FOR HALLOWEEN......

Some wonderfully phantasmagorical images from the 1922 classic HAXAN directed by Benjamin Christensen.

TAKEN (2008)

If you are into tough action films this one is a real treat. It's a double treat because here is a film that knows exactly where it is going, achieves exactly what it sets out to do and does it without wasting one foot of film. It signs in at a lean and very mean 93 minutes. It also scores heavily for me by actually having a good actor in the lead who can make the hero convincingly human as well as seriously badass. Liam Neeson plays a former ""preventer" for a U.S. Goverment Agency ("I prevented bad things happening") who has retired to be near his 17 year old daughter who lives with his ex-wife. The girl travels to Paris with a friend and no sooner is she on French soil she is grabbed by Albanian sex traffickers. Neeson hears the abduction over the phone and is soon on his way to Paris. The American scenes very cleverly inform us of his former trade, the people he worked with and, in a scene at a pop concert, show us his abilities and skills. By the time he arrives in Paris you know that the Albanians are in for a bad time. The action is fast and furious with an body count that would make some action heroes sick with envy. Yet, during the shooting, beating, stabbing, garrotting, crashing etc, thanks to Neeson's performance, you never loose sight of the fact that this is a man pushed to the very edge at the thought of losing his daughter. He shows no mercy to the scum he encounters and the film never moralises about his methods even when he improvises an electric chair which he casually leaves running after extracting the information from the man in it. Only once was I pulled up short by one of his actions (and I believe this is too intelligent a film for that not to be the reaction that the writer and the director wanted) when he casually puts a bullet into an innocent woman to convince somebody he means business. It is the most shocking scene in the film despite all the graphic violence that has preceeded it. Yet, even here, the film refuses to moralise. The only question the film asks us is what we would do if it was our child? We are not invited to pass judgement on Neeson's character, only on ourselves. Written by Luc Besson and directed by Pierre Morrel TAKEN is a terrific action film with a brain. Rating ****

OUT OF CONTROL (1998)

This is so obscure that I couldn't find any decent (or indecent) pictures from it on the web. But it is worth saying something about - albeit nothing very good. It is a desperate attempt to put together a film nouveau noir out of other peoples ideas. Sean Young steals a bag of money from her boss. She packs, drives out of town, changes cars at used car dealership and that night stops at a motel and takes a shower......whoa! we've all seen that before. Here, however, she continues her journey the next morning and eventually arrives at a remote diner which looks straight out of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE. She is befriended by the kindly owner (an unconvincing performance from Tom Conti) and decides to stay there a while. Meanwhile her boss, who is a cigar chomping Al Capone clone who you'd have been embarassed to see in THE GODFATHER, is sending out his goons to find her. When one of the hoods finds her and attacks her Conti accidently kills him and later helps her gas another threat (who turns out to have been totally innocent) and they are both drawn into a web of suspicion and murder. The boss gets the barbershop treatment in a scene that is very similar to the one that opens Cronenberg's EASTERN PROMISES. The film saves a couple of twists for the climax but if you don't see them coming you've got no right to be traveling down these mean streets. Conti is a good, even great actor, given the right material. Here he doesn't have a lot to work with and has to do it with an American accent which I was constantly aware of although I can't say how authentic it was. Directed by Richard Trevor (English, I think) a film editor from his own script. He's done nothing since as a director. A shame as I like modest films, I like nouveau noir - but this totally lacks any originality. Rating *

FRANKENSTEIN 1970 (1958)

I first saw this film circa 1961. I was fifteen years old and I'd never seen Boris Karloff in a horror film. FRANKENSTEIN 1970 turned up on a one day only show at one of our local cinemas and I had arranged to meet some friends for the show (the support feature was William Castle's MACABRE) when my mother decided she wanted to see the film! Horror! How could a fifteen year old kid go to the cinema with his mother when his friends were going to be there? Deviously I decided we'd go to the matinee and avoid my friends. Of course I had completely forgotten that as we left the cinema we would walk past the queue for the next show - and all my friends!

