Three Films Make A Post: The scene was the wildest freak-out in Vegas history…and the gig was to grab it all!

The Innocents aka De uskyldige (2021): Eskil Vogt’s horror movie about a group of kids who discover they are developing psychic powers and the pretty horrible things that follow is certainly a future genre classic, exploring uncomfortable ideas about childhood and poverty without becoming dishonest or grimdark or lacking compassion, while also providing some memorable and painfully effective horror set pieces that make most jump scare horror look embarrassing and pointless in comparison.

There’s also fantastic child acting, as well as filmmaking that finds un-kitschy ways to portray the way a child’s sense perceptions might feel when combined with the strangeness of telepathic and telekinetic powers taken seriously.

The Adventures of Arsène Lupin aka Les aventures d’Arsène Lupin (1957): I generally do tend to enjoy French genre movies made in this period, but Jacques Becker’s attempt at everyone’s favourite gentleman thief feels rather too close to the way German filmmakers of the time would have handled the material, which might have something to do with this being a French-German-Italian co-production. So expect only the most obvious kind of humour, a never-ending stint in the world of KuK (treated nostalgically, of course and alas). Not to blame on my native country are Robert Lamoureux’s one-note performance as Lupin, or the script’s difficulties when it comes to at least pretending its plot episodes are actually connected. And it’s not as if the film had any interesting heist set pieces.

The Came to Rob Las Vegas (1968): A criminal mastermind (Gary Lockwood) bites off more than he can chew in a daring (and murderous) armoured truck robbery (not really robbing Las Vegas, despite the film’s title), and soon has to cope not just with the normal police and the owner of the truck (Lee J. Cobb), but also the Mafia, the US treasury department (via Jack Palance), and the fact that his merry band of colleagues is mostly incapable of keeping a clear head or following instructions. At least there’s a particularly attractive Elke Sommer waiting for him, or might that be another problem?

This is another international co-production, with the late-60s cast to match, competently though not exceedingly well directed by Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi. If it were twenty minutes shorter, this would probably be a great example of the twisty, hard-boiled arm of the heist movie. With over two hours of running time, it does tend to drag its feet from time to time, taking its time with various subplots it doesn’t exactly need. On the other hand, there are some really cleverly staged set pieces taking place in the desert, and a great ending where everybody loses.

Blood and Bullets (1976)

aka Knell, The Bloody Avenger

Original title: Sangue di sbirro

Dan Caputo (George Eastman), a giant with a short fuse and a violent disposition who goes by the nickname of Knell (as in death knell) returns to New York shortly after the death of his father. Because this is that kind of movie, Dan single-handedly thwarts an air jacking attempt by half a dozen or so armed guys on his way in. Sure, quite a few of the hostages die during the shoot-out, but apparently, he’s still a big damn hero.

Somewhat more plot-relevant attempts at our protagonist’s life begin when he hasn’t even entered the apartment he grew up in and where his father was killed. Of course, random mooks are easily dispatched. To make Dan’s life a little easier, he’s also greeted by an old associate of his, the avuncular (if one’s uncle is a bit of a killer, at least) gang leader Duke (Jack Palance) who comes with some helpful gunplay and his own free corpse disposal service.

From here on out, barely a scene goes by in which Dan isn’t involved in a brutal beatdown – mostly with him as the delivering party – or a shoot-out with people who really don’t want him to find out who killed his father, or why. The film does manage to squeeze in a couple of flashbacks about the fraught relationship between Dan and his dad, a sub-plot about him reconnecting with an old girlfriend (Jenny Tamburi), and even some detective work. Repeat until all of the bad guys are dead and Duke – spoiler – crowns himself the new king of the underworld, because all of this was apparently part of his evil plan, or something.

Around these parts, Blood and Bullets’ director Alfonso Brescia is mostly beloved for his wild and woolly cardboard and blinking lights space operas, films whose cheapness is only exceeded by their inspired weirdness. Being a working Italian genre director, Brescia was involved in other genres as well, which brings us to this Eurocrime movie. Or truthfully, this endless series of cheaply – though not as cheaply as Brescia’s science fiction – realized yet energetic action sequences. Brescia isn’t one of the great Italian crime action directors, but what he lacks in finesse when it comes to editing, blocking and rhythm, he does make up for in energy. The action is absolutely relentless, even in the context of the film’s time and place. I don’t think I’ve seen many action movies where the sheer number of violent encounters was quite as exhausting as here, apart from some Indonesian films made forty years or so later.

