Mid Seventies Vittles

Peckinpah's gritty and grubby thriller that's laden with Oates. Cronenberg's early slippery sexual horror. Schlesinger's suspenseful thriller with Olivier dominating.

There’s something about Stacy

Stacy Keach puts in a powerful performance in Luther, a 1974 film about the religious reformer produced as part of the so far excellent Masterpiece Theatre series of stage adaptations. The film follows the theologian's career from ordination and onto Wittenberg and his cataclysmic showdown with the Vatican sporting a powerful script which manages to balance the character of the man with his unflinching scorching idealism. Keach is ably supported throughout but dominates this film with a nuanced, quite remarkable turn. Heavy going but brilliant.

 

Keach's stunning portrayal of a damaged Viet Vet focuses the kaleidoscopic threads of 1970 counter-culture classic End of the Road. Adapted for the screen by Terry Southern (famed screenwriter rake) the film charts the recovery of a once catatonic patient and his reintroduction to society under the manic but paternal tutelage of his psychiatrist, played with much brio, by James Earl Jones. Shot with dollops of 60's psychedelic accoutrements that are probably an  acquired taste this is a tricksy, occasionally amusing film that shines a light into the damaged, delirious mindset of late Sixties Amurica that has plenty of substance to back up it’s style.

Frightfully Eighties

Scott’s smoky vampire flick The Hunger with Bowie & sapphism.

Mann’s spooky castle The Keep sports a Tangerine Dream soundtrack.

Cushing, Price & Lee unite for a horror spoof The House of Long Shadows.

Raving & Lunacy

Where's Poppa? is a darkish 70's comedy about a beleaguered son tending to his crabby, increasingly deranged aging mother. After falling in love in with her new nurse he decides to rid himself of his hectoring burden once and for all. The script although amusing relies too much on a glut of farcical situations for most of the laughs and though George Segal and Ruth Gordon put in reasonable performances the film's dark discontentment gets squandered somewhat. It's good but not really worth the effort required to find a copy.
Donald Sutherland and Gene Wilder perform double duties in the silly farce Start The Revolution Without Me. Set in pre revolution France the duo play a pair of muddled-at-birth twins, with one pair destined for penury and fecklessness while the other luxury and ruthlessness. A plot to murder the King reunites their fates in a madcap torrent of misunderstandings and slapstick antics. The comedy comes in all guises with pratfalls, satire and irreverence steeped in a quick but goofy wit that’s handled marvellously by the talented cast. Though it’s probably too silly for most it’s a nice little nugget of offbeat laughs.

Dark Dabbler Docs

Maya Deren’s hypnotic footage is the basis for the documentary Divine Horsemen about Haitian Voodoo.

Interesting if amusingly muddled BBC documentary about English Witchcraft circa 1971.

A surprisingly even handed but brief documentary about the life of Aleister Crowley.

Hip Hop Historicals

Ice T uses his clout to gather the heavyweights of rap for his excellent documentary Something From Nothing. The focus is squarely on the craft of writing rhymes and his own legendary status ensures his interviewees are happy to relax and share their writing secrets with a fellow rapper. There's a few notable absences and a little too much Kanye West for my tastes but overall this is a thoroughly entertaining history of rap that, thankfully, eschews the macho posturing and bling that sullies their art.

Run DMC and the Beastie Boys collaborate in the 1988 nonsense thriller Tougher Than Leather. DMC gets released from prison and rejoins the band with the prospect of a new tour but when their friend is murdered they go looking for revenge instead. The plot, performances and production are pretty awful but it’s fortunately  festooned with cracking old school performances from both bands and steeped in some badass period ‘charm’. Great fun but for fans of the music only.

Kings of Cult

Monte's classic automative fable, "Two Lane Blacktop.

Meyer's masterpiece of mammaries, Supervixens.

Noe's afterlife odyssey, Enter The Void

Looping WW2

Despite the cumbersome title, Tomorrow I'll Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea is an amusing, light footed Czech scifi comedy from 1977. A bunch of aging, wistful Nazis decide to hijack a time travel tour and gift Adolf a suitcase nuke so he can win the war but their plans are stymied by the unfortunate death of the pilot and the whims of his twin brother who decides to take his place. This is low budget stuff but there's a decent plot with some nice paradoxes, a smorgasboard of satire, slapstick and farce and a brilliant performance from the lead who handles his double role with aplomb. It's not going to entertain everyone and isn't as accomplished as Kin Dza Dza but it's definitely worth a look.


The second World War provides the backdrop to another low budget time travelling tale, Enter Nowhere. Events bring an apparently disparate group of people together to a remote shack in the woods and as they figure out a way to continue their journeys a curious connection arises between them. It's a modest little mystery so the titchy budget doesn't matter matter much but the acting is a bit sub par with none of the 3 particularly convincing, still it has quite an interesting premise and that was enough to keep me watching.

Insistent Funk Array

Malcolm in the Outskirts

Joseph Losey directed Malcolm McDowell and Robert Shaw (who also penned the adaptation) in a curious, enigmatic 1970 chase thriller Figures in a Landscape. The film opens with a helicopter scouring the countryside in search of two escapees, Shaw and McD, who, still bound by their never named captors, are in a desperate race to reach a unspecified mountainous border crossing. The spartan plot with it's deliberate obfuscation of almost all details and the stark cinematography foster an atmospheric backdrop for our central duo, who, driven a little mad by captivity and the intensity of their pursuers bicker, reminisce and murder their way across the land towards freedom harried by the seemingly ever present chopper. It's success lies in the two brilliant, searing performances at it's core, with Shaw and McDowell throwing everything they've got into these febrile, traumatised yet determined men. A fantastic film that's seemingly fallen between the cracks but has now tumbled out onto YouTube.


Malcolm McDowell appears in another cryptic thriller, a decade or so later, called The Caller that in the most part is even more abstruse. McDowell plays an unnamed caller at a woodland cabin inhabited by a peculiar single white female, their uneasy encounter soon develops into a vastly more convoluted relationship with a darker tone and some ugly twists. I'd like to say more but it's definitely one of those plots best left unspoiled however I will tell you that while Figures never provides answers to it's questions, The Caller does and the denouement is, er, quite a surprise. McDowell's ambiguous, slightly google eyed performance outshines his co-star's fractured turn and though the script is strong it falters in the final furlong. This film is all about the ideas & the mind games however and in that regard it deserves plenty of credit for it's ambition and chutzpah. A very strange but highly enjoyable little oddity.

Vinyl Veneration

Free Films Friday

Some Things Seventies

Mini Anime Medley

Soul Gems

Yesteryear's Futurities

Auf Wiedersehen Ken

Lovely Lapses

Kubrick, Aldrich & Wilder

Some Things Wicked