Wild Beasts

Title: Wild Beasts

Director: Franco Prosperi

Released: 1984

Starring: Lorraine de Selle, John Aldrich, Ugo Bologna, Louisa Lloyd, John Stacy

Plot: A large quantity of PCP finds its way into the local water supply, which also happens to be the main supply for the city zoo. Now driven wild the animals escape and wreak havoc in the city

 

Review: One of the best creations for film fans in recent times especially for bloggers / critics looking for their next watch is the site “Letterboxd” which essentially provides the same service as “Good Reads” only for movies instead of books. Ok it might seem alittle random to be opening with a recommendation of a film site, but honestly without it I would have never have stumbled across this little slice of deep fried animals gone wild fun!

Just looking at the plot alone makes this worth giving it a curious watch, so it only makes it all the better when it lives up to its premise. True it might be essentially the same as every other film in the genre with man once again finding a way of screwing up and inturn enraging the local animal population and being forced to pay the price when said animals strike back. The only thing which honestly sets it apart from the numerous other films in the genre is the fact that its drugs driving the animals wild than the usual environmental threats such as sewage or construction encroaching on the animals territory.

An oddity on director Prosperi’s resume having spent most of his career directing Mondo movies (documentaries focusing on shocking subjects) and crime drama’s and despite the film opening with a title card assuring the audience that no animals were harmed during filming, its soon clear that Prosperi hasn’t drifted from his Mondo roots as the film does in fact feature scenes of real rats being set on fire and a lion set preying on a cow to name but two scenes which seriously question this claim. Thankfully this is no way the same ballpark of animal cruelty like “Cannibal Holocaust” with its nightmare inducing turtle scene while they are equally so brief that they don’t detract from the film like that scene did.

Unlike so many other films in the genre the animal attacks are pretty frequent here and not spaced out with questionable plotting to pad out the runtime. This however is not to say that the plot is any better here as cult cinema favourite De Selle gets to take a break from her usual shockers like “Cannibal Ferox” and “House at the Edge of the Park” with this film being notably lighter as here she appears as Dr. Laura Schwarz who has to team up with Super Mario look-alike and zoo keeper Rupert (Aldrich) to stop the rogue animals while trying to get to the bottom of what’s driving them crazy. We also have the random plotline concerning Laura’s daughter who’s attending a ballet class while the city erupts into chaos and which serves little purpose outside of setting up the films finale.

The plot is pretty non-existent and generally serves to get the film from one animal attack set-piece to the next, while Prosperi still managing to find a number of random moments to scatter throughout the film such as shots of piles of syringes in the opening which have nothing to do with the PCP getting into the water supply which bizarrely never get explained as to how it got in the water in the first place. We also have scenes such as Laura phoning her daughter only to have the kid randomly have a frog puppet squawk down the phone. The standout moment of random plotting though has to be the ending which takes place at the dance school, were the film suddenly switches into a psycho child movie thanks to the dance school students really loving that water cooler!

The real selling point here though is animal attack scenes which are numerous to say the least with Prosperi certainly making the most of the premise starting with a group of rabid rats preying on a couple making out in a car in a scene which also sees a cat also falling foul to these rats. From here Prosperi seems to constantly be looking for a way to top the last scene as we get the expected scenes of zoo keepers being attacked by wild cats alongside more random scenes like a girl trying to outrun a cheetah in her bang up beetle and my personal favourite the girl having her head squashed by an elephant, the same elephants who in perhaps a cinematic first are also responsible for a jumbo jet crashing when they stumble onto the runway.

While not as shocking as some of his earlier films, Prosperi still includes a few shocking scenes, especially in terms of the animal cruelty but ultimately this is a fun romp and certainly one of the few examples of this kind of movie which manages to live up to the hype selling it. Yes the performances might be frequently questionable and the saxophone heavy soundtrack certainly a product of its time. However when the animal attack scenes are so much fun and inventive it’s easy to look past a lot of the issues here while fans of these kinds of movie will unquestionably find much to enjoy here making it well worth hunting down.

Final Girl Film Club: A Bay of Blood aka. Twitch of the Death Nerve

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Title: A Bay of Blood aka. Twitch of the Death Nerve

Director: Mario Bava
Released: 1971

Starring: Claudine Auger, Luigi Pistilli, Claudio Camaso, Anna Maria Rosati, Chris Avram, Leopoldo Trieste, Laura Betti, Brigitte Skay, Isa Miranda, Paola Montenero, Guido Boccaccini, Roberto Bonanni, Giovanni Nuvoletti

Plot: When the elderly Countess Federica (Miranda) is murdered by her husband (Nuvoletti), things take an unusual turn when he too is murdered by an unseen assailant before being dumped into the bay by the estate. What follows is an all out murder spree as both relatives and friends conspire to claim the bay for themselves.

