Dead of Night

After the first two films we felt slightly unsatisfied, like we hadn't had a good enough Halloween experience.

Funny to see part of the first Amicus portmanteau film Dr Terror's House of Horrors the other day and realise they all came from this. (Well, could argue Flesh and Fantasy is an earlier portmanteau film of the supernatural, and there's apparently a German twenties one as well..)

"May the Lord have mercy on your handicap!"

The best horror films have the best music (The Shining, Halloween, Psycho, Suspiria) and this one is no exception, with Auric's brooding and malevolent score one of his finest and weirdest.

Remember Me (2014 Ashley Pearce)

No, it turned out we didn't, as we'd seen this horror guff before, created for the screen and written by Gwyneth Hughes (she wrote the questionable Hitch bio The Girl and Palin's new Vanity Fair series).

110 year old Palin is haunted by his Indian maid, who murders people and leaves lots of water everywhere (as she was drowned). Hmm. Well acted though. Michael Palin needs a really good dramatic part in something, he's good. So are Jodie Comer (Dr Foster, Rillington Place, My Mad Fat Diary, Jed Mercurio's TV Lady Chatterley) and her brother Jamie Rooney-West, and investigating detective Mark Addy. With Julia Sawalha, Mina Anwar, Tony Pitts. (Pitts and Addy were both in Red Riding.)

A dark production with such a proliferation of moody skies you start to wonder if they've been digitally added, with scene transitions punctuated by supposedly super-scary rushes of sound. Some nice Scarborough locations including the imposing Grand Hotel, opened in 1867 and badly damaged by the German navy in 1914 - it sadly now seems somewhat declassé with 'rooms from £24' and an almost surreal recent history of illness outbreaks. The Spa, with its black and white tiles and colonnaded sea view also makes a great location (it was used in the Rik Mayall episode 'Dancing Queen' with Helena Bonham-Carter, and also appears in the Scarborough-set Little Voice).

Photographed by Tony Miller (Fleabag, Peter and Wendy, Small Island). The Yorkshire settings and historical background help ameliorate the daftness. (You could argue that most horror films are daft.)

The Ghost of Greville Lodge (2000 Niall Johnson & scr)

We thought Nicholas Wilde's book 'Down Came a Blackbird' was probably better than this film version, (it has a more complex and darker premise) in which Jon Newman cannot carry the leading role. Prunella Scales and George Cole offer support, but Johnson is clearly no actor's director. The flashback stuff is handled quite well. The relationship between the boys just seemed quite gay to me (which would have given the story an interesting spin!)

Pretty Poison (1968 Noel Black)

Anthony Perkins is endearing as an ex-arsonist who lives a fantasy life, running into murderous nut Tuesday Weld, whilst pursued by probation officer John Randolph and harrangued by the girl's mother Beverly Garland (much on TV, she has 193 IMDB credits!)

Lorenzo Semple Jr adapted Stephen Geller's 1966 novel 'She Let Him Continue', written in kind of Beat, stream-of-consciousness style. (The novelist subsequently wrote some screenplays, including Slaughterhouse-Five).

Perkin's decision to sabotage a chemical plant which is polluting the water supply is of its time.

Perkins is great in cult oddball, quite funny.

That is a clip from The St Valentine's Day Massacre playing in the cinema.

The Spiral Staircase (1945 Robert Siodmak)

Ethel Lina White wrote 'The Wheel Spins' in 1936, which became The Lady Vanishes, and before that 'Some Must Watch' (1933) which Mel Dinelli adapted into this. Dorothy Macguire can't speak, doctor Kent Smith loves her, patient Ethel Barrymore wants to protect her, employer George Brent and his brother Gordon Oliver fight about it, Rhonda Fleming gets bumped off.

With Elsa Lanchester as a tippling housekeeper, Rhys Williams, Sara Allgood , James Bell.

