Waking the Dead: Series 4, Episodes 1 and 2: In Sight of the Lord

Written by Tony McHale; Directed by Andy Hay

Shortly after Waking the Dead's third series had completed its initial run, it won an Emmy (oddly enough, for what I consider the weakest episode of that series, Multistorey). The result was that, for the fourth series, it received an extended run of twelve episodes, up from the usual eight. The same producer, Richard Burrell, remained on board, and he succeeded in securing the same key writers who had been responsible for the show's growth.

Oddly enough, though, Series 4 starts with a storyline penned by an outsider. Tony McHale is the creator and current executive producer/lead writer of Holby City; he also wrote and directed several episodes of Casualty between Series 9 and 14. His scripts, particularly of late, have had something of an unhealthy obsession with religion, Christianity to be precise. In fact, it seems to be his goal to get as many storylines revolving around religion as possible in the show under his guidance. This episode of Waking the Dead is no exception, offering up a whole lot of cryptic biblical references in a storyline which involves a serial killer hammering nine inch nails into the skulls of various men who were formerly soldiers in a Second World War army battalion.

This two-parter is unusual in that whereas normally Waking the Dead's storylines start off reasonably logical and then throw you for a loop in the final half-hour, it's actually the other way round this time. That's not to say that the episode is particularly difficult to follow, but, for the first hour and a half, the writing is rather choppy, lurching from one plot development to another without a clear sense of logical progression. Boyd and the team make several rather odd leaps in logic, and while the majority of them don't end up playing out (such as Boyd's seemingly out-of-the-blue suggestion that the victims could have been Communists and were therefore assassinated for their political beliefs), I get the sense that McHale knew where he wanted to end up but had a bit of trouble actually getting there.

Actually, of all the Waking the Dead storylines, this is probably actually the most giallo-like of the lot, not only in terms of the killer's motivation but also his attire: he wears a black coat, black fedora and black gloves, and at one point even employs the sort of harsh whisper that many a giallo killer has been known to employ in order to disguise his voice. The director, Andy Hay, has clearly watched some Argento in his time.

Elsewhere, it's business as usual. Boyd has sprouted a rather alarming amount of facial hair, which in turn seems to have done nothing for his temper ("I don't give a shit about your rights!" he bellows at one suspect who has asked for his lawyer to be present). Meanwhile, see if you can spot how often Frankie is conveniently positioned behind a table or another character: the actress, Holly Aird, was pregnant at the time, and, as the series progressed, the production team had to resort to greater and greater lengths to conceal her ballooning stomach.

Waking the Dead: Series 3, Episodes 3 and 4: Walking on Water

Written by Simon Mirren; Directed by Andy Hay

After yet another extended delay, I finally get back into Waking the Dead's third series, and with a significantly better episode than the season premiere. Taking the same path as Series 2's Special Relationships, the plot this time focuses on a man, Mark Lovell (Craig Kelly), who has recently been acquitted of the murder of his adoptive father, Thomas, an event which took place almost a decade ago. On the night of the murder, four other members of the family vanished without a trace along with their boat. When the latter is discovered off the coast near the family home and salvaged, Boyd reopens the investigation, the assumption being that, if they can find out what happened to the rest of the family, they stand a good chance of finding Thomas' real killer. Unfortunately, since he was locked up, Mark has changed - dramatically so. He is now Maria, and Maria is proving to be less than cooperative when it comes to dredging up Mark's past.

It's at this stage that Waking the Dead becomes very, very confusing, and I must confess that, despite having now seen the episode three times, I'm still completely flummoxed by what is supposed to be going on in the final twenty minutes. It doesn't help that the writer, Simon Mirren, inserts a Big Huge Plot Twist out of left field, involving conspiracies, espionage and drug smuggling, and it's a shame, because everything leading up to these final twenty minutes is very good. I love the way the script pokes fun at Boyd's discomfort when faced with Mark/Maria. Much like with David Hemmings' character in Argento's Profondo Rosso, Boyd isn't disgusted by the sight of a man dressed as a woman: he simply doesn't know how to deal with the situation. I've said it before and I'll say it again: for all his tantrums and crudity, Boyd is actually a pretty liberal fellow, something of a rarity in TV detectives. (When Spence asks how Mark's gender disorder affects his status as a suspect, Boyd snaps back "It doesn't.")

There's some nice direction in this episode too, including a very neat shot of a body being slid out of a storage freezer, shown from the point of view of the body. On the other hand, I'm not wild about the various shots of the dead appearing and vanishing while Frankie is working alone on the salvaged boat. It's getting a little too close to the pseudo-mysticism that plagued some of the later episodes for my liking.

Holby connections: The writer of this episode, Simon Mirren, penned several episodes of Casualty during the Series 13-14 period (he's also Helen Mirren's nephew), while Craig Kelly, who plays Mark Lovell, starred as SHO Daniel Perryman throughout Casualty's tenth series.

Blu-ray Stendhal this year

Blue Underground's web site has been updated to include a release date for the company's upcoming Blu-ray release of Dario Argento's splendid The Stendhal Syndrome: November 18th. This and Don Taylor's The Final Countdown are the only two Blue Underground Blu-ray releases to have release dates, and, while I'm slightly surprised that this will by the first Argento film to be released in high definition (Jenifer doesn't count), I'm more than happy that it's on its way. Now hurry up with a release date for The Bird with the Crystal Plumage!

DVDs I bought or received in the month of June

• King Kong (R0 UK, HD DVD)
• The Kingdom (R0 UK, HD DVD)
• Phenomena (R1 USA, DVD)
• Stardust (R0 UK, HD DVD)
• Strictly Ballroom (R0 UK, Blu-ray)
• Tenebre (R1 USA, DVD)
   

Waking the Dead: Series 2, Episodes 1 and 2: Life Sentence

Written by John Milne; Directed by Edward Bennett

A playing card, the Queen of Hearts, is left on the windscreen of Dr. Claire Delaney (Susannah Harker), who, several years ago, was the first of six women to be abducted by Thomas Rice (Samuel West), and the only one to survive. All the others were raped and murdered, and, on each occasion, a pack of playing cards was delivered to the investigating officer, with the instructions that he gamble for the victim's life by picking a card. Now, working under the assumption that Rice in fact had an accomplice, Boyd and his team set out to re-interview the notoriously slippery killer, now serving a life sentence.

