SPECIES @ 30

The yetis from SETI have made the kind of contact that Nigel Kneale thought up in the '60s, invasion by DNA. Their first test case is fused with a female human sequence that grows up rapidly to look like a pre-teen Michelle Williams. The point of making the hybrid a girl was that she'd be less aggressive. Well, that went off the table as soon as Sil the Experiment started acting out her nightmares while asleep. So, they fill her big glass cage with cyanide gas which she breathes like it's strawberry vape and breaks out and escapes with her learning capacity galloping even faster. By the time they have assembled their team of stock characters, Sil's on her way to L.A. with a bag full of stolen cash and emerges from a human coocoon as a twenty-something Natasha Henstridge. In Hollywood, she gets a room, a wardrobe and a tip from the nightman about the club around the corner as she's now in need of a breeding partner. Meanwhile, the anthropologist, macho black ops agent, biologist and special empath, led by the story's Baron Frankenstein, Scientistprofessordoctor Fitch.

Ok, so once we settle into Sil's motivation and the various powers of the pursue crew, the movie plays by numbers. But, really that's not a bad thing. Species arrived in the mid-90s after a decade and a half of seminal sci-horror moments and had to try and either do something new or at least something generic with a lot of style. Ok, so this does neither. The world had seen this kind of pursuit, regardless of motive in things like The Hidden, Terminator, Predator, and their many carbon clones. Hell, they even got H.R. Giger off the ice for the creature design which sent everyone who saw it right back to Alien.

With a cast of strong performers, led by Oscar laureate Ben Kingsley and including U.K. character star Alfred Molina and highly effective heavy Michael Madsen, you'd expect some spark but this is a good example of how passable writing cannot fill gaps in chemistry. Kingsley cannot work out what accent he's going for and frequently sounds unintentionally mechanical which rubs his quality emoting the wrong way. Madsen and Marg Helgenburger form a couple of circumstance who, though credible on paper, act like they really are just doing it for the money. Molina does some day saving, along with Forest Whittaker who lets us believe in his new agey empath claptrap through an effortless sincerity. Henstridge turns up trumps as a genuinely otherworldly creature. When the effects go to work on her, the coldness inherent to her Sil intensifies. That's not faint praise; she's actually pretty good.

All that said, this movie will entertain you from the word go and keep you watching to the credits effortlessly. Why? Because once you realise that it's Sil's movie and the Keystone Boffins don't need too muchof your attention, you'll be fine with what you move with. It's also a good showcase of the state of physical effects which, in this margin between their near perfection and the onset of CGI, render the predatory alien believable. Even in the mating scenes where the film might have gone for team-human body horror, we want the Earthling marks to shut up and lie down for the seeding. Species enjoys a strange glory for this, the first creature horror of its greater era, to steal the support from the good guys and make its audiences want the baddie to triumph over all the population of the Earth, one DNA sequence at a time.

This doesn't make Species a bad film or even a bad alien horror movie, just an unusual one that only looks bad if you treat it as a normal one. If you do let the good guy gang through with too much credit. you'll be missing out on the fun of the story. The sadder side of this is that it was not intended. The decade that was thrilling people at the cinema to an ever sleazier parade of serial killer filler, was also rendering sci-fi and horror into high sheen, over-designed bland plates. There are always exceptions but Species was not one of them, however much fun it is. It was a symptom of the fallacy of the suits throwing more and more money at genre, assuming that that would lead to a golden age of cinema commerce. It would take micro productions like Primer and The Blair Witch Project to burst that bubble (re-inflated by the Waniverse a decade on but not permanently). In the meantime we got Species, too late to make a difference and too lunkheaded to make a mark. Still, it is a ton of fun.

Viewing notes: I watched Species on STAN through a subscription. It's also rentable through a number of outlets but is long out of print on physical media in Australia.

Review: DANGEROUS ANIMALS

Tucker, solid wall of salt beef, shows tourists who take him up on his offer of cage dives that sharks are not the worst things in the water, or on it. After a demo of this, we meet young Zephyr who has come to the Gold Coast from the U.S. to escape bad family and surf it away on the big waves. A few chance encounters later, she's on Tucker's boat, waking up to the sight of another abductee. Things could be better.

From this point, as you might expect, this is a tale of action and survival, the only unknowns how far it's going to be taken. At the heart of comparable contests like The Shallows or Gerald's Game, we also need to follow a character's growth and developing strength.

Jai Courtney gives a Tucker whose only emotion is satisfaction from the torment of others. We see this in the prologue scene and we get nothing further. He needs to be most directly comparable to the sharks that his business promises. They are only making their living but Tucker has the choice that makes him worse. Courtney brings a brick shithouse's phsyical force and animal tirumph to render him easily intimidating even before his shows of violence. 

Hassie Harrison's Zephyr is young and damaged, just enough spark left to try and kick against her past through her skill and the freedom of the waves. She is in stark contrast to her fellow prisoner Heather whose trauma is still too recent to smooth over. She, as we, needs Zephyr's fight and in a dialogue of character reinforcement that gets away with sounding a little too written as it feels like the only spark of hope in a starkly bleak situation.

Director Sean Byrne gives us an extension on his action chops as the scene widens out from his previous work to the open water and Tucker's almost medieval torture devices and the threat of the sea itself. There is little point in revealing more plot detail in what is kept to a lean two-hander with support and a constant feed of deeds. This film works exactly as intended and declared which is a lot more than I can say for a lot of similar outings. Faint praise? Not if you see the movie.

Review: DROP

After a prologue of a woman, Violet, facing an extreme DV situation, we cut to her more ordered and stable life years on. She has decided to brave leaving the house and try the dating scene again. The guy seems perfect, hunky but self-effacing. The restaurant is impossibly swanky with dizzy views of the city from its skyscraper setting. Violet's early but her date is keeping her updated with messages and apologies for lateness. An aging suit mistakes her for his blind date and after laughing about it they clink glasses as fellow explorers of later stage romance search. 

When the guy, Henry, arrives the chemistry is immediate. Then during the small talk, she gets a drop on her phone, a challenge. She ignores it and all the subsequent ones until the sender shows her his hack of her home security system with a balaclava-ed intruder waving a gun in the living room. What do they want? Henry. Dead. Nope, they already thought of the police or her telling Henry. They can see and hear her. She has to kill Henry with a phial of something lethal, planted in the towel dispenser in the loo. She has to think fast and well.

Christopher Landon who has already proved himself a strong director in the thriller and horror corner for the Happy Death Day films and the clever Freaky, gives us a sprightly, Hitchcockian story of invention against threat. This does not bear very close examination, once you take the setups and parade of tension releases along the way, the overall scheme just won't work. But that's situation normal for the genre.

It's also clouded and very pleawsantly by the sheer chemistry between the two leads played by Meghann Fahy and Brendon Sklenar whose interplay and individual actions in the busy setting take our minds well away from the plot holes. The camera is ready to move on call but also assuages us with static setups we need for character. The drops are delivered on screen as large font angled as through projected on to the walls. At one point there is a patchwork of Violet's home security cameras cast around her. These are like freeze frames of her concentrated attention and augment the more typical phone screenshots with a lot more urgency. In showing this kind of flair, we are invited into Violet's anxiety, knowing that, for all the brightness and scale of the notifications they are being read only by her. Add the vertigo of the window-side table and you've got some nice queasy moments of dread.

There's not much more to say about this Blumhouse produciton; it really does what it says on the tin. However, at a time when new genre tales are coming out with bloated running times, this ninety-five minute pacer, wins its slot.

VIewing notes: currently available for hire through Prime

Review: EDDINGTON

Eddington, New Mexico, May 2020. The small western town is in lockdown. The mayor promotes social distancing but doesn't always practice it. The sherrif doesn't believe the virus has made it to the hamlet even though the town drunk is clearly afflicted and roams the streets and bars spreading it to the air around him. Meanwhile, the youth are rising, turning their sort-of distanced keggers into political meetings as the community responds variously to the news, Black Lives Matter and Antifa and calls for defunding the police hit the air. Little Eddington is behaving like big America with protests made of a babel of differing directions and a comgin showdown between the mayor and the sherriff. Don't worry about missing anything, though, everyone's phone is out and it will all be online in varying degrees of truth. 

