A Wasted Life

The Child (USA, 1977)

2012-01-24T12:40:00.014+01:00

This late-career Harry Novak release, The Child – aka Zombie Child, Children of the Night and Kill and Go Hide – is an odd find indeed. A super-low-budget film – according to popular (and most likely true) legend, it was shot on short ends (that is, re-canned film stock leftover from other productions) – the film features a cast and crews of total unknowns, most of whom seem to lack any ability of note. For a film produced in the US with a fully US crew, the film has a surreally Italian feel: one could easily imagine that some Italotrash master – Bruno Mattei, for example – made it while on vacation in California, for it shares the unbelievably lousy post-dubbing, notably bad acting, inanely elliptical plot development and overall shoddy production common to so many of the Italo-trash horror films that were foisted upon the unsuspecting public as "American" productions during the Golden Age of Grindhouse. But no, The Child is a 100% Californian independent film by an American director – Robert Voskanian – who, like most people involved in the project, has never made another feature film since. (Scriptwriter Ralph Lucas, however, did supply the screenplay to Planet of Dinosaurs [trailer] the same year that he wrote The Child.)
On the University of Chicago website, the film is referred to as "a sublime Gothic classic." The terms "sublime," "Gothic" and "classic" are all extremely malleable and, actually, not necessarily wrong when talking about the film. Not only does narrative follow the traditional Gothic concept of a single woman without family who goes somewhere remote to tend the child of a family with a secret, but the film as a whole is sublimely bad and thus, likewise, is a true if under-appreciated classic of bad film.
But to say the last doesn't mean that the film has no redeeming qualities – some redeeming aspects of The Child are the noteworthy beauty of the lead actress, Laurel Barnett, and the transcendental surrealism that infuses more than one scene and some of the dialogue – it just means that the film needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt to be appreciated. Of course, it is possible that less salt is needed the better the quality of the film transfer; the quality of the DVD we viewed was wretchedly dark and murky, thus castrating the concept of "cinematography." But while a better transfer might make the film more visually pleasant, it won't improve the acting, and that is what perhaps does the film the most damage.
The Child, which seems to be set around 1940 in the middle of rural Buttfuck Nowhere, has a streamlined if somewhat schizophrenic and bizarre plot. A young woman named Alicianne (Laurel Barnett*) returns to the rural region of her birth to become the live-in housekeeper of an unpleasant, widowed farmer (Frank Janson) who lives with his mostly silent adult son Len (Richard Hanners) and his obnoxious pre-pubescent daughter Rosalie (Rosalie Cole). Rosalie is an anti-social loner with telekinetic powers whose only friends are the zombies inhabiting the nearby graveyard where her mother is buried; when the zombies aren't out and about eating animals in the woods, they do the bidding of their young friend and violently mutilate and kill those she feels are responsible for the death of her mother. This includes the slightly batty neighbor Mrs. Whitfield (Ruth Ballan), the thieving Asian gardener (Slosson Bing Jong) – whose presence would indicate that WW II had not yet started or was long over – and, eventually, her own father. Alicianne and Len try to escape, but end up trapped inside a nearby mill where Len valiantly tries to fend off the killer zombies as Alicianne collapses into a screeching, quivering and totally helpless mess...
Though the zombies are always lurking in the background throughout the whole movie, the first half definitely has a more supernatural and threatening feel, while the second half flips into 100% pure zombies on attack. Thus, the last half of the film definitely brings to mind the much more successful classic Night of the Living Dead (1968 / trailer / full film), which works in every way that The Child fails. To put it simply, Night is a good and scary film; The Child is not.
Although a roadkill of a movie lacking even one real scare, in the end The Child is also relatively difficult to totally hate for, as big of a fuck-up as the movie is, it is not entirely unredeeming: unfailingly grim, it also often achieves an unusually unreal otherworldliness and, as mentioned before, is likewise interspersed with some truly leftfield, totally bonker interludes, scenes and dialog that are undeniably memorable. The soundtrack "music", by computer-game music composer Rob Wallace, is likewise from outer space: it alternates between a relatively routine piano score and an excessively grating, atonal moog-dominated aural attack that brings to mind the worst of the "computer music" LPs once so prevalent in undiscerning, low-grade thrift shops.
The Child – another bizarre, bad film that should have been better than it is while simultaneously actually being better than it is. Fans of early gore – as in: no CGI – will definitely find the film satisfying, as will purveyors of cinema obscura. Everyone else might be well advised to watch something else... like the original Night of the Living Dead, perhaps.

*Laurel Barnett, by the way, contributed a piece on her experiences while filming The Child to the book Gods in Polyester, or, A Survivor's Account of 70s Cinema Obscura (Succubus Press / 2004). What she said, we know not, but it would surely be interesting to read...

The Locals (New Zealand, 2003)

2012-01-17T13:21:00.009+01:00

We went into this unknown Kiwi flick with less than high expectations, assuming that it would simply be yet another body-count movie but populated by folks with nice accents. Soon enough, we came to think that it might instead be yet another low budget, community-of-backwood-psychos film ala 2008's Australian Dying Bread (trailer), which is populated by fewer nice accents... But somewhere along the way, we suddenly found ourselves no longer trying to second-guess the film's intentions and, instead, simply got lost in a relatively modest but clever (if flawed) and surprisingly well-made horror movie. True, an astute viewer can predict most of the twists in advance – especially if they have an eye for skin tone – but The Locals nevertheless manages to keep the viewer perched tensely in interest all the way to its memorable ending. Odd that the film is, to date, the only feature film of music video and commercial director Greg Page, who also wrote the script. (M. Night Shyamalan, for example, has managed to make a viable if no-longer-respected career out of making far more expensive and indefinitely worse "surprise ending" films.)
The Locals opens with a beautifully done aerial shot that glides across the fertile, green farmlands of rural New Zealand, inter-spaced with occasional shots of deserted, forlorn houses and the rusty carcasses of cars and machinery. Then a tractor rolls up to the edge of a wood and an armed man disembarks to begin digging up an unmarked grave, but before he can finish he is knifed from behind and falls dead in the shallow hole he has dug. After this rather eye-catching opening, The Locals moves to Auckland to introduce its two male leads, Grant (John Barker) and Paul (Dwayne Cameron) – and between the two, it's pretty easy to guess who the "Final Guy" will be.
Grant has been dumped by his squeeze for not like The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003), and Paul manages to convince him to leave for a shared weekend of surfing somewhere on the Waikato Coast. At this point, the film almost begins to drag, but the interlude is needed to establish the depth of their friendship; in any event, just at the point when one begins to think "get on with it," night falls and the classic shortcut is taken – but plans for the beach get tossed aside with the sudden appearance of two girls, Kelly (Kate Elliott) and Lisa (Aidee Walker), both sporting oddly outdated outfits, who invite the lads to join then at a party. Before long, the girls are nowhere to be seen and the boys crash the car, forcing them to search for help. Instead, they witness a murder and suddenly find themselves on the run from the murderer and his gang of back-land thugs....
If the film does drag a tad initially, once the main bad guy Bill (Peter McCauley, also seen in Perfect Creature [2006 / trailer]) shows up the film takes off and tension and twists definitely increase. Grant and Paul quickly get separated: Paul loses his car keys but hooks up with Kelly and Lisa, while Grant is forced at gunpoint by a man named Martin (Paul Glover of The Ugly [1997 / trailer]) to finish digging up the grave seen at the start of the film. Between the various terrifying events they experience, it soon becomes very clear that the people of the area have remarkable regenerative powers...
The Locals never actually answers the question why those in that specific area of New Zealand keep coming back to life, but then, the film is not out to explain the supernatural but to present the supernatural, which it does successfully. Regrettably, it is hard to really talk about the film's slight narrative flaws without giving away too much of the plot, so we'll rest here by simply stating that there are some glaring illogicalities in the events that transpire, but the game cast, sure direction and constant movement manage to gloss over them well enough to keep the film gripping. The Locals also hides its modest budget well, and even manages to pull on the heart strings without becoming maudlin. In general the actors (particularly the younger ones) do a top job, and the direction is amazingly mature, occasionally even dipping into arty without ever becoming too obtrusive – the scene of Grant driving the car through the countryside close to the end, like the opening aerial shot, is particularly fine.
In the end, though dotted with the occasional horror shock, The Locals is less a dead-teenager or horror film than a supernatural suspense film. For a modern B-film, it is a bit light on the blood and violence, but at least both are effective when utilized. It might not be a masterpiece, but it does make for an enjoyable viewing – as such, The Locals is thus well worth giving a shot.

Ong Bak III (Thailand, 2010)

2012-01-09T17:30:00.011+01:00

At least we now know the slim strand that connects Ong Bak I with Ong Bak II & III: the Buddha statue that has its head stolen in part one is actually made in part three. Well, at least the filmmakers (as in Tony Jaa & Panna Rittikrai) managed to interconnect the flicks to each other somehow, however tangently... But other than that, the less said about part three, probably the better. As abruptly and out of the blue as Ong Bak II ended, it was at least an exciting, enthralling and memorable film; with the exception of the first ten minutes, Ong Bak III is anything but exciting, enthralling and memorable, and very much feels and plays like, well, a disjointed religious tract and a stretched storyline.
If you happened to read the review to Ong Bak II here at A Wasted Life, then you know that we found the flick almost as good as a blowjob. But we also pointed out that the movie felt like a wanna-be epic that ran out of time and thus ended out of the blue. Ong Bak III, on the other hand, feels like a half-hour's worth of narrative that had to be stretched to fit the what seems like a ten-hour running time (in fact, it is only around two hours long – which is still about 1.5 hours too much).
Ong Bak III starts up more-or-less where Ong Bak II ends. Tien (Tony Jaa) is now a prisoner of the evil Lord Rajasena (Sarunyu Wongkrachang of 13: Game of Death [2006 / trailer]), who first has him beaten to pulp and then has every bone in his body broken. It is an intensely painful episode that is perhaps the most successful segment of the film, but nonetheless not at all enjoyable to watch. Before Tien can be put to death, however, a dues ex machina in the form of a messenger arrives with a pardon from the King and rides off with the near-dead Tien. Thereafter, for the rest of the film, most of the time when Tien shows up it is to lie around half-dead, feel miserable as a cripple, hug trees, straighten his bones and karma, and learn to dance before, finally, he takes part in the mandatory showdown. Almost any scene in which he is in up until the end is drawn out and numbingly dull. In-between, realizing that an action film needs some action, the filmmakers introduce the subplot of how Lord Rajasena is first slowly driven crazy by bad, karma-born nightmares and then deposed by one of his supernaturally evil henchmen, Bhuti Sangkha (Dan Chupong of Born to Fight / Kerd ma lui [1984 / Thai trailer], Dynamite Warrior / Khon fai bin [2006 / trailer], Muay Thai Giant / Somtum [2008 / trailer] and The Tsunami Warrior / Puen yai jon salad [2008 / Thai trailer]). More padding follows, and then the film finally ends peachy keen with happy, good Buddhists meditating in front of their statue, Ong Bak.
Ong Bak III suffers dreadfully due to the fact that the filmmakers seem to forget that they are making an action film and not a Buddhist tract. The occasional mondo highlight like a bodiless head lying in the dirt sputtering out curses or the cool nightmare sequences offer brief seconds of respite, but they do not make the film pass any quicker. The fight scenes of the subplot might be well staged, but they nevertheless come across as padding – as does 90% of the film. And as for the big showdown, it is so mind-bogglingly "what-the-fuck?!?" in such a bad way that the viewer really feels as if they're having the piss taken out of them. Normally in films like this the oft-laughable acting and bad wigs adds an endearing aspect, but that is not the case here, because when added to the non-existent drama and snail's pace narrative, it is all simply too much bad and not enough fun.
Ong Bak III is not just a disaster, it truly sucks feces. Imagine a Buddhist Jack Chick pamphlet with as many pages as Moby Dick and you can well imagine what this film feels like. Do you really want to do that to yourself?

Ten Best in 2011

2012-01-02T09:46:00.017+01:00

As the New Year begins, A Wasted Life wants to once again look back upon all those films, good and bad, that we watched in 2011. We didn't even review a lot of the movies we saw – anything seen in a theater, for example, was not covered, nor were most "found footage" films, or anything caught accidentally on TV and butchered by commercial breaks – but of the forgotten total number feature-length films we wasted our lives watching, more or less a meager 44 were deemed worth either praising or damning on these digital pages. (To the 44 films came an additional 33 entries: the 12 short films of the month, the 21 R.I.P. features and the Best Film in 2010 article.) Some of the movies were really good, some were OK, some were truly crappy and some bowled us over so much that we had trouble controlling our bladder.

As any regular reader of A Wasted Life – there actually seems to be a few, unbelievably enough – knows, what counts to us is not the excellence of the film, per say, but the reaction it got from us. To quote the 2010 entry: "The choice here is also not necessarily based on the quality of the film, but rather how it affected the viewer. Did it leave A Wasted Life open-mouthed in shock? Was it fun to watch? Did it truly entertain?" To that, while the year the given film is from is immaterial to us, what is of importance is that we saw it the first time in 2010: to make our list, the film had to be a new discovery, not a re-watch of something we had seen before. Thus, for example, neither Red Rock West (USA, 1992) nor Soylent Green (USA, 1973) made the list, although they were both definitely highlights of the past year; likewise, the wonderfully trashy Zombie Holocaust (Italy, 1980) also didn't make the cut – perhaps we thought we were seeing something new and unknown when we popped it into the DVD player, but it proved to be a fabulous blast from the past, and thus cannot be included no matter how much we enjoyed it.
Furthermore, none of the monthly short films are eligible, even though the February 2011 Short Film of the Month, The Hangman, from 1964, truly deserves to be on someone's Best Films list.
Our initial list, after the disqualifications above, numbered eleven films that we deemed worthy of special mention, one too many for a Top Ten. After much hemming and hawing, we decided to cut the kimchi western The Good, the Bad, the Weird (Korea, 2008) from the list. Yes, it is a truly great film and well worth watching, but we can't help but find that the filmmakers lacked the balls to give the film the truly shocking, nihilistic ending it so needed, and thus it failed to make our list. Likewise, The Good, the Bad, the Weird was the most expensive film to have been made in Korea up till then, so it had the money to be good – although, as Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich both amply evidence, big budgets don't necessarily mean good films. Still, we decided to allow budget to influence our decision this year.
As always, the films are NOT presented in any order of preference. The titles are all linked to the original reviews presented on A Wasted Life. Read and enjoy – or better: go watch the films yourself.

Nightmare City
(Italy, 1980, dir. Umberto Lenzi)

AKA: City of the Walking Dead. The zombie attack on the disco dancers alone made this film a shoo-in on our list. Starring one of the all-time most wooden actors in the world, the Mexican exploitation-film king Hugo Stiglitz, Nightmare City is an ecologically-minded trash classic that is a lot more fun than it is good. As one of the first "zombie" films to feature high-speed flesheaters, it delivers the goods in gore, bad acting, non-sensical plot development, and bad dubbing. One of the few films that ever saw us cheering when the lead female actress died, the true ending should break the film – as the trick has so many other films – but oddly enough, it really seems to fit this enjoyable piece of classic Italo-trash.

Trailer:

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
(USA, 2010, dir. Eli Craig)

Can someone explain to me how this baby has managed to slip through the cracks like it has? Yeah, sure: You've heard of it – like everyone has. So why haven't you seen it yet? This intelligent twist on the killer-hillbilly dead-teenager film is a blast – high on blood, heavy on laughs and, for the gals, it even has true love and a happy ending. (OK, no nekkid flesh, but this a film from 21st century USA, so do you really expect any?)

Trailer:

Planet Terror

(USA, 2007, dir. Robert Rodriguez)

It seems almost ironic that the original Grindhouse double-feature project as instigated by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez ended up with Tarantino making his to-date worst film and Rodriguez making one of his best. As an imitation of the real thing, this faux-Grindhouse film has almost all the right ingredients – only the lack of that essential Grindhouse ingredient, nekkid boobies, keeps it from achieving perfection. But it nevertheless comes close enough to the classic experience to almost make you literally smell the rancid air and feel the sticky seats of the best skid-row theaters of yesterday. Planet Terror kicks ass! Its sly visual reference to Thundercrack! (1975) is only one of many highlights in a film that overflows in tactless gore and goo and intelligent stupidity.

Trailer:

The Last Man on Earth

(Italy/USA, 1964, dir. Sidney Salkow & Ubaldo B. Ragona)

Trailer:

The plot, as supplied on Internet Archives: "This classic features Vincent Price as scientist Robert Morgan in a post apocalyptic nightmare world. The world has been consumed by a ravenous plague that has transformed humanity into a race of bloodthirsty vampires. Only Morgan proves immune, and becomes the solitary vampire slayer." We had read about this film for years before we finally got around to watching it. We're a big fan of both the original novel the movie is based on, Richard Matherson's I Am Legend, and the 1971 Charlton Heston take on the tale, The Omega Man (trailer), but it took the abysmal Will Smith film of I Am Legend (2007 / trailer) to make us finally check out the low-budget, Italo-American Vincent Price version that legendarily inspired Night of the Living Dead (1968 / trailer / full film). Of all the film versions we've seen, as uneven as The Last Man on Earth is, it is also the best. Without a doubt a classic of modern horror films, it is well worth watching.

Full film:

[REC]

(Spain, 2007, dir. Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza)

We here at A Wasted Life are not a fan of the horror films by the Spanish filmmaker Jaume Balagueró; in fact, up until [REC], we hadn't liked a single film he had made. Despite the obvious dues [REC] pays – like hundreds of other films – to the found-footage technique of Blair Witch Project (1999 / trailer), the film is nevertheless well made, well paced, scary as hell, horrific, and well anchored by an extremely likable heroine. We weren't just surprised when we saw this flick, we were literally bowled over – not only had Balagueró finally made a good film, but unlike his others, [REC] lived up to its word of mouth. Still, we almost dropped this film in favor of The Good, the Bad, the Weird, even though the two films have nothing in common. You see, two years after making [REC], Balagueró & Plaza regurgitated the first sequel to the film, [REC]2, a film we so hated that we wanted to slight [REC] out of simple spite. But in the end, we decided to be fair: ignoring the fact that Balagueró & Plaza have created another unneeded, dead-horse-flogging franchise from what was a truly good film, [REC] is simply far more consistent in its vision than The Good, the Bad, the Weird, and thus definitely deserves it place on our list, where we now put it with gritted teeth.

