Avenue Kurtodrome

Surprise surprise, Teenage Monster is not that awful a movie.

Sure, the teenage monster is laughable: he doesn’t look scary at all (just hairy) and you’re left wondering if Gil Perkins decided to play a monster with a speech impediment or if he’s trying to speak normally and the make-up is making him mumble.
Anyway, the result is pretty hilarious. (I meant to say “scary”, but the only word I could think of was “hilarious”.)

But Teenage Monster is pretty educational: did you know what happens when a meteor strikes a father and his son? Well, I didn’t! Apparently such a meteor strike will kill a grown man, but not a child. However, the child will grow up with an exceptional amount of facial hair.

Okay, so the plot seems to be ludicrous to non-existing at first, but give it a few minutes (not too many, the movie is only just over 60 minutes long) and see how scriptwriter Ray Buffum (the man who also penned Teen-Age Crime Wave, Brain from Planet Arous and Island of Lost Women) adds a few interesting touches to the script: see how the monster’s mother tries to hide her son from the villagers (it doesn’t help that the sheriff is in love with her) and how the monster is abused by another character.
All this may not sound too spectacular (and indeed it isn’t), but do remember that most 50s sci-fi films just offered you a cheesy monster and a dull story: “Teenage Monster”, directed by Jacques R. Marquette (famous for directing Teenage Monster and … oh, that’s it?), at least tries to offer the viewer a compelling story.

Compelling it isn’t, but at least it keeps you from being bored and waiting for the next scene with the unconvincing monster.

If you’d like to have a look at the monster… don’t be scared, here ‘he’ is:

Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in one movie? With the addition of Hammer girl Yutte Stensgaard (Lust for a Vampire, Zeta One), surely such a movie can’t be bad! That movie is Scream and Scream Again and unfortunately I couldn’t find myself enjoying it.

Scream and Scream Again was a co-production of AIP and Tigon, released in 1970 and directed by Gordon Hessler. Hessler is mainly known for three other movies: The Oblong Box, Cry of the Banshee and KISS meets the Phantom of the Park. All movies which rate him as a cult movie director, just not a director of good cult movies. All have a certain je ne sais quoi (note we’re trying to overcome our shortage of French words at the Avenue) which make them watchable but not exceptional.

In Scream and Scream Again we witness a maniac on the loose, nicknamed ‘the vampire killer’ because he also sucks the blood out of his victims. We hardly see this happen, as this isn’t the focus of the movie. Which brings us to my key point: what is the focus of the movie? The film begins with an exhausted jogger dropping on the ground, someone trying to get into some sort of Nazi-like regime (yes, they even copied the red and white design, just with a different symbol in the circle’s middle), a überstrong killer on the loose… this movie is going places!

Sadly it’s going in four directions at the same time, which leaves the viewer feeling quartered. It’s a cop thriller, a sci-fi movie and a vampire flick. As mentioned before, the vampire scenes are barely mentioned, the sci-fi element seems directly lifted from an episode of Doctor Who or The Avengers and the cop thriller is so overexposed and stretched it’s still full of cops, but not exactly thrilling. And don’t be fooled by the poster of the movie: the acid bath is hardly there.

If there’s still a chance you want to watch this, it’s because of the cast. Cushing, Lee and Price in one movie is always worth an hour and a half of your time. Even if Cushing was a late addition to the cast and only shows up in a couple of scenes. Of the three movie legends, Price gets most of the screentime. Sometimes it looks as if he’s rehearsing for Dr. Phibes. Well, who can blame the man? Years later, Vincent Price was interviewed about the movie and confessed he’d never understood the script. See, now there’s a consolation: you’re not alone.

4.5/10

P.S. Anyone want to see the trailer?

Django may be incredibly popular in Italy, the UK, the US and Germany, but the rest of the world is often unaware of this spaghetti western hero. Quite a shame, so let’s talk about the film.

The main character’s name, Django, refers to Django Reinhardt, the famous jazz musician. Django wasn’t just known for being an exceptional musician, he also had a copule of fingers missing. Why director Sergio Corbucci chose this name for the main character of his movie will become painfully clear when you see the movie.
A sick joke, yes. But far from the only sick joke Corbucci has put in the movie.