Ari Aster, one of the wunderkinds of the 2010s, consolidating his early win Hereditary with the epic scaled Midsommar and then confounded most of his fans with the massive fable Beau is Afraid. Now he's back and has his sights on the greater American epic in the manner of Robert Altman's Nashville, Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights or the Coens' No Country for Old Men. The difference, here, is not with approach, they're all of a piece when you look at them, but in how the film suggests not that this is America now but how it happened. The information age that was freeing everyone constrained to remote cultures (or just remote basements) was devoured by capitalism and where once numbers ruled influence usurped democracy. So, instead of an America seen through porn or country music or greed, we see how the invading pandemic appears and then is exploited to transform a flawed but functioning elder democracy into an atomised mess.

While it is clear to see parallels between the characters and the COVID years' public figures, Aster doesn't labour it by being too declaritive. Neither Sherriff Joe nor Mayor Ted evoke a Trump. The conspiracy star Vernon doesn't have to correspond to any particular figure, being so all purpose. Are the terrorist-like groups Antifa, a false flag Klan, or something evern weirder? No idea but they do fire real rounds. But when we see the resulting order, the society that emerges from the rubble of the medical, cultural and political tornado, we know that we are watching types that now walk our earth in positions of authority, having once been lax lawmen, blithering conspiracists or centrist town elders.

Joaquin Phoenix offers a finely tuned and nuanced Joe who's ok at keeping the peace but doesn't handle the confusion of his times well. When one of the rioters assuages a loud protest by manipulating it into silence, Joe walks off, seeing the result is good enough. It's a performance that warns us that he will break, that his voice at the higher end of his register will gun it into a big guitar through a Marshall stack distortion. At the more Zen end of the spectrum, the I'm-in-everything Pablo Pascal as Mayor Ted Garcia, shepherds his consituents into living the right way until he needs to have a fundraiser BBQ and all the regulations loosen. The meeting of these two forces at that occasion is the point where the chaos takes full spark.

Emma Stone has few lines but her torn character takes heart-rending life when she is embraced by Austin Butler's Vernon, a soft spoken rabble rouser. Young Cameron Mann makes one of the biggest transitions from well meaning teenager to the lightlessness of the ultra right.Aster's talent lies in the smoothness of all of this. The film does feel long but also crafted. It's the craft that keeps us there; from the rich digital cinematography and dolby atmos audio mix to the warmth of the performances across the board to the rallying cry to look to as much truth as you can find, it's in the craft

Viewing notes: a small morning session at Kino was blissfully uneventful. Eddington is on gerneral release.

Review: TOGETHER

After a prologue that will remind you of John Carpenter's The Thing, we meet Tim and Millie who are about to move a little out of town to a lushly forrested country house. As partners, they are on a plateau where things have got a little too routine and their youthful hopes are dragging into inertia. At a sendoff, Millie proposes marriage in Millenial fashion and Tim bungles it with hesitation before an anticlimactic acceptance. Their night together features pillow talk that would render anyone in a long term relationship icy. Is it just a dream? Established in their new place, they whimsically go for a hike, find the location of the prologue, enjoy a bonding moment and wake up fused together at the calf muscles. That bit is not a dream.

Michael Shanks's debut feature of his own script (more on that later) wastes no time in establishing the dull pain of this part of a relationship and how the magical fusion the couple is suffering is directly punishing their drift. The central couple is played by real life couple Dave Franco and Allison Brie who immerse themselves into roles that, while they once might have been poignantly close to their real lives, might serve on ly as distant memories as recriminations about their progress as professionals and partners come up as part of daily conversation. The interesting thing about this depiction is that it swerves away from comedy when it might have gloried in it.

As such, it is more like an early '90s indie as directed by David Cronenberg with both flinty candour about coupledom and sex and body morphing ick. We are given a generous ramp of development before we get to the crucial moment when the central conceit is made flesh (so to type) and when the concept prevails and the expected twists and turns take place, the film falls into mechanical efficiency. Thanks to the stars, this works as they work hard to give us cause for empathy despite the writing presenting two entitled ocnsumer grade narcissists.

Also of note is the casting of Damon Herriman. Herriman has already played Charles Manson twice as well as a handful of other edgy nutjobs and he plays them for all they're worth. As fellow teacher Jamie at the school where Millie works, he's instantly offputting, mixing insinuation with a kind of Ikea-assembled charm. His quiet queasy menace sustains to the end.

This film arrives on screens under a cloud, being the subject of a lawsuit for plagiarism from an earlier Australian film called Better Half. I haven't seen that but I can tell you that the case is not just a plain stealing of an idea. I'll leave it to you to harvest the details but it does hamper the reception of this finely wrought film that unusually examines the creepier aspects of long term relationships so candidly. Does Better Half do the same or simliar? Well, I'd like to see it.

Until then, I'll be happy enough recommending this strange tale as an energetic and substantial essaying of the dangers of intimacy and the look of it when it's forced.

Viewing notes: Not only was I up for a free ticket due to my club membership at Kino, I had the whole screening to myself, a kind of reverse experience from the annoyance of Monday's cinema outing. Together is currently on general cinema release.

Review: WEAPONS

One night, at 2.17 in the morning, all but one of a primary school class get out of bed, go out the front door and run into the dark with their arms arched like wings. The community, in a show of communal reason, blame the teacher who is dismissed from her position and turns to vodka for assistance. She's as haunted as anyone and feels the kind of guilt that cannot be assuaged philosophically. Meanwhile, in a series of chapters that cover the same time period in the ensuing days, a cop, a homeless addict, a parent and the school principal, all make their way through the mystery of the disappearance. And then things start coming together.

Zach Cregger gave the world in 2022 the wrong-footing and heart-winning Barbarian whose sudden shifts and rug pulls revealed all of the skills of his comedian beginnings to expose his love of comedy's obverse, horror. Weapons is what his fellow Americans call his sophomore effort and it reminded me, if only in how the differences between debut and follow-up appear, of the Philippou brothers' second feature Bring Her Back. In both cases there is an intensification of elements key to the first outings and a downturn on the humour. Both are subtler than their predecessors but also nastier.

The creepiness of missing children has been an infrequently recalled trope in horror cinema and the first title Weapons reminds me of is The Brotherhood of Satan with its small town aridity and eeriness. We also get a kind of Pennywise in the figure of Gladys. By the time you meet her you'll understand why I say that, so it's not a spoiler. Shallow comparisons aside, though, the ruling mood here is the uncanny, things that almost make sense stop short of it set free the dogs of menace.

Casting here is as fine as Barbarian with the young female lead of the hour Julia Garner as the strong woman rendered fragile by the circumstances and the atmosphere of resentment and hatred around her. She doesn't miss a beat. Josh Brolin as his usual welcome lug with a heart. Amy Madigan renders her every breath unnerving. If each of these weren't offering the best they had the twisted tale would unravel about half way as the artifice begins to show. They do what all good performances do in delicate plotting, distract with organic warmth. One thing demanding mention here is the aid that Cregger's tracking camera gives with the sense of queasiness (at one point making the skeletal junkie figure tower and demoralise). A solid directorial strategy.

As the plot and its matter appear more clearly, with some unnecessary clarification in the narration, we are taken home to a conclusion that, for all its supernature, makes sense. While I was continually engaged over the long two and a half hour running time, I did begin to miss the persistent restraint of the horror behind the horror in Barbarian. That said, I'd much rather watch this than almost anything currently offered by MIFF this year. Yes, that's a hobby horse but it's still true.

Viewing notes: I went to see this at Hoyts in the morning and al was dandy until a small group of  wagging teenagers sat to one side near the front, kicked their shoes off and started talking. I turned and glared at them until I got their attention, a small wave from one of them who nodded when I put a finger to my lips. Their droning mumble lowered to whispers. It rose again as the soundtrack volume swelled and then didn't subside until I glared again. As the credits rolled and the lights came up. I caught the eye of one of them and asked why he had to talk all the way through. I almost instantly regretted it as he responded as though I was a teacher with a kind of feeble excuse that they had been whispering. I reminded him that I had heard them and added that I paid for a ticket to see and hear the film and not him. No reply. I saw them looking for an unofficial exit as the rest of us filed out. I went out into the light of day wishing I'd used the truancy card but then reasoned that it wouldn't have had much of an effect. You go in the morning of a week day and this happens.