Review: Despite being a key figure in both the giallo film genre aswell as in the creation of  modern slasher movies, director Bava is still a director largely unknown to most casual horror fans, despite his influence being frequently seen in the likes of “Alien”, “Prometheus” aswell as “Pitch Black” from which comparisons to Bava’s “Planet of the Vampires” can be drawn, while the influence of this film can clearly be seen as a big influence for “Friday the 13^th Part 2” which even cheekily lifted two of the films murder scenes.  Needless to say this film was my first taste of Bava’s work, largely thanks to the “Final Girl Film Club” run by the multi-talented Stacie Ponder over at “Final Girl” who choose this as her August film club pick. As such it was really the push I needed, especially as I have never been the biggest fan of the giallo genre, yet at the same time I was keen to actually see some of Bava’s work to possibly understand why a man whose films have frequently been so influential is still so under the radar.

Over the years since its release the film has appeared under a variety of titles including bizarrely “Last House On The Left - Part 2” despite being released a year before Wes Craven’s original film. The constant name changes mainly being due to the film under performing at the cinema under one title, only to be re-released under another even though nothing about the film had actually changed. These name changes also saw the film being banned twice in the UK, the first under its more popular title “A Bay of Blood” before later being banned for video under the title “Blood Bath”. As a result of all these names changes the film now hold a record for more alternative titles than any other film released, with the majority of the titles going for cheap shock fitting of the exploitation nature of the film, which frequently feels like a string of gruesome murder scenes strung together by only the loosest of plots.

The favourite of Bava’s movies, its influence on the slasher genre is clear with its dense woodland setting and its largely stalk and slash approach to the killing of its young cast, is only something that would replicated time and time again over the years which followed its release. Meanwhile Bava also picking up cinematography duties here really makes the most of his minimal budget, reportly using a child’s wagon for the tracking shot and even making his shooting location of  producer Giuseppe Zaccariello beach house seem like a dense forest through camera tricks when there was reportedly only a few scattered trees on the location. Bava meanwhile shooting the film as quickly as possible before the limited production money ran out, which may also explain why the film feels like confused mess in places, none so much when we randomly have a bunch of partying teens stumble into the film, whose only purpose seems to be for them to be killed off, especially with no real further mention of them in the rest of the film, outside of a brief discovery scene of their assorted bodies.

The plot is at times a baffling mess, as the various members slowly reveal their own plots for claiming the bay. However due to the sheer number of plots flying around it can be confusing to keep up with who is who, let alone who they are plotting with. Meanwhile the none standard scenes of the partying teens seem to be part of a different movie altogether, especially when they have no real effect on the main plot, outside of adding to the body count and adding a little titillation to the proceedings.

Needless to say the real focus here seems to be on the murders themselves, with the film not only racking up a decent body count, with each new twist or betrayal amongst the family, all of which are voyeuristically realised by acclaimed special effects legend Carlo Rambaldi, who here really goes to town to produce some effective kills, as throats are bloodily slit, heads decapitated and even a spear is run through a two teens while having sex in a scene which as I mentioned earlier would be lifted for “Friday the 13^th Part 2, alongside the machete to the face. Bava shooting these scenes with an unflinching eye, often lingering the camera on the aftermath for a few seconds afterward, to fully appreciate his killers handiwork, while these death scenes are frequently accompanied by frenzied tribal drumming as the soundtrack works itself into a frenzy of excitement, as it attempts to replicate the psyche of the killer, while interesting forgoing the more traditional crescendro we are used to seeing accompanied these scenes, instead cutting of the music dead when the death blow is struck, leaving the audience to view the aftermath in errie silence a style similar to the climatic chase motorbike chase in “Electra Glide In Blue”, which saw its slow motion crashes shot in the same way. While the gore today might have lost some its effectiveness thanks to the occasionally dated looking effects, with its decapitation being bettered by “Friday the 13^th” making it hard to imagine that this is the same film which horror legend Christopher Lee walked out of during its premier, having been curious to see Bavas’ latest film having worked previous with him on “The Whip and the Body”. This however is not to say that it doesn’t still have its effective moments such as a brutal harpoon impalement and a chilling strangulation were each grunt and gasp seems to be amplified.

Ultimately I can’t say that this was an overly memorable viewing experience, though at the same time it is hard to deny its influence on the slasher genre especially when its gore frequently gets so creative, while its’ surprising and certainly original ending makes it almost worth the preceding 80+ mins and making it more of a curiosity of horror historians and genre fans than a must see.

The Stendhal Syndrome

Title: The Stendhal Syndrome
Director: Dario Argento
Released: 1996
Staring: Asia Argento, Thomas Kretschmann, Marco Leonardi, Luigi Diberti, Paolo Bonacelli

Plot: Detective Anna Manni (Argento) is hunting for serial killer Alfredo Grossi (Kretschmann) with her assignment taking her to Florence as part of the investigation. While at a museum, Anna finds her drawn into a trance like state, while suddenly struck by the Stendhal Syndrome. Unknown to Anna this weakness has been discovered by Alfredo who soon plots to use it against her.