Anyway, enough of my moment of shame, and on to the film. Howard W.Koch had directed a couple of good movies early in his career, SHIELD FOR MURDER and BIG HOUSE USA , and he would later go on to produce the AIRPLANE comedies. There is certainly nothing wrong with his work on FRANKENSTEIN 1970 and he gets the best from a not too bright script. The film is particularly well shot ( ) and the newly released DVD print handsomely brings out the crisp quality of the black and white photography and the castle interiors (presumably left overs from a bigger budgeted production, are impressive. The supporting cast are all competent with Don "Red" Barry hanging up his stetson to play the insensitive film director who has the bright idea of making a film at the real-life Castle Frankenstein where the current Victor von Frankenstein, his mind unhinged by his experience under the nazis, is continuing the experiments of his notorious ancestor. Karloff, complete with scar and crewcut, walks (or limps) away with the film and shines in every scene - the early sequence where Karloff delivers to camera a monologue about the Frankenstein legend. Not a great film by any means, not even a very good one, but for Karloff fans and vintage horror fans generally it is an interesting one. Rating ***

This film has been released as part of a box set of four Karloff/Lugosi movies. To read what friend Cerpts had to say about the film and its four companions CLICK THIS LINK.

THEY CAME FROM BEYOND SPACE (1967)

This Amicus production directed by Freddie Francis is, surprisingly, good fun. It's low budget with some flimsy sets and some ripe overacting (Michael Gough is a total joy as usual as he once again spits out his total contempt for the human race and for his wardrobe). The plot seems like something that was rejected as an adventure for Professor Quatermass back in the 1950s. Robert Hutton stars as a man with a metal plate in his head and Jennifer Jayne as a woman with a two foot high ginger bouffant on hers but look out for Zia Mohyadden with a colander on his!Ray guns and accessories from the local toy shop. Hard to believe this was onlyn 85 minutes long as it seemed twice that but I can't say it dragged. Good? Frankly, no. but definitely watchable. Rating **

SUBSPECIES (1991)

Wonderful....a really enjoyable low-budget horror film from the Charles Band crypt which although it has a not too interesting "good vampire" of the type sadly becoming popular with todays teenagers also features Anders Home as his evil brother who thankfully adheres to the Max Schreck school of bloodsucking and peasant extermination. Other pluses are that there is less padding than usual and the film is actually made on location in Transylvania. Direction is by Ted Nicolau who made the excellent THE VAMPIRE JOURNALS (1997) which I believe is a spinoff from this film. The DVD to hand also features a short "making of" documentary of which the best part is a load of Romanian citizens saying that they've either never heard of vampires or that they are the invention of "simple minded Americans". Yeah, right. Also included is a very funny compilation of good bits from other Full Moon Pictures. Nearly forgot to say that Laura Mae Tate is cute. Perfect, undemanding late night viewing. Rating ***

TARZAN AND THE AMAZONS (1945)

This is an enjoyable, if somewhat odd, entry into the Weissmuller series. It starts with Jane returning from England where she has been helping with the war effort. We know Tarzan isn't the brightest light in the jungle because he doesn't seem to notice that when she left she was Maureen O'Sullivan and now she has come back as Brenda Joyce. Of course there is a treasure seeking safari on the loose led by Barton MacLane (again!) who are searching for the lost city of the Amazons. Oddly the Amazons seem to all be of the same age and rather pretty, except for their queen who is old Maria Ouspenskya - and nobody is older than Maria Ouspenskya! - who talks as though she is warning everybody about lycanthropy. Tarzan films are always better when there is a lost city around but why do they all seem to be populated by Europeans? As with all the later Tarzan films there is not a black face in sight anywhere. Johnny Sheffield is Boy again and one has to say that he was one of the more pleasing child actors in that he never really became irritating. This is quite violent for a Tarzan movie with lots of pretty Amazons getting shot, the entire safari being wiped out and Tazan watching two of the bad guys going under the quicksand without any attempt to help. Even Boy is condemned to death at one point in the story. Oh, by the way Cerpts, Weissmuller's nipples still look evenly placed to me. Direction by Kurt Neumann. Fun. Rating ***

Johnny Sheffield today (scary, eh?)

P.S. After my last TARZAN review a reader of this blog asked me how I could possibly give the film a *** rating. The answer is simple : I enjoy these films. They make no pretense to be anything more than what they are. I don't expect great art - or any art really. Any film that keeps me entertained without making me bored or irritated gets a ***.