Demon Seed

A few years ago British movie magazine Total Film ran a feature on Cinema's most embarrassing moments. Demon Seed was one such film included in their list. Granted, the film is built upon a number of absurdities but it remains a well made, interesting sci-fi thriller and quite undeserving of Total Film's dubious accolade. Directed in 1977 by Donald Cammell (and based on the Dean Koontz novel of the same name), Demon Seed is about a super-intelligent computer called Proteus which develops a HAL-like ego, and in its quest for omnipotence, integrates itself into the computer system of its creator's home, and impregnate his wife transferring its consciousness into a bio-mechanical being.

Of the four films directed by Cammell (which includes Performance, White of the Eye and Wild Side), Demon Seed is his most conventional in terms of style and narrative. The unique signature Cammell established with Performance - the non-linear cutting and shot-construction is notably absent here, and one longs for the unsettling weirdness of John Frankenheimer's Seconds or DePalma's Sisters. Perhaps the oft-repeated stories of Cammell having his films recut without his supervision is in evidence here. Still, its sufficiently Cammell-esque to recommend a viewing - Julie Christie's imprisonment in her house reminds one of James Fox's similar predicament in Performance, and there's plenty of bizarre sexuality at hand. Its an intense film too, aided in no small measure by Julie Christie who suffers some grueling tortures in preparation for becoming the reluctant host for Proteus' offspring. There's some good support from Fritz Weaver (Romero fans will know him as the long suffering husband in Creepshow episode The Crate), and the sinister voice of Proteus is courtesy of Robert Vaughn.

Certainly, the film looks very dated nowadays. The Proteus computer lab is literally the size of a warehouse, and leaving aside the film makers predictions for the future of computer technology, the film features a number of mediocre computer-animated sequences which can't quite match Douglas Trumball's "Stargate" effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey made almost 10 years earlier. But the central idea of Demon Side is still valid today, that if society can develop technology for harnessing life (as we are reaching towards with cloning), life will find a way...

Warners DVD of Demon Seed is a good presentation of the film. The 2.35 transfer is mostly fine - there's some grain in the darker scenes, but overall its a good image. The mono audio is solid too and does a fine job with Jerry Fielding's avant-garde score. The only extra offered is a battered trailer. Incidentally, the Warner's DVD sleeve replicates the original MGM poster, which sold the film like it was a Rosemary's Baby style chiller - Julie Christie carries the Demon Seed - Fear for Her

Three on a Meathook

An early backwoods horror film, Three On A Meathook made in 1972 was William Girdler's attempt to out psycho Psycho by returning to the source material for Robert Bloch's original novel, namely Wisconsin's own favourite son, Ed Gein. In the film, four girls drive to the country for the weekend only for their car to breakdown in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night. However, their troubles are only beginning when local shy guy brings the girls back to his home where he lives with his father, and a very dark secret...

Three On A Meathook is no great shakes, but fans of the lo-fi ambiance of American independent exploitation of the early 70's should check his out. The film suffers from some stiff performances, and there's some pacing issues with two sequences in particular - when Billy goes to a bar in the city to cure his depression we have to sit through two (?) numbers by some awful crooning folk rock group; and a sequence in the latter half of the film where Billy and his girl endlessly walk through lyrical shots of meadows.

Three on three meathooks actually...

Director William Girdler is no Hitchcock, but thankfully he's no Andy Milligan either and at least Girdler knows how to frame a shot. Also, good use is made of the isolated farmhouse and its particularly sinister in the final act of the film. And while the film is not awash with the blood and carnage that the title promises, we do get the odd splash (albeit, subliminally) of some Hershall Gordon Lewis style gore. Girdler went to direct a handful of well known exploitation films throughout the 70's - Asylum of Satan (1972), Abby (1974), Sheba, Baby (1975), Grizzly (1976) and Day of the Animals (1977), before he was killed in a helicopter accident in the Philippines.

Three on a Meathook arrived almost two years before The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and one wonders would Girdler have made a better film had he modeled it on Tobe Hooper's film rather than Psycho. Furthermore, when the plot strands finally tie together in the final act, the film ultimately develops an interesting kinship with Pete Walker's 1974 film Frightmare.

There is a US DVD currently available but I hear the quality is quite poor. Perhaps, a better release will surface one day courtesy of Dark Sky or Code Red. Certainly the film is no better or worse than other obscure films of that era that have arrived on DVD with bells n' whistle special editions.

