noir guy

Liam Regan's debut film - which screened to a highly appreciative audience at Frightfest 2015 - is a love letter to Troma and the early films of Frank Henenlotter. A low-budget exercise in adoration that often plumbs the depths of bad taste to amusing effect, it's an energetic and gleeful tale that also often reveals a surprising sense of self-discipline and maturity for a first effort. This is clearly a filmmaker whose love for the genre and his film shines through and should hopefully be the start of a promising career. Oh, and if you don't know what the title refers to - or what the film is about - I'm not going to tell you; apart from the fact that the film is about a worm that turns. And what happens to one particular 'worm' made me cross my legs - and may have the same effect on many other male viewers! British exploitation cinema is clearly alive and well and, for that, many thanks Liam Regan!

This offbeat 1970 NY-set character study resembles its central character too closely and is therefore something of a cop-out. Jonathan (Jordan ANGEL, ANGEL DOWN WE GO Christopher) is a lazy Princeton graduate who earns what he describes as 'an easy living' driving a NY taxi 'Because I want to show the world the back of my neck'. Together with his frustrated virginal ex-army pal Winston (Robert Walden), he lives an aimless existence disinterestedly weaving his cab through the often traffic-clogged city streets, drifting through loveless and seemingly joyless no-strings sexual encounters and occasionally chasing pigeons before embarking on a tentative relationship with his new neighbour, college drop-out Jennifer (Jill O'Hara, in her only film appearance) who - in counterculture era drop-out fashion - is trying to find herself. But can Jonathan discover true happiness in his own backyard or is he destined to forever fly free like the pigeons he casts sidelong glances at and occasionally tries to kick? Although this ticks many of the early 70s cinema boxes (there are the obligatory party scenes, generation-gap themes, swishy kaftan-wearing homosexuals, casual sexual encounters, characters bonding during a rooftop pot-smoking session, grungy wintry locations, ghastly woozy love songs warbling away on the soundtrack, a self-loathing misanthropic anti-hero and even a somewhat out-of-place car chase), the sum of the parts don't ultimately add up to a particularly satisfying whole. This is due in no small part to its smug central character whose inner monologues tend to resemble a series of clichéd and generally unfunny observations (e.g. 'It's OK to be homely, lady, but you're abusing the privilege' - which is one of the better zingers on offer) and whose selfish behaviour is most likely inherited (he has a similarly solipsistic mother still pining for her late husband and a lecherous and unfeeling stepfather) but don't really give the film the emotional or dramatic heft of the same year's far superior FIVE EASY PIECES. However, there are a few residual pleasures in those grungy wintry Big Apple locations, a catchy electronic central theme and the window cracked open on a vanished era that may have mostly existed through the refracted lens of a movie camera rather than in actuality. And it's a real obscurity that seems to have virtually vanished following its original release in its longer-titled full-length form and subsequent re-release in the retitled and abridged (86 minutes) form as PIGEONS that I viewed thanks to its apparent one-off appearance on UK TV in the mid-90s. The current scarcity factor alone makes it a must for 'Cinema Obscura' buffs.

Sombre French/Israeli co-production about a Nazi commandant Hans Wernert (Karl Boehm, best known for his lead role in Peeping Tom) who ran a wartime counterfeiting unit in a concentration camp and subsequently lives under the false identity of one of his victims Jonathan Strauss in Israel. However, the truth of his early remark to his unsuspecting pregnant wife Dahlia (Corrine Marchand) that "the past always returns" seems increasingly likely to be borne out when American sociologist Fred Blythe (Brett Halsey) begins digging up the truth as part of his oral history of the holocaust seen through the eyes of the survivors. Seemingly unseen in the West, this film must have seemed timely and relevant in 1964 as it explicitly references the then recent capture, trial and subsequent hanging in Israel of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann whilst musing (often at some length) on philosophical issues concerning the nature of good and evil that are still relevant today. Necessarily downbeat, but decently made and played and never less than dramatically engaging as the viewer is uncertain until the end how it will all play out, the most puzzling issue for many (or those that see it) will be the fact that it appears to have received scant - if any - release in English speaking countries (my DVD is a French language version that features an English subtitled option courtesy of a French DVD release by Les Documents Cinematographiques Collection Classique). Worth a look, then, if you get the chance.