DVD Review: Edmond (2005)

Splatter director Stuart Gordon and a typically brilliant William H. Macy rise to the daunting task of translating David Mamet’s pitch-black 1982 amorality play into film in this bizarre, jolty, brutal little piece whose brief running time belies its depth, slaughterous humour and disturbing commentary on urban pathology.

The story is the simplest thing here. Edmond Burke (Macy), a part-naïve part-jaded white-collar jobsworth, leaves his wife, citing sexual and spiritual boredom. He consults a tarot reader, who tells him "you are not where you belong." Reading moral apocalypse into this proclamation, he proceeds to get beaten up, to beat up a mugger himself, to get laid (with several humorous false starts), to kill with no apparent motive, to verbally abuse commuters and ultimately to get arrested.

All the while, numerology and totemic imagery from the tarot session recur: the number 115, three swords impaling a heart, the figure of death. Edmond strives to find significance in them, a third prime cause "beyond genetics and environment," but finally confesses his failure to do so. Ironically (but not paradoxically, Mamet’s adaptation of his own play seems to be getting at here) he finds unprecedented peace and fulfilment in prison and the film ends on what is, measured against the playwright’s career-long coverage of humanity’s war on its psychological self, an optimistic note.

DVD Review: Flavia The Heretic (1974)

Pick up any Shameless DVD release and you're guaranteed an 80s-style video nasty sleeve and a bold claim or two about the content within. Flavia The Heretic is no exception, although it's not really blood and guts shocker you might expect.

Based (very loosely) on a true story, Flavia The Heretic is part arthouse, part feminist tale, but ultimately an above average slice of Euro exploitation. Set in 15th century Italy, Flavia Gaetani (played by Florinda Bolkan) is the daughter of a rich landowner, sent to a convent to cleanse her soul. But instead of living a humble life, Flavia grows ever-more angry with the world, especially with the way men treat women, especially after witnessing the torture of one of the other nuns and the rape of a local farm girl by the local duke. Indeed, she is whipped herself for running away from the convent with a male friend.

Vampyres (1974)

A caravanning holiday in the English countryside in the 1970s isn't the typical scenario for a horror movie, but that is the case with José Ramón Larraz' Vampyres.

In stark contrast to the peaceful setting, Vampyres is the film Hammer were never quite able to make, with the blood letting more realistic and the eroticism in excess of what the British censor would have been comfortable with in 1974. In essence, it's a Euro horror, but set in the UK with a mainly British cast.

Sabrina Siani

If you're familiar with the innumerable sword & sorcery flicks Italian cinema churned out during the 1980s, chances are you've seen Sabrina Siani.  Either naked or in extremely skimpy outfits.  The beautiful, blonde starlet (real name: Sabrina Seggiani, but sometimes billed Sabrina Sellers) graced many a cut-price fantasy epic, typecast as an Amazonian princess or gutsy jungle girl.  Jess Franco wasn't a fan (calling her: "the stupidest person I've ever met"), but what does he know?  Siani may not have set the screen alight as a teen cannibal queen in Franco's dreadful Mondo Cannibale (1980), but at least she didn't direct it. 

Following a brief stint in sex comedies and Franco's calamitous gut-muncher, Siani soaked up the sun in Blue Lagoon rip-off Blue Island (1982) and played a feisty, female Tarzan in Umberto Lenzi's Incontro Nell'Ultimo Paradiso (1982), before making her mark as a sword-swinging maiden in Aristide Massaccesi's Ator the Fighting Eagle (1982).  Contrary to Franco's sentiments, Siani had a lot to offer: a winning athleticism, sex appeal, and a charismatic screen presence.  Whether slaying monsters, befriending bears (!), or smouldering seductively, she frequently upstaged bland beefcake, leading men like Peter McCoy (Pietro Torrisi) and Miles O'Keefe. 

DVD Review: Road Games (1981)

The Hitchcockian thriller Road Games won Australian filmmaker Richard Franklin (a lifelong Hitch devotee) his chance to direct, the surprisingly good, Psycho II (1983).  Hitchcock's influence is apparent right from the opening scene: a sinister motel, a naked girl and a psycho-killer who murders her and dismembers her body off screen.  His shadowy activities arouse the suspicion of American truck driver, Quid (Stacy Keach), whose phone calls to the police are ignored.  Quid soon finds himself being tailed by the killer in his grimy van.  He picks up gutsy runaway Hitch (Jamie Lee Curtis) and they play guessing games with the psycho's modus operandi, culminating in a taut scene where Quid confronts what he thinks is the killer in a toilet cubicle while Hitch investigates his van.  When Quid returns, Hitch and the van have disappeared, leaving him the police's prime suspect. 

