The Visitor (1979) AKA Stridulum

As soon as I saw the bat-shit trailer, I had to see this film. It looked like Dune mixed with Exorcist II The Heretic. That would certainly qualify it mad enough to check out.

With such a great cast & terrible reviews, I was expecting an incoherent mess, but its actually pretty cool. Its much better than other Italian horror knock-offs which were being made at the time.

It basically boils down to two-parts The Omen, one-part The Exorcist, a healthy dose of Rosemary's Baby, and a splash of Hitchcock's The Birds for good measure. The real difference is that instead of demonic possession, its an evil space-traveler who has impregnated a group of humans and blessed their children with supernatural powers. If this all seems a little too much like L Ron Hubbard for your taste, don't worry. All this is explained at the start to some bald-headed children in a greenhouse, by a Jesus-like Franco Nero!

After this disjointed opening, the film settles down to tell the story of Katy, a young girl who has powers of telekinesis. Paige Conner plays Katy as playful rather than sinister, which makes the film more fun when she starts going off the rails.

Katy wants her mother to settle down with Raymond Armstead (Lance Henriksen) a rich businessman who has just brought the Atlanta Basketball team! He wants to get married and have children too, but Barbara Collins (Joanne Nail) doesn't feel comfortable settling down, probably due to all the pestering!

It seem that Henriksen is being funded by a shadowy organization who are pushing him to create a heir. To top this off, a mysterious visitor played by John Huston keeps popping up, who seems just as keen to stop this happening.

The film continues very much in the vein of The Omen (1976), with an elaborate death for anyone who gets too nosy in their affairs. Damien's devil dogs are substituted in this by a hawk, and Billie Whitelaw's nanny character is replaced by house-maid Shelly Winters.

John Huston is not the only director acting in this. Sam Peckingpah plays Dr Sam, who is apparently Barbara's Ex-husband. You wouldn't know that from watching the film however, as due to his drug problem, he kept flubbing his lines. His brief appearance is mainly shots of the back of his head, with his voice dubbed by an actor.

There is no getting away from the fact that this movie is preposterous, but apart from Peckingpah, the cast are pretty game. Especially Glenn Ford, who plays a police detective who gets an expletive-filled ear bashing from the young Katy.

There is some good work behind the camera too. The Cinematography is classy, with angular lines which accentuate the late seventies décor and architecture. The director Giulio Paradisi was assistant director on Fellini's 8 1/2.

Questions I asked myself whilst watching:

Is that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? Yes it is!

Should you have left Katy with that strange elderly babysitter you've just met?

Why are they trying to kill her now? never-mind.

Is that supposed to be a Swiss-Army Bird? whaah?

Where is my old Pong game console?

Who is the funky score by? Franco Micalizzi

So where did that gun come from anyway?

Star Trek Into Darkness: Reboots, Sequels and Prequels.

I was going to give a quick review of Star Trek Into Darkness after seeing an advanced preview. But chances are you will have already seen the film before reading this, so I thought Instead I'd talk about a new development in Hollywood which STID seems to uniquely represent. The sequel prequel reboot!

My first thoughts on the film is that J. J. Abrams has managed to pull off the feat of making a good movie whilst adhering to the Star Trek universe. If you enjoyed his original reboot, then you will  certainly enjoy this twice-fold. Benedict Cumberpatch steals the show, and like it's predecessor, Abrams cherry picks elements from the original series and films for his alternative universe take. The 3D is relatively non-obtrusive, apart from the fast cutting fighting scenes, and the trademark lens flares are not as ubiquitous as his other films (lens flare just don't make sense in 3D). Its certainly an enjoyable ride.

But when you remake, or reboot a series, you can use or abuse all the emotions and invested interest that the previous version have built up. If I had one criticism of STID, its that you have to take Spock and Kirks friendship on trust. As Limoy's Spock admits to Kirk in the 2009 film, in their alternative time-line, they naturally become good friend. In J. J. Abrams' Star Trek, they must become friends to overcome a greater good. This continues in Into Darkness and culminates in a scene which replays a moment in StarTrek folklore but can't hit the same emotional heights as the original.