It strikes me that this plot is rather similar to that of Dario Argento's The Card Player, albeit without the Internet factor. This episode initially aired on September 2nd 2002, and The Card Player premiered in Italy in January 2004. Now, I'm not for a minute going to suggest that Dario Argento spends his time watching British television to get ideas for his film plots, but the likeness is nonetheless striking. The other point of reference, of course, is The Silence of the Lambs, the parallels being virtually impossible to ignore when you consider Rice's "quid pro quo" attitude and Boyd's use of Mel as a honey trap of sorts. Of course, Samuel West is no Anthony Hopkins and Claire Goose, good as she is, is no Jodie Foster, but the encounters between them (and Grace) are well-written and result in one of Waking the Dead's truly tense scenes, as Rice systematically blocks his cell's security cameras with various paintings, circling around Mel as he moves in for the kill.

Otherwise, this turns out to be a fairly conventional, albeit nasty, tale of kidnapping and murder. Certainly, after tales of bodies being found in churches and photojournalists burning to death in Series 1, this one seems a bit more like "real life", while certain aspects of this case do bear a passing resemblance to the abduction storyline of the pilot. It's an assured start to the second series, however, and one with a set of suspects that is manageable and at the same time not so limited as to make the culprit seem obvious. Actually, several people are hiding something, and the various allegiances are not all what you would expect.

Incidentally, from this episode onwards, the team have moved into their permanent location - the rather snazzy-looking headquarters with the transparent evidence boards and a lack of sufficient lighting. The episode also contains what is, to the best of my recollection, the first time Boyd uses his favourite interview technique of leaning forward and asking a suspect a question, then asking it again ONLY THIS TIME SHOUTING IT SO LOUD THE SPIT FLIES OUT OF HIS MOUTH. Truly, a man of tact and subtlety.

Holby connections: Paterson Joseph, who plays Dermot Sullivan in this episode, starred in Casualty as nurse Mark Grace from Series 12 to mid-Series 13. Nowadays, though, he is probably best known as Johnson in Peep Show.

How to make a DVD on the cheap

My copies of the new Anchor Bay US releases of Tenebre and Phenomena arrived this morning. Unfortunately, as you will know if you've been following discussions of these new editions, you'll already know that both are less than stellar.

If you were expecting gorgeous new high definition-sourced transfers, you can think again: to my eyes, both appear to be "fake" 16x9 upconverts of the old non-anamorphic masters. The new Phenomena appears to suffer from some overzealous noise reduction, which causes smearing. This is particularly noticeable during the second shot in Chapter 2, where, if you look at the grass at the bottom left hand side of the frame, you can clearly see it smudging and smearing as the camera sways slightly. And, given that they are derived from the same masters that were used for the previous releases, both are still missing material - a few seconds in the case of Tenebre, around six minutes in the case of Phenomena.

Audio (and lack of subtitle) options are identical to the previous releases. In other words, this means that the original mono (for Tenebre) and stereo (for Phenomena) mixes are nowhere to be found. Both discs include 2.0 Dolby Surround tracks, but these are both down-conversions from the 5.1 remixes created by Chase Digital.

The bottom line is that, from an AV standpoint, I really don't see there being much point in picking up these new DVDs provided you already own either the old AB disc or another version. These are by no means awful discs, but the sad fact, for AB, is that, since they released their original DVDs of these films, other companies have come along and done considerably better, so to recycle these old masters in 2008 really is a bit much. The new featurettes that have been provided for both films are very good, and I really enjoyed hearing from the various participants (including finally putting a face to a name with the first on-screen appearance I've seen of Franco Ferrini on the Phenomena featurette), but it's really a question of whether these two short documentaries justify the price of the new discs.

Regarding the issue of the ongoing debate about which version is the best, there is no doubt in my mind that the best all-round version of Tenebre is the Dutch release from A-Film, entitled Shadows. While this release is bare-bones, and it's true that it does suffer from some colour timing issues in its second half, they are considerably less severe than on the Japanese DVD (which is admittedly the sharpest-looking of the bunch). It is also completely uncut (as is the Japanese release) and features by far the cleanest English audio track I've ever heard for the film, especially in comparison to the one used by AB, which sounds pretty noisy and scratchy.

Things get a bit trickier for Phenomena. The best-looking release, by far, is the Japanese one, and it is also the full-length integral version, but unfortunately, presumably as a result of using a longer cut of the film which sometimes includes shots which differ in length from the English version by a frame here and a frame there, several dialogue scenes are rendered in Italian only on the English audio track. If you're prepared to do a bit of piecing together in a video editing program, you can put together a satisfying version, but if you intend to play it straight from the disc and watch it in English, you'll have to be prepared for some key narrative scenes being in Italian, despite English audio existing for them.

I've posted some screen captures comparing these new releases to various other versions that are available at Dark Discussion.

Swoon

Three months after announcing their intentions to break into the Blu-ray market, Blue Underground have provided a tantalising glimpse at some of the titles we can expect to see from them. While no release dates have been announced, these titles alone should be enough to whet the appetite of any serious cult cinema fans:

- The Final Countdown
- The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
- The Stendhal Syndrome
- Maniac
- Vigilante
- Fire and Ice

The brief preview trailer, available on their site, also shows material from Two Evil Eyes, Dead and Buried and Uncle Sam. We're being promised 50 GB dual layer discs, 7.1 Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio tracks, plenty of extras and (contain yourselves) D-Box Motion Code support.

The power of Allah compels you!

Well, yesterday was rather interesting. After conversing with him online for several years, I was finally able to put a face to a name as I met Baron Scarpia in person for the first time. And what better way to celebrate such a meeting than with a dreadful movie? Yes, after lunch, we boarded the HMS Whimsy to watch a title from the Baron's own private collection. The film in question was Seytan, a 1974 Turkish production directed by a fellow named Metin Erksan, which bears more than a passing resemblance to William Friedkin's The Exorcist.

