Back to the future… Escape from New York (1981)

 

Oh yes, the cruel future we forecast for ourselves was way more entertaining back in 1981 than it’s turning out to be and the older this film gets, the more youthful and relevant it appears. As we piled off the bus, probably bunking off school, to see this in Liverpool’s old ABC in Lime Street, it was all of a piece with Planet of the Apes, Logan’s Run and Soylent Green, dark and violent entertainments providing a warning of worlds we just assumed we’d never see. John Carpenter thought differently and made his futuristic 1997 as grimy and real as he could, just a president away from societal breakdown.

And, in these times of trouble it takes a very special man to navigate the brutal streets, gangs and faithless government and such a men is Snake Plissken played by a pumped-up Kurt Russell with a swagger and edge that few could rival before or since. This is a dystopian High Noon or before that Hells Hinges (1916, William S Hart, look him up…) in which a single individual is all that stands between humanity’s disaster and the smallest shard of hope.

Written and directed by John Carpenter who also provides a score – composed with Alan Howarth – with stygian synthesised sweeps that help establish an oppressive and alienated feel to a world in which almost no one can be trusted least of all authority although the alternatives are just as bad. Snake is possibly the only man we can rely on, although even then we’re not sure. He’s an anti-hero and like it or lump it, our only way in or out of Carpenter’s intended message.

New York City sometime soon

In 1988 the crime rate in the US rises by 400% and the powers that be decide that the only way to cap this lawlessness is to set up the island of Manhattan as the highest security prison imaginable. They build a wall around it and a security monitoring station of Liberty Island… see what they did there? – and it’s impregnable which is a shame for the millions of inmates but especially so when the President’s plane is hijacked and destroyed whilst his escape pod lands right in the middle of downtown.

The President (Donald Pleasence) has a briefcase handcuffed to his hand which contains a tape to be played at a peace summit to hopefully stop America’s ongoing conflict with China and Russia… the stakes could not be higher and yet when Police Commissioner Bob Hauk (Lee Van Cleef) sends in squad, the President has been captured and they are told he will be killed if they don’t leave immediately.

As luck would have it, former special forces Lieutenant, S.D. "Snake" Plissken (Kurt) is being processed before being sent to Manhattan after trying to liberate funds from the Federal Reserve. Hauk makes him an offer he can’t refuse – a full pardon plus an injection that will detonate within 24 hours – and sends him in via a glider the one-eyed veteran has to land on top of one of the Twin Towers… The film is ripe with such moments of contemporary poignance. The shots of a darkened New York are still very effective and some of the matte paintings were done by James Cameron, who was working as a special-effects artist at the time.

Lee Van Cleef

In goes Snake and after finding the missing Presidential Pod, encounters a friendly "Cabbie" (Ernest Borgnine) who recognises him and offers to help. Ignoring this advice Plissken plods on only to find that New York is a tough old town and if you can make it there you can make it anywhere… Talking of show tunes, Cabbie loves them and as he rescues Snake from a riot, he plays some good old tunes as he take shim to meet former compadre Harold "Brain" Hellman (Harry Dean Stanton) and his partner Maggie (Adrienne Barbeau, who was the highlight of many a teenage cinematic afternoon).

They know who has the President, it’s The Duke (Isaac Hayes who is definitely not walking on by here) who rules much of the locale and drives a Cadillac with candelabras on as you do. Duke’s plan is to use his prisoner to negotiate a mass escape across the 69^th Street Bridge which isn’t going to end well for anyone and Snake certainly doesn’t have the time. He persuades the three to help him assuring them of clemency if they succeed.

They set off for Duke’s headquarters at Grand Central Station where Snake gets shot in the leg and captured whilst Brain and Maggie make off with the President. Carpenter used St Louis’ Central Station as the location for Duke’s base and it’s a very convincing double as Snake is made to fight the giant Slag (professional wrestler Ox Baker) in a boxing ring surrounded by Duke’s hoards; it’s not looking good for our limping anti-hero. There’s many twists and turns to come though and who’s going to bet against Plissken, especially when you know there’s a sequel!

Adrienne Barbeau and Harry Dean Stanton

Dusty Verdict: Escape from New York holds up well after all these years and that’s down to Carpenter’s ability to build and maintain tension as well as create such tangible atmospherics. The filming was mostly during the nighttime and the director said that he didn’t see daylight for two and a half months. This made the most of the St Louis locations as well as creating that suffocating oppressed “Manhattan”.

