Quatermass (1979)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Quatermass (1979) – P. Haggard

Writer Nigel Kneale’s final outing for Prof. Bernard Quatermass finds the elderly rocket scientist (now played by Sir John Mills) in the bleakest of dystopian futures. Society has completely broken down (think Children of Men or Mad Max) and youth gangs are rampaging everywhere. Quatermass is brought out of isolation in Scotland by the disappearance of his granddaughter, who has seemingly joined a cult of Planet People who travel to mystic locations such as the Stonehenge like Ringstone Round awaiting a mystic force to take them to another world. When a force really does appear, Quatermass and a small group of space scientists realise that it may not be a force for good.  Across four episodes, the team attempts to figure out what is happening and try to stop it – meanwhile all of the world’s young people are being rapidly depleted (including 70K people in Wembley Stadium).  Shot on an extremely low budget, the four-part series is nevertheless very effective (perhaps as a result of the low budget) and even though you can’t always trust Quatermass, as played by John Mills he is always charismatic. The (often elderly) supporting cast – who you can’t count on to stay alive – do a solid job in support.  This is easily the grimmest of the Quatermass releases but worth tracking down.  

 

Home Alone (1990)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Home Alone (1990) – J. Hughes

No, I had never watched this John Hughes movie until now – after all, I turned 23 in 1990, so why would I? But now I was encouraged by 9-year-old Amon to give it a spin – and it wasn’t quite as cloying as I had feared. Instead, it had enough slapstick comedy (the kind where comic buffoons get hurt in outlandish ways) to keep Amon cackling away next to me.  Of course, this action doesn’t really get going until the film’s final third.  Before that, we meet Kevin (McCauley Culkin) and his nuclear and extended family who are all going on a trip to Paris (they are very rich, it seems, and live in an upscale part of Chicago). We also meet Joe Pesci who is casing their house disguised as a cop.  Later, with Daniel Stern, he attempts to burgle the residence only to be foiled by Kevin and his various Rube Goldberg contraptions. A subplot finds Kevin teaching his once-scary older neighbour about the value of family and overcoming conflicts. I think a little bit of Culkin goes a long way but Pesci and Stern do approach their roles with gusto and this makes all the difference.

 

The Mummy (1959)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Mummy (1959) – T. Fisher

I agree with those who have noted that the 1932 Boris Karloff version of The Mummy is superior to this Hammer remake. The plot has been varied a bit, giving Christopher Lee as Kharis, the guardian of Princess Ananka’s tomb (aka The Mummy), less to do, as he only appears in flashback or in muddy bandages rather than in modern dress as Karloff did. Instead, George Pastell plays the worshipper who organises for the Mummy to attack and kill the three members of the archaeologist team that desecrated the tomb, including Peter Cushing. Yvonne Furneaux plays Cushing’s wife, who resembles Ananka (though there is no suggestion that she her reincarnated form). As per usual, Hammer does a nice job with the sets and costumes but there is no sense that the original film has been advanced upon here. Still, it’s fun for an escape.

The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020) – M. Flanagan

I haven’t read The Turn of the Screw (Henry James, 1898) in a long time -- but I have watched Jack Clayton’s excellent film of it (The Innocents, 1961) many more times. This mini-series sequel to the 2019 mini-series The Haunting of Hill House (both developed by horror afficionado Mike Flanagan) takes the James story as its starting point (and includes many of the actors, playing different characters, from the first series).  Of course, it is hard not to compare this version to the earlier version – but soon it is clear that the ambiguity of the novella and the other film would be left in the dust. Here, the spirits are real.  But also not exactly scary.  Instead of the governess (or au pair; Victoria Pedretti) being more or less alone in her struggle against (imagined or real) ghosts, here we have an array of other characters living or working at the old manor. Together they discover the mystery of the children’s strange behaviour and together they wrestle with the implications.  I won’t say more other than that what at first seemed an expansion on the original story, bringing it up to modern times and embellishing the backstories of all the characters (and added characters), quickly turned into something else, something very convoluted, possibly a merger with other ghost stories by Henry James (which I have not read). Unfortunately, this caused the mini-series to tank.  Worse, the final two episodes seem disjointed from the rest, with explanations coming out of nowhere and loose ends being gathered together to try to give every character a final resting place (the framing story that winks at us in closing is simply awful). That said, some of the actors did manage to create people that felt real and charismatic.  But I would save your 9 hours for something else.

A Run For Your Money (1949)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

A Run For Your Money (1949) – C. Frend

Charming tale (from Ealing Studios) of two Welsh men (Donald Houston and Meredith Edwards) who travel to London after winning £200 and have a variety of comic misadventures. Director Charles Frend keeps things moving at a brisk pace as the lads get separated almost immediately, with one falling into the hands of a beautiful con artist and the other meeting up with a long-lost friend and harp player from the old country. Alec Guinness, an Ealing favourite, plays a gardening columnist (for the newspaper that sponsored the contest) charged with tracking them down and writing a human interest story about them.  Not exactly madcap but gently humorous – unless you are from Wales when apparently the many stereotypes on display are thought to be in bad taste. Perhaps not up there with Ealing’s greatest but enjoyable nonetheless.

 

All My Sons (1948)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

All My Sons (1948) – I. Reis

Although sometimes categorised as film noir due to its dark themes and critique of the American Dream, Irving Reis’s film of Arthur Miller’s Tony award winning play (written just before Death of a Salesman) is better classified as an excruciating moral drama. Edward G. Robinson plays Joe Keller who runs a factory that makes aircraft parts. His son Chris, played by Burt Lancaster, is set to inherit the factory and hopes to marry the daughter of Joe’s former partner, Herb Deever (Frank Conroy), now in jail, convicted of knowingly selling faulty parts to the air force that led 21 pilots to die.  Joe was exonerated of the same crime, as he claimed not to know what Herb had done. The return of Herb’s daughter Ann (Louisa Horton) to the town opens old wounds and casts doubt on Joe’s innocence. Joe’s wife Kate (Mady Christians) defensively protects him from accusations by Ann’s brother George (Howard Duff) and seeks to break up Chris and Ann (believing Ann still pledged to her older son who never returned from the war). Although the family tensions are well-acted, the film best serves as an indictment of capitalism and the moral blindness that is created by the desperate need to make a profit to support a family or a lifestyle, leading to choices that privilege self/family over employee/consumer. It’s a timeless theme and echoed in the headlines year after year – only corporations don’t seem to ultimately accept their guilt as Joe Keller does.