Something of a background primer is required on Turkish cinema before we can progress any further. Although responsible for a number of critically lauded films (none of which I could name at present, as my knowledge of the country's output is fairly limited), I suspect that most cult film fanatics will be more familiar with the industry's habit of ripping off Hollywood productions with its own distinctive takes on the likes of ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, Star Wars and even Superman.

Now, lest anyone get the wrong impression, we are not talking "loosely inspired" here. We are talking shot-for-shot remakes, the only significant differences being the minuscule budgets, dreadful production values and complete lack of talent on either side of the camera. Yes, those are the "only" significant differences. Oh, and they all appear to take place in Turkey.

Anyway, Seytan (pronounced "SHAY-tan", by the way) introduces us to 12-year-old Gül and her mother, Uma Thurman (I'm calling her this because the actress playing her looks like a significantly less talented version of her, and because the character's name is not provided by IMDB). Gül is a precocious child who has an invisible friend called Captain Lersen (eh?). She also has other, slightly more disturbing tendencies, such as an ability to urinate dark green liquid on cue, spew what looks like orange paint from her mouth, bitch-slap members of the medical profession and rotate her head 180 degrees. Rejecting the rational in favour of the supernatural, Uma calls in the appropriately named Tugrul Bilge, author of a book on demons. I'll be calling him Alan Partridge, though, because the actor playing him vaguely resembles Steve Coogan. (Besides, the image of Alan Partridge performing an exorcism is in itself deeply amusing.) In turn, Alan Partridge concludes that the only viable solution is to perform an exorcism on poor possessed Gül. Enter an exorcist, whose name I once again can't remember (IMDB is no help here), and the most sinister-looking moustachioed policeman you'll ever see on screen, who has a habit of blowing cigarette smoke directly in people's faces when they are talking to him. I have christened him Inspector Clouzot. Oh, and is that Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells that keeps drowning out the dialogue?

Unless you've been living under a rock since some time prior to the end of 1973, all of this might sound vaguely familiar. Remakes such as the recent versions of Halloween (well, the second half at least) and The Omen have been justly criticised for been slavish copies of the original films, but, until you've seen what the Turks got up to in the 70s and 80s, you really have no idea what outright plagiarism looks like. To clarify, The Exorcist is less of a sacred cow for me than say, Suspiria or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but I appreciate its importance in cinema history and would argue that no other horror film produced by a major studio achieves anything quite like it. Still, it's hard to be annoyed at Metin Erksan and his cronies for what they have done here because, unlike, say, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, there is no danger of this remake overshadowing the original (seriously, the number of people that don't realise Marcus Nispel's 2003 hack job is an update of an earlier film of the same name is quite disturbing). Seytan is so hilariously awful on every level that hating it is not an option: you either get it or you don't.

Luckily, I got it. Seytan is such a mess in every imaginable way that it makes Garth Marenghi's Darkplace look like the highly polished work of a cinematic genius. Before anyone asks, yes, I am aware that Darkplace was a spoof. Seytan, however, is not, as hard as that may be to believe at times, particularly when Gül's bed is bouncing about like a bouncy castle and Uma Thurman thinks that the best way to stop it is to get on the bed and join in. More gales of laughter greet every single instance of Tubular Bells starting up and then stopping as abruptly as it began when the sound technician yanks the needle off his record. Come to think of it, this piece of music is repeated so many times that I'm genuinely amazed that, when Erksan tries (and fails) to recreate the iconic image of Father Merrin arriving at the house, surrounded by fog, Mike Oldfield is nowhere to be heard.

(Mr. Erksan, by the way, is nothing if not a varied director. While most filmmakers would be content to simply zoom in or out, Erksan zooms both in and out, often multiple times within the confines of a single shot. And bear in mind that every scene in the film features at least one zoom. Lucio Fulci and Jess Franco would be red-cheeked with embarrassment.)

And I haven't even mentioned the climactic exorcism yet, which goes on for an absolutely absurd length of time and concludes, after Alan Partridge and his exorcist friend have yelled "Allah's grace be upon you!" more times than I care to remember, with poor old Mr. Partridge fulfilling his fate (and ensuring that Seytan doesn't diverge too far from The Exorcist's plot) by leaping out of the window and rolling down the longest flight of steps in Turkey. Actually, I'm fairly sure that this scene is performed by the actor himself rather than a stuntman, so it's actually quite impressive that he was still alive at the end of it all.

I really can't thank the Baron enough for giving me the opportunity to experience Seytan. It's actually somewhat embarrassing to admit that this was my introduction to Turkish cinema, so I suspect I should really follow up the experience by watching one of the country's better films. It's a bit like making Giallo a Venezia your first port of call when embarking on a voyage through Italian cinema, only several stages worse.

Brody goes yellow

Source: ComingSoon.net

Its production has been pushed back and it appears to have lost almost its entire original cast (which included Ray Liotta, Vincent Gallo and Asia Argento), but Dario Argento's latest film, Giallo, looks set to go begin shooting in Turin on May 12th, this time boasting Adrien Brody and Emmanuelle Seigner in the cast. Brody, who will executive produce the film along with Oscar Generale, Claudio Argento, Luis De Val, David Milner, Billy Dietrich, Patricia Eberle, Donald Barton and John Hicks (co-production, anyone?), must be a particularly impressive casting coup for Argento, giving the impression that the maestro may, after several false starts, be about to crack the mainstream, and to tell you the truth I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that.

I must confess that, as happy as I am to hear that Argento is working on another film so soon after Mother of Tears, what I've heard about Giallo doesn't exactly fill me with hope. He's once again working from someone else's pre-written script, again the product of an American duo, Jim Agnew and Sean Keller, and it sounds like this will be very much a nudge-nudge wink-wink "homage" to gialli, albeit hopefully not in the same way that Scream was to the Halloween-inspired slasher movie gravy train. I hope I'm pleasantly surprised, but this sounds a bit ho-hum and fairly pointless for Argento at this stage in his career. I'm yet to be convinced that this will do anything Sleepless didn't already do.