Kurt Russell is of course magnificent and relishing the chance to break away from the more conventional roles that he had built his initial success upon. He’s in peak physical condition here and mostly in character throughout the shoot as the man who lives just for the moment, and certainly this can be read as one of Carpenter’s main messages along with don’t trust the Government… he was inspired by the events of Watergate.

Which pretty much brings us full circle to where we are almost at now… 

Isaac Hayes, Harry and Adrienne

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hostesses to fortune... The World Ten Times Over (1963)

 

It’s a mystery to me why this film isn’t better known. It not only fits in with the early-sixties “kitchen sink” classics like The L-Shaped Room, Victim and A Taste of Honey, it also has Soho Film credentials with some atmospheric locations captured along with the nightclub culture of the time. The narrative is so well constructed and there are definitely traces of French new wave but also the work of Antonioni certainly in the ways it captures the communication dynamics between men and women especially in one sequence in which we alternate between June Ritchie’s character not connecting with boyfriend whilst Sylvia Syms’ similarly fails to touch her father’s empathy centre.

The performances are so committed too especially from Syms as Billa (Sybilla) whose rage at her father, also well observed by William Hartnell, is sometimes hard to watch. There’s no meeting of minds as Billa tries to reach out but Dad is too intellectual and analytical to let her in. His idea of a day out is a lecture in the evening – juvenile delinquency, he’s a teacher – with an afternoon of Coriolanus at the Old Vic, anything to avoid actually spending time with his daughter, alone with themselves. Even if this is verging on cliché, Bill and Sylvia make it work really well, his still waters running so deep it takes her almost the entire film to get a rise out of him. Both as stubborn as each other and set in their rut only that’s not going to work as Billa has reached a crisis…

June Ritchie is not impressed.

June Ritchie I also find very compelling as Billa’s flat and workmate Ginnie, a young woman of restless energy who still hasn’t established her full sense of self. She’s impulsive, stubborn and unwilling to conform. Her boyfriend, Bob Shelbourne is played by Edward Judd who might be the only one slightly miscast as a spoilt and uncertain “mid-30s” nepo-baby, working in a senior position for his overpowering father, (Francis de Wolff) who controls his private life as much as his work having “arranged” his marriage to the prim Elizabeth (Sarah Lawson). Judd is indeed a little mature and rugged to play this naïve role and sometimes we don’t quite believe his motivations in risking everything for a 22-year-old “hostess”.

Ah, now there’s a word and it is, like other elements in the film, “coded”. Both women work in a nightclub as hostesses who are paid to drink and entertain the gentlemen who go there. There’s music and a compère played by Davy Kaye and lost of mostly middle-aged men eating and drinking with bored younger women… it’s not quite a “clip-joint” but the inference is certainly there that companionship can be bought and extended to a hotel or other external venue…

Written and directed by Wolf Rilla, perhaps best known for Village of the Damned (1960) an adaptation of John Wyndham’s classic sci-fi novel The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), the film is probably the earliest example of a lesbian relationship in British film although the coding is fairly deep on this one. Talking years later, Syms said she went as farm as she could to emphasise the love Billa has for Ginnie for as far as she was concerned that was what this was. There had been films with homosexual overtones before, Syms was in one of them, Victim with Dirk Bogarde, but as with the Victorian law banning only male same-sex relationships, women’s sexual attraction to women was largely ignored in this country.

Dignity Mr Judd, dignity...

Both women are let down by their men, and professionally, Bila, seems contemptuous of her clients. Ginnie is more easy going and she seems to be prepared to play along with her rich man although perhaps she is conflicted by her ultimate lack of feeling for him. She’s coasting along on the surface of sincerity and kicking back especially when Bob takes her to his father’s office for a “discussion” about finding her work so their relationship is more acceptable. Father is not impressed and suggests a role as a kind of business version of a hostess whilst the secretaries muse on her transactional relationship with their bosses’ son.

Dusty Verdict: Rilla directs at a pace as the events essentially take place over a day as confrontations are made unavoidable by one of the hazards of Bila’s trade and Bob’s determination to free himself from trophy wife and father’s money. It’s an unsettling ride with some lovely moments always undercut by the unspoken details of the women’s’ life and the harsh realities they face: what has driven them to this point we can only imagine and how can they go forward if only with each other?

Great job Bill!