Shot by Nick Musuraca, scored by Roy Webb, produced by Dore Schary in his brief time at RKO before returning to MGM.

Actually found Barrymore's performance the creepiest thing in the film!

Primary Colors (1998 Mike Nichols)

Still in Emma Thompson mood, here she plays (with a somewhat wavering accent) the First Lady to John Travolta's Governor in Elaine May's adaptation of a novel by 'Anonymous' - Joe Klein - based on Clinton's first candidacy. Adrian Lester (good) gets sucked into the tour - it sort of reminded me of Almost Famous in that regard. It's very well, subtly written e.g. how well-oiled Lester's amateur team of aides has become, how the relationships (Billy Bob Thornton, Maura Tierney (ER), Kathy Bates) develop. Indeed, in just two shots, we learn that Lester and Tierney are in a relationship, and that Bates and Stacy Edwards (that was a hard name to track down) are too.

And it's subtle in that we are presented with who this man is right from the off - a serial adulterer and maker up of convenient tales. In fact in a way it's odd how Lester is so sucked in knowing those things. Though the Governor is charismatic...

With Rob Reiner, and a good performance from Larry Hagman, Diane Ladd, Alison Janney, Caroline Aaron.

Photographed by Michael Ballhaus - the widescreen is well used. Music from Ry Cooder. Quite long, but good.

I wonder why Lester didn't stay in Hollywood...

“It was kind of hard to swallow, because surely if you executed a role like that to any degree of believability you were a shoo-in for major auditions for other major roles… But it didn’t happen. Costa-Gavras wanted me to play the lead role in a movie. And Sidney Lumet was doing an updated version of 12 Angry Men and offered me a choice of two roles, so I went home thinking, ‘Great!’ Then both films fell through – they couldn’t get the money – and I sat at home unemployed for a year.

'Radio Times' December 2011.

Stranger Than Fiction (2006 Marc Forster)

Written by Zach Helm like an exercise in writing itself - Will Ferrell (somewhat colourless) hears writer Emma Thompson narrating his life as he ditches dullness and falls in love with cake maker Maggie Gyllenhaal (excellent) instead - smart move.

It all began because we saw Emma on Graham and she reminded us this was her first time with Dustin Hoffman, who plays a literary professor. It had been ten years - another of those films that just slipped through the cracks.

It was odd that Queen Latifah (good) was higher billed than Emma. With Tony Hale.

Shot by Roberto Schaefer, edited by Matt Chesse. very enjoyable ('I've brought you some flours'). Infectious music from Britt Daniel and Brian Reitzell.

Unable to establish the movie they're watching (it isn't credited, oddly):

OK, apparently it's a 1965 Mustang and the film is Lelouch's Un Homme et Une Femme... Did that take some tracking down.

Candyman (1992 Bernard Rose & scr)

Clive Barker, author of 'The Forbidden' on which the film is based, has a tendency to fuse horror with something creepily romantic - thus Tony Todd's Candyman believes that Virginia Madsen (good) is the reincarnation of his lost love. There's something of Val Lewton (again) in the back story of a black man who's brutally murdered for daring to fall in love (think I Walked With a Zombie), and the projects setting is a welcome change (love the way she crawls through a hole in the wall and emerges from a painting of his face through the mouth - this stuff is quite dreamlike). The way he keeps setting her up as the killer is funny (ultimately she pulls off the same trick with her boyfriend's lover). But as I observed on 23 April 1995, the Candyman figure is just rather corny (processed scary voice, for example) and Rose is a bit of an oddball (he made the rather misjudged Paperhouse, a riff on Catherine Storr's 'Marianne Dreams').

Like many horror films it doesn't follow its own logic - how do you 'kill' the undead?

With Xander Berkeley, Kasi Lemmons, Vanessa Williams. Shot by Tony (Don't Look Now) Richmond.

Q remarks that there are far too many disgusting toilets in the film too.

