Another Terence Fisher blood fest, this one involving Peter Cushing’s Baron Frankenstein, who not content with discovering how to resurrect corpses, has now discovered a method to preserve a man’s soul after death. His driven and maniacal existence doesn’t sit well with his charming, drunken friend and assistant Dr Hertz, who acts as grave robber, lab technician and surgeon. Together the two men steal a dead murderer’s soul and transplant it into the body of his scarred lover, who committed suicide on learning of his guillotining. This is a grim old tale all-round, with more than its share of horror, most emanating not from the ‘monster’ created by Frankenstein, but from the local population, particularly the prejudiced constabulary and a group of nasty rich boys who tease the deformed serving wench Christina to her – and our – total crawling embarrassment.
Once resurrected and given a new face – weren’t cosmetics wonderful in the 1800s? – poor Christina wrestles with her new given soul, that of the even poorer Hans, her executed lover. Rather like Peter Lorre’s severed hand in The Beast with Five Fingers, we now have a soul taking over a whole body. The metaphysical aspect is touched on, but the filmmakers prefer to dwell on the titillating features of the story, most obviously the concept of a man inhabiting a woman’s body and enacting acts of love and sex with his / her male victims before dispatching them. Because the writers are so torn between themes, the film doesn’t work on an intellectual level or as an exercise in outright terror.
Peter Cushing is once again a wholly dislikeable Baron. The audience has a lot of sympathy for Susan Denberg’s Christina who swaps an ashamed and under protective father for an overbearing mad-as-a-Chinese-cat scientist. A Hammer curio, not entirely successful, but worth a look.
I agree, though it's missing the one ingredient which would make it even better (I hesitate to say perfect, because of course it can't be)- Peter Cushing. This isn't to knock Andrew Keir, who does a splendid job as Father Sandor.
Hmm, I'd beg to differ, as I think in this circumstance the unexpected nature of the piece is what makes it so good. Cushing I feel would have tipped it into the expected and remove some of the tension. The monastery under siege and the fact the brethren openly kill vampires has an intriguing sacrilegious subtext that would not exist had Van Helsing been present.
I have to disagree with you two guys - Dracula (1958), or Horror Of Dracula outside the UK, is the best in my opinion. Would agree with Peter Cushing in all the movies though!
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
This is a very effective eerie chiller based on John Wyndham’s TheMidwichCuckoos novel. One morning in a sleepy English village all the inhabitants suddenly lose consciousness for a number of hours. Anyone trying to enter the zone also falls to sleep. The authorities set up an exclusion zone and then everyone wakes up, seemingly unaffected until two months later all the women of child bearing age are found to be pregnant, accusations of infidelity and extramarital sex abound. The children are born with unusual characteristics and develop rapidly and with the power of telepathy. The children begin to influence the villagers with their powers including making some of them kill themselves. The villagers need to form a plan to stop the children.
Wolf Rilla directs in a restrained manner which makes the children a terrifying force to be reckoned with. Adorned with padded wigs they really are menacing. George Sanders and the marvellous Barbara Shelley play parents of the children’s leader. Laurence Naismith (DAF) plays the doctor and Michael Gwynn (Fawlty Towers’ Lord Melbury) is an intelligence officer.
It’s interesting to see the attitudes of the period - don’t miss this one.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
That was a long thread - thanks for posting the link - a few films I had forgotten about and many I have never taken in. I used to have a slim photo book entitled something like House of Horror, a Pictorial History of Hammer, which had a brief synopsis, cast lists, production credits, and stills from every film, plus a few critiques and historical footnotes about the history of the studio. I bought it in the early 1980s - chiefly because it featured a lot of photos of half-naked women - a great attraction for a 12 year old - but I found it an essential movie guide. I have no idea where it went, but I don't have it now. Probably one of those house clearances. The post in that thread which I found most amusing was the one about the 'terrifying' Mutiny on the Buses - it is often forgotten Hammer Pictures made sci-fi, comedies and domestic dramas as well as thrillers and horrors.