Filmed on location in Maida Vale – their flat is over a shop on a smart Victorian Street, not cheap even then, and the surrounds over to Wyndham Place, elsewhere in Marylebone as well as Soho after dark – The World Ten Times Over does have a grittiness you won’t often find and its unrelenting narrative leaves you in no doubt that the women have harder choices to make.

There’s a surprise cameo from a very young Donald Sutherland as a club patron and also from a dour John Junkin playing a morose drinker in a Soho pub as Dad considers his daughter’s chosen profession. Junkin’s character bemoans the state of the nation in ways that feel very modern… next round’s on me John!

Sylvia chooses the score from All Night Long! Good choice!

 

 

Smuggling meaning… The Blood Spattered Bride (1972)

This film is deceptive and has clearly confounded a number of reviewers on horror sites and IMDB as it was intended to do to the Spanish censors at the time of release. To understand director and writer Vincente Aranda’s motives and meaning you need to consider the situation in Spain at the time, thirty-odd years after the fascists won the civil war and still some years away from the liberation that came following the death of Franco in 1975 and the restoration of democracy with the new Spanish Constitution of 1978. Liberalisation followed as did a new era of creative expression, La Movida Madrileña led by the likes of Pedro Almodóvar whose debut, Pepi, Luci, Bom (1980) reflects the spirit of the Madrid punk aesthetic of the time.

But in the early seventies, films were heavily censored and so artists like Aranda had to be careful in their critique of a society that was heavily regulated and which favoured “traditional” values and militaristic hypermasculinity. One reviewer, who I won’t quote directly, discusses this film’s feminism in terms of modern US/UK views on the “patriarchy” and “wokeness”… which is deeply a-historical and shows the dangers of the assumption that our entitled rights are guaranteed no matter what “nonsense” the youngsters favour. Make no mistake, women were second class citizens in Franco’s Spain and were expected to provide loyal family support, be mothers and barred from not only becoming judges but even testifying in trial.

Alexandra Bastedo

This film which seemingly fits into the lesbian vampire sub-genre, was made in a country in which homosexuality was illegal until 1979 with the fascists having established special prisons called "galerías de invertidos" ("galleries of deviants") for both sexes. In this film and in his earlier superb, deeply encoded masterpiece, The Exquisite Cadaver aka Las crueles (1969), Aranda covers same-sex relationships with levels of artifice which add enough element of doubt to avoid censorship. In both cases the English language versions of the films are more specific in meaning than the Spanish at least as far as I can tell from the subtitles!

Both films directly address the position of women in society and far from being an attack on the patriarchy that the modern right does not accept even exists, is a plea for basic rights and equalities that were absolutely denied.

OK, but what about the “blood spattered” bit? I hear you ask… well, there is a fair amount of blood and it is spattered throughout this film. Let me take you through it. The story if loosely based on the vampire novella Carmilla (1872) by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu that was also the inspiration for many films not least The Vampire Lovers (1970), Lust for a Vampire (1971) and Twins of Evil (1971) – the last two featuring Judy Matheson who worked with Aranda on Las crueles in which she is superb! Here, as with that film, Aranda is happy to centre the women in the narrative in ways that were atypical even in more liberal filmmaking environments.

Maribel Martín

The film begins with a young bride, Susan (Maribel Martín), still in her bridal gown, heads off on honeymoon with her, unnamed husband (Simón Andreu) simply “He” in the script to denote his everyman status or that patriarchy? Susan sees a beautiful woman (it’s the sublime Alexandra Bastedo!) wearing bright pink and watching from the shadows and shortly after has a nightmare about being sexually assaulted by a masked man in her hotel room. She tells her husband that she cannot remain at the hotel and so he takes her to his family pile in the country.

Once there Susan remarks how none of the family portraits are of women and her husband tells her, with no other explanation that they are downstairs in the basement. Once there they find a portrait of Carmilla who had apparently killed her husband on their wedding night… her face has been cut out of the painting. Susan’s wedding night passes with her husband rather energetically ripping her clothes from her body… how much events are seen from her heightened imaginative view we are unsure but that’s the director’s choice.

Susan has a vivid dream in which the woman in pink arrives to give her a long knife with an ornate handle, the woman encourages her to use it to kill her husband and then stands over his dead body to remove his manhood… there’s copious amounts of dream blood spattered everywhere. Susan awakes to find him awake and alive but the dagger is very much real and underneath her pillow.