What Blood and Bullets lacks, at least in comparison with much of the rest of Brescia’s body of work is a sense of weirdness. Brescia’s stranger sensibilities are completely replaced by a willingness to hit genre tropes and plot beats like clockwork. To me, that’s a bit of a disappointment, because I prefer my Brescia weird and woolly. Yet it also is what makes this work as well as it does as a straightforward Eurocrime film, made with a total commitment to entertaining its audience with the low-brow but always effective charms of copious violence, tough guy posturing, a bit of sex and a nasty disposition.

Past Misdeeds: Hawk the Slayer (1980)

This is a re-run with only the slightest of edits, so please don’t ask me what the heck I was thinking when I wrote any given entry into this section.

Welcome to some vaguely defined medieval fantasy period. Brothers Voltan (Jack Palance) – evil if the name isn’t hint enough – and Hawk (John Terry) – good if his lack of personality isn’t a hint for that – have been feuding for years, ever since Voltan tried to murder Hawk, killed the woman they both loved (Catriona MacColl on flashback duty), and murdered their father (Ferdy Mayne) because dear dad didn’t want to give him the family elf stone that turns a really awkward looking sword into the Mindsword (magical power: something about minds and a bit of telekinesis).

Now, Voltan, his adopted son Drogo (Shane Briant) and their henchpeople involve themselves in kidnapping an abbess for ransom. Though, if that sort of thing should attract Hawk for a bit of fratricide, all the better. Indeed Hawk does become involved. Happily, he’s already in the process of picking up his own team of, ahem, heroes by saving their lives: Ranulf, owner of a repeating crossbow who is also the guy responsible for informing Hawk of Voltan’s misdeeds; Crow (Ray Charleson), the last elf; Baldin (Peter O’Farrell), a not particularly small dwarf; Gort (Bernard Bresslaw), a not particularly large giant; and a blind good witch everyone calls Woman (Patricia Quinn) because name are for men. Together, they fight crime. No, actually, together they assault a band of slavers, murder (which is the word one uses when you kill your enemies when they are already disarmed and helpless, I believe) them and steal their money so the nuns can have some ransom money to hand if our merry band doesn’t manage to conquer Voltan.

Obviously, with our heroes coming up with plans this ethically accomplished, nothing can go wrong.

The British production Hawk the Slayer is a strangely fascinating film. Not because it is any good, mind you. It is, as a matter of fact, actually a pretty terrible movie all around, with shoddy production values, dubious to hilarious acting, and a script that always drifts off into stuff that just doesn’t make sense; why, it even ends throwing open the gates to a sequel that – perhaps thankfully, perhaps sadly if you’re of my somewhat perverse tastes – never came.

However, it is also a film absolutely ahead of its time. This is, after all, a low rent sword and sorcery movie made before any of the films that produced the sword and sorcery wave for the cinemas were completed, seemingly picking up its main influences from Star Wars. At least, Voltan’s helmet and demeanour forcefully suggest a whinier Darth Vader, while the cowled sorcerer or whatever he is supposed to be pulling his strings for reasons the film leaves open for that sequel that never came has a decided Emperor vibe. One might also interpret Hawk’s Mindsword as the low tech version of a light sabre, but then, a magic sword is a magic sword is a magic sword and not necessarily invented by George Lucas.

The film’s other main influence is obviously – at least to my eyes and ears – the Spaghetti Western, with half of the score built out of cues which carry more than just a passing resemblance to certain Ennio Morricone works, and many an early fight scene consisting of stare downs followed by short and rapid action. The latter could of course also be less inspiration by the Italian films as Terry Marcel filming around something he’s not very good at, namely the actual action in action sequences. This idea gets further traction when you keep in mind that Hawk’s two larger set piece battles both take place in conditions of visibility so bad, the audience can only guess at most of what’s actually going on in them, peering through the very artificial fog of the first one, and through what looks a lot like the insides of a slaughtered feather bed in the second one (all thanks to practical witch magic that seems to be based on the idea of movie heroes coping much better with not actually seeing their enemies than villains do, which doesn’t actually work out so hot in what I’m not going to call a nod to realism).

There’s something deeply perverse about directorial decisions like that one. But then a certain perversity fits the film, for there’s a lot about Hawk that’s awkward and dubious in a way that parallels the Italian sword and sorcery films of half a decade later to a degree I can’t help but imagine someone involved in the production was a Doctor Who companion socialized in the 1990s somehow stranded in 1980’s British low rent movie central. Seriously, the parallels are frightening, and there’s little on screen you wouldn’t later see in various Italian films.