A political allegory disguised as a shark hunt which exposes the corrupt underbelly of local politics in smalltown coastal America. A Great White Shark arrives in Amity to inflict maximum retribution for his misrepresentation by composer John Williams. Steven Spielberg sends the Three Stooges after him, this time in the form of three outcasts: a drunken game fisherman, a novice marine biologist and a family man who happens to be the inept police chief, newly appointed from New York. He can’t swim. Handy.
Interesting for a hour or so until the glorified extended ocean safari takes precedence over everything else. Hemingway’s Old Man Santiago this is not; one begins to feel sorry for the bloody shark. The unfortunate fish turns out to be a poorly realised mechanical rubber monster. It was better before we saw it. Jeez, don’t filmmakers learn? Hitchcock worked up more horror throwing feathers at Tippi Hedren in The Birds. [Yes, I know he used sodium vapour overlay, but you get my point.] A screeching, biting, animalistic soundtrack helped too. This looks exactly what it is and Williams’ orchestral score intrudes everywhere. A tensionless exercise not helped by frequent ad-breaks; over exaggerated and overdrawn at every turn. The director revels in action, but it’s the smaller, intimate moments and those beachfront flashes of early directorial impetus that best succeed. Unfortunately, there just aren’t enough of them.
Probably worked better in 1975; these days we have The Shallows.
The main weakness of this late Hammer Dracula flick is the embarrassing attempt by writer Don Houghton to draft hip dialogue for a countercultural gang of Chelsea youngsters who get mixed up in satanic rites and fall prey to Christopher Lee's revived Count: it's a middle-aged man's excruciating take on youth-speak. Fortunately Lee doesn't demean Dracula by swinging into Carnaby Street personally: the Count's twentieth-century self chooses to remain within the dark confines of a deconsecrated church, St Bartolph's, and its graveyard. His wayward victims come to him rather than the other way around.
Overall, this is my favourite Hammer Dracula, despite the cringeworthy screenplay. (Bear in mind that I'm writing as the same guy whose favourite Bond film is DAF!) I love the hybrid mix of generic elements. We get conventional Hammer gothic (Peter Cushing vs. Lee in their first 'Dracula' face-off since '58), overshot by allusions to the contemporary Highgate Vampire case and mixed with elements of 'A Clockwork Orange' (Christopher Neame's Johnny Alucard is a thrill-seeking, anti-establishment sadist), an emergent glam rock evolving from bohemian hippydom (Stoneground's 'Alligator Man' is a catchy number, which might have been worthy of an early T Rex album*), Euston Films' TV series 'Special Branch' (Michael Coles, later a guest actor on 'The Sweeney', is a gritty detective, freely admitting he's out of his depth when the serial killer he's investigating is suspected to be none other than the Prince of Darkness) and Dr Who (Cushing's Van Helsing is grandfather to Stephanie Beacham's Jessica, just as William Hartnell's Dr Who was grandfather to Carole Ann Ford's Susan. Cushing himself had also played a grandfatherly Dr Who, for the big screen, but in 'AD 1972' Jessica is probably closer to the TV Third Doctor's contemporary companion Jo Grant, for whom Houghton was also writing in 1970/71, than to Susan. In 'Who' Katy Manning is on record as saying that she resisted lines which gave Jo too much 'fab' or 'groovy' vernacular. In a similarly conservative spirit, Ms Beacham's Jessica is ultimately her grandfather's grandaughter, despite her association with Alucard and friends: she reassures Van Helsing that she doesn't do drugs or pre-marital sex and she weeps bitterly over the fatal consequences of her gang's forray into black magic.)
