I held off getting a blu-ray player for a long time.
I didn’t see the need. Drives are dead. DVDs are yesterday’s tech. Physical is so last century.
Then those wicked pork buns drew me back in.
See, physical is still the best way to get hold of anything that isn’t Main Street USA. If I want Hollywood, if I want anything North American really, it is easily had. There are any number (God, oh God, so many) ways to get that content. Streaming options beyond the dreams of avarice.
But.
If I want, say, The Untold Story, how do I get that? If I want any kind of non-English language media, how the hell do I get it? There must be Spanish, German, Italian streaming services, and I shall want a VPN at the very least to access them, never mind a working knowledge of the language to understand the menu options. Netflix is a gateway but it offers only a glimpse; besides, damned if I’m paying $22/month for yet another streaming service.
No, if I wanted my pork buns – hot from Terracotta in the UK – I’d have to get an external blu ray drive for my PC. Which is exactly what I did.
The Untold Story is a retelling of the infamous Eight Immortals killings in Macau. Two high stakes gamblers, one a restaurant owner with a family of ten, argued over debts. The restaurant owner Zheng Lin refused to pay Huang Zhiheng so Huang, in a fit of rage, tried to force Zheng to pay up. That went badly wrong and Huang killed Zheng’s whole family, thus becoming the owner of the Eight Immortals restaurant. Briefly.
How do you get rid of all those bodies?
Well, there’s a perfectly good restaurant in need of meat for its famous pork buns … or so the story goes. That part may be apocryphal, but it became part of the narrative.
The 1993 film version won awards and made a ton of money at the box office, but due to its graphic scenes of rape and murder – plus, of course, those buns – it was age restricted to 18 and up. It’s mildly notorious as a slasher, but difficult to get hold of. Unless you buy from an outlet like the folks at Terracotta.
Having seen it, my review:
It’s an odd little duck. The killing scenes are about as bloody and nasty as anything you’re going to see on screen and Anthony Wong Chau-sang as killer Wong Chi-hang is a standout. The comedy cops in hot pursuit are an incompetent bunch of bozos; they’re all stereotypes of one kind or other, led by their fearless Lieutenant Lee, and there’s a peculiar running gag where Lee parades around with a host of prostitutes on his arm much to the disgust of his only female subordinate Bo (Emily Kwan) who wants Lee all to herself. It doesn’t pair all that well with the main plot. That said, it does end in a stunning moment when all those same comedy cops realize that the pork buns they’ve been chowing down on free of charge came with a hidden cost.
Cheap, nasty, entertaining. It may be the unrelenting realism of the gore scenes (a stark contrast with modern cinema) but it really does stick in your mind in a way that few other films can.
If you want a good retelling of the pork buns saga I recommend Kento Bento’s version, which I believe is on Nebula; not sure as it’s been a while since I watched Nebula.
From a gaming POV there have been plenty of examples of suspicious meat on the menu. Sweeny Todd, Telltale’s Walking Dead (the comic too, for that matter, in a different plotline), Fritz Haarmann the Vampire of Hanover, who allegedly sold the meat of his victims on the black market – take your pick, really.
There haven’t been as many haunted restaurants.
There is a starting Call of Cthulhu scenario in the main book, The Haunting. It’s been around for donkey’s years. You can find it in the free-to-play Quick Start rules. In that scenario the investigators are called in to investigate a haunted house. So far, so normal – at least, normal in a Cthulhu-esque way.
What if it wasn’t a haunted house? What if it was a haunted restaurant? What would need to change?
Not much, really. The Keeper would need to change some of the details of the ground floor plan. But the plot would tick on regardless, and you’d have some interesting horror options – particularly in the kitchen. The family would live above the restaurant, so you wouldn’t have to change much about the upper floors.
The Macario family would be the ones running the restaurant of course; a nice little red-sauce-spaghetti joint. Until Mr. Macario decided to add a little extra to the Bolognese. Then there’s a discreet pause while the place is shut up for … let’s call it redecoration. At that point Mr. Knott, the building’s owner, calls in the investigators. He wants to rent the place out to new tenants but the restaurant’s reputation frightens off any interested parties. If they could just give the place the all-clear, he could rent the place out.
A potential plot change: as written Vittorio Macario, the former restauranteur, is locked up in the asylum. His only plot function is to hint at a way of defeating the evil.
Suppose he has a secondary function. Suppose he escapes from the asylum with one thought on his mind: a grand reopening of Macario’s Restaurant.
OK, you know the drill: this is where I recommend stuff for you to watch. So you're not as locked down as you were before; so you can go to the pub if you want. Will you? Methinks not. I suspect you're still in the market for entertainment, so have a shot at these.
Assume this is on Netflix, unless I say otherwise.
Time To Hunt
2020, Korea, crime, action, thriller
Small-time criminal Jun-seok leaves prison only to find that the loot he spent three year incarcerated over is effectively gone, as South Korea is economically devastated and it's now illegal to exchange the all-but-worthless Won for any other currency. He and his pals Jang-ho and Ki-hoon resolve to escape South Korea by knocking over a gambling house, since the house has stacks of US$ in its safe which they can use to relocate somewhere sunny and economically viable. So far so good, but they make a huge mistake; they steal the hard drives that contain the house's security footage, as a safety precaution Unfortunately for them the house could care less about the cash, but it cares a great deal about that footage as it contains evidence of their illicit doings. So psychopathic and extremely well-connected hitman Han is sent to kill them all.
The Hunt Is On.
Why see this? If you're a Night's Black Agents Director looking for inspiration, this is it. The Heist, followed by the extended Thrilling Chase. Plus some excellent gunfight and stuntwork moments, especially in the final crimsoned scenes on a deserted stretch of wasteland near the sea.
Betaal
2020, India,action, horror, zombies, TV show
An Indian army detachment nominally sent to disperse terrorists, but actually there to wipe out some inconvenient protestors on behalf of a corrupt land developer, finds more than they bargain for when zombies start chasing them down. The risen dead are all members of an East India Company regiment whose commanding officer led them to damnation in search of loot. Now the living soldiers have to hide out in the old fort the dead soldiers used to occupy, hoping to hold out till dawn. Zombies with guns? It's not going to go well for our heroes ...
A little cheesy but there are some great action scenes, and it's fun to see zombies used in a more imaginative way. Suchitra Pillai as Commander Tyagi is a standout.
The 9th Precinct
2019, Taiwan, film, action, cop drama, undead
Street cop Chen Chia-Hao finds himself inducted into the 9th Precinct when his partner is shot dead in front of him, only to discover that dead isn't as dead as he thought. The 9th Precinct exists to police ghosts, and to resolve their situation as best as possible so they can move on or at least stop bothering the living. It's a nice mix between Beetlejuice's dark humor and a conventional cop drama, as the Precinct cops realize that the increased undead activity they're dealing with is actually linked to a vampiric entity that's manipulating them all to its own ends.
Great action scenes, unexpectedly funny in places, and the lead actors are very charismatic and fun to watch.
Ladda Land
2011, Thai, film, ghosts, horror
Businessman Thee gets a promotion and decides it's time to move the family out to the suburbs. He has his eye on a magnificent detached house in Ladda Land, where everything is as perfect as can be. Except he soon discovers the neighbors are less than friendly, and his economic situation takes an unexpected downturn when his boss runs off with the company's funds. Economically trapped in a house he can't afford, Thee soon finds that his neighbors had good reason to be unfriendly - and that there was a lot about Ladda Land he didn't know before he bought a house there.
Remarkably chilling, and it has an elegant answer to the two classic questions: why don't you move away? and, given all the evidence, why do you think this place isn't haunted? Keepers need to watch this; some really brilliant scares, jump and otherwise.
Below Zero
2021, Spanish, film, crime, thriller
Cop and family man Martin has been transferred, and his first job at his new posting is to assist in a prisoner transport. Some of the cons in his truck are high-ranking mafia types, so the idea is to keep the whole process below the radar as much as possible. The truck and its escort will be moving through desolate, snowbound terrain at the crack of dawn, to avoid attention as well as traffic. Except someone knows, and that someone *really* wants to get his hands on one of the prisoners. Trouble begins when the escort is knocked out and the truck ambushed in the middle of nowhere, but things get much, much worse ...
Tense, but not a chase movie. Most of the action takes place inside the stalled transport truck, and if you'd told me ahead of time that this would be the perfect setting for what amounts to a locked room mystery I don't think I would have believed you. It almost makes me want to set a one-shot in one of those vans myself.
