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VincentElgar
Reviews
La louve solitaire (1968)
Pussyfoot
La Louve Solitaire, which I saw as "Golden Claws of Cat Girl" (a title worthy of ten stars alone), stars stunning redhead Danielle Gaubert as trapeze artist turned cat burglar Françoise. There's more than a little hint of Nikita in the way Françoise is forced to work for the government after being caught red-handed on a job and one can't help but wonder whether Luc Besson saw this before making that movie. Assisted by undercover agent and gifted lip-reader Bruno (Michel Duchaussoy), Françoise undertakes a daring heist to help nail a drug trafficking gang. Complications inevitably ensue.
The heist sequence is reasonably well-done and is the highlight of this fairly obscure little movie which suffers badly from an uneven tone. Whereas Françoise has all the makings of a comic book heroine a sexy, catsuit-clad superthief with remarkable acrobatic abilities - La Louve Solitaire is a grey, gloomy movie. Françoise is too cold and remote a character to empathise with and the script lacks the snap and humour that would have brought her flirtations with Bruno to life. Danielle Gaubert certainly looks the part, but her glacial beauty was put to far better use in Radley Metzger's 'Camille 2000'.
Aficionados of 1960s interior design might like to check out Franciose's apartment, but others should check out Mario Bava's Diabolik instead - a movie which has the humour and sparkle La Louve Solitaire desperately lacks. 4/10.
Saint Jack (1979)
People make love for all sorts of crazy reasons ....
Singapore 1973 Jack Flowers (Gazzara) a worldworn drifter, has finally found his niche. He is a small-time pimp, eking out a living arranging liaisons for jaded ex-pats and burned-out GIs. Everybody knows Jack and everyone likes him a situation that changes rapidly when he decides to open his own house of ill repute.
Saint Jack is Peter Bogdanovich's most accomplished film. Made long after his Hollywood star had waned it is a low-key, character driven piece full of memorable scenes and performances. The Singapore it depicts is long gone, buried under acres of concrete and glass. The world Jack Flowers' inhabits is old school orient - sampans, alleyways, bustling markets and street hustlers. Denholm Elliot excels as the bemused, vaguely melancholy accountant Jack takes under his wing. Rodney Bewes and Joss Ackland do memorable turns as aimlessly Englishmen abroad. Former James Bond George Lazenby puts in an appearance as a slimy US senator and director Bogdanovich plays a CIA operative.
For a movie produced by Roger Corman and Hugh Hefner it's far from the exploitation fare its subject matter might suggest. Photographed by the great Robby Muller and based on a novel by Paul Theroux it's well worth a look. 8/10
**Also recommended for fans of this movie is "Kinda Hot: The Making of Saint Jack in Singapore" by Ben Slater (ISBN: 9812610693) - a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film.
Le foto di Gioia (1987)
For die hard fans only
'Delirium' is a disappointing late addition to the giallo cycle which peaked in the first half of the 1970s. Luscious Serena Grandi (who looks the part but unfortunately cannot act) plays the owner of a fashion magazine who becomes involved in a not-terribly-interesting series of murders. There's the usual prowling camera-work and off-kilter set-design common to this genre, but the script is too dull and the performances too by-the-numbers for this to be truly effective. Things are not helped by a truly appalling synth-based score by Simon Bosworth and some ludicrous makeup effects (intended apparently to depict the killer's 'dehumanisation' of his victims. Capucine, in one of her final screen roles, adds a bit of class as a rival magazine publisher.
For die-hard genre fans only 3/10.
La bidonata (1977)
Kidnapping Drama
This little-seen comedy/ thriller about a trio of losers who plan to kidnap a man already marked for that fate by some mobsters marked the cinematic swan-song of 'giallo' specialist Luciano Ercoli. The comedy is fairly broad and bawdy, verging on slapstick at times, but there are some amusing moments particularly when the gang ingeniously employs a variety of vehicles during its operations. 'La Bidonata' never received a theatrical release and seems to have been shelved after its producer became the victim of a real-life kidnapping in early 1977. Kidnapping was of course a major criminal industry in 1970s Italy. The most famous victim was probably former Prime Minister Aldo Moro who was abducted and murdered in 1978. This may have contributed to the decision not to release the film, which contains a somewhat tasteless reference to another kidnapping, that of oil heir Jean Paul Getty III in 1973.
The movie has recently been resurrected however from the only surviving print and appears as an extra on the NoShame Films release of 'Colt 38 Special Squad'. The DVD booklet contains a few extra, albeit rather sketchy details of the producer-kidnapping episode.