There are also shades of Bond in 'AD 1972'. The movie begins spectacularly, 'in media res', with a pre-credits sequence pitching the nineteenth century iterations of Dracula and Van Helsing against each other for a 'final confrontation' in Hyde Park: the pace and style of that remind me of DAF's violent PTS, which welcomes Bond's nemesis Blofeld to a red-herring hell. Moreover, Mike Vickers' score echoes elements of John Barry's Bond music of the period, blending this with contemporary TV cop show-ish stylings, jazz funk and vaguely ecclesiastical, gothic melancholy. I suspect that, with a degree of reciprocity, some of Vickers' themes may even have influenced Barry's rushed but evocative work on TMWTGG (1974), reflecting Lee's dark persona as Scaramanga.** (A year on from 'AD 1972', 'The Satanic Rites Of Dracula' was to continue to magpie Bond in low-budget fashion; notably, Cushing takes the elevator to confront the shady D D Denham - actually Dracula - in his top-floor office of a tower block, discovering his true identity, just as Sean Connery drops in on recluse Willard Whyte - actually Blofeld - in his Whyte House penthouse suite in DAF.)
Three of 'AD 1972''s misguided youths, Caroline Munro, Christopher Neame and Michael Kitchen, would of course all later turn up in Bond films themselves, in different decades (in TSWLM, LTK and GE/TWINE respectively, as Naomi, Fallon and Tanner). To my mind, Caroline Munro gives one of the most affecting performances as a victim of Dracula that we get in the entire Hammer series: her freaky death scene is really rather disturbing. Neame is well over the top throughout, but Alucard's own demise after a tussle with Cushing is memorable and amusing, running through a playbook of what undoes the Undead - all in the domestic setting of his trendy apartment.
As ever, Cushing and Lee are superb. Van Helsing is dignified but determined, quietly harbouring expert knowledge about the evils of vampirism and bearing the burden of doing what needs to be done, while Dracula is the smouldering epitome of transgressive charisma and vengeful appetite. Alan Gibson's direction of the climactic battle at St. Bartolph's is spot on: it's gripping, well choreographed stuff. It has to be said, though, that Dracula is a little too easily defeated - for one "who's commanded nations!" (Lee's repeated insistence in the early 70s on including a bowlderised line or two from Bram Stoker, as a condition of donning the fangs for Hammer yet again, results sometimes, as here, in awkwardly jarring dialogue.)
Despite the uneven lurch into a contemporary setting I'd argue that 'AD 1972' is largely respectful of Hammer's Dracula legacy. For example, Alucard's role is structurally similar to that of Lord Courtley (Ralph Bates) in 'Taste The Blood Of Dracula' (1970) and when, near the end, Cushing taunts Lee with, "Look on me... look on me and remember!" it's as though he's referring not only to the events of this film's PTS but also to the 1958 film.
"Rest in final peace" (or at least until 1973 and 'Rites' - the inferior direct sequel).
Here's a piece which Caroline Munro kindly signed for me at a Film and ComicCon a few years back. Laura Bellows is her 'AD 1972' character. I prioritised this for a signing even over her Naomi material!
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
I think this is the book you’re referring to @chrisno1 it was published by Lorrimer and was excellent - it had several pages of artwork for proposed Hammer films that never got off the ground which looked like good projects. They didn’t turn up that often at my shop but when they did they would sell for a minimum of £50.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Film 4 is showing the first 10 Star Trek movies over the next couple of weeks, so I am dipping in. I didn't watch The Motion Picture because I saw it recently and posted a review, which I have reproduced here:
STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE (1979)
There was a long gestation period for this movie, which was floated as a film, then a TV show, then a film once more. In fact there’s a long gestation for everything on show, period. A half-decent idea is spoilt by over enthusiastic special effects from John Dykstra and Douglas Trumbull which over power almost every scene. Robert Wise didn’t know a thing about Star Trek, although he had science fiction pedigree with The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Andromeda Strain. He creates a workmanlike piece which aches to be important but merely looks elaborate. At 132 minutes the adventure is too long to hold our interest without any of the expected phaser battles and fist fights. I enjoyed the psychological dilemma which plays out as Kirk and Spock begin to realise they are dealing with a sentient logic computer whose journey in the universe began three-hundred years ago. Its origin proves to be a worthwhile revelation.