Sure, there’s a total lack of nudity (appropriate to the mythical, meaning it being a myth, sexlessness of British culture) but otherwise we have everything I love and hate about Italian sword and sorcery on display here: the ethical flexibility of the heroes (which might obviously also be taken from the Spaghetti Western or even actual sword and sorcery stories); line delivery that suggests a cast of non-native speakers or a really weird bunch of post-dubbing actors giving the characters voice; acting that fluctuates between so dead pan it’s more dead than alive (hello, Hawk and monosyllabic, staring elf dude) and hysterically over-excited (hello, Jack Palance’s visible hunger for the chewing of scenery and possibly other actors, and double hello “Woman”’s loud melodramatic stage whispering of every damn line she speaks); production design that makes little sense culturally and looks in turns shoddy and hypnotically weird; oh so very special effects like the emulation of Crow’s supernaturally fast arrow shooting skills via showing the same shot again and again in quick cuts while adding hilarious sound effects; and last but not least, a script that makes little sense and meanders from one damn thing to another with random abandon. Yup, Hawk truly has it all.


Of course, since time travel doesn’t actually exist apart from the boring linear movement most of us – I’m not sure about certain script writers and filmmakers - suffer under, Hawk being a full-fledged Italian sword and sorcery movie made in the UK before the genre actually existed, might also suggest the big Italian sword and sorcery wave didn’t just try to rip off Conan and Excalibur but was actually heavily influenced by Terry Marcel’s Hawk the Slayer. I’m not sure I’m not preferring the time travel theory, though.

Torture Garden (1967)

After visiting his torture-based mobile cabinet of wax that’s apparently part of a fairground sideshow, the proprietor, one Dr Diabolo (Burgess Meredith), invites five of his customers (Michael Bryant, Beverly Adams, Barbara Ewing, Jack Palance and Michael Ripper, who confusingly enough does not seem to play an innkeeper) to a very special show. There, he presents warnings of possible futures where they do evil by getting them to stare at the shears of a figure of Atropos. Since this is an Amicus anthology movie, every vision makes one segment of the movie.

First up is “Enoch”, in which something that presents as a cat develops a rather unholy influence on a young would-be playboy who basically murdered his uncle.

Then follows “Terror Over Hollywood”, in which we learn the rather boring secret that keeps certain Hollywood stars seemingly immortal. No, it’s not cosmetic surgery or the injection of snake toxins, silly!

Next up is “Mr. Steinway”, concerning that most classic of love triangle between Man, Woman and Grand Piano.

We finish up on “The Man Who Collected Poe”, where the greatest of all Poe collectors (Peter Cushing) meets a rather too enthusiastic sharer (Jack Palance) in his interest.

Poor Michael Ripper doesn’t actually get his own segment but is used to close the framing story. You’ll never guess who Dr Diabolo actually is (if you are very, very slow)!

As friends of weird fiction and literary horror will probably have noticed (if you didn’t simply know already), the segments of this film directed by the great Freddie Francis are all based on stories by the equally great Robert Bloch (who did so much more than just write the novel Hitchock’s Psycho is based on). In fact, this is one of the three Amicus anthology films scripted by Bloch himself. So it’s no surprise it is full of the man’s interest in classic supernatural authors as well as (usually aberrant) psychology, with a healthy dose of the macabre added for good measure.

Quality-wise, this isn’t my favourite of the Bloch/Amicus bunch (that would obviously be Asylum), but it does have quite a bit to recommend it. Well, “Terror Over Hollywood” is just bland, taking way too much time to come to a not terribly interesting or shocking ending, but every anthology needs to have one single bad entry at least. “Enoch” provides Francis with some nice opportunities for creating a creepy, gothic-style mood; this is also one of the few films I know which feature an evil cat the filmmakers actually manage to make look rather sinister.

“Mr. Steinway” works best if you treat it as a work of black humour of the most sardonic type; its psychological basis is a bit too obvious and so outdated it weakens the whole thing considerably if you take it too seriously. On the other hand, a pianist having an unhealthy connection to his supernaturally endowed instrument certainly isn’t without resonance.

The last one’s the greatest treasure here, though, and “The Man Who Collected Poe” doesn’t just have an excellent joke in its title, but also features a particularly huge dose of Francis’s patented gothic mood – this time aiming for a heated version of the same very fitting to the tale’s Poe theme – and a great outing by Jack Palance. Seeing Palance orgasmically (I’m not even sure that’s a metaphor) rubbing himself against all sorts of Poe paraphernalia is quite the thing, as grotesquely funny as it is creepy. Even better is the script’s emphasis on his obsession with Poe and all thing weird being so great, he’d be perfectly willing to die for it, if it only provides him with a kind of total communion with his love.