Thoughts on The Maltese Falcon, and various giallo/film noir observations

I had my first proper film noir experience today in the form of John Huston's celebrated 1941 offering, The Maltese Falcon. I don't mean by that that it was the first film noir I'd ever seen, but rather that it was the first time I sat down to watch a film thinking "Right, this is a film noir. What does that mean and how does it manifest itself?"

The Maltese Falcon is currently ranked as the 69th greatest film of all time on IMDB, and, regardless of how much or how little faith you put in such lists (personally, I think they're generally of little value), it's tough to deny that it's difficult to approach any film with that sort of reputation, particularly one that's over 60 years old. How do you even begin to comprehend how it would have been viewed at the time of its release, and how do you begin to appreciate its various innovations in that context, knowing full well that they have now been assimilated into the everyday language of film? The answer is that you don't, unless you possess both a time machine and a means of erasing all of your existing knowledge and preconceptions regarding the type of film in question. The Maltese Falcon is very much a quintessential film noir, but it wouldn't have been seen as such in 1941, given that the movement didn't enjoy its glory period until some years later, and it would take even longer for people to begin actively referring to these as film noirs.

So anyway, did I enjoy The Maltese Falcon? Yes, I did - considerably so, in fact, although, as I find to be the case with many films that are considered the greatest of their respective genres or movements, my enjoyment didn't develop into out and out awe or adulation. I found it consistently witty dialogue-wise and at many points engaging, but there were also several moments for me where things began to sag a bit and my interest started to wane. Each time that happened, a plot development would generally show up in a few minutes to regain my attention, but my overriding reaction was "Yeah, this is a really good film" rather than "Wow, this is one of the greatest films of all time!" (Oh, and a minor criticism: I must admit that the continual continuity flubs, mainly actors changing position between shots, kept taking me out of the drama.) That said, I'm pretty sure my reaction to Deep Red was somewhat similar the first time I saw it, and we all know how highly I regard it now.

Anyway, as I've continued reading up on film noir, the similarities between it and the giallo movement have become all the more pronounced. I'm not sure that much, if any, of this comes from my viewing of The Maltese Falcon, but I thought I'd note a few of my observations regarding the ties between the two movements:

- The giallo began in the late 60s as an offshoot of 30s pulp literature, whereas film noir kicked off more than two decades earlier, in the early 40s, drawing on the influence of 10s/20s German Expressionism (for the visuals) and hard-boiled detective pulp fiction (for the narratives and themes).

- For both movements, there is a broad agreement on what constitutes the key iconography, but no single universally accepted definition. In addition, broadly speaking, it is agreed that neither the giallo nor the film noir constitutes a genre. To describe film noir, Alain Silver uses the word "cycle", which has obvious connotations of time, indicating that the movement is part of a specific period, an is echoed in writing on gialli which uses the Italian word 'filone', used to refer to trends and cycles.

- Key traits include moral ambiguity and sexual motivation, often involving a contemporary urban setting.

- Although there are a number of high profile exceptions (The Maltese Falcon being a case in point), the majority of gialli and film noirs tended to be B-movies, with modest budgets and a lack of major stars.

- Both movements seem to have emerged in times of social and/or political unrest:

-- Literary gialli arrived in the 1930s during the rise of fascism.

-- Filmic gialli emerged during a period of intense violence and terrorism in the early 1970s, and following considerable progress in the women’s emancipation movement.

-- The hard-boiled detective novels which influenced film noir emerged in the US during the Depression of the 1930s.

-- Film noir as a movement took off during the aftermath of the Second World War, and its portrayal of powerful, independent women as dangerous (i.e. the femme fatale) can be seen as representative of the fears of a generation of men who returned from war to find that women had entered the public sector in their absence. The vilification and ultimate destruction of the femme fatale can be argued to constitute an attempt to restore 'order' and return women to what was perceived as their rightful place.

- Shared (partial) roots in German Expressionism: Dario Argento, whose The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) is considered to have sparked the main thrust of the giallo boom, has professed to having been influenced by German Expressionism, particularly the films of F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang.

- In both cases, the 'colour' terminology appears to have been applied retrospectively. 'Film noir', or so says Wikipedia (remind me not to quote that in my bibliography!), was first coined by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, and likewise the term 'giallo' does not appear to have been actively used when the films in question were initially released (trailers which do attempt to classify them tend to use the word 'thrilling', e.g. Deep Red). It may be that the giallo movement's literary origins were only noticed and acknowledged later. (Does anyone know? An investigation of contemporary Italian press publications would probably be needed here.)

- Oh, and Luchino Visconti's Ossessione (1943), referred to by some (e.g. Gary Needham) as the first cinematic giallo, was adapted from James M. Cain's novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, itself adapted in the US in 1946 and considered a major film noir.

On the up and up

This morning, I had a meeting with my two supervisors to discuss my PhD progress. Primarily, we were discussing a written piece that I had submitted, as well as my aims for the next six months. I came away feeling both more positive and more negative than I had beforehand, mainly because it became clear to me that I had, until now, essentially been working without a plan, doing a bit of reading here and a bit of writing there without any concrete goals. This was pretty much spelled out to me when my supervisor asked me to define my thesis' unique selling point, and my response was more or less "Um... er... well, my aim is to... er... sorry, let me just think... um... how should I explain this...?"

So, as a result, I'm a bit down right now because it feels as if the work I've done so far hasn't been of a great deal of use, and I now see myself with a lot of work ahead of me as I get up to speed again. On the other hand, the meeting was extremely useful not only in terms of revealing to me what I was doing wrong, but also in terms of showing me what I should do to put things right. I now have a definite plan of action for the next four weeks:

- Week 1: read up on film noir literature and watch a couple of key films. One of my supervisors suggested film noir as being a useful point of reference due to the similarities he perceived between it and the giallo movement (not necessarily in terms of its themes but more as a body of films born out of a literary movement that can't be classified in traditional genre terms), so that will be my first port of call. I know next to nothing about film noir barring what little I've read so far, so this should prove to be interesting.

- Week 2: check out some of the dissertations that have been written by other PhD candidates in the department. It occurs to me that I have little, if any, idea of what one of these actually looks at, and with that in mind it's not entirely surprising that I've been flailing about like a blindfolded chimp with a pencil in his teeth, to quote The Simpsons.