The Enfield Haunting (2015 Kristoffer Nyholm)

There seems to be some doubt as to whether any of this happened. Still, makes for an entertaining 136 minutes. Of particular interest is the performance of Eleanor Worthington-Cox, who's remarkable - in extras, Matthew Macfadyen reveals she makes him seem like an old ham. The young don't have the baggage that grown up actors do, and can just be the part. Timothy Spall is as good as ever.

With Juliet Stevenson, Rosie Cavaliero, Fern Deacon.

It was unfussily made (by the director of The Killing) and shot, to its credit. Written by Joshua St Johnston. Good seventies period flavour.

Halloween II (1981 Rick Rosenthal)

Beginning at the end of I (like Bride of Frankenstein) we're still in the same night and Michael Myers - who has by now developed silly supernatural properties - remains unkillable. Unlike the original it's non-stop slaughter, and we're missing the slow build up and routine behaviour of kids and teenagers that marked the first one as being so good. Never mind - we still are treated to creepy and clever plotting from Carpenter and Debra Hill, and the same tantalising use of widescreen, though this time it's not so much the shadowy empty spaces you have to look out for as a variety of other ways of shocking you are presented (it's still - to me - very much on the wave of the Val Lewton films).

Carpenter's music has been given an extra synthesizer treatment (the original was played on a piano), making it quite one of the most angular scores I've heard (its high frequencies bound to disturb dogs). Dean Cundey repeats his wonderful night / Panaglide lighting (less blue light this time, I noticed).

So yes, it has brilliant moments and wonderfully creepy deserted hospital sequences, and is quite funny.

Below, two variations of the same (creepy) composition. In the first the killer is close left foreground, in the one below he's all the way in the far right background:

The producers - Hill and Carpenter again - have not let the budget go to their heads by shelling out for a decent cast (not referring to Jamie Lee, naturally). Didn't I make them enough money??

The Innocents (1961 Jack Clayton)

Worth seeing for Freddie Francis' black and white CinemaScope photography alone - not just for the lighting but also the deep focus (made harder in the widescreen ratio), the compositions and movement (future Oscar-winner Ronnie Taylor operating). We also have some marvellous editing from Jim Clark - the two together artfully produce an amazing dream / montage sequence - music from the unpredictable Georges Auric and a team of interesting sound people edited by Peter Musgrave.

It's an adaptation of Henry James' 'Turn of the Screw' (1898) by William Archibald and Truman Capote, with additional scenes and dialogue from John Mortimer.

Deborah Kerr is the nervy governess, Megs Jenkins the slightly questionable housekeeper and the young wards are Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin (And Soon the Darkness). Michael Redgrave is the ruthless and absent uncle.

From 13 September 2009 (when we last saw it):
Are we frightened? No. The sound effects predate The Haunting. The kids talking like adults is fun. Believe it or not Jason King (Peter Wyngarde) is the male ghost, whose TV career ended when he was caught in a compromising position in the lavs of Gloucester bus station.
Megs Jenkins made me think of the Queen's maid in Black Adder.
B&W photography impressive except for candelabra scenes.

It was then not at all annoying that at 1 hour 10 the DVD fucked up as we were well hooked and enjoying it. Though the next day we were treated to an HD ending...

Le Havre (2011 Aki Kaurismäki & scr)

He has a most interesting way of framing shots, Mr. Kaurismäki (the ä is Alt+0228 for the purists amongst us), a simplicity (the camera doesn't move much) and a sort of close-but-not-too-closeness - for want of a better vocabulary. (The screenplay is also beautifully concise.) André Wilms is the colourful hero - most people have a way of pausing or thinking but he just gets right to it in a courteous and funny manner. His unwell wife is Kati Outinen, and how do we know right from the off that inspector Jean-Pierre Darroussin is going to turn out OK? Great performances. Blondin Miguel is the boy and he is aided by Wilms' friends Elina Salo, Evelyne Didi, Quoc Dung Nguyen and François Mennier. And with Jean-Pierre Léaud as the informant.