Review: VIDEOHEAVEN

Can you remember the last time you went to a video shop as part of your domestic routine? The weekend night you weren't going out or the movie marathon you organised with your friends, or maybe on a whim a mid-week catchup with something you missed at the cinema? It really was a while back, wasn't it? You might have forgotten your local one. Mine was a place called Video Busters and had a massive floor space and a big expansive range from the latest hits to obscure continental gore fests. In 2012, I was housebound with a leg in a cast and in two months, while I was recovering, the entire block that housed that shop, the chemist and the medical clinic had all been redeveloped. The shop did re-emerge further down the road and kept up the ice cream and snacks it had been selling to keep things afloat. But a lot of the stock was on sale. I picked up a few Asian horror titles I didn't know and pretty much left it there in the street to end its life. It had gone by the close of the year.

This film is not the documentary I had assumed it would be but a deep diving essay into the market, the cultural phenomenon and the social space of the video shop through its decades long history. Instead of talking head recollections from former owners and staff, we get the flinty tones of Maya Hawke talking us through an epic three hour examination.

At first, to allow us an appreciation of it scale, we are treated to a compact history of the technology and its rapid commodification that affected both cinema attendance and tv habits to install itself as a constant rival to previous standard business. One thing that such a stretching vista omits is how a flop at the cinema could be a durable hit on home video. That surprised me.

Otherwise, the chaptered sections begin to specialise. Aspects like the social arena of the spaces and its depiction in movies and TV shows, the figure of the video store clerk in feature films as toxic cinephilic gatekeeper, the language of cinematic taste in rom coms, and the depiction of the business in popular culture as it waned against the tide of convenience offered by streaming services. Carpeted by TV and movie clips that expand from instant illustrations to a series of deep dives, the arc describes the passing of an institution by cultural change from the ground up, just as TV and home video itself had. 

I watched this as a MIFF stream on ACMI 3 and intended to slice it into digestible pieces but, after some initial resistance as I got used to the chalk and talk approach, I just let it absorb me whole with its subtle but mesmeric repetition and massive supply of quotes. Depictions of video shops in fiction were far more prevalent than I recall and chosen to provide solidity to the discourse. Instead of the nostalgic to-cameras I was worried about, I was engaged to compulsion by this revisit to a thing that folk of my age down to millennials will remember as a dependable part of the weekly roll. While, I didn't wander, check the phone or interrupt the stream for too long, I know I missed quite a few points and might well seek this on physical media to cover everything that slipped by. I know it's ironic but it suits.

Viewing notes: As I'm not buying into the stress of MIFF this year, I'm choosing very few things to see and was happy to stream this through the ACMI3 app. This looked and proved essential. I am glad I didn't have to put up with the distractions of contemporary festival audiences for three hours in a cinema but enjoyed this in the cloister of my lounge room. I'd recommend that approach.

Review: 40 ACRES

After an agrarian apocalypse, the most precious thing is arable land. North America has become a land of self sufficient farms. So you are going to get raiders, invaders, post-urban imperialists to move in and take over. We open as the Freeman family's place is getting taken. The rough and ready land pirates move through the thin grain crop. They are surrounded in the thick by eerie whistles. In a matter of minutes, they are all lethally dispatched. C'est la vie.

The entirety of the first and second acts are spent on character and family development and it takes on the distinct feel of a literary adaptation: deep characterisation, back story, leisurely pacing, chapter titles. Then a detail is revealed and everything breaks. This makes for a riveting final act but at the time it occurred to me how forgiving we are of a pedestrian beginning when act 3 is action packed.

And then, as the credits rolled and I and my companion stood and made our way out, it occurred to me that when the action is so heavily concentrated at the business end, how eager we will overlook the ease of the falling final action. Anyone who has done their thinking about narrative structure will consider these statements naïve singsong but I've seldom seen a film where I was so keenly watching my own responses.

That is not to say that this film is too formulaic but when it does enter genre territory it becomes very obedient of it and the narrative beats are palpable. This is eased by the performances which are robust across the board, particularly Danielle Deadwyler as the military-trained earth mother, and Kataem O'Connor as the son and heir trying to work out what kind of person he needs to be for a future as raggedly promised as this one.

There is more made of descendance as a theme, here, than I would have expected. The Freemans came from post-Civil War slaves who moved north across the Canadian border to shake the stigma of bonded ownership. The companion family is native north  American, retaining language and cultural traditions. The encroaching antagonists are weighted to the historically likely northern Europeans. These last seem like the forced but doomed people who have chosen the way of the spoiler that I won't be revealing.

This is where the film does start working for its living and the stakes produced by those issues come into life/death levels. While I can't be recommending 40 Acres as a post apocalyptic scenario I will suggest that its thematic overlay does have merit and the cast do some solid bearing. There are a few too many flaws due to genre-service but, really, it's not the end of the world.

Viewing notes: I saw this as a plus one in an advanced screening at Cinema Nova. A very fine spirited time. On general release in Australia from August 14 2025.

PEEPING TOM @ 65

We watch as a sex worker gets killed by a client, almost entirely through the crosshairs of a camera viewfinder. Through the same crosshairs we watch the police investigation the next morning. The camera operator is Mark Lewis, young, fresh faced and lethal. He shoots porn above a newsagents as a moonlighting job but mostly pulls focus on feature films. He lives in a large terrace house in London which he partially lets to tenants. He has little to do with them, preferring to stay upstairs watching his home movies. 

One night he pauses at the window of the mother/daughter pair on the ground floor. There's a party going on for young, sweet Helen and they notice him gazing in a little too long. Helen is curious and catches him on the stair, offering a slice of cake. She follows him upstairs and asks about his camera. Of course she wants to see something. He shows her a series of experiment films his biologist father took of the young Mark which go from charming to unnerving in seconds. Ok, that's where he got it from. Helen is scooped back by one of her party guests and leaves, disturbed but intrigued.

Reading all that, you might have come to the conclusion that this is an early serial killer film like M or its fellow 1960 horror Psycho. That's true enough when you consider the onscreen murders in the film itself and the implied bulk of previous crimes canned away on celluloid in Mark's attic, but most of the running time is actually taken up with a romance. It's a strange and unsettling romance but a romance all the same. 

Casting is key, here. Carl Boehm as Mark, is supposedly a Londoner. The actor makes no attempt at disguising his Teutonic accent. Powell, no slouch at maximising the value of his casts, appears to have encouraged this, and not just for giving his lead actor a comfortable base. No explanation is given for Boehm's voice which could be a prototype for every Kraftwerk album ever made and this affords it an unease that the posher English voice Mark Lewis might be expected to affect. It is there to unnerve an audience who had had the time to learn of the horrifying extent that the Nazi scientists took their experiments. His grown up Peter Lorre cooing sounded of the laboratory and the death camp; nothing homely, nothing warm.

Anna Massey as Helen has escaped from a Cliff Richard movie into a London that hasn't yet started its '60s swing. She is less pure than unformed and eager to find definition, even by the side of a soft voiced monster. She is not turned off by Mark's private cinema of his father's cruelty but enticed by its results. It's unknowing rather than naivete that drives her to pursue him, persuading him to leave his now-organic camera behind on a dinner date. She sees him stop and linger near a necking couple and reach for the mechanism but just pulls him away, as though she is flicking away the cigarette of a compulsive smoker. We have seen her courted by far more eligible specimens in the same residential crew but it is the other that attracts her. This does lead to a confrontation, as it must within the era's ethics but she has followed it to that point through fascination.

Necessary mention must be given to Helen's hard-arse mother played by Maxine Audley. Embittered and toughly cynical, she suspects Mark of horrors and confronts him about his compulsive behaviour. Her blindness prohibits her from being either horrified by his record or seduced by it. She warns him away from her daughter, knowing, with or without evidence, that he is beyond redemption. She knows him through his sound, thudding on the floor above, the projector ticking away. With the teen romances of the '50s fading, this difficult morsel of love and violence was a good decade before its time. You could look ahead to Badlands, Taxi Driver or Natural Born Killers but you'd still not find as dark and deep a pairing as Helen and Mark but there it was.

Peeping Tom was savaged by critics and left alone by audiences on release and sank into obscurity for decades until corners of the now obsolete late night movies on TV allowed it some air. Michael Powell's career was finished in the UK and found himself thrown back to the fate of criminal pariahs by getting transported to Australia where he made films as celebrated as They're a Weird Mob and as winced at as the dodgy Age of Consent. It wasn't until the '80s that Martin Scorsese took up the champion token and arranged for the restoration of the likes of Red Shoes, Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus and, finally, the strangest one, Peeping Tom.