Maribel Martín and Simón Andreu

Carol (Rosa Maria Rodriguez) the young daughter of the couple who look after the house is accused of hiding the knife and confesses even though the parents suspect she is hiding something. But there’s something about the knife and, again in a dream, the lady in pink arrives having collected the knife from Susan’s husband’s hiding place and the dream slaughter ensues. The following day Susan knows exactly where the knife is… Her husband begins to suspect that there is more to these dreams but the family doctor (Dean Selmier) reassures him that, essentially, his wife is tired and emotional and needs to rest. They both agree that Susan is "like a child" and clearly she has no part in decision-making about her own health.

Determined to really hide the dagger, the husband drives to the beach to bury it only to find a woman’s hand sticking out of the sand. He looks closer and sees the tube of a snorkel and then wipes away sand to reveal the still breathing face of a blonde woman. It’s an extraordinary moment – surrealist and unexpected – and the naked woman rises to reveal herself as Susan’s lady in pink, Mircala as she calls herself after accepting a lift back to the man’s house. Susan had been drawing this woman from memory and now, sketching Mircala she realises that they are one and the same.

Alexandra "Sandy" Bastedo uncovered on the beach

That night she leaves the marital bed to join Mircala in the woods only to return at dawn with the other woman apparently gone but with what looks like a bite mark on Susan’s neck. The young woman is not herself though and after Carol’s father (Ángel Lombarte) reveals that he had seen the two women engaging in some ritual in the woods, the Doctor follows the next night to see the same in the ruins of a church on a hill within the grounds of the estate. Next Mircala is teaching Carol’s class about the nature of human blood, and clearly is influencing the youngster as well as Susan.

From this point you’re on your own in terms of interpretation as the story heads towards a splattering conclusion that breaks down as women versus men. On the face of it the vampires must be stopped but is this what we’re really seeing as the weapons and the hunting devices are brought to bear in an attempt to keep the women in their place? Also… Mircala, hang on, is that an anagram!?

Some excellent framing from Aranda - amazingly, this was a four-week shoot!

Dusty Verdict: I watched the Mondo Macabra Blu-ray of The Blood Spattered Bride which includes a 4k transfer from a 35mm negative (hurrah!!) as well as outtakes, an alternate ending, a commentary from writers Samm Deighan and Kat Ellinger along with interviews, including one with Simón Andreu. Andreu has made many hundreds of films on TV and film and would rate this film as one of the dozen or so he is glad to have been involved in. He didn’t always see eye-to-eye with Aranda, who wanted more gore, more sex and explicitness, but perhaps he didn’t see the director’s hidden agenda? If the film translated well to the English-speaking market it would give him more revenue and also a bigger voice internationally at a time when the battle against Francosim was reaching a key stage.

Aranda’s direction makes the most of what has become an all-too-common storyline but which he uses to create mysteries and a haunting quality much as he did with Las Crueles. The actors all do well, despite Andreu’s comments, the director clearly was good with his players, and Martin, Bastedo and young Rodriguez are all very good as is he!

Highly recommended along with a study of Spanish history when the right wing really got a chance to govern as they wished. The Mondo Macabra Blu-ray is excellent and I only wish they or somebody would perform the same service with Las Crueles!!

PS Director Quentin Tarantino named a section in Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) after The Blood Spattered Bride. He knows…

 

 

 

Triumph TR4 sports car, oh my yes!!

 

 

 

Elvis acts… Flaming Star (1960)

When I was a child, one of the very first LPs I got was Elvis Sings Flaming Star (1968) by Elvis Presley. I knew it related to a film because of the cover but as I found out later, it’s a compilation and a mixed bunch at that with a raucous version of Tiger Man from the ’68 Comeback Special, along with a mix of all previously unreleased songs from various of his films recorded between 1960 and 1968. There’s the sublime blues of All I Needed Was the Rain and the rugged Chuck Berry cover, Too Much Monkey Business from Stay Away Joe (1968) (the latter unused), balanced against the saccharine Wonderful World from Live a Little, Love a Little (1968), then the more energetic The Yellow Rose of Texas, Do the Vega and Night Life from Viva Los Vegas (1964) plus the funky She’s a Machine from Easy Come, Easy Go (1967).

I was seven or eight but I knew Elvis was cooler than Herman and the Hermits, Englebert or Cliff… and, as I got older, I became the kind of Elvis snob who bemoans his work after the army years in favour of the Sun Sessions and his more “authentic” rock ‘n roll. Even his films seem to follow the same trajectory with Jailhouse Rock (1957) and King Creole (1957) ahead of almost everything save the hyper-energies of Viva Las Vega (1964) and, bless you Ann-Margaret for that one!

