That Lucky Touch

That Lucky Touch

United Kingdon - 1975

Director - Christopher Miles

Video Treasures, 1987, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 33 minutes

Dr. Who & the Daleks

Dr. Who & the Daleks

United Kingdom - 1988

Director - Gordon Flemyng

Goodtimes Home Video, 1989, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 18 minutes

Saturn 3

Saturn 3

United Kingdom – 1980

Director – Stanley Donen

CBS/FOX Home Video, 1987, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour 28 minutes 

Until my friend laid this old tape in my hands I had never heard of Saturn 3. That isn’t saying much I suppose, but he hadn’t either, and we are both big fans of robot oriented space-fiction so it was a pleasant surprise. Before watching the film I did a little research and discovered some interesting stuff. Despite not initially wanting to write extensively about what is a fairly mainstream film, after watching I was inspired to say something about it its relationship to space-fi in general.

When it was released, Saturn 3 appears to have received generally negative reviews, and remarkably, continues to do so . Not surprisingly these predominantly appear to stem from unfavorable comparison to Star Wars, which was released just a few years before. Although not mentioned in anything I read, I think it also owes a large debt to Kubrick’s 2001 in both overall plot, and Elmer Bernstein's score. But even if it’s not exceedingly original, Saturn 3 does a damned good job of wearing it’s pedigree on its sleeve.

The important thing to remember about Star Wars, especially because it has compounded its cultural significance in the last decade, is that it wasn’t very creative. As I’ve said before, it’s an entertaining movie, but the plot as we know is a generic and predictable white hero myth. Saturn 3 is not as epic or inspiring than its predecessor, but neither is it any less creative. What was so remarkable about Star Wars (and this is what I think most people find so endearing about it) was the visual design. Saturn 3 interestingly enough, was written and (initially) directed by John Barry, the same man responsible for the look of Star Wars.

The story itself centers around Adam (Kirk Douglas) and Alex (Farah Fawcet) on one of Saturn’s moons where they operate a hydroponic farm but mostly shag. When another astronaut, Benson (Harvey Keitel) arrives at their secluded love nest, they soon discover that he and his robot are not on a mission of peace. Compelling? Perhaps not, but visually everything in this movie, from the spacesuits to the ships clicks. The thing that really sells it for me is the robot, “Hector”, an eight foot tall machine powered by a giant tube of vat-grown human-fetus brains. The concept is pretty twisted if you think about it, and the way in which Hector takes on the sociopathic personality of its programmer Benson is particularly well conceived.

I’ve always cushioned my disappointment with the termination of sci-fi cinema’s great sagas with a simple philosophy; If the human geography of space has been expanded as much as my favorite films claim, then it is quite possible that each space-fiction film (of a nominally similar quality) merely represents another local facet in the same broad story. In that sense, there is no “end” to what I call the “Space-Fi Narrative Continuum”*. Garnished with moments of genuine intelligence and clothed in awesome visuals, Saturn 3 definitely makes the cut.

*In the future I'll refer to qualifying films under this label. Previously reviewed films which qualify have been back referenced.

 This Japanese poster is from Movie Outlaw

The Killing Fields

The Killing Fields

United Kingdom - 1984

Director - Roland Joffe

Warner Home Video, 1986, VHS

Run Time - 2 hours, 22 minutes

As a longtime student of the conflicts in Southeast Asia, this is among my favorite films on the subject. Although only peripherally related to Vietnam, it is an integral part in the overall history of the region. Not only is The Killing Fields really well acted, (regardless of anything else he has done or will do I have eminent respect for Sam Waterson because of this movie), but it is acted by an actual survivor of the brutal purges, the Killing Fields of Cambodia; Dr. Haing S. Ngor, one of only two non-actors to win an Oscar. Ngor went on to act in a number of films, usually about Vietnam, only to be murdered on the streets of Los Angeles in 1996.

Curse of the Werewolf

Here is a French poster for the 1961 British film Curse of the Werewolf, directed by Terence Fisher. The poster is by Guy Gerard Noel a French artist I talked about briefly back HERE.