This final segment alone, in combination with Meredith’s most excellent mugging as the Devil (spoiler?), would be worth the entry, but the rest of the film, “Hollywood” excepted, really isn’t bad at all either to watch on a rainy night.

On ExB: Hawk the Slayer (1980)

Stop press! The history of cheap sword and sorcery movies has to be rewritten thanks to the most Italian British movie ever made – before cheap Italian sword and sorcery movies even existed.

Learn more about this dark sorcery in my column about Hawk the Slayer at the cackling Exploder Button.

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,reviews,other places,sword and sorcery,terry marcel,jack palance,john terry,patricia quinn,bernard bresslaw,ray charleson

In short: The Professionals (1966)

Oil millionaire Grant (Ralph Bellamy), hires four professionals – former revolutionary Fardan (Lee Marvin), his explosives expert best buddy, the amoral Dolworth (Burt Lancaster), superior scout Jake (Woody Strode) and horse expert Ehrengard (Robert Ryan) – to return his wife Maria (Claudia Cardinale) to him who has been kidnapped by Mexican revolutionary/bandit Raza (Jack Palance) for a ransom of one hundred thousand dollars.

Raza is an old friend of Fardan’s and Dolworth’s but they still take on the job, first making a dangerous trip through the desert on the US/Mexican border, only to learn their employer just might not have told them the whole truth about the situation, and the kidnapping is anything but; not that this sort of thing matters all that much, one does have a contract with Grant, after all. On the other hand, long forgotten consciences might just be reawakened after a lot of people have died.

Quite a few reviewers on the net call Richard Brooks’s The Professional stuff like “an underseen classic” or even “one of the best westerns ever made” but frankly, I don’t see it. To earn any of these superlatives from me, a film needs a bit more than a slickly professional direction, a bunch of beloved (by me too!) aging tough guy actors going through the typical motions of this sort of thing, or picture postcard pretty photography.

What the film lacks for me are two things, and including just one of them might have been enough to turn this from perfectly watchable to great. Firstly, depth: sure, there’s a bit of moral deliberation about the uses and causes of revolutions and the men who fight in them, but the results the film arrives at aren’t exactly the stringent result of thematic work as they are in Leone’s and Corbucci’s revolutionary themed Spaghetti Westerns. In fact, I’d go so far as to say the moral conclusions the film draws aren’t actually convincing results of what happens in it at all, thanks to a script (also by Brooks) that tends to be desperately underwritten and leaves its inspired cast as ciphers. A Cipher, as you know, isn’t anything that does have any character or moral development per definition at all.

Secondly, the film’s very relaxed approach to storytelling does result in a certain lack of drama. Sure, there are shoot-outs, chases and an attack on a bandit fortification, and every single one of them is realized in perfectly competent manner, yet they all lack any sense of actual danger, the film never making a successful effort bringing home the stakes of any given situation.

Having said this, I don’t want to leave anyone reading in the impression I didn’t find watching The Professionals a perfectly enjoyable time; it just seems to lack in any ambition beyond being a pleasant time waster. Unfortunately there’s so much obvious talent before and behind the camera a pleasant time waster does seem like a bit of a waste of other things also.

Technorati-Markierungen: in short,american movies,western,richard brooks,burt lancaster,lee marvin,robert ryan,woody strode,jack palance,claudia cardinale

In short: Cyborg 2: The Glass Shadow (1993)

In the future, two companies, one Japanese and one American, producing intelligent, feeling androids they call cyborgs for no good reason vie for world domination. Pinwheel, the American corp, decides to dominate their Japanese counterpart once and for all by blowing up the competition's executive level with a special cyborg explosive they have prepared their cyborg Casella "Cash" Reese (Angelina Jolie) with.

A quite independent cyborg (who actually is a cyborg and not an android like Cash) named Mercy (Jack Palance) who likes to communicate with the world via a negative image of his luscious lips on TVs lying around - and in this future, TVs are lying disused in the dust everywhere - has other plans for her, and pushes Cash and her martial arts instructor and owner of a big crush on his charge Colson "Colt" Ricks (Elias Koteas) into a daring escape attempt.

The bad guys send a crazy bounty killer (Billy Drago) and an equally crazy cyborg bounty killer (Karen Sheperd) after what will soon enough become the lovers, but as you know, love, kicks in the face and Cyborg-Palance conquer all.