I knew about this film from an article in a magazine about a rare cinema screening of it. I needed to see it but there was no way. A friend, much later, lent me his TV tape of it and I was hooked. This is a film not to love but to acknowledge. If you get to know Powell's stunning work with long time collaborator Emeric Pressburger you might resist this on first look but the aesthetic, the use of colour and the strange mix of the urban merry England and dark fantasy carry over. As a marker for a junction in crime fiction cinema, add this to the same year's Psycho for context and watch the time line as the rest of the world caught up. 

Viewing notes: I first saw this as a dub from TV then as a DVD, then Criterion's Blu-Ray and finally Studio Canal's stunning 4K which is currently available in Australia (including a Blu-Ray disc) at a moderate price. 

PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES @ 60 (Mild spoilers)

A pair of exploration ships respond to a distress beacon while in deep space. As they approach the planet and prepare to land the crews suddenly start beating each other up. Captain of the Gallio Markary, manages to control himself and breaks up the fights and the crew return to normal, reporting feelings of being manipulated. The landing goes well and the atmosphere and gravity are hospitable. Locating the other ship, they find the crew, including Markary's brother, dead and an essential piece of equipment intentionally damaged. Once buried, the remaining crew, set about finding the source of the beacon, now considering it an act of hostility. Could it have come from the crashed ship with the giant skeletons over there? Guess not. They aren't stranded but they also might not be themselves, effectively binding them to the planet. Things to do.

Mario Bava's 1965 eerie sci-fi is a triumph of artistry and vision over meagre means. Bava had already put in some serious service by inventing the giallo crime thriller and answered Hammer with a continental version of gothic horror in films that remain impressive. The Bava name stretches back to his father, a cinematographer from the early silent era, and forward to his son Lamberto, himself no slouch in giallo and horror in the '70s and '80s. Planet comes near the mid point and, as we'll see, reaches into the past and future.

One of the persistent issues with this film is that 1979's Alien ripped it off. You'll get that with the giant skeleton in the old crashed ship and the false beacon by themselves. You could go further. The twin phallic engines of the Gallio and its genital front door (made more labial under H.R. Geiger's design) as well as the ribbed interiors and jagged, misty landscapes. What's missing is the physical alien, the xenomorph that becomes the plot of Ridley Scott's film. That's not really a massive steal.

What we do get is much more like John Carpenter's 1982 re-adaptation of The Thing where the alien could be anybody. It's actually a little scarier. The crew are effectively parasitised by an ethereal consciousness that intends to travel inside the crew back home and transform the planet into a colony. They've all but destroyed their own planet, which should tell you a little about their character. But this is not Star Trek (which hadn't been broadcast at the time), it's a space opera by the writer-director of Blood and Black Lace; Markary and his dwindling company aren't interested in civilising the insidious colonisers but shaking them off and fleeing the scene. That, after a little gore unusual for its era, is what they set about doing.

The mention of Star Trek there might have set off some images. Yes, this very cheaply made movie was shot on sets that could have been from a '60s TV show. Bava joked that the landscapes were made out of a couple of plastic rocks reused over and over. But that's false modesty. There are many shots that involve optical illusions that Bava's father used in the early years of cinema. So, yes, the space ship in the credit sequence looks like a bath toy against some starry wrapping paper but as soon as the ship lands and the scene changes to an alien world things lift dramatically. One of the durable techniques is to shoot a mirror reflecting a miniature set, with a cutout through which cast members can be seen performing. It is more seamless that the dioptric shot in Jaws of bad hat Harry and the beach, within the aesthetic, it looks realistic. Bava uses this for interiors, as well, rendering the ship gigantic. The ringed entrance to the crashed alien ship is a marvel of forced perspective. The gore effects might surprise you.

The score is solidly electronic but not the weird and wonderful symphony of Forbidden Planet (itself a wonder) but a low key moody series of drones and growls. If anything, I could have wished for a lot more of it (although it occurred to me, when watching it for this blog, that it must have been a slog getting what sounds we did get in the first place: see also Delia Derbyshire's work for the BBC). It's not just a theremin and a few kazoos. John Carpenter almost certainly saw this film near its release and would have cause to recall the sounds of its atmosphere.

That said, Planet of the Vampires drags Bava's '60s rap sheet with its slow pacing through some fairly obvious revelations and the stiffness of the international cast who were speaking their lines in their own languages. Post-sound was normal practice for Italian cinema well past this point and the resulting Babels of on-set voices was never considered a hurdle. This was the first time I chose to watch it in Italian with subtitles and preferred the experience to hearing the strangled dubs (even though the Italian is also a dub). But I'd still recommend the curious sci-fi fan or cinephile seeking it out for the atmosphere building and wow-factor of the resourcefulness on display. Bava's space horror, for all its creakiness, remains a treasure.

Viewing notes: I've had this on a non-anamorphic DVD and a slightly better Blu-Ray but I watched it most recently on Radiance's stunning boxed Blu-Ray with a squeaky clean remastering. The thing looks a little too good when coming up against some of the model work and effects but most of what is on screen is a notch above what you'd see in the remastered Star Trek and so quite easily adjusted to. There is a possiblity of a 4K but I can't see it doing all that much more than here (then again, I've said that a lot). This might have once been available locally but not at time of writing, so the only way of getting it (not on streaming either) is to shell out for a physical copy. The box set I bought is prohibitive for taking a punt so ebay for a DVD might be the go. Sorry I can't be more help.

THE GOONIES @ 40

A local bad guy escapes from prison. Across town, a group of friends gather at one of their houses to help prepare for the move due to the imminent buy-out from the local real estate money grubbers. The Goonies from the Goon Docks, they stumble on an adventure which could get them out of the move. It leads them to the bad guy's lair. When the bad guy finds out about the Goonies' treasure map, things collide and the adventure just won't quit. Through old houses, waterslides, caves rigged with traps, and an old pirate ship and a cast from the sidelines of a Spielberg movie, this is everything that a mid-'80s American movie needs to be.

While characters are clearly defined with text book keynotes and the world building is of the magical suburban that was sold to audiences from the Spielberg stable and its imitators, we are treated to a plot that works a treat and moves at a clip. If you have seen Stranger Things but not The Goonies you might be struck with an odd deja vu. You might also notice that this PG rated piece with its hard on jokes and sex references got away with that. If anything the rating system has become more protective of the sensibilities of the under fifteens. Then again, with a cast dominated by that group, for whom else was this movie made?

Answer: for the family night at the movies and then the home video night. John Hughes had already nailed the teen and young adult date night market, Spielberg's concerns went straight to the audience that got into everything else he'd made or oversaw. The Goonies is a kids Raiders of the Lost Ark. It won't have the goofy Nazis but it can have the kind of baddies that would later appear in the likes of Home Alone. You don't get a single Indy Jones but why would you need him when each of the kids has his or her own quest?

The difference between just squeezing it down to essentials and making a movie that the kids want to see again and again is a director who can bring some serious mainstream muscle to the project, so that it never gets too cute. Richard Donner did the prestige TV to big screen journey like Frankenheimer or Lumet, only Donner kept at the big movie side of things, hitting huge with The Omen and Superman. Reigning in the cutesy tendencies of a Spielberg story that were allowed too much bloom in things like Gremlins, was part of the assignment for him. What we get from this is a non-stop fun ride with some acceptable life lessons for the little 'uns along the way.

As much love as this movie gets from Gen Xers with nostalgia, there is an elephant hanging around in the corner. The Goonies fulfilled the need for a second bite at the Indy Jones cherry but it was also doing service for the lack of a property that was claimed so hard that it was in development and negotiation purgatory for a time beyond the patience of the great marketeers of the Spielberg stable. The TV mini-series of IT would not get to screens until five years after The Goonies but the book was burning a hole in the yearning of its fans. Concentrating on the kids adventure theme allowed the team to avoid too close comparisons and any copyright headaches while churning out yet another rollercoaster ride on film. 

As rides go, it's a good one. Donner, clearly appreciating the bigger budget, pulls out some dazzling set direction and complicated camera moves along with a host of practical effects which work without needing an apology. However, for me, this is like Christmas, wondrous as a child but meaningless without kids of my own. I didn't bother with it as a new cinema release at the time as Spielberg and co. had long worn out their welcome for me. I saw it on TV in the '90s and then for this on streaming. It did kick better on the recent revisit. It's a film for an appetite; if yours doesn't crave it, you'll never pick it up but if it does, you'll be eating warmth.

Viewing notes: The Goonies is available on DVD and 4K through retailers but currently streamed through SBS on Demand. 

