dfordoom’s blog

I've more or less abandoned this blog, and decided to concentrate on my Live Journal and my blog at Blogger.

Cleopatra (1934)

When describing a Cecil B. DeMille movie it’s customary to use words like extravagant, outrageous, spectacular and flamboyant.  Such words are totally inadequate to describe his 1934 Cleopatra.  This movie requires completely new adjectives.  The scale is stupendous; the sets are grandiose, outlandish and magnificent; the costumes are extraordinary.  It’s also customary to use words like camp, flashy, trashy and tasteless when talking about DeMille’s films.  Cleopatra is all these things and more.  It’s gloriously trashy.  It’s wonderfully tasteless.  It’s dazzlingly flashy.  It’s superbly marvellously fantastically camp.  It was DeMille’s first movie to receive a Production Code seal of approval.  DeMille may have complied with the letter of the Code; he treated the spirit of the Code with splendid contempt. Cleopatra is pure sex.  Well actually it’s mostly impure sex!  It’s quite depraved.  It’s a celebration of fornication and adultery.  Practically everything Claudette Colbert does in this movie is somehow indecent.  Delightfully indecent!  And her seduction of Mark Antony!  The entertainments she stages for him involve leopard girls, whips, lots of scantily-clad maidens, several scantily-clad men, a fishing net full of half-dressed young women waving clamshells at Antony, and plenty of very naughty dancing.  There’s also an outrageous scene in which DeMille uses the rhythmic pounding of drums and the stroking of the oars on the queen’s barge to tell us that Cleopatra and Antony are having sex.

It all has nothing whatever to with history, but you don’t expect history from Cecil B. DeMille.  You expect pure Hollywood, you expect sex and sin, excess and entertainment in abundance.  And with this movie he delivers.  Warren William is surprisingly effective as Caesar – he’s unscrupulous and lecherous, as only Warren William can do unscrupulous and lecherous. Henry Wilcoxon is just awful as Antony, but his performance is awful in an incredibly entertaining so-bad-it’s-good way.  The dialogue is pure soap opera.  The conspirators against Caesar stand for decency, moderation and Republican virtue, so naturally DeMille portrays them as dreary and sanctimonious.  Just as in Sign of the Cross, it’s the wicked characters that DeMille wants us to admire.  Claudette Colbert is very wicked indeed as Cleopatra.  Being wicked for Cecil B. DeMille was something she was exceptionally good at!  She plays the Queen of the Nile as a scheming sex kitten, and you just can’t help but adore her.  She puts a truly astonishing amount of sex into her performance.  This movie is non-stop fun, and it’s just about the most sumptuously decadent and visually breathtaking film you’ll ever see.  I cannot recommend this movie too highly.  It’s pure camp genius.

Zazie dans le metro

If there’s ever been a stranger movie than Louis Malle’s Zazie dans le métro then I haven’t seen it.  Imagine Salvador Dali directing a Three Stooges movie from a script by Samuel Beckett with Jerry Lewis as a creative consultant and then add a dash of Monty Python and a pinch of Bugs Bunny to the mix and you have some idea of what’s in store.  Existential slapstick.  A young girl spends the weekend in Paris with her uncle.  He works in a club, doing a drag act.  The movie also includes a guy in a polar bear suit and a food fight, lots of frenetic editing and jump cuts, sudden bizarre changes in lighting and colour, an abundance of camera tricks, a bewildering series of costume changes and large amounts of general mayhem.  Probably very funny if you share the French love of slapstick.  Personally I’ve always been mystified by the French love of slapstick.  I’m glad I’ve seen Zazie dans le métro, it’s unquestionably an interesting an technically innovative and adventurous movie, and it does have moments of manic visual inspiration, but I certainly have no desire ever to see it again.  I would still recommend it, simply because there’s nothing else like it and if nothing else it’s an experience.

Attack of the 50 ft Woman

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is a legendary 1950s B-movie.  I’d seen the 1993 remake with Daryl Hannah (which is actually not bad) but never the original.  Unfortunately World Movies employed two idiot radio personalities to introduce their brief season of B-Movie Mania.  Good thinking World Movies, get two people who know nothing about such movies and care nothing about them to introduce them.  Anyway the movie itself lives up to its legend.  I’d heard that the special effects were just about the worst ever filmed, and they are!  They didn’t even bother trying to keep the scale constant, so in some scenes she looks 50 feet tall and in others she looks about ten feet tall!  The transparent alien giant has to be seen to be believed.  It’s a special effect that Ed Wood would have rejected as too amateurish.  Despite this, the movie is fun.  