Django was supposed to be shot on a spaghetti western set. Sadly, heavy rainfall had made the grounds considerably muddy, probably too muddy for a western to be shot there. Corbucci did not despair, he even liked what he saw and decided to make the set even soggier. This is just one of the details that draw you into the movie when you’re watching the opening scene.
While not many spaghetti westerns will start with the film’s hero dragging himself through the mud, Django has another extra: the hero is dragging something along with him, a coffin.
As human beings tend to be curious, you want to find out why someone’s carrying around a coffin and who or what is inside this coffin. The film’s main character is definitely not the guy that’ll tell us: Django is a mysterious character. It would be wrong to describe him as a hero, he’s more of an anti-hero, just like it’s hard to find a good character inside this film.

Franco Nero is excellent as Django, in fact so noteworthy lots of producers tried sticking the name Django to all their spaghetti westerns with Nero. Actually, Nero didn’t even have to be in the film… it was enough that the movie was a spaghetti western. With more than 20 movies using the name Django, it should be noted that there is only one official sequel, Django 2: Il Grande Ritorno, made 20 years later with Nero once again as Django. Sadly, the movie is not that good.
Much more noteworthy is Django Kill, a spaghetti western that was released just a couple of months after Django and which had its title changed from If You Live Shoot, much to the annoyance of director Questi. While being completely unrelated to Django (the main character is played by Tomas Milian), it is the one movie that comes closest to the unhealthy atmosphere of Django and is even way sicker (the scene where bandits pull golden bullets out of a wounded guy’s chest springs to mind).
Django itself has its fair share of whipping scenes and torture scenes, including a rather notorious one where one guy has his ear cut off and then has it put in his mouth.

You’ll notice the bad guys wear red masks. Great (it stands out so much you remember those scenes forever), but it wasn’t planned. A major production that was being shot at the same time as Django had hired the best-looking extras, so Corbucci could only get his hands on ugly extras and had them wear capes.
This is probably what makes Django such an interesting picture: if the extras are ugly, have them wear capes; if the grounds are muddy, make them muddier and insert a scene where the prostitutes are sitting by a stove in an attempt to get warmer, that’ll convince the viewer it’s late autumn or even winter.
Add to this the wonderful looks of Franco Nero, who looks good but isn’t as clean cut as many heroes in spaghetti westerns. You could actually believe Nero spent a couple of weeks in cold and dirty areas. In fact, once again movie magic helped establish that: the make-up crew gave Nero a few extra wrinkles, to make him look tougher.
All in all, that’s what makes this film so exceptional: its combination of luck/coincidence and a relentless creativity that manages to work all the misfortunes into the film as if it had always been planned like that.

One important name hasn’t been mentioned in this review: that of the assistant director, one Ruggero Deodato, who later became a director himself and got his name into movie history books as the director of Cannibal Holocaust.

Being quite brutal, the English censors did not take kindly to the film and had Django banned in the United Kingdom. The British audience only heard about the film’s reputation and were only introduced to Corbucci’s film when The Harder They Come was shown in British theatres, a reggae movie that included a few scenes from Django.
This is the sort of stuff that does wonders for your reputation.

If you’re waiting for part three of our Pukkelpop review, you’ll need to have a bit more patience. It’s time for an interlude: two reviews of movies with a connection to the festival. Coming up in part two: the movie that inspired a band looking for a good name, it’s Creature With The Atom Brain. First though, we return to Thursday night in the Marquee: Mercury Rev were prepping the audience with a visual treat. A two-minute long scene from the cult classic Daisies. Which reminded us: high time for a review.

Daisies is called Sedmikrasky in its original Czech language. The movie was directed by Vera Chytilová in 1966 and was part of the Czech New Wave. The movie features two young girls, Marie I and Marie II (though you could do without their names), sitting in their bikinis soaking up some sun, but doing nothing. Not only are they bored, they have no plans and come to a shattering conclusion: “Everything’s going bad in this world. You know what? If everything’s going bad… we’re going bad as well.”