Pom Poko
1994, animated, film, Studio Ghibli
1960s Tokyo is expanding rapidly to meet the demand for suburban housing. This spells disaster for the tanuki, intelligent and supernaturally gifted raccoons who, up till now, have led peaceful lives in what was the countryside. Now their homes are under threat, either because those hills and fields are slated for development or because construction companies are illegally dumping construction waste onto whatever green spaces are left. It's time for all good tanuki to band together to fend off the humans, scaring the dickens out of those pesky construction workers with their shapeshifting powers.
OK, it's a Studio Ghibli, which means many of you will have heard of this one already. But have you watched it? Or is this something in your to-watch list, while more eye-catching fare like Porco Rosso and Spirited Away grab all the attention? If the latter, time to move this up in the queue. Brilliant ghost action; my favorite's the nupperibo scene, but there's plenty of options to pick from.
I just watched one of those top ten videos. You know the kind; you've probably seen far too many of them. I know I have. It got me thinking. I don't really have a top ten and I don't want one. There are far too many films out there for me to winnow down a list to just ten. Still, in these happy-go-lucky times when watching film is a solid go-to for folks who have to stay indoors, which ten horror films would I recommend to any horror fan?
Vampyr, 1932, Carl Theodor Dreyer. Semi-silent.
The silent film era birthed some of horror's finest talents. Directors and writers were finding their feet in a new medium, and an entirely new craft was invented: cameraman. Sometimes the results were less than satisfactory, but that didn't matter because you could put together a solid film with next to nothing in the bank. Many did.
One of the silent era's significant advantages was any film could be shown anywhere. Without language getting in the way, the audience could concentrate on what was happening on-screen. Sound broke that market, ushering in a new era where films had to stay in their home market to find any kind of success at all.
Dreyer, a Dane, was an orphan and had an unhappy childhood. He first worked as a journalist but switched to writing title cards for film, eventually graduating to film direction. Vampyr was very nearly his last feature, as it was a commercial failure and he was unable to find work for almost a decade afterward.
Vampyr is just at the cusp of silent and sound. Perhaps because of this Dreyer intentionally included as little dialogue as possible. Basing his plot on two Sheridan Le Fanu chillers, Carmilla and The Room in the Dragon Volant which features live burial, he cobbled together a serviceable plot about a young traveler who finds himself caught in a spectral drama. The plot's good but not great; what makes this film sing is its dreamlike imagery. The dancing shadows, the burial in the glass-fronted coffin, the corn mill - those stick with you years after watching Vampyr.
Cat People, 1942, Jacques Tourneur.
Produced by Val Lewton for RKO's low budget horror studio, this gives the horror world one unique artefact which I know you're familiar with: the jump scare. Or, as it's known then, the Lewton Bus, as the first known example involves a bus.
Young Serb immigrant to the US Irena Dubrovna fears the dark, because she thinks she knows what lives in the dark. The people she comes from tell stories about witches who can turn into savage beasts, a gift given them by Satan. Though good King John punished them for their many bloody crimes, a few survived and thrived in unhappy places up in the mountains. Irena's terrified their wickedness lives in her, and is careful never to become too exited, too passionate, in case their curse overwhelms her. Even so her American friend Oliver persuades her to marry him, only to bring doom on them both. She refuses to make love, terrified that passion will awake the beast. So he, in his misery and frustration, turns to his friend and work colleague Alice for a shoulder to cry on. Jealousy provokes Irena, and before long her passions get the better of her.
This, and Lewton's other films, show what can be done with imaginative camera work, clever editing, and above all a good story. If for no other reason than to see the very first jump scare, you should see this film.
Night of the Living Dead, 1968, George Romero.
Romero and his buddies, most of whom worked making cheapo commercials, became frustrated watching fourth and fifth rate horror flicks. Anyone could do better. Hell, they could do better. All they needed was a bunch of young people, plenty of blood and guts, and some nudity. That was what the kids in the drive-in wanted to see.
So that's what they set out to do, on a next-to-nothing budget. Movie legend says it was $12,000, though it ended up being more than that. About $60-70K in cash, plus extra in credit and equipment, or a little over $100K total. The main camera was second-hand, and the costumes came from Goodwill. The house was borrowed and due to be demolished, so they could do whatever they liked. For actors, they turned to friends and neighbors. Those friends and neighbors soon became investors - after all, the film's cash had to come from somewhere. Every single person you see on screen, zombies or otherwise, had at least a couple bucks invested. It was a hectic shoot, and nobody had only one job. You weren't just the woman who did make-up, you were the ghoul who ate the live bug and worked on sound too. They were young, inexperienced and ready for anything - and it shows.
John Russo, one of Romero's partners, is the zombie you see set on fire about halfway through the film as well as another zombie seen stabbed through the head by hero Ben. The fire story is one of my favorite bits of film trivia. Like pretty much every other special effects sequence the production team had very little idea how to do it. These days the sequence would be carefully plotted out for maximum safety. In Night of the Living Dead, they dressed Russo in several layers of baggy clothing and threw a Molotov cocktail near him. "I was trying to hit a stone out there," recalls Hardman. "Sometimes I hit it, and sometimes …I just can't believe, to this day, that I thought I could hit a stone that was really, what, twenty-four inches across, from the second floor window, over the porch roof." Some strategically pooled gasoline and a match would then set Russo on fire. It was Russo's plan. He felt it was unreasonable, as written, for Harry to throw all those Molotovs and not set a single zombie ablaze.
The idea was Russo'd catch fire and run off-shot, where he'd be extinguished. "I just went until I felt my hair burning." The look on people's faces as he ran past them, "this worried look mixed with glee," he remembered later, stuck with him the rest of his life.
Night of the Living Dead is my go-to example of how budget doesn't matter, experience doesn't matter, when making a movie. The only thing that counts is a willingness to get out there and shoot the film, no matter what.
Onibaba 1964, Kaneto Shindo.
Japan is wracked by civil war, and the country is falling apart. Two women, a mother and daughter-in-law whose husband has gone off to war, fend off starvation by killing straggler soldiers and selling their equipment to a middleman. Then one of their neighbors returns from the battlefield with stories to tell, and he settles in nearby. The son isn't coming home, he says. He was executed for stealing food.
The lonely young widow sneaks out to see the young man every chance she gets, much to the displeasure of her mother-in-law who blames him for her son's death. She concocts a plan: with the help of a hideous mask she stole from a samurai's corpse, she pretends to be a demon spirit to keep the daughter-in-law at home through fear.
Thus begins the reign of Onibaba: the Hag Woman.
This is how you do a lot with a little. There's practically no set. Everything takes place out in the rushes next to a river, and in two rough huts. The only complicated bit was the hole in which the women disposed of the corpses, and into which the mother-in-law has to crawl in order to steal the mask from the samurai's body. It was impossible to dig any kind of hole where they were, as it immediately filled in with water. So they built a 'hole' above ground in a kind of tower supported by scaffolding, in order to get the shot.
Yet those night sequences, particularly once Onibaba shows her masked face, will stick with you forever. I don't want to spoil, but I will say that the ending sequence in particular … brrrr. Chills.
Dead of Night 1945, various directors. Black and white.
An architect, Walter Craig, is asked to visit a house in the country to advise on alterations. When he gets there he discovers he's seen the place before, in a recurring nightmare. What's more all the people in the house are the people in his dream, except he can't remember exactly how it ends. He knows it ends badly ...
This is an anthology movie, one of the earliest - possibly the first. Each person in the house tries to reassure Craig by telling him their own stories: the young kid with a bad experience at a house party, the racing driver who had a nasty dream after a car crash, the young bride who got a very dangerous wedding present, the psychiatrist who once had a patient whose delusions might not have been delusions. Each story is a short sequence, perhaps ten minutes long. Some of the stories are almost pleasant. You may recognize one or two, as they're based on famous short fiction.
Then comes the end, when Walter Craig finds out what happens after the lights go out.
I couldn't find a version of the trailer that didn't give away significant plot points so if you want to see this unspoilt, don't search YouTube.
This is an Ealing Studio movie, and while Ealing is best known for its comedies it could produce serious dramas when it wanted to. This is a rare example of Ealing's chiller side, and it works very well. It's hokey and creaky at the start, and then it begins to tighten the screws. By the final moments like Walter Craig the audience is hopelessly ensnared. What happens when the lights go out? What happens when the lights go out?