TEEN WOLF @ 40

Scott sucks at basketball. When we first meet him he fails his shot at the hoop in front of his schoolmates. The other thing that's happening is his body is changing. He yanks straggles of hair from his chest, his nose can detect a liverwurst sandwich through a layer of socks in his friend's locker and his ears are going pointy. Sent in to buy a keg of beer a a liquor store he scares the old guy behind the counter into selling it to his underage self. Then one night there's a full moon and he finally goes full werewolf and his father comes to him in his own werewolf form and tells him they need to talk.

At first, he keeps this from everyone as he's a teenager and self conscious but, a few accidental moments later, everyone soon knows and in a bizarre twist, he is accepted as a werewolf. His game improves and he is finally getting the attention of the alpha chick. So, as long as he's ok with it, he's a lycanthrope daywalker who's come into his body and style. Well, the alpha chick has a sporty alpha boyfriend whose jealousy is growing faster than the hair on Scott's body. Also, his childhood friend with the tomboy name of Boof is becoming much more than that. And he still sucks at basketball. And now everyone wants him to be the werewolf all the time. This is going to take some working out.

Rod Daniel's amiable teen comedy takes the nebbish coming of age tale a step into magical realism with a more absurdist tinge than anything related to horror. The insistence on Scott's life tests in his basketball skills is a continuing undercurrent that feels warm rather than cute and his growing negotiation with Boof feels natural rather than the brittleness that a John Hughes would have made it. In fact, in its own way, Teen Wolf is an effective counter to Hughes's self-important teenage epics. Not as much as Heathers would prove to be but in its developing celebration of teamwork rather than peer-enforced conformity earns it a lot of points.

Michael J. Fox, still high on his Alex role in the hit com Family Ties and a smash in the recent Back to the Future is perfect casting for Scott. Credibly good looking and affectless, his charisma seems effortless next to most of the cast of stock characters. Jerry Levine slots into the kind of identikit Ferris whacky guy who surfs car roofs and comes up with publicity and money making schemes. Seldom has a high schooler looked so thirty something. Lorie Griffin as alpha Pamela shows promise but is written so flat that all she has to do is look pretty and be casually bitchy. Susan Ursitti as Boof is the only younger cast member that meets Fox on his own level. Her quiet persistence and nuanced longing are masked with the kind of day-to-day relaxed face that her character does a little too well. Of the adults, James Hampton plays a lightly whacky werewolf dad to Scott which offers both gravitas and era-typical bizarreness to a comedy parent.

For a score we get a dominance of what Americans still think of as '80s music with a kind of Neanderthal take on yacht rock broken up by sugary electronics. That's the way you had to sell it at the time, even after some promising looks away like the Risky Business score (mind you, that was Tangerine Dream). What are you gunna do, it works for the party and prom scenes.

Teen movies from this context are dominated by John Hughes whose pontificating style imposed itself on everything not touched by the Spielberg stable. This is what makes a film like Teen Wolf feel so light. The ersatz Ferris Bueller, Stiles feels like a loser without the Bueller sociopathy and when Scott does his more gynmastic turn surfing on the car roof it feels more ho hum than it should. Instead of light I got the sense that this, like everything in the same vein, had to pass the Hughes test to get funded. There is unrealised seriousness here that might have broken it out. It would be years until Heathers and decades until the power of Ginger Snaps but who's complaining, Teen Wolf was a world wide hit which is what it was meant to be, it just happened to have been made at a time when looking away from the assembly line just felt too dangerous.

Review: FRIENDSHIP

Craig corrects a misdelivered parcel to his neighbour Austin and inadvertently finds a new friend. Not just a guy you can wave to as you see them in the street but someone to go on adventures with. Craig is in the manipulation business, designing advertising strategies to keep consumers hooked to products. Austin is a weatherman on TV who smokes, drinks and leads a punk band on his nights off. Austin takes Craig to an urban exploration into the old city sewer system which ends in a warm bonding moment. So, it's a bromance? Nope.

At a night with some of Austin's buds Craig pushes through the inhibition he feels was holding him back but it ends in him committing a massive faux pas. What started out as a kind of suburban Fight Club inverts to Craig almost switching roles with Austin who turns all normie after a promotion at work. This is really not going to plan. 

Nothing is, though. Craig's family life is introduced after his wife Tami's successful battle with cancer. One of the first things you hear her say is that she would like to have an orgasm again. Craig, trying to cover the embarrassment announces that he has plenty of his own orgasms. When his son and share a child parent kiss it's on the lips. He notices and remarks on it but it's dropped. On an outing with his son at a shopping centre a middle aged man goes by riding a vehicle that looks like a pig with blinking lights. It's also commented on.

These moments not only save Friendship from ever easing off into cuteness they serve the film's modus operandi: destabilisation. Tim Robinson has built a comedy career on social distress with his I Think You Should Leave sketches. Their approach is transported here to feature length proportions. After Craig's faux pas with the buddies, he's given a dry and unpleasant breakup speech by Austin. He tries joining the smokers at work as they huddle outside but the guy's night in he gets them to at his basement lasts only minutes before he throws everyone out. This film does not allow its audience to get too comfy, even with its frequently bleak comedy.

Robinson fights for our empathy and we are surprised to grant it. Partly, this is due to the victimhood he suffers but it's also due to the motivations of those around him. When he disrupts a customer pitch at work what we notice most is that he's breaking through the falsehood of his own career. But then, we don't feel like cheering the self-destruction. He's neither a golden hearted jerk nor a corporate terrorist like Tyler Durden. If anything, his responses are the sporadically overkilling ones of Leo Bloom in the Producers or Sheldon's in The In Laws, given the switch he breaks it.

To the very end we have to guess where things are going as the stakes of personal antipathy between friends and family soar and the means to arrest the damage increasingly fail. Paul Rudd as Austin's change from urban freedom fighter to rat race running conformist is jolting but his counter in Craig's chaos makes it work (or at least explains it as a necessity). Kate Maras long suffering Tami's choices feel like she is waking from a lifelong fog (reminiscent of  Being John Malkovich's Lotte)

There is a scene toward the end that repeats an early one in which the seeds of imbalance are planted. Its warmth and resolve feel like a  genuine reward. This leads to another that suggests a development in the friendship but is left ambiguous. 

I don't know if Tim Robinson can develop or refine his sketch comedy persona further than he has here. His performance is so committed and solid it suggests that his future career could stay at the one-shot that it feels like or into something else entirely. It's definitely not the stuff of comedy franchises. I'll be interested to see where it does go.

This is one for the cinema. Not because of any high vistas or action setpieces but for the density of its psychology that, while not academically taxing is nevertheless sincere and probing and would be easily missed if your phone was there to distract you. It's to be seen without pause and all the attention you can muster. It's a comedy, not the type that makes you chortle but smile with recognition and even sadness. In the year's offerings so far, it's among the highpoints.

CATCH-22 @ 55

It's World War II and Yossarian the bombardier wants out. He asks the squadron doctor to ground him but learns the paradoxical clause of the title. If someone was insane they would not be permitted to fly more missions but only sane people would ask to be relieved of the duty so they are fit to fly more missions. The doctor can't ground Yossarian without compromising his own position. The limit on missions before relief keeps growing, well past the initial twenty-five limit. Meanwhile, the supply officer, Lieutenant Minderbinder is doing deals on goods between the air base and anyone else who'll trade. As a sticky web of rorts and absurdist situations grows the military life looks both like a lark and a huge deadly nightmare.

It was 1970 and any military-based movie that wasn't an old school gung-ho shouter was anti-war and, whatever war it was superficially referring to, always led back to the one the U.S.A. was losing in Vietnam. The conflict that was revealing to Americans through its own tv screens, the wasting decay of old heroism and the way of the good guys, was linked inextricably to anything on screen in a uniform. Claims like destroying a village in order to save it and the atrocity at Mi Lai had rewritten the order and the culture was ready for cynicism and a slap in the face to authority. They were ready, in other words, for Catch-22 and M.A.S.H.

Mike Nicholls who had made a name on TV not only with directorial efforts but as part of a satirical improv act with the great Elaine May (this is worth YouTubeing) but more recently had impressed with his transposition of the Albee stage nerve-fest Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf with the world's celebrity divorcees Burton and Taylor and then the middle class shock comedy of The Graduate. Joseph Heller, author of the source novel, knew Nicholls was right after rejecting the redoubtable Richard Brooks and Richard Quine. Nicholls worked with black comedy stalwart Buck Henry for two years on the screeenplay and, though it diverted from the novel, got the author's full approval. 

