The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971) – S. Martino

Italian giallo films are not for everyone.  Wikipedia suggests that they are “murder mystery horror-thriller” films and they are not without sex and violence.  The classic format is a black-gloved sex killer on the loose in some Italian city, a killer who wears a mask and who is not unmasked until the very end of the film, revealing one of the central characters.  In Sergio Martino’s first giallo, that’s exactly the formula.  Poor Julie (Edwige Fenech) feels she is being gaslighted by her ex-lover Jean, seemingly a sadistic creep, who might be stalking her, leaving roses with cryptic notes, even though Julie is now married to a diplomat whose work at the US embassy in Vienna keeps him away all the time.  This gives Julie the opportunity to meet and fall in love with “Australian” George Corro (George Hilton) who is in Italy to receive an inheritance from a long lost uncle (that he will share with one of Julie’s friends, his long lost cousin Carol).  All the while, Vienna is prowled by a black-gloved sex killer and Julie may be his next target.  When she’s blackmailed by someone threatening to reveal her affair to her husband, she sends Carol to the rendezvous instead – and of course she’s murdered.  At this point, I felt the film was pretty straightforward and I also felt that I knew exactly who the killer was.  However, at this point, I was very wrong and a plot-twist (or two or three) lay just ahead.  I won’t spoil them for you but if this is possibly your cup-of-tea, this was a more enjoyable (less confusing, better dubbed) giallo than some others I have seen. Also on Tubi. (Oh, and the h was added to Wardh after a real Mrs. Ward threatened to sue the producers!).

Top of the Heap (1972)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Top of the Heap (1972) – C. St. John

It isn’t clear how Blaxploitation audiences felt about this weird low-budget film from one-shot director Christopher St. John but it certainly contains enough thought-provoking content (alongside the incidental car chases and nudity) for this viewer. St. John plays George Lattimer, a Black Washington DC cop who is fed up with taking crap from perps, public, colleagues, and the captain.  His relationships with his wife and 13-year-old daughter are frayed and distant. He fantasises about joining NASA and heading to the Moon. In fact, his thoughts and fantasies are intercut into the action, even if it is just a brief blip passing through his mind in reference to what’s actually happening.  It wasn’t too hard to keep fantasy and reality straight for most of the film but I confess that I might have misjudged this by the end!  The loose plot (which sees George wrestling with whether to quit his job after the jolt of his mother’s death) is only an excuse for St. John to offer his thoughts on a variety of topics, including racism particularly but also aging and, uh, space travel (the ultimate escape?). Richard Brody of the New Yorker referenced Fellini in relation to this film and that might be apt if the Maestro was transposed in space and time to this genre. Worth a look (on Tubi).

Clue (1985)

 ☆ ☆ ½

Clue (1985) – J. Lynn

With the success of recent whodunnits (such as Knives Out and Branagh’s Poirot films), I was tempted – or perhaps mislead – to watch this ‘80s variant, based on the well-known board game (called Cluedo outside of the US).  Well, it was a flop back then, despite its gimmick of having multiple endings with different culprits (all included at the end of the film now), and it is still a flop now.  Tim Curry, as the butler, does his able best to provide exposition to the characters as well as to us, the audience, but the script and the cast let him down. Apparently, all of the guests invited to the mansion (and instructed to use pseudonyms which are the names of the Clue characters) are being blackmailed by Mr Boddy, so when the lights go out and he’s found dead, they are all suspects.  This is after they have each been handed a box with a weapon inside (candlestick, rope, revolver, etc.). The rest of the movie will see other peripheral characters (maid, cook, cop) killed and the central characters scramble around the mansion (and the secret passageways between lounge-conservatory and kitchen-study) looking for clues (I guess). Only a few of the actors appear interested in being in this movie (Lesley Anne Warren, Michael McKean, Curry) but you can’t really blame the others (Martin Mull, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd, Eileen Brennan) given the quality of humour here (oh yeah, it is supposed to be a comedy).  Play the game instead.

 

The Offence (1973)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Offence (1973) – S. Lumet

Sean Connery apparently secured the opportunity to star in this film, essentially a showcase for his acting, as part of his agreement to return as James Bond in Diamonds are Forever (1971). It is a tough watch, adapted from his own play by John Hopkins and directed almost as if on stage by Sidney Lumet.  Connery plays a burnt-out detective sergeant on the hunt for a serial pedophile; when they bring in a suspect (Ian Bannen), he takes his gloves off to do the questioning.  Things turn sour immediately and Connery is suspended from the force before being questioned himself by the superintendent (Trevor Howard). Throw in a brutal argument with his wife and we’ve got a full measure of the unsavory man. Even with all that he's been through, it’s hard to see him as a victim – and Connery does not play him as one -- but he does offer a complex portrayal, full of self-doubt and self-delusion.  The final scenes, in flashback, show us in detail the interrogation between Connery and Bannen, in which Bannen (who may or may not be the pedophile) gets inside Connery’s head and messes with him. It does not end well for anyone.  Brutal, but Connery does succeed in distancing himself from Bond.

