First look at Muchas Gracia Senor Lobo

Yesterday the long awaited Paul Naschy book published by those fine folks at Creepy Images arrived in the mail. Muchas Gracia Senor Lobo takes it's cue from the Creepy Images magazine, and compiles an exhaustive collection of globe-spanning advertising materials for the Horror films of Paul Naschy - 30 films are featured from the 1960's to the 1980's - some numbers: the hardback book contains 392 color pages, more than 1,200 pictures, including more than 170 movie posters, almost 750 lobby cards, over 100 press stills, more than 100 reproductions of admats and rare sales materials. The book is simply extraordinary.

I've taken a few pics to give a flavour of what the book contains. I hasten to add that the pictures are only an approximation of the book's ultra-high quality. The pages are so glossy I had to dumb down the light to avoid glare.

The book can be ordered direct from Creepy Images HQ or FAB Press.

Oíche Shamhna Shona Duit ! (or Happy Halloween !)

Halloween really is one of my favourite holidays of the year. Growing up in Ireland Halloween meant being off school for mid term, but more than that, hailing from a country which is steeped in myths, legends and folklore, Halloween had a powerful charge - it was the one night of the year when the boundary between the Otherworld and the Human world dissolved and the spirits drifted among the living - wailing banshees, child snatching Leprechauns and demonic shape-shifters - and we kids kept our eyes peeled for any that would cross our path... This year, we've stockpiled the sweets for the neighbourhood kids and when they call to the door in their bin-liner costumes and lucky bag masks and we'll put on a show and scream the house down like Marilyn Burns...

And so the legend goes...

Carving Pumpkins dates back to the eighteenth century and to an Irish blacksmith named Jack who colluded with the Devil and was denied entry to Heaven. He was condemned to wander the earth but asked the Devil for some light. He was given a burning coal ember which he placed inside a turnip that he had gouged out. Thus, the tradition of Jack O'Lanterns was born - the bearer being the wandering blacksmith - a damned soul. When the Irish emigrated in their millions to America there was not a great supply of turnips so pumpkins were used instead...

The Yakuza

In his 1998 study of rebel Hollywood, Easy Riders Raging Bulls, author Peter Biskind makes just three cursory mentions of Sydney Pollack. Hardly surprising considering Pollack epitomised the Hollywood establishment, his 70's work managed to straight-jacket the likes of Robert Redford and Al Pacino into forgettable star-vehicles like The Way We Were and Bobby Deerfield. Following Tootsie and Out of Africa, Pollack's career settled into an unbroken run of mainstream mediocrity. It would, however, be a mistake to dismiss Pollack's filmography completely. In the first decade of his feature film career, Pollack made some interesting and worthwhile films - the eccentric WWII film Castle Keep from 1969, the quiet desolate western Jeremiah Johnson from 1972, and from 1974, The Yakuza, arguably Sydney Pollack's finest work.

The Yakuza is the first screen credit for brothers Paul and Leonard Schrader. In 1972 Leonard Schrader was sitting out the draft in Kyoto, where he developed an interest in the Yakuza, soaking up Japanese gangster films and befriending some Yakuza soldiers. Leonard brought the story to his younger brother Paul and by the new year a screenplay had been completed. The story concerns Harry Kilmer (Robert Mitchum), a retired detective sent to Tokyo to retrieve the daughter of an American businessman, kidnapped by a yakuza gang in lieu of a shipment of lost guns. Kilmer a former MP who was stationed in Japan during the American occupation enlists the help of an estranged friend, Ken Tanaka (Ken Takakura) to infiltrate the gangs but a straight-forward rescue mission inadvertently upsets the delicate balance of power within the Tokyo underworld...

Excited by the potential of an East meets West thriller, Warners picked up the Scraders' screenplay for $325,000, a staggering sum for the day, and immediately offered the film to Lee Marvin with Robert Aldrich in mind for directing duties. Marvin passed on the screenplay, and was next offered to Robert Mitchum who had Aldrich replaced by Sydney Pollack, a film maker with no apparent affinity for violent gangster films. With Pollack on board the Schraders' screenplay was revised and streamlined by Robert Towne (who shares a screenplay credit with Paul Schrader on the finished film). Hardly a promising turn of events for the film but The Yakuza confounds expectations. A full-blooded, two-fisted violent thriller, The Yakuza expertly steers a course between American and Japanese film traditions - the first half of the film is leisurely paced, Schrader's screenplay is dense, wordy and demands attention with its complex exposition, double-crossings and arcane Japanese rituals, but gradually the film uncoils itself as all the elements of the plot line up into place for the rousing final act of the film. Pollack handles the film's bursts of action with surprising skill and displays a keen eye for cultural detail - samurai swords, Yakuza tattoos and the ritual of Yubitsume - the cutting off of the tip of the left hand little finger as an apology.

Robert Mitchum sat out much of the 60's hidden away in a string of forgettable pictures but the 70's saw the actor on much better form with the likes of Ryan's Daughter, The Friends of Eddie Coyle and Farewell My Lovely. He's particularly fine in The Yakuza, Mitchum's subtlety as an actor perfectly in tune with the sad-eyed, introspective Harry Kilmer. Holding his own against Mitchum is Bullet Train's Ken Takakura (later seen in Ridley Scott's comparable East/West thriller Black Rain) commanding the screen with his rigid and emotionless Ken Tanaka (at one point his character is called "the man who never smiles"), and there's excellent support from Keiko Kishi (who played the Snow Maiden in Kwaidan) and James Shigeta (best known as the ill-fated Nakatomi boss Joseph Takagi in Die Hard). Richard Jorden's character Dusty, Kilmer's young sidekick has been criticised for being superfluous to the film but his character, a stranger to Japan translates for the audience much of peculiarities and contractions of the Japanese and helps the film remain coherent.

Warner's 2007 DVD of The Yakuza is one of the label's harder to find titles these days, but luckily the film was bundled in with the 6-disc Robert Mitchum: The Signature Collection collection, which is still in print. The 2.35 transfer is generally excellent, with vibrant colors and only minimal wear on the print. The audio is fine too and dialogue is intelligible, vital for this particular film. Sydney Pollack is on hand for a director's commentary, and the disc is rounded off with one of Warner's vintage on-set promotional films. For readers in the UK and Ireland, the film is regularly screened (in 2.35 no less) on TCM. Highly recommended.

Desert Island Discs

For the last few weeks I've been exploring the BBC's huge archive of Desert Island Discs, Radio 4's long running series in which guests are invited to choose a handful of records to take with them to a far flung desert island. In between the music selections, the "castaways" discuss life, art and career, and perhaps the comfort of being surrounded by their favourite music, the interviews are often intimate and revealing.

The BBC website currently hosts over 1500 downloadable mp3 episodes of Desert Island Discs, featuring castaways from the world of politics (former British PMs Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher), music (Brain Eno, John Cale, Michael Nyman, Morrissey), writing (Stephen King, JG Ballard, James Ellroy), and of course film making - Ken Russell, Otto Preminger, Elia Kazan, Ken Loach, John Schlesinger, Fred Zinnemann, Terry Gilliam, John Boorman, Kenneth Williams, Martin Sheen, Dirk Bogarde, Tim Robbins, Lewis Gilbert, Michael Caine, Michael Deeley, Terence Stamp, Jeremy Irons, Patrick Stewart, Stephen Frears, Christopher Frayling, George Clooney, Simon Callow are just a few....