Nicholl's cast was of the massive kind touted for major event movies but on a more varied scale: Orson Welles, Martin Balsam, Anthony Perkins, Alan Arkin, John Voigt, Richard Benjamin, Paula Prentiss, Bob Newhart, Charles Grodin. Add pop star Art Garfunkel and you have a castlist that doesn't play fair. Is it a send-up or serious? Nicholls' wrangling of this herd alone should earn him kudos but that he manages to allow someone like Newhart his comedic hysteria but Perkins his restrained explosion and so on, while giving Orson any damn thing he pleased, makes this potentially cutesy comedy a multi-textured tour de force.

This is before you get to astounding sequences in which actors have to deliver layered dialogue against the sights and sounds of massive explosions and a Mitchell bomber crash landing behind them. The aircraft management is, of course, done without a frame of anything but cameras and lighting (but that does include some rear projection): when you see planes, you are really looking at planes. One shot of a downed bomber's tail section in the sea as a distant intact one flies closer to the horizon while dialogue continues will inform or remind you that they really just can't make 'em like this anymore.

But none of this visual dazzle suggests the depth of the satire and how it mounts to epic scale toward the third act. Yossarian (an explosive and hilarious Alan Arkin) with his highly localised mission to escape the military and the war might be rendered insignificant by Milo's rampaging and stinkingly corrupt capitalism, but its essential humanity is never lost to us. By the time Milo is marshalling the streets in control of the local sex work, he has secured control of the war itself on the local scale, resembling both a carnival barker and a fascist dictator. Even more, we want Yossarian out of there.

My memory of this film is one of hearing it from behind the wall of the front seat of my father's Humber on a family outing to the drive-in. After Snowden's guts pour out of his life jacket in Yossarian's motif memory, that's how I "watched the rest of hte film. My brother exaggerated the grisliness of the scene and for years I dared not watch the movie. I had seen the bisection of Hungry joe by McWatt in the light plane and thought that was bad. Then again, I was eight or nine (parents, what were you thinking?) It turned up on Brisbane TV in 1980 and I did watch it. The guts scene was edited and the film played fine without it. Two decades later, on DVD, I was ready for it after a bout half a decade of catching up with horror movies I'd missed from the '80s onwards.

Catch-22 was beaten at the box office both by Robert Altman's M.A.S.H. and Franklin Schaffner's Patton, two very different films, but its reputation has since lifted. It has also aged much better than both. The male-gaze leering that feels juvenile and icky in M.A.S.H. is more diegetic here; the bomber crews' lust is offered as comic but is also saddening. Nurse Duckett gives way better than she gets from Yossarian with a double knee to the groin in a scene that calls for both. The sex workers in Rome are given more economic understanding that Fellini gave them two years later. The film has more compassion than a satire's ethical mudget usually gets. Against its example the swathe of late '60s and early '70s knockabout examples seldom come close to matching it for its underlying gravity.

But that's it, the dark undercurrent's energy saves it the way it saved the following year's Harold and Maude from ever straying into the cultural safety of M.A.S.H. (for all its frat boy jibes) or the still queasy unease of Patton. It's Catch-22 that reaches from the past as a response to an exhausting era. When the time came to take a similar look at the first Gulf War in Three Kings, this was the example that led it. 

DEEP RED @ 50

Mark, a young jazz maestro in Rome, witnesses the murder of a co-tenant of his building but is powerless to stop it. As the killer progresses through everyone who gets close to making an identification, Mark is drawn into an investigation of his own as he, too, is now under threat. This takes him on an intriguing journey through darkness.

The Giallo genre, a series of crime films popular in Italy from the '60s to the '70s, was on the wane in its native country. Dario Argento had made his start as a film maker with one only five years before (The Bird With the Crystal Plumage) and had contributed two more, neat and deadly entries. Whether he was wanting to revive the flagging genre or finish it off with a cinematic mountain, what he achieved was one of the most articulate and ranging examples of it with sumptuous sets, eyepopping kills, arresting music and solid central performances.

David Hemmings is paired with Daria Nicolodi (co-writer of the later Suspiria and future spouse of Argento) and they have a ball colliding with each other until the sparks turn into arc lighting. The closest Hemmings had come to the slapstick antics on screen here was the mime scene in Blow-Up. In Deep Red his character endures frequent indignities at the hands of the impossible new-feminist Gianna, her difficult car with the glove-box filled with airline booze bottles and whose power at arm wrestling leads to some hilarious embarrassment. 

This plays against a frequently grim series of murders. No one in Gialli ever seems to get shot. They get decapitated, pierced by shards, knifed, sliced by sliding doors, alright, but I can only think of one case where a gun is used for a kill in the decades of the genre. The medium at the start is despatched by knife and then finished off with the glass of a broken window. There is death by boiling water, death by impact with a marble fireplace and a range of others as this high strung movie gets on with it.

Goblin's score tread a fine line between insistent electronic motive and outright prog rock. Both fit perfectly. There is also the eerie lullaby that plays over the mid credit sequence that pits the sharp violence against its disarming major/minor tonality. The motif was a direct influence on John Carpenter's theme for Halloween with its pressing grind and pealing piano figures.

As to plot, Gialli never boasted particularly tight examples, preferring to mix cultural shock value of "deviant" sexuality and decadence. Argento writes a coherent story and (you'll see this on a repeat viewing) plays fair by matching an early, easily missed detail, with a later revelation.

Now, all this gush aside, it should be noted that by current standards, Deep Red is a snail of a thriller. Personal investigation stories will, by necessity, have stretches in the middle act where everyone has to stop and take stock of the mystery and its dangers before racing to the finish but the Italian genre liked to ask its audiences in for a coffee or a drink, a red herring on toast and then a big finish followed by a coda no one saw coming. Deep Red's middle act is a lot of chemical bickering between the leads as the kill setups get more elaborate. This makes for a fascinating atmosphere but it doesn't hurry. 

What it does do is widen the style, growing increasingly baroque in detail. The location of an old murder case that might be pertient is found through horticulture. A victim is distracted by the sight of one of the ghastliest walking puppets you are ever likely to see. He is a target because he discovers something hidden on a bathroom wall. When Mark discovers the child's horror drawing of the historical murder behind the plaster of an old house, he is led back to the scene to investigate a detail he missed only to discover an even more horrific scene. 

All of this actually does add up. If his next film (Suspiria) threw narrative cogency out the window in favour of heavy violence and even more style, Deep Red plays like the highest that Giallo ever got as a rational film genre. I'm leaving out the treatment of the character Marco's gayness as it deserves more attention than I can give it, here. I will say that, along with other LGBTQ depictions in Argento's films, it is far too easy to characterise him as othering these characters in order to execute a Hollywood style punishment. It's not advocacy but it is live and let live. It wasn't all Fellini.

It is, as the saw goes, a pleasure to live at the beginning and end of an era. You could do worse, assuming you can find them (probably only on physical media now) than Deep Red be paired on a film night with Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace. Both are strikingly visual and bracingly violent crime thrillers with aesthetic sensibilities more attuned to the realm of old master painters and Jacobean revenge playwrights than 20th century filmmakers. If that sounds good to you, track these down. You will be holding on to them, if you do.

Viewing notes: I watched Arrow Video's stunning 4K presentation of Deep Red in its extended cut. I could have chosen a 5.1 audio track in Italian of the cobbled English/Italian hybrid. This is a splicing of elements discovered long after the first edits were released, a reassembly that meant that a number of scenes suddenly go into an Italian dub. I have always found this easy to get used to and highlights David Hemmings' full performance (he dubbed his own part at the time). It's only offered in 2 channel but it's worth it.

AMERICAN PSYCHO @ 25

In an early scene, Patrick Bateman takes us through his morning skin routine, a complex series of named products and tasks, that allows his privileged youth to remain vibrant and beautiful. He is also warning us of the implication of the title, ending with, "I simply am not there." As we follow his progress through the culture of 1% Manhattanites, with its multitude of micro-aggressions and abstracted savagery, we see how he responds to this rarefied stress with acts of extreme violence. If Patrick is driven to atrocity by such means what happens when they get too much for him?

Brett Easton Ellis' dark satire on yuppiedom in the '80s was considered unfilmable for the intensity of its graphically described violence. Screenplays, including one by Easton Ellis, came and went until almost a decade after its publication, this adaptation was released. So how did it go?

I recall a conversation in the '90s where a friend proposed Oliver Stone as director and the still young enough Robert Downey Jr as Bateman. It was a thrilling idea, the kind that can take a conversation from fat chewing to the corners of inspiration. We imagined scenes from the book we'd read in annihilating colour on screen. The novel was a must read at the time, a book deemed taboo here but bold there. 