Land and Freedom

Land and Freedom

UK/Spain - 1995

Director Ken Loach

Polygram Video, 1996, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 49 minutes

The sad remains of a beat up box I got from the library.

These two from IMPAwards

Spanish poster from Movie Poster Database

From pastposters.com

Tintorera: Tiger Shark

Tintorera: Tiger Shark

UK/Mexico – 1977

Director – Rene Cardona Jr.

Media Home Entertainment, 1983, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour,31 minutes

Tintorera came to my attention because of the Hugo Stiglitz name and the raggedy old Media box in which I spotted it. It quickly became evident that despite more obvious on-screen distractions, there was a lot of subtext in the sex and violence that pervade the film, and I wanted to figure it out. Monsters pretty much always represent more complex issues than their own physical or spiritual presence. Animals as monsters, despite common connections to fears of science, can also embody some socially or personally repressed aberration (or both).

Tintorera: Tiger Shark centers around Steve (Hugo Stiglitz,) an affluent and bored middle aged bachelor vacationing in Mexico and his relationship with Gabriella (Susan George) and Miguel (Andres Garcia). Initially Steve chases women in the bars and beaches, but his interest is ambivalent at best. After an insincere argument with Miguel over one particular woman, he and his rival quickly become friends and begin chasing women together. Soon they meet Gabriella with whom they establish a Menage a Trois with some important rules; no attachment to her, and no other women. Much of Steve and Miguel’s remaining time together is spent interacting with one another while Gabriella, whose character remains largely undeveloped beyond her introductory lines, remains peripheral and safely within the prescribed confines of female sexual object. Her presence serves to superficially deny what is becoming increasingly readable as a journey of sexual discovery between our two brotagonists.

 

In the opening scenes while pursuing women, Steve is horrified by a local fisherman’s wanton killing of sharks, but as his relationship with Miguel quickly becomes closer (although never explicitly physical) his friend teaches him how to hunt sharks and he actually begins to enjoy it. Up to this point the violence meted out against sharks is largely implied, but when they start hunting together it is shown quite explicitly, and becomes rather difficult to watch in its gruesomeness. For both the narrative and the film itself, this graphic penetrating violence clearly implies sex between the two men and Steve’s increasing comfort with this new identity. The first time they take Gabriella on one of their hunting forays she is shocked when she witnesses what the men are doing, and as if on cue Miguel is eaten by a Tiger Shark. According to the established rules of the three way, Gabriella takes her leave and Steve is left alone again.

Until this point, social disapproval and condemnation of his sexuality have pushed Steve into bitterness and even self repression which, with Miguel’s tutelage he has overcome. Through their commission of the transgressive act, the sex as violence, the men kill their feelings of lonely ostracism and guilt. In the final scenes after his lover’s death Steve goes completely apeshit and begins clubbing and spearing every shark he sees in a desperate attempt to find the one that ate Miguel. When he does, he kills it at the cost of his own arm.

Violence committed by men has a long and multicultural filmic tradition as a metaphor for sex, so it is not really a surprise to find it surfacing in a Mexican Jaws knockoff. What is interesting are the connotations of that violence as meted out against sharks in Tintorera, and the fact that contrary to Hollywood’s imperialist tradition, it ends on a positive note with the outsider still outside and unrepentant. Although Miguel’s death truncates the possibility of an continued or overt relationship, and the brilliant white hospital room in which Steve wakes suggests a return to safe institutional normalcy (that is, the hetero-normative), Steve is undeniably and visibly marked by the experience. The look of satisfied serenity on his face leads me to believe that his guilt-demons have been finally exorcised.

 This post is part of Queer Film Blogathon hosted by Garbo Laughs

German poster from Grindhouse Database

Japanese art from Super Trash Cinema

"Cult" Classic? I hardly think so.

Three French VHS inserts, all from Agressions Animales

Hellraiser

Hellraiser

United Kingdom - 1986

Director - Clive Barker

Anchor Bay Entertainment, 1996, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour 26 minutes (film), 22 minutes (spec. features)

A great example of the wastefulness of the consumerist precept wherein bigger and more equals better. Less than two hours of video is split onto two VHS tapes for no apparent reason except that the consumer could be charged more for the hollow satisfaction of having purchased this visually imposing but pointless box.

