THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE DARK (1976)

I’ve been reading about THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE DARK (a.k.a. THE LAST DESIRE) for years without ever setting eyes on a copy. If my recollections are right Sinister Cinema has been selling a copy for years but Video Watchdog has warned that it was the cut down American import version. I know of no DVD release of it anywhere in the world so again my lack of patience rears its ugly head and its bootleg time once more.

I’m not sure if the print I have is uncut but I kept a watchful eye and I couldn’t find any big plot jumps or story gaps in evidence. That doesn’t mean there aren’t things missing but I’m hoping it was complete. It certainly seemed whole and it definitely lives up to its good reputation.

Of course the reason I first became interested in this one was because of Paul Nacshy’s role as a rich jerk who likes his guns. Nacshy was a hired man on this film having no input on the script but I like to think he could spot a good thing when he saw it. That he had worked with director Leon Klimovsky before is a good indicator of why he might have had confidence in the film. This is a solid piece of apocalyptic science fiction in the vein of ON THE BEACH with a bit of THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS and a few other better known end-of the-world thrillers. Its very well paced and smartly played with the story carefully whittling down the mostly unsympathetic characters until two of the least hateful …….but then I shouldn’t give too much away. It’s quite good and for fans of these kinds of doomsday tales it is highly recommended.

I’ll give a brief synopsis. A group of wealthy folks gather for their annual weekend of hedonistic De Sade inspired debauchery at a secluded castle. Owned by one of the decadent group it sports a large set of underground catacombs in which the participants drink, drug and fornicate themselves into a stupor. But this year’s festivities are just getting started when a large boom sounds outside the place rattling the buildings foundations. When they investigate they find that everyone above ground at the time of the far off nuclear blast is blind from the flash. Realizing that they can wait out the eventual fallout in the catacombs they quickly ride down to the nearest town for supplies to discover that the entire town’s population is blind. A stupid bit of arrogance from one of the sighted people causes a violent outburst and the wealthy have to retreat quickly. From there on it’s just a question of who will survive and how.

Suitably downbeat and very engrossing I found this film to be one of the best of its type. Indeed I’d go so far as to call it a near classic and after a re-watch soon I may think better of it. This is a little seen gem that really deserves to be discovered by genre fans.

BLACK SUNDAY (1960)

In celebration of the release of the Bava Box Set of five of his films here is the excellent trailer for THE MASK OF SATAN a.k.a. BLACK SUNDAY. Is this his greatest film?

HUNCHBACK OF THE MORGUE (1973)

I finally got to see Paul Naschy’s HUNCHBACK OF THE MORGUE this weekend. I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time and I have to say it did not disappoint. I’ve been a fan of Mr. Naschy’s films for years and have tracked down quite a number of the Spanish Lon Chaney’s output. Luckily several of his monster/horror films have become available on Region 1 DVD in the past couple of years making my goal of eventually seeing all of his work a bit easier. Word is that BCI is going to release this one possibly later this year but I obtained a bootleg of the Japanese VHS because patience is not one of my stronger attributes. Wanna see it NOW, thank you.

I’d heard HUNCHBACK was a fine slab of Euro-Trash cinema and boy howdy- is it! Deformed men, beautiful ladies, a mad scientist, rotting corpses, ancient torture devices, a shambling monster and a deadly acid pit are front and center. Throw in angry townspeople, an unbelievable love scene and burning rats and you have a damned fine piece of entertainment! MAN! I love this movie!