Trailer:

Valhalla Rising

(UK/Denmark, 2009, dir. Nicolas Winding Refn)

Once again, a film featuring actor Mads Mikkelsen makes our list – the decidedly odd, religiously-minded Danish head-trip Adam's Apples (2005 / trailer) made our Ten Best Films in 2009 list. As we say in our review of the movie, "Valhalla Rising is genetically enhanced crossbreed of sativa and indica." A wildly arty and violent film, Valhalla Rising is a love it or hate it film – and we thought in came close to being newly waxed poontang.

Trailer:

Dance of the Dead

(USA, 2008, dir. Gregg Bishop)

This film definitely has its cuteness factor: real teens playing in a zom-com about teens vs zombies. Well-made with a young and game cast, the dialog is witty without being overdone, and the action is bloody and violent without ever being mean-spirited. Good for the nights that you know you want a funny film that doesn't insult your intelligence and doesn't overstay its welcome. Dance of the Dead is one you can watch with the whole family...

Trailer:

Night Train to Terror

(USA, 1985, dir. John Carr, Phillip Marshak, Tom McGowan, Jay Schlossberg-Cohen & Gregg C. Tallas)

This is a film that has to be seen to be believed. Night Train to Terror is without a doubt one of the worst films ever made in the world – or rather, worst films ever culled together, as this "anthology film" was sewn together from four other films in various states of completion: Cataclysm (1980 / full film), Death Wish Club (1983) and Scream Your Head Off – the last, unfinished, was eventually molded into Marilyn Alive and Behind Bars (1992). But, as sometimes happens when a film really goes so utterly, terribly wrong, something unexplainable "right" occurs, and the monstrosity suddenly becomes something surreally entertaining. We love this film – it's the perfect film to show, for example, as a double-feature with Slugs (1988 / trailer), a film that made our Ten Best Films in 2010 list.

Trailer:

Trailer provided by Video Detective

Splinter

(USA, 2007, dir. Toby Wilkins)

How much you'll like this film will probably depend on how much you like Jack Arnold films and the like. Splinter is a truly nostalgic experience, but in contemporary clothing. It might not offer anything new, but that's not the real point: it shows a love and understanding of the classic monster films of the 50s that once dominated the afternoon Creature Feature shows of local TV stations, paying loving respect to the source while adding enough of the new to not simply be a rehash. We liked it a lot... the perfect double feature with the first Tremors (1990 / trailer) movie.

Trailer:

Trick 'r Treat

(USA, 2009, dir. Michael Dougherty)

Trick 'r Treat is another one of those films that can only lead you to the conclusion that studio heads are fucking retards. Like Tucker and Dale vs. Evil above, this baby has been unjustly mishandled by the ones in charge and illogically treated like a fist wife that you just don't want to deal with – possibly because she is both better looking, more intelligent and sexier than your present one. This film is scary, is funny, is well shot and well acted and well edited – in other words, it is simply a really good film. Yeah, once again: You've heard of it – like everyone has. So why haven't you seen it yet? Make it your yearly Halloween tradition, it deserves to be!

Trailer:

Muzorama (France, 2008)

2011-12-29T12:50:00.005+01:00

Muzorama from Muzorama Team on Vimeo.

The horror hidden in the mundanity of suburban France, where women are romanced and men lose more than just their heads. This candy-colored 3D animation short is loosely based on the illustrations of the French graphic artist Muzo (aka Jean-Philippe Masson), the examples of which seen here are from publications from the end of the last century (left: Des Gens by Placid & Muzo [Paris, France, 1984]; and right: Chacal Puant #8, edited by Blanquet, with Placid, Y5/P5, Muzo, El Rotringo, H. Valium, Julie Doucet et al. [Conflans, France, 1994]).
On the web, information about the artist is scant (in English, at least). The man, pictured below, was born in Rennes, France, in 1960. While at art school in Caen, he used the pseudonym Muzo for a fanzine he published with his friend Placid and the name stuck. Since then, he published work in numerous magazines, including the legendary comic art publication RAW. Aside from his illustration work, he is active as a painter and engraver and as the writer/illustrator of children's books.
Muzorama, directed by Elsa Brehin, Raphaël Calamote, Mauro Carraro, Maxime Cazaux, Emilien Davaud, Laurent Monneron and Axel Tillement and written by Emilien Davaud and Raphäel Calamote took six weeks to produce using Autodesk 3D Studio Max, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects.
Since its initial release, Muzorama has gained extraordinary popularity on the web and has been seen at numerous short film festivals – but we just discovered it the other week and were so blown away by its excellent craftsmanship and total surrealistic scurrility that we just had to make it the Short Film of the Month for December 2011. Enjoy.

The Night Flier (USA, 1997)

2011-12-20T08:56:00.009+01:00

"Never believe what you publish, and never publish what you believe."
Richard Dees (Miguel Ferrer)

A rarity twofold: a Stephen King horror film without a cameo by the author, and a Stephen King horror film that doesn't completely suck. OK, we admit it, not all Stephen King horror films suck – we rather liked Thinner (1996 / trailer), for example – but most of them seem to; as good as some of his horror books are – generally the shorter ones, the few in which he doesn't come across as if he is paid by word – they have, as a whole, translated poorly to the big screen. (We ain't even gonna bother talking about the little screen, where we've yet to see a project that didn't put us to sleep, no matter how well they were received by the masses.) Part of the problem is that so many things in his books that might work scary in the mind's eye look stupid on screen – a good example in The Night Flier being, assuming that the appearance was take from the original description in the short story, the cloak the titular character wears, which comes straight from a Bela Lugosi film circa his Ed Wood days. Sorry, not scary: an anachronism that verges less on being iconic than simply being ludicrous – even after the film started to work, the cloak still got giggles from the group we saw the film with.
The Night Flier was the directorial debut of one-spurt wonder Mark Pavia, who hasn't made a film since he helmed this one, which has his main squeeze Julie Entwistle in the lead female role. Why he's never done another flick is a bit of a mystery, for even if he is partial to that 80s trope of spotlights in the fog to infer a scary location, he does a pretty good job at keeping the tension growing despite the occasional illogical inanities of the script – which he also wrote. True, he lets the boom mike slip into the image thrice too often, and it is odd that he didn't notice that "Miguel Ferrer" sports an obvious but disappearing Castro-Clone mustache the first time he lands his plane, but the film is never boring, something even practiced filmmakers cannot always claim when they film a King adaptation. (By the way, Julie Entwistle has also seemingly fallen off the face of the earth since this film: her only other film job was as a "student" in the really fun comedy In & Out [1997 / trailer].)
The tale The Night Flier concerns Richard Dees (George Clooney's cousin Miguel Ferrer, of RoboCop [1987 / trailer], DeepStar Six [1989 / trailer], Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me [1992 / trailer] and Hot Shots! Part Deux [1993 / trailer]), a hardened, whiskey-swilling and extremely unlikeable reporter for a sleazy tabloid called The National Enquirer – I mean, The Inside View – who's investigating a story on a serial killer he dubs the Night Flier, an under-the-radar serial killer that flies between small, remote airports in a Cessna Skymaster killing people. Dees is convinced that the murderer is just some nutcase that thinks he's a vampire and is out to get the story before his new rival at the rag does, a young woman named Katherine Barr that he dismissively nicknames "Jimmy" (as in "Jimmy Olsen"). Despite visions and warnings, Dee can't let go and finally confronts his quarry (Michael H. Moss) at Wilmington International Airport, where he is met with a scene of blood and carnage...
The Night Flier is not exactly an action-heavy film; in fact, it relies more on occasional fake scares and growing tension to keep the viewer interested. And that it does so, considering what a dislikable asshole Dee is, is not a small feat. Unlike so many of King's tales, The Night Flier is not one of a burnout on the path to redemption; much more, it is about a sleazeball barreling towards self-destruction. If the Night Flier himself feeds upon the blood of humans, Dee mirrors him in that he feeds upon the miseries of mankind, a point that comes to fore again and again as Dees tracks down his next headlining story. And blind to his own rot and the misery of others, Dees literally flies straight into death's arms with only a camera as his weapon; despite all the warnings – as visions and as blood-smeared messages – he never stops to reconsider his actions. The big show down, in addition to all the severed latex and cow's blood, literally has one of the all time best pissing scenes ever caught on film (though the one in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance [2012 / trailer] is sorta cool, too).
Needless to say, the film has some glaring plot holes (like the Night Flier's apparent ability to show up places at will to write bloody warnings on windows) and unresolved dangling threads, but for that the film does manage to overcome its selected flaws and keep the viewer intrigued. It might have been nice if the tale had left fewer questions unanswered, but as a straight and simple horror film, The Night Flier does its job without insulting the viewer's intelligence or patience. That, and some noticeable visual verve and gobs of red stuff and body parts helps make for a more than passable 93 minutes – something that is still a rarity for a horror film based on a Stephen King source.

R.I.P.: Donald Sharp

2011-12-20T08:42:00.045+01:00

19 April 1921 – 18 December 2011

Born in Hobart, Tasmania, Sharp began his career in Australia as an actor. He enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force on 7 April 1941, and after the war and following his discharge as a corporal on 17 March 1944 he moved to England. After a few insignificant film parts in unimportant films like 1950's Ha'penny Breeze (which he also co-wrote) and the forgotten pro-Colonialist Claudette Colbert film Outpost in Malaysia aka The Planter's Wife (1952), he turned to scriptwriting and direction. In the mid-1960s, he gained a reputation as a man who could work well with limited budgets and thus became a popular genre-film director, in particular for Hammer. For most of his career, he specialized in thrillers, horror films and comedies – as well as some TV work for such notable English cult programs as The Avengers and Ghost Squad – but spent the twilight years doing uninteresting mini-series, including a few based on the best selling trash novels of Barbara Taylor Bradford. At the time of his death he had not made a film in 22 years. Here is review of his films of note and lesser note.

The Cruel Sea

(1953, dir. Charles Frend)

Donald Sharp has a miniscule part as a Lt. Commander somewhere in this classic British war film. It was his last job as an actor. Find him if you can.

Trailer:

The Golden Disc

(1958)

Aka The In-between Age. This is the second film that Sharp directed, and the seventh that he wrote. The Guardian, in their superciliously condescending obituary about the director, says "The Golden Disc [is] packed with forgotten British skiffle and rock'n'roll stars performing mainly in a faddish coffee bar." Wikipedia, on the other hand, prefers to talk about the film's historical aspects: it is the first British rock 'n' roll movie, was released a year before Val Guest's Expresso Bongo (1959 / full film) and two ahead of Beat Girl (1960 / full film), and features Christopher Lee as a strip-joint owner. Britmovie.com says "The acting is wooden and awkward – and Mary Steele is delightfully bad, in a particularly 1950s way."

Scene from the Film:

Linda

(1960)

Two years later, Sharp directed this teen film, which was screened as co-feature with Tony Richardson's "kitchen sink drama" Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (trailer). It's now considered a lost film, and is on the British Film Institute's "75 Most Wanted" list of missing British feature films. The BFI gives the plot as follows: "Bored with life, Phil (Alan Rothwell) joins the Chief's gang, but when he meets Linda (Carol White) tottering on her high heels, his interest re-focuses on her. He takes her to Brighton on his scooter, but on the way back he makes a pass and she puts him in his place. When the gang want to defend 'their' territory, the local café, they need to call on all their number, and the reluctant Phil is tricked into believing Linda is going out with someone else, and agrees to join in. Phil does discover the truth and quits the gang for good, and others follow his lead, urged by the local 'trendy' vicar, leaving the Chief to fight his own battles. Phil and Linda contemplate marriage."
Doesn't sound exciting, but Carol White does look nifty in white.

Theme to the film:

The Dream Maker
(1963)

Aka It's All Happening. After directing Two Guys Abroad (1962), a movie/TV pilot (starring George Raft) that never got released (another lost film) and a number of episodes for the first year of the highly popular English television series Ghost Squad, Sharp made another teen music film, The Dream Maker. A feel-good film, it tells the tale of Billy Bowles (Tommy Steele), a musician working in a recording studio who arranges a charity concert to raise capital to purchase the building of the orphanage where he grew up. Lots of music.

Tommy Steele singing The Dream Maker:

The Kiss of the Vampire
(1963)

In need of a director who could handle low budgets well, Hammer pulled in Don Sharp to do this film, which was originally intended to be the third installment of their Dracula franchise as well as the second not to feature Dracula himself (like the film that it follows, The Brides of Dracula [1960 / trailer]); it ended up being a stand-alone vampire film. (The ending of the film was even supposedly originally intended for The Brides of Dracula and was scrapped due to Peter Cushing's objections; it does, however, appear in the paperback novelization of The Brides of Dracula.) In the US, the film was cut and then re-titled Kiss of Evil for TV, resulting in a much less bloody movie that often doesn't make sense and is totally anti-woman empowerment. The plot: Gerald (Edward de Souza) and Marianne Harcourt (Jennifer Daniel) are a honeymooning couple in driving through 20th-century Bavaria when their car breaks down. They become caught up in a cult led by the vampire Dr. Ravna (Noel Willman) and his two blood-sucking children Carl (Barry Warren) and Sabena (Jacquie Wallis). Dr. Ravna has the hots for Marianne and wants her for his own...

Trailer:

Heiss weht der Wind
(1964, dir. Rolf Olsen)

Aka Legend of a Gunfighter. It is open to question just to what extent "Donald Sharp" was truly involved with this Euro-western, an early film from one of Germany's shamefully overlooked B-film, exploitation and Eurotrash directors Rolf Olsen – among his many films of note, Olsen made Playgirls of Frankfurt (1966 / opening credits), Bloody Friday (1972 / trailer), Ekstase (1979 / trailer) and both Shocking Asia I (1972 / trailer) & II (1985) – but imdb and few other sites have Sharp listed as coauthor (along with Paul "This-is-the-only-film-I-ever-wrote" Clydeburn). According to the Spaghetti Western Database, this forgotten and seldom seen German-Austrian production tells of a young man who, "after his parents are killed in a stagecoach holdup [...] learns to be an expert gunman and with his dog Shorty, sets out to avenge their deaths."

Witchcraft
(1964)

Sharp returns to low-budget horror with this generally overlooked but universally praised B&W horror film that features Lon Chaney Jr. in one of his last roles – as Chaney could only slur after noon, his presence is kept to a minimum despite his star credit. At the time of its release, Witchcraft was part of a double feature with Terence Fisher's horror comedy The Horror of It All (1964). Arborgast on Film says: "Witchcraft is a visually stunning little chiller that seems to have taken its cues from John Llewellyn-Moxey's City of the Dead / Horror Hotel (1960 / trailer) and Mario Bava's Black Sunday (1960 / trailer). [...] For all its faults, Witchcraft at least never looks less than grand in all its high contrast black-and-white glory." The plot, edited down from Wikipedia: "In the 17th Century the Lanier family buried a Whitlock woman alive as a witch and took over the Whitlock estate. A bitter hatred of the Lanier family continues into the present. However two descendants, Amy Whitlock (Diane Clare) and Todd Lanier (David Weston), fall in love and plan to marry regardless of the families objections. [When] a bulldozer overturns headstones and churns up graves in the old Whitlock Cemetery [...] an exhumed grave opens and Vanessa Whitlock (Yvette Rees), the witch buried centuries ago, rises from the grave. Together with Morgan Whitlock (Lon Chaney Jr.), they use their witchcraft and one-by-one, the Laniers meet with various fatal accidents...."

Trailer:

The Devil-Ship Pirates
(1964)

This film is also spoken about in A Wasted Life's career review of Jimmy Sangster, who died on 19 August 2011. To simply crib the paragraph there: Hammer's second pirate film, a smidgen less land-locked than the first one (John Gilling's The Pirates of Blood River [1962 / trailer]), and once again starring Christopher Lee. At imdb, dinky-4 of Minneapolis says: "A pirate ship, fighting in 1588 on the side of the Spanish Armada, suffers damage and must put into a village on the British coast for repairs. The village is small and isolated and the Spanish convince the villagers that the English fleet has been defeated and that they, the Spanish, are now their masters. This results in the villagers' sullen cooperation, but rumors and unrest begin to spread and soon the Spanish pirates find themselves facing a revolt."

Trailer:

Curse of the Fly

(1965)

For years, this film was best known from stills found in books about horror films, for it was seldom seen on television and wasn't even released on video; it finally made it onto DVD in 2007 as part of a box set with the two original precursing films, The Fly (1958 / trailer) and Return of the Fly (1959 / trailer). By the time Curse of the Fly was made, Vincent Price (the lead in the first two films) was under contract with AIP and thus unavailable; he was replaced by a somewhat over-the-hill and toupee-wearing Brian Donlevy (The Quatermass Xperiment [1955 / trailer] and Quatermass II [1957 / trailer]). The film, scripted by "prolific and spotty" genre-scribe Harry Spalding (The Watcher in the Woods [1980 / trailer], The Earth Dies Screaming [1964 / trailer], The Day Mars Invaded Earth [1963 / trailer] and Witchcraft [1964, see above]), oddly enough does not feature a fly monster; rather, "the curse" refers – one must assume – to either the fly DNA in the family genes since Return of the Fly which cause the son Martin (George Baker) to age at an accelerated pace or the general bad luck the whole family seems to have with teleporters. The film, which does not end happily, features a lot of freaky-looking victims of teleporter accidents and opens with a great slow motion scene (go here) of Carole Gray escaping a funny farm in bra and panties....

