The Amazing Mr. X (1948)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Amazing Mr. X (1948) – B. Vorhaus

With stunning black & white cinematography by John Alton (then working his magic for Anthony Mann in a string of heralded films noir), this unusual film, part mysterious supernatural quest and part twisty noir, took me by surprise. At the start, viewers cannot quite be sure whether Christine (Lynn Bari) really does hear the voice of her dead husband while walking alone by the ocean at night. Sure, the “psychic consultant” Alexis (Turhan Bey), who she meets soon after, seems suspicious – but it isn’t clear how he could be influencing her weird dreams about her husband. When she meets him at his house/office, he isn’t shy about telling her that he knows she is thinking of remarrying, to boring lawyer Martin (Richard Carlson), and that her dead husband is not happy about it. As she gets sucked into ongoing sessions with Alexis, her younger sister Janet (Cathy O’Donnell) joins with Martin to hire a detective to look into his operations, suspecting him to be a shady conman (although Janet soon falls for him too, given his sensitive and sultry nature).  Soon we learn that their suspicions are correct, as director Bernard Vorhaus quickly gives us a tour of Alexis’s house and its instruments of deception and duplicity. But even as the detective is ready to turn the screws on Alexis, the appearance of Paul’s ghost throws everyone for a loop. To say more would spoil the film, but suffice it to say, that even Alexis finds himself in a tricky situation going forward.  Overall, the film isn’t a masterpiece but it is a dreamy unpredictable affair that tantalizes with its spooky look at spiritualism.

 

Dragons Forever (1988)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Dragons Forever (1988) – S. Hung & C. Yuen

As Jackie Chan moved from Seventies Shlock to Worldwide Fame, he maintained close ties with other students from the China Drama School (aka Peking Opera) that he attended in his youth, principally Sammo Hung and Biao Yuen.  Known as the Three Brothers or Dragons, they starred in a series of action comedies (Project A, 1983; Wheels on Meals, 1984; My Lucky Stars, 1985; Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars, 1985), mostly directed by Sammo (Fatty Dragon).  Dragons Forever was their final outing together, as Jackie’s Police Story and Armour of God franchises took off.  Jackie stars as a lawyer working for a criminal gang that own a chemical company (also serving as a front for narcotics production). When the owner of a neighbouring fish farm (Deanie Ip) sues the chemical company for polluting, Jackie takes the case. Jackie recruits Biao to help plant a bug in Deanie’s house to gather information, since her lawyer (and cousin), Pauline Yeung, also lives there. Sammo is a scammer who hopes to swindle Ip out of her fish farm but ends up falling in love with her.  Jackie also falls for Yeung, creating a conflict of interest for the case (resolved at the trial in a scene that is unfortunately marred by homophobic comments by the judge). If this all sounds rather cheesy, it is (in true Jackie fashion) -- but there is enough hand-to-hand combat from the three stars, old school style with chairs and furniture used for props, to keep those who came for the action engaged. (Benny Urquidez takes on the role of super-baddie in the final fight). The comedy is, as usual, hit or miss, but the Three Dragons are undeniably charismatic (even if cast somewhat against type here).   

 

 

The Plague of the Zombies (1966)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Plague of the Zombies (1966) – J. Gilling

By 1966, England’s Hammer Film Productions was already churning out Dracula, Frankenstein, and Mummy sequels but also producing other strange tales that echoed Universal’s glory days of the 1930s and ‘40s. The Plague of the Zombies shares a family resemblance to Bela Lugosi's White Zombie (1932) in that these zombies are virtual slaves working in a mine for the Squire/Master. And like that film, this feels much more like a voodoo movie (though not as pure as the Lewton-Tourneur I Walked with a Zombie, 1943) than what we have come to know as the zombie film. What differs here is that the zombies are reanimated corpses, reanimated by voodoo, rather than humans who have been zombified by magic but who might later return to human. As such, the film looks forward to George Romero’s classic series (beginning with Night of the Living Dead, 1968) where the dead rise and shuffle about, much as they do in this film (but with less explicit mayhem here). Andre Morrell stars as Sir James Forbes, a professor of medicine, called to Cornwall to assist his former star pupil who is now struggling in the remote town plagued with mysterious deaths. As always, Hammer’s film sports production values par excellence, with a perfectly realised Cornish village decked out in 1860s period fashion.  Beyond Morrell perhaps there is no actor as charismatic as a Lee or Cushing here (the Squire calls for one of them) to elevate the proceedings yet further but this is still a solid outing for the fabled studio.