And so it begins… two young girls roaming through the city, being mischevous where and when they can. Don’t expect them to be sensitive. From time to time one Marie will ask the other if she minds. The answer is no. It should be no. Yes would show goodness and weren’t they supposed to be bad girls?

Some are questioning now how come this movie was called a feministic film. Surely, the depiction of these morally depraved girls (and, judging by the incredible amount of phonenumbers on their wall, I’m sure a lot of people wouldn’t hesitate to label them sluts) is the complete opposite of what a feminist should be. Well, don’t forget the film was made in 1966, at a time when it was even difficult for the actresses in television shows to be independent. Surely, we know how independent Catherine Gale and Emma Peel were in The Avengers, but BBC’s concurrent Adam Adamant (and his servant) told their female ally Georgina Jones on a weekly basis crime should be solved by men. Yes, Miss Jones was a highly fashionable Carnaby Street chick, but she often had to go home because “this is no place for female eyes”. Not that she ever listened, but it often led to her ending up in the hands of the enemy. Meanwhile, over on the other channel, Mrs Peel was kicking ass. Whereas most female characters in movies had to be content with looking admiringly at the male hero, the two young Maries dared to take their lives in their own hands and be bad, quite bad. The way girls shouldn’t behave.

So the girls take up the habit of dining with old men, having the men pay for their food, accompanying them to the station, but jumping off the train when it departs. Do they mind? Of course not. Nor do they mind breaking into a room ready for a banquet. So much food and noone to watch them… ooh, I wonder how that’ll end… (watch clip)

And if you don’t want to believe the movie has feminist undertones, watch how the road to ruin leads the girls to the final scene. What future do the girls have? We’re given two versions, both not exactly too great for the girls.

The movie is as whimsical as the two girls. Sometimes the colours change rapidly throughout a scene, sometimes the girls’ movements (as in the first clip) are accompanied by odd sounds. Sedmikrasky is an odd little film. You’ll like the film as much as you’ll like the Maries: sometimes you’ll adore them (and the film), sometimes you want to strangle the girls (and kill the film). By all means an achievement and something everyone who calls himself/herself a film enthusiast should’ve watched at least once. If not, I’ll send Marie and Marie after you.

Film: 9/10

Eastern Promises, like A History of Violence, meant a step back from the usual body horror for David Cronenberg. Eastern Promises is a bold step forwards though: it is still vintage Cronenberg even if it’s a thriller rather than a horror movie and doesn’t involve gamepods attached to your spinal or phallic creatures coming out of your armpit. That a director like Cronenberg was so interested in a movie about the Russian maffia shouldn’t surprise you: they have the habit of tattooing their history on their body, which makes a naked body like an open book for those who know the language.
That naked bodies are capable of a good dose of body horror is proved in the sauna sequence, where Viggo Mortensen’s character is attacked by men with knives. Not only because knives are easier to hide when you enter a sauna, but because guns are less personal. To stab a person, you need to be close to him/her. Which is what makes this fight, combined with the nakedness, so horrific to see.

That wasn’t the first time Cronenberg had you cringing in your seat. I watched Eastern Promises the day it arrived in the cinemas. A magical moment as I’d visited the dentist and the narcotics were beginning to wear out during the film. A surreal sensation, I must say. Anyway, it was 3pm and there were several dozens of people in the audience and I think every single female had screamed or yelped within the first ten minutes of the film. This body horror and Cronenberg’s refusal to glam up the violence is what makes this movie so good. Well, that and the qualities of cast and director. This isn’t your typical shoot-out blow-up extravaganza: it’s a thriller with human beings where violence really hurts.

The director had parts of the script reworked to turn this into a genuine Cronenberg feature (unlike A History of Violence - which was a movie with Cronenberg touches). The tattoo art went from a briefly mentioned aside to a more important part of the movie. This is only one of the things you learn on the DVD of Eastern Promises. The special edition contains two discs, even if it might’ve fitted on one. The specials include some interviews with the cast, the director and the writer as well as a feature on the tattoos and, rather than an audio commentary, a brief documentary on the film, what it was about and what it hoped to achieve.
There is also a B-roll with some footage of the recording. Well, if you have nothing better to do than Cronenberg shout action, Naomi Watts walking in front of the camera several times or Mortensen freezing his butt off, knock yourself out. I’m a die-hard Cronenberg fan and even I found this a waste of time.