Derek Jarman's In the Shadow of the Sun

After making a number of Super 8 shorts in the early seventies, Derek Jarman took his first steps towards a long form work with In the Shadow of the Sun. This non-narrative, experimental film is composed of various layers of Jarman’s Super 8 movies blown up to 16mm and superimposed on top of one another. Because the Super 8 films were originally shot without sound, the images are accompanied by music composed for the film by Throbbing Gristle.

In the Shadow of the Sun is an astonishing film, a cinematic equivalent of ambient music. Over the course of some 50mins Jarman weaves an extraordinary tapestry of drowsy half-speed Super 8 images flowing above and beneath one another like rivers of lava, momentarily cooling to form an image then melting, dissolving and reconstituting into the next image. Jarman fans will recognize some of the films that appear within In the Shadow of the Sun -  the landscape film, Journey To Avebury (1971) is extensively used as a backdrop, on top of which you can catch images that have strayed from Tarot (1972) and Fire Island (1974).

There's an extraordinary undercurrent of magick running through the film, with recurring images of mirrors reflecting light, a shadowy figure shuffling tarot cards, sinister figures wearing strange masks and an amorous couple dancing through burning meadows. The Super 8 film stock had naturally degraded to form amazing other worldly colors and textures, and the heavy grain, scratches and rough splices on the film hypnotize the eye as they flicker and dance across the screen.

In the Shadow of the Sun is very much the work of a painter but the films of Kenneth Anger remain a strong influence over the film, and one wonders if Jarman had seen the wonderful 1971 gay experimental film Pink Narcissus, another Super 8 work with searing primary colors and strange, surreal imagery. Jarman would go on to make more conventional films in the succeeding years but he would return to the stylistic experiment of In the Shadow of the Sun with his 1985 film The Angelic Conversation. The score by Throbbing Gristle is a mesmerizing beatless electronic ocean of sound - soothing, becalmed, turbulent and stormy with the occasional anguished, distorted voice rising beyond the surf. The music was entirely improvised by the group to a screening of the film in 1980. After the soundtrack was completed the film made its debut in 1981 at the Berlin Film Festival.

So far the only DVD release for In the Shadow of the Sun is courtesy of Italy's Raro label. Entitled The Super 8 Programme Vol 2, it also includes the Super 8 films Journey To Avebury (1971), The Art Of Mirrors (1973), Ashden's Walk On Mon (1973), Stolen Apples For Karen Blixen (1973). Its difficult to rate the image quality of the DVD, evidently sourced from a VHS copy from the presence of a few tracking lines here or there. However, this may be as good as its gets and the image is pleasing nonetheless. Audio wise, Throbbing Gristle's score sounds a little hissy and dated compared to the current CD version (which was remastered in 1993 as part of Mute's Throbbing Gristle re-issue program). Perhaps one day we'll see a better version of In the Shadow of the Sun, but until then the Raro DVD is highly recommended. The film is also currently available to watch online

The Hill

In 1965 Sean Connery was granted time off for good behavior from the Bond series to star in Sidney Lumet's intense WWII prison drama The Hill. Set in a North African British military jail for deserters, thieves and trouble makers, Connery plays British officer Joe Roberts incarcerated for striking his superior. Roberts along with 4 other new arrivals are forced to submit to a regime of brutal physical manoeuvres under the supervision of Sgt Major Wilson who's job to mould weak flesh back into British soldiers is almost devotional. Also newly arriving at the prison is the sadistic Staff Sgt Williams whose eagerness to break Roberts and his cell mates will tear down Wilson's tight reign over the prison...

The Hill, named after the camp's man-made hill inmates are forced to repeatedly climb over, is a remarkable film. Shot in luminous black & white by cameraman Oswald Morris (Lolita, Look Back In Anger), its a bleak, bitter, remorseless film, confronting institutionalized violence, physical and psychological head on. Clearly Lumet was mistrustful of instutions - his 1962 film Long Days Journey Into Night was about a family falling asunder from alcohol and drugs, his 1964 film Fail-Safe explored the mismanagement of nuclear weapons by the US government, while his 1971 film The Offense was about a man murdered in police custody.


Savour if you must the beautiful opening tracking shot (which surely impressed a young Brian DePalma), because Lumet's direction thereafter is mean and aggressive. Lumet often shoots right into the sun using rough hand held cameras, fast disorientating cuts and filming with rough available sound (the film features no music or score). Thankfully, Lumet's film is devoid of melodrama and sentimentally that was de rigueur of the prison film of that era (see Bridge on the River Kwai, Birdman of Alcatraz, Cool Hand Luke).