R-Point, 2004, Kong Su-Chang.
In 1972 South Korean High Command in Vietnam is worried about a series of radio messages received from a platoon that High Command thinks is long dead. They say they're lost at Romeo-Point and beg for extraction. Is this some sort of hoax? An enemy broadcast? Can anyone really be alive out there?
Heroic Lieutenant Choi and a group of cooks and ne'er-do-wells is sent to find out. It's a kind of Lost Patrol of the malingering and useless. Nobody expects them to find anything, and God forbid actual effort's expended to find soldiers lost out in the jungle. Except they do find those missing soldiers, and much more besides, out at the old colonial plantation house at the heart of R-Point.
It's got all the war movie goodness you'd expect and in many ways it's not much more than solid B-class filmmaking. But. But. It does the right thing. It lets the atmosphere carry the film, not the special effects or gung-ho guns blasting heroics. That means the creeps start in your mind, and once your mind is caught everything else follows.
Apologies for the non-subtitled trailer, but while there are subtitled trailers none of them are HD, so I went for pretty over convenient.
Ju-On 2002, Takashi Shimizu.
OK, either this or the Ring was going to be on the list. I went for the Grudge because of the two it was the first one I saw, and stuck with me the longest. It's loosely based on a short by Lafcadio Hearn, who you may remember me mentioning before.
This is actually the third in the series, but the first to see a theatrical release. The shot above is one of the earliest in the film, where social worker Rika Nishina goes to a house to check on an invalid. The invalid's an elderly woman who's supposed to be in her son's care. Rika discovers the old woman abandoned, the son nowhere to be seen. But the house isn't empty ...
The core concept is that, in folklore, a person who dies while consumed in a fit of rage comes back as an angry ghost. In the original story that spirit is obsessed with completing a task, and will never stop until the task is complete. In Ju-On the ghosts just come back angry, not obsessed - but whoever they encounter is infected by their curse, and whoever those people encounter also become infected. It operates on zombie movie mechanics, where first bit spreads the contagion until everyone's bit.
Kudos to Rika for carrying on, by the way. Was it me, no amount of dedication to the job would have had me set foot in that house.
Atmosphere does a lot of the work here. It helps that this is very much a house-next-door story. Many spooky house dramas take place in cobwebbed mansions. This is a perfectly ordinary suburban house. What could possibly happen there?
Well ...
Seoul Station 2017, Yeon Sang-Ho.
A precursor to the better-known Train to Busan, this zombie story focuses on events the night before Busan. Things are just starting to kick off, and one man's tragedy soon turns into citywide chaos and devestation.
OK, so far so zombie but what makes this work is not the animation nor the gore - though there's plenty of gore. It works because Yeon Sang-Ho has the sense to focus on three characters: a runaway daughter turned prostitute, her wannabe-pimp boyfriend, and her raging father. Those three carry the film. It's never just about zombies. The boyfriend and father comb a city on the verge of collapse trying to save the daughter, and it's their struggle above all else that really makes this work.
In that sense it's a spiritual successor to Night of the Living Dead, which also had the sense to focus on the characters and not the action surrounding the characters. Sure there was plenty of gore in Night - those zombies were chomping down on actual guts sourced from a slaughterhouse, after all. That wasn't what the audience was interested in. The audience desperately wants to know who will live and who will die, and that's because the audience quickly becomes invested in the characters.
The same is true in Seoul Station. Right up to those last few terrifying minutes, you want to know what will happen next to those three lost souls.
Hardware, 1990, Richard Stanley.
I was in two minds whether to put this or Stanley's Dust Devil on the list. They're both excellent, atmospheric films but I've seen Hardware more often and keep wanting to see Hardware more often, so I suppose this is the better pick.
If you know Stanley it's probably because of his recent Lovecraftian release, The Color Out of Space. This is Stanley at the start of his career. Up till now he's been shooting music videos for the likes of Field of the Nephilim. He's just this minute come back from Afghanistan, where he shot a documentary about the Soviet-Afghan War and the USSR's withdrawal from that bloody conflict. He goes from the battlefield straight into Hardware, and you can see the influence it had on his story. Chunks of the shoot feel like goth rock tracks too.
Yet where this works is in the visuals. Like R-Point there's a lot of solid B-picture filmmaking on display, and the SFX are about as ropey as you'd expect from a cheapo Miramax product of the '90s. Like Night of the Living Dead Stanley opts for violence, blood and nudity as those sell. However the visuals are what really makes it sing, just as they do for Vampyr.
For a very long time controversy prevented this getting a DVD release, but it finally became available in 2009. It can be difficult to find, but if you do get a copy, settle in for a midnight showing with a six-pack to hand. You won't regret it.
That's it from me! Next week, something completely different.
Recently Hurricane Humberto breezed past the island, and when that sort of thing happens I download a horror film and break out the beer. This time, I figured I'd try something different, and went for Jim Jarmusch's comedic zombie apocalypse feature, The Dead Don't Die.
Starring a ton of people, set in an unmemorable little town called Centerville, featuring everyone's favorite ghoul.
If you don't want spoilers, stop reading now. I didn't like it. I didn't laugh once. Make of that what you will.
Now, on with the show.
Bill Murray, Chloe Sevigny and Adam Driver are cops in a town that makes no sense. Centerville's big enough to have three cops, a juvenile correctional facility, a diner, a motel, a cemetery, a funeral parlor, a gas station-cum-memorabilia-store, and a hardware store. Nobody actually lives there, or if they do, you couldn't tell it from this movie.
There's one point, where Murray and Driver are in the squad car headed back to home base, and they're discussing whether or not to warn people the zombies are coming. They decide warning people is a good idea. Then Driver says, "You know, we passed by Farmer Miller's place, back there. Should we go warn him?" To which Murray replies, "No, Miller's an asshole." Which is fine so far as it goes, except, as they're delivering this witty banter, they're passing by half a dozen other houses, all of which presumably have people living in them who might like to know about the impending apocalypse. I guess those folks were assholes too.
Into this town pour an assortment of misfits, including, but not limited to, a woodlands hermit (Tom Waits), Selena Gomez and a pair of hipster sidekicks, passing through, Tilda Swinton in the Kill Bill funeral director role, Iggy Pop and Sara Driver as coffee-obsessed zombies, and, and, and, and … oh dear God, there are too many warm bodies in this movie about dead bodies.
This is the film's besetting sin. With so many people doing so many things, nobody, bar Murry and Driver, gets more than two minutes' screen time, much of which is wasted. I lost track of the number of times I said to myself, 'you could cut that line. And that line. This entire bit of business could be cut. Why are we spending any time in the JDC? None of these characters are relevant to the plot or doing anything interesting. They're just reacting to what's on the TV screen - any other cast member could do what they're doing. Cut this. Cut that. Cut the other thing." All of which makes the film feel bloated, and given the damn mess is 1 hour 44 minutes long in an industry that's tending towards two hour films, that's an achievement.
Frankly, towards the end I began to wonder whether the whole thing wasn't some misguided scheme on Jarmusch's part, to give fifty or sixty of his actor friends a paycheck and, for the kids, something to put in their showreel.
The actor I feel sorriest for is Chloe Sevigny, who's the third wheel in the cop shop and never gets to do anything cool, or have any big scenes. I hoped there'd be at least one defining moment before the inevitable, but I guess there wasn't enough time to shoehorn that in. Plenty of time to shove in another dead-on-arrival George Romero reference, though.
None of the actors seemed to be having any fun. Their whole shtick was deadpan delivery, so I suppose that's a partial explanation. But Tilda Swinton really seemed to revel in it, and so did Iggy Pop, where Tom Waits drifted, disconnected, and Murray just looked bored, most of the time. He was much more engaged in Zombieland. Waits was more fun to watch in Buster Scruggs. What the hell went wrong on the way to … wherever this is supposed to be?
That's the central problem. This is a film that doesn't know where, or what, it wants to be. It tells a few jokes, and shuffles off the stage. But a comedian that wants her career to last more than five minutes doesn't tell a few disconnected giggles and hope for the best. That comedian puts together a whole routine, and polishes it to a mirror shine. Till they can tell it in their sleep. This film is unpolished. It's a bloody mess.