If you open the box and take the discs out of their case you’ll find a list of the most important tattoos and their meaning. Here’s one: stars are an indication of how long someone’s been to prison. Each dot signifies one year spent in prison. If the stars are tattooed on the knees, it means this person refuses to kneel for any form of authority.
While it’s quite enlightening, someone didn’t think hard enough: the dvd case may be transparent, but the text at the part where the dvd clicks itself to the case is hardly legible. Excellent idea, poorly executed.

All in all Eastern Promises had everything in it to become a regular British thriller, but Cronenberg took the ideas and turned it into one of the best films of 2007. If you missed it in the cinema, catch it on DVD. If you caught it in the theatres, you’ll have probably run to the DVD store by now.

Film: 9/10
DVD: 6.5/10 (would’ve been 7.5 if they’d thought about the packaging)

I’m pretty sure thousands of fans would like to blow me to smithereens for the following sentence, but here we go: halfway through the movie I was ready to rate Wanted higher than The Dark Knight. And that’s when the plot went cuckoo.

Here’s my thing: I hate movies like The Bourne Ultimatum which pretend to be the thinking man’s Bond. If such movies are any part of the thinking man, it’s probably his anus. If you have seen the movie, you may remember Bourne being chased on a motorbike, happening to see the little block of wood that allows him to jump, glide and drive off a free man. Credible? I think not!

Over to Wanted then where a man manage to improve the long jump record by 77 metres and an inch whilst killing off half a dozen assassins. Too bad for him his opponent had planned this and shoots a bullet through the man’s head from a building at least five blocks away. Credible? Who cares!

Yes, the one and only solution to keeping your action movie credible (apart from only using credible stuff, but who does that these days) is chucking all the credibility out of the picture in the very first minute. Though director Bekmambetov still managed to alienate me with plot lines even he’ll confess aren’t the most ingenious. The Fraternity, an organization led by Morgan Freeman (champagne by the way, it’s the 500th time Morgan gets to play almost the same role with the same lines), uses a cover-up so implausible it’s only there for one scene (the scene where James McAvoy tests his skills). Apart from that… erm, so that’s how Fate has been communicating for 1000 years? Really??

But yes, every scene in this movie seems to have only one of two functions: either it’s an action scene or it’s a scene that helps to lead up to the next action scene. And the action scenes are flabbergasting. It took me to the train chase to get my regular feeling of “oh yes, action scenes, how boring”: I’m pretty sure no train conductor will get the brainless idea of using the emergency brakes when the train is speeding over a narrow ridge between seemingly endless mountains. But hey, it’s action.

On the plus side, Wanted isn’t as brainless as it looks. There are several hints throughout the film that’ll make sense once you’ve seen the finale. (Look at me, all proud I spotted a hint noone else of my group seemed to have noticed…) Only that should give this film a score of 7/10. Sadly, the explosions can’t cover up the emptiness of the plot and the fact that Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie are only there because Fate likes typecasting. Erm, we need an action babe with lots of tattoos and Asia Argento isn’t available. Anyone an idea?

Verdict: 5 out of 10

P.S. And, as part of our Rappers Acting In Movies double bill, we went from Common in Wanted to The X-Files: I Want To Believe. Tomorrow you’ll get to read my analysis of that film, which will mark the 100th post on Avenue Kurtodrome.

Time now for our annual tradition of our Summer Check-up of This Year’s Movies. Alright, so I’ve never done this before, but every annual tradition has to start once, no? Seven months of 2008 have flown by, let’s look at the good films they’ve given us so far.

1. JUNO (8)
Best film of the year? I hope not. But we can be certain of one thing: when I saw it in the theatre, I was very lucky. Right after Easter, the room loaded with girls the same age as Juno and a couple of older men. The first 15 minutes of the film are dreadful: the dialogue seemed fake and intentionally funny (you know, the “you better start laughing now cause I’m telling you a joke” sort of humour), but then the movie found its soul. The laughter didn’t come from the older men in the room, but from the girls in the crowd. And at one point, when “All The Young Dudes” was playing, a man who had been a young dude at the time of the recording started singing along to the music.
And let’s not forget Ellen Page, who was an excellent choice for Juno (those who’ve seen her as daughter Lilith in ReGenesis might’ve expected that.)