The original cover art gave us a Bateman in a suit. His face was either a mask with darkened eyeholes or his face crowned with a film of bloody red. Out of context, you'd take it as a tribute to Francis Bacon. It looked fearsome. Then, when I read it, I found it to be wincingly violent but also constantly humorous in the same way as his debut novel Less Than Zero. The violence, though, is flavour and emphasis, not purpose. That is what Mary Harron understood.

Easton Ellis' uber privileged are shown as shark-like competitors in bespoke clothing, suggesting that Bateman is only enacting what his friends and colleagues only dream of doing if they weren't already performing an abstracted expression of it in their business dealings. In one of the few passages addressing his childhood in the novel, Bateman is afflicted by rage. We don't need that here and a lot of that has to do with the casting of Christian Bale.

Bale at twenty-six presented an unblemished beauty strengthened by near constant exercise. His blankness is perfected rather than undermined by his narration and has Bateman perform his smile which is free of any genuine joy. If you've ever known someone who engages in conversation in order to pounce on points and finish their ridicule with a weird blurting AI laugh, you will know this characterisation: a life-draining continuous antagonism. When we see him prepare to attack, we don't need to see the results. If anything they would detract from the effect of Bateman's remove (even from his own actions). Harron continues the mystery of the scene with the coathanger from the novel in that neither explains what he used it for, only suggesting its gravity through the results, knowing that we who read and see and fill in blanks are going to supply the worst we can. And when we do, we are, however temporarily, kin to Bateman.

The rest of the cast are also astutely chosen to give us an elite New York that is intimidatingly urbane and dangerous to approach with the likes of Jared Leto, Justin Theroux and Reese Witherspoon. Chloe Sevigny also impresses as the timid but observant Jean. Willem Dafoe turns up in a role that shows he really can do restraint, as the quietly canny detective who understands more than he reveals. I can't finish this without mentioning the work of cinematographer Andrzej Sekula whose compositions go from sumptuous lifestyle brochure perfection to the ugly over lighted moments at venues that are rinsed with discomfort.

American Psycho is the kind of literary adaption that comprehends its source material. The book that might have got its author cancelled if it appeared more recently and the film based on it both prove both funnier and less extreme than feared. The thread of wavering identity, the rupture between a fantasised wish fulfilment and diegetic reality is nauseously blurry. It recalls another supposedly unfilmable novel made a few years before. David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch threw the issues with forming a literal report of Burroughs' eyepopping satirical epic by creating a companion to it. More recently Luca Guardaningno's take on the much shorter Queer managed to overstretch the source and make an unsatisfying thing of it. Guardangnino is currently at work on a remake of American Psycho. I won't be in line for that one, though, as Mary Harron has already made this one.

THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE @ 55

Sam, an American in Rome, walks past a gallery on the way home one night to witness a masked figure attacking a woman inside. He runs to her aid, getting into the glassed off antechamber, inadvertently locking him self between two glass walls and watches powerlessly as the attack proceeds. Getting a passing stranger to call the cops, he pounds at the glass ineffectively. The assassin leaps away at the sound of the siren but the woman is on the floor with an abdominal wound.

Sam was about to decamp to New York with his Brit girlfriend but the detective who interviews him takes his passport. The case is so baffling that anyone could be involved. Sam has to clear his name but also is intrigued to play detective, himself, haunted by the notion that he saw something that the excitement erased. The killer is picking off women around the city. Sam is about to enter a labyrinth of intrigue, danger and after dark puzzles. Does he have the key?

The Giallo genre was about a decade old when Dario Argento entered the scene with this film. Argento had already been a film critic and had made a good start at screen writing, collaborating with the likes of Bertolucci and Leone (the tense opening of Once Upon a Time in the West has his stamp all over it). Italy had already shown its endless appetite for the violence and engaging mysteries of Giallo as dished up by the great Mario Bava among many others. These were shot for international markets and, as with all Italian film production at the time, made with the intention of dubbing the dialogue. Argento wrote his own adaptation of the novel The Screaming Mimi for his debut.

While the gallery attack scene is not the very opening it's the way the film is recalled opening, with a situation straight out of Hitchcock as a would be hero is prevented from helping and must watch an act of violence from a trap. It's a nightmare situation and won't be the last one this movie offers.

Actually, that's a point: Bird is so stuffed to the gills with Giallo quirks that it would be considered a postmodern parody if it had been made now. the cross-dressing lineup guy giving better than he gets, the Breughel style naive painting of the sexual assault, the ugly but funny comedy scene with the artist, the too-urbane detective, right down to the hit man in the bright yellow leather jacket (Giallo is Italian for yellow, Argento even made a later movie with that as the title) which has one of the best comic relief transitions before getting scary again. Argento isn't trying to send anything up, though, he is gleefully picking genre tropes off the shelf and setting them off as perfect plot bombs. Hitchcock himself dismissed the plot drivers of his films with the joke about the McGuffin (Google it) he much preferred the visual puns, social commentary and mechanics of suspense. See also everyone who made a Giallo except that Argento even more, outdoing the great Bava himself.

So, if anything, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage pays nothing but service to the genre it declares. That said, it is not a series of ticks on a checklist. Argento warms everything up with real humour and builds a nocturnal Rome that feels of its time but also darkly medieval. On board as cinematographer is Vittorio Storaro  who also lensed The Conformist, The Godfather and Apocalypse Now among many others, having a deadly sense of the effects of colour on the psyche. Bird still looks like a zillion dollars. And while we're talking collaborators, let's throw in the great Ennio Morricone who provides a score that mixes cute girl pop with avant orchestral noise motifs and electronica. This movie sounds scared.

As a sub-genre of crime fiction The Bird With the Crystal Plumage still delivers and in a much more insistent manner than most of them. Argento perfected the traditional Giallo with his next string of films, adding more peculiar style each time until Deep Red a few years on which all but rendered the genre impossible to top. After some extraordinary horror outings he then returned but to decreasing effect as some of the later entries could not outgrow the limitations of the Giallo's heyday. There are always exceptions (Opera, The Stendhal Syndrome) but the more recent films have felt like the first ones never did: routine. Before that, back in 1970, he climbed to the peak of his adopted genre on his first go. If you can find this, watch it.

Viewing notes: We watched Arrow's 4K presentation of this and it is stellar. In the convivium and sipping of bubbly stuff we all got a little lost. As these movies were never shot with direct sound and intended to be dubbed even in their native Italian it's not a big deal unless you really want ot hear actor's own voices (E.g. David Hemmings in Deep Red). The subtitles might prove a boon, here. I can't find it for purchase or rent on any streamer. If you are feeling adventurous you can get a physical copy from a few boutique labels. Maybe Shudder or Tubi in the future.

Review: 28 YEARS LATER

Decades after the initial outbreak of the rage virus Britain is a quarrantined area. Survivors band in various ways but the ones we follow have found an Island protected by a causeway that the tide renders impassable. Island life is primitive but homely. Young Spike is being prepared to accompany his father across to the mainland to join him in scavenging for the settlement. While Spike initially nails a few of the infected his fear and nerves during skirmishes see him making mistakes and he carries guilt back with him to the island. 

When his initiation party gets under way, his concerns make him follow his father who has himself followed a young woman out to where the shadows are private. Betrayed at the sight, Spike goes back home and chats to his grandfather about what happened and a curious distant fire he saw on the mainland. Grandad suggests that the flame was maintained by one of the few trained doctors in reach. Spike thinks of his bedridden mother upstairs whose erratic, hallucinatory behaviour is probably just something that needs medicine. He has a lot to prove and a chance to do something really good. He takes his mum across the causeway.

When I saw 28 Days Later as a new film I and my companion were treated to a very ill fellow cinephile who kept sneezing ballistically while watching the instantly transferrable bug lay the land waste with hoards of angry zombies. That wasn't entirely why I didn't love the movie. I did like about two thirds, though, the first act and build were wonderful but then it fell into over-contrivance with pat dialogue and what felt like a rushed conclusion. Along with other titles of its vintage (hello to The Descent and Eden Lake), it gained in cult adoration what it didn't in box office returns and largely left me cold. I had no interest in the sequel 28 Weeks Later. 

So why go to this one? It was deemed different.