- Week 3: get my hands on a copy of Dimitris Eleftheriotis' book Popular Cinemas of Europe: Texts, Contexts and Frameworks. He was the course convenor when I did my MLitt and I remember this book, from what little I read of it, being very clear and well-written. I also aim to spend Week 3 (and, if necessary, the beginning of Week 4) deciding on an actual title for my dissertation, setting down my key research questions, putting together an initial outline (with a preliminary timeline to take me through to 2010) and a brief bibliography of key texts.

- Week 4: meet with my supervisor again to discuss my progress and set the next deadline.

On balance, I feel considerably better about this project than I did this time yesterday, if only because I now feel I have some idea of what I'm doing and have agreed a plan of action with my supervisors, to the extent that the three of us seem to be on the same wavelength. It's disheartening to discover that a lot of what you've been doing hasn't been much use, but I suppose that's the way things go sometimes. If nothing else, the 11,000 or so words that I've churned out since October have got me back into the frame of mind required for academic writing, something that had been a little rusty after taking a year out.

PS. Can anyone recommend me a couple of good film noirs? (Or is that films noirs, or films noir?)

DVDs I bought or received in the month of March

• Across the Universe (R0 USA, Blu-ray)
• Atonement (R0 UK, HD DVD)
• Danny the Dog (R0 Japan, Blu-ray)
• Hidden (R2 UK, DVD)
• Lewis: Series One (R2 UK, DVD)
• The New York Ripper: Special Restored Edition (R2 Denmark, DVD)
• Sugar Rush: Series One & Two (R2 UK, DVD)
• Tragic Ceremony (R1 USA, DVD)
   

Are we completely without morals?

Source: Mobius Home Video Forum

The British Board of Film Censors has just recanted on yet another of their blasphemies, this time giving an 18 rating to the uncut version of Piero Schivazappa's The Frightened Woman (reviewed here as part of my Giallo Project, even though it's technically not a giallo). This film was previously classified in 1998, when it was subjected to 16 seconds of unspecified vandalism. The new release runs for 86 minutes and 3 seconds (PAL), and, according to the information issued by distributor Shameless Screen Entertainment, is approved by Schivazappa himself:

Rebuilding The Frightened Woman has been a labour of love but thanks to the work of genre expert Marc Morris the Shameless version of The Frightened Woman runs at 86m 03secs compared to the 83m 25 secs run time supplied by the licensor.

What became clear as Shameless compared all the known versions of The Frightened Woman was that various moments had been lost at different points in all of them. Some were merely shaved seconds; others changed the nuance of a scene or missed out important footage. These have been more than enough to prompt fans on the web to start cataloguing the differences with a prime example being this thread on the respected DVD Maniacs forum:

http://www.dvdmaniacs.net/forums/showthrea...rightened+woman

In order to create this new Shameless version they have used a wide variety of source materials that widely vary in quality but they believe that the end result shows off the film in the complete form it has long deserved to be celebrated in including the correct colour palette.

Shameless have kept director Piero Schivazappa informed throughout the process and asked him to watch through it for them and see if he could give it his seal of approval. He kindly sat through it, with script in hand and felt that, "it is as faithful as it can be to the original script", and was very happy to see the film brought back to life in this Shameless version declaring, "This IS the version of my film to watch."

Shameless Screen Entertainment will release The Frightened Woman on DVD at £12.99 on 14th April, 2008. The Shameless director approved cut will run at 86m 03secs and is being released uncut by the BBFC for the first time in the UK. Presentation of the film is in restored 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen with a restored 2.0 mono soundtrack. The DVD includes an original theatrical trailer.

I shall definitely be picking up a copy. I'm just glad I held out and can now replace my grimy VHS-sourced dupe.

Happy Chocolate Egg Day, by the way.

We changed our minds

Source: Mobius Home Video Forum

The British Board of Film Censors are on quite a roll lately. Back in January, Aldo Lado's exploitation shocker Night Train Murders was finally passed for release in the UK with all previous cuts waived, and now, it's the turn of the film which spawned it, Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left. Craven's film has long been something of a Video Nasty poster child, a prominent item on the DPP list, not granted a UK release until May 2003, and only then with 31 seconds of cuts.

Well, gee whiz, it's great and all that the BBFC have now decided that the film has suddenly stopped being likely to "deprave and corrupt", but wouldn't it have been nice if they'd reached this conclusion in the first place? For example, they could have made up their minds that it wasn't a "threat" before more or less anyone with any interest in seeing the film already did so via the black market or by importing a copy from a less suppressed country. They might also have decided this before the previous UK rights holder, Blue Underground, frittered away a considerable amount of money in their appeal against the BBFC's ruling of 16 seconds of cuts. (When their case was thrown out, the BBFC enacted gleeful revenge by demanding a further 15 seconds of cuts.)

It's nice to know that these people have such a vested interest in our safety, isn't it? Why, if it wasn't for them, I might have seen The Last House on the Left uncut before the date of March 17th 2008, when it would no doubt have scarred me permanently. Luckily, though, I now feel safe in the knowledge that, watching it after March 17th, it will no longer hold any power to deprave and corrupt.

Now that it has been granted an 18 "certificate" (note that I put "certificate" in quotation marks because I believe the term is a misnomer, falsely conveying the notion that the big red logo on the DVD cover is some sort of award), you can expect to see it in your local HMV or Zammo (or whatever the fuck Virgin is called now) among copies of other former training videos for rapists and murderers such as The Evil Dead, Tenebrae and The Exorcist.

For those who are interested in this sticky subject, I suggest reading this article from Mark Kermode (who gave evidence at the appeal in defence of the argument that the film should be granted an uncut release).

(Oh, and they banned Murder Set Pieces at roughly the same time that they passed The Last House on the Left. Good to know that these bobbies are still patrolling their turf.)

