Reviews

A film that continues to cause controversy - Philip French once opined that if you could turn 'Gertrud' into a sleeping pill it would make the perfect tranquilliser - with a tiresome, self-centred heroine who spends an inordinate amount of time staring into space while seemingly oblivious to the blandishments of a succession of alpha males.

It's too bad that veteran Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer failed to realise his original aim to make 'Gertrud' in colour, as what to prove his swan song (although he continued to furnish ambitions to make a life of Christ) limpidly photographed by Henning Bendtsen it would have looked even better than it already does.

Fifties and sixties teenage rebellion having by now remorselessly plunged into simple hedonism John Hughes' sequence of films celebrating eighties acquisitiveness continued apace with the latest in his series of exercises in which the excesses of the era are by now synonymous with blatant product placement throughout done in the style of a comic strip in bright dayglo colours.

Bueller's lack of respect for authority shows in the way he cheerfully ignores the Fourth Wall throughout as he invites us to admire his anarchic activities; while Jeffrey Wright as Bueller's hapless principal is easily the funniest thing in it.

Jack Lemmon's second dramatic role and his only western was this bowdlerised version of Frank Harris' unreliable memoirs 'My Life Out West' which represented a further step in the move by Delmer Daves - a director incapable of making a dull film - from rugged outdoor fare to romantic melodramas when he took Lemmon out of his accustomed urban environment and teamed him with Glenn Ford; who later the same year himself made a memorable venture into comedy with 'The Sheepman'.

As might be expected much of the humour derives from Lemmon looking incongruous in a stetson, while in a supporting role Brian Donlevy is permitted rather more depth than usual.

Despite the title the subject is really the impact on Tilda Swindon as a mother obliged to come to terms with (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) the sociopathic depravity of her first-born (chillingly played by Ezra Miller), a problem liable only to increase as we move further into the 21st Century.

Considering that 'We Need to Talk About Nigel' begins with Tilda Swinton dreaming that she's undergoing crucifixion, things at first seem they can only get better, but when she wakes up things get even worse as she experiences every woman's nightmare that she might have spawned a bad seed in this fancifully organised, highly-coloured adaptation of Lionel Shriver's bestselling novel depicting every mother's nightmare.

Described by Denis Gifford as "cheap but intelligent" and quite a departure for Merton Park, which although for a long time considered of interest merely as a promising early film by director Alan Bridges now enjoys a respectable reputation of its own as an atmospheric piece of science fiction in its own right in which James Wilson does a fine job depicting a hospital sweltering through a night shift experiencing an unseasonable heatwave ably assisted by an excellent score by Bernard Ebbinghouse.

Despite such pulp elements as female aliens in beehives & rubber suits (more prominently displayed in the posters than in the film itself), under the stewardship of Jack Greenwood - who had already provided Joseph Losey with the opportunity to demonstrate nascent potential with 'The Criminal' - 'Invasion' demonstrates the contribution that can be made by the influence of a specific producer; you only need compare this with the glossier but trashier 'Konga', also made at Merton Park but with the grubby fingermarks of Herman Cohen all over it.

While not usually given to bothering with sequels, 'Lara Croft: the Cradle of Life' shares with 'Night in the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian' the singular distinction of being more fun than the original.

It mercifully doesn't take itself too seriously and at less than two hours compared with much of its ilk seems a model of brevity. But what places it head and shoulders over the competition is that it bucks the trend by for once providing a substantial role for a woman and represents an extremely rare occasion when the outfit the heroine wears in the movie actually improves upon the original.

A strange film on which to find Dimitri Tiomkin's name as producer, especially as the music itself was by Quincey Jones. The credits proudly declare this 'Carl Foreman' MacKenna's Gold'; but it would be more apt to call that a confession since despite frequently spectacular location work by Joseph MacDonald much of the dialogue is plainly staged on studio sets and some of the special effects work is absolutely atrocious.

This star-studded, kill-happy attempt by J. Lee Thompson to emulate a spaghetti western features an extraordinary cast ranging from Gregory Peck to Edward G. Robinson, Omar Shariff and Keenan Wynn as Mexican bandits wearing sombreros as wide as their grins, Telly Savalas strangely cast as a cavalry commander, while Raymond Massey quotes the bible as a religious zealot.

