Foxtrot (Israel/Switzerland/Germany/France 2017: Dir Samuel Maoz)

Samuel Maoz's belated follow up to his well received debut feature, 2009's Lebanon, is a three act movie about war and loss that plays fast and loose with your expectations of how such subject matter should be treated on film.

In the first section, two Israeli soldiers arrive at the door of Michael and Daphna's apartment, with devastating news about their soldier son Jonathan, who has been killed in combat. The resultant clash of grief and procedure, with the soldiers mechanically going through the motions of dealing with the newly bereaved, is hellish to watch but also attains a dark Coen-esque humour. A sedative is administered to Michael's wife, and the shocked, grieving husband is sent text messages every hour to remind him to drink more water. It's an absurd and tragic opening, compounded by Michael's brother Avigdor quietly organising the words for the funeral eulogy with almost indecent haste, and a visit to the siblings' Alzheimer's ridden German speaking Holocaust surviving mother, who is unable to distinguish Michael from his brother.

A confusion of identities leads to the second act of the film; it transpires that a soldier with the same name as Jonathan was killed, and their son is safe. He's part of a small garrison of soldiers listlessly guarding a checkpoint - named Foxtrot - on the northern border of Israel, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. They're bored out of their minds, their tedium interrupted by exercising their limited authority stopping cars at the crossing barrier, and subjecting the occupants to an ID check (ironically the ID shown is usually false but it's the power of being able to stop drivers that's more important than authenticating their identity). Ultimately this boredom and lack of focus leads to a terrible accident, which gives way to the film's final part, in which Michael, now separated from Daphna and keen to be reunited with his son, endures a final and this time very real tragedy.

Apparently the kernel of the idea for Foxtrot came from an incident in the director's own life where, refusing his daughter money for a cab to get to school, she ran to catch a bus instead. Maoz subsequently heard that the bus she was due to board had been blown up in a terrorist attack, and until he learned that she had in fact missed it, for a short time had to live with the thought that his daughter was dead. Something of the dread and relief of that story inhabits the mood of Foxtrot, but the absurdity of life shines through too: the guards raising the border barrier to let through a camel, and a soldier practising his dance moves using his gun as a partner are just two of the film's more striking images. But the title of the film, after a dance whose moves lead the dancer back to the place where they started, suggests that the overall theme of the film is of characters stuck within their own lives, and as such offers little redemption for its cast.

The Prodigy (USA/Canada/Hong Kong 2019: Dir Nicholas McCarthy)

Nicholas McCarthy's previous horror features, The Pact (2011) and At the Devil's Door (2014) were well received but rather abstract and at times obscure movies. McCarthy seems to have gone back to the drawing board for his third genre outing and made a film that pretty much signposts its influences, designed with a Saturday night crowd in mind, but which still has sufficient directorial tics to make it interesting beyond its surface appeal.

Taylor (Orange is the New Black) Schilling plays Sarah Blume, who has just had a baby, at exactly the same time that hand severing serial killer Edward Scarka - dubbed 'The Thrush Creek Killer' - has been shot dead by police. Sarah's new son Miles (an astonishing performance from Jackson Robert Scott) develops very quickly, being put into a special pre school at the age of two. Everyone notices that Miles' eyes are a different colour to each other - "he's like David Bowie" comments mum - which seems unusual.

But things are not right - as a five year old Miles callously kills a spider; he may also have been complicit when a babysitter cuts her foot badly on some strategically placed glass while playing a game of hide and seek with him, and he was definitely responsible for wielding a wrench on a classmate in school when he didn't get his way. Added to this Sarah notices Miles talking in a different language while he is asleep, which she finds odd enough to want to record. School psychologists try to explain it away with terms like Oppositional Defiance Disorder, but when Miles implies that he may be subject to abuse (a story clearly created by the boy), things begin to get out of hand. Psychologist Arthur Jacobson (Colm Feore) identifies the recorded language spoken by Miles as a specific form of Hungarian dialect only spoken by a small number of people, and also introduces Sarah to the very real concept of reincarnation. Could Miles have been invaded by a reincarnated soul?

McCarthy's film is, let's face it, bat shit crazy. But for a movie which seems concocted from bits of a dozen other movies, it's amazing that's it's watchable at all, let alone good. Which it is. The most obvious source is The Exorcist (1973) which McCarthy has admitted was a major influence, but it also reminded me of Jonathan Glazer's 2004 weirdfest Birth (in which a mother is convinced that her young son is the reincarnation of her dead husband) and of course the serial killer reincarnated in a children's doll movie Child's Play (remade this year, the first trailer for which was unveiled, tellingly, on the day of The Prodigy's release Stateside). There are numerous other cinematic references floating round the film too, ranging from Joseph Ruben's psycho child feature, The Good Son (1993), to John Carpenter's adaptation of The Thing (1982) and 1976's The Omen (the end credit font is also remarkably similar to the one used in that film). Oh and for those who know Maria Bava's Shock (1977), he's gone and nicked the standout effect in that movie.

So what makes The Prodigy worth seeing? Mainly, it's the performances. Taylor Schilling and Jackson Robert Scott are electrifying respectively as the mother who grows to fundamentally mistrust her offspring, and the child who transforms from loving toddler to evil infant. Brittany Allen also turns in a solid performance as Scarka's last victim; like all of McCarthy's films, it foregrounds a strong woman (Blume is married but her husband John (Peter Mooney) is little more than a bit part).

This is a film that isn't afraid to mount some jump scares, but does them in a way which restores their power in such a movie ie they are genuinely surprising. And there are also some creepy touches which almost go unnoticed, particularly a view of Miles, half in shadow, whose face briefly takes on the guise of someone much older. The film uses the same muted colour palette as his previous movies, which is unsurprising as the cinematographer is Bridger Nielson, who worked on all three of McCarthy's fright films, providing an increasingly claustrophobic feel. Jeff Buhler's script may be silly but in the mouths of its cast it's convincingly rendered (Buhler is currently working on reboots of Grudge, Jacob's Ladder and Pet Semetary over the next couple of years). As an all round package The Prodigy delivers. Highly recommended.