As usual Naschy co-wrote the script as well as starring as the titular hunchback, a poor, sad soul named Wolfgang Gotho. Simple minded and naturally gentle he endures the cruel ridicule of medical students and doctors making fun of him as he goes about his job in the hospital’s morgue. The only bright spots in his life are his daily visits to his childhood friend Elsa who is slowly dying of what appears to be tuberculosis. Gotho is finally pushed to violence when a group of interns insult Elsa and although their fight is stopped he later tracks them down in the night and kills them. Vengeance thy name is Gotho!
Complicating things considerably is that after Elsa dies Gotho believes that she can be revived. He steals her body from the morgue and hides it in some hidden catacombs originally used by the Inquisition to torture sinners. He then goes to Doctor Orla (a suitably crazed Alberto Dalbes) who has been working for years on the reanimation of dead tissue. Orla is thrilled with the hidden location as the hospital has cut off funding for his experiments and he must continue them in secret. The doc lies to Gotho about the possibility of bringing Elsa back to life to get his help and then embarks on his biggest project yet- the creation of a living creature from scratch.

As with most of Naschy’s scripts this is a sometimes uncomfortable mix of pathos, gore, madness, horror and gothic images. Everything in Naschy-land is driven by either epic emotions or creeping madness and sometimes both in conjunction. At his worst his stories are painfully simplistic but at his best he can strike universal (or Universal) chords that bring life to his monsters. Here he mostly manages the latter even though the film suffers from the standard flaw of atrocious, often stilted dialog. In general I’d like to credit the awful English dubbing to someone other than Naschy but I’m not sure. I’d love to have someone re-dub big chunks of this baby to smooth over awkward scenes that would play wonderfully with just a slight tweak in a few places. But maybe that would ruin the atmosphere of the piece. Perhaps it could destroy the elements I find so endearing leaving behind a technically better film but a less enjoyable one.

Hell! We’ll never know. I’m just glad we have it. Now bring on the deluxe special edition Region 1 DVD.

This should have been the greatest film of all time

I mean really. Look at that monster. And its on Mars!

It's still kind of fun in a 1950s strange-ass science fiction way.

But man!

SHINING

Possibly the funniest thing I have ever seen.

Re-viewing Bond- GOLDENEYE (1995)

It’s a rare thing for my opinion to change about a movie. Only in a handful of cases have I returned to a film I disliked on initial viewing and realized that I was completely wrong in my first reaction. Such is the case with GOLDENEYE which I saw last on its opening weekend in 1995 and have hated ever since. I can pinpoint the moment when the film pissed me off clearly and that particular moment still irritates. But I can see now that the rest of the movie is actually very good. The moment where the film lost me that first time was what by this time in the series had become the standard ‘stupid, impossible action bit’. You know! That one little thing in so many Bond films that makes you roll your eyes going “Give me a break’. A few of the Moore films have so many of these moments that they become jokes that can in no way be taken seriously. Even some of the better ones have these moments and as a fan you just have to grit your teeth and accept them to enjoy the ride. Or maybe not.

But in this case I simply could not accept that Bond could magically will himself to fall faster than a prop plane in flight. This happens at the very end of the otherwise well done pre-credits sequence in which 007 and 006 (Sean Bean) break into a Russian chemical warfare factory. As Bond makes his solo escape the plane in question is flying under power straight down and Bond clearly leaves the cliff face well after it dipped toward the ground below. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of physics can tell you that there is no way for an object to fall faster than another object especially if the first object is powering away from the second. This is simply impossible. What made it even more irritating was I could immediately see a way for them to have staged this action scene that wouldn’t have been so freakin’ stupid. Why not just have Bond reach the side of the plane just as it tips over the edge and begins its crash dive? He would then have to pull his way down the side of fuselage as it plummets toward the ground to get inside and wrestle the plane’s controls to save himself. That’s an exciting scene just on paper and it wouldn’t have made me go ‘Yeah, Right!’.

Of course, I have to accept that most Bond fans have loved this film from the day it opened. I guess I let the stupid opening scene taint the rest of the movie for me but GOLDENEYE is still not a perfect 007 film. The love scene still feels like it was airlifted in from another movie, the Joe Don Baker scenes are less than inspired, the moment when the statue rides along on top of the tank is asinine and the way Bond meets the female baddie played by Famke Janssen is silly. I still think that most fans were just so happy to have Bond back after a six year hiatus that they would have been happy with anything. Even a film as bad as DIE ANOTHER DAY!