Michael Schroeder's Cyborg 2 is a film that usually gets a bad rep as a horrible, horrible movie. I, however, somewhat emphatically disagree with that position, possibly because I just watched the film this isn't really a sequel of (even though there are a few seconds of random scenes from it inserted into this), and therefore know the difference between a boring low budget movie and one that is trying enthusiastically. Cyborg 2 is the kind of film Roger Corman could have produced in the late 70s if the late 70s had had a thing for somewhat cyberpunk-y futures. It's cheap, it's not as dumb as it pretends to be, and from time to time, it's even rather funny.

And really, what's not to like about a movie that contains: Jack Palance's lips chewing the scenery, and then Billy Drago and Karen Sheperd taking care of whatever he left of it, a young, pretty insecure and very cute Angelina Jolie (who does get naked, as does Koteas so there's nudity for everyone), copious amounts of blue, amber and red lighting, an arena fight below two ventilators, Jack Palance making things explode, cheap production and costume design that is either meant to suggest curious cultural crossovers in the future or a random grab into a wardrobe, and a story - such as it is - where love and an exploding Jack Palance cure all ills? Even better, all this stuff is told without too much boring filler and with a totally annoying synth soundtrack. If that doesn't make Cyborg 2 a winner in anyone's book, I don't want to read it.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,sf,angelina jolie,elias koteas,billy drago,jack palance,karen sheperd

Without Warning (1980)

aka It Came Without Warning

There's trouble afoot in the rural area surrounding a lake somewhere in the USA. An alien (Kevin Peter Hall) uses the place as its hunting ground, killing people by throwing little living discs with the cutest teeth at them, and storing the corpses in a practical little shack. The fiend even gets Cameron Mitchell before the plot is getting going!

The situation escalates when a quartet of four teenagers arrives (oh look, it's a pre-sunglasses David Caruso in one of the meat roles, and he's wearing shorts in a most disturbing manner), and two of them manage to escape the alien into the loving arms of the local bar population. Because it's that sort of film, the closest the kids get to any actual help are great white hunter Joe Taylor (Jack Palance) and Vietnam vet and conspiracy theorist Fred "Sarge" Dobbs (Martin Landau). It's just too bad that Taylor is a bit too much into going mano-a-mano with his hunting brother from outer space and Sarge is so crazy he becomes convinced everyone around him - including the kids - is an alien invader in disguise.

Without Warning is a typical film by minor yet always interesting cult movie auteur Greydon Clark. I always have the impression Clark was at his best when he had the opportunity to direct comedies. At the very least, he seldom seemed very interested in the more straightforward elements of his films in other genres, and preferred to turn up the off-beat humour and the sideways weirdness in those of his movies that weren't actually supposed to be comedies.

The film at hand is no exception there, what with its numerous strange comical bits and detours into strange characters like Cameron Mitchell and his son who just can't seem to get onto the same page; I side with the son's scepticism towards using the phrase "hubba hubba" unironically - or at all - and hating books, I gotta say. That sort of thing distracts from what is supposedly the film's main thrust - you know, that thing about the alien hunter predating Predator? And yes, imaginary reader, I agree, there should be no copyright on ideas, and it's neither of the two movies who had the alien hunter idea initially anyhow.

However, most of the film's detours are so entertaining - or just plain befuddling enough - that I think it's quite impossible not to be entertained by Without Warning. After all, there are not only the strange characters (except for the teens, which are as lacking in character traits as the genre mandates, though I did like Tarah Nutter's somewhat awkward performance enough to root for her over the guy in the big headed alien suit, which surely counts for something) to fall in love with, there's also a scenery chewing competition between Jack Palance and Martin Landau. I think Landau wins that competition easily, but then a crazy Vietnam veteran conspiracy theorist is a more fruitful base for thespian overindulgence than an Ahab without a whale.

Despite Clark trying his best to distract the audience from the very basic man in a monster suit tale he and his four writers are telling, I even discovered some worthwhile moments in the more horror movie-like parts of Without Warning. Some of the sequences of the alien stalking its prey and of said prey running around in fear of it work quite well, mostly thanks to Dean Cundey's typically great photography that turns what could be rote and uninterested moody and tense.

The script also has its moments. A lot of it is just horribly silly stuff to give people a reason to run through the woods, but from time to time, like with the death of the next to last teenager, or the scene when Nutter's character suddenly comes down from an adrenaline high and remembers her dead best friend, there's a streak of self-assured grimness and a willingness to give non-characters moments of humanity on display that stands in hard contrast to the adorable mugging of Landau and Palance, and the off-beat humour.