STID reminded me of two other things which I'd watched recently. The first was the Total Recall Remake. I feel this film would have received better review if it had completely disowned the Verhoeven 1990 classic. Its action sequences were well done, but continuous reference to the original only reminded us that, even though it was more faithful to the book, the Schwarzenegger version was superior. Colin Farrell doesn't give us much characterization as Quaid. If you take a scene which is arguably more convincing in the new film, where Quaid is being convinced that somethings gone wrong and that hes still at Rekall, it never allows Farrells character to really slow down and ponder whether its true. The film could of looked at  the idea that Quaid really is the bad guy, but that is left unexplored.

The second thing watched recently was the TV series Hannibal. Like Star Trek, it too played with familiar characters in an updated context. And like Star Trek, it used the audiences knowledge of the series to create an alternative take. Both do this cleverly and reward fans of the original. But I can foresee Hollywood using prequel/reboots as the new alternative to sequels. I expect these won't be so well thought out, and if not done well, they will end up tarnishing the originals that we love. A recent example is Prometheus (2012). I know some people liked it, but for me it kinda ruins the original movies. Before seeing it, I was certainly more curious about this than I would have been for just another sequel. I expect Hollywood to exploit this in the future...

Day of Resurrection (1980) AKA Fukkatsu no hi

What if a deadly air-borne virus killed off the population of earth? What if that wasn't the worst part?

Day of Resurrection was the most expensive Japanese film made at the time,  and was the manga publisher Kadokawa Shoten's attempt to break into the international film market. I expect that Hollywood wasn't too keen on a foreign studios muscling in on their patch, and the film failed to get a US general release. A shortened version (108mins) renamed Virus was shown in the States, but it seem to have now been forgotten, and the film has ended up in public domain.

Its got a great cast including Glenn Ford, Sonny Chiba, Robert Vaughn, George Kennedy, Oliva Hussey, Bo Svenson, & Henry Silva. It shares many similarities to the Late 70's disaster epics like Earthquake and Airport. Some of the actors probably stepped off the set of one disaster to this one. It even has its own love theme! (Why did they always have love themes in disaster films?)

The 1st part of the film reminded me of the Novel World War Z, without the zombies. Lots of short vignettes around the globe of how the virus is effecting humanity. Emotional scenes in a Japan hospital, A sweating POTUS in the White House, and confused scientists at an Arctic base. News reports of humanity breaking down. Riots and protests.

The 2nd part concentrates on the survivors who have congregated at the arctic base. Surprisingly, the film deals with the elephant in the room. Namely, of the group of 800 people, only eight are women. Yes, this movies go there. Obviously a movie about humanity being wiped out is grim, but its the bland council-meeting discussions of how to repopulate that are move unpleasant than any amount of scattered skeletons.

The last part (Spoilers) takes a sharp turn when the geologist of the group thinks that recent drilling may cause another disaster. Due to a convoluted chain of events, a earthquake in Washington DC will set off the Nuclear missiles aimed at Russia. Which similarly will set off the missiles aimed at the USA including the Alaskian base that the last of humanity is holed up in.

You have to like a film which is not content with wiping out humanity with a man-made virus, but wants to finish the job with a thermo-nuclear war!

There is a strange Alejandro Jodorowsky vibe to the ending that gives a slight amount of optimism which I think is completely missing from the shortened Virus version.

The film really boils down to a message of the folly of nuclear war. A message, that the Japanese would obviously have strong feeling about. 1980 was a dangerous time in the cold war. USA/Russian relationships were frosty. Mutually Assured Distruction was still the only real nuclear deterrent.

Sidenotes:

Henry Silva has played plenty of great villains, but here he is responsible for wiping out humanity twice! Good work!