But what of Flaming Star the film? Fifty-odd years on it was time for me to complete the picture and watch the film of the song and, whilst that’s a little bit of a depressing stat, I found a lot to admire in this one and not least, the performance of Elvis Aaron Presley. This film is perhaps the most serious and dramatic he ever made, dealing as it does with the issue of mixed-race with Elvis playing Pacer, the son of a white father Sam "Pa" Burton (John McIntire) and a native American mother, Neddy played by the sublime Dolores del Río who was born in Mexico. Presley has long been rumoured to have had native American forebears and this adds an extra edge to a film that at the time caused some controversy not just in the USA but also in the British colonies with South Africa initially banning it before showing it only in segregated cinemas for a white audience only. Elsewhere, the film was permanently banned in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, with colonial government officials concerned about the impact on the native community after the Mau Mau uprisings of the fifties.

The film was indeed bold in its treatment of miscegenation, which was and sadly remains, a hot topic in certain parts of the USA and it’s also nuanced in the ways that racism affects and is part of pretty much every character. Pacer and his elder half-brother Clint (Steve Forrest) are as close as siblings could be but even they are torn by the issue when growing tensions between the local tribes and the white farmers grow and the younger man must decide which side he’s on.

Steve Forrest, John McIntyre, Barbara Eden, Dolores del Río and The King

Up till now Pacer has been accepted as part of the community and the film opens with a get-together with the Burtons and their friends including the excellent Barbara Eden as Clint’s sweetheart, Ros Pierce and the always tightly wound Richard Jaeckel as Angus Pierce. After the dinner Angus takes his fiancé Dorothy Howard (Anne Benton) back to her parent’s home only for them to be slaughtered by a raiding party. Angus manages to escape but the incident sparks fear and racial hatred throughout the local community. When Pacer and Clint ride into town they are confronted by Angus and his father (Karl Swenson) as even Ros bitterly suggests that they need to take a side in the face of this brutality.

What makes the film stand out is the fact that there are no two sides here but two cultures in which fear of the other is ingrained; there are lots of decent folk, like Ros and, even Clint, who carry the assumption just below their sense of decency, that the “Indians” are fundamentally less civilised than the whites. On the other side, we see not only the kindness and consideration of Neddy but also her rejection by her own people when she and Pacer go to hear them out. Pacer is also given the same ultimatum by the new chief, Buffalo Horn (Mexican actor, Rodolfo Acosta), who with a long list of grievances, many of his fellows killed by the settlers, reasons the same way as the Pierces.

 

In the middle of all this acts Elvis and with Don Siegel’s direction he gives probably his best performance with this grittiest of roles. He’s believable and committed both physically – all that army training no doubt helping in the action sequences – but also in the moments between the anger and action. There’s only one song sung within the film, accompanying himself on guitar during the get together at the start of the film, and the rest is the rock star as actor. The pressure was on to include four songs by Siegel resisted and was at pains to insist that Elvis did not appear professional in this scene, he played and sang in character and the film is all the better for it… the audience is reminded what he can do but then get taken down a more challenging path.

Quentin Tarantino has described this as not only a “truly great” '50s Western but also “… maybe the most brutally violent American Western of its era…” and it doesn’t shy away from some horrific moments and the tension mounts as characters are killed off with some regularity. There’s an uncomfortable moment when two cowboys come to ask for food when Pacer and his mother are alone. They quickly start insulting the “red boy” and his mother and, when Pacer steps out for some wood, try to sexually assault Neddy who repels one of them with a quick thump of her ladle. They encourage the men to go and, without his mother noticing, Pacer goes out the back door to exact instant retribution. Don’t mess with Elvis.

The divine Delores

 

As the film races to its conclusion there will be no easy answers and enough is left unsaid or implied to keep the audience thinking well beyond the end credits. It’s a thoughtful film that ranks alongside even classics such as The Searchers and The Unforgiven in terms of its subject matter if not overall quality. Flaming Star also looks fantastic with cinematography from five-time Academy Award nominee Charles G. Clarke capturing the full breadth of the outstanding locations and Seigel’s vision with characters often silhouetted next to lonesome buildings or staring out across the vast space, vulnerable and alive amidst the backdrop of chaotic humanity.

54 years between the song and the film… who knows where the time goes but this film is certainly worth yours and mine. Happy New Year!