Dark Eyes Retrovision #10 - Parents (1989 Canada/USA: Dir Bob Balaban)

When Parents was released on home video back in the day, (July 1989 to be precise and cut by three minutes from the cinema release) I thought it really was something different. Critics tended to disagree, and generally gave it the thumbs down. Thirty years on and Vestron have re-released the movie, completely uncut, for a 21st century audience to re-consider.

1950s stylings were very 'in' during the 1980s. Parents is part Norman Rockwell, part Blue Velvet era David Lynch. It also recalls Paul Bartel's Eating Raoul (1982) and John Waters movies like Polyster (1981) and Hairspray (1988). Where this movie attempts something different - and why it probably felt different to me at the time of initial viewing - is that it pitches the narrative from the perspective of a young boy, playing on the inherent suspicion a child has of its parents as figures of authority but also independent adults in their own right.

So it's 1958, and we're somewhere in the suburbs of the mid USA. 10 year old Michael Laemle (Bryan Madorsky in his only screen credit - he would go on to be an accountant) lives with his parents, a distant pair who seem to have stepped out of a household management advert, and who force feed their son with an almost constant supply of cooked meat. Michael isn't keen - why, he's verging on vegetarian - and is increasingly suspicious of the origin of dinner, lunch and tea.

Dad Nick (Randy Quaid, looking constantly sweaty) is a scientist working at the local Toxico (geddit?) laboratory, developing a chemical product that will quickly eliminate forestry enabling more cattle rearing to take place. Mum - ok, mom Lily (May Beth Hurt), is a pinafore wearing domestic goddess, forever up to her elbows in mince or devilling kidneys at any hour of the day.

Michael's concerns spill out in his dreams - of drowning in blood - and into his schoolwork; when asked to draw his family he defaces the entire page of an exercise book with red jagged crayon lines. He is referred to the school psychologist (a brilliant turn from the late Sandy Dennis who sadly died only three years after Parents was completed), and there is a marvellous scene where Michael's mother, quizzed by the psychologist about her son's relationship with his parents, remains absolutely clueless.

The movie builds to a grand guignol climax as expected, and Parents has moments when mom and dad are exposed for the creatures they really are (recalling Brian Yuzna's 1989 movie Society). But, and it's a criticism that's been levelled at the film before, the film shows its hand too early - ie that Nick and Lily aren't the cookie cutter parents they make out to be - and then extends the 'eat your meat' gag pretty much through the whole film.

Parents is worth a watch for its overall style and for Quaid's - and to some extent Madorsky's - sinister performances. It's perhaps not as nasty as it should be, but it has the benefit of a sharp script; one of the best lines in the film comes when, in response to a question about where the food he's given comes from, Michael is told "Leftovers." "But what were they before they were leftovers?" he enquires.

Parents special features include an audio commentary with director Bob Balaban and producer Bonnie Palef, interviews with composer Jonathan Elias, screenwriter Christopher Hawthorne, Mary Beth Hurt, director of photography Robin Vidgeon and even decorative consultant Yolanda Cuomo.

Parents is released on Blu Ray as part of the Vestron Collector's Series on 25th February 2019.

Dark Eyes Retrovision #9 - Ring (Japan 1998: Dir Hideo Nakata)

The twentieth anniversary of the release of arguably one of the most important horror movies of the late twentieth century (it made No. 12 in The Guardian's list of the 25 best horror films of all time back in 2010) is an opportunity to revisit the film that caused all of the fuss, courtesy of Arrow Video's new restoration.

Like much 'weird' Japanese cinema, Ring was based on an ancient folk tale, Banchō Sarayashiki,(translated as The Dish Mansion at Banchō). The story, dating from the eighteenth century, centres on Okiku, a maid who resists being tricked into sleeping with her master. After being fatally thrown into a well as punishment (some versions have her killing herself), her ghost rises and seeks revenge.

Nakata's version, which was adapted from a 1991 novel by Kôji Suzuki (an earlier made for TV adaptation, Ring: Kanzenban, was released three years earlier), develops the story, adding touches of MR James into the mix, specifically 'Casting the Runes.'

A reporter, Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima), investigating a mysterious series of deaths - including that of her niece - is led to a rented cabin, where she finds a video cassette. The tape contains a series of strange images which triggers a revenge curse delivered via a phone call, giving her one week to live. Enlisting the help of her ex husband Ryūji, Reiko searches for the truth behind the tape, which leads to her finding out about Sadako Yamamura, a girl with psychic powers whose rage at her death reaches out from beyond the grave. With Reiko, Ryūji and her son Yoichi in mortal danger (all three who have now watched the tape), it's a race against time to find the body of Sadako and lift the curse, which, it is finally discovered, can only be achieved by copying the tape and passing it on to someone else.

While Nakata's film is to some extent a triumph of mood over logic (why the phone calls? How did Sadako's rage physically manifest itself onto the videotape?) Ring succeeds for a number of reasons. First, it's a great 'daylight' horror film. The trappings of the movie may be gothic, but the stylings are remarkably prosaic. Here a telephone replaces the ouija board and the television is the medium for conveying the haunting; for most of its running time Ring doesn't rely on darkness and shadows for its mood. The look and basic premise of Ring was later borrowed for a number of movies, most notably David Robert Mitchell in his 2014 movie It Follows.

The story plays out in the grand 'onion skin' tradition, gradually unravelling the story, leading to the film's big payoff scene - the appearance of Sadako out of the TV set - only after much exposition and careful character building; even if the premise requires suspension of disbelief, the people in the story feel real.