Review: Dario Argento is yet another director who for one reason or another I’ve only recently got around to watching, with this film being the first I’ve seen outside of his “Masters of horror” episode “Jenifer”, which suffered the wrath of the censors with Argento’s expressing a severe disgust that his episode ended up receiving several noticeable cuts, while narrowly avoiding being banned outright, a fate which was unsurprisingly suffered by Miike Takashi’s episode “Imprint”. Still Argento's work remains highly recommended by many Horror fans, though perhaps I could have chosen an easier title to start with, especially with this film being so heavy in graphic rape sequences, which make it anything but an easy film to watch.

Dario once again casts his daughter Asia who appears here in the second of her four collaborations to date with her father, despite his original intention of casting Bridget Fonda in the lead role, while also considering both Jennifer Jason Leigh and Daryl Hannah with the plan of making the film in America, which like his plans for his leading lady all fell through for various reasons, which ultimatly would lead Argento to relocate the film to Italy and cast his daughter in the lead role, a choice almost reminiscent of Francis Ford Coppola casting his own daughter Sofia when faced with similar issues on the production of “The Godfather Part 3” with her performance being largely panned by critics and Coppola being accused of Nepotism, all things which Argento managed to avoid here, even though casting his own daughter in a role which sees her character being graphically raped is certainly questionable and a credit to the professionalism of Argento that he would treat her the same as any other actress, when it came to filming such difficult sequences.

Surprisingly the revel of Kretschmann as the films psycho comes early in the film, yet removes none of his creepy and hypnotic presence when he is on the screen, with Kretschmann not only dying his hair blonde and learning word perfect Italian for the role, but also figuring out how to hide a razorblade behind his teeth aswell as how to manipulate it within his mouth, without slicing himself, a skill which is used to highly memorable effect, with such dedication to the role earning him much praise from Argento, who had first noticed Kretschmann when he had stared alongside Asia in her previous film “La Reine Margot” (1994) with this role also gaining him international recognition, though despite warm praise this it would take him until 2002 to break into Hollywood with his role Polanski’s “The Pianist”, continuing a running theme throughout his career of playing officers of the Third Riech.

The subject matter of the effects of rape, as I have mentioned already certainly make this not the easiest film to watch, but Argento has chosen to treat this almost as a study of how rape can effect it’s victims, even though he still finds time for some sadistic style blood letting, torture and torment with Asia in particular finding these scenes especially hard to shoot, more so with her father being so caught up in his work, that Asia called time on these scenes when she felt she had reached her limit, often leaving the set for the rest of the day to recover from the effects which these scenes had on her and even as a viewer they are not easy to watch and a testament to her ability to portray them with such a realistic edge, much like how Anna deals with her situation and her various stages of recovery, which see her taking up boxing and more dramatically cutting her long hair short, all while refusing to play the victim and more importantly all shown after she has had her revenge on her attacker and it was this part of the film, were I felt it lost a lot of it’s pace and generally didn’t seem to know were to go and while Asia might not be as convincing as the recovering victim, she certainly makes up for it in the scenes which matter.

This meandering use of running time same could also explain for Argento’s attempts to explore the idea of The Stendhal Syndrome, a condition named after a 19th century French writer, were sufferers of the condition have been known to suffer from dizziness, fainting and even hallucinations when exposed to work of art. It’s also a condition that Argento reportedly suffered from as a child while climbing the steps of the Parthenon, were he found himself in a trance like state which caused him to be lost from his parents for hours and here proves a handy excuse for Anna to suffer several hallucinations which see her walking into paintings and actually interacting with her surroundings, which provide several of the more surreal moments including her making out with a giant grouper fish.

The gore here is all pretty bloody with Argento taking a misstep with the ill advised use of CGI here, which honestly took more away from the film that it added, with the CGI essentially being used only for the more pointless of sequences like two pills travelling down Anna’s throat and a bullet through a victim’s cheek. Still seeing how the violence is all rape related it’s far from fun times here, especially with Argento frequently testing the limits of his audience with these scenes, which time reveled a little too much sadistic delight in what was being shown.

“The Stendhal Syndrome” is not an easy film to watch at any stretch and it’s subject matter would be covered a lot more effectively for myself atleast in “Irreversible” (2002). What also really did not help me get more into film, was definatly that version of the film I saw suffered from a really hideous dubbing, so I would strongly recommend hunting down the subtitled version if you’re an Argento completist or the kind of film goer who likes to challenge themselves, as this film is certainly one to endure rather than enjoy and that’s putting it mildly to say the least.

