Celluloid Sounds - Thief (1981)

As The Celluloid Highway appears to be undertaking something of a mini Michael Mann retrospective (and I stress the word mini, Mann has done little that has interested me after Manhunter [1986]) I thought it only appropriate to return to his debut picture Thief, and the contribution to it, of the German progressive electronic group Tangerine Dream. At this point in the bands history they were relative novices to the world of soundtrack composition. Their first soundtrack was for William Friedkin’s haunting and often beautiful, but ultimately misguided, remake of Clouzot’s Wages of Fear (1955) which went under the name Sorcerer (1977). Without a doubt the textured soundscapes of Tangerine Dream were a major creative highlight of the troubled production. In these early formative soundtrack years for the band their type of cosmic electronica was often used as a counterpoint to the unfolding narrative. Their cold and clinical tones would seem wholly inappropriate for the sweat and dirt of a poverty stricken area of South America, but time and again the music saves Sorcerer from becoming little more than a mild distraction.

The Keep (1983)

Dir: MICHAEL MANN
Country: USA/UK

The gothic horror fantasy The Keep had everything going for it when pre-production began in 1982/3. The novel by F. Paul Wilson was a bestseller, and the director Michael Mann was coming into his second film off the back of a critical and commercial success with his debut effort Thief (1981). The film had a respectable budget of $6,000,000, and a solid and dependable cast that included Scott Glenn, Jürgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne, and Ian McKellan. The casting however is very instructive; while all these actors are respectable in their own right, none of them were stars. The Keep was clearly the Michael Mann show, and the writer/director is both the worst and the best thing about the film. The novel represents a challenge too adaptation, and Mann was clearly not up to the task. His initial cut of the film ran to over two hundred minutes -  somebody should have reminded him his name was Michael Mann not Francis Ford Mann! And much of the controversy around the film centres on the studios decision to cut the film down to a more palatable one hundred minutes. The question of whether Mann’s cut would have made any more sense is moot, the film exists as it does. And in its present form it is untidy, chaotic, incoherent, and confused. The Keep fails dismally as a story; plot development lacks even the most basic sense of continuity and the narrative is a mangled mess. But from a visual perspective The Keep is a stunning success; it overflows with one striking image after another, and is stylistically at least, one of the most beautiful horror/fantasy films of the 1980’s.

Guest Review - Invocation Of My Demon Brother (1969)

Dir: KENNETH ANGER
Country: USA

My introduction to the works of Kenneth Anger began when I saw Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) [on the Channel 4 show Midnight Underground.] My first thoughts were “What the hell is this?” Bizarre imagery set to classical music, with a guy who had impressively long fingernails. In the pre-internet days, a trawling of the library uncovered a book featuring underground filmmakers. This led to my quest to track down as many of his works as possible, which was not easy in the days before multi-region DVD players. Most of the copies of Anger’s films were American, but eventually, through the classified ads in a magazine, a, cough, bootlegged copy of nine of his short film were mine, albeit on a Maxell C180.

Lobby Card Collection - The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (1966)

This months thrilling edition of the Lobby Card Collection completes Sergio Leone's trilogy of 'Dollars' film featuring Clint Eastwood as the nameless anti-hero. In comparison to previous instalments lobby card images for The Good, The Bad and the Ugly were relatively thin on the ground, but on my travels I still managed to find some interesting examples that were used to promote the film in French and Italian cinemas.

Michael Mann Poster Gallery

Thief (1981) - US Poster
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 The Keep (1983) - US Poster

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Manhunter (1986) - US Poster

Manhunter - US Poster

Conquest (1983)