Q thinks it looks like it's set in the past - maybe it is done so deliberately - I just assumed it was a poor part of town 'where miracles don't happen'. It's a very funny and sweet film and makes me want to watch more Kaurismäki.

Cameraman Timo Salminen has shot several of the director's pics including The Other Side of Hope (2017), Lights in the Dusk (2006), The Man Without a Past (2002), The Match Factory Girl (1996), Juha (1999), Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses ('94) / Go America ('89), Drifting Clouds (1996), La Vie de Bohème (1992, also with Wilms about refugees struggling to get on in Paris), Hamlet Goes Business (1987), Shadows in Paradise (1986), Calamari Union (1985), Crime and Punishment (1983), phew ... in fact flicking through this photographer's CV is like looking at a list of rare foreign films of interest you never knew existed - including some by Aki's brother Mika.

In fact this is also the complete Kaurismäki filmography with the exceptions of I Hired a Contract Killer (1990 with Jean-Pierre Léaud) and Ariel (1988)!

Duplicity (2008 Tony Gilroy & scr)

Why do Clive Owen and Julia Roberts run through exactly the same dialogue in New York that they exchanged in Rome three years earlier? There's a reason in Gilroy's snaky and ingenious thriller (though I'm not sure it needed to be exactly the same dialogue - we see them rehearsing it again later). Anyway, it revolves around competition between rival manufacturers Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson, based on the spurious notion that inventions always need to be stolen .. hmm.

Cast includes Tom McCarthy, Oleg Stefan, Denis O'Hare, Kathleen Chalfant, Wayne Duvall, Carrie Preston (from The Good Wife). Shot by Robert Elswit in Panavision (quite shallow focus). Edited by Tony's younger brother John.

Gilroy the elder wrote of course Michael Clayton, the Bourne films, the adaptation of State of Play, and latterly the dodgy The Great Wall, Rogue One (Felicity Jones in Star Wars prequel) and High Wire Act (Rosamund Pike and John Hamm Beirut thriller).

Paying attention helps.

Like many a globe-trotting film it doesn't really make any use of its locations (Rome, Geneva, London).

The Good Lie (2014 Philippe Falardeau)

Margaret Nagle spent a lot of time researching the Sudan background to the story after working with refugees selling handbags. Q says Reece Witherspoon didn't need to be in it - but she did, to sell the film. I know what she means  though as the film really is the story of the four refugees Arnold Oceng, Ger Duany, Emmanual Jal and Kuoth Wiel. Has some truly priceless moments - the leap of joy when Jal (I think it is) learns he is going to America - their short-sighted friend moves a little like this when Oceng is reunited with his brother. And the heart-rending moment when Wiel is not allowed to stay with the family.

She wrote a couple of episodes of Boardwalk Empire.

Suspicion (1941 Alfred Hitchcock)

In Francis Iles' book 'Before the Fact' (1932) a ne'er-do-well husband cheerfully murders his father-in-law and wallflower wife. The Hays Office though isn't going to let you make such a film - why was that fair? Why were films subjected to more control than books? The screenplay was drafted by Alma and Joan Harrison, then elaborated by Samson Raphaelson (a frequent collaborator with Lubitsch).

Cary Grant was persuaded to appear thinking he would be that murderer. Film also features Joan Fontaine - 'Behind the leading lady's back, the star told close friends he had a genuine impulse to strangle the leading lady - an enmity that informed his mercurial performance' (McGilligan) - and  Nigel Bruce, Dame May Whitty, Cedrick Hardwicke, Isabel Jeans and Leo G Carroll.

Hitch was also to have his murderer-hero have an affair with the maid, and an illegitimate child, but censorship precluded that too. So in the original ending, Grant was to poison his wife with the milk, but she had written a letter to her mother revealing the truth about him - the next morning "Cary Grant, whistling cheerfully, walks over to the mailbox and pops the letter in" (Hitch to Truffaut). That sure sounds like an ending. But the censors interfered and thus we were left to this misdirection ending in which Grant isn't the murderer after all. I mean, it sort of works... He's just a bastard...

