Demon Seed (1977)

Director: DONALD CAMMELL
Country: USA

With the success of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970), and Westworld (1973) technophobia became one of the major ‘meta-narratives’ of 1970’s American cinema. It sat comfortably alongside the ‘Revolt of Nature’ movie, the conspiracy thriller, the disaster movie, and movies set in post apocalyptic wastelands. All of these thematic strands functioned in very similar ways, and all of them sought to punish mankind for its hubris and arrogance. Other interesting examples of the ‘Revolt of Technology’ narrative include The Terminal Man (1973), Killdozer (1974), Futureworld (1976), The Car (1977), Android (1982), The Lift (1983), and Runaway (1984 - any more nominations please feel free to leave a comment!). But arguably the most absurd extension of this thematic pulse came in 1977 with Donald Cammell’s film of the Dean R. Koontz novel Demon Seed. Unlike his contemporary Stephen King, Koontz has largely been overlooked by Hollywood producers, and now churns out novels with such alarming regularity that each feels as inconsequential as the previous one. Whilst cinema screens have proved resistant to Koontz’ brand of fantasy, he has found a more receptive environment on television. A cursory glance at Koontz’ filmography however indicates that Demon Seed is easily the most prestigious and important film to be based on his work.

John Carpenter - Title Screens

The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971)

Dir: SERGIO MARTINO
Country: ITALY

AKA:
Lo strano vizio della Signora Wardh
Next!
Blade of the Ripper
The Next Victim!

Like his contemporaries Umberto Lenzi, Enzo G. Castellari, and Lucio Fulci, Sergio Martino was a director who possessed a highly developed degree of generic utility. This ensured that Martino and the others were constantly in demand in the 1970’s and 1980’s, but the price they all had to pay for this was critical marginalisation. However were it not for the commercial success of popular cycles such as the giallo, the spaghetti western, and the poliziotesschi films, the preening ‘art’ cinema of dullards such as Fellini, Antonioni, and Bertolucci, would undoubtedly have struggled to gain the domestic support they required. Sergio Martino’s renaissance has taken a little longer to come about, but like many of his ilk, the era of DVD has been critical in constructing an appreciation of a diverse and intriguing filmography. No longer do scribes have the excuse of films being unavailable. Whilst it is remiss not to place Dario Argento’s early films within the expectations of the cycle they operated within (a major weakness of Maitland McDonagh’s Broken Mirrors/Broken Mind’s was a failure to do this), it would also be equally remiss not to assess the important contribution to the cycle made by Martino and his producer brother Luciano. Although Martino was inspired by the success (and the style) of Argento’s debut picture The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), his own gialli offerings have a peculiarity and an attitude which help them to stand apart in a very overcrowded generic landscape.

Nicolas Roeg Poster Gallery

 Performance (1970) - US Poster

 

Performance #2 - West German Poster

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Walkabout (1971) - US Poster

 Walkabout #2 - UK Quad Poster

Lobby Card Collection - For a Few Dollars More (1965)

Following quickly on the heels of the lobby cards for A Fistful of Dollars (1964) I present a selection of stills for Sergio Leone's 1965 sequel For a Few Dollars More. This is my personal favourite of Leone's westerns, and the following three sets of lobby cards were used to promote the film in British, French and West German cinemas.

Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974)

Dir: TERENCE FISHER
Country: UK

Although To the Devil - A Daughter (1976) officially marked the end of Hammer’s first cycle of horror film production, it is Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, made two years before, that has the more genuine feel of a concluding statement. It was the final example of Hammer’s archetypal brand of gothic Victoriana (though Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires [1974] would transplant these trappings to an East Asian milieu later the same year), it was also the final film directed by the legendary Terence Fisher, who was one of the key architects of Hammer’s distinctive visual style, and it features the final adventure of one of the companies most enduring characters; Baron Frankenstein. But the film also has an ambience and an attitude of finality. It possesses a pitch black streak of cynicism, and indeed an equally bleak sense of humour. Frankenstein might conclude the film making positive pronouncements about embarking on his next experiment, but this is unable to disguise the ultimate pointlessness of the Baron’s endeavours. In each of the Baron’s previous adventures he found himself increasingly marginalised - by society, politics, and the scientific community. It seems somewhat fitting then at the end that we find him operating out of an insane asylum. His previous status as inmate is soon forgotten, and with the asylum director firmly blackmailed into submission, the Baron is able to continue his experiments using the incarcerated human fodder at his disposal.

