Coming Attractions - Die, Monster, Die! (1965) / Planet of the Vampires (1965)

Poster Gallery - Vertigo (1958)

US POSTER - This artwork or variants of it was also utilised in Italian, Portugese, Argentinian, Spanish, French, and West German promotional campaigns

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Reflections of Murder (1974) - TV Movie

Dir: JOHN BADHAM

Country: USA

Original Transmission Date: 24/11/1974

The detective novel Celle qui n’était plus by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac has proved itself to be a very durable and influential work for cinema. The first screen adaptation came in 1955 with the peerless French production Les Diaboliques, which was expertly and stylishly directed by the brilliant Henri-Georges Clouzot. This in turn was a major influence on Alfred Hitchcock who turned to the work of Boileau-Narcejac for his 1958 production Vertigo, and who also incorporated some of their narrative strategies in Psycho (1960). In Britain a whole slew of monochrome psychological thrillers were produced by Hammer, who were inspired by the resounding commercial success of Psycho, but sought their inspiration from Les Diaboliques. This is most keenly felt in Taste of Fear (1962 – US title Scream of Fear) which is replete with a swimming pool, and a fragile female protagonist. A rather drab and forgettable TV movie remake of Les Diaboliques appeared in 1993 under the title House of Secrets, airing on NBC it starred Bruce Boxleitner as the abusive spouse, Melissa Gilbert as the weak hearted wife, and Kate Vernon as the mistress. A $45 million remake followed in 1996 under the title Diabolique, and though it was intriguingly cast with Sharon Stone and Isabella Adjani, it failed to reach a sizeable audience and was universally panned by critics. Where these two films failed ABC’s movie-of-the-week Reflections of Murder, which aired on 24^th November 1974, manages to succeed, and emerges as the second best screen adaptation of Boileau and Narcejac’s important novel.

Celluloid Sounds - Street Law (1974)

The 1974 ‘Euro-crime’ film Street Law is one of my personal favourites of the cycle. I took a risk on it when I imported Blue Underground’s DVD release of the film back in 2006. But I’ve always found that particular distributor to be very reliable in terms of quality and interest. The film was my entry point into the violent, exciting, reactionary, and uncompromising world of the Italian ‘Euro-crime’ cycle and for this I owe the film a debt of gratitude. The director of the film was Enzo G. Castellari who was no stranger to the various cycles that constituted popular cinema in Italy in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Castellari’s early westerns were rather drab and predictable affairs, singularly unmemorable, and offered little promise of the films to come. The first hint of Castellari’s capabilities came in the war film Eagles over London (1969). He followed this with the dour and lacklustre giallo Cold Eyes of Fear (1971), which unsurprisingly remained his only entry in this cycle.  For the next few years Castellari concentrated on crime pictures, creating an impressive and consistent body of work which included High Crime (1973), The Big Racket (1976), The Heroin Busters (1977), and Day of the Cobra (1980).

The Lift (1983)

Dir: DICK MAAS

Country: NETHERLANDS

AKA:

De Lift

Goin' Up

Genre cinema in the Netherlands is pretty much non-existent, and this probably has a great deal to do with the fact that the majority of indigenous production relies on government funding. The cultural unworthiness of the horror genre, which is still viewed by some as little more than the outpourings of underdeveloped and immature minds, is never likely to find a great deal of sympathy in a film culture dependent on state subsidies. Nevertheless there have been a few co-productions over the years, and a handful of horror projects categorised as Dutch have emerged to blink confusedly in the light of the international arena. The name Dick Maas is at the epicentre of this tiny cycle thanks to The Lift, Amsterdamned (1988 – an underrated and criminally under-seen film which is arguably the greatest Dutch horror film), The Shaft (2001 – a remake of The Lift starring Naomi Watts no less!), and Saint (2010). In recent years the Dutch director Tom Six has stolen the headlines with his execrable Human Centipede films, the first of which was deceptively amusing, but the sequel was little more than an exercise in gross repugnance, and was unsurprisingly an American production. Other noteworthy Dutch horror films worth investigating include The Johnsons (1992), Necrophobia (2005 – for fans of Nekromantik [1988], if there are any!), and Two Eyes Staring (2010).

Lobby Card Collection - 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)

Blueblood (1973)

Dir: ANDREW SINCLAIR

Country: UK-CANADA

1973 was a very busy and productive year for English actor Oliver Reed.  He began it in the Italian/French co-production Dirty Weekend, a crime/comedy directed by Dino Risi, which paired him up with Marcello Mastroianni.  He followed this with the historical drama Frenzy, an Italian/UK co-production exploring the class divides in pre-revolutionary Russia, in which he played Palizyn opposite Claudia Cardinale’s Anya. He continued his association with Italian cinema in his following film Revolver (US title Blood on the Streets) an excellent crime thriller directed by Sergio Sollima, which saw Reed and Fabio Testi make unlikely allies as they uncover a far reaching political conspiracy. Reed’s biggest success of 1973 was his following film, playing Athos in Richard Lester’s spirited and entertaining screen version of The Three Musketeers. Reed’s fifth and final screen credit of 1973 was in the obscure British film Blueblood, based on Alexander Thynne’s novel The Carry Cot. There are those who classify Blueblood as a horror film, but it is more of a class drama in the mould of the Pinter/Losey production The Servant (1962). The motivations of the respective butler’s in each film are pretty much the same, but their methodology differs. In Blueblood Tom, played with the hulking brutishness and barely suppressed rage that became Reed’s stock in trade, utilises witchcraft to secure his aims.

Mark the Narc (1975)

Dir: STELVIO MASSI

Country: ITALY

AKA:

Mark il poliziotto

Blood, Sweat and Fear

Mark of the Cop

The big three directors who inhabit the murky, tough, and violent world of the Italian ‘Euro-crime’ cycle are Fernando Di Leo, Umberto Lenzi, and Stelvio Massi. It seems that history has been the kindest to Di Leo, who has selected titles available in high definition and is generally regarded as an important filmmaker in the landscape of popular Italian cinema. Fairing slightly worse is Umberto Lenzi, and this is almost entirely due to his risible cannibal escapades rather than his solid, if unexceptional, entries in the ‘Euro-crime’ and ‘Giallo’ cycles. Due to the vagaries of distribution the filmography of Massi is the least explored of the three, and as a result Massi is not discussed anywhere near as prolifically as the other two men. Although all three filmmakers owe debts of gratitude to the Hollywood films that inspired them, perhaps Massi most of all showed his influences a little too freely. This can be seen most keenly in his 1975 thriller Mark the Narc which is one of the most rigorous pastiches of the first two films to feature Clint Eastwood as San Francisco detective Harry Callaghan.