The familiar faces acquit themselves adequately, but no more than that. I missed the funky sixties fashions. Persis Khambatta, a model turned actress who quite possibly has the best legs I’ve ever seen in a movie – and wears one of the very shortest mini-dresses – is probably the most watchable component of a block-by-block building narrative. When her navigator Illa is taken over by the alien machine V’Ger, things momentarily get interesting, but Wise hasn’t got a firm hand on this space ship’s steering column and he becomes beholden to the effects maestros. The end is an ethereal mess and the whole has something of 2001 about it. They did all this sort of thing much better in the sixties, on telly and in fifty minutes. Not truly as terrible as many fans and casual viewers would have you believe, but it is very slow and would struggle to interest the uninitiated.
STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982)
Some observers claim this is the best of the Star Trek movie spin-offs. If so, that’s setting the bar extremely low.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture attempted to do something unique with the theme of futuristic space exploration by turning the idea on its head and having Earth be the civilisation under inspection. Audiences didn’t like the esoteric ending and the lack of any violent incident left most viewers wondering what kind of adventure they were watching. This was the age of Star Wars, remember? Star Trek 2 attempts to rectify the situation by returning the fledgling franchise to its television roots. So we have a returning villain in Ricardo Montalban’s genetically empowered Khan [rather good in a pantomime fashion], some decent phaser battles between star ships and a revenge plot that doesn’t really take much understanding. Sciencey stuff comes in the shape of the Genesis Project – or Man Plays God, as I like to think of it – a creation machine and a destroyer of worlds all at once.
Thing is, if you take out the extended preamble that revisits Kirk’s uneasy promotion to an admiral and the padding of his past love life, replace the revenge plot with a crazy idealistic scientist and cut out the business with the trainee recruits – who include Kirstie Alley as a Vulcan Star Captain – you basically have a fifty-two minute movie: the exact length of a television episode. The film only seeks its core fanbase, so it barely scrapes above average in the casual interest stakes. Of course, the fans all loved it for that very reason, dodgy special effects and all.
Personally, and having never watched it before, I can’t see what all the fuss is about.
For a somewhat dissenting view, as a lifelong Trekkie Star Trek: The Motion Picture (ST:TMP) has always been one of my favorite movies. Yes it is slow paced and went thru a torturous development but it also has a lot of interesting hard sci-fi ideas and if you look past the reliance on effects it pushes the characters of Kirk and Spock to some very interesting places. Spock in particular goes thru a pretty big evolution here; in the old TV show his human and Vulcan halves were often at odds with one another and ST:TMP tackles this head on; by the end he has learned to reconcile his two halves and the peace he finds thru that resolution informed Leonard Nimoy's performance as the character thru the rest of the movies he appeared in. Kirk also has an interesting arc; at the start he is obviously out of his element, not having been in the captain's chair for an extended period and not being familiar with the workings of his new ship. He makes mistakes and must come to terms with his own failings and put his ego aside. The movie is also really true to the classic Star Trek philosophy of people working together to find a non-violent solution to a seemingly impossible problem; they don't resort to violence to defeat V'Ger, instead helping it evolve into a higher form of life. The film also has really amazing production values with sets and designs that still look fresh by today's standards. A familiarity with the original series is definitely needed to fully appreciate the movie but I think if you look below the shiny surface, there is a lot there to think about. Not sure which version of the movie you saw, but if possible I'd suggest checking out the Special Director's Edition which was released last year as it scales back on the effects and brings more of the character development to the forefront.