Nieves Navarro (the real life Mrs Ercoli, and billed here as Susan Scott) has a nice turn as a hooker whom the gang rope in to their scheme. Navarro, a strikingly beautiful woman, also appears in Ercoli's 'Forbidden Photos of a Lady above Suspicion', 'Death Walks in High Heels' and 'Death Walks at Midnight', each time in various tantalising stages of undress. The Navarro-Ercoli relationship could be seen as a forerunner of that between Brian de Palma and Nancy Allen, who frequently cast his onetime wife as a lady of dubious repute.
'La Bidonata' is certainly not on the same cinematic level as Ercoli's giallos, but is worth seeking out as a curiosity item - and certainly if you're a fan of Ms Navarro.
Bloodline (1979)
Dressed to Kill
Following the release of Wait Until Dark (1967) and the break-up of her marriage to Mel Ferrer, Audrey Hepburn retired from the screen. By the mid 1970s her subsequent marriage, to Rome-based psychiatrist Andrea Dotti, had become strained and this is often cited as one of the reasons for her decision to resume her acting career. It may also account for the fact that her choice of material was so ill-judged.
Bloodline (1979) was Hepburn's second 'comeback' movie and appeared three years after the underrated 'Robin and Marian'. Based on a novel by Sidney Sheldon it can be compared in many ways to The Adventurers (1970). Both are based on trashy bestsellers, both feature journeyman multi-national casts, both are directed by James Bond series veterans and both benefit from the services of first-rate cinematographers in Bloodline's case Freddie Young, David Lean's regular cameraman, who previously worked with his namesake Terence on You Only Live Twice. (Trivia note: Sean Ferrer, Hepburn's eldest son, would later work as an assistant director on Terence Young's Korean War epic 'Inchon'). Both movies were poorly received and both have enduringly awful critical reputations.
So is Bloodline that bad? Well, it isn't very good but bear in mind that it dates from an era when the notion of 'guilty pleasures' was unknown. The movie opens fairly well with the murder of pharmaceutical magnate Sam Roffe and the inheritance by his daughter Elizabeth (Hepburn) of his Zurich-based empire. We are then introduced to Elizabeth's cousins (Sharif, Schneider, Mason) all of whom, we later find out, have reasons for wanting her dead. So far so good but unfortunately things don't stay that way for long. There is a long, redundant (and excruciatingly poorly acted) sequence detailing the birth of the Roffe empire which really drags things down. Scenes become increasingly disjointed at one point, following the murder of one of the company's research scientists, Hepburn yells "I want them out!", a statement which makes no sense whatsoever unless you've read the book, in which case you'll know she's referring to the security personnel who've failed to protect the murdered man. Bloodline bears all the signs of heavy cutting, indeed one source (Leonard Maltin) says that 40 minutes were added to the movie's first network showing. Even if this footage were to be restored for a DVD release, it is doubtful given the quality of that which remains, that Bloodline would suddenly turn into a masterpiece.
For a movie with a fairly reasonable budget (Hepburn's Givenchy-designed wardrobe reportedly cost $100,000, and she does look great) it looks remarkably shoddy in places (witness the back projection during the Le Mans sequence) and with a couple of exceptions (Hepburn and Schneider, who is delicious as a Contessa de Sade-type) the performances are strictly one-dimensional. Ennio Morricone's score is effective, especially during the striking main title sequence, but is disappointingly uneven overall.
Lovers of eurotrash will lap Bloodline up, but even they may find it a bit heavy going. Recommended with strong reservations 5/10.
Flight of the Phoenix (2004)
Crash 'n' Burn
Flight of the Phoenix (2004) is remake of Robert Aldrich's gutsy 1965 original and is inferior in every respect. The use of music is particularly poor: where the original was blessed with a strong orchestral score by the vastly underrated Frank DeVol, here we are saddled with irrelevant excerpts from the back catalogues of Johnny Cash and The Black-Eyed Peas. We also get lot of pumped-up noise, courtesy of Marco Beltrami. One particular scene, where our heroes are creeping up on a bunch of killer tribesmen, could probably have done without music at all. At the very least Mr Beltrami could have come up with something appropriately suspenseful. Instead, what do we get
Massive Attack. Now, there's a time and a place for Massive Attack, but this surely isn't it. By contrast the original used Connie Francis' rendition of 'Senza Fine' in one scene to great effect.
The sound mixing is terrible: dialogue is frequently rendered inaudible by sound effects, but that's forgivable seeing as most of it's so hackneyed anyway.
There is no-one to root for in this movie none of the actors, Dennis Quaid excepted, seem capable of adding the nuances to their characters that would make us care whether they lived or died. In the original for example the Hardy Kruger character starts off as a typical Teutonic automaton, but by the end we have a grudging admiration for him. In this version the equivalent character, Elliott (Giovanni Ribisi, looking like a grown-up 'Village of the Damned' kid), is a thoroughly nasty little martinet who grows more ruthless and unpleasant as the film progresses. At one point I expected him to start yelling 'Who run Bartertown?' at the top of his voice.