The Cat O' Nine Tails (1971)

Dir: DARIO ARGENTO
Country: ITALY/FRANCE/WEST GERMANY

AKA:
Il gatto a nove code

History hasn’t been kind to Dario Argento’s second feature film The Cat O’ Nine Tails. It hasn’t helped that Argento himself has been quick to dismiss the film as his least favourite, though Argento has also gone on record saying his favourite film is the 1985 debacle Phenomena. It’s abundantly clear from this that Argento isn’t the best judge of his own work. The real problem for The Cat O’ Nine Tails is that it has never been able to fully emerge from the looming shadow of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), Argento’s debut feature. The third film in the so called ‘Animal Trilogy’ Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971) has succeeded in standing on its own feet largely because of its utterly bizarre distribution history, and its standing as something of a ‘lost’ cult classic. But The Cat O’ Nine Tails has always been a very visible Argento title, one that has been easy too acquire, and one that was very successful during its release in 1971. There is no doubt that it is a pale shadow of the startlingly fresh and vital The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, a film which was both a document of Argento’s personal obsessions and a brilliant exercise in suspense driven plot mechanics. But the perceived Americanisation of The Cat O’ Nine Tails (Argento’s most common grumble is both the films American sensibility and its lack of a personal identity) is actually what makes it stand out in Argento’s filmography. It has a feel and style unlike any of his pictures, and instead of dismissing the film for this, perhaps we should celebrate it.

Death Laid an Egg (1968)

Dir: GIULIO QUESTI  
Country: ITALY/FRANCE

AKA:
La morte ha fatto L'uovo

Italian writer/director Giulio Questi deserves a more prominent position in the history of popular Italian cinema. One of the most challenging things for a filmmaker working within the restricted conventions of fashionable cycles or genres is to make the familiar seem unfamiliar. His films achieve this through an experimental attitude to form, an attitude that sometimes borders on the avant-garde, and a political perspective that is unashamedly leftist. Questi’s work has the sensibility of 1960’s Italian art cinema, but possess a presentation that took advantage of the prevailing popular trends of the day. It means of course that audiences are caught completely unaware, as will anybody will who approaches Django Kill, If You Live…Shoot! (1967) expecting a regular spaghetti western. The debate within Questi’s cinema however lies with trying to judge the extent of Franco Arcali’s contribution. Arcali was both writer and editor on a number of Questi’s films, and it is in the editing strategy that the films show their most experimental side. Furthermore there is much evidence in his filmography to suggest his political sympathies were also strongly leftist. Either way the two men clearly complimented one another on Django Kill, and they took this collaboration on to the peculiar and surreal giallo Death Laid an Egg.