Trailer:

The Face of Fu Manchu
(1965)

Sharp's involvement with the 1964 German western Legend of a Gunfighter / Heiss weht der Wind seems to have paid off career-wise, for when Harry Alan Towers joined the German production company Constantin Film to create a new franchise of thrillers ala the popular Dr Mabuse and Edgar Wallace films, Sharp was pulled in to direct the first of what ended up being five Fu Manchu films. (Sharp only directed this and the first follow up film, The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966), but the headlining star Christopher Lee appeared as Fu Manchu in all the films; Fu Manchu is second only to Dracula as the film character he played most often.) For the West German version, the German actors – the ever-popular Joachim Fuchsberger (The Hand of Power [1968 / trailer]) and Karin Dor (The White Spider [1963 / scene]) – received top-billing alongside Lee, though Fu Manchu's constant nemesis Nayland Smith was actually played by Nigel Green (The Masque of the Red Death [1964 / trailer]). The plot, as supplied by Jeremy Perkins at imdb: "Grisly strangulations in London alert Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard to the possibility that fiendish Fu Manchu may not after all be dead, even though Smith witnessed his execution. A killer spray made from Tibetan berries seems to be involved and clues keep leading back to the Thames."

Trailer:

Rasputin: The Mad Monk
(1966)

Shot back-to-back with Terence Fisher's excellent Dracula: Prince of Darkness (trailer) using the same sets and many of the same actors, Rasputin: The Mad Monk is a typically sumptuous (for Hammer) but less than historically accurate retelling of the final years of the Mad Monk's life. His legendary mesmerizing appeal to women – as Nigel Cawthorne put it in his entertaining sleazy volume Sordid Sex Lives, "Grigory Yefimovich Novykh (that's Rasputin to you and me) was one of Russia's greatest lovers" – and appetite for sex and power receives great attention in this version of his infiltration into the life of the Russian Tsars and resulting influence. For some odd reason, the final assassination scene does not include either his legendary rape by Prince Felix Yussupov or the castration of his legendarily 13-inch member* – but then, neither aspect is included in Yussupov's version of the kill upon which this film is loosely based. Mondo Digital summarizes the plot as: "Rasputin (Christopher Lee), a monk living in Czarist Russia, leads an outward life of religious devotion which masks his true nature: a bestial, murdering lout who uses his mysterious powers of hypnotism and his gift for healing as tools of manipulation. In St. Petersburg, he uses the lovely Sonia (Barbara Shelley) to infiltrate the royal family of Nicholas II and exercise his wicked control over Russia itself. However, political forces begin to brew and conspire to bring an end to the monk's subversive reign."

*Looking like "a blackened, overripe banana, about a foot long," the amputated phallus was last seen in 1968 in Paris.

Trailer:

Our Man in Marrakesh

(1966)

Retitled Bang! Bang! You're Dead! for its US release. The New York Times says "Films like Bang, Bang, You're Dead helped kill the movie career of Tony Randall in the mid-1960s" – but who ever believes The New York Times? This euro-spy persiflage possesses a must-see relevance best summed up simply with: "Tony Randall versus Klaus Kinski." Web of Mystery calls it "One of the best of the 60s Euro-Spy cycle," pointing out its great cast which, aside from Randall and Kinski, also includes Herbert Lom (99 Women [1969 / trailer]), Wilfrid Hyde-White (The Third Man [1949 / trailer]), Terry-Thomas (The Abominable Dr Phibes [1971 / trailer]), Margaret Lee (Venus in Furs [1969 / trailer]) and a delectable Senta Berger (Sherlock Holmes & the Deadly Necklace [1962]). Bang! Bang! You're Dead! is basically a low budget riff on North by Northwest (1959 / trailer) but set in Marrakesh, with Randall playing an innocent oil company rep (verses Cary Grant's ad executive) who gets caught up in a plot involving 2 million bucks bribe money to fix UN votes.

Trailer:

The Brides of Fu Manchu

(1966)

A year after The Face of Fu Manchu, Harry Alan Towers rejoined the German production company Constantin Film to bring the second installment of their Fu Manchu franchise, The Brides of Fu Manchu, once again directed by Sharp (who supposedly also did unaccredited script work). Christopher Lee is still there as Sax Rohmer's villain – he played the part in all installments – but this time around Nayland Smith is played by Douglas Wilmer (The Vampire Lovers [1970 / trailer]), who also returned in 1967 for the 3rd installment The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (German trailer), while the German audience had to be satisfied with Heinz Drache (Hypnosis [1962]), Harald Leipnitz (Die blaue Hand [1967 / trailer]) and the eye candy that was French actress Marie Versini. The literal German title of the film is "The 13 Slaves of Dr Fu Man Chu" – revealing a slightly Teutonic obsession with titles and bondage. Plot: Fu Manchu kidnaps the daughters of scientists to force them to help him build a death ray with which to take over the world – can Nayland Smith stop him and save the world? What do you think?

German Trailer:

Rocket to the Moon
(1967)

Aka Those Fantastic Flying Fools and/or Blast Off; a slap-stick comedy inspired as much by Jules Verne's novel From the Earth to the Moon as by Ken Annakin's 1965 movie Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (trailer), for which Don Sharp had been the second unit director. And, as in Annakin's film, the lead scoundrel, Captain Sir Harry Washington-Smyth, is played by Terry-Thomas and his moustache. Plot: P.T. Barnum (Burl Ives) decides to become the first person to reach the moon, but has problems with spies and saboteurs and other problems. If you liked Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963 / trailer) or The Great Race (1965 / trailer) or Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies (1969) or even The Cannonball Run (1981 / trailer), then you might find this film entertaining. Aside from Ives – playing a part supposedly originally intended for Bing Crosby – the "all star cast" here includes Troy Donahue (The Chilling [1989 / trailer]), Gert Fröbe (The Green Archer [1961 / German trailer]), Dennis Price (Vampyros Lesbos [1971 / German trailer]), Daliah Lavi (The Whip and the Body [1963 / Italian trailer]), Stratford Johns (Salome's Last Dance [1988 / full film]) and Graham Stark (Bloodbath and the House of Death [1983 / trailer]).

Opening credits:

The Violent Enemy
(1967)

In an odd career choice, Sharp followed the highly commercial comedy Rocket to the Moon with this independent film, an IRA drama based on a book by Jack Higgins; the book, entitled A Candle for the Dead, was originally published under the pseudonym Hugh Marlowe. The film promptly fell into obscurity and presently only seems to be available online as an illegal download. Depending on which online source you believe – no one we know has ever seen it – The Violent Enemy either tells the tale of an IRA bomber (Tom Bell) who escapes from prison and wants nothing more than to live a quiet life in Ireland but is pressured by the IRA to blow up an electronics factory, or it tells of how an IRA bomb expert (Tom Bell) who escapes from prison to stop a plot to blow up a British power station. Online reviews seem to be nonexistent.

First ten minutes:

A Taste of Excitement
(1970)

Aka (on US TV) Why Would Anyone Want to Kill a Nice Girl Like You? Based on Ben Healey's novel Waiting for a Tiger. In the identical review of the film which appears on both modculture.com (credited to David Walker) and cinedelica.com (uncredited), the writer says "[...] A Taste Of Excitement [is] not a bad film – far from it – but it is a tough one to follow. On the plus side, it plays out like an Italian Giallo, without the blood and the sensationalism [...] (although there is a bit of nudity squeezed in)." Answer.com says: "Americans in 1968 seemed to prefer long, campy film titles. Thus it was that the British A Taste of Excitement was rechristened Why Would Anyone Want to Kill a Nice Girl Like You? The girl in question is Jane Kerrell (Eva Renzi [The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970 / trailer)]), who is somehow involved in an assassination plot. The hero, artist Paul Hedley (David Buck), agrees to help Jane when he's told that the intended victim is a traitor. But who's telling the truth here?"

First eight minutes:

Puppet on a Chain

(1971, dir. Geoffrey Reeve)

Don Sharp didn't direct this movie, but he did do additional (credited) work on Alistair MacLean's screenplay, which was based on Alistair MacLean's book of the same title. The blog BlackHoleReviews thinks the film is grand: "A brutal blond-haired tough guy (Sven-Bertil Taube) using any means necessary to bring down heroin smugglers in Amsterdam. With a pistol, and brute force, he's actually an undercover agent working for the good guys, despite his destructive murderous methods. This is a personal favorite of mine for the spectacular, verging-on-reckless, speedboat chase through the canals of Amsterdam that pre-dates many of the stunts used as the centerpiece of James Bond classic Live And Let Die (1973 / trailer)."

Trailer:

Dark Places
(1973)

Sharp returns to horror in this film starring Christopher Lee and Joan Collins as Dr and Sarah Mandeville and featuring Jane Birkin (Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye [1973 / trailer]). When the Manderville's catch wind of a hidden stash of money hidden in a house with a nasty past, they decide to get the money for themselves. The problem is, the house is haunted... Sharp adapted the tale from a script written by Ed Brennan and Joseph Van Winkle; the latter went on to write and direct Joan Blondell's last film, The Woman Inside (seven minutes of the film). The Spider Must Eat You To Survive says Dark Places is "English Gothic at its best."

Full film:

Psychomania

(1973)

Aka (in the US) The Death Wheelers. This cult film has the added distinction of featuring the final film appearance of George Sanders, who killed himself shortly thereafter, leaving behind a suicide note that read: "Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck." The Guardian calls Psychomania "the weirdest of Sharp's pictures." It was written by Arnaud d'Usseau and Julian Zimet, who had previously joined forces to pen the screenplay to the classic Horror Express (1972 / full film). At imdb, Guillaume Robieux offers the following plot description: "A gang of young people call themselves the Living Dead. They terrorize the population from their small town. After an agreement with the devil, if they kill themselves firmly believing in it, they will survive and gain eternal life. Following their leader, they commit suicide one after the other, but things don't necessarily turn out as expected..." Nicky Henson, who plays the lead psychopath of the film, considers it to be one of his worst projects, but the film enjoys great cult popularity.

Trailer:

Callan

(1974)

Don Sharp helms the feature-length film version of a 43-episode English TV series which started in 1967 with the episode A Magnum for Schneider; the film is basically an extended version of that original episode, which was in turn based on James Mitchell's novel A Red File for Callan. Callan (Edward Woodward) is a former assassin for the SIS (M16 for Bond fans) who was retired after he lost his nerve; he's given a second chance and called back into service to kill Schneider (Carl Möhner of Rififi [1955 / trailer]), a German businessman. Taking on the mission, he soon finds that there is more to his job than he has been told...

Full film:

Hennessy

(1975)

Sharp returns to the IRA – sorta. The BFI gives the plot as follows: "During a street riot in Belfast, the wife and daughter of Hennessy are accidentally killed by a British soldier. Normally opposed to violence, Hennessy decides to destroy the British Parliament during the State Opening the following week." Hennessy – which, by the way, is the feature-film debut of Patrick Stewart – had problems getting shown in England because it was edited in such a way that it looked as if Queen Elizabeth were acting in the movie; even after getting approval by the film board (by adding a disclaimer at the movie's start stating that the Royal Family had not participated in the film and the footage of Queen Elizabeth was all from newsreels), an English distributor was difficult to find. The screenplay, written by John Gay, was based on the original story by Richard Johnson, who appears in the film as Insp. Hollis; we prefer him as Dr. David Menard in the 1979 classic Zombie (trailer). Roger Ebert, in his review of the film on January 1, 1975, says Hennessy is victim of the "idiot plot," or a movie plot "so constructed that everyone in the movie has to be a complete idiot or the story will be resolved in 10 minutes flat." The non-embeddable trailer can be watched here, while the soundtrack can be heard below.

Title melody:

The Thirty-Nine Steps

(1978)

One must pay the rent. Sharp followed his rather uninteresting 1977 TV movie remake of The Four Feathers (TV commercial) with this equally unnecessary but far superior remake of Hitchcock's 1939 film (full film), which had already been remade in 1959 and would be remade yet again (for TV) in 2008. Britmovie.com says Sharp's version "adheres more faithfully to the source material but fails to reach the suspenseful heights of Alfred Hitchcock's". Plot, as supplied by Anonymous at imdb: "The year is 1914 and Richard Hannay (Robert Powell [Mahler (1974)]), a mining Engineer who is visiting Britain for a short time before returning to South Africa, is shocked when one of his neighbors, Colonel Scudder (John Mills), bursts into his rooms one night and tells him a story that Prussian 'sleeper' agents are planning to pre-start World War I by murdering a visiting foreign minister. However, Scudder is murdered and Hannay is framed for the death by the 'sleepers'. Fleeing to Scotland Hannay attempts to clear his name and to stop the agents with the aid of Alex Mackenzie (Karen Dotrice) but not only is he is chased by Chief Supt Lomas (Eric Porter) for Scudder's death but by the agents who is headed by Appleton (David Warner) who has managed to hide himself in a high-placed position in the British Government..."

Trailer:

Bear Island
(1979)

A Canadian-British production based on the book of the same name by Alistair MacLean; the Medved book The Hollywood Hall of Shame says that at the time of its release it was the most expensive film ever made in Canada. BritMovie is 100% right when they call Bear Island "dismal." Despite an illustrious cast including Donald Sutherland, Vanessa Redgrave, Richard Widmark and Christopher Lee (as well as the less-illustrious Barbara Parkins and Lloyd Bridges), Bear Island is a total snooze – we actually fell asleep watching it, something we seldom do. The film was originally intended to be the first of a series of Alistair MacLean adaptations – the end credits even include the line "Coming Soon - Alistair Maclean's Goodbye California" – but the film bombed, thus scuttling the franchise concept. The basic plot has researcher Frank Lansing (Donald Sutherland) joining a United Nations expedition on a remote, frozen research station on a North Atlantic island (with big mountains to ski on), but then some mysterious accidents and murders occur. Could it all have something to do with that WWII German submarine loaded with Nazi gold? Never trust pure-bred Aryans... in any event, by the end of the movie Lansing discovers that his dead daddy – who was the commander of the submarine – was a Good Nazi, which helps him sleep as soundly as the viewer of the film.

TV Trailer:

What Waits Below

(1985)

Other than the episode Guardian of the Abyss (1980) for the TV series Hammer House of Horror, Sharp's last feature-film project, What Waits Below, is also his last project worth noting – if for all the wrong reasons. After this film, which is also known as Secrets of the Phantom Caverns and went straight to video in the US, Sharp disappeared into the land of TV miniseries and multi-episode adaptations of best selling women's books. What Waits Below's tagline was "inspired" by that of Alien (1979 / trailer): "Underground, no-one can hear you die." Starring Robert Powell, Timothy Bottoms (Uncle Sam [1997 / trailer]) and Lisa Blount (The Prince of Darkness [1987 / trailer]), What Waits Below is legendary for how Blount's character gets hot to get her twat licked just from watching Powell's character lick his self-rolled cigarettes – needless to say, as any real man would be, Powell does not seem adverse to the idea. The plot, accord to Aunt Violet's Book Museum, is about "an albino race, remnant of Lemuria, [...] discovered deep within subterranean caverns in South America." In the end, What Waits Below is simply another riff on the old story about man-killing underground dwellers; for much better takes on this basic story, watch The Mole People (1956 / trailer) or The Descent (2005 / trailer). Which is not to say that Sharp's film isn't worth watching, for it is: What Waits Below is one of those so bad it's good car-wreck-of-a-movie that we here at A Wasted Life so love, which is why we give it a hearty recommendation....

Trailer:

R.I.P.: Walter Giller

2011-12-18T18:05:00.077+01:00

Walter Giller

23 August 1927 – 15 December 2011

In all truth, much like the German character actor Heinz Reincke, the recently deceased Walter Giller is not a name that one would immediately assume worthy of a career review on A Wasted Life (assuming you, as a non-German-speaking person, even know the name). As an actor, Giller's career was much more mainstream than it was mondo, and most of the films he made – comedies and Heimatfilms – are of the kind that make us gag. But the man had a long career, and as such he also made a lot of films, and amongst and aside from all the mainstream pap he made in his life there are also a number of interesting projects – particularly during the 60s, when he, like all German actors, suddenly found themselves participating in films they would never have made in the prime of their careers. And it is these films, along with a select number of other projects, are the films that we want to honor.

Outside of the German-speaking nations, Giller is an unknown name, but there where they eat wurst, potatoes and sauerkraut and drink beer for breakfast and schnapps for dinner he was a very popular actor in his day. In fact, in 1956, when he married his regular costar, the equally popular Austrian actress Nadja Tiller, the match was big news – and a good one, it seems, for they were still married at the time of his death from lung cancer on 15 December 2011. Back in the days when they got married, the focus of the press and public may have been a bit more subdued than now, but due to their respective popularity, they could well be called the Brad and Angelina of their time and country. (Perhaps Romy Schneider and Hans Buchholz were more in the headlines, but they never got married, thus making them more the Ben Affleck and J.Lo of their day.) Throughout the 55 years of the Giller & Tiller marriage, they took part in untold films and TV projects together, a happy couple until the end.

Giller was born on 23 August 1927 in Recklinghausen and grew up in Hamburg. In 1942, at the age of 15, he was made a "Flakhelfer" – an anti-aircraft helper – and two years later he was a war prisoner. Released early (due to health problems), he began to medicinal studies but dropped out to do voluntary work at a Hamburg theater; he eventually began to study acting and worked as an extra and director's assistant. His first role of note was a small part in Artistenblut (1949), followed by Kein Engel ist so rein (1950). From there, it was a quick and continuous uphill ride for the actor, who initially specialized in playing the shy young lover but soon moved into more demanding comedy roles. As Germany's leading weekly news magazine Der Spiegel wrote on 16 December 2011, "[With] American lightness and frivolous humor Walter Giller refined the uptight German cinema of the post-war period." He appeared in the many of the biggest German films of the fifties and sixties years, as well as a number of less respectable projects in the sixties and seventies.