A tragedy of a film

Yesterday, I received my review copy of Dark Sky Films' long-delayed release of Riccardo Freda's Tragic Ceremony. As many of you will know, this DVD was originally supposed to be released over a year ago, but was held back due to rights issues. These appear to have been resolved now, but I would urge those who want a copy of this film to get their orders... although, to be honest, given how weak the film is, I'm going to have a hard time recommending it. The best I can say about it is that it provides an interesting opportunity to see Camille Keaton, of What Have You Done to Solange? and I Spit on Your Grave fame, playing yet another ethereal and wide-eyed damsel. Really, I'm not surprised Freda reportedly disowned the end product (the director's credit goes to "Robert Hampton"), as it's actually worse than his limp giallo, The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire.

Presentation-wise, the transfer is really not all that satisfying. It's anamorphic and progressively flagged, and looks passable once the opening credits are over, but lacks detail and has an overly contrasty look, with poor shadow detail and blown-out highlights. I initially assumed that this was simply what the film looked like, but the theatrical trailer included on the disc shows a much better tonal range, not to mention offering more detail (despite being non-anamorphic and not properly flagged for progressive scan):

Above: the film itself;
Below: the trailer
(click images to view them at their full size)

Oh, and the infamous Dark Sky cropping issue, pointed out to me by a regular reader of this site (thanks, Jeff), appears to be present here, at least in certain shots:

The image above is the most severe instance of overly tight framing that I could find. By and large, I didn't find it to be bothersome on any other occasions, although this may be down to the fact that much of Freda's camerawork is so haphazard anyway that, for the most part, framing is a non-issue. It wouldn't surprise me if this film turned out to have an intended ratio of 1.66:1 and was over-matted to 1.85:1 for this DVD.

I should also say a few words on the issue of the sound. The only audio track provided here is an Italian one, although it's clear, from the actors' lip movements, that this one was shot in English (and post-dubbed, of course). In any event, the film is (laughably) supposed to take place somewhere in England, as evinced by several references to Scotland Yard, names like Lord Alexander, and a currency amusingly referred to as "sterling" (as in "You owe me fifty sterling"). Generally, with Italian films from this period, no "original" audio track exists, so I tend not to be too picky about which language is provided. On this occasion, however, the lack of English dubbing is rather problematic, although I do understand the reasoning behind it: apparently, the Italian cut of the film is dramatically different from the version exhibited in the US, so cobbling together a complete English dub would be impossible.

I really enjoyed the Camille Keaton interview, though - considerably more than the film itself, in fact. It was nice to see someone so obviously proud of her achievements and eager to talk about them.

Expect a full review at DVD Times in the near future.

Eye of the ripper

A few quick words on the Another World Entertainment release of The New York Ripper, which arrived today:

First and foremost, the source for the transfer appears to be the same one that was used for the Australian release from Stomp Visual. Based on the screenshots posted with HorrorDVDs.com's review, I had assumed that the source was different, primarily due to how much more saturated they appear, but I suspect that the person who captured them had his/her DVD playback software's saturation set too high.

Having compared the Stomp Visual and Another World Entertainment transfers fairly thoroughly, I'd go so far as to say that there's really nothing to call either way - both look identical, and I did 600% magnifications of several screen captures. AWE's release does, however, gain several points in its favour for including the scene in which Dr. Davis plays a trick on his secretary, which was omitted from the Stomp release. On the AWE DVD, this scene is sourced from the Anchor Bay DVD and is NTSC-to-PAL standards converted, but it's better than nothing (it could still have been handled better, though - a proper adjustment of the frame rate should have been carried out rather than a video standards conversion).

Another major boon for the AWE release is the fact that it ports over several of the bonus features from the 2-disc French Collector's Edition, along with optional English subtitles. Not everything has made it over, but there is a decent amount of material here - enough to keep you occupied for a while.

Ultimately, the AWE release gets my thumbs-up. As far as I can tell, it's the best release of the film to date. Perfect? No, certainly not. There's certainly room for improvement as far as image quality is concerned (although detail-wise is very nice), and it's a shame the extras package is incomplete. But AWE's efforts to port over some of the material, and to assemble a complete cut of the film (even if the added footage could have been handled better) is appreciated.

Eye slicing never looked more lovely

I was browsing through some of the reviews at HorrorDVDs.com the other night, and I suddenly noticed something: Another World Entertainment's release of Lucio Fulci's The New York Ripper has a really nice transfer. Personally, I always appreciate it when a review includes full size screen captures, because it means that, whatever the words might say, I can trust my own eyes and have a fairly good idea of what the transfer will actually look at without having to put a whole lot of faith in reviewers whose credentials are unknown to me.

Today, while doing a bit of shopping at Xploited Cinema, in the form of the Italian genre cinema book Esotika Erotika Psicotika, primarily for my PhD work, I decided to bite the bullet and order this, my third copy of Fulci's notorious Video Nasty. It's not my favourite of Fulci's films by a long shot (I still maintain that A Lizard in a Woman's Skin is his best work), but it's unjustly maligned and is, if not in the "very good" category of gialli, at least in the upper echelons of "good".

Thank you for the screenshots, HorrorDVDs. You've just earned Another World Entertainment another sale!

Blu Underground

Source: Film Talk

Well, this has got to be just about the most unexpected piece of news to round off the month, but perhaps also the most pleasant. Blue Underground, who hold the US DVD rights to most of Dario Argento's catalogue, not to mention a vast sea of other European cult titles, have added a placeholder page to their web site announcing their intentions to get into the high definition market in the near future:

We are proud to announce that a number of high definition Blu-ray™ releases are in the works. We will have more information soon.

There we go - there's no actual information besides their statement of an intention to release on the format, but I must say I'm absolutely thrilled. I pretty much gave up any hope of seeing the likes of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Deep Red, Suspiria and Inferno in HD any time soon after the rights to these films ended up at Blue Underground and various statements came from the company indicating that they didn't perceive the market to be large enough to make HD releases viable. I can't wait to see what their first titles are, and it goes without saying that they should constitute a sizeable improvement on the filtered, edge enhanced standard definition transfers that Blue Underground routinely put out.

My most wanted titles:

• Baba Yaga
• The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
• Deep Red
• Don't Torture a Duckling
• The Fifth Cord
• Inferno
• Night Train Murders
• Opera
• Short Night of the Glass Dolls
• Suspiria
• The Stendhal Syndrome
• Who Saw Her Die?