Also, the film's horror is largely implied. In the source novel the revenge deaths are described explicitly, but in the film it's suggested by the agonised faces of the victims that they may in part have died of fright, and it's this subtlety which connects Ring to the golden age of Japanese horror, and directors like Nobu Nakagawa or Gorô Kadono. In the novel Sadako is hermaphrodite, a fact emphasised in the 1995 version, in which the ghost spends an inordinate amount of time topless. Sadako's appearance in Nakata's version, with her white dress and long, straggly black hair obscuring her face, is straight out of the pages of Japanese folklore; although Nakata has disclosed in interview that the reason he his her features was simply because he had shown too much of the spirit's visage in his earlier Don't Look Up (1996) and been criticised for it.

There's a very good overview of the Ring franchise courtesy of the online version of Empire magazine here. As a postscript, Nakata has returned to Ring for his latest movie, Sadako, due out later this year, wherein the director has promised a ghost for a new generation of fans. Let's hope it's better than the appalling F. Javier Gutiérrez directed 2017 US movie Rings or the 2016 Toho styled face off flick Sadako vs. Kayako, directed by Kôji Shiraishi, which pits the ghost from Ring against the child spirit from Ju-On:The Grudge. Bizarre indeed.

Ring will be re-released in UK cinemas on 1 March 2019 and on Steelbook, Blu Ray, DVD and Digital HD on 18 March.

Dark Eyes Retrovision #8 - Breakfast at Tiffany's (USA 1961: Dir Blake Edwards)

Notes from my introduction to the film at Screen 25 on 15 February 2019.

It’s 5am on a Sunday morning, October 2nd 1960. A cab pulls up at the deserted junction of 5th Avenue and 57th Street in Manhattan, disgorging a woman, dressed in a black Givenchy evening dress and wearing huge sunglasses, who totters up to the window display of the famous Tiffany’s jewellery store and gazes on its contents while drinking coffee and eating a Danish pastry. This was scene one on the first day of shooting Breakfast at Tiffany’s and it’s arguably one of cinema’s most iconic openings.

On that first day it was reported that the star, Audrey Hepburn, was incredibly nervous, as evidenced by a pile of stubbed out cigarettes seen on set, her state of mind not helped by arriving in Manhattan fresh from her very quiet mountaintop home in Switzerland, where she had lived since 1953 with her bullying husband, Mel Ferrer, called “the frog faced delinquent with the spindly legs,” by Audrey’s mother, with whom no love was lost. Audrey had also recently become a mother herself; the separation from her 10-month-old son, coupled with Ferrer’s feelings that his wife should be a mother first and an actress second, made her anxieties on this first day of shooting quite understandable.

Most people will know that Breakfast at Tiffany’s is based on the novella by Truman Capote, published in 1958, and that the inspiration for its subject, Holly Golightly, was as much his mother as it was a conflation of a number of society figures who flocked round the author at parties and openings. Each one of Capote’s ‘swans,’ as the women were later referred to, thought that Ms Golightly was modelled on her, and to some extent they were all right.

In casting Holly Golightly Capote - who subsequently took a deal that would remove him from any further influence in the adaptation - wanted Marilyn Monroe to play the part, which would of course have put a very different slant on the movie. The story goes that it was the fear of budget and shooting overruns that affected the decision not to cast her (Marilyn had a reputation for lateness and an inherent difficulty in remembering her lines), but it may also have been because of the spectre of the Motion Picture Association’s dreaded Production Code. This was, after all, an adaptation of a story about a prostitute, a woman who clearly slept with men for money, or to use Capote’s words, an ‘American geisha.’ The movie’s producers, Martin Jurow and Richard Shepherd were therefore on the lookout to cast someone who, while still playing an ‘escort,’ could inject a level of innocence to counteract the more risqué elements of the story.

Audrey Hepburn was about as far away from Marilyn Monroe as you could get. She was actually 31 at the start of filming – playing a character who in the novella was around 18 or 19. Since being ‘discovered’ 10 years previously – by the author Colette of all people, who chose her for the lead role in the stage play of Gigi - over the next ten years Hepburn’s star inexorably ascended. She was the right face at the right time, the fifties being the decade when ‘teenagers’ started to be a thing. Up until then the screen role models for girls had either been someone like Doris Day or, at the other end of the scale, Monroe. Hepburn was someone that female cinema-goers of all ages could relate to, someone independent yet stylish, but down to earth.

But when the producers approached Hepburn for Tiffany’s she was very unsure, both about the character she’d be playing, and the range of acting required; previous roles in Roman Holiday, Sabrina and Funny Face hadn’t exactly stretched her repertoire, and the script for Breakfast at Tiffany’s required her to laugh, cry and sing!

Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) in the opening scene of
Breakfast at Tiffany's

An understandably twitchy Hepburn made it a condition for accepting the role that some of the dialogue was watered down – it was Hepburn’s idea, for example, to change the lines about being paid fifty dollars for services rendered in the ladies room to the more innocuous ‘powder room’ – and the normally stubborn screenwriter George Axelrod happily obliged these changes to keep their star sweet.

Hepburn’s influence also came to bear in the choice of director. John Frankenheimer was first mentioned but she vetoed that. Many other names entered the frame - and exited quickly - until George Shepherd suggested Blake Edwards who had, up until that moment, mostly directed TV and frothy comedies; his last movie had been High Times, featuring a 57-year-old Bing Crosby dancing in a pink skirt. Although he was an outside choice he had successfully directed a big star in a movie – Cary Grant in Operation Petticoat - which gave the producers, who thought that Hepburn would require some solid direction, the confidence that he was the man for the job.