Walter Giller died on Thursday, 15 December 2011 in Hamburg. Herewith, A Wasted Life would like to pay our respects with this review of the projects we find noteworthy.

Falschmünzer am Werk

(1951, dir. Louis Agotay)

Aka Fall 7:9 ("Case 7:9"). No undiscovered classic, this film is included primarily because it is the first crime film that Giller took part in, playing a young reporter named Conny Heuser that is described in one online critique as imitation Jimmy Olsen – the same critique described the film as "ZZZzzzzzzz". The film is the only feature-length directorial credit of Louis Agotay, who also wrote the script; he ended his career as a scriptwriter of such non-classics as Untamable Angelique (1967 / trailer) and Angelique and the Sultan (1968 / trailer). The plot involves a police inspector (Paul Klinger) and his French colleague (Paul Dahlke) trying to take down a band of car smugglers and counterfeiters between reminiscing about the good old days – the war – and a love interest named Madame Winter (Lenore Aubert).

Charleys Tante

(1956, dir. Hans Quest)

Aka Charley's Aunt. A German classic, of sorts, it is the second of to-date four German adaptations of the famous English play by Brandon Thomas, which originally debuted over 100 years ago (February 1892) at the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds. This version, starring one of Germany's most popular actors (Heinz Rühmann) as the titular aunt, has enjoyed inexplicable eternal popularity despite a mediocrity that is only elevated by the wonderfully garish Technicolor, an occasional verbal zinger and one fun, campy mambo number. Taking place in a society in which good girls still only meet single boys in the company of a chaperon, Giller plays one of the two youths (the "Charley" of the title) who invite two dishy Swedes, Ulla (Elisa Loti) and Britta (Ina Peters), to their bachelor pad for some fun; once the girls realize they are alone with the lads, the decide to leave, but Ralf's older brother Dr. Dernburg (Rühmann) saves the day by showing up in drag to chaperon as Charley's aunt... Some Like It Hot (1959, trailer) it's not, but Granny and the kids might enjoy it.

Trailer:

Der Hauptmann von Köpenick

(1956, dir. Director: Helmut Käutner)

Aka The Captain from Köpenick; it is the second of three films that Giller made with Heinz Rühmann (the third being the uninteresting comedy Das Sonntagskind). The previous year, in 1956, the director Helmut Käutner made The Devil's General, an early co-production of Richard Gordon. Käutner's Der Hauptmann von Köpenick is the second German production based on the play of the same name by Carl Zuckmayer – the first version was made in 1931 by Richard Oswald, who made dozens of German exploitation films during the Silent Age but fled Hitler for Hollywood, where his son Gerd Oswald became a successful B-movie director (his films include A Kiss Before Dying [1956 / trailer], Screaming Mimi [1958 / trailer], Agent for H.A.R.M. [1966 / trailer] and more). Der Hauptmann von Köpenick, which was nominated for an Academy Awards as Best Foreign Language Film (losing to Federico Fellini's La Strada [trailer]), is considered a classic of post-war German film. The tale is based on the true story of Wilhelm Voigt: landing behind bars as a youth, Voigt decides to go straight once released, but his past prevents him from getting papers. By chance he finds an old captain uniform in a junk shop and masquerades as a captain. Entering the town hall of Köpenick (now a borough of Berlin), he has the mayor and treasurer arrested and once again tries to obtain his papers – and once again fails. So he takes the city treasury and flees...

Trailer:

Spion für Deutschland

(1956, dir. Werner Klingler)

Werner Klingler is a relatively forgotten director, even in his own homeland, but he made a number of entertaining films in his life, including The Terror of Doctor Mabuse (1962 / trailer). Spion für Deutschland, entitled Spy for Germany for its English-language release, is based on the fact-based novel ghost-written by Will Berthold (other films of note based on Berthold's writings include Richard Siodmak's The Devil Strikes at Night [1957 / title sequence] and Klingler's 1961 Nazi love camp exploiter, Ordered to Love [1961 / trailer]). In Spion für Deutschland Giller costars (as the second male lead) with his wife-to-be, former Miss Austria Nadja Tiller – in the film, however, she is the romantic interest of the main character, Erich Gimpel (Martin Held). The movie is based on the true story of the WWII German spy Erich Gimpel, whose eventual planned execution for spying in the US was delayed due to the death of FDR and then commuted to life imprisonment on Alcatraz; he was released ten years later in 1956, eventually settling in South America. Plot: Gimpel arrives in the US in 1944 to find out everything about the Manhattan Project, with Billy Cole (Giller), an expert on US customs and ways, in tow. When Cole is caught, it's Gimpel alone against the CIA and FBI...

Blaue Jungs

(1957,dir. Wolfgang Schleif)

Aka Seamen. Actually, there is virtually no justifiable reason to include this film in this review – we here at A Wasted Life hate this kind of German mainstream Romantic comedy crap from the 50s. BUT: we do have a weakness for bad music. The title song of this film, Seeman (deine Heimat ist das Meer), sung in German by Lolita, was the first German-language single to reach the US Top Ten, reaching #5 in 1960. It remained the most successful German-language song in the US until Nena's 99 Luftballons in 1984. Below, you can see Lolita singing the song in the film – yes, your grandparents liked the song. Petula Clark's English-language version of the song, Seaman, was her first number one hit in England.

Seeman (deine Heimat ist das Meer):

Peter Voss, der Millionendieb

(1958, dir. Wolfgang Becker)

This film is not about Peter Voss, the SS-Oberscharführer commander of the crematoria and gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau. No, this is a comedy about an anti-hero thief along the lines of Arène Lupin, but unlike Lupin, Voss has never been heard off outside his home country. Becker's film was the fourth German version of the story (the other three being from 1921, 1932 and 1946, respectively), and was rather a hit – not only was it followed by a sequel Peter Voss, der Held des Tages (poster below) the following year, but the character Walter Giller played, the detective Bobby Dodd, was given his own film in 1959 as well (more on the latter below). The original novel of the same name was written by Ewald Gerhard Seeliger. Giller narrates the rather dull and dated trailer embedded here for your viewing pleasure. O.W. Fischer, by the way, played the title character.

German trailer of Peter Voss, der Millionendieb:

Bobby Dodd greift ein

(1959, dir. Géza von Cziffra)

As a director, Géza von Cziffra preferred making light entertainment, so this sequel to Peter Voss, der Millionendieb starring Giller in the title role was right up his alley. (We here at A Wasted Life don't like von Cziffra's films at all, though we would like to see his last one, Lolita aka Josefine – das liebestolle Kätzchen (1969) and we do have a partiality to the title melody of his 1960 success, Kriminaltango (1960) – here's a version by Die Toten Hosen from 1984 and here's the version sung by Peter Alexander for the film. The following plot description for Bobby Dodd greift ein is loosely translated from the German website filmportal.de: Due to a lack of success, the private detective Bobby Dodd has no work, so he takes a job as a double for a dodgy arms dealer whom he resembles. But three crooks who work for his employer kill the man and put the blame on Dodd. Now he's busy dodging the police, catching the gangsters and clearing his name. He succeeds in the end, and thus regains his old job at the PI agency.

Rosen für den Staatsanwalt

(1959, dir. Wolfgang Staudte)

This is the first of three films Giller made with director Wolfgang Staudte over a period of 11 years, none of which could be said as being one of Staudte's better films. (Among his best are Der Untertan [1951 / scene], which after its release was banned in West Germany until 1956 and was first shown uncut [on TV] in 1971, and Murderers Among Us [1946].) Still, (almost) no film by Staudte is a total loss, and this one isn't either – in fact, it is rather good. Giller plays Rudi Kleinschmidt, a Wehrmacht soldier condemned to death in the last days of the war by military judge Dr. Schramm for stealing two bars of chocolate. By pure luck, he is able to escape, but ten years later he meets the judge again: the ex-Nazi is now a senior prosecutor and respected citizen, and the last thing he wants is that his past is revealed. According to the German website filmportal.de, Wolfgang Staudte was taken to task by some for this film as being a "denigrator of his own country".

First 13 minutes:

L'affaire Nina B.

(1961, dir. Robert Siodmak)

Richard Siodmark, a director of many a great film (including The Phantom Lady [1944]) who is seen as a major influence in the development of film noir, was one of the first émigré directors to return to Europe after the war. L'affaire Nina B. is not viewed as one of his better films. More than one on-line source claims that the then-controversial topic of German officials being exposed as former / hidden war criminals is one of the reasons the film ended up being made in France and not Deutschland, but that statement fails to take into account the same topic was popular with Wolfgang Staudte and other German filmmakers who made their films within Germany – although, perhaps by 1961, times had begun to change. The events of L'affaire Nina B. are told in flashback from a funeral; Giller plays Holden, the film's narrator, a former jailbird hired as chauffer by a shady businessman who gets murdered for blackmailing the wrong war criminals...

La chambre ardente

(1962, dir. Julien Duvivier)

Giller and Tiller are among the stars of this supernatural mystery film based on John Dickson Carr's most controversial novel, The Burning Court, which is seen as being one of his best – and most puzzling – pieces of fiction. (Recognize the beautiful blonde? It's Edith Scob, of the classic horror film Eyes Without a Face [1960 / trailer].) La chambre ardente (like the book it is based on) is an arty cross between an old dark house and locked-room murder mystery. Michel Boissard (Giller) and his wife Marie (Scob) arrive at château of Mathias Desgrez (Frédéric Duvallès), who soon dies. Mathias is interred in the crypt, but when suspicions arise that he was poisoned, his body disappears. Where has the body gone? And more important, who killed him?

The decidedly surreal funeral of the murdered man:

Die Dreigroschenoper

(1962, dir. Wolfgang Staudte)

The Three Penny Opera. Another version of the famous German musical by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, this time around starring Curd Jürgens, Gert Fröbe, and Hildegard Knef. Giller appears as Beggar Filch – and Lino Ventura (!) as Tiger Brown. The scenes with Sammy Davis, Jr. were added for its US release. The film is not considered prime Staudte.

Sammy Davis Jr sings Mack the Knife:

Liebling – Ich muß Dich erschießen

(1962, dir. Jürgen Goslar)

When one looks at Giller's film projects as of 1959, it would seem that he was trying to break out of his sunny-boy image. This forgotten krimi is the first film in which he played a 100% bad guy. The title of the film translates into Darling – I Have to Shoot You to Death; it is based on the play Double Cross by John O'Hara and co-stars Marianne Koch, best known to the English-speaking world as the woman the Man With No Name helps in A Fistful of Dollars (1964 / trailer). The plot: The poetess Jeannine (Koch) has inherited a considerable fortune from her aunt, but the lonely lass is less interested in material possessions than love and security. She appears to find both in the American Tom Fleming (Giller). Within ten days of meeting they marry, and off they go on their honeymoon to a lonely and distant hut in the hills – only then does she learn that Tom is not the man she thinks he is, and his interests do not include her well-being...

L'ape regina

(1963, dir. Marco Ferreri)

Aka The Conjugal Bed and The Queen Bee. An early film from one of Italy's most unique talents, the man behind such great films as, among others, The Ape Woman (1964) and The Big Feast (1973 / trailer). Walter Giller appears as Father Mariano in this film about a man, Alfonso (Ugo Tognazzi) who marries a virgin, Regina (Marina Vlady), who basically fucks him to death. The film was entered into the 1963 Cannes Film Festival where Marina Vlady was awarded Best Actress.

Italian opening credits:

Der Würger von Schloß Blackmoor

(1963, dir. Harald Reinl)

Aka The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle – a Bryan Edgar Wallace krimi from director Harald Reinl, who was knifed to death by his third wife, actress Daniela Delis, in 1986 on the island of Tenerife. This film stars his first wife, the beautiful Karin Dor (of Hotel der Toten Gäste [1965]). Reinl made a lot of excellent films in his day, including the krimis The Forger of London (1961) and Die weiße Spinne (1963). For an English-language review of The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle, go here to the blogspot Hallo, hier spricht.... Like many a krimi, Der Würger von Schloß Blackmoor is an amalgam of horror, comic and crime elements filmed in expressionistic B&W. Plot: In a properly Gothic castle a masked murderer is on the loose who beheads his victims and brands their foreheads with an "M".

Trailer for the Bryan Edgar Wallace DVD Collection:

Der letzte Ritt nach Santa Cruz

(1964, dir. Rolf Olsen)

Aka The Last Ride to Santa Cruz. The cast of this western by the unjustly forgotten director Rolf Olsen includes Giller, Klaus Kinski, Marianne Koch, Marisa Mell (Das Rätsel der roten Orchidee [1961 / trailer] and Danger: Diabolik [1968 / trailer]), Mario Adorf (The Tin Drum [1979 / trailer] and Deadlock [1970 / trailer]) and Edmund Purdom (Don't Open Till Christmas [1984 / German trailer], Absurd [1981 / trailer], Pieces [1982/ trailer] and Dr Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks [1974 / trailer]). Plot: After sitting in jail for ten years, Pedro (Adorf) wants to get the gold he stole and go south, but first he helps Carlos (Thomas Fritsch) escape from jail. The two, along with José (Kinski) and Fernando (Sieghardt Rupp of Mädchen für die Mambo-Bar [1959]) and Juanita (Mell), then go their way to the mountain Santa Cruz, where he has hidden the gold, dragging Woody (Giller) along 'cause he could spill the beans. But before Pedro gets his gold, he wants to kill Kelly (Purdom), the man who put him behind bars... everyone who should, dies.

First 10 minutes in German in B&W:

Die Tote von Beverly Hills

(1964, dir. Michael Pfleghar)

Aka Dead Woman from Beverly Hills, based on the book by Curt Goetz, the film was entered into the 1964 Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Palme d'Or. Giller has a very small part in the film – he wasn't even listed on the poster (as if often the case in his film projects as of now) – but the poster is so nice we had to include it. The film was the first feature-length cinematic release of director Michael Pfleghar, who killed himself in the bathtub of a friend on 23 June 1991 after going bankrupt due to badly timed investments in HD TV. The plot of the "satire": 17-year-old Lu (Heidelinde Weis) is found murdered; her diary reveals that she lived a lively life dotted with lovers, including altar servers, judges and scientists. As Det. Ben (Wolfgang Neuss) investigates to find out who killed her, the trail leads him to pair of twin entertainers (Ellen and Alice Kessler) in Las Vegas. The clip below is not from the film, but it does feature the Kessler Twins.

The Kessler Twins representing Germany at the 1959 Eurovision Song Contest:

Tonio Kröger

(1964, dir. Rolf Thiele)

Tonio Kröger was the fourth of six films Giller made with Rolf Thiele, a "mainstream" director who drifted into exploitation by the late 60s and thus made some fun films. Giller has a relatively small part in this film, which is based on the Thomas Mann novel of the same name and needless to say is one of Thiele's serious productions. Tonio Kröger was nominated for awards both at the 1964 Berlinale and Venice Film Festival but came away empty-handed. To loosely translate the plot as given by a German website: Tonio Kröger (Jean-Claude Brialy of The Bride Wore Black [1968 / trailer]), who comes from a patrician family of Lübeck, is in search of himself and the meaning of life. During his search, he travels across Europe, from Florence through Munich to Denmark and, among other things, visits his great love Lisaweta Ivanovna (Nadja Tiller).

Fanny Hill

(1964, dir. Russ Meyer)

Walter Giller plays "Hemingway" in this European movie version of John Cleland's novel, which may be one of the weakest and least distinctive of all Russ Meyer films, but is still a Russ Meyer film – so let's put the blame on his co-scriptwriter Robert Hill, who scripted a number of early psychotronic films such as, among others: Dog Eat Dog (1964 / trailer), Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962 / trailer), Sex Kittens Go to College (1960 / trailer), She Gods of Shark Reef (1958 / full film), The Girl in the Kremlin (1957 / hair-shaving scene) and Female on the Beach (1955 / full film). The delicious Letícia Román (The Evil Eye [1964 / trailer]) plays the titular female, while the film legend Miriam Hopkins (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [1931 / full film), Becky Sharp [1935 / trailer / full film] and The Heiress [1949 / trailer]) plays Mrs. Maude Brown, the bordello mother. Others notable members of the cast include Alexander D'Arcy (of Horrors of Spider Island [1960 / trailer]) and future trash-film director Ulli Lommel, who shows up in the end dressed in drag to save the virtuous damsel. The plot, according to Eduardo Casais at imdb: "Young, pretty and innocent Fanny Hill has lost her parents and must find her way in life amidst the perils of turbulent 18th century London. She is fortunate enough to find rapidly a place as chambermaid of the effusive Mrs. Brown. Mrs. Brown lives in a large house teeming with female 'relatives' in négligée and with very relaxed manners. She also insists that Fanny meets alone various gentlemen who show an ardent interest in Fanny."

Trailer:

Heiss weht der Wind

(1964, dir. Rolf Olsen)

Aka Legend of a Gunfighter. This western, the second that Giller made with director Rolf Olsen, was co-scripted by the English genre film director Don Sharp. According to the Spaghetti Western Database, this forgotten and seldom-seen German-Austrian production tells of a young man who, "after his parents are killed in a stagecoach holdup [...], learns to be an expert gunman and, with his dog Shorty, sets out to avenge their deaths." Other on-line sources indicate that an added conflict arises when the killer ends up saving the life of the young man. Giller plays Spike Sunday; in Kevin Heffernan's book Ghouls, Gimmicks and Gold, the author says the film was never released theatrically in the US, and indeed, no one who writes English seems ever to have seen it – or, if anyone has, they have yet to write about it on the web.