Lacking the knowledge of Barker and England that would make for some kind of moderately clever observation about the film, I will use it as an excuse to share some contextual media in the form of some contemporary articles in Fangoria:

 Hellraiser Issue 67
September, 1987
A really good interview with one of the stars of Hellraiser, Andrew Robinson, also of Charlie Varrick and Dirty Harry. This is an article that I have always remembered because Robinson has some great reflections on the  industry from an indie perspective. This issue has already appeared here at LVA with articles on The Lamp, also known as The Outing, and an article on Evil Dead II special effects.

Hellraiser Issue 65
July, 1987
An here's another one from a little earlier in the year. Actually, to be honest, there was a third issue, #66 which had yet another article about the film. You can see that the folks at Starlog got a little geeky about a big movie when it was coming out. Either that or they inflated the articles to take up more space and keep us in suspense until the next issue. Whatever the case, these were the more interesting of the three articles, this second being something of a report-from-the-set with Clive Barker.

The Crawling Eye

The Crawling Eye

A.K.A. The Trollenberg Terror

United Kingdom - 1958

Director - Quentin Lawrence

Starring - Forest Tucker and Janet Munro

I used to hate black and white monster movies but this was one of the first ones I was able to appreciate. Among all the Evil Dead and Re-Animator I was watching back then, the giant tentacled eyeballs of The Crawling Eye struck a chord that has reverberated ever since.

The classic poster image and below, a VHS box with a Munsters tie-in thing going on.

I found these images a long long time ago so I have no idea where I got them. If they are yours let me know and I'll give you credit.

Yorythmics: Sweet Hunter From the Video Future

What do Yor The Hunter From the Future and the Eurythmics: Sweet Dreams the Video Album have in common?

Why, those crazy tab-boxes from RCA/Columbia Home Video of course!
Allow me to wax nerdy for a second; these boxes are super cool, even more so than those crazy double-flap boxes that VCII was putting out in the early 80's. What can I say, I like technical packaging. I also like that the brand was identified by the similar package design. This was typical of the period when home video was still a new concept and studios wanted people to associate a certain level of quality with their brand. Branding and trademarking took place in packaged food products in the late 1800's in exactly the same way. Of course, when home video took off they realized it was a big waste of money to have to make thousands of fancy die-cut boxes like this and everybody switched to the standard single flap-top/open bottom. And who said the future would be better?

Yor The Hunter From The Future

Italy - 1983

Director - Antonio Margheritti

RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video, 1983, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 28 minutes

Eurithmics: Sweet Dreams The Video Album

United Kingdom - 1983

Director - Derek Burbidge

RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video, 1983, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 2 minutes

Death Ship

Death Ship

UK/Canada – 1980

Director – Alvin Rakof

Embassy Home Entertainment, 1986, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 31 minutes

Death Ship is a film best watched alone, for it is explicitly about the sudden, nauseating horror of helplessness and loneliness. George Kennedy is the perfect actor for this; he looks drunk already. Kennedy captains a cruise ship, a veritable city-sized floating metaphor for emotional isolation. It's no surprise that he opts to drown his bitterness with drink, a cruise is the ultimate in manufactured socialization. A group of people who have little in common voluntarily remove themselves from their comfortable home environment and force themselves to engage in staged, scheduled group activities. Kennedy rants at length about the hateful cruise-ship life while sweating out pure distilled gin. He is a man alone, the uranium rod in the reactor of misanthropic solitude.

That very night when his cruise ship is rammed by a mysterious and persistent radar blip, it is literally the collapse of manufactured polite society with explosions, crashing walls of water, and falling pianos. So why is it that the main characters are always the ones who survive the opening scene cataclysm? Why, even the quasi-suicidal George Kennedy was unlucky or drunk enough to survive his own ship’s sinking and be hauled aboard a tiny raft with the other survivors. When their colossal rusting adversary drifts out of the mist, they row their tiny raft around and around it screaming up the battered sides for help. None is forthcoming, but they soon find a gangplank, and the first thing they do is to send the children up first.

