Set Adrift

When a transatlantic liner sinks an Indian boy finds himself lost at sea with a bunch of his father’s not-so friendly zoo animals in Ang Lee’s whimsical adaptation of best seller Life of Pi. Our protagonist’s desperate struggle to survive his various misadventures is lusciously painted by Lee with some quite stunning CGi sequences, cinematography and his trademark confidently languid direction and buoying this lushness is an excellent performance from his young lead and two solid supporting turns. However despite (as far as I can remember) sticking quite closely to the events of the original novel it seems to have lost it’s edge allowing a slightly sickly sentiment into the script and subsequent performances or maybe it’s just leakage from the dazzling, knowing beauty of the film that seems to have softened some of the harshness out of this tale. Another classy Lee film that’s definitely a spectacle.

Kirk Douglas’ gurning and grinning performance as the archetypal man adrift, Ulysses, in the 1954 adaptation sets the tone for a lurid, cheap and cheerful retelling of Homer’s classic saga. The obvious highlights of Polyphemus, Circe & Tiresias are included in the adventure and though it’s budgetary restraints are always evident it’s swept along with some tidy direction and a bucket load of brio with Douglas accompanied by the similarly ‘large’ actor Antony Quinn. It’s good, frothy adventuring for the most part and even musters some menace for the final scene but it like, Life of Pi, lacks the emotional depth or boldness to address the darker aspects to the tale. Apparently this film kicked off the Italian Peplum industry that churned out innumerable sword and sandal epics and I can see why, old fashioned, quite good fun.

Classic Creations

Quatermass and the Pit was broadcast live for the Beeb in 1958 and it's a glorious slice of vintage speculation that reeks of it's era and has a wonderfully British sense of understatement. Professor Quatermass, stiff lipped maverick scientist, fresh from a row at the War Office, is dragged to a building site turned archaeological dig that's unearthed a mysterious craft in a 5 million year old strata with some curious alien corpses inside. Despite the amusingly dated styling and script there's plenty of vigour in the plot and a few wisps of genuine atmosphere as the well mannered team find themselves besieged by incomprehensible forces. This is brilliant stuff but something that's probably only going to appeal to fans of retro scifi.

Frankenstein: The True Story is a reasonable, if mis-titled, TV mini-series version of the classic horror. I was expecting some sort of psychological retelling of the man-made monster but it's quite plain interweaving of the original with the sequel The Bride of... . When the naive Dr assists a demented colleague and inherits his life giving experiments his first bash slowly turns into a disaster and he's offered a second go, this time with lady bits, but it quite unsurprisingly it all ends in tears. The production is decent and the talents of James Mason and David MacCallum assist with proceedings so although I was a little disappointed with the unimaginative retelling it was still an entertaining 3hrs of vintage scifi.

Kubrick, Aldrich & Wilder

Forties Fear Mongering

Based on a short story by Pushkin, The Queen of Spades is an exquisite fable about the consequences of avarice. An impoverished Russian officer buys a book which reveals the occult secret behind an aging Countess' wealth and embarks on a convoluted plan to gain the power for himself and unsurprisingly things don't go smoothly. Lavishly staged, beautifully shot and with a carefully paced script the film's success is sealed by an impressively intense central performance by Anton Walbrook whose portrayal of the character's descent from desperation to obsession and finally into madness give the film it's emotional punch.

The Beast with Five Fingers is not quite as successful as Spades but is still an entertaining slice of vintage horror. A famous pianist, retired in a plush Italian villa, carks it and strange, ghostly antics follow and soon enough his house guests, hanging around for the will to be read, start turning up dead too. When the local policeman rolls up his investigation leads him to conclude the pianist's paw, now missing from the corpse, is the only possible culprit. Though it's a bit creaky on the script front and the cinematography is a workmanlike it does have a brilliantly demented performance by Peter Lorre as an astrology researcher at it's core and it's more than enough to keep things ticking along.

The Marionette's First March

Alfred Hitchcock Presents, despite being over fifty years old, is still fantastic entertainment & well worth watching and it certainly makes you think about where TV went wrong with our screens currently packed with reality/talent show garbage. Each episode famously begins with Hitchcock himself providing an introduction usually with dollops of sarcasm and a gentle dig at his sponsors) and the plays themselves cover a wide spectrum of genres, time periods, tones etc. They're all beautifully shot, well scripted and sport talented casts including Claude Rains, Charles Bronson, Lorne Greene & Peter Lawford.

Some of my favourites from the 39 ep first series include Breakdown - about a man paralysed during a car accident, A Bullet for Baldwin - an office worker kills his boss only to find him back at work the next day, Whodunit - a mystery writer is allowed to relive his last day so he can uncover his murderer and And So Died Riabouchinska about a troubled ventriloquist. I've embedded The Cheney Vase for your perusal below, sorry can't find any others.