Blow the Man Down (2019)

 ☆ ☆ ½

Blow the Man Down (2019) – B. S. Cole & D. Krudy

Perhaps searching for a revelation from Amazon Prime (30 day free trial) is futile but this thriller was recommended on the internet – as a sort of Fargo for New England.  I suppose my NH upbringing also softened me up to choose this tale of small town Maine and two young women who get involved in murder there.  But apart from some snowy roads and colonial-styled houses, I didn’t recognise much (and the accents seemed a bit all over the place).  The drama itself was acceptable, although if you told me it was “made for TV” (as we understood this term in ye olden days), I wouldn’t have been surprised – except for the focus on prostitution (which might mean the title, taken from the seafaring tune, counts as a double entendre, sadly). There’s little action but there is family drama, some yearning to escape small town life, and a wry comedic ending featuring some otherwise nosy old women.  Not terrible but there are other choices out there.

They Live (1988)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

They Live (1988) – J. Carpenter

It takes a lot longer before Rowdy Roddy Piper puts on those sunglasses than I remembered.  Before that, this is a downbeat tale about homelessness in Reagan’s America, shot in a pretty rundown looking Los Angeles.  Roddy gets a job on a construction site and meets up with Frank (Keith David), another down-and-out but upright guy looking to keep his head above water (and support his family back in Detroit).  Soon, Roddy (the character’s name is apparently Nada) notices some activity in a nearby church that seems to be associated with a mysterious broadcast that over-rides the local TV signal, claiming that the rich and powerful are running society and keeping people down and pacified by consumerism.  When he sneaks into the church, all he finds are boxes of sunglasses.  Soon, the church is attacked by a SWAT team, which also destroys the tent city where the homeless are living as a supportive community.  Roddy finally puts on those sunglasses and then he’s on the run.  If you’ve seen the film, you know that it totally shifts gears at this point.  If you haven’t, you are in for a surprise.  But once the concept is out there in all its glory, this does turn into a bit of a generic action flick (with an epic fistfight between Roddy and Keith David, as he tries to get him to wear the sunglasses – hilarious).  Only at the very end, when they are trying to turn off the signal at the TV station does director John Carpenter really cash in on the sci-fi aspects of the premise. As a metaphor for a society where some are willing to sacrifice and use others to facilitate their own accumulation of wealth (and others complicitly allow them to do so), this film stands alone in its greatness (and sublimely great weirdness).  A plea for humanity!

Déjà vu (2006)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Déjà vu (2006) – T. Scott

A Jerry Bruckheimer-produced Tony Scott film.  Is there anything more to say than that?  Maybe. I usually avoid these noisy expensive blockbusters, finding them all spectacle and little plot or character development.  Of course, if you get a star with a known personality, such as Denzel Washington, they can add their usual traits and style to the proceedings, as happens here.  But what really drew me to the film (which I had never heard of before) was that it was grouped together with other films about time and memory by the Criterion Channel (sadly available only in the US), including such amazing films as Vertigo, Twelve Monkeys, Memento, and Mullholand Dr. So, I took the risk and, yes, like those other films, it turned out to be rather mind-bending (although as most reviewers suggested at the time, also preposterous).  This film, shot in 2005, also focuses on terrorism (a bomb is planted on a ferry carrying US servicepeople and civilians) and takes place in an immediately post-Katrina New Orleans.  Thinking about how the US felt this close to 9-11 and this terrible disaster adds another odd resonance to the film – but is it terrorism-porn?).  Washington plays an ATF agent called in to investigate the bombing and help track down the culprit.  This far in, the film is a by-the-numbers disaster film with fast cutting and death/destruction.  But then FBI agent Val Kilmer invites Washington to join an elite team with access to a very high-tech surveillance system that allows them to view actions in the past from any conceivable angle in any location (within a set radius that can be extended by using a portable headset) – the kicker is that they can only observe things 4 days in the past, because the system takes a long time to render the data from all available camera sources.  Washington asks the right questions (how do they get the audio?) but receives no answers.  This is very high concept stuff and to the extent that you can hold onto the thread, you’ll enjoy the movie.  It is part action thriller and part (creepy) romance, not to mention sci-fi.  But just don’t try to apply logic to the ending because it just might not make sense (although it might bust your brain to figure that out).