Edwards also brought on board his go to composer Henry Mancini, whose increasing move away from classic film orchestration to more jazzy themes was perfect for the film – the score is one of Tiffany’s strongest elements. Blake also cast his mate Mickey Rooney in the part of Mr Yunioshi, but the less said about that the better – if you’ve seen the film you’ll know exactly what I mean, if you haven’t then I’ll apologise now.

Reflecting later on in her career, Hepburn concluded that Breakfast at Tiffany’s was the best thing she’d ever done because it was the hardest. But she couldn’t have predicted how prescient her performance was. When we look back now we can see that Breakfast at Tiffany’s acts as a kind of shorthand for what was happening in New York at the time, and particularly for females. It’s one of the first Hollywood films to show a strong, independent woman successful at what she’s doing and - mostly - in charge of herself. Around the time the film was released, Joan Didion neatly summarised Golightly’s character when she wrote that New York City had become the natural home for “girls who want to prolong the period when they can experiment, mess around, make mistakes. In New York there is no gentle pressure for them to marry.” Change was definitely in the air.

You can access the full programme at Screen 25 and find out about ticket options here.

Outlaws (Australia 2017: Dir Stephen McCallum)

Despite the rather unpleasant characters and violent setups in Stephen McCallum's debut feature film, Outlaws (original title One Per Cent) is a surprisingly conservative gang movie about loyalty and rivalry (what else?) in the wild lands of Australia.

Mark aka Paddo (Ryan Corr) is 'Vice President' of a motorcycle gang called Copperheads (all the members have their name and job title on their jackets, which probably comes in handy at staff conferences) who, when we first meet him, is trying to save the skin of his mentally incapacitated brother, Adam aka Skink (Josh McConville). Skink has been set up to diddle a rival gang out of a stash of heroin, and they are justifiably annoyed. But Mark thinks he can save the day - and his brother - and maybe rise in the ranks a little, by negotiating a deal with them. The only problem is that Copperheads' president Knuck (Matt Nable) is just about to get out of a three year prison term, probably won't agree to any deal he hasn't brokered, doesn't do deals with anyone anyway, and is still very much in charge.

Knuck's girlfriend Hayley (Simone Kessell) just wants him to get home and settle back into being boss again, but Mark's girlfriend Katrina (Abbey Lee), has other ideas, willing her boyfriend to take over the operation by stealth or murder, whichever's quicker. It's a tense situation all right, as the gang begin to turn on themselves, and everyone is asked to pick a side.

Sons of Anarchy meets Macbeth, claims the movie's admats, but Outlaws doesn't really offer anything new or indeed as satisfying, with its bickering gang members, gritty locations and generally pallid sense of lawlessness. Ryan Corr looks a little too squeaky clean to be a gang member, as does his scheming partner, Abbey Lee. Matt Nable and Simone Kessell look more the part, Nable in particular a snarling bundle of anger that seems hell bent on starting one fight after another. Knuck is all about power - an interesting if exploitative character angle has him sodomising his opponents to assert his absolute authority (including his accountant - giving a whole new meaning to the phrase double entry book-keeping), never being at home to the fact that he might be gay. As Skink Josh McConville only seems to exist to do stupid things which give the plot the chance to advance, making it difficult to sympathise with this rather pathetic individual.

As an example of Ozploitation, Outlaws, while never less than watchable, is incredibly tame against the likes of say, Snowtown (2011) or Killing Ground (2016). The camera often looks away from the violence, which would make sense if the director wanted to focus more on the drama. But the drama here is constructed around characters that are both thinly drawn and profoundly unsympathetic. It scores points for a great and very tough soundtrack which sadly only reminds the audience that what they're watching, while not exactly pleasant, is no way near as gruelling as possibly Stephen Mccallum wanted it to be.

Dark Eyes Retrovision #7 - The Unholy (USA 1988: Dir Camilo Vila)

According to Camilo Vila, in the commentary on Vestron's Blu Ray reissue of his third feature The Unholy, the director didn't set out to make a horror film; he was hoping more for a 'whodunit' with supernatural overtones. Special effects maestro Jerry Macaluso, whose make up and model work on the film were almost completely excised from the final print by the producers in favour of Bob Keen's FX, would have it differently. Yep, this one has all the hallmarks of the troubled production, a quintessentially 80s movie best watched these days for its curiosity value.

The Unholy opens with the murder of a priest - via a vigorous throat ripping - by a mysterious, beautiful (and naked) woman; the original idea was to have kept the identity of the murderer a secret, setting up the movie's cast of characters as suspects. Cut to three years later and a new priest is appointed to the church, which was closed following the killing. He is Father Michael (Ben Cross). If the new incumbent acts a little stiff, it may be because he was recently thrown out of an apartment window after being attacked by a mysterious being, miraculously escaping with little more than cuts and bruises. Teaming up with waitress Millie (Jill Carroll) Father Michael, as well as building up his congregation, investigates the murder of the priest (and previous similar ecclesiastical slayings). What he uncovers is a web of concealment and demonic activity; he faces a race against time to combat the demon responsible for the deaths, before he and Millie can be added to the body count.

The Unholy wears its influences on its sleeve rather publicly. Its religious themes plunder both The Exorcist and The Omen, but its effects work references any number of rubber monster features from the 1980s. And on that subject Bob Keen's creature suit stuff, complete with kids dressed in mini demon costumes, has all the quality you'd expect from a unit drafted in at the last minute to replace the admittedly not very good effects work of then new kid on the block Macaluso (only one small shot of his monster remains, just as Father Michael is about to be hurled from the apartment window).

The movie includes some heavy hitters in the cast department, which helps to make a fairly lacklustre production just that little bit more gripping. Hal Holbrook and Ned Beatty, respectively a priest and a cop, add a welcome gravitas to the procedural elements of the movie, even if they do sit around chatting for most of their scenes. And veteran Trevor Howard, in his last acting role, is a game sort, his role as blind Father Silva - a guy who clearly knows far more about what's going on than anyone else - requiring him to wear some pretty uncomfortable looking opaque contact lenses.

