Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

 ☆ ☆ ½

Murder on the Orient Express (2017) – K. Branagh

I went into this Agatha Christie adaptation thinking it wasn’t going to be too challenging – more of a TV mystery comfort food sort of thing – but unfortunately, it is much worse than that.  Although director Kenneth Branagh has lined up an array of top-drawer stars (Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Olivia Colman, Daisy Ridley et al.), they are almost all wasted in small unrewarding parts. Branagh gives himself (as Hercule Poirot) the most screen time but his moustache tends to overshadow his acting; I didn’t think that he established the character any better than David Suchet, despite the bigger budget, bigger canvas.  Even worse, the plot itself is botched – we barely get to learn each character’s backstory by the time we find Poirot lining them all up and revealing the solution to the crime.  Instead much time is wasted trying to make the film feel like an action flick (that chase after Josh Gad) or to use the 65mm screen with what feels a lot like CGI landscapes behind the fabled train.  Give it a miss. 

They Won’t Believe Me (1947)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

They Won’t Believe Me (1947) – I. Pichel

At the start of this film noir, Larry Ballentine (Robert Young) is on trial for murder.  The prosecution has already rested and he is called to the stand by his defence attorney to tell his side of the story.  We see this unfold in flashback, although occasionally we return to the courtroom to see the impact his version of the events is having on the jury.  To his credit, Ballentine does not always present himself as a good guy – instead, he cheats on his wife with two other women. She keeps him as a trophy husband because he is good looking, but he is basically good for nothing.  As the events of the story unfold, we learn how he finally decided to split from his wife and take up with his cynical girlfriend, Verna (Susan Hayward) – but a tragic car accident changes everything.  In a twist that wouldn’t be possible in the days of DNA-testing (let alone dental records), Larry manages to free himself from his marriage but still retain his rich wife’s fortune.  Until, that is, he is arrested and put on trial.  The title refers to his perception of the jury and the ending hinges on this belief.  The strengths here follow from Young’s willingness to play a morally dubious character (with some of his lecherous moments apparently edited out of the versions shown on TV) but the ending is very abrupt! 

The Legend of Hell House (1973)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Legend of Hell House (1973) – J. Hough

Of course, this film owes a huge debt to Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963), based on Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel, which also featured a team of paranormal investigators visiting a supposedly haunted house to determine its secrets.  Here, the visitors include two mediums, played by Roddy McDowall and Pamela Franklin (who was the young girl in The Innocents, 1961, another haunted classic), and a physicist (Clive Revill) and his wife (Gayle Hunnicutt).  The house was fortress of a debauched Crowley-type figure who still haunts the place and has succeeded in killing earlier investigators (only McDowall escaped an earlier incident).  The set-up is good and creepy and the early “sittings” by Franklin’s medium capture the right spooky tone.  She believes the ghostly son of the evil man is trapped in the house and wants to free him – but is she being fooled?  Things do take a rather sexual turn as the women are molested or possessed – it is hard not to see this as a bit gratuitous but I guess it relates to the backstory.  Then, the physicist attempts to suck out all of the spiritual energy from the house with a big contraption.  I’ll leave it for you to watch to see whether it works but when all is said and done and the big reveal is revealed, I’m not sure it completely adds up (or at the very least Richard Matheson’s script does not do a good enough job of highlighting the important clues).  Worth a look, if only because there are so few good entries in this genre and this does capture a certain vibe.

  

Dangerous Crossing (1953)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Dangerous Crossing (1953) – J. M. Newman

Jeanne Crain is a newlywed having met her new husband just one month earlier and tying the knot in one of those roadside wedding chapels, now she is onboard a cruise ship ready for departure.  Her husband just has to leave some money with the purser as the ship is departing.  She awaits his return in the bar.  And he doesn’t come back.  When she seeks help from the ship’s steward, he informs her that no such husband exists on the passenger register and that she boarded alone and her luggage arrived early and was taken to her cabin – not the cabin she originally arrived to with her husband.  He takes her to the ship’s doctor, played by Michael Rennie, and the rest of this brief film (75 minutes) involves Crain trying to convince everyone that she is not crazy and to find her husband.  Yes, it’s film noir but a minor entry in the canon; the plot resolves too quickly and too patly, methinks, and the premise only takes us so far before it gets old…

  

Attack the Block (2011)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Attack the Block (2011) – J. Cornish

A young John Boyega (pre-Star Wars) plays the leader of a gang of kids in a housing estate block in South London who have to fight off some “alien gorilla wolf MFs”.  I’m maybe not the right demographic for this (which would seem to be young stoners?) but there’s no denying that it gets right to the action and doesn’t really flag. That might also be a weakness (i.e. no time for character development) but if you think so, you’re watching the wrong picture. Billed as an action-comedy, I guess it could be funny but I didn’t laugh; however, the non-CGI aliens are pretty effective. Overall, I think it wins because of its warmth toward its characters, pushing past the initial semi-stereotypical presentation to treat them more humanely.  We also get a nod to racial and class harmony with the inclusion of Jodi Whittaker who is first mugged by the kids and then ends up fighting the monsters with them.  A bit of a feel-good finale for you but I wouldn’t necessarily go out of my way for this one.  

  

Ghostwatch (1992)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Ghostwatch (1992) – L. Manning

Perhaps this has gone down in the annals of “seemed like a good idea at the time” events but even now it managed to pack a punch, 28 years later.  So, yes, the BBC decided to make a faux live broadcast (hosted by Michael Parkinson no less) where they station a reporter and camera crew in a supposedly haunted house and film what happens on Halloween.  In the studio is an expert on parapsychology and interviewees include a skeptic from New York City.  Of course, weird things do begin to happen, centered on a young girl nearing puberty.  Apparently, many Brits tuned in late (after a movie on ITV finished) and did not realise that the broadcast was staged & fictional – so the outcry and shock resembled what happened after Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast in the 1930s.  In practice, the film feels a bit like the subsequent Blair Witch Project with its “you are there” shaky cam and inexplicable chaos.  Apparently, if you look closely enough you can see the apparition (that callers to the show’s hotline were reporting) approximately 13 times – I only saw it once after being told where to look!  I knew it wasn’t real but still I had to keep pinching myself…

 

The Woman in Black (1989)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Woman in Black (1989) – H. Wise

This British TV movie (not the more recent Daniel Radcliffe big screen release) was highlighted by The Guardian as containing one of the top 10 scariest ghosts of all time.  And, true enough, it is one of those low-key spooky affairs (not unlike the BBC’s M. R. James adaptations) that takes place in the early 20^th century where the old fashioned customs and surrounds add to the creepy ambience. Adrian Rawlins plays Arthur Kidd, a young lawyer who is ordered to attend to the affairs of a recently deceased widow who lived in an isolated old house on the marshes near the (fictional) seaside town of Crythin Gifford. No one in the village is keen to go anywhere near the house and no one shows up for the funeral of the widow, although the Kidd sees a mysterious woman in black that no one else acknowledges.  Of course, she is a ghost and, as it turns out, not a very friendly one (among the scariest of all time – maybe if you saw this as a child)!  Kidd eventually has to spend the night uncovering the facts in the haunted house and indeed it does send chills down your spine.  The screenplay is by Nigel Kneale (of Quatermass fame) from Susan Hill’s story. Although you might expect that this is the sort of TV movie where a happy ending awaits with the mystery of the ghost’s unhappy demise tied up with a bow – but you could be wrong!  Worth a look if you like eerie rather than gory, implicit rather than explicit horrors.