2. ONCE (8)
Is this a trend? I also hated the beginning of Once, where busker Glen Hansard chases someone who tried to steal his money. After this fake start the story of Hansard (him) meeting Markéta Irglová (her) and eventually jamming plus recording with her looked a lot more sincere. Above all human.

3. TBS (8)
Dutch movie about a psychotic (played by stand-up comedian Theo Maassen) who escapes from prison and takes a 13-year-old girl (Lisa Smit) hostage. When he went to prison, noone wanted to believe he battered his father to death because his father was abusing his sister. Will the girl believe him? Can he find people who’ll back up his story? Or isn’t he as innocent as he claims to be?

4. ATONEMENT (7,5)
Atonement is a good movie with an occasional brilliant scene (e.g. the scene on the beach), but its brilliance doesn’t linger. And in general it was hard to find scenes that could turn a good movie into a classic, mainly because they aren’t there. And of course a bad ending (oh, how horrible) leaves a nasty aftertaste. Pity.

5. ELDORADO (7)
Even if it only takes three hours to drive from one side to the other side of the country, 2008 seems to be the year of Belgian road movies. And coincidentally, one was made in Wallonia, one in Flanders.
Eldorado is the Wallonian effort and is just that bit better. One night Yvan (actor and director Bouli Lanners) comes home and finds a burglar (Fabrice Adde) hiding under his bed. Eventually Yvan pities the poor sod and offers to drive him to his parents (the young man lived in the city, but is penniless and wanted to find money to pay for his journey home). When this odd couple runs into car trouble, they’re helped by a nudist (who claims his name is Alain Delon). Just one of the many funny scenes in this movie. Sadly, the movie is a bit uneven and some scenes are boringly overlong, but Eldorado contains more than a handful of scenes that are so funny you’ll still chuckle about them after a week.

6. IN BRUGES (7)
Read my longer review here.

7. SMALL GODS (6,5)
The Flemish road movie of 2008 (released six months before Eldorado). The six and a half you’ll see here is also part of our sympathy for this movie, which dared to be different. Sadly, someone should’ve revised the script properly and taken out all the horrible scenes. It starts early where a man is interrogating our female protagonist. She talks about her odd story and he manages to utter: “So it’s as if you were watching a movie?” Oh, how meta can one go! The woman was abducted by a young man and make a trip through the country together with a runaway girl. Why did he do it? Why was she under arrest in the hospital? We’ll find out, eventually.
Blurry vision galore and an impressive score (by Millionaire’s Aldo Struyf) and soundscapes (by Noise Reduction). It’s a shame it’s occasionally so pseudo-intellectual because it contained many lovely scenes that would make it as popular as the odd Icelandic movies that are so popular around here. Who’s to blame? Mainly the financial film committee, who didn’t want to give money to a film that was so outrageously different from the Flemish movies (read: turds) we normally get to see. This had the potential to become a cult movie, but noone wanted to back up the two brothers who wanted to make their debut movie and so the movie had to do without a firm hand and the control needed to turn a couple of good ideas into a cult movie. That’s right, kids, blame the government!

8. THE STRANGERS (6,5)
Reviewed here.

9. EL ORFANATO (6,5)
Reviewed here.

10. THE DARK KNIGHT (6,5)
Batman and I will never become friends, but Christopher Nolan managed to put another movie to the short list of sequels that are better than the original. Gone is Katie Holmes, who really deserved an award for Worst Performance in 2006 for Batman Begins, and in comes Maggie Gyllenhaal. Whom I like, so that’s good. The movie is fleshier and Heath Ledger is very good as the Joker (even though his performance is overhyped). Christian Bale manages to give Batman/Wayne so gravitas and it’s a shame the death of Ledger made people overlook how good Bale is in this movie. Sadly I had to think of Mark Kermode when I watched one of the many chase scenes in the movie. Kermode mentioned that, during the finale, he noticed he was liking what he was seeing but that he didn’t feel anything. The movie may look great, but there’s emotion missing. And yes, that’s what I felt too: I wanted to be involved more and I know there were many opportunities I should’ve felt more, but I didn’t.