Now, obviously, I'm not naïve enough to assume that anything approaching all of these titles will show up, but if even a handful of them get the HD treatment, I will be a very happy gentleman.

Anchor Bay sails again

Fangoria has got the scoop on the long-delayed special edition re-releases of Dario Argento's Tenebre and Phenomena from Anchor Bay, due out at some point this summer, accompanied by some fairly dodgy cover art. Originally announced in an unofficial capacity a good 2-3 years ago, I forget precisely where they were first mentioned, but it seems to have been common knowledge for some time that these were in the pipeline. Anyway, the specs provided are as one would expect: these two titles, both originally non-anamorphically, will both be receiving new 16x9 enhanced transfers in their original aspect ratios of 1.85:1 and 1.66:1 respectively. Additionally, they will carry over all the extras from their previous releases, in addition to a new retrospective featurette - Voices of the Unsane for Tenebre, and A Dark Fairy Tale for Phenomena.

Unfortunately, the real questions aren't answered. Namely, will these releases be properly uncut? The previous release of Tenebre was missing a few seconds of footage at various points, while Phenomena lacked over six minutes' worth of (mostly minor) material in comparison with the longer integral cut. (Both films were released on DVD in their full length variants in various other territories.) Additionally, while the Fangoria article states that each film will feature a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track, what I really want to know is whether or not the original mono (or should that be stereo for Phenomena?) mixes will also be provided. Ideally, I'd like to see the original audio mixes provided for both English and Italian, with subtitles... although this is Anchor "you don't need subtitles if the film is in English" Bay we're talking about, so I won't get my hopes up.

Finally, where are the Blu-ray releases?

Anyway, I'll continue to keep an eye on the buzz surrounding these releases, but with some trepidation. I already own a copy of Tenebre (the Dutch Shadows release from A-Film) which I'm pretty happy with, barring some colour timing issues, and the Integral Japanese version of Phenomena that I own is nice, but for the fact that certain stretches of dialogue are in Italian on the English language track. Ah, we'll see. I might be tempted by review copies...

The Giallo Project #12: The Fifth Cord

Alternative titles: Giorna nera per l'ariete; Evil Fingers; Director: Luigi Bazzoni; Starring: Franco Nero, Silvia Monti, Wolfang Preiss, Ira von Fürstenberg, Edmund Purdom, Rossella Falk, Renato Romano, Pamela Tiffin; Music: Ennio Morricone; Italian theatrical release date: August 28th, 1971

Note: this review contains significant spoilers.

In his excellent essay Playing with Genre, Gary Needham descibes Luigi Bazzoni's giallo The Fifth Cord as an example of the more progressive side of the movement. The first time I watched the film, I really wasn't sure what he meant, but, after mulling the issue over in my mind for a while, I'm beginning to see where he was coming from. I'm going to do something a little different with this instalment of the Giallo Project, in that, instead of doing a general overview of the film, I will focus in depth on a handful of scenes which specifically refer to the subject on which I am currently interested: namely, the character of Andrea Bild (Franco Nero) and his relationship with the two women in his life, his ex-girlfriend Helene (Silvia Monti) and his current catch, Lou (Pamela Tiffin). This is part of the work I am currently doing for my PhD, a piece which I am hoping to use to explore the wide variety of ways in which women are portrayed in gialli, and as such, a lot of the material below was written with an eye to being incorporated into an academic essay.

Above: Andrea Bild: the image of the stereotypical hard-drinking macho man turned on its head

Andrea embodies the hard-drinking, virile, macho male stripped of all the qualities normally found in giallo portrayals of such characters. Rather than the suave George Hilton type, he is an unkempt, pathetic drunk, engaged in an affair with Lou, a student several years younger than him, but clearly still dependent on his ex-girlfriend, Helene, a firm, sensible, working single mother fighting a divorce (at one point, she says that, until the proceedings go through, she will not be able to "live [her] own life"). In this film, it's not so much the plot or the basic character archetypes that are unique (on the contrary, they are actually somewhat generic), but the manner in which what we are supposed to infer from them is reversed. In the average giallo, the J&B Whisky bottle is an ubiquitous simple of sophistication and finesse (Koven, 2006, pp. 49-50); here, the first time we see a J&B bottle is when Andrea, drunk and unshaven, swigs from it while driving home from a party after being snubbed by Helene, who has already commented with disdain on his drunkenness. What's particularly interesting about this is that it is a clear reimagining of the persona Franco Nero portrayed in the spaghetti westerns of the 1960s and would go on to play in the action and crime thrillers of the mid to late 1970s. In these, the gristled, tough-talking antihero who takes the law into his own hands was romanticised; here, he's practically a joke. Just watch his first speaking role, where he drunkenly tries to woo Helene, gazing pleadingly at her, only for it to be made clear that she finds his state of intoxication pathetic. As someone who finds macho culture intensely irritating, this pleases me no end.

Above: J&B: the classy gentleman's drink

In the scene above, Helene returns to her car to find him sitting in the passenger seat, dishevelled and slurring his speech. It is made clear from the start that he is encroaching on her territory (in this case, her car) and that she holds the power. Throughout their conversation, he gazes at her pleadingly, which she refuses to even dignify him with eye contact. When he begins to caress her hair, she firmly and calming removes her hand, responding to his statement that drinking "makes life much easier" with the statement that she, on the other hand, has not been drinking, the implication being that she would have to be drunk herself in order to entertain any prospect of anything happening between them. She controls the scene from its beginning to its end, when she orders him out of the car with the simple statement "Goodnight. Goodbye, Andrea", and turning on the car's ignition, all the while refusing to look at him. Bazzoni, meanwhile, underscores the lack of connection between the two of them by filming the entire scene as a single medium shot in which each character occupies either side of the frame, the camera adopting a detached distance rather than priveleging either character's point of view with subjective shots.