****SPOILERS AHEAD**** The gaffes and inconsistencies in the screenplay are too numerous to list fully a couple will suffice. Firstly, for a bunch of oil workers supposedly used to functioning in hostile environments their knowledge of health and safety is non-existent. Witness the use of cutting equipment near drums of aviation fuel. Witness also the way characters just wander off into the desert without adequate head covering or are able to perform hard physical labour under the harsh Gobi desert sun without breaking sweat.
The final climactic 'take-off' sequence is the most ludicrous of all: we watch our heroes desperately attempt to start the plane's engine whilst hoardes of evil-looking horsemen watch malevolently from the crest of the hill, poised to attack. And when do they decide to mount their attack? At the very moment when the plane is actually taking off. Ridiculous! Dennis Quaid is a fine actor and is always worth watching. Other than that, this one crashes and burns 3/10.
The Dukes of Hazzard (2005)
Atrocious
The Dukes of Hazzard is an atrocious movie. The persons responsible display a contempt for the source material that verges on spite. Okay, the original TV series wasn't exactly intellectually profound, but it was still good, clean fun and is fondly remembered. Why then turn it into a charmless, mean-spirited farrago like this? The filmmakers here don't even pretend to care about the original TV series or its fans and make no attempt to pander to them. Instead they are content to rub the audience's nose right in it: in place of wayward country boys whose hearts are in the right place, the Dukes here are a pair of backwoods sociopaths bent on destruction and carnage. The same goes for Daisy: in place of a cornfed, wholesome beauty, we have a flint-hearted bimbo, portrayed by a dead-eyed dullard whose star-power would be eclipsed by a can of pilchards.
The whole enterprise reeks of contempt for its audience: time and again the conventions of the original series are unsubtly 'subverted'. One can almost hear the screenwriters giggling over their double mocha lattes: yes, let's show them what a stupid, reactionary pair of dumb-ass Southern punks those Duke boys really are.
Lynda Carter seems thoroughly embarrassed by her participation, as well she should be, and Burt Reynolds phones in his performance to such an extent that you almost expect to hear a dial tone.
Shameful and pathetic. 1/ 10
Trick Baby (1972)
Well worth your time
An interesting, extremely well-performed little movie about a pair of Philadelphia con artists who get more than they bargain for when they cross swords with a corrupt cop and the local Mafiosi.
Trick Baby begins well and builds up midway to a terrific foot-chase through the seamier side of the city. In the second half it starts to run out of steam and becomes a little predictable. Things are bogged down especially by a lengthy scene involving a preacher, who is the only character that strikes a false note. In spite of this the movie never loses one's attention completely. The cast down to the supporting players is excellent: Beverly Ballard particularly shines as a woman used and abused by slick operator White Folks (Kiel Martin) and Dallas Edward Hayes does terrific work as the ruthless and relentless cop.
The use of locations is terrific, and the movie has a rawness and immediacy utterly missing from thrillers today. Minor reservations aside, Trick Baby is well worth a look 8/10.
Van Helsing (2004)
The Stephen Sommers Guide to Movie-making
The Stephen Sommers guide to Movie-making:
(1) Ensure screenplay consists of little but a series of continual action sequences, none of which advance your story one iota
(2) Assume that your audience will be indifferent to 'character development' and 'coherence' and ensure therefore that your screenplay contains neither.
(3) Instruct sound people to turn all sound-effects up to 11, no make that 12
(4) Tell effects people to lay on the CGI with a trowel and to make it look as cartoonish as possible
(5) Ensure sound effects and CGI combine to guarantee Dramamine sales rocket
(6) Employ an epileptic woodpecker to edit your movie
(7) Refer sound people, CGI people and editor to 'The Mummy Returns' to give them an idea of what you're looking for
(8) Laugh darkly and malevolently at the filmgoers who forked out hard-earned cash to have their taste and intelligence insulted by you.
L'infermiera nella corsia dei militari (1979)
Lame-brained
This lame-brained comedy (which I saw under the title 'Nurse at the Military Madhouse') is set in a military psychiatric hospital and makes the Three Stoodges look like high-grade intellectual fare. Much of the comedy is pure low-grade slapstick - doors slammed in faces, people tripping over buckets of water or being punched in the privates ... you get the idea. The 'story' such as it is, involves some valuable paintings hidden in the hospital.
Nadia Cassini performs an embarrassingly awful song 'n' dance number about halfway through. She is admittedly easily on the eye - as is former giallo queen Nieves Navarro (billed here as Susan Scott)who contributes a couple of fairly unsexy (for her) nude scenes. Even so, these provide the only possible reason for watching this strange little movie.