DM-Killer

(1965, dir. Rolf Thiele)

Giller shares star billing on the poster with Curd Jürgens and Charles Renier (The Black Abbot [1963 / trailer]) in this, his fifth film with director Thiele. The movie is based on the novel Ehrlich fährt am längsten by Peter Norden, who also wrote the book upon which Tinto Brass based his 1976 movie Salon Kitty (trailer). Other cast members of note include Daliah Lavi and Elisabeth Flickenschildt, the latter who starred in some of the best Edgar Wallace krimis. According to what one "Dan Pavlides" says on numerous websites, the film is about: "A trio of crooks just out of prison plan their next scheme to strike it rich in this amusing crime comedy. Kurt (Jurgens) is a handsome ladies man, with Charly (Giller) as a dim-witted dolt and Roland (Regnier) as the criminal mastermind. Their scheme is to ship Volkswagens to the United States, sell them for a profit, and eliminate the nearly 18-months waiting time the car buyers normally had to endure." Aside from Pavlidas, no one seems to have seen this film in a long, long time.

Schüsse im Dreivierteltakt

(1965, dir. Alfred Weidenmann)

This is the second of three films Giller did with Weidenmann – the first being the extremely dated comedy Das große Liebesspiel (1963) – but Giller has such a small part in this spy flick that he isn't even on the poster. Later releases added the credit of Terrence Hill, who appears in the film somewhere (credited as Mario Girotti). Schüsse im Dreivierteltakt has been given many names over the years, but the most common one seems to be Spy Hunt in Vienna. Director Weidenmann began his directorial career doing Nazi propaganda films, including the 1942 feature film about the Hitler Youth, Hände hoch (full film in German); following the war, once he was released from prison, he was allowed back into the industry and came to specialize in dull crime films and TV series, though he did a rare exploiter such as The Bordello (1971) or Unter den Dächern von St. Pauli (1970). Over at imdb, gridoon2012 says: "Although Schüsse im Dreivierteltakt is fairly well-produced and shot in beautiful European locations (Paris, Vienna), this film [...] is a generally dull example of its genre (the Euro-spy thriller). For one thing, there is little action, as the main character / agent simply walks through the various locations and engages in some form of action not more often than once every 20 minutes. The people he is searching for may or may not be hiding within a traveling circus, which results in some overlong circus numbers. [...] The film even disappoints in the women department, as the two best lookers (Senta Berger and Paola Pitagora) have VERY limited screen time."

The opening credits:

Das Vermächtnis des Inka

(1965, dir. Georg Marischka)

Aka Legacy of the Incas. This is the last theatrically released film of the director Georg Marischka, who then moved on to do TV films for a few years before becoming a character actor to be found in such films as The Odessa File (1974 / trailer) or The Boys from Brazil (1978 / trailer). This film is yet another Eurowestern (of sorts) based on a Karl May novel; Giller might get special notice in the film credits, but his name is obviously not considered a big enough draw to be on the poster. The real star of the show is 50s western heartthrob Guy Madison (of The Beast of Hollow Mountain [1956 / trailer]) and some of the locations: although much of the film was shot in Bulgaria (standing in for South America), some scenes were shot on location in Peru, including at Machu Picchu. To loosely translate what the German book Das größte Filmlexikon der Welt Film says: "A very free and low-brow film version of a lesser known Karl May novel that tells a confusing and fantastic adventure story set in Peru. The search for a legendary Incan treasure leads to numerous bloody confrontations before the Incan prince decides to sacrifice himself for peace." Legacy of the Incas was a flop and helped hasten the end of the popularity of Karl May films.

Opening credits:

Ich suche einen Mann

(1966, dir. Alfred Weidenmann)

Aka I Am Looking for a Man – needless to say, the character Giller plays, Dr. Pleskau, is not the one seeking a man. The plot, as the description found most often on the web describes it: "The ambitious Barbara (Ghita Nørby) isn't satisfied with the men she dates – she's got the impression they all want her just for her body, not her mind. Hence she decides to try a marriage broker... oblivious that there's already a nice guy (Giller) who really loves her." The tagline of the poster translates into: "Experiences and adventures of a woman who wants to marry." To quote the book Von Jean Gabin bis Walter Huston, the comedy is "inhibited." We include it here only because we find the whole concept of the film so, well, embarrassing and prudish – it could really be an American film, couldn't it? As for the German-language Petula Clark song below, we don't know if it has anything to do with the film, but since it shares the same title, we thought we would share it you. Here at A Wasted Life, we love it when Petula sings in German...

Petula Clark singing Ich suche einen Mann:

Gern hab' ich die Frauen gekillt

(1966, dir. Alberto Cardone [as Albert Cardiff])

Aka Killer's Carnival. Alberto Cardone worked as assistant director on many a fine film, but of his eleven-odd solo projects, none are particularly well known; Gern hab' ich die Frauen gekillt is basically the only non-western among his own films – and a forgotten film, at that, though we do admit to having a DVD of it in our "To Watch" pile. Giller (along with Karin Dor, Klaus Kinski and Margaret Lee) appears somewhere in this mess starring Stewart Granger, Lex Barker and Pierre Brice, the plot of which is given at imdb by gridoon2012 as follows: "A man wanted by the police for multiple murders breaks into the house of a professor [...]. The professor tries to convince him to give himself up by telling him three stories about how criminals always get caught in the end. In the first story, set in Vienna, Stewart Granger [...] is a suave and shady character investigating the death of a reporter who was tracing a drug ring around the world; in the second story, set in Rome and, unlike the other two, played mostly as a slapstick comedy, Pierre Brice is a secret agent trying to deliver some important documents to his boss while being chased by a gang led by a woman with a whip; in the third story, set in San Francisco and Rio, Lex Barker is a private detective trying to stop a political assassination plot by posing as the assassin himself. In the end, there is a major plot twist that tries to tie everything together, but the film ends up making even less sense than before! [...] For 60s spy-movie completists only."

Le soleil des voyous
(1967, dir. Jean Delannoy)

Aka Action Man. By this film, Walter Giller was long past being a name found on the poster; instead, he was one of those familiar names (and faces) that normally gets special, separate listing in the film credits. By the time director Jean Delannoy made this film, his long career – he entered the field as an actor in the 1920s and was respected director by the mid-30s – was already on the wan; he was a popular punching bag for the young critics of Cahiers du cinema, and "drivel" like this film didn't help his reputation any. Action Man stars Jean Gabin (Port of Shadows [1938]), Robert Stack and Margaret Lee, with Walter Giller hanging out somewhere. Based on a novel by J.M. Flynn, the film tells of Denis Farrand (Gabin), a former hood who now owns a restaurant but decides to do one last big "job" when an old friend of his, Jim Beckley (Stack) suddenly reappears. They make off with 500 million francs, but then things begin to go wrong... At filmsdefrance.com James Travers calls the film "plodding" but say that the two stars "work together surprisingly well in this film, which should appeal to devotees of the American B movie as well as die-hard fans of the French film policier."

See Gabin slap Margaret Lee & Robert Stack speak French:

Johnny Banco

(1967, dir. Yves Allégret)

French director Yves Allégret, who was once married to Simone Signoret (Diabolique [1955 / trailer / full film), was, according to TCM, a "leading figure of post-World War II French cinema" who gained renown as a director of depressing French films such as Dédée d'Anvers (1948), Une si jolie petite plage (1949), Manèges (1950) and Les orgueilleux (1953 / trailer)... Johnny Banco is not considered one of his better films, if anyone considers it at all. This vehicle for pre-gay Horst Buchholz (One, Two, Three [1961 / opening scene]) and the delicious Sylva Koscina (Lisa and the Devil [1973 / trailer] and Deadlier Than the Male [1967 / trailer]) is a French crime caper movie so lightweight that everyone seems to have forgotten it. Based on the novel Le flamenco des assassins by Frédéric Valmain, for production reasons this French/German/Italian coproduction had a core cast seven French, three German and three Italian actors. Buchholz is the titular Johnny Banco, who steals a bunch of money from the gangster Sebastiani (Michel de Ré) and hustles to Monte Carlo to live the good life, where he marries the rich widow Laureen Moore (Koscina); Sebastiani and Banco's ex-mistress Nati (Elisabeth Wiener) show up to get revenge. Moore gets murdered and Banco gets framed for the death; Inspector Jakubowski (Walter Giller) is the man on the case. TV Guide says: "Rambling and ultimately boring, the film is further hampered by Buchholz's weak performance; he tries to play his role for laughs..."

Elsk... din næste!

(1967, dir. Egil Kolstø)

Aka Love Thy Neighbor and Vergiß nicht deine Frau zu küssen – this directorial debut, a Danish-German coproduction, is a totally forgotten sex comedy by a totally forgotten Danish director. Though lacking any hardcore sex scenes – Vilgot Sjöman's groundbreaking, sexually explicit Danish film I am Curious Yellow (1967 / trailer) came out the same year as this film, but hardcore films only became legal in Denmark (and the Netherlands) two years later in 1969 – Elsk... din næste! still officially has a rating (in Germany, at least) of "18 and above". Walter Giller stars as the sex-book author Sven who tries to escape the limelight in Copenhagen by retreating to a Norwegian fjord with his neglected wife Brit (Ghita Nörby) and his over-sized bed, in which he gets his best ideas but otherwise uses mostly just to sleep in. Initially rejected by the village, they become tourist attractions. Lots of unfunny stuff happens and a lot of sweet, lithe and attractive young ladies show bare skin. In the end, everyone finds out it is better to be old-fashioned. The book Das größte Filmlexikon der Welt says: "A satire on the hoopla about sex in the 1960s that fails both thematically and directorially."

Seven boring minutes of the film in Danish:

Grimms Märchen von lüsternen Pärchen

(1969, dir. Rolf Thiele)

Aka Grimm's Fairy Tales for Adults and The New Adventures of Snow White. Director Rolf Thiele finally jumps on the exploitation bandwagon with this "adult" version of some of the best-known fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, including Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. Over at Rotten Tomatoes, "Clarke Fountain" writes: "Gore and sexual acts are features of this German retelling of several well-known fairy tales [...]. In one of the movie's scenes, what takes place with a cow, frogs and snakes cannot properly be described here. Much of the film's imagery involves explicit depictions of the dismemberment of toes, fingers and entire bodies. This movie is not for the young or the faint-hearted." The movie was not the first "adult" fairytale film – that was, perhaps, Loel Minardi's Sinderella and the Golden Bra (1964 / trailer)* – but it does seem to be one the earliest of the movie sub-genre of adult fairytale that includes such films as The Erotic Adventures of Hansel and Gretel (1970), The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio (1971 / trailer), Alice in Wonderland (1976 / full film), Al Adamson's Cinderella 2000 (1977 / trailer), Fairy Tales (1979 / full NSFW film at a Russian website), the porno Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs (1995 / full NSFW film), Walerian Borowczyk's The Beast (1975 / trailer) and more. Though Grimm's Fairy Tales for Adults is relatively unknown – and innocent, when compared to at least one of the just named films – it has a reputation of being extremely weird; one on-line fan of cult movies describes the "psychedelic" film as being "a true great moment of German cinema!" Giller stars as Hans (of the Grimm's fairytale Hans in Luck), but the true eye candy of the film is naturally the stunning Swedish actress Marie Liljedahl as Snow White; during her short career in exploitation – she inexplicitly retired at the ancient age of 21 – she participated in such exceptional projects as Ann and Eve [1970 / trailer], Joseph W. Sarno's Inga [1968 / trailer] and his The Seduction of Inga [1971 / trailer] and Jess Franco's Eugenie... the Story of Her Journey Into Perversion [1970 / article & trailer]. The Evil Queen in Grimm's Fairy Tales for Adults, by the way, is played by the German actress Ingrid van Bergen (Der Rächer [1960 / trailer] and The Devil's Daffodil [1961 / trailer]), who was convicted in February 2, 1977 of manslaughter for the death of husband Klaus Knath; sentenced to seven years in prison in Bavaria, she was released in 1982 for good behavior. (One assumes their match was not as good as that of Giller and Tiller.) Other eye candy in the film includes Miss World 1969 Eva Reuber-Staier as Cinderella and, as Sleeping Beauty, Gaby Fuchs of Mark of the Devil (1972 / trailer) and The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman (1971 / trailer / full film).

*The title of H.G. Lewis's nudie-cutie Goldilock's and the Three Bares (1963 / trailer) might make the film seem like a fairytale-based film, but it was about a singer who's a nudist.

Scene:

Grimms Märchen von lüsternen Bärchen - MyVideo

Die Herren mit der weißen Weste

(1970, dir. Wolfgang Staudte)

Aka Gentlemen in White Vests. In 1968 Wolfgang Staudte formed Cineforum, his own film production company in Berlin, so as to enjoy greater artistic freedom in regard to his themes and films. Regrettably, the firm's first (and only) production Heimlichkeiten / Little Secrets (1968) – with Ewa Strömberg (Vampiros lesbos [1971 / trailer] and Der Teufel kam aus Akasava [1971 / trailer]) in a tiny role – was such a financial disaster that henceforth Staudte was pretty much forced to do anything he was offered, which was television work; most of his work after Little Secrets, as filmportal.de puts it, "[was] based on external material ...[and] rarely resembled the social dedication of his earlier films." Die Herren mit der weißen Weste, which also lacked any true social commentary, was his first theatrical film following the collapse of Cineforum; it was a relative success and is still screened regularly on TV in Germany. filmportal.de describes it as "an amusing and lighthearted crime story in which a number of robberies take place executed by a group of older and respectable gentlemen much to the dismay of a rival group of real gangsters. [...] There is good company acting and everybody obviously enjoyed doing this film." The plot actually has a bit more going to it: the gents are doing the crimes so as to frame the real gangsters, who always managed to escape the law while the main gent sat on the judge's bench. Walter Giller plays one of the men with "white vests"; in German slang, when you have a "white vest", you are basically innocent or have done nothing wrong. Agitating on the sidelines of the film is no one other than Sir John himself, Siegfried Schürenberg (The Hand of Power [1968 / trailer]) playing Kommissar Berg.

Die Feuerzangenbowle
(1970, dir. Helmut Käutner)

Aka The Fire Tongue Bowl. And if you thought all those 20-plus-year-olds that play teens in the average dead-teenager film are unconvincing, watch Giller play a high-school student in this flick – like, take a look at his picture on the DVD cover above! This is the third film that Walter Giller made with director Käutner beginning with Der Hauptmann von Köpenick (1956), which is considered the first post-war German film to be a financial success in the US; their second shared project was an uninteresting trifle entitled The Dream of Lieschen Mueller (1961 / 13 seconds). Helmut Käutner, by the way, entered the directorial biz under the National Socialists, but his 1939 debut film Kitty und die Weltkonferenz ended up being banned for its supposed pro-British tendencies when the war broke out shortly after its premiere. Die Feuerzangenbowle is a remake of the Helmut Weiss film of the same name from 1944 starring Heinz Rühmann (the English title being The Punch Bowl), which in turn was a remake of Robert A. Stemmle's 1934 film starring Heinz Rühmann entitled So ein Flegel (the English title being Such A Boor); all three films are based on the Heinrich Spoerl novel entitled Die Feuerzangenbowle. We here at A Wasted Life have seen the 1944 version and managed to stay awake until the end, but it is doubtful we shall ever bother with the other two versions – including this one, although Nadja Tiller (as Marion Xylander) looks a total MILF in it. For a change, Walter Giller is the headlining star – and he romances no one other than Uschi Glas (Sette orchidee macchiate di rosso [1972 / trailer], Angels of Terror [1971 / trailer] and Der Mönch mit der Peitsche [1967 / trailer]). (The year before Die Feuerzangenbowle, in an extremely forgettable film entitled Spanking at School [1969], Giller played her teacher!) Plot: Over a bowl of punch, Dr Johannes Pfeiffer (Giller) reminisces with old friends over their youth, whereby his friends' tales of their days at school makes Pfeiffer realize that he missed out on a lot due to his private schooling. It is decided that Pfeiffer must return to school to enjoy such fun – and as is said, is done: Dr Johannes Pfeiffer becomes Hans Pfeiffer at the highest class at a provincial high school, where the award-winning doctor of literature becomes one of the most popular students and the problem child of the entire school...

Trailer:

Ein Käfer auf Extratour

(1973, dir. Rudolf Zehetgruber)

&

Das verrückteste Auto der Welt
(1975, dir. Rudolf Zehetgruber)

Director Rudolf Zehetgruber began his film career as a second-unit director in the 50s before finally directing his first film, Das Dorf ohne Moral in 1960. For the next decade, he specialized in krimis and thrillers, most of which he both wrote and directed. With titles such as The Black Cobra (1963), The Nylon Noose (1963), Piccadilly null Uhr zwölf (1963) The Inn on Dartmoor (1964), Secret of the Chinese Carnation (1964), Girls Behind Bars (1965), the western Seven Vengeful Women (1966) and Ich spreng' euch alle in die Luft (1968), they were for the most part unexceptional and usually somewhat slow, but most have some entertainment value and have aged well in a tacky sort of way. During this time, Zehetgruber also directed two entries of the seven movies of the popular Kommissar X Euro-thriller series, Kommissar X – Drei gelbe Katzen (1966 / bar scene) and Kommissar X – Drei grüne Hunde (1967). But his biggest success came in 1971, when he lifted the core concept of Walt Disney's Herbie the Love Bug (who debuted in 1968 in The Love Bug [trailer]) for his own film series based around a super VW Beetle called "DuDu". Beginning with The Love Bug Rally (1971 / trailer) and ending with Return of the Superbug (1980 / trailer), Rudolf Zehetgruber wrote, directed and played the lead (under a variety of names) in five films which can basically be described as a super-childish – retarded? – version of The Night Rider in which the car is a VW Beetle. Walter Giller could be found in Ein Käfer auf Extratour / Superbug, the Wild One (1973), the third installment of the series, as well as the fourth film, Das verrückteste Auto der Welt / Superbug, the Craziest Car in the World (1975), playing a different character each time. The two films were perhaps financially successful, but they are also arguably the lowest point of his cinematic career – and prime examples of just how stupid films can be. (In fact, in their current DVD re-release, they are sold for their trash factor – to quote the cover of the Ein Käfer auf Extratour DVD: "Dudu makes the trash barometer burst!") It is not surprising that but for a rare exception thereafter, Giller concentrated on TV and stage productions. Rudolf Zehetgruber, in turn, hasn't made a film since the 1985 kiddy film, Nessie, das Monster von Loch Ness.