The first scene to feature Andrea's young girlfriend, Lou, taking place the morning after his encounter with Helene, shows him to be even more dishevelled and pathetic than the night before. He wakes up in bed, groggy and half-dressed, to the sound of the telephone ringing, and it is revealed, through dialogue, that he has slept through two previous calls after returning home in such a state that Lou had to undress him and put him to bed.

Andrea: You always liked undressing me.
Lou: Not when you're drunk.

Above: The modern man: emblematic of suavity and dignity

Here, drinking is once again held in contempt, the impression being given that, far from making him the virile 'ladies' man' that most male giallo protagonists seem to embody, drink is a turn-off (rather than a turn-on) for women and makes him unable to function sexually. Alcohol, therefore, is here used to diminish masculinity rather than embody it.

Lou, however, is a considerably different character from Helene. Content to allow Andrea to be unfaithful to her (a courtesy which he does not extend to her in return - see the scene in which he slaps her about after suspecting that she has been seeing another man) and to dote on him (Helene refused to give him the time of day; Lou, on the other hand, took care of him when he came home too drunk to even undress himself), she is instantly portrayed as a more submissive character. What is unusual, though, is that, while the Italian gothic horror films of the 1960s generally portrayed assertive women as dangerous and a threat to (patriarchal) society and weak, submissive women as embodying the 'proper' characteristics of femininity (see Günsberg, 2005, Chapter 4), this film does not appear to make any judgement calls about either of the two women in Andrea's life. Indeed, if anything, she is the most positively portrayed character in the film. (Other examples of positive portrayals of independent professional women in gialli include Vittoria Stori in What Have They Done to Your Daughters? and Gianna Brezzi in Deep Red. These are, I must confess, about the only ones I can think of.) On the contrary, we see the level of respect Andrea has for Helene when he is sober, heading round to her house to apologise for his inappropriate behaviour the previous night when he discovers that Lou has gone away for the weekend. (In a note she has left for him, Lou tells him that, if he wants to "get laid", he is free to go ahead, but this clearly is not his intention when he pays his visit to Helene.)

Above: Helene, a woman in control of her own life

Is with their previous encounter, Bazzoni once again emphasises Andrea's futile attempts to make eye contact with Helene and her refusal to look at him. It is only when he makes a disparaging remark about her lack of a sex life, telling her that "it's bad for [her] not to make love", that she finally grants him more than a brief glance, and only then to once again refer to his drunkenness and to tell him to get to the point of his visit. His purpose, incidentally, is to ask her for information about a case he is investigating, in effect priveleging her with information which he does not possess and even going so far as to imply that he needs her to succeed at his job (whereas she is self-sufficient). Throughout the scene in which she provides him with the information that she needs, her authority is accentuated by low angle shots in which the camera looks up at her, while the scene's first shot shows her standing on the balcony at the top of a flight of stairs, looking down at Andrea. Throughout the scene, she moves freely around the house, pouring herself a drink and monologuing without directly looking at Andrea, until towards the end, when she sits down and faces him, maintaining a clear distance from him.

Andrea: I didn't notice anything.
Helene: I'm not surprised. You were drunk.

Above: Are you getting all this down, Laura Mulvey?

The difference between the portrayal of Helene and Lou is once again accentuated when Andrea, after believing Lou to be having an affair with another man, returns home to confront her. Whereas Helene, in the scene previously discussed, was dressed modestly in a black pullover and trousers, Lou is completely naked, lying on Andrea's bed as she waits for him to return. Even more significantly, she is introduced via a subjective shot, the camera adopting Andrea's point of view as he enters the bedroom. This time, it is Andrea who moves freely around, putting his groceries away while talking at Lou rather than to her. It is tempting to view Lou, who tells Andrea that she was "dying to see [him]", as his attempt to make up for his failure with Helene. One gets the impression that Helene's independence frustrates him, and that he entertains Lou simply for the convenience of someone who can alternately dote on and be dependent on him.

Andrea: What kind of dump do you come from? Your mother doesn't take care of you, your father's gathering mould in a state home for the aged, and you play tramp in one sports car after the other."
Lou: Was it a red sports car?
Andrea: That's right.
Lou: Well, that car just happens to belong to my brother Walter, you idiot! You know, ever since you've been playing detective, you just can't get anything right. You really had me a laugh!
[Brief pause]
Andrea: You're pathetic.

In a sense, Lou is pathetic. Immediately afterwards, she eagerly tries to please Andrea by providing him with further information for his investigation, before pleadingly asking where he is going when he head out without a word. (Later, she seems to forgive him completely, indulging in a giggling play-fight with him before having sex.) Andrea, however, the drunk who seems to take his frustration regarding his ex out on his current girlfriend, is nothing if not a hypocrite. This is not, of course, the only giallo in which a male protagonist treats his girlfriend badly, whether by treating her with contempt or physically assaulting her, but it is one of the few in which the filmmakers seem to condemn this behaviour. Often, George Hilton (or one of his counterparts) will slap a female character whom they believe to be in a state of 'hysteria' (the impression given that the filmmakers believe such violence to be justified in order to calm down an unhelpfully 'hysterical' woman); here, however, Andrea's assault of Lou is that of a scruffy alcoholic hitting a woman in complete control of her senses on the basis of a false assumption. Andrea is not 'punished' as such for this; rather, it is simply yet another in a long line of cases of bad behaviour. (When she reappears once more, towards the end of the film, to tell him that she is leaving him and getting married, it's tempting to view this as Andrea getting a taste of his own medicine.)

Above: And it looks really nice, too

Of course, the characterisations are far from inclusive. For all her strengths, Helene does, rather regrettably, submit to a brief passionate snog with Andrea after her turns up at her house, wanting her to comfort him after a particularly unpleasant encounter with his boss. (To her credit, however, she does call a halt to it, opting to head back indoors to take care of her son rather than allowing herself to be used by Andrea as a cheap lay to make himself feel better.) And let's not forget that the killer's motivation, seemingly plucked out of nowhere at the last minute, is that old reactionary staple, that of the homosexual turned down by a straight man going mad and deciding to kill a bunch of people. Still, I can see exactly what Gary Needham means when he calls this a progressive giallo which "play[s] with the conventions of detection and investigation procedures in order to explore issues of masculinity and identity".