I largely agree with your review of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (ST:TWOK). As a straightforward action vehicle it can be entertaining but in many ways it deviates the most from Trek's hopeful philosophy of people working together to find common ground. Starfleet is transformed from a largely peaceful, exploration focused organization into a quasi-military one. Also, the film is a sequel to the episode Space Seed from the old TV show; that episode was quintessential Trek as after Kirk and crew defeat Khan they actually give him what he wants, putting him on a virgin planet to tame in the hopes that the trials they will face to master their new home will make them better people and erase their arrogance and hubris. Spock even comments on how it would be interesting to return to that world in 100 years and see what had sprung from the seed they had planted (thus the title). ST:TWOK flushes that hopeful ending down the toilet so that it can tell a pedestrian revenge story with a disappointingly predictable and very anti Star Trek final confrontation. The performances are great, especially Montalban as the revenge crazed Khan and Shatner as a Kirk suffering a mid-life crisis but it's also a shame that this movie has served as the template for so many of the Star Trek movies that followed it.
@TonyDP Thanks for that take on ST:TMP, my review is one of those that I should really reassess - but I don't do that, I like to leave things as they are - and the film's major flaw IMO is the pacing, which I mention. I am not sure how you could speed it up though. I agree with most of your comments, especially those around the V'ger storyline which I believe is far more demanding than most of the other Trek movies. I did enjoy the effects and the sets [I call them elaborate, I think] although the costumes are only so-so. The review probably doesn't talk up what I enjoyed enough. When ST:TMP is good, it is very good, but it dawdles too much for me. I watched the 132 minute version. As a side note, Halliwell's gave ST:TWOK no stars. Monthly Film Bulletin hated it too.
Audiences didn’t like the esoteric ending and the lack of any violent incident left most viewers wondering what kind of adventure they were watching. This was the age of Star Wars, remember? Star Trek 2 attempts to rectify the situation by returning the fledgling franchise to its television roots
__________________
I think this gets the Original Series wrong. Sure there were scenes of conflict and occasional bursts of action in the teevee show, but mostly it was Kirk Spock 'n' McCoy standing round the bridge debating philosophy. The tone of Star Trek may have been very different from the new Star Wars, but Star Trek was not forgotten at all in 1979, it was ubiquitous in syndication. Filmgoers wouldve known what to expect, but the problem was the first film was much slower and more pretentious than the old show had ever been. your comparison to 2001 is good, the first film may have been trying for that sort of tone. More recent revivals of Star Trek, especially the Jar Jar Abrams movies, have tried to "update" Star Trek as a more conventional action franchise, and I consider them Star Trek in name only. I want the characters to stand round the bridge and debate philosophy!
Have we all seen Star Trek the Animated Series? thats the missing link between the original series and the films. The original cast returned to do the voices, and James Doohan and Majel Barrett did the voices for most of the "guest" characters. Limited animation allowed them do show some more ambitious images than the practical special effects of the live action series, and there were some really weird looking aliens now working on the bridge.
No, it doesn't. I refer to the expectations of the Star Wars type audience - albeit somewhat lazily - then list the aspects of the Original Series which are easily identifiable to most as the basis for the film: crazy villain, clear plot, some science, some action. I'm not commenting on the wider merits of the Original Series at all, which are many and varied.
Having been the right age at the right time, and in a school full of nerds, all of us lined up repeatedly to see Star Wars on first release (for the next year, every child's birthday party included yet another trip to see Star Wars). and all of us were quite familiar with Star Trek long before Star Wars came out, it was nerd-bible along with comic books and Tolkien.
maybe if I'd run with a less nerdy crowd I would have experienced a different sort of Star Wars audience?
@caractacus potts, regarding Star Trek: The Animated Series, I have it on DVD and will rewatch it regularly. While the animation was quite limited it was really heady stuff, especially given the Saturday morning kiddie time slot it was assigned. It also tackled some pretty weighty topics with episodes such as The Magics of Megas Tu where Kirk defends a benevolent alien at a Salem Witch Trial who ends up being what we would call the devil (that one ended up being banned in some markets). The show even had some elements that Gene Roddenberry cribbed for Star Trek: The Next Generation over a decade later including the first appearance of the holodeck. Sadly, these days it seems the animated show gets largely ignored with regard to established continuity. Roddenberry himself once even said he didn't consider it part of established canon (though I think he might have retracted that at some point) and I think people have used that to marginalize it to some degree. Personally, I disagree as I think it presents some really good stories with thought provoking ideas behind them.
Unofficially the greatest sequel film ever made, the best Frankenstein horror film ever made, Universal Pictures’ best-ever horror movie, one of the top ten greatest horror films ever, etc, etc, etc, one feels unable to criticise this hoary old thing from 1935.
Boris Karloff revives his own dead Monster from the 1931 original and goes tramping around the countryside terrorising kids, maidens and blind old men. He’s petrified of fire, has learnt to speak, loves a drink and a fag and desperately wants a mate. Meanwhile evil psychologist Dr Pretorius reckons he’s found a method of genetically engineering a live human, but needs Dr Frankenstein’s assistance in reactivating the heart and brain. Pretorius plans to provide a partner in the living dead for the poor old shouty Monster. Dr Frankenstein, haunted by his past, looks seriously ill. Actor Colin Clive was an alcoholic who worked almost the entire movie half-cut. Probably wise. His performance is mania personified, mirrored by Karloff’s frightful turn. Sanity – or insanity, depending on how you look at it – is provided by Ernest Thesiger as Dr Pretorius. He’s a weird one. Fifteen minutes in, he persuades Frankenstein to his attic and presents him with a half-dozen ‘living dolls’, including a king, a queen, an archbishop and a pretty ballerina who only dances to Mendelssohn. Creepy isn’t the half of it: Pretorius is a first order raving lunatic.
The film is framed by a prologue of some length at which Lord Byron congratulates Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley on her as yet unpublished novel. Keen to know why she killed off her tragic monster, Percy Shelley asks his wife to continue the tale, and she begins to relate a chapter omitted from the original film version, segueing us neatly into a fiery flashback. It appears both the Doctor and his Monster escaped the blazing fire at the mill…
Elsa Lanchester, who never quite became a star, but would always remain remembered for her role as the titular bride, dominates proceedings late on. Her hissing, scowling Bride is a thing of both beauty and terror. Lanchester has the dual role of Mary Shelley, a clever piece of casting which hints at the darkness residing inside all writers of fiction.
The whole project is enormous. Huge sets abound. The music score is loud and proud. The special effects dominate. Lots of shouting. Bad accents. Many over the top performances in a cast of Universal regulars. The mixing of jazz-age art deco with nineteenth century fashions is hilarious. A comedic delight which threatens to undermine Mel Brooks forever. A film that occasionally still shocks too. It’s a complete mess, really, but it succeeds on pure energy and gusto alone. You can’t quite believe what you are watching, never certain if the film asks to be taken seriously or not. Director James Whale is on record as stating he wanted the picture to be a “real hoot.” It probably is, one way or another.
An important movie in cinema history for being the first top-rank horror film to utilise colour for shock purposes. The blood is vividly red, yes, but importantly the shadows are also spectacularly dark, the women alabaster white, the clothes opulently brown, gold and green, the candles and gas lamps sparkle, the sky shimmers an azure blue, even at night, and the Creature, that poor lost soul, is freckled with black scars and duck-shell skin. This is an Eastmancolor extravaganza which attempts to paint its horrific portraits and actions, the guilty and innocent, in primary shades, yet hawking beside them are the deep shadows, contrasts and bursting light of a gothic tradition and the old masters, like Caravaggio and Rembrandt.
Perhaps what is most interesting is the smallness of the scene. Universal’s Frankenstein pictures tended towards German expressionism, as exemplified by the huge sets and over-acting. Hammer, with less of a budget, chose to focus on character and storytelling, building not by incident but by personal intent. So here we have Peter Cushing’s Baron Victor Frankenstein, a genius scientist, but a man so subsumed to his own satisfactions that he has quite simply begun to lose his own grip on reality. This is quite possibly Cushing’s greatest performance on screen and one of the greatest ever seen in the horror genre.