The plot, such as it is, involves a “flying satellite” that turns a wealthy woman into a 50 foot giantess.  She then sets out to find, and deal with, her faithless husband.  The acting is bad, but in a thoroughly enjoyable way. William Hudson as the husband is deliciously oily, and Yvette Vickers as his floozy, Honey Parker, is an absolute delight.  This is one very bad girl!  There are those who see this movie as a kind of feminist statement, but that’s really more true of the 1993 remake.  If you love really bad 1950s sci-fi B-movies then you simply have to love Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

The Big Steal

The Big Steal is another of those movies that isn’t really film noir although it often gets described as such.  It’s much too lightweight, and it lacks the necessary noir darkness in both tone and visual style.  But that’s not top say it’s a bad movie.  In fact it’s enormous fun.  It’s a chase movie with those who are doing the chasing being chased in turn; in fact there are four separate parties all in Mexico on the trail of a missing US Army payroll.  The movie benefits from some very snappy (and at times surprisingly risque) dialogue and sparkling performances by Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer.  The chemistry between these two comes as no surprise, of course, after Out of the Past.  They get great backup from a fine support cast, with the ever-reliable William Bendix turning in a typical Bendix performance and Patric Knowles portraying Jane Greer’s delightfully oily fiance.  There’s a car chase that is exceptionally well done by the standards of 1949 car chases, there’s non-stop action, there’s humour and there’s romance, and all done with great style.  Wonderfully entertaining.

The Rape of the Vampire

Jean Rollin’s 1967 debut feature The Rape of the Vampire (Le Viol du vampire) is one of those movies that very few horror fans seem to have a good word to say for.  Not surprising perhaps, since despite being a vampire movie it isn’t really a horror movie.  And it may not even be a vampire film.  It tells the story of four sisters who live in an old decaying house.  They believe themselves to be vampires, but they don’t seem to have any of the characteristics of vampires.  They have been living in the house for several centuries, though.  Or have they?  A group of young people arrive in their village, and one of the young men decides (for reasons that are never clear) that he can cure the sisters.  A series of bizarre incidents follow, incidents that are never fully explained.  That’s the story of the first half of the film (originally made as a standalone short film).  The second half is quite different, but just as strange, as it introduces the vampire queen, and a medical clinic that may or may not be run by people who may or may not be vampires.  Throughout the movie both the vampires and those who are opposing them are presented ambiguously, and it’s not at all clear whether these vampires are monsters or victims.

As Colin Odell and Michelle Le Blanc point out in their essay on him in Alternative Europe (edited by Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik) Rollin’s major influences were the Surrealists and comic books, and the movie is more a Surrealist movie than a horror flick.  It has many of the expected gothic trappings, but the gothic influences come more from late 19th century Symbolist and Decadent painting and poetry than from the or usual gothic sources.  The mix of high art and comic book sensibilities gives the movie a unique feel, and there’s no question that Rollin creates some striking and disturbing images.  If you’re looking for a straightforward horror movie don’t even bother with this one.  If, like me, you have a weakness for the arty pretensions of European horror auteurs like Jess Franco, or if you like odd atmospheric vampire movies like Daughters of Darkness or The Hunger, then you may just love this movie every bit as much as I did.

Cobra Verde

Cobra Verde was the final collaboration between director Werner Herzog and actor Klaus Kinski.   It’s a sprawling epic of the slave trade, set in Brazil and West Africa.  Kinski is Francisco Manoel da Silva, known as the bandit Cobra Verde, who becomes overseer on a sugar plantation until he manages to impregnate all of the plantation owner’s daughters, after which he is shipped off to West Africa to buy slaves from the insane King of Dahomey, the assumption being that this is a mission that can only lead to certain death.  But Cobra Verde is more a force of nature than a man, and he survives and prospers.  At least he prospers until the king turns against him.  He then finds himself leading an army of amazons in revolt against the king.