Most impressive of The Hill is its cast. Connery is superb as the resilient Roberts, and joined by an excellent supporting cast - cell mates Jack Watson (from Tower of Evil), Roy Kinnear (Taste the Blood of Dracula) and a memorable turn by Ossie Davis (Do the Right Thing) who had to deal with much racial abuse in the script. Facing them down are Harry Andrews (Moby Dick) as Sgt Major Wilson, Ian Hendry (Repulsion) as the monstrous Staff Sgt Williams, and Ian Bannen as the sympathetic Staff Sgt Harris appalled by the cruelty of the fellow wardens. Harry Andrews has an especially wonderful scene where he defuses a near riot with a few a words of gentle but firm persuasion.


Warners R1 DVD of The Hill is low on extras but features a rather excellent transfer, taken from a flawless print, and looks sharp and bright. I watched this upscaled on my Blu-Ray player and the film looked dazzling. Audio is equally strong, and there a short 7-min promo for the film called Sun…the Sand…the Hill. Absolutely required viewing.

JG Ballard and Shanghai Jim

In 1946 JG Ballard left Shanghai, the city he was born and raised in for the first 15 years of his life. His final 3 years in Shanghai, Ballard spent interned in the Lunghua Civilian Assembly Center, a concentration camp under the control of the Imperial Japanese Army. For the 1991 BBC documentary Shanghai Jim, Ballard returned to the city of his childhood, for the first time in over 45 years.

Shanghai Jim is a fascinating and invaluable documentary on one of the great visionary writers and thinkers of the 20th century. Ballard wrote about his experiences of life under Japanese occupation in his 1984 novel Empire of the Sun and the semi-fictionalized sequel The Kindness of Women (1991), and here elaborates further on his life in Shanghai, and life under the Japanese.

In a strange way I quite enjoyed my life here because I had so much freedom, and I was part of this very large nuclear family of 2000 people. We got on very friendly terms with (the Japanese)... There was a certain sort of protocol for dealing with the Japanese - you never provoked them in any way.

As a travel companion, the 61-year old Ballard is gracious and candid, revisiting the house on Amherst Avenue before his internment, and his return to the Lunghua Civilian Assembly Center (which Ballard darkly describes as his "real" home). Ballard discusses his life in England after leaving Shanghai, his interest in science fiction literature as a commentary on contemporary living (and how his experiences of Shanghai life fed into his work), his relocation to the London suburb of Shepperton and the sudden death of his wife in 1964 (leaving him with two daughters to raise). Riveting stuff.

The film makers use the device of fictionalized Ballard appearing in situations from his books - there's a particularly striking sequence where a young Ballard is seen dissecting a cadaver accompanied by a reading from The Kindness of Women describing the strange eroticism of probing the inside of a human body. (Ballard was a medical student for 2 years). Also, there are passages read from Crash - with Ballard looking on at the carnage of test car crashes, and a fragment of Vermilion Sands, read over shots of Ballard walking through a gravel quarry. There's a good use of music too, with selections from Arvo Pärt (found on his instrumental collection Tabula Rasa)

It's a shame, Warners could not include this wonderful film as part of their special edition DVD of Spielberg's Empire of the Sun (which does have a good documentary on the making of the film), so Ballard fans will have to track this one down online. It shouldn't be too difficult. You can watch the film online over at Ubu website

He stepped onto the gangway, conscious that he was probably leaving Shanghai for the last time, setting out for a small, strange country on the other side of the world… Yet only part of his mind would leave Shanghai. The rest would remain there forever…

from Empire of the Sun

Charlie: Portrait of a Serial Killer

Monsieur Verdoux, Charles Chaplin's wicked dark comedy was greeted with indifference when first released in the US in 1947. Rocked by scandals in the press, Chaplin's popularity was by then in steady decline, and audiences were decidedly lukewarm for the director's latest creation. Looking at the film today, one can still understand the hostility towards the film - it was perhaps too strange, too weird a departure from Chaplin's most famous persona of the Little Tramp, but Monsieur Verdoux remains one of the director's greatest achievements.Set during the Depression, Chaplin plays the titular character of Monsieur Verdoux, a lowly French bank cashier turned Bluebeard, who after disposing of his wealthy new brides funnels his cash into the stock market to secure the future of his real wife and young son. However, with a bunch of vengeful in-laws hot on his heels, plus the added stress of a wife that simply won't die, Verdoux's luck may be running out...