The Ten Essential Blu-Ray's of 2011

Throughout 2010 I had resisted the urge to dip my toe into the waters of High Definition film presentation. But in January 2011 I finally took the plunge and immersed myself in the world of the blu-ray. My main motivation for doing so was that the discs had become more affordable, and a far greater selection of older and interesting titles were seeing the light of day courtesy of niche distributors such as Arrow Video and Eureka . The first blu-ray I purchased also happened to be the same title that marked my first DVD purchase; John Carpenter’s wonderful 1982 remake of The Thing. Oddly my awakening to blu-ray has also gone hand in hand with a need to seek out and view rare films in which print condition was a secondary condition. 2011 has been both a year of pristine visual beauty, and murky monstrosities. I rarely do list based articles on The Celluloid Highway, mostly because I find it terribly unimaginative and pointless, and frankly who cares (other than me) what my ten favourite westerns or horror films are? However this particular list will hopefully be slightly more useful than other redundant ego-trip lists you might see elsewhere. Naturally due to the archive nature of The Celluloid Highway, the ten blu-rays under discussion here are older titles. A quick note to my American readership - the discs listed here are all UK releases, however I would welcome with open arms anyone from the States who would like to share their own Top 10 US released blu-rays…please feel free to leave a comment. For that matter I invite anyone from anywhere to do the same. Without further ado I present The Celluloid Highway’s ten essential blu-ray’s of 2011.

Celluloid Sounds - Zombi 2 (1979)

This edition of the ever popular and world famous Celluloid Sounds will investigate the musical contribution of Fabio Frizzi and Giorgio Cascio to Lucio Fulci’s gore soaked zombie opus Zombie 2 (aka too many different names to list). For pure entertainment I don’t think Fulci ever eclipsed this film, and it remains a firm favourite of mine. Intellectually I find myself gravitating to more nuanced and layered productions such as Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972) or A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971), but for sheer enjoyment then look no further than this wonderful film. Crucially it lacks the dream like and hallucinatory feel of his later horror films, and is subsequently able to tell its story with efficiency and economy. I often find that adjectives such as ‘dream like’ or ‘hallucinatory’ are normally used in Fulci’s cinema to explain away the terrible and shoddy lack of continuity, and to ultimately forgive incompetently plotted screenplays.



Zombi 2 is wonderfully free of such barriers, and it is also wonderfully free of the adolescent social commentary that so blighted George A. Romero’s infantile zombie pictures. Like the best horror films the primal terrors are created through music. Frizzi had contributed musical offerings (along with his frequent collaborators Franco Bixio and Vince Tempera) to several earlier Fulci productions, including Four of the Apocalypse (1975), Seven Black Notes (1977) and Silver Saddle (1978). Although Cascio gets a credit on Zombi 2 I’m not certain as to the extent of his contribution. I shall open this out to my tremendously knowledgeable readership, and hopefully someone can leave a comment telling us more about this man. Easily the most successful composition to grace the film is the eerie primal shuffle of the main title theme. The slow and plodding nature of this piece resonates with the laborious progress of resurrected corpses. It was clearly impressive enough to function not only as the title theme, but as a leitmotif whenever the zombie hordes appear.

One of the stylistic elements that binds a great number of the films outlawed in the United Kingdom as ‘Video Nasties’ is their use of electronic music. Undoubtedly this was partly attributable to the low budget nature of the production. But the use of synthetic instrumentation in so many of these films was a serendipitous side effect of a forced economy, and the results were often more impressive than the films themselves. The stark and clinical sounds only added to a sense of dislocation and alienation; a sense of the unnatural invading the natural world. One of the pleasures of Zombi 2 is its unabashed embracement of the voodoo culture upon which the myths of the zombie were born. This had become increasingly unpopular in the post 1968 Night of the Living Dead conception of the zombie. But Fulci and his collaborators were seemingly uninterested in using the zombie motif as an allegorical or metaphorical device. This is represented in musical terms by the deft combination of electronica and tribal drums.

Lobby Card Collection - A Fistful of Dollars (1964)

Italian director Sergio Leone's rip off of Akira Kurosawa's masterful samurai flick Yojimbo (1960) has achieved a huge prominence in the bitter and cynical landscape of the European western. Although it made Clint Eastwood a star, and showcased Leone's exaggerated stylisations, it is the music by Ennio Morricone that has had a greater lasting appeal. Here is a selection of lobby cards used to promote the film in British, Spanish, French, and West German cinemas.