Cobra Verde doesn’t quite hang together as well as some of Herzog’s previous films.  I think part of the reason for this is the character of Francisco Manoel.  Like the characters he portrayed in earlier Herzog movies Kinski’s character is a man pursuing an impossible, insane dream.  The difference is that Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo, mad as they were, knew what they were trying to achieve.  Francisco Manoel’s dream is much vaguer – he simply wants to escape from grinding poverty, to be in control rather than be a victim, a master rather than a slave.  The fact that Kinski was becoming progressively more and more unhinged by this time (Herzog describes him on the commentary track, in English, as being by this time “completely bonkers”) is perhaps the reason that his performance is less focused, and that also contributes to Cobra Verde’s slightly incoherent and very enigmatic feel.  On the other hand Cobra Verde is as visually magnificent as any of Herzog’s films, and in its own disjointed way it’s just as powerful and just as intense.  And Kinski’s performance, although erratic even by Kinski standards, has moments of brilliance.  In the scenes in which he trains and then leads into battle his army of female warriors he is as mercurial, as disturbing and as intense as he’s ever been.  In fact  Cobra Verde is only disappointing if you compare it to other Herzog/Kinski movies like Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Nosferatu or Fitzcarraldo.  Compared to anything else it’s still a masterpiece.   A slightly lesser, slightly flawed masterpiece, but still an extraordinary movie that should not be missed.

Inside Daisy Clover

Inside Daisy Clover follows the adventures of a teenage girl from Angel Beach, California, as she becomes Hollywood’s newest singing star.  It’s set in the 1930s but this is a 1960s vision of the 1930s.  Daisy’s costumes are like a Carnaby Street re-imagining of 30s fashions.  Oddly enough, the blending of 1930s and 1960s sensibilities works quite well once you get used to it.   Natalie Wood was much too old to play the teenage starlet Daisy Clover.  She just about gets away with it, although she’s perhaps just a touch too knowing and too sophisticated to really be convincing.  Christopher Plummer is a charming but ruthless producer who makes Daisy a star, and Robert Redford is a handsome young star who falls for Daisy – a match made in even, if only Daisy had been a boy rather than a girl.  The things that make Inside Daisy Clover a failure are actually the things that make it a rather interesting failure.  Made in 1965, it’s not quite sure if it wants to be a Hollywood movie or a European art film.  There are moments that are almost surreal, but they’re not pushed far enough to make it a Hollywood version of 8½, but the narrative is too loose to really make it work as a conventional Hollywood product.  There are several sub-plots, but no real main plot, and the sub-plots don’t really go anywhere.  The relationship between Mrs Clover (Ruth Gordon) and Daisy is interesting but undeveloped.  We get the feeling that there’s an interesting story behind Baines (Roddy McDowell), the enigmatic assistant of the big-time producer, but we never find out what that story is.  Nonetheless it’s a fascinating movie and as an expose of the emptiness behind the glitter, the cynicism behind the façade of the Dream Factory, it works quite well.

Shoot to Kill

There are B-movies and then there are B-movies.  Some of the greatest of all noirs are B-pictures, and they’re movies made with a degree of artistry that puts many A-pictures to shame.  And then there are B-movies like Shoot to Kill, movies that are pure pulp film-making.  Released by Screen Guild Productions in 1947, this is an archetypal Poverty Row production, made on a shoestring and with some truly terrible acting.  It also boasts a plot that is just too complicated for its own good.  But, having said all that, Shoot to Kill is still a great deal of fun.  With a running time of just 64 minutes the pace doesn’t flag for an instant, and William A. Berke’s direction displays enormous energy and a surprising amount of flair. It also has genuine film noir atmosphere and mood, and it has both these qualities in abundance.  This is a cheap blonde of a movie, not much class but guaranteed to entertain.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Cry-Baby

Cry-Baby was John Waters’ first film for a major studio.  Set in Baltimore in the 50s, it tells the story of the rivalry between the Drapes (the cool, bad teenagers) and the Squares (the boring, good teenagers), and of the love between Square girl Allison and Drapes gang leader Cry-Baby (Johnny Depp).  Inspired in equal pats by 1950s juvenile delinquent movies, rockabilly, and Waters’ own distinctive and eccentric imagination, Cry-Baby is a delightful musical extravaganza.  It features bizarre characters, and Waters assembled an equally bizarre cast to play those characters.  He gets fine performances from his odd cast, including Iggy Pop as Cry-Baby’s Uncle Belvedere, ex-porn star Traci Lords as Drape girl Wanda, Ricki Lake as Cry-Baby’s sister, and Patty Hearst (yes, that Patty Hearst) as Wanda’s evangelical Christian mom.  There’s also former Andy Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro, and a brief appearance by Willem Dafoe.  Amy Locane, in her screen debut, gives a spirited performance as Allison.  The musical numbers, including several written specifically for the film, are fantastic – Allison singing “Please Mr. Jailer, won't you let my man go free?” is a particular highlight.  Ultimately the movie succeeds through sheer exuberance and good nature – you just can’t help wanting these two crazy kids to find happiness together.  It’s corny, it’s romantic, it’s strange.  What more could you want?