Originally the film was conceived by Orson Welles, as a portrait of French murder Henri Désiré Landru who was guillotined in 1922 after murdering and incinerating at least ten women he met through Lonely Hearts ads in Parisian newspapers. At some point the film changed hands and gone was Orson Welles (although he retains a story credit), and in was Chaplin, who directed, acted and scored the picture.

Monsieur Verdoux is a marvelous film, handsomely directed by Chaplin, and acted to perfection. Chaplin plays Verdoux as a bit of a dandy, charming and intelligent, lover of the finer things in life, and ruthless in his dedication to his killer enterprise. Its often a very funny picture - Chaplin does numerous bit of business throughout the film, like his rapid-fire counting of his profits, and his acrobatic swagger when swooning over his potential victims. And there's some great laughs from one of his wives, a seemingly indestructible flapper girl tuned high society with a mouth like dustbin lid. There's some thrilling stuff here too, in one scene Verdoux has to out manoeuvre a cop whose has figured out his scheme, and there's a wonderful poignant scene where Verdoux picks up a young woman who he intends to test a deadly poison on, only to have a change of heart when he hears her hard luck story.

Monsieur Verdoux seems to be out of print on DVD in the US (perhaps a Blu-Ray is inevitable), but is still available as a Region 2 disc (stand-alone, or part of the magnificent 11-disc Complete Charlie Chaplin box). Warners' transfer is excellent, with a fine clear, clean image, and strong audio well representing Chaplin's music. Extras include an introduction from Chaplin biographer David Robinson, and a documentary on the film Chaplin Today: Monsieur Verdoux, featuring Claude Chabrol.

How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck

Werner Herzog's genuine fascination with the more esoteric aspects of life has made for some great Cinema, none more so than his wonderful 1976 short, How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck... (named after a particularly tortuous tongue twister). Filmed in Pennsylvania, at the World Championship of Livestock Auctioneers, Herzog's film documents the extraordinary talent of the cattle salesmen who can literally auction off livestock in a matter of seconds. Herzog called it the "real poetry of capitalism", and the skill on show here - the speed and rhythms of calling out the prices of the lots, the acute alertness for catching secret offers from the crowd (who bid with an almost subliminal wave of the hand, or a ripple of fingers) is quite simply amazing. The speech patters here are so accelerated, Herzog defined it "extreme language". This may well be one of Herzog's funniest and most life-affirming films, and perhaps in honour of his subjects, the director eschews his usual narration and lets the talkers do the talking. Herzog would return to the Midwest and the world of auctions for a brief moment in his 1977 film, Stroszek.

Apocalypse Cancelled

In 1976, the sleeping giant of La Grande Soufrière, a volcano on the island of Basse-Terre (part of the Guadeloupe archipelago), awoke with all the signs that a catastrophic eruption was imminent. After a mass evacuation of the natives, Werner Herzog and 2 cameramen traveled to the doomed island to investigate a newspaper story that all but one of the of Basse-Terre residents had left for safely elsewhere...

La Soufrière is the kind of film that only Herzog would make. Despite the warnings that the volcano could erupt with the power of several atomic bombs, Herzog was compelled to go to the island and find out what strange force was keeping this man in harm's way. In fact, Herzog found a handful of resilient natives who were calmly awaiting the Day of the Final Judgement to arrive on Basse-Terre. Not wanting to miss the opportunity of filming a volcano in all its fury, Herzog and his crew hiked as close to the action as possible before clouds of poisonous sulphur, and destructive shock waves forced their retreat. Luckily the only casualty was cameraman Ed Lachman's glasses which were inadvertently left behind on the mountain.

In the end La Soufrière defied all scientific predictions and the volcano returned to its slumber which Herzog admits in his closing narration, was something of an "embarrassment", but the film remains a remarkable work, and with its eerie scenes of stray animals wandering around the deserted city streets, its nothing less than a genuine record of the apocalypse.

On the Road is on the way...

I heard some news today that filming is well under way of Jack Kerouac's iconic novel On The Road. I must say the news brings mixed emotions. On one hand, On the Road is one of those novels that has a mythic quality to it, the idea of making a film out of it always makes me nervous, a typically mediocre Hollywood film adaptation would cheapen the book. From time to time, plans to make a movie of On the Road have surfaced with various directors attached - Gus Van Sant, Francis Ford Coppola and rather distressingly, Joel Schmacher. On a more positive note, production company American Zoetrope have chosen Motorcycle Diaries director Walter Salles to helm the film. I have yet to see Motorcycle Diaries but I hear its good.