The City of the Dead (1960)

Dir: JOHN LLEWELYN MOXEY
Country: UK

AKA:
Horror Hotel

"Just Ring for Doom Service"

The City of the Dead belongs to a subset in British horror cinema that explores the relationship between the arcane beliefs of witchcraft and the occult and contemporary modernity. Other notable examples include Night of the Demon (1957), Night of the Eagle (1962), Witchcraft (1964), and The Witches (1966). Although The City of the Dead was produced under the banner of Vulcan Productions, in many ways it can be considered the first production of Amicus. Max J. Rosenberg  was an uncredited producer here, with Milton Subotsky taking the role of executive producer as well as contributing the story upon which the screenplay by George Baxt was based. In its own way then The City of the Dead is an historically important film, though you wouldn’t think so thanks to its descent into relative obscurity. This was a situation that was remedied somewhat by the DVD release courtesy of VCI in 2001. What makes the film particularly striking and unusual was the decision by the filmmakers to recreate the town of Whitewood, situated deep in the heart of the Massachusetts countryside, on a soundstage at Nettlefold studios, which was situated deep in the heart of the Surrey countryside in England. This gives the film a unique look, and a slightly surreal vibe, which is heightened significantly by Desmond Dickinson’s lustrous monochrome cinematography.

Lobby Card Collection - Lolita (1962)

This latest instalment of the Lobby Card Collection features Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Vladamir Nabakov's scandalous Lolita  I was only able to find one set of lobby cards for this film on my travels, nevertheless I hope you enjoy them.

 

 

Don't Go in the House (1980)

Dir: JOSEPH ELLISON
Country: USA

This dreary and depressing slasher flick was the inspiration of writer/director Joseph Ellison. I use the word inspiration cautiously in this case, because it would be fairly clear to anyone who has watched this film that Ellison was very familiar with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Elements borrowed include a socially inept alienated psychopathic protagonist, a monstrous matriarch who also rots away in a chair and who also taunts the protagonist from beyond the grave, and a suitably creepy and gothic house on the hill. However there are also some key differences which enable the film to just about stand on its own two feet. The psycho in question Donny Kohler (Dan Grimaldi) stalks his victims whereas Norman Bates waited for them to come to him. Kohler also has a fetish for dressing up the charred corpses of his female victims and creates a kind of macabre family for himself. Norman Bates meanwhile collected stuffed animals rather than dead people. Don’t Go in the House also has a highly subjective attitude to narration. From the outset we are placed inside the head of Donny Kohler. We are given access to his motivations by virtue of flashbacks and by the disembodied voices that haunt and torment his waking moments. The result is that the film manages to explain away Kohler’s psychosis far more successfully than Hitchcock’s movie which resorts to a hackneyed summing up by a psychologist at the end.

Hammer Horror - Title Screens [Part 2]

Hammer Horror - Title Screens [Part 1]

 

 

 

Spaghetti Westerns Poster Gallery [Part 2]

"A politician would promise an amnesty to the murderer of his own father to win an election." - Sheriff Burnett ("The Great Silence")

The Mercenary aka A Professional Gun (Sergio Corbucci, 1968) - US Poster

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Find a Place to Die (Guiliano Carniemo, 1968) - Spanish Poster

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Ace High (Giuseppe Colizzi, 1968) - US Quad Poster

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The Great Silence (Sergio Corbucci, 1968) - US Poster

Spaghetti Westerns Poster Gallery [Part 1]

This two part celebration of  Spaghetti Western poster designs is by no means definitive. This is a purely subjective selection, so if your favourites are not amongst the images I apologise. Without further ado I invite you to explore some wonderful art work for one of my favourite popular European film cycles.

"There are two kinds of people in the world, my friend: Those with a rope around their neck, and the people who have the job of doing the cutting" - Tuco ("The Good, The Bad and the Ugly")

A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone, 1964) - Italian Poster

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Minnesota Clay (Sergio Corbucci, 1964) - US Poster

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A Pistol for Ringo (Duccio Tessari, 1965) - Italian Poster

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For a Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone, 1965) - Italian Poster

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