Of Cooks and Kung Fu (1979) Tao Tie Gong

A mysterious stranger with a Raiden style hat, is killing off the chefs in the area, and it's not because of the cooking.

Master Glutton (Chai Kai) was once the Emperor's cook, The King of Chefs. But after a bizarre scallop incident, he was chucked out in disgrace. Over 20 years, he's developed a series of kung fu styles based on Chinese dishes. That's the odd premise, and also what he's teaching his wayward grandson Tan Tan (Chan Siu Lung AKA Jackie Chen). Yes, its basically Drunken Master, with an even more obscure fighting style. The two plot lines of chefs and killers carry on till they inevitable meet.

As part of my remit to review obscure films, I could make the whole blog on Hong Kong movies from the 70's. Having said that, if you've seen a few kung-fu movies, you can pretty much guess how this one will pan out.

So why am i writing about it? Well 3 reasons.

1. Its not actually that bad. There is plenty of action, the training sections tie into the plot as you see our young hero learn from his previous mistakes. Jackie Chen has great acrobatic ability.

2. This film has spadefuls of  gratuitous camera zooms. It may be a cliché of Hong Kong movies, but for me, this is a real plus.

3. The version I've seen has a weird effect which I'm going to call Wobble-Cam. Sometimes the action seems to bob up and down like a boat. Sometimes it feels like the camera is trying to avoid being punched. At first I thought it was some in-camera effect, but it looks like someone has blown up the print and has manually moved the film around, in a similar way they used to do pan-and-scan, only more violently. Its a really weird effect, that's hard to explain, but I quite liked.  On YouTube there is a clip of the film from a German release which doesn't have it, so I think this effect was added when it was released in America in the mid 80's. If any one can shed some light on this, please drop us a comment!

To be honest the film could of done with a few more locations. 90% of the fights seem to occur on the same dirt path.

Things to look out for:

Like Magnificent Bodyguards, There's another blast of a John Williams score on the soundtrack. This time Jaws!

If your daughter's life is being threatened by a hoodlum to make you reveal a secret, this film has a ingenious way out of it.

"As it's well known, Chinese cooking is the best in the world!"

This movie also goes under the name Duel of the Dragon, and is presently on YouTube and DVD rental at LoveFilm UK.

Shoot (1976)

A hunting trip goes very wrong in this intriguing Canadian movie starring Cliff Robertson and Ernest Borgnine.

A group of middle-aged buddies go on a deer hunt in the woods. With nothing to shoot but the breeze, the  party are about to call it a day, when they come across another set of hunters. After some major eye-balling, the other group takes a pot-shot at them, and a spontaneous shoot-out breaks out. When Zeke, played by perennial bad guy Henry Silva, kills one of their party, the groups scarper.

With its similarities to Deliverance, the movie becomes an exploration of the consequence of this violence. Should they report it to the police? will the others? What importance would they place on who started it? Lou (Borgnine) is the group's conscience, and as they decide their next steps, its clear that he is a lone voice.

Rex (Robertson) plays the most troubled member of the party. A man who seems to have a better relationship to his gun collection, than to his family. As he investigates who the other shooting party were, he begins to believe that what happened was only an opening skirmish in a full-on war.

The film has plenty of earthy dialogue. When one of the group is being treated by a veterinarian friend, Borgnine quips "You know that needle was previously in a horse's ass?". There's a nice down-to-earth quality to the movie, and the direction by Harvey Hart is solid and unshowy (he directed several 70's Columbo TV movies).

The film doesn't quite live up to the opening scenes, as Rex is pretty unlikeable, and we don't get to know the other characters that well. This gives a too narrow perspective on the events that follow. It would have been better if Rex's paranoia hadn't been so obviously valid, and the ending would seem to undermine the point the films seem to raising. I think this maybe due to simplifying the source material, a novel by Douglas Fairbairn.

Still, its worth a look as an examination of machismo and gun control.

(Presently on YouTube)