So, bottom line: if you like Jarmusch's work and are prepared to sit through a flatulent, overcooked garbage pile featuring just about every single indie film maven you can think of, and others whose names you can't quite remember but are sure were great in that thing with the stuff, then by all means, see The Dead Don't Die.
Otherwise, avoid like the plague.
Side note: I see Hurricane Jerry's due to visit Bermuda next week. I wonder what I'll rent?
This is going to be the last post for the year, and I want to round off 2017 by taking a failed idea and playing with it: The Vault, a recent horror release. A desperate band of robbers try to take millions from what ought to be an easy target, only to discover that this vault is the last one they ought to have broken into.
It's not good. It's not truly awful either, though that's mainly down to the three leads. Taryn Manning's good as the crazed, strung-out robber, Francesca Eastwood keeps the plot moving forward as the clued-in, grounded one, and James Franco as the bank manager with a secret is the rock holding all this together.
There are several problems here. The first is the plot, which is bloody awful from about the midway point onwards. If you can't guess what's going to happen next, you haven't seen many horror films since, say, 1970. It explains too much, which is a ridiculous mistake to make. Even the music conspires against it, being the same collection of bland, obvious TA-DAAH! horror stings you can buy for $0.99 from a sound effects collection. The only standout is Crimson and Clover, a 1968 single, and I couldn't tell you why it's there.
Well, maybe I can. While looking up this song's Wiki entry I notice that it's also featured on the Bates Motel series, Sons of Anarchy, In Plain Sight, crime drama Blood Ties (which went to Cannes), and a few other 2000-era film & television references. I suspect it's become one of those go-to songs that sound editors desperate for something vaguely spooky and evocative reach for. I'm guessing it's cheap, too.
I fell asleep sporadically for the last 40-odd minutes of the film, which meant I stopped keeping track of who was doing what to whom - not that it mattered much. It was obvious who was going to live to see the final reel and who was not.
I knew absolutely nothing about this film before deciding to see it, not even the trailer. However the puff line accompanying the Netflix entry reminded me of a much better film, R-Point, a K-horror war movie in which an army unit is sent to rescue a group of soldiers lost behind enemy lines, only to find that very little is as it seems.
It's the phone message that caught me. R-Point starts when the Korean top brass hears a radio SOS, from soldiers who've been dead for months - or are they? Whereas in The Vault everything goes to hell for the robbers when someone calls the police, again and again and again - but who is it?
Kim Newman, in his review for Empire, says that The Vault is 'too timid to go all-out weird,' which definitely is not R-Point's problem. That one's weird almost from the get-go. If you're looking for a horror film to round out your year, R-Point is the one I'd heartily recommend.
However I started this by saying I wanted to play with The Vault, so with that in mind, let's start playing. Assume this is a one-shot, say for Fear Itself. What happens next?
There are some things The Vault gets very right. One is anchoring the nasty in a particular mismatched time period, in this case the 1980s. There aren't many 2017-period tags until about ten minutes in, and everything looked suitably pastel and old-fashioned, so at the start I was almost convinced the film was set in the 1980s. That allows a Keeper to start laying pipe with period-specific material. If ever you're going to use music in the background, now's the time. If the session is set in the 2000s, the players are going to get freaked if all they get on the radio or TV is period material. You can swipe old radio stings and other audio from YouTube and similar places, but the key here is to keep it subtle at first, with something that might not be noticed - like one of those radio stings. Then hit them with something obviously out of place later.
The players, in a one-off, can be a mix of robbers and hostages. This is one of those hotbeds of suspicion concepts that's crying out for a Trust mechanic of some kind, which is the one thing Fear Itself lacks, but it shouldn't be difficult to import one from another source - say, Night's Black Agents.
In R-Point, one of the earliest scares comes when the platoon takes a photo of the group early on, only to discover later that one of the people in that photo wasn't really there at all. That's what you should be aiming for with this scenario seed. Imagine what it would be like to go into the vault with a five-person crew, only to discover later that there were only four of you all along. At least one of the team ought to be on the Enemy's side, but what that means exactly is up to the Keeper. Has this person been suborned, or were they always this way?
With all that in mind, let's have a scenario seed:
This bank is being robbed. Armed thieves have locked the place down, taken the customers and tellers hostage, and are making their way to the vault. Except there isn't any money there, and the cops are closing in ...
1) The Bank never existed in the first place. There was a Bank in that location back in 1983, but during a botched robbery someone set off an explosion that took out everyone inside, and the building's been vacant ever since. Only the most desperate homeless live in that eerie, bombed-out structure. The robbers are from out of town, which is why they don't know that - or at least, most of them don't know that, though their man on the inside might. Once inside, the robbers can't leave; the only way out is through the vault, but it's anyone's guess as to where that door leads.
2) The Bank's vault safeguards something incredibly dangerous, like the Devil, or impossibly valuable, like a jar with someone's soul in it. One of the robbers knows this, and has persuaded the others to help him get in there. What the other robbers and bank staff don't appreciate is, the closer the robbers get to their goal, the more elaborate and deadly the defenses become. Doors become hungry mouths, electrical cords reach out and strangle, and the wall of Most Valuable Employee pictures just gets longer and longer with each death.
3) The security cameras see everything, everywhere, and record every move. Some of the footage is from the 1980s, some from the 1990s, some from the 2000s - but that doesn't matter. Some is from a bank in San Francisco, some from San Antonio, and some from Paris, France - but that doesn't matter. This is an amalgam of robberies, faithfully recorded by all the cameras, and the feed is playing into the Security Room, where it's all spliced together. Who is in that room? Why are these five robbers and a handful of customers and tellers trapped here, and how will it end?
The Bermuda International Film Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. I don't often get a chance to enjoy the movies on offer, and this year wasn't an exception, but I did make an effort to see the independent short films. Monday's lineup called itself Dead? Undead? Don't Know ...? which should give you a great big clue as to the theme.
No, it was not banana cream pies. Shame on you. Shame on us all.
So this time out I thought I'd give a short review of each so that if you come into close contact with one of these snaggle-toothed orphan children you know what to expect.
As part of the audience choice short film awards we were invited to vote for our favorites, on a score from 1 (snail vomit) to 4 (cinema gold). I present you with my votes as I remember them, and why.
Alfred J Hemlock(Australia, director Edward Lyons, who also co-wrote the screenplay). Emily (Renaye Loryman) is comprehensively dumped by the side of the road by her jackass boyfriend, and wishes she were dead. Enter Alfred J Hemlock (Tristan Mckinnon), demon and king of the road, who offers her a chance to get the death she craves.
Had I seen the trailer before seeing the film I wouldn't have been so disappointed - and I would still have been disappointed. See, I was half-hoping that, what with its name being Alfred J Hemlock, I was about to see a Hitchcock-style chiller. The man's name was Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock after all; the connection seemed obvious to me. Alas we were presented instead with someone's substandard Johnny Depp impression. Only 14 minutes long, but a substantial wasted chunk of those 14 minutes is devoted to a silly chase montage. Plus, Oh Susannah? Why? You're in Australia for God's sake; if you're going to go cheesy, you might just as well sing Waltzing Matilda. At least that has a ghost story in it.
Score: 2, and that only because the SFX are reasonable, though we don't get too many SFX moments.
A Family of Ghosts (Canada, dir Shannon Kohli). A turn of the last century tale in which a privileged young woman's ghostly grandparents frustrate her love life. The ghosts take against her music teacher suitor and do their best to force him away, but is this what's best for her? With Kacey Rohl as Abigail, Jordan Burtchett as Thomas, and Mary Black, Gwyneth Walsh, Alec Willows and Chris Button as both sets of grandparents.
Interesting, well thought-out and charmingly shot on historic location, all for about a thousand Canadian smackers according to IMDB. It rather resembles the love child of a museum and an amateur dramatics society. I enjoyed it, but I wonder how long it will stick around in my brain before it vanishes into the void. Charming yes, but there's not a lot of there there. In many ways it reminds me of those period dramas the BBC used to do, and which Canadian TV now produces excellent examples of. High production values, but nothing to really sink your teeth into. Plus, not sure why ghost dog got a screen credit; he didn't even poop on anyone's shoes.
Score: 3, as the production values are high even if the story is insubstantial.