Ben Cross, on the other hand, an actor who confesses in the extras that he was only in the movie because he was mates with Vila and the casting director, pretty much sleepwalks through the film, even allowing for his return from the dead status. He may, as he confesses, have had a lot of fun making the movie, but it sure doesn't translate to the viewing experience.

And finally a word about the demonic killer, played by Nicole Fortier. My guess is that someone saw Mathilda May in 1985's Lifeforce and decided that the demon would be extra demonic if she were nude, but at least had the decency to add a sheer nightie for reasons of taste, a kindness tot extended to Ms May. Fortier's second and final credit (she was also in the 1987 cobblers Scared Stiff), she and her amazing cheekbones never appeared in a movie again.

The Unholy is released as part of the Vestron Collector's Series on 25th February 2019.

The Blu ray/DVD combo features a number of special features, including a fairly honest audio commentary with Camilo Vila, interviews with composer Roger Bellon, production designer & co-writer Fernando Fonseca, Ben Cross, and a short mini feature on the abandoned creature work produced by Jerry Macaluso, 'Demons in the Flesh: The Monsters of The Unholy.'

Dark Eyes Retrovision #6 - Class of 1999 (USA 1989: Dir Mark L. Lester)

Director Mark L. Lester clearly felt confident enough about the predictions of a soon come USA in his successful Class of 1984, filmed in 1982, to make some even grander assumptions about society 15 years on in the sequel, 1989's Class of 1999. Whereas the original movie anticipated rising levels of violence within the education system, this one goes the whole hog, depicting an American wasteland where schools are run by armed gangs, the police are defenceless and there ain't a whole lot of learning going on.

Oh and robot teachers are a thing. Three of 'em. And one smokes a pipe.

Set just before the end of the twentieth century, Lester's rough and ready - but enormously enjoyable - mash up of Escape From New York (1981), Robocop (1987), The Terminator (1984) and any number of 80s post apocalyptic two wheeled renegade movies, focuses on Kennedy High, a beleaguered school in Seattle, closed down because of escalating violence, and surrounded by a lawless 'Free-Fire' zone in which law enforcement fears to tread. However things are about to change, in a deal brokered by school Principal Dr Miles Langford (Malcolm McDowell). The appropriately named Department of Education and Defence, responsible for the nation's schools, is about to partner up with the military hardware outfit Megatech in a ground-breaking experiment; courtesy of company head honcho Dr. Bob Forrest (Stacy Keach) Kennedy High will be supplied three 'superteachers,' humanoid battle drones, reconditioned and rewired to perform roles as 'Tactical Education Units', but with the added advantage of super strength to deal with the more forceful students.

As part of the project, some of most violent kids, previously locked up in prison, will be released back in to society and obliged to re-attend school. One of these kids, Cody Culp (Bradley Gregg), has decided to reform himself and escape the gang culture which got him into pokey in the first place, despite the stick he gets for this approach from brother Angel (Joshua Miller) who like their mother is still addicted to drugs. Befriending the Principal's daughter Christie (Tracy Lind) Cody begins to suspect that the school's new robo-teachers may be pursuing a slightly different agenda to the three 'R's, particularly when their military programme starts to short circuit their scholastic one. Cody and the warring factions must unite against the humanoid terror that threatens the school.

The sci fi elements may for the most part be slightly McGuffinesque - Lester never lets story or context get in the way of a good fight or car chase - but the director efficiently paints a picture of a future Seattle which is for the most part convincing, helped by locating the movie in an actual abandoned town, vacant pending the expansion of an airport - nice find! There's some humour in here too - the teachers' lockers are largely full of cans of WD40 and the neon signs on the school walls read 'Respect, Obey, Learn.' The effects, largely confined to the the movie's last half hour, are doubtless where most of the $7 million budget was expended, and include an unstoppable final cyborg that may take its moves from The Terminator but is a glorious mix of hydraulics and stop frame animation.

But it's the cast that make this, just keeping the right side of tongue in cheek. McDowell and Keach may have small roles but they bring a touch of class to the B pic (Keach in particular looks resplendent with white spiky hair and cats eyes contacts). Pam Grier plays it brilliantly straight as one of the teacherborgs, and Bradley Gregg, Joshua Miller and Tracy Lind are spirited teens who aren't afraid to roll their sleeves up and get with the action.

Class of 1999 is available on Blu-ray as part of the Vestron Collector's Series from 25th February 2019.

Extras include: a slightly lacklustre audio commentary from producer/Director Mark L. Lester; School Safety – interviews with director/producer Mark L. Lester and co-producer Eugene Mazzola; New Rules – an interview with screenwriter C. Courtney Joyner; Cyber-Teachers From Hell – interviews with special effects creators Eric Allard and Rick Stratton; Future of Discipline – an interview with director of photography Mark Irwin; theatrical trailer, TV Spots, still gallery and video promo.

Cold Pursuit (UK/Norway/Canada/USA 2019: Dir Hans Petter Moland)

The controversy of Liam Neeson's comments during a press interview for Cold Pursuit - wanting to randomly revenge attack a black man (any black man) following the rape of a friend - have threatened to overshadow any objective assessment of the film. But let's have a go, shall we?

Nels Coxman (Liam Neeson) is a snow plough driver in the remote and snowy resort town of Kehoe in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. His job is vital to clear routes for drivers to get through town - the white stuff comes thick and fast in this part of the country - and when we first meet him he's being recognised by the people of Kehoe as "Citizen of the Year." He lives in a lodge on the outskirts of town with his wife Grace (Laura Dern) and son Kyle (Micheál Richardson), a cargo loader at the nearby airport. Kehoe's cosiness, nestled in the bowl of the majestic Rockies, seems idyllic.