Dir: LUCIO FULCI
Country: ITALY/SPAIN/MEXICO

It is not unfair to say that Fabrizio De Angelis and Ugo Tucci’s decision to hire Lucio Fulci as director for their horror production Zombi 2 (1979) saved his career. The pair embarked on a wave of excessively gory and increasingly incoherent horror pictures, inflicting such delights as The Beyond (1981), The House by the Cemetery (1981), The New York Ripper (1982), and Manhattan Baby (1982) on an unsuspecting public. These were all critical titles in Fulci’s cult resurgence in the 1990’s and beyond, and for many, Fulci’s work under the auspices of De Angelis represents his most impressive. Unfortunately some time between the release of Manhattan Baby and pre-production on Fulci’s next picture Conquest the two parted company. Little did Fulci know that whoring himself out to the highest bidder - in this case Giovanni Di Clemente - would have such a devastating effect on the quality of his films. I’m not arguing that the De Angelis produced films were masterpieces, only a complete asshole could make a case for Manhattan Baby. But Conquest is so nonsensical and drab, and so utterly bereft of intelligence and charm, that one cannot help but conclude that Fulci’s current standing amongst horror aficionados is as much down to De Angelis as it is Fulci.

Knife of Ice (1972)

Dir: UMBERTO LENZI
Country: ITALY/SPAIN

AKA:
Il coltello di ghiaccio
Silent Horror

I should start this review by saying I’m not a big admirer of the films of Umberto Lenzi. I’m well aware of the high esteem he is held in by enthusiasts of cult Italian cinema, but to date I’ve only seen marginal evidence to suggest that Lenzi is little more than an incompetent and talentless hack. I say marginal because I am rather fond of his unconventional and surprising giallo Spasmo (1974), and he did make some striking contributions to the poliziotesschi cycle - most notably Almost Human (1974), Assault with a Deadly Weapon (aka Brutal Justice, 1976), and Violent Naples (aka Death Dealers, 1976). But what these films highlight is the strength of the casting, rather than Lenzi’s direction. I’m often very charitable to those filmmakers who were overshadowed/overlooked in favour of the Bava’s, Argento’s and more recently Fulci’s of the world, but I find Lenzi’s position to be entirely justified. If his career was overshadowed by others, then so too is the mans filmography. In this case by the odious excrement entitled Cannibal Ferox (1981). His earlier departure into the ‘Green Inferno’ The Man from Deep River (1972) was far superior, but Lenzi’s attempt to out grotesque Cannibal Holocaust (1980) casts a long and repulsive shadow over his career.

The Celluloid Highway's Title Screen Database

One of the major benefits of having a blog such as The Celluloid Highway is that I can advertise on it for free. With this mind I'd like to direct my readers and friends to a new site I created this weekend. I've always been fascinated by the various fonts and graphics used in the design of film titles, and I've decided to create a database that chronicles the title screens of all the films that can be found in my personal library. I will still continue to run themed title screen posts on The Celluloid Highway because they have proved to be quite popular. It is my pleasure to invite you all to The Celluloid Highway's Title Screen Database. If you're feeling particularly generous please spread the word...thanks in advance! - Shaun

Morgiana (1973)

Dir: JURAJ HERZ
Country: CZECHOSLOVAKIA

If there were two defining characteristics of art cinema in the 1960’s then it was a need to challenge prevailing orthodoxies (both in terms of film form, filmic traditions, and politics) and to reconstitute the theme of national identity in the wake of tumultuous world events. It became a decade of national cinema and new waves. The most prominent occurred in France and was represented by the films of former critics such as Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut and Claude Chabrol. In Britain the ‘Angry Young Man’ impulse gave rise to the ‘kitchen sink’ realism of films such as Room at the Top (1959), A Taste of Honey (1961), and This Sporting Life (1963). While the young French filmmakers were concerned with challenging the so called ‘Tradition of Quality’ and pushing the boundaries of film form, the British filmmakers were occupied with issues of class and realism. In Japan filmmakers such as Nagisa Oshima, Seijun Suzuki, Shohei Imamura, and Susumu Hani contributed to a wave of audacious politically motivated films that interrogated questions of gender and the recent occupation. The influence of Italian Neo-Realism and the French New Wave had a profound effect on a generation of South American filmmakers, and tremors of seismic activity could be detected in Cuba, Argentina, and most notably Brazil’s ‘Cinema Novo’. One of the least written about areas of activity occurred in the Eastern bloc countries; Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia all enjoyed brief but brilliant moments of filmmaking sunlight, before the boot of communism ground out the creativity. Morgiana is considered one of the last flowerings of the Czech New Wave and is both a brilliant and frustrating viewing experience.

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.