 

Red Rooms (2023)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Red Rooms (2023) – P. Plante

There’s a long tradition of sadistic directors encouraging viewers to identify with unseemly characters, epitomised by Hitchcock’s choices in Rear Window (1954), where Jimmy Stewart’s Jeff does some recreational spying on his neighbours, uncovering some unsavoury business.  Here, director Pascal Plante introduces us to Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy), an edgy haute couture model, already deep into fascination with accused serial killer Ludovic Chevalier, attending his murder trial every day (which requires sleeping outside the courthouse each night to get a place in the gallery).  Chevalier is accused of creating snuff films and offering them on the dark web to viewers in exchange for bitcoins in what are known as “red rooms”.  It’s hard not to think of Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983) and the illegal broadcasts offered there.  Soon, we realise that Kelly-Anne is already well familiar with the dark web, raising her own stash of bitcoin with cold-hearted online poker playing. Perhaps Kelly-Anne has something in common with this serial killer? When she takes another groupie under her wing, the naivité of the younger girl might be forever lost. As the film progresses, viewers are forced to contemplate how much they would be willing to watch the snuff films in question, wondering whether the film will actually show them, and of course, why they would be watching a film where this is even a possibility. It’s hard not to feel dirty, even if the film’s conclusion offers an unexpected twist that might recast Kelly-Anne’s hitherto unknown motives.

 

Winter Kills (1979)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Winter Kills (1979) – W. Richert

I wonder if the Coen Brothers were thinking about Winter Kills when they cast Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowksi? Although he’s much younger here, he also plays a much put-upon “straight” character caught up in zany episodic situations beyond his control. In this film, he’s the much younger half-brother of the assassinated president who is provided with evidence that contradicts that single-shooter theory put forward by a Government Commission.  With pressure from his father (John Huston), he descends into the rabbit hole.  If this plot sounds like a thinly veiled retake of the events surrounding JFK’s shooting, it shouldn’t take long to confirm when faced with characters like “Joe Diamond” (Eli Wallach), in lieu of “Jack Ruby” of course (all from Richard Condon’s novel).  And it also doesn’t take long before the serious subject matter starts to give way to some blackly comic moments, as Nick Kegan (Bridges) finds himself confronting a range of eccentric characters played by well-known character actors: Sterling Hayden, Ralph Meeker, Richard Boone, Toshiro Mifune, Anthony Perkins, even Elizabeth Taylor (in a well-paid cameo). Not unlike the real thing, the conspiracy theory laid out here includes various red herrings and dead ends (with most informants meeting unfortunate fates after providing evidence).  Letting things wash over you without worrying too much about details is probably the best strategy.  And, in the end, the film ties things together with a truism about power and money that doesn’t feel wrong. A lost half-baked classic of sorts.

 

One from the Heart (1981)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

One from the Heart (1981) – F. F. Coppola

I’ve finally gotten around to watching this famous flop (the 2003 re-release, I think) by Francis Ford Coppola – the follow-up to Apocalypse Now, retreating to the newly purchased Zoetrope Studios to do everything off-location (as it were).  So, he built Las Vegas’s famous Strip, neon and all, from scratch, and set out to use all of the latest technological cinematic methods (including the first use of “video assist”, something that my long-lost friend Tim O’Toole used to commandeer back in Minnesota) to create this highly stylised colourful musical.  Tom Waits wrote all of the songs on the soundtrack, which accent or comment upon the action, assisted by Crystal Gayle – but this is definitely the bluesy ‘70s Waits rather than the weirder more experimental persona he later adopted (think Foreign Affairs more than Swordfishtrombones).  Did I say “highly stylised”? The film’s plot, which finds Teri Garr and Frederic Forrest as a couple breaking up on their fifth anniversary, is just a schematic framework on which to hang the set-pieces, art design, and music. I didn’t mind this, occasionally thinking of (the much better) The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964, where the dialogue is entirely sung, unlike here).  That was probably Coppola’s aim, to recreate the lavish musicals of the past, but it’s hard to get emotionally involved here.  Although Garr and Forrest give it their best shot, they never seen made for each other or even interested in each other (instead, as others have noted, they might be better partnered with Raul Julia and Natassja Kinski, with whom they have one-night flings). Ultimately, it’s a bit of a mess but every other scene seems to contain eye-popping technical wizardry, clearly expensive enough to have bankrupted Coppola. Still worth a look. 

 

Oddity (2024)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Oddity (2024) – D. McCarthy

Irish director Damian McCarthy’s second feature is one of those horror films that I’ve been seeking, the kind with an emphasis on spooky supernatural events that don’t involve a surplus of blood and gore.  Any violence happens off-screen (although there is the occasional after-effect shown).  Instead, we are treated to the foreboding chilling (and gently teasing) suspenseful feeling that a jump-scare could be coming – or worse, the revelation that there are evil or malevolent forces that can reach us from beyond the grave (or elsewhere).  In this case, those malevolent forces might, thankfully, only target those who deserve their wrath.  The film opens with what turns out to be a flashback – Dani Odello-Timmis, wife of Dr Ted Timmis (a doctor in a psychiatric clinic; played by Gwilym Lee), is alone in their unfurnished stone house in an isolated part of Ireland.  An ex-patient of Dr Timmis knocks on the door to warn her that a stranger is in the house and she should let him in to assist.  Fast forward one year and it turns out that Dani was killed.  Her blind and psychic twin sister, Darcy (also played by Carolyn Bracken), who runs an antique shop full of cursed and haunted objects, believes that Dani’s death was not as straightforward as it appeared to be.  Things come to a head when she arrives to spend the night at the house with an ominous wooden golem, much to the chagrin of Dr Timmis and his new girlfriend.  This film gave me the creeps in more than one spot and the ending is pretty much perfect, although perhaps making the film just a little too tidy (for a supernatural thriller).