But this seemingly happy setup is about to be disrupted. Kyle is abducted and killed by some heavies from a local drug firm for his part in a cocaine boost. Nels and Grace are understandably distraught - although Nels channels his grief into anger and a need to hunt down the people responsible for murdering his son ("Kyle wasn't a druggie," he maintains) which costs him his marriage and, almost, his sanity. His revenge is made more difficult as the drug ring in the town is widespread and complex, frustrating Nels' attempts to work his way to Mr Big, but raising the body count exponentially as he does so.

A sign that we're not in the usual Neeson action movie territory comes about fifteen minutes or so into Moland's film, curiously a sort of remake of the director's own 2014 flick In Order of Disappearance aka Kraftidioten. Nels and Grace are at the mortuary waiting to identify Kyle's body. The slab is gradually raised, manually, the body still out of camera view. The noisy cranking continues, far longer than is expected, as Neeson and Dern stand around awkwardly. It's a moment of comedy which tonally takes Cold Pursuit in a different direction than expected. I wish I could write that this was a good thing.

What follows is part Coen Brothers shtick - but without the warmth and depth of their work - part Elmore Leonard plotting, part Martin McDonagh 'baddies with gags' movie - and all increasingly awful. Characterisation is paper thin here. Drug baron Trevor Calcote aka 'Viking' (Tom Bateman) is a smiling rich boy with an annoying son (who gets 'fathered' by Neeson in the film's climax) and an offensively depicted ex wife straight out of the 'Taming of the Shrew' handbook; Nels' brother, retired drug pusher Brock, seems only to have been included to set up a mistaken identity plot development and to have some scenes with his laughably stereotypical bossy Asian wife Ahn (Elizabeth Thai); and Laura Dern's Grace literally disappears, which is a wise choice for an actress who's worth more than this, leaving Nels to mutter a throwaway line about her leaving him by way of explaining her absence. Neeson himself looks dazed throughout much of the movie, and rather knackered (one character describes him as a "tired old man" and the audience, looking on at an actor who has confirmed that he's to bring an end to this type of role, nods in agreement).

Some plot irrelevance about legal jurisdiction - the drug problem extends between the fictional Kehoe and the real life Denver - allows the introduction of two Colorado police officers Kim Dash (Emmy Rossum) and John Gipsky (John Doman) who don't really seem to do anything much except outline the limits of community policing, and a rival drug gang of first nation American Indians included only to set up a turf war subplot.

Cold Pursuit is a movie that does everything wrong, from the casual misogyny and racism, to the awkward humour and bursts of violence which are neither redemptive or thrilling. It's the the kind of film that soundtracks the murder of a drug runner called Santa (all the baddies have 'amusing' nicknames) with '2000 Miles' by The Pretenders; features two cops who are revealed to be gay in a short scene entirely designed for cheap laughs; an includes a sequence in a cab where an Indian taxi driver changes the radio channel to Aqua's 'Barbie Girl.' Oh my aching sides. Just awful.

Ouijageist (UK 2018: Dir John R.Walker)

I've been waiting for Ouijageist for a while. It was finished early in 2018 and received its first (and only) big screen outing at the Derby Film Festival that year.

India Harper (Lois Wilkinson) is a single mother who has moved from a grotty flat with her young daughter into an airy suburban semi, found for her by her mother Karen (Lesley Scoble, who was in Village of the Damned back in 1960 and, with her twin sister Teri, appeared as Siamese Twins in 1980's The Elephant Man) and family friend Laurie (Roger Shepherd). But, rather like the Hammer House of Horror episode 'The House that Bled to Death' (which in look Ouijageist closely resembles) it's not long before things start going wrong. This run of bad luck may possibly have been prompted by India finding a 'Witchboard' game abandoned in the back garden (it's a ouija board to you and I but, in the first of many film references throughout this flick, I'm going to guess that this is a nod to the Witchboard movies of the 1980s). First, after playing with the thing, India's friend Rebecca falls downstairs, sustaining injuries from which she later dies. Then baby Emily (India Raqia-Walker) nearly scalds herself to death in a bath, the bathroom door mysteriously closing behind her.

India strongly suspects that these incidents are more than coincidence, and when her pet dog's head is found (well actually it's thrown at her by an unseen presence) and the window cleaner karks it in a mysterious hose accident, she's convinced of it. Mum decides to employ the services of the cloth; firstly Father West, who gets an Amityville Horror style welcome at the house, then the more pragmatic Bishop Chapman who wants to carry out an exorcism, but, he warns, "don't expect any of those Father Merrin Power of Christ antics!"

And that line kind of sums up most of Ouijageist really. There is horror but it's largely played down, making it for the most part a suburban drama with things that go bump in the night. Things do eventually move to an Evil Dead style climax - presaged by a cafe scene where India's slacker ex breaks out in pentagramic welts and spews bile everywhere - and to be honest these scenes feel like they've strayed in from another movie altogether.

But there's a lot of fun to be had here, despite some occasionally ho hum performances. There is some very impressive camerawork on display from Matthew Hickinbottom; the score is also rather striking, although I'm somewhat confused as the film credits Liam W. Ashcroft whereas imdb lists one Jean Michel Noir (trading as Liam Smith). Anyway, it's good to hear a soundtrack where the string synthesiser isn't the only toy in the box, and Ashcroft/Noir/Smith's tones cover all points Tangerine Dream and John Carpenter very effectively.

But it's the affectionate nods to the genre that made this film for me. In particular there's a great homage to the (original) Poltergeist 'chairs on table' scene, explained away by India's mum as the product of her doing a spot of vacuuming. And I bet you never see another movie with a cine literate priest who puts up a spirited defence of Poltergeist II: The Other Side with a straight face. Well done to all, and I look forward to future projects from the team.

