Reviews

Zodiac’s great but the DVD ain’t

Yesterday, I received a review copy of the R2 UK release of Zodiac, David Fincher’s latest film. The short story is that it’s a great film, a worthy spiritual successor (of sorts) to Se7en, and you should definitely see it if you haven’t already. For the long story, you’ll have to wait for my full review for DVD Times, which will hopefully be going up on Sunday, ahead of the DVD’s Monday release.

On a side note, it’s been a while since I watched a standard definition DVD of a recent film, and I was horrified by just how shoddy this release of Zodiac looks. Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by high definition, but I was genuinely shocked by the amount of artefacting (mostly in the form of mosquito noise and horrible noise reduction smears) on display, not to mention the total lack of fine detail. I think Lyris (who saw it at the cinema) put it best when he said to me that, with high definition and theatrical screenings, you can tell what’s supposed to be in focus because you can see a clear difference in clarity between, say, the actor who is the centre of attention and the background which is of less importance, but, in standard definition, or at least poor quality standard definiton, everything just sort of merges together as a flat, indistinct sea of mush.

Paramount is bringing the director’s cut out on HD DVD in the US on January 8th, and you can bet your bottom dollar that I’ll be snatching it up and junking the DVD as soon as possible.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8, Episode 6: No Future For You, Part One

Written by Brian K. Vaughan; Illustrated by Georges Jeanty

This episode begins the Faith storyline, and I’m pleased to report that it looks as if it’s going to be a good one. Any fears that bringing in a new writer would disrupt the tone of the series can be put aside, because Brian K. Vaughan definitely captures the correct feel: in fact, I’d argue that this feels more like vintage Buffy than any other issue thus far, given that, for the most part, it eschews the large-scale, superhero-like fights scenes and improbable demons (c.f. the fairies in The Chain) in favour of more understated character scenes.

The main interaction in this episode takes place between Faith and Giles, holed up in Cleveland, guarding its “second-rate Hellmouth”. They were always two of the strongest characters, and the dialogue is the sort of witty-yet-meaningful material that went on when the show was at its best. It’s nice to see them not shying away from Faith’s dark past, especially given that one of the biggest problems with her return in Season 7 was that this aspect of her character was given short shrift. The hints that are being dropped about her childhood and home life make me hopeful that we’ll get a deeper exploration of her character as this arc progresses, while the mission on which Giles intends to send her - to pass herself off as an aristocrat and attends a fancy dress party (“They seriously call their fancy dress parties ‘fancy dress parties’?”) in order to assassinate a rogue Slayer/heiress - is just ridiculous enough to offset the darker elements with some much-needed comic relief. So, Faith heads off to England (you know she’s in England because David Tennant and Billie Piper are wandering past a red telephone box in the establishing shot) to learn etiquette and be fitted with a ball-gown - most amusing.

The episode also picks up on an issue raised, briefly, in Angel’s fifth season, and it’s a pertinent one: if you give two thousand girls throughout the world instant Slayer powers, how can you be sure they’ll use these powers for good? The answer is that you can’t, and Lady Genevieve Savidge (great name) is a particularly nasty piece of work, kidnapping various people (including other Slayers) and hunting them down on horseback on her estate. This continues the theme that began in The Long Way Home of the world becoming less defined in black and white terms and more in shades of grey. It’s no longer a case of “good Slayer fights bad demons” - the later seasons of the TV show suggested that demons had it in them to be good, and now we’re seeing that a Slayer can just as easily be bad, and that, by sharing her power with these two thousand girls, Buffy has in fact populated the world with two thousand dangerous killing machines, with the choice of going either way.

Overall, an impressive episode. After a slightly shaky start, this new season actually seems to be finding its footing.

8/10.

The Giallo Project #8: One on Top of the Other

Alternative titles: Una sull’altra; Perversion Story; Director: Lucio Fulci; Starring: Marisa Mell, Jean Sorel, Elsa Martinelli; Music: Riz Ortolani; Italian theatrical release date: August 15th, 1969

Note: this review contains a number of major spoilers. Much of the body of this text is taken from my review of Severin’s DVD.

When Dr. George Dumurrier’s (Jean Sorel) wife Susan (Marisa Mell) dies suddenly during a vicious asthma attack, the young clinician stands to inherit $2 million. The convenience of this situation does not escape the attention of the authorities, and their suspicions are raised further by the news that George has started associating with a stripper named Monica Weston (Mell again), who bears an uncanny resemblance to his supposedly dead wife. As the net closes in, and George finds himself accused first of conspiring with his wife to commit fraud and then of murdering her, his lover Jane (Elsa Martinelli) is forced to take matters into her own hands to unravel the mystery and prove his innocence.

Lucio Fulci was the second of the “Big Three” (Bava, Fulci, Argento) to hop aboard the giallo train, and this, his first entry, clearly bears the influence of Romolo Guerrieri’s The Sweet Body of Deborah, a fact never denied by Fulci himself. For this review, I watched the French cut of the film, entitled Perversion Story, released on DVD by Severin Films, but in actual fact I prefer both the English cut and its more ambiguous title, One on Top of the Other. The French cut loses a lot of character development in exchange for added sex scenes, and as a result feels considerably more disjointed than the English variant. There is some discrepancy as to the running time of the Italian cut, although I have seen a version, in Italian, which includes all the scenes from both the English and French edits.

I see this as Fulci’s Vertigo, a thriller focusing on a man’s obsession with the image of a dead woman (who is in fact not dead), set in and around the dizzy heights of modern (late 60s) San Francisco. Taking many of its cues from the domestic melodramas popularised by the likes of Umberto Lenzi in the mid to late 1960s, the focus is less on outlandish set-pieces (the events of the film hinge around a single death, which takes place off-screen) and more on conspiracy and psychological torture. This is a very cold film, and one tinged with sadness too, despite the colourful settings and Swinging Sixties vibe: all relationships seem to be distant, comprised of ritual and pretence. George’s marriage to Susan, it would seem, is merely for show, while even his relationship with his lover, Jane, is mechanical and devoid of any real passion. This is most apparent in an early sequence in which, having told him that their relationship can’t go on, Jane boards a train to return home to her family. George then sets off in his car, pursuing and overtaking the train, and meets her at the other end. Later, as they travel together in his car (in a scene removed from the French print), it is made clear that this ritual is carried out on a regular basis: “One day, I’ll take that train, and you won’t be there waiting for me,” she tells him, to which he responds “No, we’ll work it out. Even his relationship with the seductive Monica, a woman who finally seems to be accessible to him, turns out to be a sham, as she is revealed to be nothing more than a mocking construct created by Susan.

Sex is a game in the world in which this film is set, characterised by strip clubs that manage to be both shamelessly salacious and hopelessly naff at the same time, while George, in what is perhaps a manifestation of Fulci’s inherent misogyny, finds himself surrounded by a cavalcade of manipulative and hostile women. Indeed, even ‘plain’ Jane is not all that she seems, transforming into a calculating seductress in a scene in which she turns a photo-shoot with Monica/Susan into an impromptu interrogation. Looked at from a male perspective, it’s essentially a fantasy of submission - perhaps best exemplified by the character of Benjamin Wormser (Riccardo Cucciolla): a love-struck client of Monica, he dotes on a woman who doesn’t even really exist. Perhaps, in this world, people can only truly be in love with themselves: as Monica rebukes the jealous Benjamin, who believes that she has found someone else, “Yes, you’re right. I’ve got a lover who loves me more than you do. It’s a woman, too. It’s me!”

Perhaps the most misanthropic element of the film, however, is not the sex but the general impersonality of life itself. Fulci shows us a world in which everything is done by proxy: we, the audience, aren’t sure how Susan “died” until it is actually spelled out for us by Henry (Alberto de Mendoza), because we never actually see the event. Even the conspiracy to have George bumped off does not require that its participants lift so much as a finger against him since, as Henry so eloquently puts it, “the State” will kill him for them. This extends to the film’s conclusion, which actually turns out to be its weakest moment, despite being thematically appropriate: George’s last-minute rescue from the gas chamber takes place off-screen, with the events instead described to us by a news reporter. Given George’s complete lack of agency throughout the whole affair, his slinking into the shadows is rather fitting, but it is unsatisfying nonetheless, as it means that both he and the audience are denied a proper sense of closure.

It is, therefore, appropriate, that the biggest impression is made by Marisa Mell. Given top billing in English language prints but listed after Jean Sorel elsewhere, she pulls off a remarkable feat by playing two completely different characters who are, in fact, one in the same. So complete is her transformation from the cold, strait-laced brunette Susan Dumurrier to the blonde, energetic and highly sexual Monica Weston that it comes as a shock to learn that both are played by the same person. A Jungian reading reveals a world full of doppelgangers, none more so than Susan/Monica, who is introduced as a reflection in a window, fleetingly spotted gliding around the house. Effectively, the film is telling us, she’s a ghost even before she’s dead, and her spirit continues to haunt George long after her apparent demise. Even the title is a double entendre: “one on top of the other” may superficially be seen as a reference to sexual activity (of which there is plenty in this film), but it could just as well refer to the notion of layering one persona over another, as Susan does when she creates the character of Monica.

One on Top of the Other stands as the beginning of a high point in Fulci’s career, and a niche which, had he continued to explore rather than being drawn to the more visceral but less satisfying thrills of gory zombie horror flicks, would probably resulted in a better legacy than being known simply as the “godfather of gore”.

Next time, I’ll be looking at Piero Schivazappa’s 1969 thriller The Frightened Woman.

Blu-ray review: Black Book

Call it a guilty pleasure if you like, but Black Book is one of the most engaging films I’ve seen in recent years, and definitely Paul Verhoeven’s best offering in a long time. Tartan’s Blu-ray release offers up an impressive transfer and audio options, alongside extras that are insightful but rather limited in quantity.

Tartan kicks off their Blu-ray support with Paul Verhoeven’s World War 2 thriller Black Book, released on the UK on September 24th. I’ve reviewed this Region 0 disc, which features an excellent transfer and boasts solid audio support.

Inspector Negro rides again

Yesterday was pay day, so, during my lunch break, I took a wander over to Borders and picked up a copy of Day After Day by Carlo Lucarelli, the sequel to his giallo Almost Blue (see here for my review of that title). I wonder if there have ever been any plans to turn this one into a film, as Alex Infascelli did with Almost Blue? Either way, I’m looking forward to getting stuck into this one without knowing the plot and its outcome beforehand.

I’ll get cracking on it just as soon as I’ve finished the books I currently have out of the library - Mercy Alexander by George Tiffin and Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin.

HD DVD review: Silent Hill

Constituting a distinct improvement over the earlier Sony Pictures release in terms of image quality, Concorde Home Entertainment’s release of Silent Hill features an amazing transfer and impressive audio. Despite being bare-bones, I highly recommend that fans of the film, or those who are just dying to add another magnificent-looking disc to their HD collections, get their order in immediately.

Just over a year after launching on Blu-ray and receiving much criticism for its image quality, Silent Hill shows up on HD DVD courtesy of German distributor Concorde Home Entertainment. I investigate how this new VC-1 encode compares to Sony’s older MPEG-2 release.

The biggest comeback since JR rose from the dead

If you’ve been reading this site for any length of time, you’ve probably had the opportunity to observe me waxing lyrical about the medical drama Casualty and its fall from grace. In spite of featuring an excellent two-parter penned by former writer Barbara Machin, which were as good as anything the show had to offer in its prime, the most recent series was the worst ever by a long shot, and, not for the first time, I was just about ready to give up on it entirely. Last night, however, such thoughts were banished from my mind. The 22nd series began this weekend, with a two-parter spread over Saturday and Sunday, and, if their quality is in any way indicative of what we can expect from the rest of the season, this might just be the most miraculous return to form I’ve ever seen on television.

Casualty, in recent years, has been characterised by many problems, not least a gradual ramping up of the number of episodes per series (going from 24 to 48 in the space of a scant eight years) and a slow but steady decline in the quality of the writing, acting and characterisation, while the “medical drama” aspect of this medical drama became increasingly sidelined in favour of second rate soap opera storylines revolving around who fancied who and managed to knock who up. The influx of soap content was gradual enough that it took a few years for the problems to become readily apparent, but by the sixteenth series everything more or less fell apart.

Last night, however, it felt as if someone had turned back the clock. While I don’t know if the five-week gap between Series 21 and 22 can truly be considered an end-of-series break, these five weeks would appear to have been put to excellent use, as the new production team, which came in towards the end of the previous series, have performed a blitzkrieg on the show. Rather than gradually phasing out the soap, they have done what was in my opinion the only thing they could have done: obliterated it entirely in the blink of an eye. The opening two-parter focused around a bomb blast in the centre of town which left the hospital swamped with casualties and barely able to cope, and in the process reaffirmed everything that the show used to be about.

Like last Christmas’ two-parter, the same storyline was told from two different perspectives, the first episode being shown entirely from the point of view of wide-eyed, bumbling new recruit Toby (Matthew Needham, a shockingly good screen debut), and the second through the eyes of world-weary Charlie (Derek Thompson, the only actor to have been there since the first episode), who, having lost all sense of purpose in the job he does, receives a generic letter commending him on 35 years of nursing. Showing the same events from two different points of view might seem like a cheap gimmick (and, when I first heard about it, I was worried that this would simply be an attempt to replicate the more superficial elements of the Christmas episodes), but the effect is extremely powerful, the first episode throwing the audience into the thick of an extremely confusing situation and the second adopting a perspective of jaded detachment.

In the first episode, the decision to feature a new character in every single scene certainly helped make a character who, on the surface, was quite annoying, more sympathetic. I felt that some of the narrative contrivances were a bit silly (Toby just happens to be in the vicinity of the bomb blast, then just happens to run into not one but two people in need of urgent medical attention on his way home), but by and large I found it incredibly effective. This was a properly character-driven episode, the like of which we haven’t seen for a long time. Oh, and the banter between the regulars was some of the best and most natural I’ve heard in a long time.

As good as the first episode was, the second just blew it out of the water, surpassing it in every way imaginable. If Episode 1 was trying to be the Casualty of old, Episode 2 actually was the Casualty of old. This was a true nursing-oriented episode, with not a shred of soap in sight: just 60 minutes about a normal guy trying to get through a job he no longer believed in, only to have has passion for it re-ignited before the end. Just as with Toby in the first episode, the way in which it was structured really helped get inside Charlie’s head, and the benefit of him being such a familiar face made it all feel that bit more real. You could really feel his total sense of displacement and uselessness, being treated like a spare part (oh, sweet justice, the writers finally seem to have noticed how they’ve been treating him for the last couple of years) and pushed around by people who didn’t value his experience and expertise. Seemingly innocuous moments like him lighting up a cigarette outside the hospital entrance, something he last did way back in Series 2 in 1987, hammered home just how close to breaking point he had come.

As for the terrorism storyline, it was handled quite well. Originally, the idea was for the perpetrators to be Islamic fundamentalists, but this concept was nixed by BBC standards and practice goons, who decided that it would be too “controversial”. The result? The bombers are now animal rights activists, who accidentally detonate their explosive device in a crowded street rather than at its intended destination. (I’m not sure why this is any less controversial - more likely, the BBC bosses are less scared of reprisals from animal rights activists than suicide bombers.) However, it ended up working a lot better than I was expecting, and the fact that one of the bombers was by far the most sympathetic of the guest characters (a superlative performance by Nigel Terry) gave the episodes a much-needed angle of balance, avoiding any sanctimonious hand-wringing.

On the technical side of things, the show has now finally abandoned the cheap-looking, interlaced video format used for the previous 21 years and switched to a progressive, film-like appearance. The film effect (actually the result of shooting in 25p DigiBeta) is a big improvement on the tacky “remove every second line so everything looks like a jaggy mess” technique used on most TV shows shot on video but made to look like film, including sister show Holby City, which recently adopted this look. It actually looked like film on some occasions, and I thought the design of the bomb site, with all its smoke, debris and monochromatic colour palette, was hugely effective. For some reason, no director was credited for these episodes, but, whoever he/she was, they did a sterling job. They decided to shoot the scenes in the aftermath of the explosion in the manner of a horror film - a very effective choice. Yes, the overuse of clumsy, hand-held shots and haphazard editing remains, but the filmic look, coupled the more dramatic lighting, helped make it less objectionable than it has been for some time.

Seriously, I could rave and rave about these episodes all day, but I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice to say that, if the rest of the series is even a smidgen as good as this, I will be more than satisfied. I never thought they’d pull it off, but they really have brought Casualty back from the dead, and my faith in the programme has been restored, just when I thought there was no hope left. While I doubt that anyone could maintain a further 46 episodes of this quality, I would like to think that the ideology they represent will remain in place. Writers: please, please keep things going in this vein and don’t be tempted to go back to the soap and silliness.

Tarantan films presents…

Today I received my first ever high definition check disc - a review copy of the upcoming UK Blu-ray release of Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book from Tartan Films… or “Tarantan Films”, as the label misspells it. I already have the US version from Sony Pictures, due out on September 25th, on pre-order at DVD Pacific, and I intend to keep the order open in order to get the US-exclusive Verhoeven commentary plus other assorted extras, but the UK version, due out a day earlier, on September 24th, is a rather impressive package in terms of image quality, and one that Sony will have to work hard to better (if indeed they don’t just use the same encode).

For a start, Tartan have clearly decided to go the whole hog, delivering the film on a dual-layer BD50 disc with a 1080p AVC encode (no repeats of their early days with the DVD format here). The transfer, which hovers consistently around the 30 Mbit/sec rate, is very impressive, slightly pre-filtered and as a result exhibiting some mild ringing and not quite hitting the heights of, say, Open Season or King Kong in terms of fine detail, but otherwise absolutely magnificent.

For audio, as seems to be Tartan’s custom, the default track is a stereo affair (at 224 Kbps), with Dolby Digital 5.1 (640 Kbps) and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks also included. Unfortunately, neither the Playstation 3 nor any other currently available player can decode the high definition audio content of such tracks, so it falls back on a legacy DTS 1.5 Mbit/sec stream, but to my ears it sounds very good in its own right and constitutes an improvement on its 768 Kbps predecessor from the DVD. I’ll have to do a more in-depth comparison between the two before offering my final verdict, however. Annoyingly, despite the bulk of the film being in Dutch and German, English subtitles are not enabled by default, making a pit-stop at the Setup menu (or a few button presses on the remote control) necessary before beginning the movie.

Tartan have also chosen to approach the presentation of their bonus content in a rather unusual manner, and this is likely to attract some consternation from certain parties. Whereas every other distributor I know either upscales their legacy 480i content or has the player itself switch to standard definition to play it, Tartan have embedded the material in a small window on the Extras menu. While this has the effect of making the quality look better (because it’s smaller, natch), it’s also going to be a bit of a pain in the neck for people with smaller displays. On a 40” screen viewed at fairly close range, it’s not that big a deal, but I wouldn’t like to watch it on my 20” monitor, or even on our older 32” TV.

Expect a full review at DVD Times in the near future. After a fairly lengthy period of what I can only term writer’s block, I’m finally getting back into the sway of penning regular reviews.

HD DVD review: Dawn of the Dead (remake)

The HD DVD release of Dawn of the Dead is a definite improvement over the standard definition release, maintaining all of the original bonus features and boasting a solid transfer and audio mixes. Of course, the upcoming release of Romero’s superior original version on Blu-ray is likely to put this release in the shade, at least in terms of the quality of the film itself, but those who enjoyed Snyder’s reimagining are highly recommended to trade their DVD copies for this new release.

Halloween comes early this year as I review Universal’s recent HD DVD release of the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead.

DVD review: Spooks: Season 5

Season 5 comes across as Spooks’ weakest so far, sacrificing credibility and its ensemble cast in favour of increasingly unbelievable situations and an annoyingly narrow focus. The DVD release, likewise, is the most disappointing of the bunch, making the high £39.99 RRP seem particularly extortionate given the lack of bonus materials.

In preparation for the launch of its sixth season on BBC1, I’ve reviewed Contender Home Entertainment’s DVD release of Spooks Season 5, presenting all ten episodes on five discs.

The Giallo Project #7: The Sweet Body of Deborah

Alternative titles: Il Dolce corpo di Deborah; Director: Romolo Guerrieri; Starring: Carroll Baker, Jean Sorel, Evelyn Stewart, Luigi Pistilli, George Hilton; Music: Nora Orlandi; Italian theatrical release date: March 20th, 1968

The newly married Marcel (Jean Sorel) takes his American bride, Deborah (Carroll Baker), to his home town of Geneva to celebrate their honeymoon. However, he hasn’t been home long before he begins receiving all sorts of reminders of the untimely demise of his ex-girlfriend, Suzanne (Evelyn Stewart). The papers all say that she committed suicide, but an old friend, Philippe (Luigi Pistilli), menacingly accuses Marcel of murdering her. Soon, it becomes clear that someone is playing a very sick game with both Marcel and Deborah, who both begin to wonder how they can trust each other.

I like to class gialli such as this one as “Mills & Boon Gone Wrong”. All the familiar traits are here: handsome European stud romances glamorous American woman and they run away together to various exotic locales (here Geneva and, as this was a French co-production, Nice, both lushly photographed in the manner of a tourist video). Then, throw in a bit of blackmail, double- and triple-crosses and some murders, and you’ve got yourself a giallo in the same vein that was later exploited to great success by the likes of Sergio Martino. In fact, a glance at the list of players both in front of and behind the camera shows this to be very much an early forerunner to Martino’s ventures: Luigi Pistilli, Evelyn Stewart and a bearded George Hilton (as a charmingly unapologetic peeping tom) make up the roster of suspects, while Ernesto Gastaldi penned the screenplay, Nora Orlandi provided the score, Luciano Martino (brother of Sergio) served as producer, and Sergio Martino himself receives a credit as production manager. The jet set aesthetic that Martino would so often visit is also clearly established: this film is populated by wealthy decadents with too much time on their hands and a predilection for watching topless dancers gyrate to swanky lounge music with an air of bland indifference.

What’s missing is the urban slasher element popularised by Dario Argento: as a pre-Bird with the Crystal Plumage giallo, the emphasis is more on the melodrama and internalised anxiety than on black-gloved killers stalking and killing a roster of victims. There are no on-screen deaths at all until the final act, and the pace tends to become a bit stodgy at times, with Baker looking harangued and spending a lot of time in bed and in various stages of undress. Yet, it’s still considerably more engaging than the last giallo I watched, Naked You Die, and that has a lot to do with the plot, which Gastaldi skilfully drives from one twist to the next, even if the final major twist, which Gastaldi would go on to use again and again, is difficult to swallow, given that it directly contradicts what we have already seen. It also helps that there is distrust on both sides: the film alternates between Marcel and Deborah’s point of view, with both suspecting each other of foul play, and as a result we’re never quite sure how the land lies.

There are also some genuinely nice moments of style on display, with the occasional use of flashbacks to convey Marcel’s past with Suzanne, with a scene in which they canoodle against a backdrop of autumn leaves falling in slow motion seems to anticipate, albeit in a romantic rather than sinister context, the “rape in the rain” scene in Martino’s The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh. Likewise, a shot in which Marcel watches a striptease act through a brandy glass, the liquid distorting and colourising his (and our) viewpoint, is an interesting touch, the scene in question anticipating something similar that would show up in Giuliano Carnimeo’s The Case of the Bloody Iris (also written by Gastaldi and produced by Luciano Martino), albeit with considerably more visual panache and less relevance to the plot. There’s some deliciously outdated fashion and decor on display, all manner of crazy dancing, and even a bizarre musical game of Twister. Oh, and I’m not sure if it’s a major point, but this strikes me as being the only giallo I’ve seen to feature a scene with a woman coming during sex.

Next time, I’ll be returning to familiar territory with Lucios Fulci’s One on Top of the Other, a film with many of the same hallmarks as this one.

The Giallo Project #6: Naked You Die

Alternative titles: Nude… si muore; Sette vergini per il diavolo; Schoolgirl Killer; The Miniskirt Murders; The Young, the Evil and the Savage; Director: Antonio Margheriti (as Anthony Dawson); Starring: Mark Damon, Eleonora Brown, Michael Rennie, Sally Smith; Music: Carlo Savina; Italian theatrical release date: February 20th, 1968

So far, all of the gialli that I’ve watched for this project have demonstrated a wide variety of influences. Naked You Die is where this all changes, as its sole frame of reference seems to be Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace, with an all-girl boarding school standing in for the earlier film’s fashion house and its various pupils replacing the models. Margheriti, however, doesn’t have half the visual flare of Bava, and the cinematography is overall flat and unattractive, particularly when it comes to the lighting which, day or night, has the same harsh brightness. Nor does he possess Bava’s imagination: almost everyone dies as a result of a straightforward strangling, which seems to take little more than a couple of seconds.

Margheriti does, however, make occasional use of the subjective camera to represent the killer’s point of view, beating Dario Argento to this technique by nearly two years. (One of the interesting things about tackling these films chronologically is that you begin to get a sense of at what points various trends began to become popular.) There is also a rather effective moment in which a girl strangled in a basement drops to the floor, her head angled directly at the camera - staring, as it were, at the audience. That’s about it for creative kills, though, and the film’s title turns out to be incredibly misleading as most of the victims are fully clothed when they are murdered.

Elsewhere, a bland cast and unbelievable, perfunctory dialogue kill pretty much any potential interest in the plot itself. Mark Damon is hopelessly ill-equipped as riding instructor Richard Barrett, while the fact that virtually every girl on campus seems to be on the verge of swooning at his feet just boggles the mind - “I think I’m in love; he’s the man I’ve always dreamed of!” is an actual line, spoken within minutes of his arrival. Naturally, he has his own ideas about the students, and ends up romancing one hapless girl who - coincidentally - is deathly afraid of horses.

Naked You Die can pretty much be summed up by the first couple of minutes, as a woman sheds her clothes, takes a bath and is promptly murdered: Margheriti teases but shows very little with regard to violence and nudity. This is effectively an exploitation film without any exploitation, and there certainly isn’t anything more intellectually stimulating to compensate. It just amazes me that a giallo about a killer stalking the pupils of an all-girl school can be so damn chaste! One for completists only.

Next time, it’s another new discovery for me, Romolo Guerrieri’s The Sweet Body of Deborah.

Almost Blue

Almost Blue is an Italian giallo novel and, as far as I’m aware, one of the few to have been translated into English (although the blurb on the back refers to its as “noir”). The author is Carlo Lucarelli, who is probably known to most readers of this site as one of the co-writers of Dario Argento’s giallo Non Ho Sonno. Almost Blue was itself turned into a film, in 2000, by Alex Infascelli, and it was in that form that I was first introduced to it. Reading the book, therefore, has been an interesting experience.

The premise is a pretty intriguing one. A serial killer is doing the rounds in Bologna, killing students and assuming their identities. His modus operandi leads to him being given the nickname of “the Iguana”, and, fairly quickly, he is identified as Alessio Crotti, an orphan who grew up in a convent and has developed severe psychological problems. The only problem is that, as he continually changes his identity, any description of him is rendered useless as soon as he kills again (which he does with alarming frequency). By chance, a telephone conversation between him and an intended victim is picked up by Simone, a blind teenager who spends his life in his bedroom, listening in on phone conversations on his computer. Grazia Negro, a young detective brought in from Rome to crack the case, believes that Simone is the key… but can he lead her to the Iguana before he kills again?

Had this been written back in the 70s, it would probably have been given a deliciously convoluted animal title: then again, we already have a giallo film whose title involves (somewhat bafflingly) an iguana.

At less than 170 pages, it’s a very short book, and one that I could imagine many people blazing through in one sitting. I tend to read at a somewhat slower pace, however, as I rarely sit down with a book for an extended period (reading, for me, tends to be restricted to the three Bs: bed, the bus and the bog), but I finished it in a couple of days, which is fast by my standards. I prefer to read for a bit and then soak up the atmosphere of what I’ve read - and it is a very atmospheric book, contrasting the emphasis on sound when told from the blind Simone’s perspective with the killer’s emphasis on sight. It also transpires that the film is very faithful to its literary origins: with few exceptions, if a scene occurs in the book, it is also in the film, and hits all of the same main plot points.

Where the two differ, however, is in the foregrounding of the sounds heard by Simone. This isn’t entirely surprising, given that, as a visual medium, it’s hard to convey blindness in a film, so one can’t really complain too much about this, but what is regrettable is that, as a result, the film focuses a lot more attention on Grazia, turning the plot into a more typical detective thriller. This isn’t done by altering the narrative as such, but rather by drawing out her scenes for longer. It’s not that she isn’t an interesting character (she is, and sympathetic too) but even she loses something in the adaptation - her struggle to be taken seriously as a woman in a male-dominated environment. In the novel, this is a major point, because the fact that Simone can’t see is what attracts her to him so much, as this means he doesn’t make judgements about her based on her appearance. In the film, it appears that she makes a habit of banging her witnesses.

Overall, I’d recommend Almost Blue. It’s a fast, engaging read, and the English translation is very evocative (I’m assuming the Italian original is similar, if not better). The subtitle on the cover, “An Inspector Negro Novel”, suggests that this is part of a series, and I certainly intend to seek out further instalments.

The Giallo Project #5: Death Laid an Egg

Alternative titles: La Morte ha fatto l’uovo; Plucked; A Curious Way to Love; Director: Giulio Questi; Starring: Gina Lollobrigida, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Ewa Aulin, Jean Sobieski; Music: Bruno Maderna; Italian theatrical release date: January 9th, 1968

Marco (Jean-Louis Trintignant) has married for money, which comes in the form of the chicken farm owned by his wife Anna (Gina Lollobrigida). It’s a state of the art affair, employing all manner of high-tech machinery and avant garde music to get the chickens in the correct psychological frame of mind. Marco, however, has a few sordid secrets up his sleeve. Not only is he carrying on an affair with Anna’s cousin Gabriella (Ewa Aulin), he also takes regular trips to a hotel, where he indulges in the murder of prostitutes. Nothing is quite as it seems, however, with multiple conspiracies brewing beneath the surface, and everything eventually explodes in a cocktail of mind games, backstabbing and, yes, headless chickens. (From my review at DVD Times)

I defy anyone to claim that the giallo was a movement aimed exclusively at grindhouse audiences, as Mikel Koven’s book La Dolce Morte suggests, after watching this film. The clearest frame of reference seems to be Jean-Luc Godard, as evinced by the wildly experimental editing, while the sweltering heat that can be palpably felt throughout the entire film recalls the Western Django, Kill… If You Live, Shoot! for which Questi is best remembered. You won’t find much Bava here… then again, you won’t find much Antonioni either. Death Laid an Egg sports one of the most bizarre titles in the entire giallo catalogue, and is a baffling mindfuck of a movie. As an experiment, it’s an interesting one, but as a commercial film, the end result is somewhat less than the sum of its parts, for, while the various avant garde techniques of narrative and editing that co-writer and director Giulio Questi exploits are definitely interesting and give the film a tone unlike any other giallo, they ultimately serve to make the film more frustrating than engaging.

This is a film that seems to be off-kilter right from the start, as the opening titles play out over stock footage of microscopic close-ups of living organisms, set to the crashing and banging of Bruno Maderna’s weird, jaunty, atonal score, which manages to be both incredibly annoying and incredibly catchy at the same time. This segues into a truly baffling scene showing various hotel guests doing a mixture of mundane and bizarre things in their rooms - polishing knives, combing hair, preparing to commit suicide, and so on. Like much of the rest of the film, this first scene promises much but ultimately delivers little: a series of non-sequiturs with little pay-off. In a sense, it doesn’t work because, despite using experimental editing techniques and throwing in a whole bunch of inexplicable cutaways and seemingly irrelevant plot strands, Questi still insists on tying it all to a relatively straightforward narrative structure. The thriller element, which doesn’t really surface until well into the second half, and has more in common with a domestic melodrama than the urban slashers popularised by Dario Argento, doesn’t really fit, while what seem to be various criticisms of commercialism don’t really go anywhere meaningful.

What does work very well, however, is the claustrophobic atmosphere. The film seems to take place in the middle of the Italian summer, with the light so bright and the heat clearly so intense that at times it feels as if the characters are actually being suffocated. Even during the night scenes, the characters (or is that the actors?) look as if they are on the verge of collapse, while the fact that everyone looks (and sounds, at least in the English version) incredibly bored and tired seems somewhat appropriate given the film’s rather biting portrayal of this section of society. In true giallo fashion, everyone is deceiving everyone else (the constant allusions to masks are perhaps just a little too bludgeoning), and the glee with which certain characters approach the prospect of pretending to be someone else just serves to underscore how thoroughly tedious their everyday lives are.

Death Laid an Egg has built up quite a following in certain circles, most likely on account of its obscurity and weirdness - how could a film which features genetically mutated chickens that are basically falls of meat with pulsating veins and feet not be embraced by the cult circuit? A film doesn’t, after all, have to be brilliant in order to develop a cult following: often, simply being weird is enough. While Death Laid an Egg is not a bad film per se, it is an unsuccessful one - one that add two and two together and doesn’t quite make four.

Next time, I’ll be tackling a film I’ve never seen before, Antonio Margheriti’s 1968 offering Naked You Die.

The Giallo Project #4: Blowup

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni; Starring: David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles; Music: Herbie Hancock; US theatrical release date: December 18th, 1966

“Slowly, slowly… against the beat.” - The unnamed photographer of Blowup

“What’s the meaning of this?” you ask. “I thought this was the Giallo Project?” It’s a valid enough question, and I thought long and hard about whether or not to include Blowup in this rogue’s gallery, but eventually I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t afford to ignore it. You see, while I don’t believe it possible to describe this as a giallo in the truest sense (although both Blood and Black Lace and The Giallo Scrapbook 2 do so), I suspect that it had a profound impact on virtually every giallo beyond a certain point in history. It undoubtedly had a huge influence on Dario Argento, who adapted several of its themes into The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and indeed all of his 1970s gialli, and, in turn, the various directors who set out to imitate Argento’s work ended up adopting these same themes and stylistic traits second-hand - imitations of an imitation, as it were. Besides, I thought it only right that I do something to acknowledge Antonioni’s recent death.

Beyond the plot, which, if you break it down, is basically the same as virtually every Argento giallo - an artist living as an outsider in a contemporary urban space, flitting around unable to settle, witnesses (or believes he has witnessed) a crime taking place, the solution to which lies in a single image or memory that he can’t quite understand - it’s the very atmosphere that so closely mirrors everything from The Bird with the Crystal Plumage to The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh: a sort of decadence, a society of bourgeois excess, where people are obsessed with useless commodities and avant-garde art, and seem to have to real purpose in life. I wasn’t around to experience the 60s first-hand (far from it!), but I can easily see this as a defining statement of the atmosphere and mood of the period. In some respects, it makes the same point as Blood and Black Lace, and yet the bleak urban landscapes are a world away from the gothic opulence of Bava’s film.

David Hemmings’ unnamed photographer is clearly the forerunner to Sam Dalmas and Marc Daly - and indeed, Argento even cast Hemmings as Marc in the seminal Deep Red, itself a clever inversion of Blowup which actually manages to outclass its predecessor. In many respects, though, he’s a far nastier piece of work than the two of them put together. Daly had some rather antiquated ideas about the place of women in society, while Dalmas seemed to treat his girlfriend as a commodity, but they pale in significance to the character in Blowup (referred to as “Thomas” in many sources but never actually named in the film itself - actually, names are almost completely absent, a reference, perhaps, to the characters’ lack of identity and failure to find a place for themselves in the world), who manhandles several models, forcibly “posing” them and berating them for being useless, not to mention toying with blackmailing a woman (Vanessa Redgrave) who objects to having her picture taken on the sly. That’s effectively Antonioni’s (and Argento’s) point, though: he is a vain, self-absorbed prick, continually searching for a perfect image that doesn’t exist, and searching for meaning where there is none. Of course, it’s therefore entirely appropriate that the central mystery is a single image whose very meaning continues to elude him (and the more he focuses on the image, the more he loses perspective).

In many regards, Blowup is about as anti-giallo as you can get - there are no on-screen murders, and the film is famous for its deliberate refusal to provide a solution to its central mystery - and yet in orders, you can see the roots of so many 70s gialli in it that it’s impossible to ignore it completely. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the giallo of the golden age is effectively a marriage between Bava’s early efforts and Blowup, filtered through Argento’s sensibility and adopted by a slew of imitators - a reinterpretation of the form in the context of the post-1968 cultural revolution. It’s a brilliant, baffling, mesmerising film in its own right, but when you consider the knock-on effect that it had on the giallo movement, its importance becomes all the more clear.

Next time, I’ll be dipping into the bizarre world of Giulio Questi’s baffling Death Laid an Egg.

The Giallo Project #3: Blood and Black Lace

Alternative titles: Sei donne per l’assassino; Director: Mario Bava; Starring: Cameron Mitchell, Eva Bartok, Thomas Reiner; Music: Carlo Rustichelli; Italian theatrical release date: March 14th, 1964

Whenever the topic of Blood and Black Lace comes up, I always seem to find myself apologising for not liking it more. I’ve seen it four or five times now, and on each occasion I find myself feeling strangely distanced from it and unable to see it in quite the same light as its many, many admirers. Maybe it’s the fact that it lacks a single clear-cut protagonist to whom I can relate, or perhaps it’s because, to date, there has not been a satisfactory presentation of the film on DVD (it’s fickle, I know, but there have been occasions when a better transfer has improved my appreciation of a film, particularly those that are visually-oriented). In any event, for whatever reason, Blood and Black Lace is an entry that I see as important on account of its influence, but considerably less interesting when taken on its own merits.

Dubbed “the first authentic body count movie” by VCI on the cover of their (frankly pretty poor) DVD release, Blood and Black Lace builds on the thematics that Bava developed in his previous two gialli, The Girl Who Knew Too Much and The Telephone segment of Black Sabbath, and injects a vital new component that would come to characterise so many other films in the genre: the protracted, deliriously violent murder sequence. While Girl’s death scenes, such as there were, were pretty perfunctory, they are Blood and Black Lace’s raison d’être, and are quite shocking in their intensity. The very first, occurring in a windswept park at night within the first five minutes, is brutal and frenzied, unveiling the fedora-clad, black-gloved killer (his face concealed with a mask), who, thanks to his sheer viciousness and lack of identifying features, feels more like a force of nature than an actual person.

Actually, it’s difficult to fault the murders at all - they are all incredibly well-executed and almost always incredibly sadistic. One unfortunate victim is slapped about before having her hand and then face scalded, while another receives a blow to the face with a spiked glove, prefiguring the killer’s modus operandi in Death Walks at Midnight by several years. A further death, occurring late in the film, also sets the template for many a giallo bathtub drowning. However, the scenes designed to connect them together (and I believe that this is all they really are) are considerably more mundane, with the plot never sustaining my interest in that way that Girl’s does. Thomas Reiner’s wooden Inspector Silvester plods from scene to scene without doing anything particularly interesting, and the various women of the fashion house around which the events revolved are given only enough characterisation for us to know what dirty deeds they have been getting up to in between shows.

Admittedly, some of this really is quite clever. In typical giallo form, everyone is hiding something, whether it’s drug addiction, thievery or blackmail, and to an extent you can almost imagine the killer representing a force of brutal retribution. Bava also indulges in one of his favourite pass-times in opening up an outwardly respectable society and revealing it to be corrupt to the core. Furthermore, I don’t need to tell you that it’s impeccably shot, with Bava’s trademark gel lighting giving the various locations an otherworldliness while still anchoring them firmly in reality. However, Blood and Black Lace remains, for me, a stepping stone in the giallo’s journey rather than the landmark that many consider it to be. I like it, but I would never afford it masterpiece status.

Sorry again…

Next time, I’ll be looking at Michelangelo Antonioni’s seminal Blowup (don’t worry - all will be explained).

The Giallo Project #2: The Telephone (segment of Black Sabbath)

Alternative titles: Il Telefono; Director: Mario Bava; Starring: Michèle Mercier, Lidia Alfonsi, Milo Quesada (uncredited); Music: Roberto Nicolosi; Italian theatrical release date: August 17th, 1963

I hadn’t originally considered including The Telephone in this project, as I was originally planning on only covering feature-length gialli, but Marcus over at Dark Discussion suggested I give it a look. In the end, I’m still not completely sure that it should be included here, since I would only consider it to be a giallo in the broadest possible sense, but it has an important place in history nonetheless, since not only was it the first film of this sort to be shot in colour, not to mention having a profound influence on everything from Black Christmas to Scream in its use of the telephone as a device of dread, it also potentially marks the first instance of the iconic black gloves later to be donned by many a giallo killer!

The plot takes place entirely within a single location, focusing on the protracted terrorising of Rosy (Michèle Mercier) by phone by a voice claiming to be that of Frank Rainer (Milo Quesada), a man who, having been put away as a result of Rosy’s testimony, has now escaped from prison… only there’s more to this than meets the eye, as it turns out that the calls in fact originate from Mary (Lidia Alfonsi), Rosy’s former friend and (as is strongly implied) lover, as part of a bid to rekindle their friendship (and relationship). There is, however, a twist in the affair. Can you guess what it is?

Black Sabbath is introduced by host Boris Karloff as “three brief tales of the supernatural”, but, at least in the Italian version (the US edition, like The Girl Who Knew Too Much, features a radically different edit), there is nothing supernatural whatsoever about The Telephone. Rather, it’s a very straightforward thriller mixing that perennial giallo cocktail of sex and violence: the voice on the phone discusses killing Rosy in decidedly erotic terms, while a strangling by stocking only serves to underscore the manner in which the two are conflated. As the protagonist, Michèle Mercier is certainly easy on the eyes, and Bava seems to delight in tantalising the audience with the briefest flashes of bare shoulders and legs (of which the voice on the phone approves so much). However, despite looking the part, she lacks the pluckiness and spontaneity that made Letícia Román so appealing in The Girl Who Knew Too Much; she seems more like a forerunner for what would eventually end up becoming the Edwige Fenech role in later gialli of the harangued, attractive victim. Lidia Alfonsi, meanwhile, is rather more effective as the ice-cold femme fatale.

More psychological than most gialli, the horror of the situation comes not from sadistic violence (there isn’t any till the final few minutes) but from the fact that the speaker on the phone knows Rosy so intimately, while the room in which the entire segment takes place, despite being quite spacious, takes on an incredibly claustrophobic quality. The transition from black and white to colour, meanwhile, has not harmed Bava’s ability to make the most of light and shadow to create tension, while the richly saturated hues, especially on the excellent transfer provided on Anchor Bay’s recent DVD, at the same time provides a drastically different aesthetic (one can only dream of Blood and Black Lace looking this good on DVD). Roberto Nicolosi’s score, meanwhile, starts out with some of the jazzy lounge aesthetic of Bruno Nicolai’s contributions to later gialli, but quickly gives way to a more menacing, sinister tone.

In many ways, this is a minor entry in both Bava’s filmography and the history of the giallo - a sub-heading rather than a full chapter, if you like - but it shows many of the tropes that would be established in Blood and Black Lace in a smaller-scale, more rudimentary, form, and works rather well as a short, sharp exploration of mounting dread.

Next time, I’ll be looking at Mario Bava’s second feature-length giallo, Blood and Black Lace.

The Giallo Project #1: The Girl Who Knew Too Much

Alternative titles: La ragazza che sapeva troppo; The Evil Eye (alternate US edit); Director: Mario Bava; Starring: Letícia Román, John Saxon, Valentina Cortese, Dante DiPaolo; Music: Roberto Nicolosi; Italian theatrical release date: February 10th, 1963

We all have to start somewhere, and I can think of no better film with which to begin this lengthy and probably foolhardy project than this 1963 offering from Mario Bava. While I doubt that you’d ever be able to find two people who completely agree on the definition of the word “giallo” and every single title that it encompasses, it’s more or less unanimously agreed that The Girl Who Knew Too Much was the film that launched its cinematic form (unless you count Luchino Visconti’s 1943 Obsession - Gary Needham, I’m looking at you!). It’s ironic, then, that the first true giallo film is one of the most tongue-in-cheek of the cycle. Almost a parody of thriller conventions, it sends up heroine Nora Davis’ (Letícia Román) obsession with paperback gialli and her less than accomplished attempts at amateur sleuthing.

Bava and his five co-writers use the “foreign tourist in Rome” framework that would become so popular with other filmmakers as the giallo gained popularity, placing the wide-eyed Nora against the backdrop of a series of killings known as the Alphabet Murders (actually the title of a Poirot novel and a very self-conscious reference to the giallo’s roots in Agatha Christie, Edgar Wallace and Mickey Spillane novels - all of whom are referred to by name in this film) and forcing her to team up with the charming Dr. Marcello Bassi (John Saxon) to solve the mystery herself when she is met with the same disdain and disbelief that The Establishment would dole out to so many other giallo leading ladies. A rather likeable heroine, Nora is a bit silly and possesses an over-active imagination, not to mention a tendency to faint when things get a bit too much, but a lot more independently-minded than many an Edwige Fenech or Suzy Kendall. It also helps that Román has a decent sense of comic timing, playing the slapstick romance scenes between her and Saxon well and not afraid to make a fool of herself when the script calls for it. Indeed, the banter of the pair in many ways prefigures that of David Hemmings and Daria Nicolodi in Deep Red, while the running gag of one or the other continually causing injuries to Marcello is a good one and helps lighten the tension.

Indeed, this is a decidedly light-hearted giallo, with its tongue firmly in its cheek at all times. The Italian version (the American version, released under the title of The Evil Eye, is substantially different, featuring a number of alternative scenes and a different music score) features a male narrator continually commenting on Nora’s plight which, in addition to providing a lot of humorous moments also serves to highlight the genre’s literary origins. On the other hand, the manner in which it is shot is anything but frivolous: one of the few gialli to be shot in black and white, Bava, who was also the cinematographer, makes superb use of his monochromatic palette to create a world of great foreboding, foregrounding extremes in light and shadow and turning many of the familiar Roman tourist traps, including, most famously, the Spanish Steps (which provides the film with its key set-piece), into places of mystery and dread. Bava takes the Rome of picture postcards and rips open its seedy underbelly, and Marcello’s insistence that the Rome of bright sunshine and milling tourists is the “real” one never quite ring true.

This is clearly a very prototypical giallo, and while some elements are already in place, others are either not yet fully formed or else absent entirely. There is no hidden, black-gloved villain - all the potential suspects are unmasked - and the outlandish murder set-pieces that would later become the format’s hallmark are nowhere to be found. “One moment and it’s all over,” the killer promises Nora when finally unmasked, a far cry from the protracted stalk-and-slash scenes that would later delight audiences. There are only a handful of murders, and they are largely committed off-screen, with the body count aesthetic that would emerge in Bava’s next giallo, Blood and Black Lace, not yet established.

Of all the Bava films I’ve seen so far, this is actually the one that I enjoy the most, and in fact I would put it ahead of Blood and Black Lace, for reasons that I’ll explain when I get round to discussing that film. It lacks both the depth of a Deep Red and the camp sleaze of a Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, but it got the giallo movement off to an impressive start, and it holds up today as a thoroughly enjoyable stand-alone film.

Next time, I’ll be looking at Mario Bava’s second giallo, Blood and Black Lace.

Update, August 17th, 2007 03:35 PM: At the recommendation of Marcus, the next title to be covered will now be The Telephone segment of Black Sabbath rather than Blood and Black Lace.

Blu-ray review: The Rock

A solid catalogue release from Disney, The Rock holds up well in high definition, and indeed compares favourably to many HD releases of more recent films. While the missing audio commentary is a shame, at the end of the day the impressive (albeit not flawless) audio-visual presentation means that those who already own the film on DVD are highly advised to pick up a copy of the Blu-ray release.

It’s got explosions, it’s got car chases, and it’s got Nicolas Cage doing his “I’m a loveable dope” shtick. Yep, sounds like the perfect HD release. I’ve reviewed Disney’s recent French Blu-ray release of The Rock.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8, Episode 5: The Chain

Written by Joss Whedon; Illustrated by Paul Lee

This season of Buffy is full of surprises. Who would have thought that the best “episode” so far would turn out to be a one-shot stand-alone affair rather than one with something to do with the main arc? Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that it will prove to be relevant to the bigger picture in a thematic sense, but for the most part this is a self-contained story, and, to date, the only episode not to feature Buffy. Actually, the only regulars we see are Giles (briefly) and Andrew (even more briefly, thankfully, although he manages to be as infuriating as ever in his one-page appearance). The narrative, this time, focuses on one of two Slayers posing as Buffy in order to confuse her enemies, and it actually manages to be quite touching in the space of its 22-page duration. The theme seems to be the loss of identity: as the heroine puts it, “You don’t have to remember me. You don’t even know who I am.” This is a continuation of the “everything is connected” mantra of Season 7 that eventually led to Buffy sharing her power with all the potential Slayers, although it’s a lot less happy-sappy and touchy-feely than what we saw at the end of Chosen. The point is that, in a war, the grunts are expendable, and most of the time, no-one will even know the names of the ones who make a real difference. It’s not a pleasant message, but it’s a truthful one.

By the way, this episode was drawn by a different artist, Paul Lee. He tends to stage his action more coherently than Georges Jeanty, but his characters seem less “alive”, and his rendition of Giles is way off (his Andrew his considerably better, although, given how I feel about the character, I’m using “better” in the loosest possible sense of the word). Jeanty returns for the next episode, which will kick off the Faith arc written by Brian K. Vaughan. My hopes for this arc are actually somewhat higher than they would have been had Whedon been writing it - I’m looking forward to seeing whether new blood can put a fresh spin on things. And hey, it’s Faith. What’s not to like?

8/10.