A plot about an evil ship should be corny, particularly coupled with a second-thought Nazi back-story. It’s just like a haunted house with some stupid historical plot: a lot scarier without a boring reason. Explicable terror is, in its lack of mystery, much less terrifying than inexplicable terror. Anything else just adds mood-killing logic, and grounds the experience far too much in the real world for it to be any fun. But despite this aside, and because the Death Ship literally “needs blood”, and takes it, it persists. Each and every death is such a bleak solitary thing, yet filled with so much screaming, shrieking and wailing, that it’s unnerving. Like life, it is a prolonged screaming solitary struggle, unassisted by friends who sometimes add to the horror by standing there unable to help and screaming right along with you as you sink. And if fighting alone against a giant evil ship doesn’t get you, no problem. Here comes George Kennedy, drunk again, and now he has a gun!

Come Play With Me

Come Play With Me

United Kingdom - 1977

Director - George Harrison Marks

This film gets pretty low ratings online which is unfortunate considering the "entertainingly funny and blushingly saucy" poster artwork attributed to Tom William Chantrell, a British artist whose work you can see more of at Britposters.com. Without buying the film there seems to be no way to verify its low quality except for the usual blanket statements about British cinema.

You can see this poster on the wall in a scene in Jack Hazan and David Mingay's Clash socio-bio-pic Rude Boy.

Schizo

Somehow I procured a factory copy of the tape in a clamshell case with this badly photocopied cover art.

Schizo

United Kingdom - 1976

Director - Pete Walker

United Home Video, 1986, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 49 minutes

Far be it from me to judge the English on the basis of a few films. I’ve always been a little jealous of all their castles and crumpets and whatnot. But as with Japanese horror, I struggle to grasp British stylistic sensibility. The first British horror film I really liked was Neil Marshall’s Dog Soldiers (2002). Perhaps this is because Marshall's style has been so informed by the American milieu.
Now I'll laugh and nod my head at all they stereotypes of Americans and their fims as well. Hell I agree, we’re all slovenly, boorish, gorilla-fisted mouth-breathers. But as a mouth breather, I find that too much British film fulfills the excessively proper “I say old chap” negative stereotype. Hence having just watched the 1971 film The House That Dripped Blood, I’m looking for something that isn’t drawing room horror (literally). British director Pete Walker helmed a series of what are widely considered horror classics in the late 70’s, including House of Whipcord and The Flesh and Blood Show so I’m hoping for something good here. These two are memorable mostly because the first is a particularly bleak W.I.P. film and the later mostly because of the skin.

Sadly, that is also the only reason I can find to like Schizo. Ostensibly I’m supposed to believe that Sam (Lynne Frederick) is a professional ice skater, the problem is she’s built like a 1950's burlesque dancer. This fact will actually pay off, though. The ice skating is soon subsumed under a series of motiveless murders. Some Old Chap sees a newspaper story about an upcoming skating performance, and decides that it’s his job to drive home the whole, “you’re not really an ice skater who do you think you’re fooling” thing. The intention is to confuse Giallo style, whether the killer is Sam or Old Chap.


But that’s all really a side story, a mere distraction to the crucial few moments of plot which wiggle across the screen during Sam’s 7:30am shower scene. If what I’m seeing on screen is accurate, in England shower curtains are merely useless paisley window dressing, and front-door locks, superfluous paranoia. Subsequently, on every single viewing over the last ten years I have found a single curvaceous 1 minute and thirty second reason why Schizo is worth sitting through. The rest remains a boring drone of Englishmen pontificating on the fundamental psychological weakness of women while making cagey swinger innuendoes.

Like a psychiatrist trying to coax a building-jumper down from his perch, all the condescending, long winded explication that comes before and after Sam’s climactic "performance" makes little practical sense to the final outcome. The story is ultimately far less interesting than the real life of star Lynne Frederick. And I have to admit on this one that my tastes can be pretty crude at times, I guess that’s what makes me such a good American.

I ran across this very old school Media VHS box a couple of weeks ago. The box is copyrighted 1978, probably just the text content because the tape itself said 1980.

Found image on German Ebay.

Can't find my original source for this poster, but Giallo Fever has the same one.