Ouijageist is available in the UK on Amazon Prime Video now.

Burning Men (UK 2019: Dir Jeremy Wooding)

Wooding's last feature was the assured 2014 horror western Blood Moon, which achieved a degree of authenticity by being filmed on location in the Laredo Wild West Town near Dartford in Kent.

Locations also feature prominently in Burning Men, but despite the enigmatic filming choices there's little else to recommend this rather ponderous shaggy dog road trip effort.

Bickering musicians Ray (Ed Hayter) and Don (Aki Omoshaybi) have big time ambitions but no money to realise them. Evicted from their south London squat, they decide to sell their precious vinyl collection and fly to Memphis to kick start their career and move beyond covers of Joe Strummer songs. But even the second hand record business denies them most of the funds they need, so impetuously Ray steals a rare Black Metal acetate worth thousands of pounds from a record fair.

Hearing that they may be able to offload it at a dealers in Norwich, Ray and Don head east (taking a wrong turn into Great Yarmouth first and hooking up with music fan Susie, played by Elinor Crawley). When the Norwich dealer turns them down, they set their sights north, via a friend of Susie's, Robert, who fills them in that the person behind the record in their possession - 'The Children of Hades' by a band called Black Hymn - is notorious Satanist Stig Hanson, and anyone who plays the record in full threatens to unleash hordes of demons into the world. As they head further north, with the disc still in their possession and fuelled by drugs which make Ray unable to distinguish truth from visions, they are followed by Satanist henchmen, keen to reclaim the vinyl in connection with a grand devil's mass podcast to be held on Holy Island.

The director's choice to use a POV technique to convey the drama in Burning Men (incidentally the group name that Ray and Don give themselves) means that for most of its running time there's the inescapable Peep Show comparison, perhaps unsurprising in that Wooding directed six episodes of the series. While this keeps the film moving, at about the half way point the gimmick has played itself out and the realisation has kicked in that, rather like the characters in it, the film is going nowhere fast.

Hayter, Omoshaybi and Crawley all do the best they can - they're quite a likeable threesome - but this Kerouacian road trip very soon becomes a sort of mythical England travelogue, not helped by singer and lyricist Dan's frequent sixth form poetic musings, a sort of Holy Grail story in reverse with nods to Iain Sinclair and Robert Macfarlane. An attempt to do something different, certainly, but not a very successful one.

Burning Men will be released in UK cinemas on 1 March 2019.

Dark Eyes Retrovision #5 - Rosa Luxemburg (Germany 1986: Dir Margarethe von Trotta)

If Margarethe von Trotta's excellent, moving biopic of activist Rosa Luxemburg has a ring of Fassbinder to it, it's no coincidence; Fassbinder was due to develop the project himself but died in 1982 aged just 37. It was one of his last wishes that von Trotta should direct, and despite her initial reluctance, she was the perfect choice to make the movie, an actor who moved behind the camera, with her debut being the spellbinding The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum in 1975.

Despite attempts to highlight her work - the Independent Cinema Office mounted a retrospective of four of her films last year - von Trotta remains a rather unsung figure in the New German cinema movement (although that movement is far from 'new' these days). Hopefully STUDIOCANAL's new restoration of one of her finest films will do something to redress this injustice.

Polish born Rosa Luxemburg's reputation as one of the most important political figures in early 20th century German history is tough to condense into a two hour film, but von Trotta perfectly captures the enigmatic disrupter's life of provocation. Opening with Rosa in prison (she was imprisoned nine times for her dissenting views), incarcerated as a precaution to prevent her gaining more influence in a revolution primed Germany, we move backwards and forwards in time. Luxemburg is always on the move; battling with the male elders of the far left who saw war as an inevitability; or continuing her idealistic tussles with Leo Jogiches, with whom she parts romantically but remains attached to in developing her political campaigns. But often we're left alone with Rosa, either in her apartment, with just Mimi her cat for company, or in prison, where her endless pleas for books are met with contempt.

Von Trotta regular Barbara Sukowa, while looking little like Rosa physically, absolutely inhabits the role, retaining her political passions from her first flush of youth to her final incarceration. A strong, determined woman weakened by ill health and her spells in prison, what emerges is a person whose convictions remain constant while those around her vacillate. Daniel Olbrychski as Leo is equally persuasive in his role, being unable to live with her or without her.

Rosa Luxemburg is an ambitious film which, despite its historical sweep, refuses to set itself up either as a lavish costume epic or as conventional biopic. In truth it's something in between (although Nicholas Economou's overly stately score wants us to believe it's the former), and those unfamiliar with early 20th century history may want to do a little catch up so as not to get lost in the events. It's a movie which places equal importance on dissenting thought as much as deeds, and the final, tragic scenes show just how much of a threat those thoughts were, and how little was learned from them as the century unfolded.

Rosa Luxemburg is released on 4th February 2019 for the first time in the UK on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital Download, as part of STUDIOCANAL’s Vintage World Cinema label. Bonus content includes fascinating, and rare, filmed interviews with Margarethe von Trotta and Barbara Sukowa, plus the original theatrical trailer.

Dark Eyes Retrovision #4 - Alien (UK/USA 1979: Dir Ridley Scott)

These are the notes from my introduction to the 40th anniversary screening of the film at Screen 25 on 1 February 2019.

There are any number of stories about the making of Alien, but as you’re here to watch a movie and not to listen to me all night, I’m going to concentrate on how the film got from story to screen.
The birth of Alien came about when screenwriter Dan O’Bannon was at film school in California back in the early 1970s. His initial idea, originally called ‘Memory,’ wherein a group of astronauts discover a dormant creature, had progressed to a half-written script when O’Bannon met John Carpenter at the same school – and together they took some of the former's ideas, developing a small student film which eventually became the 1975 space satire Dark Star.