As I don’t have time to write a full new review tonight, I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to dive into my archives and fish for an older review. I found this mini review of a movie that - according to me, anyhow - shouldn’t go unmentioned at DV: the classic tale of Jekyll and Hyde in the Hammer version.

Like Jack the Ripper, the tale of Jekyll and Hyde has been told so many times you gave up counting a long time ago. Would there be a single person on the planet who doesn’t know the story?

So when a director makes a movie on Dr. Jekyll or Jack the Ripper and plans to amaze us, he or she should come up with either an excellent movie or a daring new approach.

“Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde” succeeds in doing both. It is a good movie and it’s quite original. Ralph Bates and Martine Beswick make a good Jekyll and Hyde and the movie is in the hands of a team that brought you very good episodes of ‘The Avengers’ (director Roy Ward Baker, writer Brian Clemens and the music of Laurie Johnson).

Some scenes could have been better, but a believable combination of Jekyll and Hyde is rare, so let’s give this movie the benefit of the doubt.

By the way, Susan Broderick is very good as the girl next door. Apparently she acted only in two movies (the other one is “Blow Up”), so there’s another reason why you should see this.

It’s no wonder so many novels by Vladimir Nabokov were made into movies. After all, we are talking about the man who once said: “If you don’t admire all the colours when you are outside, there is no point in becoming a writer.” The same goes for watching a movie by Mario Bava: he was a genius at composing colourful movies.

La Ragazza che sapeva troppo (1963) is a black-and-white movie. There are no colours to admire, apart from the variations in grey. Is it still a good movie? Yes. While colours add that little bit extra, it’s just the bit that makes a good movie excellent.

In Ragazza we follow Nora, an American girl who goes to Italy to visit her sick aunt. There she witnesses a murder, or so she thinks. There is no body to be found and, only moments before the murder, Nora had been attacked by a thief.
As we follow her on her journey to the truth, it becomes clear why the European title (a literal translation from the original Italian title, La Ragazza che sepeva troppo) is The Girl who Knew too Much. This is the Bava version of a Hitchcock movie, a case study for Bava’s later gialli.

If you’re American you should look for the DVD of La Ragazza che sapeva troppo. The video version, called The Evil Eye, is a pretty different American cut of the same movie. This cut makes the movie more confusing and the soundtrack is different too.

If we forgive Ragazza for being a bit too sketchy at times, we are left with an intriguing puzzle, with a movie that wants to show beauty in almost every scene, with a few scenes that’ll remain in your head for at least a few months. in short, with a very good movie.
Letitía Román is so intriguing it looks like she is having an affair with the camera.
There is no reason why you shouldn’t be the voyeur.

No, to finish off, here’s a scene from the movie:

THE RETURN OF DOCTOR X (1939)
Director: Vincent Sherman
Starring: Wayne Morris, Rosemary Lane, Humphrey Bogart, Dennis Morgan, John Litel, Lya Lys.

Plot outline: A hotshot reporter and a young doctor team up to investigate a series of grisly murders and a mysterious sample of synthetic blood.

“This is one of the pictures that made me march in to Jack Warner and ask for more money again. You can’t believe what this one was like. I had a part that somebody like Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff should have played. I was this doctor, brought back to life, and the only thing that nourished this poor bastard was blood. If it had been Jack Warner’s blood, or Harry’s, or Pop’s, maybe I wouldn’t have minded as much. The trouble was, they were drinking mine and I was making this stinking movie.”

That’s Humphrey Bogart’s idea of the film. And yes, Karloff was originally cast. And no, it’s not that bad a movie. Sure, some scenes were added for comedy purposes and hardly one of them works. Sure, it’s not a big frightener (not that I think it was intended as one - more like a detective story with a horror twist). And sure, the title is glorious exploitation as it has nothing to do with “Doctor X”, the 1932 classic horror film slash box office hit.

Nevertheless, if you want an hour of decent sleuthing, “The Return of Doctor X” isn’t all too bad.

7/10