While the alien suit is somewhat bland - and of course very unconvincing - the design and execution of the gooey little disc things we see much more often is quite great, clearly keeping with the tradition of all those lovely latex things out to suck your blood with tiny tentacle thingies and really dig in(to your heart) with the cutest little teeth. In other words, they're just as adorable as they are creepy.

It's … than one would expect might be Without Warning's catchphrase too, for it is also funnier, sillier, and grimmer than one would expect. Now, I'm not arguing this is one of the great ignored films of the cult cinema canon (a thing I'm not sure I even believe in, nor would want to exist), I'm just saying it's much more ambitious and interesting than it needed to be as a film about a guy in a monster suit chasing people through the woods.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,horror,sf,reviews,greydon clark,jack palance,martin landau,tarah nutter

Craze (1974)

London antiques dealer Neal Mottram (Jack Palance) is in financial trouble, with creditors and the IRS breathing down his neck.

Neal also just happens to be the leader of a small cult that worships the idol of a demon named Chuku (or something of that sort) he keeps in his cellar. Neal's situation begins to improve when he has an altercation with a former member of his coven and accidentally pushes her onto the (not very spiky looking) trident the idol carries. Neal - not the sanest of men - decides to interpret the woman's death as a blood sacrifice, rolls up the dead body in a carpet and throws it in the Thames.

A bit later, Neal suddenly finds a secret drawer full of gold coins that should take care of his most dire financial troubles. Clearly, it's Chuku's reward for the sacrifice!

With this sure sign of godly intervention in hand, it does not take long until Neal loses it completely and decides to sacrifice more women to satisfy Chuku. Neal's live-in "associate" Ronnie (Martin Potter), a young man whom the antiques dealer took in from the street where he was working as a (gay) prostitute, soon enough cops to what his boss is doing, but a weird mixture of loyalty and what one assumes - though the film does never actually show it - must be at least a part-time physical relationship between the men, possibly something more romantic, keeps him in line while Neal continues killing.

The police (with a short appearance by Trevor Howard and a young David Warbeck) are soon on Neal's case.Yet even though the antiques dealer acts as suspiciously as humanly possible, the cops can't prove anything. That may have something to do with the fact that the leader of the investigation, Sergeant Wall (Michael Jayston), seem more used to letting his fists speak than to the actual investigation of crimes. Still, Neal's luck (or Chuku's blessing) can't hold out forever.

Craze is a minor film in the body of work of the great Freddie Francis (here working for producer and writer Herman Cohen) that is quite below much of the director's best work in quality, but that functions perfectly well as a time capsule of early 70s London as seen through the eyes of the elderly.

Consequently, the film is full of everything you expect from the first half of the 70s: blinding fashion (and blinding wallpapers), random occult nonsense that tries to give itself an "exotic" sheen, cops who may have once heard of civil rights, awkward sex scenes (they do after all include Jack Palance as an irresistible ladies' man, though his character seems to assume that's Chuku's - big scriptwriter in the cellar that he is - blessing too and so on. These pleasures/eyesores all come together into a thick miasma of the mood of the film's time.

As a time capsule, Craze is highly entertaining, and really pretty brilliant; as a horror film, it's okay when one has a tolerance for middling genre pieces whose strengths don't have much to do with them being horror films. Francis was incapable to shoot a bad looking movie, as he again and again demonstrates through his lovely eye for visual detail here, yet the director was well capable of making a film that just doesn't do much of interest when it comes to its actual storyline. The plot meanders a bit too much, the murders tend to the absurd, yet are never absurd enough to get Craze into the zone of irreality, and most of the interesting thematic avenues are never really explored. There's a bit of subtext in the movie that could lead to one interpreting Palance's murders as his attempt to deny his attraction to Ronnie, but honestly, that's stretching interpretational freedom in the manner of Mister Fantastic.

So what's left when one tries to watch Craze as a horror film are scenes of Jack Palance mugging, Jack Palance killing women, some very brightly coloured blood, and Jack Palance's bare chest. That would leave the film barely watchable in a "point and laugh" sort of way, but for me, there's something utterly irresistible about a film so desperately trying to be part of its time, and to be pop. I do doubt Francis or Cohen actually understood contemporary pop culture in the least, but that's part of the fun of the whole affair.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,horror,reviews,freddie francis,jack palance,martin potter,diana dors,suzy kendall