Ernie (US, dir Hadley Hillel). Ernie (Gary Gorland), disappointed in life, resolves to commit suicide, only to find himself bonding with the neighbor's kid upstairs thanks to a hole in the ceiling of Ernie's apartment. Undoubtedly the most stylized film of the bunch, devotees of Jan Svankmajer's animation will find a lot to love in the meticulous cardboard-build set and properties. Every single thing, whatever it may be, is made either of cardboard or paper, giving the film an otherworldly quality.
Judging by the little I can see of Hillel's previous work online, I'm guessing Hillel has a mild - maybe not so mild - obsession with misfit loners, such as our protagonist Ernie. The relationship between Ernie and the child, who save each other, is perfectly realized and well thought out.
My difficulty is plot-related. We start with a heavily narrated portion, perhaps 4 out of the film's 17 minute total, describing Ernie's early life, his hatred of Swedish meatballs, his father's failing meatball business, the climactic fiery destruction of his meatball stand - and fire assumes a special significance when the entire set is cardboard and paper.
Yet after the burnt-out remains are dealt with we fast forward about sixty years to the point where Ernie's on the brink of suicide. It's a huge leap, and I felt as though I'd wasted my time paying attention to the meatball stand, the father, the narrator or anything to do with the sequence when I realized it would never be referred to again. Sure, it gave Ernie backstory, but the audience didn't need Ernie's backstory. The director could have cut that entire bit out and the film still would have made perfect sense. Hell, the director ought to have cut that entire sequence out; it just delays the start of the narrative. I note this film won a Tacoma Film Festival award. I'm guessing that's thanks to its charming set design, not its storytelling.
Score: 2, as I bitterly resent the wasted prologue.
Memento Mori(UK, dir Scott James Bassett). A young woman (Alexandra Roach) goes on a blind date, and gets a marriage proposal from someone rather like death (Joel Fry). Game of Thrones fans will recognize Fry as one of the minor recurring characters from Season 5, Hizdahr zo Loraq. Alexandra Roach hasn't quite got the same fantasy cred, but she's got a lot of UK TV appearances to her name.
This one impressed me, largely because of the meticulous set dressing - and yes I know that sounds like faint praise, but if you'd seen it you'd say the same I wager. There's something about that atmosphere-drenched setting that makes anything seem possible. But if I were handing out acting awards they'd all go to Fry, whose charismatic performance steals the show. There's something about him that reminds me of Toshiro Mifune; I think it's a combination of that deep voice and his scraggle beard. Give this actor larger roles, please; I'd love to see what he can do.
The ending's predictable but the journey to get there is compact, well designed and cleverly plotted. Unlike many of the other films on this list, none of its 19 minutes are wasted. Fry's alien attitude makes him feel far more like an otherworldly being than Alfred J Hemlock, and though I haven't spent much time talking about Roach's performance trust me when I say that it's very good - just not as memorable as Fry's.
Score: 4. All the 4.
Lost Souls (France/UK, dir Fabrice Pierre, who also wrote the script). A depressed taxi driver (Dean Christie) finds help from an unexpected customer (Sophie Delora Jones). Not much supernatural in this one; it is what it says on the tin. Methinks it scraped into the supernatural section on account of its title.
A whopping 26 minutes long, and unlike Memento Mori at least half of that run time is wasted. Plus the grand climax is Dean Christie telling Sophie Jones why his character's so fucked up, in a scene that lasts about a minute and a half of screen time.
As a drama it works inasmuch as I understand why the main character needs help and I can see how he gets there, but my problem with the plot is the main character does nothing. He picks people up in his cab, they chat, they leave, he goes on to the next customer. At no point does he take positive action to resolve any of his problems, until finally he's prodded into action by his last fare of the night, a prostitute who needs to go to hospital but who nevertheless has time to talk Christie down from the metaphorical window ledge.
I don't even know why Jones' character needs to go to hospital. It's suggested that a customer beat her up, but there's not much on show to demonstrate that. Frankly, she's only there to drop a few words of wisdom in Christie's ear, and to hell with any problems her character might have, whether it's a black eye or a bust appendix.
This one desperately needed a severe edit, and I can't help but notice Fabrice Pierre is listed as director, screenwriter and one of the two producers. This is someone who couldn't bear to kill his darlings, so his darlings killed him instead.
Score: 1. And may those snails puke forever and ever, amen.
Anyway, trust you enjoyed this departure from the norm. If you get a chance to see Memento Mori or A Family of Ghosts, please do. Ernie also has my begrudging recommendation, on grounds of style alone; it looks gorgeous even if the prologue annoys the hell out of me. Avoid the other two like the plague, unless you've a tolerance for time wasters.
Later this Sunday I'm going to see The Night Watchmen - the executive producer's Bermudian, which is why it's showing down here on what's called Bermovie Day - so this post may get an update, but probably not a Sunday update unless it's truly inspiring. Which it might be, I don't know.
The Night Watchmen(2017, dir Mitchell Altieri). Three inept night watchmen, aided by a young rookie and a fearless tabloid journalist - ye Gods, I'm not making this up, it's how the producers bill the wretched thing, and since when are tabloid journalists fearless? - fight an epic battle to save their lives. A mistaken warehouse delivery unleashes a horde of hungry vampires. These unlikely heroes must not only save themselves but also stop the scourge that threatens to take over the city of Baltimore.
Judging by the trailer this is one part Salem's Lot to nine parts 28 Days Later. How good is it? Well ...
It's as dumb as a dead donkey, but it's funny.
Blimpo the clown and his entire clown posse get wiped out while on a trip to Romania, in a mysterious bat-related incident. The group is shipped back home to Baltimore and most are sent to the morgue, apart from Blimpo who gets relocated because the morgue and the newspaper offices next door - on Stoker Street and yes I did see what you did there movie - have similar addresses. Someone cracks open the coffin to steal Blimpo's clown nose, and it's all downhill from there.
Not to be seen by those suffering from coulrophobia. No, no, pass, trust me.
The film gets a bit tired of itself at the midway mark, and all of the really good jokes are in the first half. There are some brilliant moments; my personal favorite is when Blimpo, as Clown King, summons his killer clowns from the morgue next door by standing at the window and blowing his little clown horn. There's a recurring gag about corpses voiding their bowels which crops up every time they stake a vampire, and believe me when I say the heroes do that a lot. But it loses its grip once the situation is established and the heroes have to decide what to do.
The acting's decent, the SFX are high quality amateur stuff, and the plot bangs along quickly for the most part. It's a tribute to the trio of amateurs who came together to make it that it works, mostly. It's never going to win an Oscar but it deserves and will probably get a distribution deal. Which is all an aspiring film maker can hope for, really.
I first saw Anna May Wong in the silent British classic Piccadilly, where she plays the doomed love interest of the man who later is accused of her murder.
It's a brilliant performance, and a remarkably fun movie. At its heart it's nothing but a potboiler, set in seedy Soho clubland. Wong plays Shosho, a Chinese dishwasher in the Club kitchens who unexpectedly rockets to stardom thanks to her dancing skills, only to fall in love with the Club's owner, Wilmot. Wilmot's former lover Mabel confronts her rival in Shosho's apartment, and later the next day Shosho is found shot to death. Was it Wilmot, Mabel or someone else who killed the dancing star?
As a movie I highly recommend it first and foremost because it's a good film, and second because it's one of the few times Wong was allowed to act in a sympathetic role. As a Chinese American, she often played villain roles, and the rules of the day prevented her from ever having an on-screen kiss from a white actor, which meant she'd little chance of playing the romantic female lead.
Wong's family arrived in California in the 1850s. Her father was a prosperous laundry owner, and Wong was the second of his seven children, born in 1905 and raised in Los Angeles. It was just the right time; the moving picture business was taking its baby steps, and you couldn't walk two feet in Los Angeles at that time without seeing some poverty row film unit shooting reel for a knockabout comedy or crime drama. Wong soon became hooked on movies, spending lunch money on cinema tickets and following every film shoot she could, practicing the actors' moves when she went home.
Her parents were less than thrilled. Her father wanted her to marry a good Cantonese man and help with the family business, but Wong wanted to be a film star, and even as early as 9 years old she begged directors working in her neighborhood for film parts. Soon she was a jobbing extra, landing her first role in 1919's The Red Lantern.
By 1921 she'd dropped out of high school to pursue the dream, allowing herself ten years to make it big, or bust out. In 1922 she landed her first film lead role, and never looked back.