The Desert Island Disc Archive, categorized by occupation, can be found here

The Japan Journals: 1947-2004

Fans of Japanese Cinema will no doubt have encountered Donald Richie at some point. Richie has written extensively on Japanese Film (his book on Yasujiro Ozu remains the definitive study of the director's films) and in recent years has appeared on introductions and performed commentary duties on a number of Criterion DVDs. In 1954 Richie permanently settled in Tokyo and took a job with the The Japan Times as a film critic. In 1959 he published his first book The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, and since then has written over 40 books on Japanese life and culture, among them perhaps his most famous work The Inland Sea, (1971) a classic of travel writing.

The Japan Journals collects various writings, sketches and diary entries from 1947, shortly after Richie first arrived in Tokyo, to 2004 when Richie turned 80. The sheer scope of the book is breathtaking, as it chronicles almost 60 years of Japanese life, culture, politics, fashion and sexuality. Reflected in the Journals is a remarkable life lived - Richie writes about his first meeting with Kurosawa on the set of Drunken Angel, his friendships with Yukio Mishima and composer Toru Takemitsu, and such was his position in Japanese society in later years, that he could discuss films with Japan's Empress. Richie could be equally at home in a Japan which had little to do with tea ceremonies and kabuki, and throughout the Journals, are Richie's encounters with the ordinary citizens of Japan - the taxi drivers, the prostitutes, the sex workers, and the homeless.

The Japan Journals is not one of Richie's film books per se but there are enough luminaries of post-war Japanese Cinema scattered among the pages to make it required reading for film fans. Kurosawa figures prominently throughout as does Oshima, and there are enjoyable cameo appearances by the likes of Toshiro Mifune, Shintaro Katsu (of Zatoichi fame), Koji Wakamatsu (director of Violated Angels) and Takeski Kitano, plus visting American film makers like Francis Ford Coppola, later joined by Paul Schrader, both of whom were seeking Richie's help putting together Schrader's 1985 film Mishima. The book contains a wealth of wonderful anecdotes, which are best left for the reader to discover himself but among my favourites is a journal entry from 1981 with Richie attending a special screening of Fellini's City of Women arranged for Kurosawa. The film was shown without Japanese subtitles and afterwards Richie asked Kurosawa why he wanted to see the film. Kurosawa replied "I'm going to Sorrento to pick up the Donatello prize and Fellini is supposed to give it to me. Then we have to talk about something. I though I should see his new picture".

Donald Richie (left) on set with Akira Kurosawa

The Japan Journals is available through Amazon US/UK on paperback and kindle.

The Grateful Dead Movie

In March 1973 Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, The Grateful Dead's organ-playing blues man died from a gastrointestinal hemorrhage. A heartbroken Jerry Garcia summed up the loss of one of the band's founding members, "We can go on calling ourselves The Grateful Dead but after Pigpen's death we all knew this was the end of the original Grateful Dead". A year later Garcia's words took on greater significance when it was announced that the Dead were taking an indefinite hiatus. By 1974 the band was exhausted. They had survived a series of back-to-back grinding tours, but the task of truckin' the Dead's massive Wall of Sound, a 641 strong speaker cabinet from one show to another was putting an enormous drain on the band's finances. Individual band members were also eager to record their own material and with that the Dead were put on hold. The retirement would prove short lived when they reconvened in February 1975 to record the Blues for Allah album, but as preparations were made for a 5-night farewell concert at San Francisco's Winterland in October (dubbed The Last One), Garcia had the idea that if the band was about to meet its end there should be definitive document and with that came The Grateful Dead Movie

Jerry Garcia was a life long cinephile. From an early age Garcia loved Horror movies and later became a devotee of European Art Cinema. Garcia had strong aspirations to become a film maker but his life was entirely devoted to his music. Garcia recruited documentarian Leon Gast to direct the film, then provisionally titled There is Nothing Like a Grateful Dead Concert, and what began as a straightforward visual record of the Dead's performance soon evolved into a documentary encompassing the entire Grateful Dead experience - the music, the band, the fans, the stage set-up, the road crew, and the drugs. Gast placed seven camerman (among them Albert Maysles) around the stage to fully capture every nuance of the Dead's performance across the 5-nights, with additional footage shot within the audience and in and around Winterland. Immediately after the Winterland shows Gast flew to Zaire to film the three-day music festival which preceded the Ali/Foreman fight (the footage which later became the Soul Power documentary), and Garcia took over as "editorial director" charged with the unenviable task of sculpting 125 hours of performance footage into a coherent, commercial film.

The Grateful Dead Movie, Garcia's labour of love (or Jerry's Jerk-off as Phil Lesh once described it), didn't see the light of a projector bulb for almost three years. As well as sifting through the footage in search of the best performances and the best coverage, Garcia and soundman Dan Healy pioneered a new innovative type of mixing which resulted in a perfect symbiosis of image and sound. The film's post production had put the Dead's finances in another precarious situation - when the project was first mooted in 1974, the budget was set at a modest $15,000 but by the time the film had its premiere in New York in June 1977, the film swallowed up a staggering $600,000. The film took a heavy toll on Garcia as well - "Every time I thought about something, my mind would come back to the film and I'd get depressed", and towards the completion of the film a stressed out Garcia sought refuge in heroin. Rather than distribute the film along conventional lines, the movie was booked to play special Roadshow style exhibitions in major cities, with each theatre screening the film specially fitted with an expensive sound system which could do justice to Garcia's state of the art mix. It was a grand idea but the band would never see a return on their investment in the film.

Whatever the turbulence of post production, filming of The Grateful Dead Movie saw the band on tremendous form. Perhaps the impending retirement had energized the performances and over the course of two hours, the Dead radiate a brilliance the studio albums could never quite capture. The film opens with an 8min amphetamine-fuelled animated sequence in which a skeletal Uncle Sam goes through various mind-bending adventures before the film begins proper with the band on stage performing an exuberant US Blues. The film's transitions from performance to documentary are expertly done, the band's long improvisations jams give the film the space to feature the other players in the Dead's psychedelic wonderland - the road crew are seen assembling the monstrous Wall of Sound, and there's some amusing stuff with Bill Graham. Most of the non-musical footage is reserved for the Deadheads, the band's unfailingly devotional community of fans - although the Dead don't get it all their own way, as one irate fan vents his anger at the band over the filming of the Winterland shows. Garcia of course loved this bit of impetuous whining and left him in the film - much to the fan's eternal mortification no doubt.

The Grateful Dead may well be the most documented rock band on compact disc, but precious little film footage exists of the halcyon days of the band. The Dead can be seen in a short performance bit in Richard Lester's 1968 film Petulia, and two years before the Winterland film, the band were filmed playing a show in Oregon for the feature length but unreleased Sunshine Daydream. The Dead also appear in the 2003 documentary Festival Express, which chronicles a 1970 train tour across Canada which included Jonis Joplin and The Band among others. The Grateful Dead Movie remains the definitive visual document of the band. Bathed in queasy purples and rosy pinks, the Dead have never looked better, the onstage telepathy between the band members is mesmerizing as they travel the space ways of long extended jams led by Garcia's fluid guitar lines. 1973 is seen as a crossroads in the band's long career, when the Dead left Warner Bros. to launch their own short-lived label. In retrospect the film is a farewell of sorts to classic-era Dead, the band emerged into the second half of the 70's making patchy studio albums and ditching ballrooms for stadiums. Acoustic sets figured more prominently at live shows, perhaps foreshadowed by the end credits of The Grateful Dead Movie which features a time-lapse photography sequence of the crew dismantling the Wall of Sound for the final time. It lasted just 37 shows.