Trailer for Ein Käfer auf Extratour:

German Trailer for Das verrückteste Auto der Welt:

Lady Dracula
(1978, dir. Franz Josef Gottlieb)

As far as A Wasted Life is concerned, this is Walter Giller's last film of note. Director Gottlieb, from Austria, had a long and versatile career in which he made films of almost every genre. A Wasted Life definitely prefers his early krimis – he first gained notice doing krimis such as Der Fluch der gelben Schlange (1963), The Black Abbot (1963 / trailer) Das Geheimnis der schwarzen Witwe (1963 / full film), Das Phantom von Soho (1964 / trailer), Die Gruft mit dem Rätselschloß (1964 / trailer) and Das siebente Opfer (1964) – or his later, more trashy films such as 1970's The Naked Wytche (aka The Erotic Adventures of Hansel and Gretel) or Joy of Flying (1977 / all the nude scenes in 16 minutes) or this tacky horror comedy, Lady Dracula. Stephen Boyd (of Kill! [1971 / opening credits], Slaves [1969 / trailer] and Carter's Army [1970 / full film]) makes his last film appearance in this film as Count Dracula – he died of a heart attack soon afterwards in California. Lady Dracula is played by the delectable (and since 2009, likewise dead) Evelyne Kraft of The Mighty Peking Man (1977 / trailer). Walter Giller is there somewhere as Herr Oskar – he at least has more screen time than the uncredited Heinz Reincke. Vampyres Online gives the plot as follows: "In 1876, the countess Barbara Von Weidenborn (Marion Kracht) is abducted from her young ladies' boarding school by Count Dracula (Stephen Boyd). He puts the bite on her and turns her into a vampire, but Dracula is killed by the angry villagers. Barbara is interred in a coffin, but accidentally exhumed one hundred years later, in modern day Germany. Although she is a vampire, she doesn't want to kill people. So Barbara (now played by Evelyne Kraft) tries to be a nice little vampire who only gets her food from the blood bank... She also works in a funeral home where she feeds on supplies. But when she kills her boss's fiancée and falls in love with the investigating police officer (Brad Harris), the problems start." In all truth, the intentional humor of the film is less funny than the unintentional comedy of the film – Lady Dracula is a bad film in every way (but the babes) and low on sleaze, but it's silly and fun enough to watch on a rainy day.

Trailer:

Zombie Reanimation (Germany, 2009)

2011-12-15T11:50:00.014+01:00

Who knows whether this film will ever be dubbed in English or even subtitled, but if it is, and you happen to see it, and you cannot follow what the fuck is going on, well, rest assured it isn't due to the translation. Zombie Reanimation really is a disjointed and disconnected mess that hardly makes any narrative sense. But then, the director probably knew this while making the film – and definitely didn't really give a flying fuck, either.
Director Jochen Taubert has been making films for over twenty years and has almost as many direct-to-video productions to his name. Aside from his regular "family" of stars, his films, sporting such illustrious titles as Ich piss' auf deinen Kadaver / I Piss On Your Cadaver (1999 / clip), Exhibitionisten Attacke / Attack of the Exhibitionists (2000 / trailer) and Bad Boys Bad Toys (2007 / trailer), sometimes even feature second- to fifth-rate German "celebrities" such as Dolly Buster, Jürgen Drews, Frank Zander or Ralf Möller (many of whom, oddly enough, don't list the projects on their imdb resumes). Zombie Animation, however, features only his regular retinue of family and friends and others who were probably willing to act for free.
It is doubtful that Zombie Reanimation was actually conceived as a continuous feature-length film. When reviewing Taubert's website and his credits as listed on imdb, I would offhandedly guess that Zombie Reanimation is a combination of a short called Santa Claus (2008) with possibly one or two other incomplete projects as well as additional, possibly new, footage to fill in the blanks. But even with continuous voice-over narration, to say continuity is lacking would be an understatement. To enjoy the film at all, one must disavow such a mundane concept as logical narrative, and instead flow freely with a tale that moves from a cheating wife fucking a man dressed as Santa to her murder by a doctor colleague of her husband who eventually flips out and goes on a short, bloody murder spree in a hospital (killing the cheater's husband, among others) before a flashback to WWII explains how some secret formula to make zombies and that imbues a few characters with immortality gets lost before the flick returns to the present were one soldier of the past is now played by a muscle-bound motorcyclist and a zombie plague breaks out. (Follow that?)
On his website, Taubert clearly states that the philosophy behind his films is "Spaß am Filmen zu haben!!!" – "to have fun making films". Without a doubt, he and his cast surely do have fun making their trashy and amateurish bloodpectacles. Whether the viewer has fun is perhaps another question, for Taubert's films are meant for viewers with very special tastes – or perhaps a total lack of any taste. And Zombie Reanimation is no exception. Thus, it is virtually pointless to argue whether this film (or any of his other ones) is good or bad – though it is a fact that the acting sucks, the story idiotic, the production Z-level, the actors uniformly unattractive (though the gal who did the hilariously gratuitous nude scene does has a tasty body), the blood and effects messy but undeniably fake-looking, and the pacing inconsistent. Indeed, Zombie Reanimation makes almost every other film ever trashed on this blog look like a professional Hollywood production. But then, everything here sucks on purpose, so can it be held against the film?
On a positive note, his film echoes the early anarchism of Troma's mindless flicks like Surf Nazis Must Die (1987 / trailer) or The Toxic Avenger (1984 / trailer), but with a way lower budget and far less professionalism. If that sounds good to you, watch this film; if not, avoid this and Taubert's other films like the plague.
We, in any event, plan to watch more... someday.

Sam Cooper's Gold (Italy, 1966)

2011-12-07T11:38:00.013+01:00

A half-forgotten spaghetti western that may not be an undisputed, forgotten classic, but is an interesting entry of its genre with a clear theme that it trumpets without ever being overly didactic. The original Italian title is Ognuno per se, but it plays on late-night television under various other titles, including The Ruthless Four, The Goldseekers and Every Man for Himself. Good cast, good acting and a relatively interesting story save what for some unexplainable reason is an at times almost dull film – but for all the moments that drag, the film not only quickly manages to regain your interest but also haunts the mind long after the final credits roll.
Sam Cooper (Van Heflin) is an old codger prospector who, along with his partner, finally hit the big vein deep in the desert of Nevada. In no time flat, his partner tries to kill him and, after turning the tables, Sam almost doesn't even make it back to the god-forsaken town from which they had come. Unsure whom to trust, he sends for a youth he once knew as a virtual son, Manolo (George Hilton), but when Manolo ends up bringing along his less than sympathetic friend Blond (Klaus Kinski of The Big Silence [1968 / trailer] and much, much more), Sam calls upon Mason (Gilbert Roland) an old but hostile friend who has a score to settle with Sam. The less-than-harmonious group of four set out for the mine, but (spoiler time!) only one makes it back.
The theme of Sam Cooper's Gold is not a particularly complicated one – the evil that greed (i.e., gold) drives one to do (see The Treasure of Sierra Madre [1948 / trailer] for an earlier treatise on the topic) – and the story development is likewise straightforward and simple; unlike many of its genre, however, Sam Cooper's Gold is often most interesting when there isn't a shoot out. The nature of the relationship between Manolo and Blond is as obvious as was possible for the generation in which the film was made, but as to be expected of a film of that time the sausage lovers are not nice guys: Blond is a blood-thirsty psycho and Manolo is sorta wimpy and without a backbone. (Just how little backbone Manolo has is indicated by the fact that his relationship with Blond is due more to an inability to stand firm than actual desire, for he believably indicates that he would in fact rather be cuddling the one deep cleavage found in town; thus, his very sexuality is less innate than a reflection of his lack of will.) Carlo Rustichelli's music, but for the opening scene, is oddly annoying for a spaghetti western, lacking the sense of elegy that infuses the best soundtracks of the genre – but then, the west of Sam Cooper's Gold is far more pathetic and dirty than it is in any way mythic.
Both Heflin and Roland, two seasoned and mostly forgotten actors of the Golden Years of Hollywood, do an exceptionally fine job, giving their roles a rounded sense of solidity and sincerity that neither Kinski or Hilton manage. (Roland, whose career actually went back to the silent films, was born Luis Antonio Dámaso de Alonso and took his movie moniker by combining the names of two of his favourite actors, Ruth Roland and John Gilbert. Like Heflin, he was always in regular employment and took part in more than a few memorable projects, but never achieved lasting great fame.) Kinski, as so often, acts less than walks through his stereotypical part as the psychopathic wacko while Hilton is simply the handsome man of the film – in other words, both are (well) cast by type.
The film itself could have been a lot more than it is, for the sum of its parts – actors, setting and script – promise a lot. Regrettably, director Giorgio Capitani is no great master of mood, composition or rhythm, and his relatively lackluster and by-the-numbers direction keeps the movie from becoming something truly special. A shame, really, for although Sam Copper's Gold is a pleasantly depressing, cynical and existential film, it had the stuff to be a truly great, depressing, cynical and existential film.
This is not at all surprising, seeing who helped write the script: Fernando Di Leo. Di Leo went on to a long career making hard, cold-blooded and violent crime films and is supposedly one of Tarantino's fave (forgotten) Italian directors. Di Leo began his career co-writing spaghetti westerns such as Django (1966 / trailer), The Return of Ringo (1965 / trailer) and Navajo Joe (1966 / trailer) before moving onwards into directing. Amongst his more memorable films (though not necessarily the best) are the cheesy Klaus Kinski horror flick Asylum Erotica (1971 / trailer), the multi-violent crime "drama" Murder Inferno (1972 / trailer) and the uneven crime-comedy Loaded Gun (1974 / trailer), which basically stars Ursula Andress's love pillows (entertaining, one and all – the films, I mean). Di Leo's scripts usually feature a somewhat nihilistic view of the world, and Sam Cooper's Gold is no exception.
In the hands of a good director, the film might have been great. In the hands of Giorgio Capitani, the film is merely interesting and engrossing – which gives indication of the strength of the film script and acting. Well worth watching, even if you are not a fan of the genre.

The whole film:

Sherlock Holmes & das Halsband des Todes (Germany, 1962)

2011-12-02T14:03:00.016+01:00

The first 15 minutes of the film:

As a result of the popularity and financial success of the series of films based on the writings of the English mystery author Edgar Wallace, the German film industry of the sixties was forever in search of yet another popular franchise to cash in on. It is not at all surprising that some producer would eventually hit upon the idea of adapting the works of yet another and even greater English author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Producer Arthur Brauner, the man behind the then successful (but since mostly forgotten) Dr. Mabuse films (and a number of Bryan Edgar Wallace films), with the assistance of his brother Wolf Brauner, angled the permission from the Doyle estate to make a film based on the novel The Valley of Fear.
In what would seem like a stroke of genius, they pulled in Terrence Fisher – who had done Hammer's excellent Sherlock Holmes film The Hound of Baskervilles (trailer) in 1959 – to direct the film (aided by the unknown Teuton Frank Winterstein), Curt Siodmark to write it, and Christopher Lee to play the great detective. But as the great Christopher Lee himself has said with truthful insight: "The whole thing was a really classic example of having the right ingredients and coming up with a very unpalatable dish." That the film might be less than spectacular is already indicated within the first five minutes of the film, when the exact same long shot is used twice, but even this obvious lazy slip-up fails to prepare the viewer for the cinematic disaster that follows.
Before discussing what is wrong with the movie, however, it must be said that there are some plus points to Sherlock Holmes & das Halsband des Todes, or Sherlock Holmes & the Deadly Necklace, as it was titled for the English-language release. Like many of the better Universal films of the 40s, the action takes place in an interesting time warp in which the lead lady (a buxom, beautiful and wasted Senta Berger as Ellen Blackburn) looks like a Gibson Girl and everyone drives cars from the twenties and thirties or horse-drawn carriages. And though most of the numerous characters are underdeveloped and underused, they are at least generally well-cast. The German actor Hans Söhnker is convincing as Prof. Moriarty, and Thorley Walters – an English actor also found in The Earth Dies Screaming (1964 / trailer), Trog (1970 / trailer) and Vampire Circus (1972 / trailer) – does a pleasant turn as Watson, paying due respect to the bumbling characterization made famous by Nigel Bruce in the Universal series but also occasionally making the good doctor a bit more palatably competent. Leon Askin, most famous in the USA as the fat and laughable Nazi General Alfred Burkhalter of Hogan's Heroes, might not be too convincing as Moriarty's chauffeur and man-for-everything, but he is fun to watch. Best of all, however, is Christopher Lee. Dubbed or not, Lee is one of the most convincing screen Sherlock Holmes ever, his characterization of Holmes played, as Lee himself has said, "as he was written – as a very intolerant, argumentative, difficult man." It is completely un-understandable that it took another 28 years before he played the famed detective again in the 1990 television movies Sherlock Holmes & the Leading Lady (trailer) and Incident at Victoria Falls (trailer).
In Sherlock Holmes & das Halsband des Todes, Holmes and the Good Doctor once again face off with the evil Prof. Moriarty, who is in pursuit of a valuable, bejeweled box containing the priceless necklace of Cleopatra stolen some years before by Peter Blackburn (Wolfgang Lukschy) from the Egyptian archaeological site at which the famed and respected Moriarty was working. The box gets stolen and stolen again, a few people die, Holmes gets to disguise himself a couple of times and do some light detecting, Moriarty naturally attempts to kill him and the story sort of meanders on to a rather anti-climactic end in which, like throughout the entire film, nothing really happens.
It is tempting to lay the blame for the cinematic fiasco on the script supplied by Curt Siodmark, a well-known name in the field of both classic and bad genre films, but some sources claim that the script he originally supplied was much altered by an unknown rewriter, so he can be given a benefit of a doubt. What is without a doubt, however, is that not only that the plot of the film has very little to do with its supposed literary source – The Valley of Fear – but it is also lacks any and all suspense and features very little real action. Thus, though it may be open to discussion whether or not Siodmark helped ruin the film, it is definite that the final version of the script used was truly substandard.
In regards to the direction itself, it is also difficult to put the blame there. Though Terrence Fisher may have made a turkey or two in his life, he was also an old hand at putting together an acceptably decent film, and in the case of Sherlock Holmes und das Halzband des Todes, he did so. In fact, the direction of the movie, in regards to its staging and composition, often recalls the classic silent masterpieces of early German cinema and, as a result, is one of the more interesting aspects of the movie. (Whether Fisher is responsible for this Expressionist tinge is open to question, for it is his unknown German co-director Frank Winterstein who has the better credentials in this area. Winterstein, like Fisher, may never have worked in the silent area, but he did work as second unit director for those who had once worked during Germany's golden era of filmmaking: He assisted Fritz Lang in 1959 on both Der Tiger von Eschnapur / The Tiger of Eschnapur and Das Indische Grabmal / The Indian Tomb (edited together and originally released in the US as Journey to the Lost City [trailer from hell]) and, two years earlier, he also assisted the one-time silent film actor and major Nazi filmmaker Veit Harlan on the decidedly homosexual-intolerant movie Anders als du und ich / Bewildered Youth (1957 / scene which indicates that liking/making avant-garde music or painting means you're gay). (Anders als du und ich should not to be mistaken with Richard Oswald's indefinitely more homosexual-tolerant silent movie from 1919, Anders als die Anderen [what's left of the full film].)
In the end, the fault that Sherlock Holmes & das Halsband des Todes is such a mess probably lies in the hands of the producers for, of all those involved, the brothers Arthur and Wolf Brauner, have the longest list of trash credentials. Or at least Arthur Brauner does, which is why it is easy to want to lay all blame on him. True, Brauner may have produced such "classic" German films as Mädchen Hinter Gittern / Girls Behind Bars (1948), Die Halbstarken / Teenage Wolfpack (1956 / trailer) and, eventually, Hitlerjunge Saloman / Europa Europa (1990 / trailer), but he was also the driving force behind such instant trash classics and non-classics as the 1965 remake of Mädchen Hinter Gittern, Russ Meyer's Fanny Hill (1964 / trailer), Jungfrauen Report (1971) and Vampyros Lesbos (1973 / trailer) – not to mention a ton of other long forgotten (enjoyable and painful) celluloid garbage. Indeed, like most producers, Brauner was obviously a man whose decisions were often based less on intelligence than finances. For example, although it is understandable and acceptable that Christopher Lee's voice is dubbed in the German version of the production, Brauner actually had the audacity to have some cheap, unknown Englishman dub Lee when the film was finally released in English-speaking lands. Furthermore, aside from whatever qualities the original script might or might not have had, if the script originally supplied by Curt Siodmark was actually rewritten by some unknown, it would have been the producer that okayed it.
Of course, special mention still needs to be made of the movie's rightfully infamous soundtrack. Though it has been described by some as "jazzy," in truth it is much more a third-rate imitation of those eccentric soundtracks common of German films at that time. Unluckily, the unknown and long-forgotten Martin Slavin – who ended his life as the musical director on cruise ships – succeeded only in creating an oddly off-putting soundtrack that is less individualistic than simply completely at odds with the entire film. Thus, many scenes that work in regards to direction and acting are undermined by the overly present and grating score. (It is hardly surprising that one of Slavin's last known film credits is something as respectable and demanding as the X-rated animation film Once Upon A Girl... (1976 / trailer).
As is most obvious, Sherlock Holmes & das Halsband des Todes is not one of the best Sherlock Holmes films ever made. Were it not for Christopher Lee's presence, it would undoubtedly be one of the worst. A true shame, for had this film been artistically and financially successful, it would have probably led to a whole new series of Holmes films starring Christopher Lee as the famed detective.