In terms of style it's lesser Hitch, with memorable 'Murder' scene over scrabble and the lighting of the main hallways which evokes a spider's web (Harry Stradling). Franz Waxman scored, for RKO.

Mr. Holmes (2015 Bill Condon)

Info here. Souce novel by Mitch Cullin - 'A Slight Trick of the Mind' - was published in 2005, and the fact the author's partner is Japanese, and they share residences in both countries, perhaps suggests the Japanese element in the novel. The book was adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher, author of mainly historical stuff like The Duchess (Kiera Knightley and Ralph Fiennes) and an episode of the badly judged Upstairs Downstairs remake.

Dave Elsey was the makeup artist responsible for aging Mr. McKellan.

Could think of no good reason why it was shot in widescreen.

Dog Day Afternoon (1975 Sidney Lumet)

A true story, written up in 'Life' magazine in 1972 by P.F. Kluge and Thomas Moore as 'The Boys in the Bank' - I think the book by Leslie Waller aka Patrick Mann is just a novelisation of the film, which was written by Frank Pierson. I can see why people turn novels into films, but not the other way round. Anyhow, most of the plot details (the sex change and relationship with other 'wife', interaction with hostages, even the reactions of the crowd, the ending) were all substantially true. The Attica prison riot which the robber throws at the bystanders occurred in 1971 where prisoners took control of the prison with demands for better conditions - 43 died.

It has a good, taut beginning (there's no music in any of the film), but it's also amusing - one of the three loses his nerve and goes home! Leaving Al Pacino and John Cazale, who is at once sympathetic and worrying - they're both Vietnam vets, but he's the one the FBI identify as being the true threat.

Pierson also wrote The Anderson Tapes, A Star Is Born (which coincidentally is seen playing at a cinema in this film  - though it must have been one of the earlier versions - even so...) and Cool Hand Luke, and ended up a consulting producer on Mad Men.

Penelope Allen is good as the senior (and most feisty) bank teller, Sully Boyar the manager. With Beulah Garrick, Carol Kane, Sandra Kazan, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Amy Levitt, John Marriott (guard). And Charles Durning (lead cop), Gary Springer, James Broderick (FBI), and Susan Peretz and Chris Sarandon as the two wives.

Marcia Jane Kurtz, Penelope Allen and Al Pacino

Shot on location by Victor J Kemper and edited by Dede Allen, her deft touch evident in the one and only time Pacino fires his rifle, and the ensuing flurry of montage.

Mildred Pierce (1945 Michael Curtiz)

A film of marvellous sweep and style - coming from the recognisable director-composer team of Casablanca. Even the dissolves are fabulously done. James M Cain's novel, as adapted by Ranald MacDougall, comes over like a Sirk rags-to-riches / family melodrama bookended with a film noir. Composed and shot with enormous style by Ernie Haller.

Joan Crawford is the too loving mother. Excellent cast comprises Jack Carson, Ann Blyth as Veda (who Q describes at one point as a 'whore-let'), Zachery Scott, Eve Arden (to Carson: 'Leave something on me. I might catch cold"), Bruce Bennett, Lee Patrick (Mrs. Biederhof), Butterfly McQueen, Moroni Olsen (inspector), and Jo Ann Marlowe as the doomed little sister.

Maybe my favourite shot in the picture - dark turns into light

The Set-Up (1949 Robert Wise)

Taut, tight, music-free noir drama tales place in real time as down on luck boxer Robert Ryan ignores being told to take a dive, with nasty consequences. Audrey Totter is his concerned girl. With George Tobias (his manager), Alan Baxter ('Little Boy'), Wallace Ford, Percy Helton (much on TV - a familiar face). Good fight scene, well-directed film is nice and short.