Well, so it is, mostly. It plays like an old rustic tale like Kes or Whistle Down the Wind but with Zombies and adult themes. Spike leaves the safety of his small society, let down by his father and needing to make his mother better, and wanders the dangerlands, meeting fellow travellers also pursuing survival. The memento mori of the herds of infected, whether obese and crawling like outsized reptiles or knotty limbed and voracious, preventing all but the most fleeting senses of the kind of reset the land needs.

Danny Boyle was one of the '90s wunderkinder, a flashy auteur bursting with pop culture and an eye for irony that often broke into the screamingly cynical. His Shallow Grave and Trainspotting remain durable highlights but his output after them put him in the patchy file. The embarrassing Coens rip A Life Less Ordinary and the meh The Beach left him nowhere to go until 2002's 28 Days Later in which he reinvented zombies to a decent return. The problem for me with that one is that he didn't leave his smartarsed observations at the door and tried to shoehorn the kind of toughness of Trainspotting in. It meant that the resulting tonal tension made it feel more like cable tv than cinema. And then we get the ending. I won't spoil it but it reminded me of nothing else but the kind of rugpull cliffhangers that The Walking Dead would end its seasons with. 

That said, this one does feel like cinema. There is a theme of anger and a quest for betterment from Spike which works but perhaps works toward the already announced sequel. Alfie Williams is outstanding as Spike. The ever dependable Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes and Aaron Taylor Johnson provide the screen with solid presence. All of this works but I was still left waiting for the next season.

Viewing Notes. The timing of the session had me getting an overpriced ticket to one of Hoyts' Lux cinemas with the reclinas. These days I'm fine with these as they can be easily adjusted for comfort. We were also treated to a free popcorn and softdrink which was a pleasant surprise. Currently on general release.

Review: WARFARE

Do you remember Eric Prydz's 2000s hit Call On Me? No? Well, if you ever slunk home after a long Saturday night and chucked Rage on, you'll remember the video. A group of beautiful and fit young women compete for the attention of the hunky gym trainer. Gyrations and pelvic thrusts and Californian perfection in the hair, faces and bodies. All the reward is directed at the male who is standing in for those playing at home. Well, that's how this movie about military violence begins. After enough of the Prydz clip the reverse shot is of a wall of soldiers in action gear grinning and leering and cheering: bonding. You will remember this moment as the film continues. You will need to.

This film has a progress rather than an act structure. It is based on the collected memories of the soldiers who participated in the operation and, while an arc does become clear, what we are watching is military procedure without context beyond that of warfare itself. Ok, got it, roll credits.

Well, the rest of the film is a steady build from the crew establishing their base to starting operations to defending themselves against an elusive enemy. The point of their presence and commandeering the house becomes clear as they identify armed suspects appearing in the neighbouring buildings, the soldiers are drawing them out. When a grenade is tossed in through a window the operation changes from a clean-up job to a siege with increasingly traumatic and brutally violent effects on the men.

A multinational cast of young, intense performers gives us a thickening tension and at frequent intervals, we go back to that bonding sleazy pop video. When we're looking into the body of a soldier halved by an explosion with his internal organs exposed or another's legs hacked by weaponry, we recall the doof doof techno rhythm and the beautiful young things grinding around erotically and wish we were back there when the worst thing was what the men no so secretly wanted to do with those dancers. If that bonded the characters, it now bonds the audience to the movie.

The insistence on depicting the real time events highlights the apparent futility of the operation. What does it mean when a single act of aggression renders the soldiers into automatic motion drilled in by training? And where are we looking when we understand that almost all of what we are seeing is the force and equipment of an invading army? When they are threatened our empathy defaults to them. A poignant single shot before the end credits puts this into perspective.

I am gladdened that this wasn't a found footage movie as the real-time feature suggested. The presentation is the cleanest digital video and multiple setups every scene. About half way through I began to wonder when the point was due to arrive but as that mark drove by it became clear that this was the point: noise, danger, life and non life. While I was happy to emote-along the characters closest to my field of vision, I kept thinking of why they were there. I did not support the war in Iraq. This coloured everything I saw between the two credit sequences and I kept thinking of the ever darkening sleaze of the Eric Prydz video and feeling sick that the erotica and the ultraviolence became indistinguishable. A strong piece that yet must beg for indulgence lest its audience should wise up and walk out.

Viewing notes: I saw this as part of my subscription to Prime. It was a robust 4K presentation. It's available for rent at other sources.

FRIDAY THE 13th @ 45 (Spoliers!)

A young woman hitchhikes her way to her job as a cook at a summer camp. After being weirded out by a local preaching doom, warned off going to her destination because of murders that took place there, and then given the ick by the driver of her ride, she gets out and is pursued into the woods to her violent death. Meanwhile, the other young things assemble at Camp Crystal Lake to setup for the advent of the kids. They notice the persistent absence of the new cook (we already met her) and then they, too, start suffering the slings and arrows ... and javelins. Cinema has entered the 1980s.

Sean Cunningham's 1980 teen slasher from a screenplay by Victor Miller was intended as a cash-in after the success of John Carpenter's seminal Halloween from two years before. This is how the film is often dismissed but that really is a disservice. While the parent group is similarly absent, leaving the nascent adults to fend for themselves, the threat of the suburban jungle is replaced with the wilder environment of the forest at night. 

These teens, also, have cleared school, having even less anchor points to the social order. This is illustrated early with the snake. Anyone who has never seen this film needs the warning that it depicts the onscreen killing of a snake by a machete-wielding kid. It happens as part of a panic among the group which is solved by violence. I cannot apologise for it but I can see how it establishes a pragmatism that puts the young adults into preparedness. In the realm of the movie, it's a small crisis brought to a head. It might well haunt more recent views beyond the running time.

For all I prefer in Halloween, I have to admit that the internal politics are given more depth in Friday the 13th. Along with the effective Tom Savini gore of the kills, this cultural aspect is brought to the fore, providing the monster with the kind of grounding absent in Carpenter's shape. In this first outing of the franchise, we don't even catch sight of the killer until the last. At this point we also get the motivation and its twisted ugliness.

A 1950s-set prologue has already given us a kind of standard setter and appears to speak for the film itself by punishing pre-marital sex. This, and a careful misreading of the ensuing movie bears out the common misconception that teen slashers are puritanical thunderbolts, warning the too-young away from the sins of the flesh. This falls apart immediately when you consider the target audiences were the same horny teens on screen who didn't once consider their desires to be preludes to murder. More centrally, it's the deranged monster with the machete that's doing this. As Alex West of The Faculty of Horror podcast once perfectly phrased it: the movie's rad, the killer's conservative.

A glimpse into the future will show how the F13 franchise developed this. The first four display an offroad freedom to the young adults' choices and, while sex is a generic given, they're also adventurous outside of that one. For now, back in 1980, the adults in the form of ludicrous cops and uptight veteran youth counsellors, and crazy Ralph the doomsayer, offer only a kind of dead skin as faces of authority. The result isn't an instant Lord of the Flies but an incursion by the big bad world lashing out from the dark.

It's taken me a while but I've come to appreciate Friday the 13th. When I first saw it during schoolies week in 1980 it was a tearing thrill ride before an eerie walk home though canal-ville on the Gold Coast to the flat I was staying at with other demographically threatened late teens. In a strangely prescient co-incidence, there was a serial criminal known first as the balaclava rapist and then balaclava killer on the loose along the Gold Coast. We were aware of that as we tried to navigate the then forbidding urban landscape of the strip.

This film also carries a surprise for anyone aware of the franchise iconography. It is not Jason who does the killing but his vengeful mother. Her dispatch with a machete to the neck appears to give a second birth to her wronged son whose grisly mutated form polarises out of the lake water and attacks the final girl in what might or might not be a dream. Than he's still out there? she asks the cops from her hospital bed. Yes he was, growing, getting nastier and uglier. But he was also developing and distinguishing himself from a decade of slasher clones who preferred F13's flamboyant gore over Halloween's suspense. And, of course, the Halloween sequels lay down and copied the copy. Jason got his hockey mask on the third go and its assumption was a comment on the society of his victims. Yes, of course, it's fun rather than philosophy but it's fun that got that tiny bit closer.

Viewing notes: I saw this on my birthday of Friday the 13th on Paramount's superb 4K transfer which enhances the always unexpected beauty of the cinematography. It was a birthday celebration and the viewing was ruled by peanut-gallery commentary, but we did take it in in spirit. It has been available as part of a boxset of the Paramount-owned franchise, and Stan used to stream it. Otherwise it's rentable online from a few outlets.