However she never really fit in either. She wanted to be an American, a jazz baby, a flapper. She talked the talk and danced up a storm, but to her white contemporaries she would always be Chinese. That limited the roles she'd be offered, and it only got worse as the decade went on. Early cinema was an unregulated wonderland, but in the aftermath of the Fatty Arbuckle sex scandal Hollywood became more prudish - outwardly, anyway. This meant, among other things, not even the slightest hint of miscegenation. This cost Wong several lead parts, demoting her to gangster's moll or Dragon Lady instead.
If an Asian role was the lead, it wouldn't go to Wong; it would go to a white actress, as happened later in the 1930s with Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth. Wong was bitterly disappointed to see the meaty star role go to someone who could legally kiss white lead Paul Muni, who was playing Asian character Wang Lung. Instead Wong, the only actual Asian in the cast, was offered the part of Lotus - the only unsympathetic role in a plot stuffed with Asian characters.
Incidentally for those of you shaking their head and muttering, 'God, they were so racist back then,' bear in mind that far too little has changed in the years since. We're still talking about whitewashing today, almost a century later. Asian actors working in Western film and television still have to fit a certain stereotype if they want to get parts. The only real difference is the stereotype has changed.
"We're the information givers," said Yale School of Acting graduate Pun Bandu in a 2017 article. "We're the geeks. We're the prostitutes. We're so tired of seeing ourselves in these roles."
Meanwhile back in the 1920s things weren't any better for Wong on the other side of the ocean. Chinese audiences resented her American behavior, and seethed at her public persona. Affairs with white men, like director Tod Browning - and he thirty nine years old to her tender sixteen? This wasn't the behavior of a good Chinese girl.
Frustrated at the lack of opportunity in her native California she upped sticks in the middle 1920s and went to Europe seeking her fortune. She did well in Germany with Schmutziges Geldand Pavement Butterfly, rubbing elbows with the likes of Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl. When she went across the water to England she starred on stage with Lawrence Olivier, and made Piccadilly, her last silent drama. Her first talkie was a British film, The Flame of Love(also known as Road to Dishonor) in which she finally got to kiss a white man on screen - only to have the scene cut for non-British audiences.
When Hollywood started poaching European talent in the early 1930s Wong came back to Los Angeles, only to find that things hadn't changed all that much while she'd been away. After playing a couple Dragon Lady roles she went back to Europe, only to find herself drawn to Los Angeles again at the prospect of a role in the 1937 adaptation of Pearl S. Buck's Pulitzer-winning novel about life in China prior to the Great War.
That ended in disappointment for Wong, who went to China on an extended tour only to discover that her Chinese critics were no more favorable than the American variety. To the Chinese Wong was a disgrace, a sexually charged scandal on legs. Friends with Dietrich? Then Wong must be a lesbian. Linked with older men? Then she must be a prostitute. The real problem was she was too American for Chinese audiences, and they let her know it. She eventually won over the Chinese press, but it was hard going - not that Wong was intimidated by hard going.
The war intervened, and Wong found herself in a string of patriotic B-pictures, always a heroine bashing the Japanese. She devoted herself, when not working, to war relief, sending as much money and support as possible to benefit Chinese refugees.
Later, the war over, Wong invested in real estate, and lived quietly with her surviving family. She had a minor post-war film role, in the 1949 noir B-picture Impact, and the lead in a TV detective series The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong, which was cancelled after a single season and sadly no longer exists in any format. She appeared in some documentary work and some TV roles in the 1950s, but no leads and no film work. Her last film appearance was in 1960's Portrait in Black in which she plays the maid, Tawny. She got a star on the Boardwalk in 1960, and died of a heart attack in 1961, at the age of 56.
So let's talk about gamification.
As a walk-on NPC Wong could appear in Call of Cthulhu, Trail, or any of the 1930s era settings. As she travels extensively she could as easily be part of a Dreamhounds game as Bookhounds, or be encountered en route to some exotic location, say on a cruise liner or a very famous train. She's equally at home in modest as well as luxurious circumstances, and speaks many languages.
Her main attraction to the Keeper is that she knows almost everyone, in the States and abroad. She's on first name terms with a wide variety of people, from media moguls and film directors to dancers, composers, stage managers, restauranteurs, and many more. She can be a very useful link between the player characters and the local Chinese community, which might not otherwise open its doors to interfering investigator types. She can introduce them to artists, directors, powerful men. She's hobnobbed with everyone from the Los Angeles elite to the rising stars of Hitler's Germany. She's worked with the likes of Douglas Fairbanks and Alfred Hitchcock, as well as innumerable forgotten B-actors and directors. You name it, she's done it, or been there and loved every minute.
Perhaps the most obvious setting for her to appear in is the One-to-One Dex Raymond adventures, set in 1930s Los Angeles. Wong could drift in and out of Dex's life, always on her way somewhere else hoping for her big role, always frustrated at her lack of opportunities.
As a One-to-One Source her skills favor performance, language, dance and high society. She can open many doors for other people, even doors that would remain frustratingly closed to her. However she's also got a strong business sense, which means she could be helpful in Bargain tests, and her extensive knowledge of Chinese culture and history gives her some Art History or History bonuses when dealing with Chinese culture.
For that matter there are few who know the film business quite like she does; she was there, on the spot, when it was being born. Any scuttlebutt or juicy bit of gossip relating to times long past - who was sleeping with who, who made shady deals to get financing, who worked in Poverty Row but likes to pretend they didn't now they've made it - is grist to her mill.
As a film nut I often seek out interesting movie houses, film festivals and big screen entertainment, all the more because I don't get much chance to do so down here. I thought this time out I'd examine some classic cinema, and to give this a gaming twist I'd see which of these films is best suited to a Director/Keeper.
I'm going to concentrate on the films of British genius Alfred Hitchcock, whose big screen career stretches from the early days of silent film up to the 1970s. I may dwell on some of his slightly more obscure works, since I figure you've probably already seen Psycho at least once. I'm not going to consider films in which he wasn't the director, and if you're hoping I've somehow found one of his lost films, sorry, but no. I'm not that lucky.
Without further ado:
Sabotage(aka The Woman Alone). This 1936 drama stars Oskar Homolka as saboteur Karl Anton Verloc, Sylvia Sidney as his wife, John Loder as heroic detective Sergeant Ted Spencer, and child actor Desmond Tester as young Stevie. Karl is an agent for hire who agrees to carry out acts of sabotage in London. We first see him tampering with a power station, temporarily knocking it out. He's expecting a big reward for this but is disappointed to learn his bosses aren't best pleased, as his stunt did nothing except make London laugh when they wanted London terrified. This leads them to demand greater things of Verloc, and they supply him with a bomb which Verloc is supposed to plant at a train station. However Verloc gets nervous and, thinking he'll be suspected, he gives the disguised bomb to young Stevie to deliver instead. This kicks off one of the most suspenseful scenes in British cinema as Stevie, all unknowing, tries to get to his destination in time. We watch him get lost, get delayed, and all the while are screaming inside because at any moment the bomb could go off.
Bookhounds Keepers need to see this film for its accurate and fascinating portrayal of London in the 1930s, particularly the street scenes.
As an espionage thriller it's remarkable for three things:
Its portrayal of its antiheroes as misanthropic, greedy men, which is a more accurate depiction of actual traitors and spies than usually seen on film.
Its portrayal of hero Ted Spencer, as a reminder of how we used to imagine the heroes of this kind of thriller. An archetype soon to be replaced by the likes of Michael Caine's Harry Palmer, Spencer is more a Bulldog Drummond type, but unlike the stock hero he abandons his principles pretty quickly when Mrs Verloc, the woman he loves, is in danger.
The bomb-maker, who has to be seen to be believed.
The Lady Vanishes. This 1938 tale sees Margaret Lockwood as carefree dilettante Iris Henderson thrust headfirst into mystery and death aboard a luxury train that might as well be the Orient Express. She's travelling across Europe back to England so she can marry a blue-blooded idiot, but falls in with octogenarian Miss Froy, a charming old lady who vanishes mysteriously. Iris' attempts to find out what happened to her are frustrated when all her fellow passengers say they've never heard of or seen Miss Froy, and Iris is accused of making the whole thing up. Knife-wielding magicians and sinister bandaged men follow in quick succession, as Iris dodges assassins and soldiers in her search for the truth.
If you've ever wanted to run Horror on the Orient Express, this is the movie for you.
The first appearance of comedy stock British characters Charters and Caldicott, who appear in several other films including wartime espionage drama Night Train to Munich. A master-class in how to make supporting characters memorable.
Saboteur. A wartime drama which kicks off with the immolation of a bomber factory, and one of the most cold-blooded cinematic killings of all time. As the factory goes up in flames, two would-be heroes rush to the rescue. The villain passes one of them a fire extinguisher, which is immediately grabbed by his friend who rushes in to fight the blaze. Unfortunately for him the extinguisher's actually full of gasoline, and he dies in a ball of flame. Admittedly as an assassination it's a bit cheesy - how did the villain know to have a trick fire extinguisher on hand at that exact moment? - but as a piece of cinema it's undeniably effective. Which is emblematic of the movie as a whole; because it's filmed in 1942 when everyone's at their patriotic height - filming started two weeks after Pearl Harbor - there are any number of Truly Heroic Moments And Brave Speeches, but that doesn't prevent this being a brilliant film. The climax alone, atop the Statue of Liberty, is worth the price of admission.
If Lady Vanishes is a master-class in making supporting characters memorable, this is a master-class in villainy. One character in particular, whose name I shan't mention as it might spoil his entrance - one of the best introductions of a major character I've ever seen - is superb. Charming, persuasive, and utterly ruthless, his defense of totalitarianism is chilling. Moreover for a wartime film about sabotage there isn't a racist Japanese or German stereotype in it, which is remarkable in and of itself.
As luck would have it I'm reading Shermer's The Science of Good and Evil, and thought this was worth repeating: 'The real horror of Himmler is not that he was unusual or unique but that he was in many ways quite ordinary, and that he could have lived out his life as a chicken farmer, a good neighbor with perhaps some antiquated ideas about people.'
Hitchcock's known for gorgeous set-pieces, but that moment atop Lady Liberty is undoubtedly one of his best. Better, I'd say, than a very similar moment in North By Northwest, though the latter film is more well known.
Night's Black Agents Directors wondering what Dust mode looks like on film need look no further. One scene in particular, the murder of a security man, epitomizes the whole gruesome, exhausting business.
Ever wonder what it's like to create Thrilling Contest scenes that aren't car chases or acrobatic parkour leaps from rooftop to rooftop? See how you can have a theoretical physics Thrilling Contest, or a cat-and-mouse with two buses.
The race to the border is the very essence of an extended Heat contest, right up to the final moment when someone machine guns the plot.
Much like The Lady Vanishes the supporting characters are memorable and interesting in their own right. My hat's off to unnamed tetchy ballerina played by actual ballerina Tamara Toumanova; now there's someone you have to feel a little sorry for!
Topaz. On the eve of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a French intelligence operative is asked by an American contact to investigate potential NATO leaks within the French government. In doing so he runs foul of Topaz, a French spy ring that's been funneling NATO military secrets to Moscow. He has to use every trick in the book in his search for the truth, and even then it might not be enough, as his shadowy opposite number Columbine, head of Topaz, is so well connected that not even the strongest evidence may be enough to get him arrested, never mind convicted. Frederick Stafford, a spy film veteran, plays the heroic French lead Andre Deveraux, and at the time critics blamed his performance for the film's poor box office. Having seen the film I don't agree; his performance wasn't stellar, but he's unfairly blamed. No, to my mind the larger problem is that an audience used to Bond level heroics can't get behind a spymaster who actually behaves like a spymaster - that is, he gets other people to do all the dirty work. So the action scenes and heroics belong to other actors, and Stafford shows up only when the big scenes are over and done. Even at the end - and there are several possible endings depending on which version of the end you watch - he isn't directly involved. All the big moments belong to other actors.
Night's Black Agents directors and players both need to watch this, to get a better understanding of Network. Deveraux is a master of this very important Ability; his agents and catspaws can be found all over the world, even in Castro's Cuba. It's thanks to them that he succeeds, and by that I mean it's often thanks to their shattered corpses, as it's a hard life being a Network contact. Deveraux's own Network pool is so exhausted that, by the end, he's recruiting family members, leading to a tense moment when one of them goes missing, presumed murdered.
If yours is a Dust game, this could be a useful way of keeping Agents alive. After all someone's got to risk themselves, and many players would rather it wasn't their character. However it does mean that the big action scenes end up going to Network contacts rather than the characters themselves; the Director may wish to impose Stability penalties, or let players play Network characters for that all-important moment when the enemy spy is bearded in his den, just before the vampire counterspies turn up and make steak tartare out of everyone.
In fact let me propose a device I'll call The Topaz Maneuver: If an Agent wants to create a Network contact but has no Network to spend, the Agent can spend Stability instead, provided that the Stability spend is permanent, just as Network spends are permanent. There is no refresh for Stability spent in this way; like Network, this lost Stability can only be bought back with experience spends.
It's also useful for a look at how Solaces can work. In this case Deveraux's Solace is his wife Nicole, who leaves him halfway through the film when he goes to Cuba to commune with his agent and mistress, Juanita de Cordoba. Here we have a legitimately frayed Solace relationship, and see one potential consequence - in this case that she may or may not go over to the enemy, wittingly or otherwise.
I spent rather more time than I would have liked in hospital during my recent UK trip, but it gave me time to read a book I'd bought to entertain me on the flight: Scott Smith's The Ruins (2006). It was one of three I'd bought, the other two being a Michael Slade and a Jack Higgins. I don't look for aesthetic or intellectual entertainment when I fly; I want something interesting enough to make it worth my while turning pages, and that's it. It's different when you're comfortable, awake and alert, but those three things are not what flying is all about.
The Ruins was an unknown quantity. I didn't recognize the author. I later discovered he's the guy who wrote A Simple Plan (1993), a thriller I very much admire, but at the time the name Scott Smith plucked no forgotten strings of memory. The Ruins is his second, and to date he's only written two. The man does not believe in rushing things along.
He's an MFA Fine Arts who's got a few screenwriting credits behind him, and is currently working on Civil, a TV drama-cum-thriller-cum God Alone Knows in which nation-shattering violence breaks out after a hotly contested election. He seems to prefer obscurity; he's given few interviews and in those interviews he says little about how he works or what he's working on. He likes bookstores. So there's a plus.
The Ruins begins deep in Mexico's tourist heartland. Four Americans meet a German and three Greeks. The German has a problem; he and his brother fell out after the brother met a pretty archaeologist and the brother ran off to join her at some dig out in the boondocks. Now it's almost time for their flight home, and the brother hasn't come back. What, he asks the Americans, do they think he should do?
To them this all seems like a fantastic side adventure with a hint of illicit romance. Besides, going out to see some picturesque antiquities was on their To Do list, even if these particular antiquities seem to be a not very remarkable mine far from the comforts of civilization. So they pack a hearty picnic lunch, rent a taxi, and zoom off to the ruins. Ignoring the taxi driver's Borgo Pass-style warning - 'this place no good. Give me fifteen dollar, I take you somewhere better.' - they get off where they think the footpath to the ruins ought to be. There their problems begin.
The locals in the village nearby are as unfriendly as it is possible to be without actually shooting them. The locals pretend not to understand what they're talking about, and don't encourage them to stay. However by luck and some deductive reasoning they find the right footpath, which has been carefully camouflaged with leaves and brush. Following that path they find a pleasant hilltop covered with greenery and beautiful flowers, surrounded by a wide strip of what seems to be burnt out landscape, not unlike a moat cut out of the jungle. They can see what seems to be a tent at the top of the hill, presumably belonging to the archaeologists.
In short order the locals arrive, and they are not best pleased. Many of them are armed, and more are on the way. The leader seems to be about to let them go, but then one of the Americans accidentally sets foot on the flowery hillside. That contaminating foot is enough, and they're all ordered to climb the hill. No questions, no going back: climb.
Then things really get weird, but to go any further would involve major spoilers.
This, like Smith's previous novel, has also been made into a movie. While I have not seen that movie the trailer gives me no confidence whatsoever, and I'd avoid watching the film before reading the book as it might ruin things for you. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a pretty mixed rating, for what that's worth.
I like smart horror. By that I mean I like the characters to be strong characters who don't do anything dumb for reasons that are transparently plot related. Everyone has to behave in keeping with their character and everyone has to make reasonable decisions. Not necessarily correct decisions - in horror there aren't many of those - but reasonable according to the facts available at the time.
This is very smart horror. Even the locals, who might otherwise be faceless cyphers, are interesting, and behave very much in keeping with a group of people who've found themselves living next door to Satan's Left Buttock. Having found a way to keep the wicked emanations at bay they dedicate their lives to ensuring nobody goes near, and if somebody does, they make sure the unlucky wanderers never get out. Perfectly reasonable, under the circumstances. After all, we know what happens when you rely on the authorities to solve your problem for you.
Seldom have I read anything quite so much in the present tense. The only comparable I have is Andy McNab, and you know how I feel about him. Yet in this everything relentlessly flows from moment to moment, less like a narrative and more like a rising flood, carrying everything before it. Nothing in this novel happens without you silently witnessing it; there are no off-camera segues.
The antagonist is pleasingly Lovecraftian. By that I mean it is unknowable, alien, and malign. You get the sense that it's just biding its time up there on the hillside, waiting for the locals' guard to drop. It voraciously devours everything it can get - birds, animals, insects - and human targets are o-so-tasty, but perhaps a little large and feisty to be swarmed in a frontal assault. So it resorts to trickery and illusion to get the job done, luring them into dangerous situations where they can be picked off one by one.
Narratively it reminds me of John Wyndham and while some of you may be leaping towards a certain novel I'm actually thinking of the criticism levelled by Christopher Priest, who called Wyndham 'the master of the middle-class catastrophe.' The main characters are all nice college kids with money and all the nice things that money can buy. They've had good educations, they're smart, they can handle themselves in most situations and soon they'll be going off into the working world.
Here they are enjoying an exotic vacation. Here they are going off to rescue their friend's brother from a silly romantic misadventure. Here they are climbing a flower-covered hill, threatened with death if they try to come down again.
One of them thinks wistfully about her nice things, left in the hotel back in Cancun. Perhaps the maid will steal them.
It all speaks to a kind of invulnerability middle class Westerners think they enjoy. Nothing can seriously go wrong, not to them. After all, they're on vacation. They're having a good time. They just want to go out for the day, have a picnic, see some scenery and go home again. What's so difficult about that?
The other two books I bought for the trip are long gone. I don't believe in carrying excess baggage, and I brought too much stuff home with me to want to burden myself with even a fraction of a kilo's weight. I don't think the Harris even left Bermuda's airport; I dumped it for someone else to find, and same goes for the Slade. I believe in being a Johnny Appleseed of books, and English pubs are quite good places to spread the love.
I almost took the Smith to Dragonmeet to pass on to some unwitting host. I didn't. I almost passed it on some other way - after all, I had three days in London after Dragonmeet before getting on a plane.
I wouldn't usually post on a weekday nor would I use the time to big up a podcast, but this is one you have to listen to if you have any interest whatsoever in cinema: The Secret History of Hollywood. This is by far the single best podcast I have ever heard, in any genre, and I'm not at all surprised that Audible has picked it up.
So what is this glorious thing? Briefly, it's one man's descent into cinematic obsession. This gent's knowledge of early cinema history is exhaustive; if ever you wanted to know anything about anyone in Hollywood before, say, 1960, this is the place to learn about it.
Moreover it's well presented. Despite the wealth of detail, it's not overpowering. The presenter is a pleasure to listen to, and the flow from moment to moment is seamless. I'm indulging in A Universe of Horrors, an in-depth study of Universal Studio's great horror experiment in the 20s and 30s and, while I know a lot of this material already, it's a treat to have it all laid out like a movable audible feast.
One caveat, and it's a fairly significant caveat: Ye Gods, these things are long. Like transatlantic flying time long. Universe of Horrors is over 7 hours worth of audio. I'm flying to the UK later this year, which is usually a 7 to 8 hour journey; I could plug myself in as soon as I board the plane, and may still not have finished listening by the time it lands. There are three separate episodes on Alfred Hitchcock, for over 18 hours total. And there's more ... and more ... and more ...
Leaving aside the obvious, the length of the episodes poses a device storage problem. Usually a podcast is, maybe, a handful of MB. Not so here. If you're so foolish as to download more than one you're looking at several GB worth of data. That takes time to download as well as space. Some mobile devices may find that difficult to swallow.
But!! If you let that put you off, you're really missing out. I cannot praise this enough. If you're a cinephile, this is a must-listen. It may be a constant companion for a week or so per episode, depending on how you devour your podcasts. In fact the biggest problem may not be listening to this one, but in finding time to listen to all the other podcasts you'll be ignoring while working your way through Secret History.
By now many of you will have heard that legendary silent film director F.W. Murnau's skull has been stolen from its resting place in Stahnsdorf, Germany. 'Satanists' have been blamed, which is a convenient short form for 'half-witted jackass.'
Murnau, director of such classics as Nosferatu, Faust, The Last Laugh and The Haunted Castle, was one of the preeminent figures of the German Expressionist film movement. Though he worked until his death in a car accident in 1931, producing over twenty features, Nosferatu, made in 1922, is by far his best remembered film.
Based on Dracula, but made without seeking permission from Stoker's widow, Nosferatu achieved notoriety thanks to the eerie, and rather ghoulish portrayal of the vampire, Orlok, by Max Schreck. Schreck, an actor more familiar with comic roles, managed to create a vivid, otherworldly vampire in Orlok, one that stuck in the public imagination long after the film was burnt by the widow Stoker for copyright infringement. Though most copies went to the bonfire, a version survived, smuggled and passed on by generations of film buffs and collectors.
The company that made Nosferatu, Prana Films, did not survive Stoker's holocaust. However Murnau was made of tougher stuff. In the war, he'd fought as a pilot, surviving eight crashes; what was a mere financial setback compared to that? He went across the water to start a new career in Hollywood, becoming one of the first recipients of the then newly-created Oscars, for his 1927 film Sunrise, often hailed by critics as the greatest film of all time. His early death in 1931 robbed us of a great talent.
As far as the robbery goes, the police have yet to recover the skull. Droplets of wax at the site have led to speculation that the skull was stolen for ritual purposes. Frankly, this is rubbish. Possibly it was stolen by would-be occultists, but as a rule, skulls aren't particularly useful in ritual magic. However they make excellent set dressing, so it's entirely possible that someone with a flair for the dramatic decided that Murnau's skull would make an excellent adornment for whatever it might be they have planned. Mind you, that could apply as equally to a death metal band as to spotty teenage Satanists. Incidentally, without scientific examination one skull looks very much like another to the untrained observer; I would expect a few Murnau fakes to turn up, over time.
Regular readers will recall that this isn't the first time skulls have come up. However the missing skull in that instance was probably stolen by phrenologists hoping to learn more from the shape and bumps on the skull, and phrenology has long been exploded as a pseudoscience.
All that said, who in the Night's Black Agents world would want Murnau's skull, and to what purpose?
A collector might want it, someone with a love of early silent cinema. Owning a piece of Murnau would be like catnip for a truly deranged completist. Expect the lair of someone such as this to be full of movie memorabilia, from posters to autographs to original prints. Perhaps several of Murnau's lost films, like Four Devils, could be found in this person's vaults. This role could as easily suit a Renfield, or a mortal, as one of the Undead. As a twist, perhaps the ultimate collector is insulted that someone else stole Murnau's skull, and is out for revenge.
A necromancer might want it, to summon up the ghost of Murnau himself. This might be done to learn more about the silent film era, or about Nosferatu itself. Perhaps this person thinks that Schreck wasn't the main actor at all; it's long been rumored that Nosferatu was played by an actual vampire. A vampire hunter might see this as a means of tracking down prey he's been seeking for a very long time. An alternate version would have a necromantic film lover put the whole gang back together, all the cast and as many crew as can be unearthed.
Or:
Perhaps a would-be vampire hunter thinks that dust from Murnau's bones would make a great bane, for a certain kind of vampire.
The Conspiracy may have found a way to resurrect the dead, and one of them thinks that Murnau would make an excellent subject.
Someone hoping to please a Conspiracy asset may have dug it up as the ultimate gift for her beloved.
Perhaps Murnau himself became a vampire, and his early death was a cover; if his secret's been discovered, someone might have dug down to see what really is hidden in Murnau's grave.
Perhaps the ghost - or the something else - of Greta Garbo decided to unearth it, to make a companion piece with the Murnau death mask that Garbo kept with her.
Ordinary would-be occultists, or kids, dug it up, and now they're the target of a very annoyed Conspiracy asset who doesn't like having his idol's grave disturbed.