Shot by Milton Krasner. Based on a narrative poem from Joseph Moncure March written in 1928 (he also wrote 'The Wild Party' which became another film) - the adaptation is by Art Cohn. RKO.

Sleepless in Seattle (1993 Nora Ephron & scr)

Jeff Arch came up with satisfying, referential story which he, Ephron and David Ward wrote for the screen. Opens with Jimmy Durante singing 'As Time Goes By', much reference to An Affair To Remember. Ross Malinger (contrary to my expectations, still acting - I was expecting him to be a CEO or somesuch) is Tom Hanks' son; Meg Ryan is clearly with the wrong bloke, wimpy Bill Pullman. With Rita Wilson, David Hyde Pierce.

Most impressive photography by Sven Nykvist.

For chemistry and warmth, Ryan and Hanks are a difficult couple to beat.

The Green Mile (1999 Frank Darabont & scr)

It was a Stephen King novel. The story reeks of religious allegory (Michael Clarke Duncan = Jesus). He is great, so are Tom Hanks and David Morse (great chemistry). Fuck me, it's a long film (three hours). With Bonnie Hunt, James Cromwell, Michael Jeter, Graham Greene (another prisoner), Doug Hutchison, Sam Rockwell, Barry Pepper, Patricia Clarkson, Jeffrey deMunn and several great trained mice.

Unmistakably scored by Thomas Newman, shot by David Tattersall.

A Clockwork Orange (1971 Stanley Kubrick & scr)

I don't find Malcolm McDowell's character attractive - in fact I enjoyed all the shit that was coming to him. Kubrick's self-banned controversy looks tame compared to today's nastiness, and in the way it attacks various institutions (prison, religion, politics) it reminds me of O Lucky Man (having McD in both probably helps form that link). Very stylishly made (Kubrick was doing the hand-held stuff himself) and often very funny (moment in hospital, for example, and the actorly flourishes of the couple that tease Alex on-stage). The most upsetting moments are McD with his eyes clamped open - his face looks oddly comic and touching.

Some quite idiosyncratic acting from Patrick Magee, Michael Bates (an almost Pythonish prison guard), Warren Clarke ('Dim'), Adrienne Corri, Paul Farrell (tramp), Miriam Karlin ('Catlady'), Pauline Taylor (psychiatrist), Anthony Sharp (politician, much on TV, also in Barry Lyndon), Philip Stone, Steven Berkoff, David Prowse, Gillian Hills.

There's something very catchy about Beethoven's Ninth played on Moog synthesizers. The Purcell theme ('Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary') comes over as totally creepy and maybe paved the way for such horror scores as Dawn of the Dead. John Alcott's photography is claustrophobic, favouring wide lenses - shot on location using natural light in 1.66:1. Very weird production design too (John Barry). One of the first films to use radio mikes.

Suspiria (1977 Dario Argento & co-scr)

Definitely the most gorgeous horror film ever created, with eye-watering photography (Luciano Tovoli) and production design (Giuseppe Bassan), fired along by the director's own rock score played by Goblin. Actually the gory close-ups don't add a thing.

What happens? I don't know.

Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Udo Kier, Alida Valli, Joan Bennett.

Often looks like a silent era horror film. But it's insanely beautiful...

The blood, though, is much too red!

Walkabout (1970 Nic Roeg & ph)

Written by Edward Bond, based on Donald Payne's 1959 novel 'The Children', published under the pseudonym of James Vance Marshall. The kid (Luc Roeg) actually seems the more practical of the two. Sensational combination of photography (often using a zoom lens, but not annoyingly) and Tony Gibbs' editing, with added attraction of fabulous, lush John Barry score.

Jenny Agutter (17), David Gulpilil, John Meillon.

Jenny on location

How can you write a book about Nic Roeg ('Fragile Geometry' by Lanza) and not mention Tony Gibbs?