As the heroine Camilla Sparv wears the usual anachronistically tight britches; while Julie Newmar's return to the western genre fifteen years after 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers' as an Indian squaw (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) seen skinny-dipping provides some compensation for this film being responsible for her unavailability to appear in Season Three of 'Batman'.

A late entry in Budd Boetticher' series of westerns for Ranown that demonstrated the ability to stage an intimate, character-driven drama in the wide open spaces even when shot in widescreen and colour.

Randolph Scott's career as a morally ambiguous hero was nearing its conclusion when his path crossed that of an up & coming Pernell Roberts and James Coburn, bearing their teeth as a pair of leering bad boys.

Karen Steele as the resident female as usual has an unsettling effect on the men, while in retrospect the most quirky piece of casting is probably James Best, best known these days as the trigger happy sheriff in 'The Dukes of Hazzard', but here cast as Scott's bounty.

Although the authorship of 'The Servant' is usually solely attributed to Joseph Losey - who gets to give full reign to his obsession with the British class system - it should always be borne in mind that there were actually three intellects behind this film.

It makes more sense if one is aware that it originated with a 1948 novella by Robin Maugham, who admitted that it was based on an episode when he was a young man when a butler introduced a good-looking young 'nephew' into the household and the book is a version of what might have happened had he risen to the bait; and certainly makes one view Barrett's 'fiancé' Vera in a new light.

But the major creative element was probably Harold Pinter's script, which supplied the playfully sinister wit such as the poisonous scenes between the two bachelors forced to cohabit; although Maugham sneered contemptuously upon viewing (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) the climactic orgy that it was plainly the work of a simple working class lad "who'd never been to an orgy in his life!"

Finally there's the element of serendipity which provides the visual impact supplied by a London shrouded in snow by the great winter of 1963 that the film of 'The Caretaker' had also recently benefitted from.

The third of three science fiction movies made by Terence Fisher for a company called Planet was the only one to feature Christopher Lee, playing a sort of 20th Century Van Helsing who carried a camera and a walkie-talkie rather than a crucifix and a mallet.

Unlike the rather picturesque Nineteenth Century backdrop of Fisher's work for Hammer this time the story is very 20th Century in its anticipation of global warming, and whereas 'Island of Terror' was obviously shot in the deep of winter, 'Night of the Big Heat' lives up to it's title although you only have to look at the trees to tell it was also shot in winter.

The giant robots in 'The Earth Dies Screaming' were probably the most formidable aliens of the trio, and the addition of colour doesn't add very much, but some of it is pretty strong meat, with a couple of gory deaths, an attempted rape and a raw depiction of an adulterous affair.

Although the title is familiar as the play written by Private Godfrey very few people have actually seen it. Even less familiar is how close the British and Continental film industries were in the twenties, Alfred Hitchcock actually making his first two films in Germany. Despite the lead going to quintessentially English lead Guy Newell the original silent version was filmed in Berlin with photography by Otto Kanturek and design by Oscar Werndorff - both of whom would subsequently settle in Britain - and the chic twenties look of the women all share a very Germanic ambience; while Geza von Bolvary was one of many Magyars to make his mark in British films.

Considering its theatrical origins it works surprisingly well in visual terms, containing such fanciful sights - characteristic of the silent era - as Isle Bois' alcohol-induced vision of an animated pair of bellows joining a pair of items of luggage in a dance.

The reason for this film's existence is that with the advent of colour TV viewers ceased being choosy about what to watch as long as it was in colour.

Hence this quickie remake of 'It Conquered the World' starring 'B' movie mainstay John Agar and our old friend Bronson Caverns under the alias "the old Hot Springs Cave", which if memory serves follows the plot of the original pretty closely since the producers were obviously too cheap to come up with a new plot, as evidenced by Agar riding a bicycle rather than drive a car on the pretext - it says here - that all terrestrial power has been neutralised; while the military attribute the strange occurrences to "some kind of communist conspiracy"

It certainly is bad - with the cool name 'Zontar' promising something rather more impressive than the enormous boggle-eyed bat that we actually see - but the addition of colour gives it a glossier look with John Agar wearing a sharp suit and the ladies in chic sixties hairstyles; while the employment of negative printing (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) embellishes a couple of shots near the end.

Tim Robbins burnishes his liberal credentials as movie town's voice of conscience by featuring in 'Dark Waters', which shows Hollywood is still capable of producing socially concerned films for grown-ups.

Six decades after Rachel Carson in 'Silent Spring' warned of the potentially lethal effects of pesticides and a full century since 'An Enemy of the People' showed that profits will always trump public health concerns Mark Ruffalo learns the hard way the consequences of messing with vested interests; and as we move further into the 21st Century the problem seems to get ever further from a satisfactory resolution.

When you consider what Eisenstein would have done if he'd had the opportunity to work in Technicolor one can only savour the irony that Roy William Neill was able to avail himself of that miracle of technology - and had use of a camera dolly which facilitated some astonishingly mobile camerawork at a time when the Technicolor cameras still weighed a ton - on an obvious piece of hack work.

Universal at that time were investing heavily in Technicolor to dress up their otherwise cheap productions and this film's leading men Jon Hall and Peter Coe are so bland they seem to have been deliberately chosen to divert attention from the fact that their leading lady's sole talent was for photographing well in Technicolor (although she certainly looks impressive in puffed sleeves and red boots), while the least funny element is naturally the comic relief of Leo Carrillo and Curt Bois. But the presence of Gale Sondergaard - who along with a bearded Nigel Bruce was probably enlisted from a Sherlock Holmes picture being filmed on an adjacent soundstage - amply compensates.

The film's most obvious economy was in its failure to commission a decent script in the first place, which brings us to the most curious feature of 'Gypsy Wildcat', the presence of the name of author of hard-boiled thrillers James M. Cain among the writers. Thereby doubtless hangs a tale.

The talents of up & coming TV scriptwriter Rod Serling and veteran 'B' director Edward L. Cahn made for pretty strange bedfellows in this Allied Artists quickie made with effective and low-keyed intelligence.

The title is really a misnomer as there (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) are in fact two incidents in the same alley that bookend the film, which actually devotes over half of it's running time to a courtroom drama in which the incident that gives the film its title - in which a trio of hoodlums rob a musical goods store with violence - which although in screen time is all over in less than five minutes is thereafter the subject of painstaking forensic analysis.

Bearing a passing resemblance to the case of Craig & Bentley this time its the policeman who pulled the trigger and has to deal with the consequences. To anyone familiar with Serling the depiction of office politics within the police department is characteristically sardonic.

'The Power of the Dog' is an austere deconstruction of the western genre which despite the presence of stars of the calibre of Benedict Cumberbatch and Kirsten Dunst suffers from the malaise that blights so many modern westerns of an uncompromising lack of pace and a concentration on mood at the expense of action.

As usual the landscape is lovely, but most of the performances are framed in the middle distance, everyone speaks in hushed tones with hardly a word above a whisper, with the usual lack of overt action that passes these days for profundity; briefly enlivened by Miss Dunst's attempts to play the Radetzky March on the piano, which Cumberpatch turns into a duet on the banjo.

One of the many satisfactions that continue to compensate for the frequent frustrations that plague students of silent film are survivals such as 'The Open Road', whose promotion from a brief mention in Rachel Low's book on twenties British cinema while discussing Claude Friese-Greene to a TV series in its own right was a consummation devoutly to be wished.

But 'The Open Road' suffers from the bugbear that afflicts most amateur photography in concentrating on the picturesque at the expense of what appears at the time to be mundane but gains in interest with the passage of time.

The Yorkshire Dales, for example, continue to look pretty much today as they did a century ago, so it's the fleeting glimpses in colour of what at the time seemed banal events like the Test at Lords in 1926 or what at the time seemed a thoroughly ordinary shot of Whitehall as it looked at the same time that today gives 'The Open Road' its most lasting value.

In an episode of 'The Monkees' in which Rupert Crosse featured there was a typical running gag when the camera would cut to Crosse looking into the camera and incredulously interjecting "Who writes this stuff?"

In this, the first of two westerns Monte Hellman filmed back-to-back a bearded Crosse had his question answered: none other than Jack Nicholson (also later to write for 'The Monkees').

More a home invasion film along the lines of 'The Petrified Forest' - with a conclusion that anticipates 'Reservoir Dogs' - rather than a conventional western, the only principals the two films have in common are Nicholson himself in a more conventional role than his part in 'The Shooting', while Millie Perkins says so little Nicholson at one point actually declares "You don't say much!"

Representing a perfunctory attempt by Dino De Laurentis to create a distaff 'Conan the Barbarian', 'Red Sonja' hails from the days when Arnold Schwarzenegger still wore his hair down to his shoulders; and while set in the mythical past the hairstyle Brigitte Nielsen - who gets an 'Introducing' credit - wears in the title role is more evocative of the 1980s.

Playing a far less substantial amazon than her later role as Karla in 'Beverly Hills Cop II', despite her name Nielsen is rather colourless in the part. Although supposed to have issues with men few of them are well defined and her most substantial adversary is actually Sandahl Bergman's evil queen - who keeps a spider the size of a sheep as a pet - which could have made it resemble a medieval version of 'Dallas' if it had given her sufficient screen time; but the long hoped-for confrontation (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) takes an unconscionable time in coming.

One tends to forget that the majority of Laurel & Hardy's shorts were preCode, which accounts for some pretty racy situations.

In 'Chickens Come Home' Oliver Hardy has come up in the world and is wed to high maintenance blonde Thelma Todd. From the word 'Go' he breaches the fourth wall as he imploringly looks into the camera while his desperation mounts as skeleton in his closet Mae Busch wages a campaign of attrition that makes Glenn Close in 'Fatal Attraction' look meek and submissive; while Stan Laurel's celebrated generosity behind the scenes towards his co-workers is evident in the number of opportunities Ms Todd and Mae Busch are given to be as funny as the boys are (witness Ms Todd's rapid shifts from jealous wife to gracious hostess).

Marking a further rise in the cinematic ascendancy of Carol Reed, 'The Way Ahead' was intended to do for the army what 'In Which We Serve' had done for the navy; the film being aptly titled since so many of the cast went on to enjoy substantial careers well into the television era, notably William Hartnell.

In supporting roles it's good to see Esma Cannon in a 'normal' role and in his debut we fleetingly see Trevor Howard who postwar went on to far greater things under the direction of Reed.

As in 'Dad's Army' - for which this strongly resembles a template - the tale begins with a gathering of veterans reminiscing about their war service (as usual complaining how soft youngsters are now getting) and features John Laurie - who looked old even then - with David Niven as an officer prophetically named Jimmy Perry.

More a Sunday school lecture than an actual film and thankfully free of the brashness that characterises the American model, 'The Promise' marked the beginning of the final phase of Norman Walker's career as a director making cinematic Sunday school presentations for his company G. H. W. Productions.

Within its budgetary limitations it does a satisfactory job in its depiction of the Nativity, done in an understated thoroughly British manner, with palpable sincerity and with a quietly dignified leading performance by Edward Underdown as the prison visitor continually being reminded how popular his successor was.

'Life is a Circus' provides further evidence that despite Val Guest serving his apprenticeship as a writer for Will Hay his thrillers were usually far superior to his comedies.

Although effectively a remake of the Crazy Gang's earlier 'Alf's Button Afloat', it more resembles 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs', with Shirley Eaton as a country lass in sweater & jeans - who claims that her friends rather improbably call her 'Butch' - as their Snow White.

As the genie Lionel Jeffries provides a satisfactory substitute to Alistair Sim in the earlier film; while the most cherishable moment comes when Flanagan & Allen briefly re team to perform 'Underneath the Arches'.

In this early exercise in widescreen filmmaking - presently available in a magnificent high definition print on YouTube - Raoul Walsh makes good use of the new process both in outdoor scenes (including the usual encirclement of the wagons and culminating in a showdown in a blizzard) and chiaroscuro interior lighting effects.

Among the many impressive sights the film provides the most impressive is probably of a fresh-faced young John Wayne - apparently recommended to Walsh by John Ford - who demonstrates the grace and ease in front of a camera that ultimately would sustain a forty year film career.

Anyone looking for Tyrone Power be warned the name on the opening credits refers to his father, a hirsute brute of a man wearing dentures (at least I hope they're dentures) that look as if they were originally meant for Lon Chaney, who towers over Wayne and who Junior plainly didn't get his looks from.

Although the settlers dismiss the Indians as "savages" most of the conflict is actually between the settlers themselves; wile the most egregious racial stereotype is probably the dreaded El Brendel wandering in and out of the action making dire mother-in-law jokes: Laugh? I thought I'd never start.