In 2004 US label Monterey Video released The Grateful Dead Movie in a fantastic 2-disc special edition. Disc 1 featured the Movie, while among the extras on disc 2 were 90min of music from the Winterland shows that didn't make the final cut. Monterey's DVD went out of print in 2010 but Shout Factory re-released the same edition on Blu-Ray no less in 2011. In terms of optics, the (A-locked) Blu-Ray is not a major leap forward from the DVD - this is not a criticism of Shout Factory's transfer, The Grateful Dead Movie has always looked a little soft due to the lighting conditions of the original film. Also the 16mm blow-up to 35 gave the image a grainy look. All these imperfections are present on the Blu but if you keep your expectations in check, the 1.85 transfer is quite decent. Audio is where the Shout Factory edition really shines, the Blu features a truly stunning sound mix and far exceeds the Monterey DVD (a more detailed account of the audio options can be read here)

Disc 2 of the Shout Factory Blu-Ray edition comes as a standard def DVD. The biggest extra on the second disc are the 90mins of music that slipped the final cut, including extended jams of Uncle John's Band, The Other One, Weather Report Suite and a particularly fine version of Dark Star. Next up is over an hour's worth of documentary features - A Look Back (28min) features archive and contemporary interview footage of the band (including Bill Graham), while Making of the DVD (14min) focuses on the job of preparing the sound mix. Gary Gutierrez's memorable contribution to the film is showcased in Making of the Animation (16min). The other significant extra on the set is the very interesting, anecdote filled commentary by editors Susan Crutcher and John Nutt. The Grateful Dead Movie is also available as 2-disc DVD edition, or can bought as part of Shout Factory's mammoth 14-DVD Dead boxset All The Years Combine. A UK DVD of The Grateful Dead Movie is out now and a Blu-Ray is promised for September.

Blue Sunshine

Fear, loathing and inexplicable baldness are the order of the day in Jeff Lieberman's second feature film, Blue Sunshine, a terrific chiller from 1978, and quite likely the director's masterpiece. In the film, strange things are happening to ordinary everyday 30-somethings. The symptoms include accelerated hair loss and irritable moods followed by violent and psychotic behaviour. Jerry Zipkin who witnessed an old college friend succumb to the condition (and is mixed up in his accidental death) investigates the phenomena and discovers that the each of the persons involved dabbled with a substance in the late sixties known as Blue Sunshine, a powerful and volatile strain of LSD...

On paper Blue Sunshine sounds like a conventional enough story, playing like a 70's paranoid thriller in the vein of The Parallax View, spliced with the Hitchcockian device of the wrong man forced to clear his name. Thankfully, Blue Sunshine is something far more special, a spiky, fast-paced, loud and determinedly eccentric film, full of off-kilter touches, something akin to one of Cronenberg's early films (especially Rabid) fused with the offbeat rhythm of a Larry Cohen film. Lieberman might have swapped the sinister swamplands of Squirm for the big city sprawl of Blue Sunshine, but the landscape here is no less menacing. Lieberman has a talent for creating images that get under the skin of the audience - in Squirm, a plate of spaghetti was fraught with danger while in Blue Sunshine, the sight of bald heads (foreshadowed by repeated shots of a foreboding full moon in the credit sequence) is, on some subconscious level, deeply unsettling. Perfectly in sync with Lieberman's visuals is Charles Gross' idiosyncratic score using instruments like gongs and bells to add another layer of weirdness to the film.

As with Lieberman's debut, the film inspires any number of readings - on one hand it's a riff on 60's drug paranoia films like Hallucination Generation, (1966) but on a deeper level the film takes a swipe at the betrayed idealism of the children of Aquarius. Unlike Hunter Thompson's drug casualties of the 60's, the permanent cripples and failed seekers, Blue Sunshine's victims have become the kind of well-adjusted people in positions of responsibility their younger selves might have rebelled against, and in a cruel twist of fate the hedonism of youth have caused their well cultivated lives to spectacularly unravel. Interestingly in 1990 Jacob's Ladder trod similar territory with Vietnam vets experiencing disturbing delayed reactions from doses of hallucinogens administered during the war.

Much has been made of Blue Sunshine's leading man, future soft-core erotica director Zalman King (Wild Orchid, Red Shoe Diaries) and his ability or lack of, to carry the film. King is certainly no David Hess, but his performance, uptight, intense and erratic perfectly suits the mood of the film, and whether intentional or not, one is never quite sure if King's Jerry Zipkin is on the level. Worth mentioning that Zalman King displayed a similiar kind of intensity when he appeared as Jesus no less in the very interesting (but hard to see) Passover Plot made just prior to Blue Sunshine in 1976. Also notable among the cast is Robert Walden (the rat-fucker from All the President's Men), and in a nice bit of casting, Mark Goddard, most famous for his role of marooned space cadet Don West on the TV show Lost In Space, plays the politician who a decade earlier was dealing Blue Sunshine to the students at Stanford.

Despite the original negative being destroyed at the lab where it was being stored, Synapse's 2003 DVD of Blue Sunshine was a valiant attempt at restoring the film to what it looked like in theatres in the 70's. And for the most part, the restoration team, working from a 35mm print found in the UK have done a commendable job. The 1.85 anamorphic image looks relatively sharp and has strong colors but the film does look a little worn and grainy. Still, there are worse looking discs in your collection and Synapse have tweaked the image about as far as possible. The audio is much better and makes for an immersive experience. If the image quality was less than perfect, Synapse makes amends with an impressive array of extras - Lieberman is on hand for a director's commentary and returns for the 30min interview Lieberman on Lieberman. Also included is Lieberman's rare 20min short film from 1972, entitled The Ringer (which includes optional commentary), plus there's a short restoration piece, the theatrical trailer and a stills gallery. Synapse also issued a second edition of the DVD accompanied by the soundtrack CD. Despite it being a limited edition (a generous 50,000 units!) this 2-disc version has been available for years but copies of this edition are beginning to dry up so if the film has been on your wish list now is the time to grab it. Another DVD edition of Blue Sunshine was issued in 2011 by New Video DVD but the Synapse is the one to pick up.

Squirm

Jeff Lieberman's 1976 debut is one of the great underrated Horror movies of the 70's, a film which should have a place among the classic drive-in flicks of the decade but instead feels doomed to live out it's existence with the likes of Bug (1975) and Empire of the Ants (1977). In 1999 the film was given the Mystery Science Theatre treatment, an odd choice along side the usual MST3K schlock - yes this film is about a town under siege from carnivorous earth worms but Squirm is made with such style and confidence that it seems a breed apart from most of the other creepy-crawly films of the era.