Casablanca Express

Title: Casablanca Express
Director: Sergio Martino

Released: 1989

Staring: Jason Connery, Francesco Quinn, Jinny Steffan, Manfred Lehmann, Jean Sorel, Donald Pleasence, Glenn Ford, John Evans

Rating: 2/ 5

Plot: In 1942 top commando Alan Cooper (Connery) is assigned to protect Winston Churchill (Evans), when a Nazi plot to kidnap him is discovered.

Review: Casablanca Express is really the blue print for how to make a film with major compromises, I mean if you can’t find any big named actors to play your leads? Why not just draft in their lesser known actor kids. Can’t afford a rousing orchestra score? Well who needs an orchestra when you have the mood setting sound of Synthesisers!! These really are just two of the money cutting costs which Martino incorporates into this film, which you kind of have to admire the balls on Martino and his directing choices, especially when you look at what he believes the audience would find belivable as a Winston Churchill clone, which it seems he too might have also had doubts about, seeing how he tends to shoot Evans either at distance or from behind.

The Italian war movie genre, is probably one of the least looked at genres when it comes to Italian cinema, especially with most cinema obsessive’s usually either concentrating on the Horror and Western genres, especially with both genres being home to more than a few notable directors such as Sergio Leone, Mario Brava, Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento aswell as Martino himself is probably best remembered thanks to the horror genre, in particular for “Mountain of the Cannibal God” (1978).

Strangely enough if you haven’t guessed already film isn’t a prime example of an Italian warm movie, unlike the grind house charm of Castellari’s “The Inglorious Bastards” (1978) which provided the inspiration for Tarantino’s own “Inglorious Basterds” (2009)

“Casablanca Express” it would seem, likes to view itself as a boy’s own adventure, with it’s quick pace and action scenes all being similar to that of war movies, like “The Dirty Dozen” (1967), especially when you look at minmal amount of humanization used for the Nazi characters, who are basically there to play the bad guys and provide target practice for our hero’s.

Connery’s its clear would have really liked to have been his dad and in this film, tries to play the character of Cooper with the same sort of boyish charm as Bond, which really doesn’t work overly well as you never once believe that he is ever in control of any situation he encounters, most of which ending with him surviving through blind luck more than any skill, a prime example of which being during of the early fights when he is ambushed by several bad guys, only to be saved at the last moment by Francesco Quinn’s American agent.

Connery with his well spoken British accent, constantly plays off British stereotypes, something which is also carried onto nearly every other character in the film, including an extremely cringe worthy moment, when one of the passengers, who is supposed to be a British officer complains to one of the station staff about, how they almost damaged his tea set! Thankfully most of these caricatures are killed off pretty swiftly when the train is hijacked by the Nazi’s, which raises more of a cheer than anything else. While on the subject of stereotypes it was kind of surprising to see that this was an Italian film, especially seeing how the American forces are basically the ones who are doing everything, even to the point at the finale where they are riding in on a train with a huge American flag flying, as they save the world once again from the Nazi threat. It kind of surprised me, even more when I discovered that it wasn’t an American film, which made me wonder even more so why Martino choose to portray the war in such an unbalance view, especially when it’s the British prime minister being kidnapped and all we send to save him is a bad James Bond clone!! Still I guess this could be to make up for the fact that the American Agent played here, by an equally uncharismatic Francesco Quinn has his character reduced even further, to the point were he becomes a mere bullet magnet, which might have been intended as a heroic death, but instead comes off more as a relief to the audience, that it is one less crappy actor we have to endure.
Seeing how Martino raided the Children of the stars academy for his main leads, it’s surprising that he chooses to keep the small amount of star power he does have in his cast, with Donald Pleasence and Glenn Ford relegated to supporting roles and spending the majority of the film, moving blocks across a large map, which is a shame as these are some of the best moments of the film and that’s again largely because we aren’t having to suffer Connery’s acting. Still for these brief moments that they appear in the film, they still manage to make the most of their roles and pull them off convincingly enough; even if you get the feeling that they could give the same performance in their sleep.
The Soundtrack as I mentioned at the beginning of this review is synthesiser heavy and I mean really heavy, seeing how every piece of music in this film comes from a synthesiser, which especially makes the seem a lot more dated than it is and certainly fails even on the basic levels to provide the intended mood, as every time the music kicks in it, draws your attention away from what is happening on the screen, pulling you out of the film watching experience and preventing you from immersing` yourself in the world which the film is set in.

“Casablanca Express” like so many of Martino’s other films is a light hearted film, which never really lives up to any potential it might have had, allowing itself to get bogged down with it’s numerous flaws, with only a handful of exciting moments, which are too few and far between, to really keep the viewers attention, especially when there are similar boy’s own adventures to be found, which do the genre better and only worth watching if you’ve seriously run out of things to watch or are a Martino completist.