint is the femme fatale; he starts off as fragile, vulnerable but ends up duplicitous and devious. Much like Barbara Stanwyck's character in Double Indemnity, Kint manipulates situations and people until he gets what he wants. And the big reveal? Just one of the most iconic shots in modern cinema.

The performances are excellent with Spacey being the obvious stand-out, but not forgetting Benicio del Toro's comedic turn as Fenster. Stephen Baldwin is Stephen Baldwin again.

The Usual Suspects has great screenplay and photography by Christopher McQuarrie and Newton Thomas Sigel, respectively, but what the hell happened to Bryan Singer's career after such a promising start?

Unlike the "twist-in-the-tail" movies by M. Night Shyamalan, The Usual Suspects is a film that doesn't rely on the single twist at the end to supply satisfaction, and it's worth watching several times to try and pick out the clues that lead to the lame man walking.

Letterboxd Review

Records Collecting Dust (2015)

A cool little documentary that I've been waiting to be released for ages. Well they're offering it for free download this weekend (2015-09-05 to 2015-09-06).

The doc's digs through the record collections of some of the greats of punk, hardcore and metal and asks about the sounds they grew up listening to, the records that influenced them and the stores they bought them in. For just under an hour we get to listen to some musical heroes of mine including:

• Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys)
• Keith Morris (Black Flag/Circle Jerks/OFF!)
• Clifford Dinsmore (Bl'ast)
• Nick Oliveri (Kyuss/Queens of the Stone Age)
• Mike Watt (Minutemen)
• Justin Pearson (The Locust)
• Greg Anderson (sunn o))))
• Matt Pike (Sleep)
• Chuck Dukowski (Black Flag/Würm)
• Mike Neider (Bl'ast)
• Kira Roessler (Black Flag)

There are a couple of issues though. The first is that, due to copyright and expense, we don't get to hear any of the records chosen. Secondly, the doc contains three promo clips of artists featured in the film. There doesn't seem to be any reason for this apart from shameless self-promotion, and leading the pack is, rather obviously, Jello Biafra with a clip of his latest band that lasts 2:35. Considering his sound-bite contributions total 3:53 in a film of just 53 minutes (excluding title and credits) I can't help come to the conclusion that Jello is still a bit of a dick. Personally I would have preferred it of they'd left him out no matter how much of a DK fan I am.

The doc is interesting, doesn't outstay its welcome and it's always a treat to listen to Keith Morris and Mike Watt - I could quite happily hear them waffle on all day.

The whole film reminded me of a store that I used to buy from when I was a kid. There was a crazy golf course beside a beach that, for some odd reason, had an attached record shop. The floor was always covered in sand, the record sleeves had a coating of sea-salt and my mate's brother (who once threw a dart into my forehead) lived out the back in a shed. Ah, those were the days.

Anyway, it's a cool documentary which should have had some cool music in it and it features a dickhead. Oh, and my god, Chuck Dukowski looks old!

To fit in with the doc, here's my first music purchases:

First music ever bought: Glen Campbell's Greatest Hits on tape, probably sometime in '77. It was the only thing I could afford locally and I'd never even heard of him before. I still love Wichita Lineman. That year my gran also bought me a David Soul cassette because I liked Starsky & Hutch! Before this I did what every kid did - taped Top of the Pops on a portable cassette recorder.

First LP: Star Wars by The Sonic All-Stars, in '78. Again, all I could afford. Bought from Woolworths.

First 7" singles: The Sex Pistols - The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle / Blondie - Union City Blue. Both with my birthday money in '79. These were the records that, for me, really started it all, even though the Sex Pistols' single is terrible and most people would never even consider it a true Pistols record.






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