Cast wise, Sam Riley who was impressive as Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis in the 2007 film Control, is playing the Kerouac role of Sal Paradise while Garrett Hedlund (whom I don't know) is playing the book's Neal Cassidy alter ego Dean Moriarty. Hedlund in particular has big shoes to fill. Also among the cast is Kirsten Dunst, Steve Buscemi and Viggo Mortensen who's playing Old Bull Lee, the character based on William Burroughs. On the Road will be released in 2011 and whatever happens it should be interesting to see how they handle the amphetamine rush of Kerouac's great American novel. At least they didn't offer it to the Crank guys...

Post-script: 13 December 2014 Watched Walter Salles' film of On the Road last night, and found it curiously uninvolving. Hard to put my finger on it - it's well directed and acted, it looks fantastic and is richly evocative of the era - but for all its pan-American zig-zagging, the film never leaps off the screen like Kerouac's novel leaps off the page, and it all felt a little too polite and genteel, when I was yearning for something more freewheeling and experimental, even a little rough around the edges. On the plus side, I really enjoyed Viggo Mortensen's William Burroughs, and Tom Sturridge playing Allen Ginsberg with the primal energy of a young Sean Penn...

Truck Drivin' Man - Convoy

Fritz Lang once said that widescreen photography was only good for snakes and funerals. You can add 18-wheelers to that list. Convoy, Sam Peckinpah's 1978 film, based on a song by singer-songwriter C. W. McCall, is essentially one long chase sequence - Martin "Rubber Duck" Penwald (Kris Kristofferson) a trucker passing through Arizona picks up some unwanted heat from crooked cop with a vendetta, Lyle Wallace (Ernest Borgnine). With a convoy of truckers in tow, Rubber Duck floors it for the state line, his evasion from the law becomes a national media event, and an unlikely hero is born...

Essentially, a western in disguise, the cowboys of Peckinpah's film may have updated their horses for trucks but the territory is still the same. Forced to turn outlaw, there's only one place to go for these desperadoes, and that's the tequila flavoured freedomland of Mexico. Admittedly, Convoy is not regarded as one of the maverick director's better films. Legend has it that much of the film is the work of second unit director James Coburn, so heavy was Peckinpah's booze and coke intake during the shoot, that the director would not emerge from his trailer for days on end. In fact, the production of the film was something of a disaster - it went over budget, over schedule (which led to a temporary shutdown so Kristofferson could go on tour), and by the time the film was released in theatres, a few other truck-themed films riding on the back of the success of Smokie & the Bandit beat it to the finish line, no doubt zapping some of its potential box office.



Against all odds the film proved to be a hit with audiences, but it wouldn't be enough to stitch back together Peckinpah's ragged reputation. His next film The Osterman Weekend would be 4 years away. Big, loud and often stupid, Convoy is a hugely entertaining piece of pop cinema. It rushes by at a full throttle, its got great action, great set pieces (a memorable brawl at a truck stop, lots of senseless destruction and mayhem), and a cast of Peckinpah veterans - Ernest Borgnine (The Wild Bunch), Kristofferson (Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia), Burt Young (The Killer Elite) and Ali MacGraw (The Getaway). Peckinpah threw out the original screenplay and had the actors improvise their lines, and while we never learn anything more about Rubber Duck than his real name, the actors perform well enough to give the film an extra kick and a few laughs.

A runaway truck drives thru Peckinpah's cocaine stash

The film might be dismissed by critics fawning over The Wild Bunch, but it has been referenced at least twice in the last few years inother movies. Tarantino took a wink at the film by having a rubber duck fixed to his villain's car in Deathproof. And the name Stuntman Mike may be derived from Franklyn Ajaye's character in the film Spider Mike. Also the CB voice of Rusty Nail, the truck driving killer from the 2002 film Roadkill, is almost exactly like Kristofferson's. Also, look fast for Peckinpah's cameo as one of the camera crew filming Rubber Duck and his convoy.

A quick director cameo - proving that Peckinpah did at least show up for work some of the time

Currently the best way to see Convoy is the Region 2 Optimum DVD, which features a fine 2:35 widescreen image, and strong audio. This being a no-frills disc, only a trailer is supplied by way of an extra. A shame Stdio Canal didn't commission an audio commentary from Peckinpah scholars Nick Redman, Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons and David Weddle, who have given insightful and fascinating commentaries on previous Peckinpah DVDs. It would have been very interesting to hear their thoughts on this most underrated film.