A Kitten for Hitler (Great Britain, 2007)

2011-11-30T10:45:00.007+01:00

Actually, A Kitten for Hitler really isn't all that good, and the comedy in it is as puerile as the production is cheap, but it does appeal to the adolescent aspects of our humor here at A Wasted Life, so in honor of the passing away of the talented director Ken Russell and the holiday season coming up, the Short Film of the Month for the end of November is this almost 9-minute, shot-on-video short – made by Russell on a dare – originally hosted on the website Comedybox.tv.
In an interview in The Times (published 27 September 2007) Russell explained how the film came about: "Ten years ago [...], Melvyn Bragg and I had a heated discussion on the pros and cons of film censorship. Broadly speaking, Melvyn was against it, while I, much to his surprise, was absolutely for it. He then dared me to write a script that I thought should be banned. I accepted the challenge and a month or so later sent him a short subject entitled A Kitten for Hitler. 'Ken,' he said, 'if ever you make this film and it is shown, you will be lynched'."
If Melvyn Bragg actually truly believed that, it would seem that he was (perhaps still is) spectacularly unaware of such past filmic projects as Mel Brooks's 1968 film The Producers (trailer) with its superlative musical number Springtime for Hitler or, relatively more recently, the hilariously stupid British TV series 'Allo, 'Allo (Helga's striptease), a farce/sitcom which aired from 1982 to 1992 (thus lasting longer than the war it was set in) – although, admittedly, Hitler never appeared in the latter. (The painting seen here right, by the way, entitled Fallen Madonna with Big Boobies, was the basis of a long-running gag on the show, which sadly was never broadcast in Germany.) Both Bragg and Russell must also have been unaware that Hitler – along with Eva Braun – did receive a sitcom of his own in England in 1990 on BSB (British Satellite Broadcasting); only one episode ever aired. Entitled Heil Honey, I'm Home, it was explained as a persiflage of the typical, classic US family sitcom format of the 1950s like The Honeymooners or I Love Lucy; the basic scenario had Adolf and Eva living happily together in the suburbia until their new Jewish neighbors, Arny and Rosa Goldenstein, move in next door. It is a weird, perverse mess of a program.
Above, with A Kitten for Hitler, Russell once again indulges his penchant for bad taste, scurrile images and juvenile humor – not to mention his odd obsession (considering that he had converted to Catholicism from Judaism around 1956) with Jews and Nazis. For a change, there does not seem to be a phallic symbol anywhere in the film – though it could be we just haven't noticed it (after all, a Russell film without a phallic symbol is like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without peanut butter).
Enjoy A Kitten for Hitler – and if you like it, perhaps you should checkout the website Cats that look like Hitler.com.
Lastly, if you are interested in seeing just how surreally unfunny a sitcom about suburban Hitler and Braun is, embedded directly below is ten minutes of Heil Honey, I'm Home. More can be found on YouTube.com.

The first ten minutes of Heil Honey, I'm Home:

R.I.P.: Ken Russell

2011-11-28T23:03:00.056+01:00

Henry Kenneth Alfred Russell
3 July 1927 – 27 November 2011

In a career that spanned decades, British director Ken Russell was the undisputed enfant terrible of the movie industry, and his Baroque vision was both presided and vilified by fans and detractors alike. First gaining attention as the director of TV biographies in Great Britain, he gained international fame with the Oscar-winning film Women in Love, a film based on the novel of the same name by D.H. Lawrence. In his later years, after becoming a popular whipping boy for the press and suffering a series of critical and commercial disasters, aside from an occasional TV project or short film he concentrated mostly on the stage productions of opera. From sensitive and insensitive biographies to nun exploitation to light musicals to weirded out horror to rock n roll opera, Russell continually presented his uncompromising creative vision on the big screen, the result being one of the most consistently outrageous and interesting filmic outputs to be found in the last quarter 50 years. Ken Russell dies of natural causes at the age of 84 on 27 November 2011; he is survived by his fourth wife Lisi Tribble and five children. Below is an overview of a selection of his early, TV and feature-length films.

Knights on Bikes
(1956)
(image from the film)

We all have to start somewhere. According to mubi.com, this is Russell's first film. Knights on Bikes – A Knight on a Bike may perhaps have been a more appropriate title – is also generally reported as being unfinished, but the "The End" title card sort of belays that idea. (Perhaps he was simply unable to develop it to the extent that he would have liked to, and thus always considered it unfinished.) In any event, as primitive as this silent film film may be, it does exude a certain charm and is also easy to perceive as Russell's: both his scurrilous humor and entertaining symbolism is already evident (I think I even see a penis reference in this film).

The first 4.25 minutes of his first, unfinished short film:

Peepshow
(1956)
(image from the film)

And here we have his oldest surviving finished film, a silent short that he shot on a budget of 100 pounds. In Kevin M. Flanagan's book Ken Russell: Re-viewing England's Last Mannerist, the plot is given as that of "the comical conflict between a gang of con men impersonating disabled was veterans and a couple of traveling street performers who impose on the con men's London patch." A silent film, it also very much embraces the visual and stylistic vocabulary of the traditional silent film.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Shelagh Delaney's Salford
(1960, TV documentary for Monitor)
(image from the film)

By 1959, Russell was doing short documentaries for British TV. This one was done in 1960 for Monitor, a regular program about the arts first went on air in 1958 and ran until 1965. This broadcast, entitled Shelagh Delaney's Salford, is about the then-young British playwright and screenwriter Shelagh Delaney, who died a week before Russell on November 20th, 2011. Delaney is considered one of the first of the so-called "kitchen sink realism" movement, which focused on social realism; her renowned play A Taste of Honey, which was made into a film in 1961, is an exemplary example of the genre. In Russell's documentary, Delaney returns to her hometown of Salford, where A Taste of Honey is set. A fairly dry and traditional if interesting film, but there is nothing about it that would make you think it was directed by Russell.

Film:

A House in Bayswater
(1960, television documentary)
(image from the film)

BFI Screenonline says: "A portrait of a five-storey Edwardian house in Bayswater, and of the people who live there." It was his first BBC television film not made for Monitor, which explains its length of roughly a half-hour. Russell himself had once lived in the house featured. In an entry about A House in Bayswater in his blog, Michael Brooke writes: "[...] At the very end there's this extraordinary dreamlike coda, which is quite unlike anything Russell had done up to then. The house is about to be demolished, but just before it vanishes from the map, there's a montage of its occupants and their defining characteristics, seamlessly dissolving into one another as if to cram as many of their memories as possible into what time is left to them before they're irretrievably lost in the rubble." An oddly touching film.

Full film:

London Moods
(1961, TV documentary)
(image from the film)

BFI Screenonline points out: "Ken Russell is often cited as one of the fathers of the music video, with Tommy (1975) widely recognized as one of the pivotal works in the development of the form. However, as this far more obscure Monitor item from 1961 proves, he was experimenting with non-narrative illustrations of pre-recorded music fourteen years earlier." Everyone likes the gym sequence – and it's easy to understand why when you watch it.

Film:

London Moods from Mounds & Circles on Vimeo.

French Dressing
(1964)

The debut feature-length film of "Kenneth Russell," as he is credited in the film. At the fansite JamesBooth.org, the film is described thus: "[...] With stylized romping scenes, speeded-up action , and other visual tricks, French Dressing looks and feels a bit like A Hard Day's Night (trailer). There are some lovely lyrical moments, [...] and there's a lot of slapstick (that generally fails as humor, unfortunately). Beneath its intentional silliness, French Dressing tells a coming-of-age story with a sentimental heart." The B&W film was a flop, and the resounding criticism it received caused Russell to return to TV. It was first screened in the US in 2004, and still is not available on DVD. Whatever its flaws might be, it does have one major calling card, aside from being Russell's debut film, that puts it on our list of films to see one day: the beautiful Marisa Mell plays the part of the sex-bomb French actress Françoise Fayol – seen here from the film wearing a nun's habit and smoking – who comes to open the film festival at Gormleigh-by-the-Sea. The NY Times says "Ken Russell's first feature film is a slight comedy about a stodgy British resort," but savage messiah says "[...] it is a minor classic."

Title sequence:

Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World
(1966, TV documentary)
(image from the film)

I actually caught this on television as a child in Germany – it was one of the first "grown-up" films my mother let me watch (I was anywhere between six and nine years of age). I remember thinking the Russian guy danced funny, and I was surprised to learn that it was considered shocking to be naked (our family was relatively freizügig in those days – we didn't develop our prudish tendencies until we returned to the US in '72). Also, my mother had to explain to me that the woman in the film (Isadora – or rather, the actress Vivian Pickles) hadn't really died in real life in the finale scene, that she was acting, and that the stuff coming out of her mouth wasn't real blood but rather ketchup that someone who had run out real quickly had poured on her face to make her look dead. I also learned that day that you don't die with closed eyes. Yes, the film left a lasting impression on me – I, for one, never wear long scarves when riding in convertibles. Below, the 67-minute film presented in four.

The film in 4 minutes:

Billion Dollar Brain
(1967)

Ken Russell's second cinema film, and one that he really didn't want to do – but contractual obligations are contractual obligations. It's the third of the Henry Palmer spy thrillers (based on the books by Len Deighton) that helped make Michael Caine a star; preceded by The Ipcress File (1965 / trailer) and Funeral in Berlin (1966 / trailer), Caine left the series thereafter, though he did return to it almost twenty years later to make Bullet to Beijing (1995 / trailer) and Midnight in Saint Petersburg (1996 / trailer). The plot, according to John Vogel at imdb: "Harry Palmer no longer spies for the British and is instead a starving private detective. He receives a package of money which is followed by a mechanical voice that gives him his instructions over the phone. He accepts the assignment and finds that he has entered the world of a Texas billionaire who thinks he can bring about a popular uprising in the Soviet Union with the help of a highly sophisticated computer." Needless to say, Billion Dollar Brain is perhaps one of Russell's most conventional films – that is, until he moved to doing television movies during the twilight of his career.

Trailer:

Dante's Inferno
(1967, TV documentary)
Scene from Dante's Inferno:

Dante Gabriel Rossetti - First Fire von poetictouch

Like Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World above, Dante's Inferno: The Private Life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Poet and Painter (1967) was originally made for the small screen; in the case of Dante's Inferno, for Omnibus, a BBC documentary series that ran from 1967 to 2003. And like Isadora, the film is less a documentary than docu-drama with an arty twist. Filmed in B&W 35mm, Russell appropriates the visual vocabulary of silent comedies and German expressionist horror films to tell a poetic, impressionistic version at the life of painter/poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, an artist of the Pre-Raphaelites, an English art movement of the mid-1800s that was extremely out of fashion when Russell made this film (many of the images of the film quote his and other Pre-Raphaelite paintings). At the Columbus Museum of Art, Dennis Toth of Cinema of the Damned once explained: " The smallness of the [TV] screen, as well as Russell's perception of the potential narrowness of the viewer's mind, led him to develop a biographical cinema based upon shock values (e.g., the opening scene of Dante's Inferno); an editing structure built upon abrupt transitions; and an ability to radically shift in his films from the sublime to the ridiculous, from placid beauty to surreal absurdity." The plot, according to DVD Talk: "With his wife sickly and his career stifled, Dante Gabriel Rossetti tries to make a mark with his painting and poetry." Considered one of Russell's best TV productions of the 60s, the roots of many of his later troupes and visual trickeries are found in this production, one that is far too artsy to readily be accepted as a TV film...

Another scene from Dante's Inferno:

Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Alas, So Long! von poetictouch

Women in Love
(1969)
Trailer:

Ah, Women in Love! A classic – it's even ranked #87 on the British Film Institute's top 100. It is the first of three projects Russell made over the course of his career based on the works of the rather verbose author D. H. Lawrence, the later two being The Rainbow (1989), a prequel of sorts in which Glenda Jackson plays the mother of the character she plays in this film, and the four-episode TV drama Lady Chatterley (1993). The general consensus about the film is well summarized by Leonard Maltin: "[A] fine adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's novel about two interesting love affairs. Tends to bog down toward the end [...]." Made when all the main actors and actresses were in their prime and, aside from a scene featuring Glenda Jackson's cherry-sized nipples, the film has the infamous interlude with Alan Bates and Oliver Reed wrestling nekkid. Supposedly, some of the characters in the book (and therefore the film) are based on real members of the Bloomsbury Group: Loerke (Vladek Sheybal), for example, is based on painter Mark Gertler, and Hermione (Eleanor Bron), Lady Ottoline Morrell. Above, the trailer; below, the wrestling nude scene, which seems to be the only thing most people know about the film.

Nude wrestling without oil and flaccid:

The Music Lovers
(1970)

As Ken Russell summarized the film once upon a time: "It's the story of the marriage between a homosexual and a nymphomaniac." Roger Elbert was not fond of the film: "The Music Lovers is [a] totally irresponsible [...] film about, or inspired by, or parallel to, or bearing a vague resemblance to, Tchaikovsky, his life and times. It is not, however, a complete failure. Ken Russell is a most deviously baroque director, sucking us down with him into his ornate fantasies of decadent interior decoration, until every fringe on every curtain has a fringe of its own, and the characters have fringes, too, and the characters elbow their way through a grotesque jungle of candlesticks, potted plant stands, incense sticks, old champagne bottles, and gilt edges [...]." Sounds good to us. Besides, any film having a young, good-looking Richard Chamberlain pretending to be a homosexual (Tchaikovsky) can't be all lies – I mean, all that bad.

Trailer:

The Devils
(1971)

Ken Russell goes Nunsploitation, with Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave along for the crazed, opulent, torturous ride. Some on-line sources claim that the film is still virtually unavailable in its original, uncut form. The film is based on John Whiting's play The Devils, in turn based on Aldous Huxley's book The Devils of Loudun, which in turn is based on a true story: "the rise and fall of Urbain Grandier, a 17th century French priest executed for witchcraft following the supposed possessions of Loudun." This is the film to watch with your religious, sexually repressed friends and relatives – they'll drop you like a hot stone. Redgrave, a nun gone batty from not getting enough sex and totally hot for Reed, causes his downfall and death – but gets a hard piece of what's left of him between her legs by the end of the film. The Devils is a grueling, bat-shit crazy film.

Trailer:

The Boy Friend
(1971)

Ken Russell's follow-up project to the ultra-heavy and disturbing movies The Devils was this light-hearted homage to Busby-Berkeley-style musicals featuring the film debut of the world's first famous anorexic model Twiggy and based on a Broadway musical from 1954. (The play was Julia Andrews US debut.) Generally considered a lesser film of the director's, the film is less "lesser" than simply lighter – had it not been savagely edited for the US release, its general reputation might be higher. The film drips visual verve and creativity, and remains light even as it interweaves modern topics such as "British class tension, hints of lesbianism, bawdy physical comedy and a telling comparison of film and stage craft." (That comes from TCM.)

Trailer:

Savage Messiah
(1972)
Trailer:

Russell continues with thematic obsession: creative genius, but for a rare change tackles the topic of the visual arts in this, one of his (unjustly) more-overlooked films. The focus of this biographical film is the French painter Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, an early and influential modernist who died at the tender age of 24 in the trenches of WW I. This film, based on H.S. Ede's book Savage Messiah, focuses on his relationship with Sophie Brzeska (Dorothy Tutin) and his model Gosh (Helen Mirren).

Helen Mirren's famous nude scene:

Mahler
(1974)

Russell returns to musical geniuses in this highly entertaining, typically over-the-top Russell film "about" the famed composer Mahler who, like Russell, converted from Judaism to Catholicism. For more on what A Wasted Life thinks of this wonderfully Baroque film, go to our review of the film here.

Trailer:

Tommy
(1974)
Trailer:

With Tommy, Ken Russell begins ever so noticeably to move from his Baroque phase to his Rococo stage – and thus made a movie version of The Who's rock opera that even those who dislike The Who can still find highly appealing and entertaining. This is not a film to watch for the story or the acting, though, since the film is a musical the latter never becomes as obviously atrocious as in Russell's follow-up film Lisztomania. The music is good enough, but it's the visual excesses of the director that make this film – scenes like that featuring a hot, stacked Ann-Margret, still pre-MILF, wallowing in soap, beans, and chocolate pouring out of the TV set doesn't hurt the eye any, that's for sure. Little Tommy witnesses the murder of his war hero daddy (Robert "Mahler" Powell) and grows up to be a psychosomatically deaf, dumb and blind Roger "The Bod" Daltrey. He gets molested by family and friends and goes through all sorts of quack cures before becoming a pinball wizard and then a cult leader and – well, all good things must come to an end... Tommy really doesn't work as well on the small screen as it does in a movie theater, but then, this is true of most of Russell's mature films.

Trailer II:

Lisztomania
(1975)
Trailer:

Lisztomania is Russell at the highpoint of his Rococo excess – and, as such, is a film that not has to be seen to be believed, but also separates the men from the boys. Having discovered rock stars when making Tommy, for Lisztomania Russell pulled in another cast of musically talented thespian nulls, headed by an unbelievably bad Roger Daltrey as Liszt. (In theory, the concept of casting a rock star to play what may have been the first rock-star classical musician is not a bad idea – but as Daltrey's acting ability is as flat as his six-pack.) But thanks to the non-stop visual barrage, one usually forgets to notice the acting in what is, essentially, a colossal visual farce. Historical fact plays twelfth fiddle – if it plays a fiddle at all – to Russell's visual madness, liberally seasoned with his obsession with cock, which stands tall more than once in this fabulous auditory assault of what must have been acid-inspired scenes and a narrative dictated by peyote. This film is simply nuts – and a true masterpiece!

Penis, anyone?:

Valentino
(1977)

After practicing uncontrolled cinematic bukakki with Lisztomania, for his next artist's bio two years later Russell decided for a slightly more controlled, almost Mannerist approach. But neither the public nor the critics were in an agreeable mood: the film tanked critically and commercially, and can be seen as the first loose nail in the coffin that was Russell's career. In his book The Official Razzie Movie Guide, John Wilson even lists it among "The 100 Most Amusing Bad Movies Ever Made" – a list upon which this film does not belong, for Valentino is far from bad. True, the film lacks any notable continuity of disposition, and neither Rudolf Nureyev nor Michelle Phillips – who both lack screen presence and any believable mutual attraction – are the strongest actors, but the film is a good example of style over substance and has some truly well-imagined visual sequences (I for one love the mini-western that plays from beginning to end over the shoulder of Huntz Hall [as Jesse Lasky] during a scene on a film lot). As Valentino is a Ken Russell bio, the possible validity of the facts presented need not be discussed, but the basic story takes the sadly early death of Valentino (at the age of 31) to present a series of flashbacks presenting Russell's interpretations of the life and times of the Great Screen Lover during his climb to success in Hollywood. A film well worth watching.