Franklin provides some nicely tense moments and a handful of shocks, but one hesitates to call this an unsung classic.  The story (co-devised by Franklin and screenwriter Everett De Roche) meanders with characters talking an awful lot, but revealing very little, as the tension dissipates.  Keach makes for an affable, articulate hero ("Just because I drive a truck doesn't make me a truck driver") - though Quid remains something of an enigma.  Jamie Lee Curtis is strong throughout her few, brief scenes, but Hitch's back-story (the runaway daughter of an American diplomat) is too slight to be anything more than a plot wrinkle. 

The Harder They Come - The Barbican's Jamaican film season

London's Barbican centre is hosting The Harder They Come season, celebrating the best of Jamaican cinema.

In terms of movies, The Harder They Come is obviously heading things up, followed by director Perry Henzell's follow-up movie, No Place Like Home, 70s cult classic Rockers, Smile Orange from 1976 and recent flick One Love. Also featured in the season is the stage version of The Harder They Come and a live show headed up by Linton Kwesi Johnson.

Full details are on the Barbican site, with the season kicking off on 6th March.

Find out more at the Barbican website

Movie poster auction at Christies

Christies has announced details of its latest Film Poster auction.

The date for your diary is March 5th 2008, with the sale taking place at the South Kensington rooms. Over 200 lots this time, with everything from the earliest cinema through to modern-day classics. And as such, it's worth checking through the lots for your favourite era.

But as this is a cult cinema site, how about a cult movie poster? There's plenty of on offer, in particular US b-movies from the 1950s. One such film is Attack Of The Crab Monsters from 1957 - and if you want the poster (pictured here), it will probably set you back between £600 - £800.

Browse all the lots at the Christies website

DVD Review: Rocco and His Brothers (1960)

A landmark in world cinema, Rocco and His Brothers marries the neo-realism of Luchino Visconti's early films with the grand, operatic vision of his later masterpieces.  The story centres around the Parondi family who leave their home in rural, southern Italy for the bright lights of Milan.  Brothers Rocco (Alain Delon), Simone (Renato Salvatori), Ciro (Max Cartier) and Luca (Rocco Vidolazzi) arrive amidst eldest sibling Vincenzo's (Spiros Focas) engagement to kindly Ginetta (Claudia Cardinale), whereupon their fiery Mama (Katina Paxinou) - suspicious of all beautiful women - squabbles with their future in-laws and gets everyone turfed out on the street. 

As the family struggle to survive in the harsh city, Rocco moves from dry-cleaning to military service and finally boxing, giving every penny of his hard-earned cash to his demanding mother ("If you have anything left - send it.  You can't spend it anyway").  Meanwhile, feckless dilettante Simone sinks lower and lower.  Things come to a head when both brothers fall for sultry prostitute Nadia (Annie Girardot) and the family unravels amidst robbery, rape and murder. 

Alain Delon excels in the role that - alongside Rene Clement's Plein Soleil (1960) - made him a superstar, but Renato Salvatori and Annie Girardot (married in real life!) deliver performances of equally remarkable depth and realism.  Visconti may have been an aristocrat, but he was also a Marxist and this film reflects his preoccupation with the injustices endured by the poor.  He tackles prejudice (Immigrants mocked as coming "from the land of layabouts") and satirises Milan's welfare programme (the Parondis are advised: "rent a house, avoid paying, get evicted and then city hall will look after you.")

DVD Review: Der Letzte Mann (1924)

F.W. Murnau's Der Letzte Mann ("The Last Man", also known as The Last Laugh) represented a major technical breakthrough for silent cinema.  Inspired by Nikolai Gogol's story "The Coat", it concerns an elderly hotel doorman (silent cinema giant: Emil Jannings) who, because of his age, is cruelly demoted to bathroom attendant.  Reduced to towelling hands and polishing sinks, he tries to conceal the truth from friends and family, but to his shame is discovered.  Neighbours believe he's lied all along about his prestigious job and taunt him mercilessly, while his niece (Maly Delschaft), her new husband (Max Hiller) and his aunt (Emilie Kurz) reject him out of embarrassment. 

Grief-stricken, the old man retreats to the hotel bathroom, where a kindly night watchman (Georg John) covers him with his coat while he sleeps.  A title card concedes the story should end here since "in real life the old man has little left but death".  However "the author took pity on him and provided an improbable epilogue."  At the end, the old man inherits a fortune and dines happily at the hotel where he once worked. 

DVD Review: The London Nobody Knows (1967) / Les Bicyclettes de Belsize (1969)

There are numerous reasons why some films and TV shows become cult items, but obscurity/lack of availability is probably the biggest one. And that's certainly applicable to The London Nobody Knows and Les Bicyclettes De Belsize - both almost impossible to find or see since the 1960s and both available for the first time on a single DVD disc. But that's where the similarity ends as these two 'mini movies' have absolutely nothing else in common.

The London Nobody Knows has become a favourite of cult cinema nights in recent years, directed by Norman Cohen and based on a book by Geoffrey Fletcher, it's a look at the 'underbelly' of London in the late 60s through the eyes and voice of veteran actor James Mason.