Nature blows a fuse in the small rural town of Fly Creek when a storm topples electrical lines sending thousands of volts into the moist earth turning the local worm population into ferocious flesh eaters. New York interloper Mick and his flame-haired girlfriend Geri investigate the strange goings on and uncover some locals devoured clean to the bone, but worse is to come as darkness descends on the town and the worms prepare for supper... On the face of it Squirm is a nature vs mankind film in the tradition of The Birds, but dig deeper and the film reveals a sly subversive strain, the paranoia and repressed emotions of an insular community bubbling to the surface in the form of irrational violence. Aside from one spectacularly gruesome Rick Baker effect, the film was originally awarded a PG rating, but Lieberman fills his film with disquieting images which play on our inherent distaste for all things slimy and slithering - a large fat worm is seen spilling out of a chocolate soda, or the famous shot of worms emerging from the perforations of a shower head. There's some striking macro photographic images as well with the worms seen in extreme close-up, Lieberman's nod to the giant bug movies of the 50's perhaps, but a clever device nonetheless emphasizing just how alien these creatures are.

Squirm begins with an introductory scroll reminiscent of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and while it seems the similarities end there story wise, stylistically both films share some common ground, with Lieberman reigning in the splatter, with the emphasis on mood and atmosphere. No doubt American International expected some drive-in fodder when the studio allotted Lieberman just twenty-something days to shoot the film, but the first time director managed to circumvent the budget limitations with some impressive exterior photography, the wild Georgia locations looking damp, off season even sinister, and there's some audacious camerawork employing a huge wide angle lens to depict the worms' point of view. As with the director's subsequent films Blue Sunshine and Just Before Dawn, Squirm has an eerie, subtle musical score, as well as a very effective sound design which perfectly compliments the visceral images.

Performances in general are better than typically seen in this type of film, helped in no small part by Lieberman’s writing which breathes life into his characters, giving his cast various bits of business to work with – the pot-smoking tomboy younger sister, the mother with the frazzled nerves, the greasy womanising sheriff, and the dim-witted and disgruntled bait boy under the yoke of his father. One suspects that lead actor Don Scardino is a stand-in for the Brooklyn-born director and his fish-out-of-the-water routine is often very funny. It’s a shame Scardino didn’t appear before the camera more often, but he can be seen in He Knows You’re Alone and Cruising, later going on to produce and direct big TV shows like The Cosbys, Law and Order and 30 Rock

MGM’s 2003 R1 DVD (still denied an official release in the UK for no good reason) looks fantastic and is simply the best looking Squirm to date. The 1.85 anamorphic image looks terrific, colors are vibrant, black levels are solid and the picture is pleasingly sharp restoring much detail obliterated on the old Vestron and Orion tapes. The mono sound is fine too. Extras include the theatrical trailer, a TV spot and best of all an excellent and very worthwhile commentary by Jeff Lieberman who discusses every aspect of the production, including what big name stars almost ended up in the cast, and explains how the whole worm infestation was caused by the movie Ocean’s 11 – to find out more, be sure to catch it.

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Notes
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To read more about Squirm and the films of Jeff Lieberman, head over to Jon's excellent and comprehensive career retrospective at the The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies

Michael Mann on Heat

This post marks the first of a projected series recalling little nuggets gleaned from film maker commentaries. In this first instalment, Michael Mann remembers a primary source of inspiration behind his cops n’ robbers epic Heat...

There was a painting that inspired me about this moment and that painting probably got me interested in making this motion picture of Heat longer than anything else, and it was a painting of a table with a .45 on it and a rear shot of a man standing against a background, and contained within it somebody was involved in some life of aggression and action and yet the contrast was in the mental state because here was a moment of inner loneliness. It didn’t dictate something, instead it posed a question – what is this man thinking, what is he imagining...

Michael Mann, Heat (Warners DVD/Blu-Ray, commentary index point 20:12)

Pacific by Alex Colville, 1967

Blood, Boobs and Beast

Documentaries about film makers are a dime a dozen these days but few are as enjoyable and as affecting as this 2007 portrait of Don Dohler, a Baltimore director and producer who specialized in ultra cheap Sci-fi and Horror pictures. Dohler may not be a household name but chances are you've come across one of his films at some point. His debut feature from 1978, The Alien Factor was a staple of late night TV (and still shows to this day on TV in the UK and Ireland), while his subsequent films Fiend (1980) and Night Beast (1982) were two of the more memorable films from the early VHS era, if only for their striking sleeves which commanded attention from the shelves of the video store. Blood, Boobs and Beast begins in conventional enough fashion when director John Kinhart caught up with Dohler during the production of 2007's Dead Hunt, and found Dohler at an impasse in his career - to continue working in the stressful world of no-budget film making or to focus on family commitments. Ultimately, Dohler had to abandon film production entirely when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and Kinhart's documentary assumed a much higher calling, as an epitaph for an unsung but much loved film maker.

Don Dohler interviewed in 2007

In some respects Don Dohler could be compared with Andy Milligan - despite making films at the low end of the exploitation market, both were talented artists in their own right and lived rich and fascinating lives. Unlike Andy Milligan, Dohler was not a psychotic prima donna, but a quiet, soft spoken family man who made films out of sheer love for the craft. Kinhart's film picks up Dohler's story in the 60's when Dohler began publishing Wild! a comic fanzine that would later mutate into underground comic Pro-Junior (securing Dohler's lofty position in the world of underground comics). In the 70's Dohler shifted gears and published Cinemagic Magazine, an influential journal for aspiring special effects artists. Dohler's first film The Alien Factor from 1977 rode the coattails of the Star Wars craze, and was a schlocky sci-fi-monster movie hybrid which became a favourite on local TV networks. Dohler made sporadic films throughout the '80's including 1991's Blood Massacre, said to be Dohler's best film, but the film went unseen for four years when the film's backers high-tailed it with Dohler's workprint only to be recovered by chance some years later. Exacerbate by the whole business, Dohler took an extended leave from film making not returning until 2001 for a belated sequel to The Alien Factor

Blood, Boobs and Beast includes many clips from Dohler's films and it must be said that most of them look terrible. Dohler would later branch into video production (with collaborator Joe Ripple handling directing duties) and these are especially grueling. In discussing his career Dohler makes no claim that his films are great art, and seems genuinely amazed that fans would seek him out at conventions to autograph DVDs, let alone that he would be the subject of a documentary. Unlike say American Movie, Kinhart maintains a great respect for Dohler throughout the film especially in the sequences chronicling the weekend shoots of Dead Hunt, a blue collar production plagued by misfortunes that would otherwise be ripe for a Spinal Tap-style parody (the unexpected departure from the film of the leading man when his wife goes into labour, or the film crew routinely triggering an alarm at the warehouse where the film was shot, much to the security company and owner's annoyance). To his credit, Kinhard maintained a respectful distance from Dohler as his illness took over and the film includes just one very poignant scene where a visibly frail Dohler hands over his personal film archive to Joe Ripple.

The documentary gathers together a number of Dohler friends and family, many of whom were at the centre of his film world, like Dohler's kids who pop up in various bit parts, and Dohler often shot his films in and around the homes of friends and neighbors. Also featured are two Dohler fans who offer an amusing Greek chorus style commentary on their hero but interestingly cast an uncertain light on Joe Ripple suggesting that Dohler's films took a sharp decline when Ripple came on board, citing the shot-on-video silicone pole dancer antics of 2004's Vampire Sisters as ample proof. In fact Dohler cringed at the idea of sex in his films and included it only when a distributor demanded (the title of the documentary is supposedly the three essential ingredients for a profitable horror picture). Also featured in the film are Tom Savini and Tom Sullivan who discuss Dohler' Cinemagic magazine with some fondness, (Sullivan recalls bringing issues of Cinemagic to Tennessee when he was designing the special effects for The Evil Dead) as well as J.J. Abrams who composed the score for Night Beast when he was still in his teens.

As much as it pains me to recommend a Troma DVD, Blood, Boobs and Beast is required viewing for fans of independent Cinema, and amateur film makers. Aside from the usual Troma junk, this DVD is a fine package, with a very welcome second disc containing Night Beast. The documentary itself looks excellent, with a crisp fullscreen image (a sharp contrast to the scuzzy clips from Dohler's films). The main extra on Blood, Boobs and Beast disc is an informative commentary from director John Kinhart.

*****

Night Beast, Dohler’s second feature from 1982 can be approached in two ways – as an affectionate tip of the hat to '50's monster movies, or a documentary about a bunch of non-actors struggling with a screenplay they may not have read. In the film, an alien from the far side of the galaxy crash lands in a rural American town, and promptly begins disemboweling and vaporising the inhabitants. The only thing standing in it's way are the town sheriff and some brave locals...


Night Beast is quite frankly a terrible film, and after some 87 colossal minutes, it's a relief when the film comes to a close. Whatever suspicion one might have about Dohler's film making skills, a large part of the problem is the film's ultra low budget which has Dohler cutting corners throughout, like a scene where the creature is breaking down a basement door, but rather than seeing the beast destroy the door, Dohler simply tosses bits of wooden debris before the camera. Optical effects are embarrassingly crude as well, like the alien's laser blasts turning its victims into glowing silhouettes (much like the starkicker logo seen on the BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test). Fortunately the alien soon loses its gun (prohibitively expensive to run no doubt) and is reduced to ripping his victims apart, at one point resulting in one of the worst severed head effects I've ever seen.

Of the cast, only Jamie Zemarel delivers anything approaching a performance and proves far more resilient than leading man Tom Griffith who plays the utterly ineffectual sheriff who sports quite an extraordinary hairdo. Griffith also gets to bed his leading lady in a truly unflattering and protracted love scene that will have viewers pressing the fast-forward button in a desperate frenzy. It would be unfair to rest all the blame for Night Beast at Don Dohler's feet. In fact Dohler shows some occasional talent, and is well capable of framing a shot and putting together an action set piece, and there is at least one inspired moment in the film when the alien is electrocuted, the scene illuminated only by subliminal blue slivers of light given off by the discharge. By far the most successful element of the film is the excellent electronic score partly attributed to a 16 year old Jeffrey Abrams.

To put it delicately, Night Beast is like all of Don Dohler's films, an acquired taste, but if you're a fan of Without Warning and The Deadly Spawn you might not want to pass this one up. Troma's DVD of Night Beast is decent enough. The fullscreen image looks suitably lo-fi with grain by the truckload and colors that lack vitality - but still a strangely agreeable transfer considering the film's poverty row budget. Audio is fine, if limited. Extras include a 6min collection of outakes and bloopers, some behind the scenes footage and a director's commentary.

The Devil Rides Out

Hammer's 1968 film The Devil Rides Out based on Dennis Wheatley's hugely popular 1934 novel was the first of the studio's three Wheatley's adaptations, soon followed by The Lost Continent and some years later by To the Devil A Daughter. In 1963, three of Wheatley's novels, The Devil Rides Out, To The Devil A Daughter and The Satanist were publicly optioned and acting on the advice of Christopher Lee (who knew Wheatley personally, both sharing an interest in black magic and the occult), Hammer bought the rights to all three properties. In 1964 the studio set to work on The Devil Rides Out. Producer Tony Hinds commissioned John Hunter to write a screenplay (having previously written Hammer's 1960 child molestation drama Never Take Sweets From A Stranger) but Hunter's adaptation proved unsatisfactory, and Hammer next approached Richard Matheson, who delivered a faithful rendering of Wheatley's novel whilst sidestepping some of the more kinkier, censor-baiting aspects of the book. Terence Fisher was appointed directing duties and in the summer of 1967 The Devil Rides Out finally began shooting.

In the film Duc de Richleau and his friend Rex discover their friend Simon has become involved in a satanic cult, and he and a young woman are about to be baptized into the world of black magic. After rescuing both from the initiation ceremony, de Richleau and his friends come under attack from cult leader Mocata, a powerful and dangerous sorcerer determined to get back his young recruits... Worth admitting upfront that I find The Devil Rides Out one of Hammer's most disappointing films, and there was much trepidation on my part approaching this review, such is the high esteem Horror fans hold the film in. Even the usual Hammer naysayers are conspicuously absent when the film comes up for discussion. First, the good stuff - Fisher's stylish relaxed direction, those beautiful elliptical dolly shots around the protective circle, complimented by Arthur Grant’s atmospheric lighting; the striking set pieces (the spectral genie in the observatory, the appearance of the horned Satan); some memorable dialogue (at one point Mocata warns “I shall not be back... but something will. Tonight, something will come for Simon and the girl”), and of course a majestic and towering Christopher Lee in one of his best roles for Hammer.

The reputation of The Devil Rides Out may well be secure as one of the great Hammer classics, but the film is deeply flawed in many respects. Technically, the film has not aged well, there's some atrocious back projection during a car chase sequence, and the big special effects set piece where de Richleau and his band of defenders are menaced by a monstrous tarantula and the Angel of Death appearing on horseback, is poorly realized and badly edited. Matheson's screenplay has its problems too. It tips the balance of power too much in de Richleau’s favor and badly undercuts the dramatic tension, the question of good conquering evil never quite seems in doubt considering de Richleau can counteract black magic with a simple spell, and the devil can be banished with little more than a crucifix. Also, the support cast are too thinly sketched - Charles Gray’s Mocata feels underwritten and de Richleau’s right-hand man, Rex is a thankless role for actor Leon Greene, playing a character who seemingly botches any task assigned to him.

More frustrating though is the film's lack of daring in its presentation of Satanism and witchcraft. These were of course delicate subjects for Hammer to be toying with, but the film does feel unnecessarily chaste - even the studio's 1966 film The Witches hinted at something more perverse during the climactic orgy, and tellingly the BBFC signed off on the film without so much as a cut, head censor John Trevelyan even citing the film as one of the studio's best pictures. Worse still The Devil Rides Out feels decidedly quaint when compared to the powerful and disturbing Rosemary's Baby released in close succession, and one might argue that the writing was on the wall for Hammer Horror at this point with the arrival of Polanski's film and 1968's other major Horror, Night of the Living Dead.

Optimum's DVD of The Devil Rides Out features a very impressive 1.66 anamorphic transfer, taken from a excellent quality print, exhibiting only a little grain during some special effects shots. The mono audio sounds robust and dialogue is sharp. For extras only the theatrical trailer is included, a shame Christopher Lee's commentary track from the US Anchor Bay edition could not be included. The Anchor Bay disc also featured a World of Hammer episode (simply entitled "Hammer") but sadly this and the later edition which included Rasputin the Mad Monk are now well out print.

Andrei Tarkovsky: A Photographic Chronicle of The Making of The Sacrifice

This latest addition to the Tarkovsky library takes an intimate look at the making of the Russian film maker's final masterpiece The Sacrifice, shot during the summer of 1985 on the Swedish island of Gotland.

Author Layla Alexander-Garrett who worked as Tarkovsky's interpreter and liaison between the director and the film's Swedish crew, took over two hundred photographs whilst on set recording the process of making the film as well as Tarkovsky's life in Sweden. The Sacrifice has already been the subject of the 1988 documentary Directed By Andrei Tarkovsky but Alexander-Garrett's book offers a different take on the film's production - rather than showing Tarkovsky as the serious artist (as portrayed in the documentary, intensely focused, framing shots with his hands), these photos show the director, and cast and crew relaxed, upbeat and friendly. Each of the photos are accompanied by scene-setting English text (side by side with Russian text) and are often fascinating - Tarkovsky having an entire field plucked of yellow flowers before shooting, actor Erland Josephson snoozing between takes or Tarkovsky and cameraman Sven Nykvist waiting to play a game of tennis. I've taken my own pics of the book to offer a flavor of what's inside...

Andrei Tarkovsky: A Photographic Chronicle of The Making of The Sacrifice published by Cygnnet Books is currently available direct from Cygnnet's website, or can be ordered from the publisher via Amazon UK Marketplace. The book retails for £32.95, which may seem steep but no doubt will command high prices when the print run has been exhausted. For Tarkovsky fans, the book is an essential purchase.

The Vengeance of She

If Hammer's 1965 film She was a enjoyable distraction on a rainy Saturday afternoon, the studio's 1968 sequel The Vengeance of She is a bit of a bore, essentially a retread of the earlier film but employing a gender reversal - in She it was Ursula Andress who summoned her male lover across the desert, while in The Vengeance of She, Czech model Olinka Bérová does all the running. In the film, Bérová plays Carol a young woman who is lured to the secret city of Kuma in Africa under the spell of sorcerer Men-Hari who has tricked Kuma's ruler Kallikrates into thinking Carol is the reincarnation of his lover Ayesha. In return Men-Hari has been promised the gift of immortal life which he intends to devote to spreading evil throughout the world.

With its combination of exotic adventure and the shapely curves of Ursula Andress, She, Hammer's first foray into pure Fantasy Cinema was one of the studio's most profitable pictures of the sixties. Originally the sequel was to be called Ayesha, Daughter of She, but rather than seek inspiration from the pages of H. Rider Haggard's own series of She novels, Hammer stuck closely to the formula of the first film. In a very early draft of the screenplay Peter Cushing's character from the first film was to make an appearance lending a sense of continuity, but the idea was scrapped and the finished film emerges as little more than a remake, just three years after the original She. Worse still, Andress declined to appear in the film and despite a change of title to the thunderous Vengeance of She, the film limped all the way to the box office and soon retreated behind the shadow of the original.

Principle photography began in June 1967 during a particularly busy period for Hammer, with a number of films in production. Much of the studio's most experienced crew members were working on three major productions - Bette Davis' second Hammer outingThe Anniversary; the special effects extravaganza, The Lost Continent and the Terence Fisher, Richard Matheson film The Devil Rides Out. As a consequence, The Vengeance of She features many one-time Hammer personnel with little affinity for Fantasy Cinema - director Cliff Owen had one previous film to his name (starring comedy duo Morcambe & Wise), while screenwriter Peter O'Donnell had penned Joseph Losey's 1966 comic caper Modesty Blaise. This perhaps explains much of the film's sense of anonymity, despite the the presence of André Morell and John Richardson, both returning from the first film, albeit as different characters. Sadly, the film would be Morell's final Hammer film and for an actor who had enriched so many Hammer productions, the film was hardly a befitting swansong.

The film's biggest stumbling block however is O'Donnell's screenplay which manages to be banal and convoluted at the same time, the film burdened with far too many longueurs and overwrought plotting, so much so that the the film may leave you perplexed on first viewing. Cliff Owen's direction remains pedestrian at best and renders the would-be explosive climax when the cast is brained by Les Bowie's crashing matt effects, dull and uninspired. Even the work of camerman Wolfgang Suschitzky, is utterly undistinguished, a shame considering he was responsible for the luminous b/w cinematography of Ulysses the previous year. Critics of the film tend to heap scorn on Olinka Bérová's wooden performance, unfairly so considering she's one of the best things in the film, at least to look at, and by the time she strips down to some skimpy white lingerie, you'll be ready to forgive the dreadfully corny theme song.

Optimum's DVD of The Vengeance of She is another decent looking addition to the Hammer boxset. The 1.66 anamorphic transfer generally looks fine, with good detail and strong colors. Audio is adequate and dialogue sounds fine. The sole extra is the theatrical trailer. The Anchor Bay disc from 2000 featured a similarly strong picture but added another episode of the World of Hammer, Lands Before Time which focused on Hammer's Fantasy films with clips from She, One Million Years B.C., Creatures The World Forgot, Viking Queen, Slave Girls, The Lost Continent and Slave Girls.

The Scottish Play by Roman Polanski

Roman Polanski's 1970 film, a nightmarish adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy is impossible to see without viewing the film through the prism of the Manson murders. It was Polanski's first film after the gruesome slaying of his wife Sharon Tate and the violence and oppressively morbid atmosphere of the film was greeted with considerable disdain by US critics who felt that the director was subjecting audiences to gore and images of death for the sake of exorcising his own demons. Polanski vehemently denied the charge claiming his decision to film Shakespeare's play was inspired by his own childhood memories of witnessing the brutal treatment of his family at the hands of the Nazis. It's difficult to say where the truth lies, but what is certain is the film is one of the director's most brilliantly realized works and a key film of the 70's.

If you're unfamiliar with Shakespeare, a brief sketch of the play is as follows - set in 11th century Scotland, Macbeth a brave and loyal general hears a prophecy spoken by three witches, that one day he will be King of Scotland. Macbeth and his wife both ruthlessly ambitious, murder Duncan the ruling King, and Macbeth swiftly ascends to the throne. Macbeth however grows increasingly paranoid and tyrannical and murders all those who threaten his rule, and soon he and Lady Macbeth are consumed by despair, guilt and madness as their enemies move ever closer... Written most likely around 1606 for a special performance before King James I and his brother-in-law Christian IV of Denmark, Shakespeare in a sense tailors the play to his audience - the political intrigue, the treason in the court and assassination plots were highly topical of the day and James I was something of an expert on the subject of witchcraft having written a book on the practice in 1597 entitled Daemonologie, in which he advocated the trial and persecution of witches. Shakespeare's inclusion of the witches might have be viewed as a flattery towards his king, but it's one of the most powerful devices in the play and one could imagine a young Roman Polanski darkly impressed by these secret, black, and midnight hags.

In 1969 Polanski was in London working on a screenplay for Day of the Dolphin when he received a phone call from LA about the terrible events of August 9th. In the early hours of the morning his heavily pregnant wife Sharon Tate was savagely murdered by four members of the Manson Family. Polanski wasn't required to return to the US during the investigation and trial of Charles Manson and his followers, and decamped to a Swiss ski village where the idea developed to film one of Shakespeare's plays. Polanski later wrote in his autobiography that he was concerned that his next film would be greeted with huge interest, and immediately ruled out doing a comedy which he felt would be in poor taste. In fact Polanski had been considering making a film of Henri Charrière's novel Papillon but was now set upon the Shakespeare play. The project quickly gathered momentum. Polanski invited friend and English theatre critic and iconoclast Kenneth Tynan to co-write the screenplay with Polanski and reshape the original Shakespeare text for Cinema - streamlining the play into a manageable two hours with some tweaks and adjustments, like the use of internal monologues and showing the actual murder of Duncan, a scene which occurs off stage in the play.

One of play's central themes is universal chaos, and it seems somewhat appropriate that financing for the film was partly received from Playboy Productions, the first and surely the last time Shakespeare and Hugh Hefner would share a credit. Rather than shoot the film in Scotland, Polanski settled on the highlands of Snowdonia and the beaches of Portmerion in northern Wales. Filming began in late summer of 1971 but unseasonably stormy weather had slowed the pace of the production considerably with Polanski grabbing only a few usable minutes of filming here and there before the cast and crew were forced to take shelter. Playboy's interest in the film was overseen by Film Finances who began leaning on Polanski to quicken the pace. Polanski wrote in his autobiography that Italian Job director Peter Collinson was hired to complete the picture if necessary but Polanski offered to waive his fee and in return Hugh Hefner injected more cash into the production earning the director a reprieve. Polanski completed the film in time for its US release in October and the film was released to lukewarm reviews, the film heavily criticised for it's nudity and gore, and there was controversy about Polanski's motivation for making such a violent film. The film fared better in the UK but this alone was not enough to recoup the film's production cost. Polanski had by then moved on and began working on an erotic comedy with Jack Nicholson in mind for the lead, a germ of an idea that would eventually grow into the absurdist 1973 sex comedy What?

From the opening sequence where the three witches gather on a windswept beach and ritualistically bury a dagger, a noose and a severed hand, Polanski's film depicts a world of cruelty and barbarism. Early on in the film, one of the king's subjects is hung for treason, pushed off the gallows with a heavy iron collar around his neck, his body left to hang for all to see. In another scene the exotic prize of a caged grizzly bear is tormented and provoked by members of the court until the poor beast is set upon by dogs and torn apart. There are images of blood and gore throughout the film - enemies of the king are vanquished with swords and spiked balls, while the murder of Duncan, violently stabbed by Macbeth, is starkly realistic (Polanski claimed that to film it any other way would have been an obscenity). There is almost no doubt that Polanski channeled the grief of his wife's death into the film, there are numerous signs throughout if you look for them, but two scenes are particularly resonant - when Macbeth gives instructions to two assassins to murder his general Banquo and his son, and the sequence where Macduff's wife and his child are brutally slaughtered while Macduff is safely ensconced in England - which echoes something Polanski wrote in his autobiography about that dreadful night at Cielo Drive - "To this day I believe that had I been there when the gang of three women and one man climbed over the fence and broke in, Frykowski and myself might have tackled them and between us driven them off"

Shakespeare's play had been previously filmed by Orson Welles in 1948 and in 1957 by Akira Kurosawa, both visually arresting works and Polanski's film follows in that tradition. Gil Taylor's magnificent 'scope photography expertly draws on the play's theme of light and darkness, the film perpetually bathed in that strange illumination known as magic hour, with the retreating sun an appropriate blood red. Among the visual highlights are the shots of Macbeth's castle looming over the horizon like a sinister spectre, or the blood soaked living dead Banquo haunting Macbeth's feverish imagination, and there's one particularly extraordinary moment where Macbeth's vision extends into a mirror, which extends into another mirror, and another and so on. Jon Finch, who previously appeared in Hammer's Vampire Lovers and Horror of Frankenstein does a fine job as Macbeth and tackles the complexities of Shakespeare's conflicted anti-hero with surprising skill. Francesca Annis equips herself very well in the role of Lady Macbeth. She's not quite the equal of Isuzu Yamada's equivalent in Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, but nevertheless she makes for a fine wolf in sheep's clothing. Incidentally Annis was later cast as a very different Lady in David Lynch's Dune (playing Lady Jessica).

Columbia's 2003 DVD is a fairly modest affair featuring a good serviceable 2.35 transfer. Aside from some spotting on the opening credits, the print is generally clean, sharp and colorful. Audio is fine overall, dialogue is clear and the memorably weird score by The Third Ear Band sounds robust. No significant extras aside from the trailer and who in Columbia's art department decided on the DVD artwork which inexplicably features a still of Martin Shaw's Banquo ? At the time of writing, a Blu-Ray edition has yet to be announced so the mid-priced Columbia DVD comes highly recommended.

The Camp on Blood Island

You'd be forgiven for imagining Dr. Moreau-type grotesqueries upon discovering the title of this film, but The Camp on Blood Island, Hammer's 1958 film is a story of real-life horror - the plight of British soldiers held captive by the Japanese as prisoners of war in the jungles of Southeast Asia during the Second World War. Made a year after Bridge on the River Kwai, Camp on Blood Island was an altogether grittier affair than David Lean's film and seen today after years of obscurity, it emerges as one of the Hammer's finest films of the '50's.

Set during the final days of the Pacific War, Blood Island POW camp is on the verge of disintegration. When Col. Lambert, leader of the prisoners learns of Japan's defeat by way of a smuggled radio, he puts together a plan to alert allies of the camp's existence before Commandant Yamamitsu's liquidation of the camp and its remaining prisoners. When an American navy pilot successfully escapes from the camp, matters come to a head and Lambert and his men are forced to overthrow their Japanese oppressors by any means necessary... Directed with customary skill by Val Guest, Camp on Blood Island was considerably strong meat for audiences back in 1958 with scenes of British prisoners being routinely humiliated, punished and executed, like the arresting opening sequence showing a British officer machine-gunned into a freshly dug grave. Not surprisingly the film was mired in controversy on its release, but the tough stance taken by Hammer was endorsed by the BBFC who gave Jon Manchip White's screenplay a relatively easy passage from page to screen, eliminating just a few instances of coarse language and grisly violence.

Despite Hammer's considerable success with The Curse of Frankenstein the studio was still some months away from signing a lucrative distribution deal with Columbia and financing for Camp on Blood Island was often perilous. Nevertheless Hammer's art department managed to turn a corner of the Bray back lot into a convincing stand-in for Malaysia with some cleverly placed palm trees, not to mention a well-oiled cast to conjure up a suitably sweaty atmosphere. Val Guest's lively, muscular direction and cameraman Jack Asher's expertly shot black & white 'scope photography lends the film an immediacy and a genuine sense of scale that belies it's humble budget. The film is well acted too, with a perfectly cast André Morell taking the lead as Lambert and joined by a roster of fine English character actors and familiar Hammer faces, including Michael Gwynn (from The Revenge of Frankenstein), Marne Maitland (The Reptile), Richard Wordsworth (The Quatermass Xperiment) and a fresh-faced Barbara Shelley in her first significant appearance for the studio.

Given the era it was made, it would be ungracious to criticize the film for being a simple, routine actioner but seeing it today, the caricaturing of the Japanese as monstrous brutes is regrettable. The Japanese were particularly cruel in their treatment of prisoners of war (considered beneath contempt for allowing themselves to be captured), but the Japanese could be equally brutal disciplining their own soldiers, and of course not all guards were sadistic monsters - as JG Ballard recalled in his semi-fictional memoir Empire of the Sun, Japanese soldiers could also be kind and humane. Worse still, all the principle Japanese characters were played by British actors, including an embarrassing turn by the otherwise marvellous Michael Ripper, japanified with some silly eye makeup and a cringe worthy accent - thankfully his appearance is confined to just two short dialogue scenes. Also, and this is a minor complaint, the cast is far too healthy looking to pass for genuine prisoners except for the perpetually emaciated Richard Wordsworth whose scarecrow frame looks the part.

Sony's 2009 UK DVD of The Camp on Blood Island is a mostly bare bones affair but nonetheless is very welcome, this being the first ever home video release of the film. The 2.35 anamorphic transfer is generally excellent, aside from some haziness in long shots, the b/w image looks very smooth and impressively detailed. The audio track sounds robust too, even if some of the dialogue can be hard to catch (most likely due to the technical limitations of the day), but thankfully Sony have provided English subtitles to fill in the blanks (worth noting, the subtitles do not translate the few instances of Japanese dialogue). The only extra offered is a throwaway stills gallery, but the DVD comes with an excellent scene-setting booklet by Hammer historian Marcus Hearn. The inferior prequel The Secret of Blood Island followed in 1965 and has yet to surface on DVD.

Renaldo and Clara

Bob Dylan's 1978 film Renaldo and Clara is one of the great white whales of Rock 'n' Roll Cinema, a sprawling 4 hour vanity project, part fictionalized drama, part concert film made during the early leg of Dylan's '75/76 Rolling Thunder Revue tour. When the film was released in January 1978, it was savaged by critics for its seemingly incoherent story, and deliberately obscure meaning. The film is undeniably self-indulgent, and despite its rather shaky reputation, Renaldo and Clara remains an oddly compelling and enjoyable film, and besides some terrific music, where else would you see Harry Dean Stanton scoring with Joan Baez and a semi-naked Allen Ginsberg flirting with a scantily dressed whore?

The plot of Renaldo and Clara resists easy interpretation. Dylan himself explained rather tortuously to Playboy: "It's the essence of man being alienated from himself and how in order to free himself, to be reborn, he has to go outside himself" In plainer terms, the film is Dylan's self-examination of his love-life and his troubled relationships with women. At the heart of the film are the characters of rock musician Renaldo and his lover Clara, played by Dylan and his wife Sara. Renaldo and Clara both have complicated pasts - Sara has left her emotionally withdrawn husband (played by Sam Shepard) while a former lover of Renaldo's, known simply as the Woman in White (Joan Baez) is back on the scene and Renaldo has to make a decision...

Renaldo and Clara is best likened with the lyric experimentation of Tangled Up In Blue - this is a film dense with symbolism, obscure references, shifting time lines and unexpected tangents. Dylan cast much of the extended Rolling Thunder band in the film, like Nashville star Ronee Blakely, former Spider from Mars guitarist Mick Ronson, Roger McGuinn and David Mansfield (who would later turn up as a rollerskating violin player in Heaven's Gate). Harry Dean Stanton appears in two or three scenes (as a jail breaker who trades a horse for Renaldo's lover), and Allen Ginsberg, in a significant role (listed on the credits as the Father), gets to read his poetry, sing songs and mantras, and at one point visits the grave of Jack Kerouac accompanied by Dylan. Most extraordinary is that Joan Baez was chosen to play Renaldo's former lover, the Woman In White, considering Baez was Dylan's former lover. Dylan and Baez split some ten years before the Rolling Thunder tour, but the chemistry between both of them in the film is still palpable - at one point Baez playfully asks Dylan "What do you think it would have been like if got married?" Ironically, by the time Renaldo and Clara was released Dylan and Sara's marriage was over apparently due to Dylan's womanizing.

"We never actually wrote a script" remembered playwright Sam Shepard whom Dylan hired to write the film. Shepard is credited with "additional dialogue" but much of the film feels loose and improvised, like a sequence at a Native American reservation (where guitarist Bob Neuwirth antagonizes one of the Indians, before Dylan arrives messiah-like). Elsewhere, there's some footage of boxer Hurricane Ruben Carter at a press conference speaking about his incarceration (followed by Dylan leaning on some record executives to release his Hurricane single), while other sequences suggest that the trio of credited cameraman simply showed up to record events as they happened, like two evangelists preaching a fire n' brimstone sermon outside the New York Stock Exchange. There's some genuinely funny stuff in the film as well, like a scene where Mick Ronson playing a bouncer refuses entry to rockabilly musician Ronnie Hawkins (playing a character called Bob Dylan), a disgruntled Hawkins responding to Ronson's thick Hull accent, "I don't care anything about the Queen, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, or David Boowie (sic) or his lead guitar figure, or anybody else". In another scene Allen Ginsberg reads aloud his famous poem Kaddish (which includes the line "a long black beard around the vagina"), to some unimpressed old aged pensioners.

Dylan shot over 100 hours of footage throughout the filming of the Rolling Thunder Revue and felt Renaldo and Clara's four-hour cut was itself a compromise, as he later explained: "I knew it was not going to be a short movie because we couldn't tell that story in an hour. Originally I couldn't see how we could do it under seven or eight hours." The final draft of the film features live footage of nine original Dylan songs, as well as songs from Joan Baez (singing Diamonds and Rust), Ronee Blakely (Need a New Sun Rising Every Morning), and a strangely androgynous Roger McGuinn singing Knockin' on Heaven's Door, Chestnut Mare (one of the Byrds' best songs), and a lively instrumental jam of Eight Miles High. Dylan himself appears in face paint (and an unnerving transparent mask seen in the opening number) and in contrast to his subdued, aloof turn as Renaldo, on stage he's in terrific form, with excellent renditions of When I Paint My Masterpiece, Isis and a rollicking John Lee Hooker-sounding version of A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall. Dylan's commitment to the film was such that he initially refused to be filmed for The Last Waltz, which was to be released around the same time as Renaldo and Clara, but Dylan relented and allowed the cameras to roll on two of the four songs he performed. Incidentally, the live footage violates an age-old convention of concert films by never cutting away to the audience, the cameras remaining firmly locked on Dylan and his band.

After the disastrous reception of Renaldo and Clara, Dylan tried to rescue the film by reshaping it into a two hour feature but still the film was greeted with jeers, even from the Dylan faithful. Dylan withdrew the film from public and still to this day has never enjoyed a home video release. Luckily, Channel 4 in the UK once screened the four hour cut (believed to be from the mid 80's) and was taped to VHS (with the adverts cut out). This seems to be where all bootlegs of Renaldo and Clara stem from but fortunately, the film looks very decent, if a little grungy. Every now and then, there is an announcement that the film is being prepared for DVD but at the time of writing, the film still remains elusive.