Dark Star shares some of the themes of tonight’s movie: namely a motley crew of grumpy space truckers; a scuffed, grotty space ship complete with lots of long corridors; and the tracking and hunting down of a recalcitrant alien (albeit one in the shape of an enormous inflatable beach ball).

Dark Star was modestly successful, but O’Bannon wasn’t satisfied – he wanted to take the space elements of that movie and make it darker, more like a sci fi version of an HP Lovecraft story, with the claustrophobia of Howard Hawks’ 1951 movie The Thing From Another World. And importantly he wanted to direct it.

The next character in the progression of our story is Alejandro Jodorowsky, he of El Topo and The Holy Mountain fame, who was putting together a now infamously un-filmed adaption of Frank Herbert’s sci fi epic Dune over in Paris in 1975. Jodorowsky had seen Dark Star, loved the special effects (and if you’ve ever seen that movie this might seem a bit of an odd comment) and wanted O’Bannon to join a posse of artists pulled together to storyboard the film. One of the other people involved with the project was HR Giger from Switzerland, whose grotesque, distended painted figures, skeletal beings with phallic heads against womblike backgrounds, had a habit of blowing the minds of all those exposed to this decidedly odd guy’s artwork. Dune fell apart in a haze of overambition and shaky finances, and the team involved all went their separate ways. But O’Bannon never forgot Giger’s work.

So at this point O’Bannon wasn’t in a great way. His health was poor and his temper worse. He was staying with his friend, Ron Shusett, and subject to violent pains in his stomach – sounds familiar? A terrifying time which would inform one of the most famous scenes in the film (O’Bannon was eventually diagnosed with Crohn’s disease).

O’Bannon and Shusett produced a different treatment of the original story, now with the title ‘Star Beast,’ the script amended, featuring some kind of space parasite. O’Bannon got the artist Ron Cobb - who had also been part of the Dune gang - to mock up some set sketches, but the studios to whom they pitched it round rejected it as the special effects would be too expensive. So O’Bannon went back to the drawing board and changed the more complicated alien form into… well, a man in a suit.

O’Bannon’s script was later criticised for ripping off another earlier man in a suit space monster movie, 1958’s It! The Terror from Outer Space, in which an alien stows away on a spaceship. Others recognised more than a nod to a 1965 movie by Italian director Mario Bava called Planet of the Vampires, in which a spaceship is sent to investigate an alien world, which turns out to be full of creatures looking to escape it. But O’Bannon in later interviews was fairly candid that ‘Star Beast’ was influenced both by a multitude of films, pulp fiction stories and vintage comic books, borrowing a little here and a little there, into a screenplay that was pretty much what you’ll see on screen tonight. But we’re not quite finished with the story yet.

At this stage ‘Star Beast,’ as the script was still called, was being envisaged as a modestly budgeted sci fi B movie – indeed cult king Roger Corman had expressed an interest. A friend of Shusett’s advised the pair to think bigger, and eventually the script ended up in the hands of the Brandywine production company – big players on the scene with links to Twentieth Century Fox. Initially the company were nervous – a sci fi monster movie? But when both Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind were released in 1977, both of which did amazing box office, suddenly science fiction was big business.

The film changed from ‘Star Beast’ to ‘Alien’ – a title O’Bannon claimed for himself, but who knows? Walter Hill from Brandywine rewrote some of the script (introducing female characters for the first time, and also the character of ‘Ash’), the budget increased, and O’Bannon was no longer in the frame as director (although he did successfully fight to secure ‘screenplay by’ and co ‘story by’ credits after a long messy battle with The Writers Guild).

Hill was first choice for director but he was unable to commit as he was about to start work on the Greek myth stroke gang flick The Warriors. A number of other directors were approached, including Peter Yates, Robert Aldrich and Jack Clayton but they passed on it. The eventual choice of director was the then 40 year old Ridley Scott, a man with a background in TV advertising who had only previously directed one feature, 1977’s The Duellists. It was a big risk - an unknown director with an equally unknown cast - and was only finally given the go ahead when Ridley underwrote a lot of the costs himself.

O’Bannon was very much around during the production – some said too much (he was banned from the set at least once) – but his master stoke was introducing Scott, a man who had no real affinity with science fiction – to HR Giger, via the artist’s seminal work ‘Necronomicon.’ Scott was yet another person whose mind was blown when exposed to Giger’s art, and the film’s look, which is the key to its success, was nailed at the point where the Swiss artist came on board, finally providing the perfect antidote to the director’s worry that Alien would be seen as just another man in a monster suit movie. What Scott didn’t know was the O’Bannon had been keeping Giger – who hadn’t worked on a movie before - on the side-lines all the time, convinced that Scott would want secure the artist's services. He was also rather unhelpfully telling anyone who would listen about his ongoing battles with the Brandywine team.

When the film was released in 1979, although it opened to a lukewarm critical reception, it was a huge commercial success, making nearly $79 million in the United States and over £7.5 million in the UK on initial release – the fourth largest grossing film of the year. Its total worldwide gross has been listed up to $203 million. The film had left both O’Bannon and Giger nervous wrecks. Scott on the other hand said of the film: “There’s nothing very intellectual about Alien. That’s the point of the film. It has absolutely no message. It works on a very visceral level and its only point is terror…and more terror.” This rather sniffy approach didn't stop Scott returning to sci fi for his next project, 1982's Blade Runner.

Alien’s rise from a few scribbles on paper at the beginning of the 1970s to its position as top grossing movie of 1979, and arguably one of the most impressive science fiction films of all time, is really the story of one person – Dan O’Bannon – and his fight to get his dream realised. It’s a fitting tribute to the man who sadly died way too early at the age of 63 in 2009, from Crohn’s disease complications. And to think, he almost didn't get a credit!