Still- GOLDENEYE is actually a pretty damned good Bond film overall. So I now go from thinking Brosnan had only one decent 007 adventure to thinking he managed to eke out a 50% batting average. It’s a shame really as old Pierce was a damned good Bond.

I’m glad I revisited this one.

Re-viewing Bond- MOONRAKER (1979)

I’m a fan of the James Bond films as, I think, most guys are. We grow up watching these movies and loving the action, the women, the cars, the gadgets and the exotic locales. Last years re-boot of the series with new Bond Daniel Craig was just the shot in the arm that the series needed. By going for a more hard edged realism the producers once again move away from the jokey asinine light tone that the films seem to fall into every now and then. The first of these sad declines resulted in the first completely awful Bond film MOONRAKER. Not that there hadn’t been a few clunkers in the run before (YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN are not good) but MOONRAKER was the worst. (Until VIEW TO A KILL! The stench is still coming off the original negative of that sucker!)

Looking back at the film now it’s easy to see what the problems were without even searching very hard. The script only gives Roger Moore about 3 scenes in which to even attempt to act. For 90% of the run time he serves only as our guide trough an ever larger set of strange/stupid action sequences that seem to try to top each previous one in some way. Don’t believe a man can survive a fall from a plane into a circus tent? How about a man biting through a 3 inch thick steel cable in one chomp? Or a gondola outfitted with missiles and the ability to convert to a car? And those just scratch the surface of dumb moments.

Originally I thought the problem was that the producers were trying to top themselves by trying to surprise their increasingly jaded audience but I now see something else. I think that they were too concerned with trying to appeal to everyone. There are so many pop culture references in MOONRAKER that I lost count. By the time the tone code to access a super secret locked lab is revealed to be the same as the one used to communicate with the aliens in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND you know they’ve lost sight of one critical thing- believability. And once you lose that in an action film IT IS OVER! Not that the film hadn’t rocketed off the rails a long time before this point but as with any Bond film you just keep hoping they’ll pull it out somehow. But, as anyone who has seen this sucker can attest, they never do. And the final 20 minutes are some of the worst cinema to ever be foisted off on the public.

As the insane finale kept rolling along I found myself stunned that a series of films that at that point had lasted 17 years felt it had to treat its fans to a sub-par STAR WARS rip off. It was unintentional parody and made some of the jokes in the AUSTIN POWERS movies the second time an audience has laughed at this situation. Words cannot do this crap justice. The icing on this shit cake has to be the sudden inane turning of the deadly (and invulnerable) assassin Jaws (Richard Kiel) into a good guy. I think when I first saw this years ago my eyes rolled so far back in my head I could see my sinus passages. And the pathetic bit wherein Bond assures his shuttle co-pilot (and us n’est pas) that the reformed mad killer and his blond pig-tailed sweetie will be fine as the orbiting space station comes apart and falls to earth is wonderfully bizarre. Really, Mr. Bond? That big chunk of satellite won’t blow up or fry completely on reentry? The hell you say! This space travel stuff isn’t really all the dangerous after all. Should I pack extra undies in case I soil myself laughing? And they can’t leave it alone! Then there is a scene in which the MI-6 higher ups mention that the loving couple has been rescued! WTF! The Jaws character (another stupid pop culture reference I might add) was barely tolerable in the previous film THE SPY WHO LOVED ME. To have brought him back to be the Wile E. Coyote to Bond’s Bugs Bunny was ludicrous and beyond all comprehension. What the hell were they thinking? Were they thinking?

I’ve got to stop thinking about this movie. I’m getting a headache. And I haven’t even mentioned the pathetic product placement throughout. Marlboro, 7 Up, and some damned brand of watch all get prominent display. I hate this crap!

Needless to say MOONRAKER is a terrible movie. But one day I know I’m going to watch it again!

I swear I must be a freakin' masochist!