Trailer:

Altered States
(1980)

Three years later Russell returns from dishonor with a pretentious if ultimately popular take on the Jack Arnold's classic trash film Monster on the Campus (1958 / trailer), but this time around it isn't fish blood and gamma rays that instigates the transformation, it's drugs and (GASP!) something dangerous known as a sensory-deprivation tank. Based on a book by Paddy Chayefsky, who both wrote the screenplay and disowned the movie before it was released, Altered States seems to be the drug movie that even non-drug users like. Personally, here at A Wasted Life, we agree with Roger Ebert when he says "the movie's characters [are] a band of overwrought pseudo-intellectuals who talk like a cross between Werner Erhard, Freud, and Tarzan." The feature film debut of both William Hurt and Drew Barrymore, Altered States is pretty stupid stuff but, as always, Russell throws in enough explosives and weirdness to make the film bearable – if barely.

Trailer:

Crimes of Passion
(1984)

Whoever gave the go for this movie must have been taking the same drugs as William Hurt in Altered States – but we here at A Wasted Life can only say "Yay for Drugs!" This film is high camp and unbelievably ridiculous – the perfect film to show, dunno, as a double feature with Psycho Beach Party (2000 / trailer). It is perhaps a bit sad to think that everyone involved probably thought they were making a serious film with a serious statement (albeit with an occasional wink of the eye) about American sexuality, but had they not been so serious the film would surely never have become so enjoyably "bad." This film is very similar to another classic "serious" film gone camp, Mommy Dearest (1981 / trailer): both films were made with deeply sober intentions, and both simply lost their way so thoroughly and deeply that they achieve a new inexplicable level of otherness, a level of unadulterated kitsch and camp, thus causing them both to become much more enjoyable and memorable they in any way should be. Crimes of Passion is a thriller to see – preferably uncut! Plot: A P.I. (Bruce Davison) with a rocky marriage finds out the object of his latest surveillance job, a sportswear designer (Kathleen Turner) has a secret double life as a prostitute named China Blue. He gets the itch and lets her scratch it, and before you know it the two emotional cripples sort of become a thing. One of China Blue's clients is the nutziod street preacher Rev. Peter Shayne (an entertainingly overacting Anthony Perkins) who likes to flaunt a razor-lined vibrator; he decides it is time to save her mortal soul... This film may well have added another few nails to the coffin that was Ken Russell's mainstream career as a name director.

Trailer:

Gothic
(1986)

After Crimes of Passion, Russell attractiveness for the major studios sort of disappeared; for his next four solo projects, the low-tier Vestron Pictures was his studio of employment. For the first of the two feature-length horror films that Russell made for them in order to hasten the end of his Hollywood respectability, he decided to combine horror with his favorite genre, the artist's biography film. The result is a typically crazed and enjoyable mess that isn't very scary but is highly entertaining in a bombastic, badly acted sort of way – had he only found someone other than Thomas Dolby to do the music! His true Rococo and Baroque days long behind him, Gothic has its share of pretentiousness and disturbing scenes, but the film is hardly as extreme as those of his heyday. It is, so to speak, Russell Lite, but with more pretentiousness and less intentional stupidity than his next horror film, the surreally inept but enjoyable Lair of the White Worm (1988). The plot of Gothic, as supplied by the Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review: "1816. The poet Percy Shelley goes to visit fellow poet Lord Byron [...] on the shores of Lake Geneva. Shelley takes with him his lover Mary Godwin and her half-sister Claire. While there Byron urges them to seek madness and inspiration in the name of free love, free thought and defiance of religion. They take turns reading from a book of horror stories and on impulse decide to hold a séance around the skull of a medieval monk Byron has found [...]. But for each of them this brings into existence a greater horror than they imagined."

Trailer:

Aria
(1987)
Trailer:

MTV for opera lovers: producer Don Boyd culled together ten directors (including Ken Russell, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Altman, and Nicolas Roeg) to direct ten separate short vignettes inspired by arias by Vivaldi, Bach, Wagner, etc. Aria features the film debut of Bridget Fonda, but in the segment by Franc Roddam (the director of The Bride [1985 / trailer] and Quadrophenia [1979 / trailer]), not by Russell – though she, too, does a nude scene for the film. Russell's segment is set to the aria Nessun dorma from Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot and stars the English Page Three model and porn star Linzi Drew as an accident victim – seen here from the film – who fantasizes her body being adorned with jewels in a tribal ritual; the jewels correspond to her real injuries, the rituals to the medical procedures of the hospital staff treating her. A rather dull and cheap-looking segment, actually...

Russell's segment to Aria:

Salome's Last Dance
(1988)
Trailer:

His second film with Vestron was a direct-to-video trifle that came and went quickly, but not quickly enough not to add another nail to the coffin of his reputation. A throwback to his more Baroque days, it may be second-rate Russell but it is fun in its own way, forced shocks and all. In Paris, Oscar Wilde – who, although most people see him as a guiltless victim of the homophobia of his age, was actually very much into underage boys (you know, like them guys at Nambla) – arrives at a male bordello where the owner, as a surprise, has arranged a performance of Wilde's banned-in-England play Salome, a fem-fatale version of the Old Testament tale of Salome dancing the Dance of Seven Veils for her father King Herod in exchange for the head of John the Baptist. The big surprise of the film is off course the dangling weenie, but somehow it just fits to the gaudy stylization and excess of the whole film. Your mommy probably won't like the film, but you might – even if you don't belong to Nambla.

Full film:

The Lair of the White Worm
(1988)

Everyone hates this one – except us. The film is ever-so-loosely based on one of Bram Stoker's many numerous lesser novels – his last, actually – previously published both as The Lair of the White Worm and The Garden of Evil. The book, based in part on the legend of the Lambton Worm, was published in 1911, a year before Stoker's death. Russell moved the action into then-present-day England. Theoretically a horror film, it has all the troupes one might expect from a film named The Lair of the White Worm – teenage heroes, a big white worm, a couple of nasty deaths, screaming gals that need to be saved – and a lot of sly as well as pubescent humor thrown in on top. As Lady Sylvia Marsh, the evil bitch of the tale, Amanda Donohoe might be hot but she definitely personifies the last person in the world from whom you would want a blowjob. A young Hugh Grant is there as one of the two lads that go up against her to save the babes and kill the worm in what is a relatively tame – but for a few nicely over-the-top hallucination scenes like the one of Roman soldiers raping nuns in front of a cross upon which the white worm slithers – but nevertheless entertainingly ridiculous, weird and witty (lesser) Russell film. We recommend it

Trailer:

A British Picture
(1989, TV movie)

One can only wonder the sales pitch for this movie – "I'd want to make a movie about me" – but Russell managed to sell the project: a 50-minute biographical film about him, his path to becoming filmmaker, and his films. Was this actually ever aired anywhere? Russell's book biography, published in 2008, shares the same title.

First 12 minutes:

The Rainbow
(1989)

For his final Vestron-financed project, Russell returned to the works of D.H. Lawrence to make this drama, a prequel to his film of 20 years earlier, Women in Love. Glenda Jackson also returns (in her fifth of six projects that she worked on with Russell) to play the mother of the character she played in Women in Love, Gudron (played here by Glenda McKay). But the focus of the film, which Roger Elbert calls "a measured, thoughtful literary adaptation," is not on Gudron, but rather her sister Ursula (Sammi Davis), a young woman of a staid family who, as a proto-feminist, spurns the traditional path of marriage, hearth and home to venture forth on her own as a schoolteacher. She befriends the schoolteacher Winifred (Amanda Donohoe), an older, unmarried and independent woman in whom she sees a role model. Is lezzie love in them thar hills? Nope, Winifred marries Uncle Henry (David Hemmings), who is liberated in his own way – but the man in Ursula's life, Anton Skrebensky (Paul McGann), proves not to be... Few people have seem to have seen the film, and but for Roger Elbert, no one seems to have liked it. But then, by 1989, Ken Russell was very much a popular whipping boy and any film he made was bound to be trashed by the popular press.

Trailer:

The Strange Affliction of Anton Bruckner
(1990, TV movie)

Russell returned to television again after The Rainbow to once again return to his favorite theme, the artist's biography, this time around focusing on the Austrian composer Anton Bruckner – or, to be more exact, to cast a fictionalizing eye upon Bruckner's real-life stay in a sanatorium due to his "numeromania," an obsessive-compulsive need to count objects and things – something that is, arguably, reflected in the almost manic repetitions found in his symphonies. No one seems to have seen the film, however – or if anyone has, they haven't written about it on the web. The bad-quality outtake below, tame as it may be, does exude an oddly Ken Russell shine...

Outtake from The Strange Affliction of Anton Bruckner:

The Strange Affliction Of Anton Bruckner quintet (Ken Russell, 1990)

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Women and Men: Stories of Seduction
(1990, TV movie)

In the first of what was to be two anthology films made for HBO – Women and Men: Stories of Seduction was followed by W&M:SoS II in 1991 – Russell joins director Tony Richardson (whose best film may be the much contemned B&W masterpiece The Loved One [1965 / trailer]) and, in a rare directorial excursion, the scriptwriter Frederic Raphael (who, also in 1990, supplied the screenplay for the decidedly odd costume drama, The King's Whore [trailer]) to film three separate short stories. Russell's segment was based on Dorothy Parker's Dusk before Fireworks and starred the great thespian luminaries Peter Weller and Molly Ringwald. A minor discursion for Russell, and one not worth taking for the viewer.

Trailer:

WOMEN AND MEN: STORIES OF SEDUCTION: Movie Trailer. Watch more top selected videos about: Movie Trailers, Elizabeth McGovern

Whore
(1991)

Whore pretty much put the final nail in Ken Russell's feature-film directorial career; until his low-budget, direct-to-video Poe-inspired The Fall of the Louse of Usher: A Gothic Tale for the 21st Century in 2002, he was pretty much stuck simply telling cameramen where to point the camera in extremely uninteresting television movies. Unlike Crimes of Passion, Russell's subsequent film about career girls, Whore, is more gritty docu-drama than thriller-chic. The film is based on a play entitled Bondage, which was written by the London cabbie David Hines and in turn based on the tales told to him by the hookers he'd carried in his cab; Russell and his co-scriptwriter Deborah Dalton moved the "action" from London to Los Angeles. Needless to say, Pretty Woman (1990) it ain't. Liz (Theresa Russell) never gets her millionaire, but she does have a lonely and dangerous life. Of course, it was cut to shreds in the US to get any viable release, but the uncut 92-minute European version is available – here, for example. Unglamorous and depressing, Whore was not exactly a hit... which makes it all the odder that it was followed by an in-name-only "sequel" three years later, Whore 2 (trailer), directed by the independent filmmaker Amos Kollek (Fast Food Fast Women [2000 / German trailer]). Unlike in Russell's film, however, in the more traditionally structured Kollek film – originally entitled Bad Girls – many of the "actresses" playing prostitutes are actually the real thing.

Trailer:

Prisoner of Honor
(1991, TV movie)

Russell's days of feature-film productions ended with Whore. His next project was a British TV film originally shown on HBO in the US entitled Prisoner of Honor, which is based on the turn of the century French scandal known as the Dreyfus Affair. In short, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, of Jewish descent, was wrongly accused and convicted on trumped-up charges of espionage for the Germans and sent to Devil's Island (where he ended up serving almost five years before rehabilitation). Lieutenant-Colonel George Piquart (played by Richard Dreyfuss in the film, who claims to be a direct descendant of Alfred Dreyfus in real life) found evidence that Dreyfus was innocent, but was forced to suppress it by anti-Semitic officials; he leaked it to the pro-Dreyfus press, which eventually led to the end of his military career. (The author Emile Zola, also a proponent of Dreyfus's innocence was found guilty of libel for the damning articles he wrote about the case.) Eventually, both Dreyfus and Piquart were exonerated, but the events are a black mark of anti-Semitism in French history. According to Wikipedia, "Russell's flamboyant direction takes the heroic tale into the realm of the surreal; this may not be a thoroughly accurate account, but it's one of the more eye-filling."

Trailer:

Tales of Erotica
(1996)

In 1996, Russell contributed a segment to the long-lasting and usually boring German television program Tales of the Erotica; his segment is among those later collected and released as a series of direct-to-video compilations which also featured shorts by Susan Seidelman (The Dutch Master), Melvin Van Peebles (Vroom Vroom Vroom), Bob Rafelson (Wet), Paul Cox (Touch Me), Mani Kaul (The Cloud Door), the under-appreciated Jos Sterling (The Waiting Room) and others. Russell's segment is entitled The Insatiable Mrs. Kirsch. (We assume it to be an in-joke that the lady's last name is the German word for "cherry.") The plot, as far as we could find out, involves a young novelist (Simon Shepherd) who becomes obsessed with a highly-sexed woman (Hetty Baynes) with a thing for masturbation and toys.

Trailer:

Trailer provided by Video Detective

Dog Boys
(1998, TV movie)

Two years after sinking so low as to do a TV movie bio of the great fraud Uri Geller (Mindbender, 1996), Russell did Dog Boys – also known as Tracked – a tenth generation misbegotten son of The Most Dangerous Game (1932 / full film) starring a batch of equally on-the-skids former "stars: Dean Cain (TV's Superman in Lois & Clark), Bryan Brown (F/X [1986 / trailer]), and Tia Carrere (Wayne's World [1992 / trailer]). The result is a film that leaves one wondering where Russell was while it was being made – there is nothing about it that bears his stamp; in fact, this flick is across the board uninteresting. The trailer for Dog Boys / Tracked can be seen watched here.

The Fall of the Louse of Usher: A Gothic Tale for the 21st Century
(2002)

With no real mainstream directorial career left to speak of, Russell's last feature-length film is basically a home movie shot on a camcorder in his garage/studio/back yard, featuring a cast of friends and neighbors. The website The Spinning Image says: "The Fall of the Louse of Usher ought to have disciples of one-time 'enfant terrible' Ken Russell salivating, producers flinging open their chequebooks and showering the great man with millions, and the arts world in general besieging parliament and demanding that Ken be given a life peerage. What will really happen is that this camcorder masterpiece will be ignored by most, and dismissed as trash by 90 per cent of those who do manage to see it. If you've got the slightest interest in movie mavericks, outrageous visual style, Edgar Allan Poe, or fighting against adversity, I urge you to seek out [...] Usher wherever you can." The plot, as described by Worldwide Celluloid Massacre (which hates the film): "[...] A kind of sequel to the story of Usher with random Poe allusions and puns. After the murder of his wife, Roderick Usher the rock star is put in an insane asylum where the chief doctor is Russell himself as a kind of crazy, naughty Benny Hill psychiatrist with a young nurse sidekick."

Official trailer to The Fall of the Louse of Usher:

Brothers of the Head
(2005, dirs. Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe)

On the rare occasion, Russell would also appear as an actor in the films of others. He has a small part as a rather flamboyant gay Englishman in Fred Schepsi's film The Russia House (1990), for example, but the film is not really interesting enough to feature in this overview of Russell's projects. Brothers of Head, however, is. The directors of the film, Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe, are better known as documentary filmmakers and received some acclaim for their 2002 movie Lost in La Mancha (trailer), a film about Terry Gilliam's cursed and never-completed film project Don Quixote. Brothers of the Head is a faux documentary (based on the book by Brian Aldiss), and Russell appears as himself as one of the talking heads in a film based on an idea so weird that it could well have come from him. The storyline, to quote imdb: "In the 1970s a music promoter plucks Siamese twins from obscurity and grooms them into a freakish rock'n'roll act. A dark tale of sex, strangeness and rock music." Sound unreal, impossible? Guess you don't know the biography of the Hilton Sisters – Violet basically suffered the same terrifying end as Eng of the conjoined twins that gave birth to the term Siamese Twins, but unlike him she was alone at the time. A film that is now on our "must see" list.

Trailer:

Trapped Ashes
(2006, multiple directors)

Russell's last directorial project was his segment for this overlooked and forgotten horror anthology film, which very much follows the structure – as well as the traditional ending – of the classic Amicus horror anthology films of yesteryear. Among the six directors involved aside from Russell are Sean S. Cunningham, Monte Hellman and Joe Dante – and among the cast are no less than Dick Miller and John Saxon. Neither appear is in Russell's segment, however, though Russell himself does as the crazed Dr. Lucy. Entitled The Girl with Golden Breasts, the segment is properly Russellian: The blonde actress Phoebe (Rachel Veltri) is of the opinion that babes with bigger boobs get all the parts, so she decides to lift her career with an augmentation. But she chooses the wrong doctors – they all have undergone boob jobs themselves, as can be seen in image above – and ends up with a pair of breasts that give breastfeeding a new meaning. Not a segment for the more mammary-obsessed among us...

German trailer:

Invasion of the Not Quite Dead
(2011, dir. Tony Lane)
Promo:

Ken Russell is/was one of many who have thrown their support for this independent production that seems to still be in production; according to imdb, he also has a small part in the film as "Alan Burrows." The storyline, as supplied by none other than Tony Lane himself (on imdb as well as Wikipedia) is as follows: "In 1978 a meteorite crash lands into the Swiss Mountains, unleashing a deadly virus. Killing everyone within a 20 mile radius, the incident was covered up by local officials. Now thirty years later the virus is released onto an unsuspecting island off the coast of England. A group of survivors must band together in order to survive the death and destruction of the once friendly locals in this black comedy horror Invasion of the Not Quite Dead." Interested in becoming a producer of the film? Go here.

Promo II: