Trog.

Review #2143: Trog.

Cast: 

Joan Crawford (Dr. Brockton), Michael Gough (Sam Murdock), Bernard Kay (Inspector Greenham), Kim Braden (Anne Brockton), David Griffin (Malcolm Travers), John Hamill (Cliff), Thorley Walters (Magistrate), Jack May (Dr. Selbourne), Geoffrey Case (Bill), Simon Lack (Lt. Colonel Vickers), Chloe Franks (Little Girl), and Joe Cornelius (Trog) Directed by Freddie Francis (#854 - They Came from Beyond Space, #856 - The Evil of Frankenstein, #860 - Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, #1145 - Tales from the Crypt, #1419 - Dr. Terror's House of Horrors)

Review: 

"What a terrible film that was. I did it because of Joan Crawford, and poor Joan by this time was a very sad old lady. We had to have idiot cards all over the place because she couldn't remember her lines. It was the last thing she ever did and she shouldn’t have done it. Neither should I. She had no friends, and she kept writing sad letters to my wife and I until she died."

Okay, so you might be wondering just what the appeal for this film is. Well, it was a horror film that just happens to be the last film appearance of Joan Crawford. By the year of 1970, she had appeared in over eighty films in nearly a half-century of work in films to go with a handful of television appearances (one of those notably saw her perform a role several years younger than her - she was filling in for her sick daughter on a soap opera!). But this was her last film before her death in 1977 at the reported age of 69. The 1960s saw her go from starting with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) to ending with Berserk! (1967). That latter film was produced by Herman Cohen, who happened to produce this film. Three writers were credited for this film: Peter Bryan, John Gilling, and Aben Kandel (the first two had previously collaborated on The Plague of the Zombies while the latter was a mainstay on Cohen productions, even at the ripe age of 73). It's a shame for Francis to be here directing a horror film like this, because while he wasn't exactly pleased to be pigeonholed as a director of the medium (he was once quoted as saying horror films liked him more than he liked horror films), he was an acclaimed cameraman. This is the man who shot Sons and Lovers (1960) and later Glory (1989), winners of Academy Awards for cinematography. Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly (1970), his previous effort as a director, was one he was quite proud of even though it took a few years to become a cult favorite. While this film wasn't exactly a hit for anyone, Francis would stay busy as a director for the rest of the decade, which included The Vampire Happening (a West German comedy horror film that apparently was just as bad of an experience for Francis released in 1971), and, well, Craze (1974), the last production spearheaded by Cohen.

You're kidding me, right? This is the way a vaunted actress such as Joan Crawford went out? Wearing her own wardrobe while apparently enjoying quite the amount of alcohol? This is such a miserable film when it comes to the amount of time it spends in trying to establish credibility with some sort of ungodly presentation of nurture and nature that has no sense of tension or doing anything beyond making one wonder just long before you get to see the silly mask again. Supposedly, the outfit for the title character was cribbed from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), but I guess they got the worst outfit of the bunch, because it is a very sad looking thing to say the least. The fact that the film has the balls to re-use footage that had been produced by Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen for The Animal World (1956) for a sequence involving dinosaurs is probably the most hilarious part of a movie that has nowhere to go but digging up from the pit that it has buried itself by the first half of a 93-minute movie of amusement. Crawford may or may not be under the influence of some liquor (vodka, reportedly) or cue cards, but there is definitely something stilted about her role in the film, which never really manages to make a compelling argument for why anyone would care for Trog in the first place (this is a beast that we first see kill folks in a cave, remember). Seeing her try to show the creature colors and play catch with it only furthers this amusement that comes full circle when you realize, yes, she really did bring her own colorful clothes for this. Honestly, I was expecting her character to become another victim of the beast to close the circle, because, well, wouldn't that be a surprise to have someone who was completely on Trog's side just get blindsided? Gough just comes off as the most obvious strawman when it comes to "beast bad", most amusingly coming for the court scenes that see him continuously interrupt the proceedings until he finally gets kicked out after like the 4th time this happens. I think the death sequence (hell, you know it was coming) is especially amusing, because he lets the beast go and seems completely unplanned for, well, getting the hell away from the one thing that could kill him like it was a cockroach ASAP. Kay and the others don't chuckle at the material in the same way one might see from even the lesser Hammer film experiences. This is the kind of thing that can appreciated for folks such as, say, John Waters when it comes to the cheapies, but this is just one of those dubious British films where the material lives and dies on just how much the actors care, and the answer here is "slim". Kitsch for some sure, but this is just crap.

Overall, I give it 3 out of 10 stars.

Turkey Week 4 is upon us, folks. From November 19 to November 25, enjoy a round of cruddy "turkey" films to enjoy the Thanksgiving season. Trog is merely an appetizer for some rancid films to come, which will see a return of such great voices like Uwe Boll and Neil Breen and more. Enjoy the suck, because the next few films are much worse than this. House of the Dead, for example....

Doctor Zhivago.

Review #1421: Doctor Zhivago.

Cast: 
Omar Sharif (Dr. Yuri Andreyevich Zhivago), Julie Christie (Lara Antipova), Geraldine Chaplin (Tonya Gromeko), Rod Steiger (Victor Ippolitovich Komarovsky), Alec Guinness (Lieutenant General Yevgraf Andreyevich Zhivago), Tom Courtenay (Pavel "Pasha" Antipov / Strelnikov), Siobhán McKenna (Anna Gromeko), Ralph Richardson (Alexander Maximovich Gromeko), Rita Tushingham (Tanya Komarova), Jeffrey Rockland (Sasha), Bernard Kay (Kuril), and Klaus Kinski (Kostoyed Amoursky) Directed by David Lean (#286 - Lawrence of Arabia)

Review: 
"Secrets are what you confide to people in the dark. I think one of the things we've lost in the cinema is intimacy. Now you see appalling things happening and high excitement, but you rarely get right into people."

If one needed to view an epic drama or romance, one could find a great argument to be made for David Lean. He was born in England to Quaker parents; he had his first experience with watching cinema at thirteen, and receiving a Brownie camera as a gift from his uncle served as a good hobby for him. He found work as an apprentice in his father's accountancy firm, but he found himself more interested in the cinema, and this led to him joining Gaumont Studios in 1927. He served in various roles for the studio such as tea and clapper boy and eventually cutting room assistant. Over the next few years, he would become chief editor at Gaumont British News before shifting to editor on film in 1939. Three years later, playwright Noël Coward gave him a chance to direct with him with the war film In Which We Serve (1942), which served him well in directing further films (which he would do through forming Cineguild Productions with cinematographer Ronald Neame and producer Anthony Havelock-Allan, which lasted from 1944 to 1949), with his next six films being adaptation of plays and novels (three of them being works from Coward), which led to noted movies like Brief Encounter (1945) and Great Expectations (1946). A perfectionist with a tendency for autocratic behavior on set, Lean would make sixteen films in a career of 42 years, receiving plenty of attention for works such as Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and Lawrence of Arabia (1962, which like this film was written by Robert Bolt), and his final work A Passage to India (1984, which he also wrote and edited).

The film was based on the 1957 novel of the same name by Boris Pasternak, a poet whose work is noted for its long and intricate structure that span over forty years against the backdrop of an evolving Russia in the 20th century (with the poet's views on said transition being the reason for the Soviet Union opposing its publication), and the controversy over the novel meant that it could not be filmed in Russia, with a majority of filming instead being in Spain. The film runs at 200 minutes (after an original length of 197 and a restoration that occurred in the late 1990s) with the intent of something intimately romantic and epic. How much the film accomplishes in that regard is up to the viewer, and there have been plenty who encountered it, since it ranks as one of the highest grossing films of its era (behind fellow 1965 film The Sound of Music), and this film won Academy Awards in art direction, cinematography, screenplay, costume design and score. All of this window-dressing for a film held n some ways as a classic is me trying to figure out exactly why the actual experience for me was just fine at best. Can it be possible to make something that has scope and ambition to tell a long story and yet seem lacking in making a romance epic whole? The words seem to be there, and there is plenty of interesting scenery and set design to go around with acting that is generally convincing, but it doesn't seem as great as it wants to portray itself. It has a sappy seductive power that can either sweep you off your feet or make you struggle to not roll your eyes in where it (theoretically) wants to go. Thrust into a title role is Sharif, an Egyptian actor of numerous British and American productions that had approached Lean about a supporting role but ended up being cast as the lead by Lean. His performance comes off decent, where his expressive eyes seem to try and hide a passive character that has bare chemistry with everything that happens to occur around him. Christie, a British actress who rose to prominence through films like this and Darling (1965), proves adept in generating passion through chemistry with Sharif that gradually builds to something halfway meaningful, a soap opera that mutates itself into trying to be taken seriously. Chaplin, a dancer-turned-model-turned actress in her English-language debut, can only do so much with a doormat type of character, one who generates far more interest in her kindness than the others who is doomed to be the first wheel to fall off the proverbial romantic vehicle. Of the whole cast, it is method icon of volatility in Steiger that proves most interesting, as he commands your attention with his intimidating nature that serves the film well in starting and ending things without becoming too much in blustering for the sake of it. It is nice to see Guinness from time to time, even when serving as a framing device for everything around him. Courtenay rounds things out with composed rebelliousness that serves him well from time to time.

There are tough choices to make for a film like this, and in some ways the film carries those dilemmas with a right touch and other times with a heavy-handed approach. It is like a piece of art that has plenty of color and lines but seems to be missing that central focus to bring it all completely together. It proves no wonder why no one has tried to make a second theatrical adaptation of this work: For one thing, television seems more adept in covering such an expansive work like this, and it might very well be folly to think one can top the highs generated by a film as iconic as this one is - regardless of how it might land for folks like me. It is immensely flawed, but it is nevertheless something to consider as a film for the 1960s worth pondering over, whether for its sweeping images or its gestures of romance that come together for a spectacle that can help lend inspiration to audiences then as before, if one has the patience and understanding for it.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

They Came from Beyond Space.

Review #854: They Came from Beyond Space.

Cast:
Robert Hutton (Dr. Curtis Temple), Jennifer Jayne (Lee Mason), Zia Mohyeddin (Farge), Bernard Kay (Richard Arden), Michael Gough (Master of the Moon), Geoffrey Wallace (Alan Mullane), Maurice Good (Agent Stillwell), Luanshya Greer (Female Gas Station Attendant), John Harvey (Bill Trethowan), and Diana King (Mrs. Trethowan) Directed by Freddie Francis.

Review:
It figures I had to pick some low budget sci-fi flick for today, especially one made from sets from another Amicus Productions film, Daleks - Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D (#472), while being based on a novel named "The Gods Hate Kansas"...while utilizing a title as cliche as one would expect. It is evident early on the lack of charisma this movie has, with everything being conveyed in a very dull manner with its ridiculous aspects seeming to be cobbled from better projects. If you like seeing random sets and random splotches of plot (like a metal plated scientist being protected from some sort of attack), this is the movie for you, with all the stops of lunacy one would expect from a low budget, low rate film. This is the kind of movie where you fight to stay attention and watch it, in part because you want to make sure you're still conscious. The cast doesn't really have any seeming life to them, with Hutton being as standard as it gets, and there is no real charisma between any of these actors. One highlight (or whatever word you would use) is one of the characters melting down their silver trophies in order to make a "helmet" to protect himself from the intruders...and it looks about as you'd expect. Naturally, the climax is a cluster of stuff thrown on the wall, with Michael Gough appearing as the Master of the Moon, where it is revealed that they did their intrusion in order to get workers to get them home to die. Yes, I'm serious. At the end (to spoil it for you), the two groups agree to have a partnership together, because I guess enslaving humans as workers to build a ship can be swept under the rug because they learned they could just have asked. The best thing about the movie? It lasts only 85 minutes. If you know me and this show well, I do have a spot for low budget flicks, provided that the movie actually looks like it's trying to be good, but this is not the right example of a good low budget film, nor a competent one.

Overall, I give it 3 out of 10 stars.