Three Films Make A Post: A man's got to know his limitations.

Magnum Force (1973): Probably not untouched by the accusations of fascist leanings levelled against Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry, this second movie concerning the ridiculously violent police inspector – and let’s be honest here, incompetent investigator - Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood), sees the guy fighting a group of vigilante cops who plan what amounts to a fascist coup in San Francisco of all places. At one point in time, ladies and gentlemen, fascists were indeed not ruling most countries in the world anymore. Just imagine.

Anyway, Ted Post’s film never really manages to explain why Harry is set against his vigilante colleagues, though it does attempt to make something of a strength out of it by having Eastwood look somewhat puzzled about it himself. In other regards, this is simply a very solid 70s action movie, with a couple of excellent set pieces, a lead actor who appears to be enjoying himself, and a finale full of dead Nazi cops.

Black Magic (1975): I remember having had not as much time for Ho Meng-Hua’s first Black Magic movie for the Shaw Brothers when I saw it last. On a rewatch, I have rather warmed to the film, especially the brutal way in which Ho lets overheated melodrama, exploitation and the ickiness of South East Asian black magic horror – here at its inception point for Hongkong cinema, as far as I understand – crash into each other, until things can only be solved through one of those absurd and wonderful magic battles one can’t help but love wholeheartedly.

I still prefer the second Black Magic, mind you.

Hardware (1990): These days, films like Richard Stanley’s trippy unauthorized adaptation of a 2000AD strip, with their nature destroyed by human hands, corrupt authorities and corporate rule do feel rather more poignant than most of us would have hoped for even a couple of decades ago, so this in part very silly movie about a rampaging bit of military technology hits harder than ever before in this regard.

If you can get through that, there’ still great delight to be found here: Stanley shoots his science fiction horror not like James Cameron, but as a giallo, with moments that manage to suggest the mythical or the supernatural without outright speaking of them, and a surprisingly daft hand at drawing dysfunctional relationships.

Three Films Make A Post: He's not a serial killer. He's much worse.

Troublesome Night 8 aka 陰陽路八之棺材仔 (2001): This eighth entry into the venerable series of Hong Kong horror comedy anthologies surprises by not being an anthology movie. Instead, director Edmond Yuen Chi-Keung chooses to draw out a single story that might have made a strong segment for an anthology into a full length movie that starts slow, continues slower and suddenly becomes downright entertaining in its last half hour (the bit you’d actually find in the anthology movie). It’s not terrible, but it’s also not exactly an exciting piece of cinema, not helped by Yuen’s bland and characterless direction.

Dust Devil (1992): Every few years, I try again to watch Richard Stanley’s much loved horror magnum opus, a film I always should have been all over, given my tastes in horror. Every few years, I don’t get on with it. Or rather, I didn’t, for suddenly, this year, the film opened up to me, and suddenly its complicated mix of private and not so private mythology, its surrealist commentary on colonialism and its human consequences, and its intense visual style came together in a singular way; eccentricities I found annoying the last four or three times suddenly make total sense.

That abuse and the kinds of violence certain men inflict upon women have been more on my mind lately than I’d like to might have played into my finally connecting with this one, as well, for this is also a film about an abused woman stumbling into a man (well, sort of) even more toxic than the last until she will eventually become so hollowed out, his personality will be able to just slip into her.

Succubus (2024): Succubus is no Dust Devil, but I do appreciate how much R.J. Daniel Hanna’s film wants to be like one of the films of the classic exploitation era: sleazy (or as sleazy as you can get in 2024), a bit absurd, but also absolutely interested in talking about some of the issues of the day in the sort of crudely metaphorical manner that makes my heart go out to any movie using it. It also features Ron Perlman playing one Dr. Orion Zephyr, adding a little joy to anyone’s day.

I also appreciate the film’s willingness to just go there and attempt the budget size version of the visionary artistry it can never afford the proper effects work for.

The script, on the other hand, could have used a little more time, perhaps a clean up of the pretty draggy middle of the film, as well as more focus on the core of what it clearly wants to communicate about relationships in the age of swiping wherever.

In short: The Otherworld (2013)

Original title: L’autre monde

As regulars among my imaginary readers will probably know, I tend towards a pretty mechanistic and materialistic view of the universe, so I’m about as far from being a “believer” as you can get. I do try to treat people looking at the word with different eyes than I do respectfully and loathe the aggressive fanaticism of people like Dawkins-style New Atheists, who are just as irrationally convinced of their world view as the most extreme religious fanatic or UFO believer, and pretty damn rude about it, too. One needs to keep in mind that it may be oneself and not the others who are wrong about everything. Plus, even when one doesn’t believe in something, it is usually enlightening, fascinating or sometimes just entertaining to learn what others think about it.

However, I generally do find my patience tested by a lot of paranormal/esoteric/etc documentaries who often argue their cases in ways that make it very hard for me to give them the benefit of the doubt or my eyes and ears.

So I went into Richard Stanley’s documentary about every esoterically minded person’s favourite part of France, Occitania around Rennes-le-Château, Montségur and the other core places of the Cathar faith, his own spiritual encounter there and the various wild and woolly theories and stories about what’s going on around there with a bit of care. Once people start talking about spiritual vibrations and telluric energies, as they do rather a lot in here, my eyebrows can’t help but rise. However, the longer the film went on, the more interested I found myself, and realized that Stanley isn’t in the business of convincing anyone of his beliefs (or even making terribly clear what those beliefs actually are) but trying to portray a place that clearly has something beyond its history drawing the stranger – or more original – parts of humanity there.

While he clearly has his own ideas about the place, Stanley doesn’t attempt to turn a whole lot of sometimes very different experiences into a coherent tale, nor – thankfully – into a conspiracy theory, but is satisfied with letting his subjects and himself share their tales. He enhances those tales through some cheap yet effective psychedelic – and often just loveably playful (watch out for the running gag about cats!) – effects, nature shots that can’t help but impress at least some of the place’s draw on a viewer, and the kind of intelligent editing hand you usually don’t get in documentaries about esoterica.

Which, really, is rather a lot for any documentary to achieve.