For all the ghastliness of Christopher Lee’s impressively made-up Creature, the real horror lies within Victor Frankenstein himself. Not only does he treat his creation like a bad dog – chained to an attic wall and fed on scraps – but he shows total contempt for everybody who surrounds him. Robert Urquhart’s nominal hero Paul Krempe gets a foretaste of the coming troubles when he meets the teenage Baron [a wolfishly young Melvyn Hayes] who engages him as a tutor. As their roles reverse, Paul sees through the Baron’s external façade of obsessive brilliance and recognises the darkness of his intent, the god-arm he is wielding. When the Baron decapitates a corpse, splashing blood stains on his pristine silver grey coat without a care, director Terence Fisher draws closer and closer to Paul’s pained features. This forms comparisons to the earlier close-up of Peter Cushing as he listens to the heartbeat of a rejuvenated cat. One is alert, fascinated, exalted with success; the other is appalled, uncomprehending, revolted. The contrast is used again and again to emphasise the Baron’s increasing single-mindedness and eventual mania: his cutting down of a hanged man, his outrageous claims of resurrection, his ignorance of social graces, his captivation with a sculptor’s severed hands or a pair of blue glutinous eyes.
This Frankenstein is no prodigious scientist, although he just might be a genius. As played by Cushing he is an ogre in a lab coat. He’s even engaged in a one-way affair with the house maid, Justine, raising a triad undercurrent of sexual frigidity, passion and longing between the Baron, Justine and the Baron’s wife Elizabeth, a subtext completely absent from Universal’s interpretations. Hazel Court and Valerie Gaunt [Elizabeth and Justine] become the first of many blushing victims feted for revealing a heaving decolletage. The Baron barely blinks; he takes what he wants whenever he wants it and damn the nation. Cushing’s so convincing he can turn a simple stroke of his wife’s cheek into a gesture of ghoulish menace. His deception, abuse and waste of Justine is as arrogant and conniving as any heartless lothario. That he commits murder to achieve his ends completely escapes his reasoning. So too the fact his eureka moment comes via an accident of nature: he really ought to listen to Paul Krempe who attempts to advise him that man shouldn’t meddle in the natural order as no good will come of it.
As his world collapses, Frankenstein blames everyone but himself. It is only at the very end, when his wife finally discovers the truth in the attic – a bit like poor Jane Eyre – that he finally realises creature creation may not be such a good career move. Too late, both for him and the monster: the latter is burnt to death; Frankenstein exits, stage left with a guillotine rising before the fall.
None of this is to say the film isn’t impressive. Filmed entirely on studio sets, it manages to feel expansive while never reaching beyond the laboratory, a prison cell, a bedroom and a drawing room. The make-up is good, as are the costumes. The sets demonstrate how miracles can be worked within tight budgetary constraints. There’s a sense of disorderliness and bustle to the Frankenstein household which seems to fit well with the Baron’s chaotic experiments. Throughout, director, photographer [Jack Asher] and editor [James Needs] provide us with plenty of visual dramas to occupy our eyes and minds. James Barnard’s music sounds fresh and incisive. Curiously, the film is mostly comprised of implied shocks and the gore count is very low, although the reveal of the Creature is certainly as stunning as it was in the 1931 original.
Splendid entertainment, a very short runtime, and a big thank-you to Peter Cushing.
Two tales of loneliness watched over a bank holiday with nothing to do and no one to see...
THE RED TURTLE (2016)
Shipwrecked on a desert island, a man goes insane caring for the corpse of a dead turtle. A strange environmental fantasy whose excellent hand drawn animation and emotive music score fails to hide a dispiriting centre. The turtle of the title isn’t very nice and nor is the man; the tale which evolves is deeply unsatisfactory all-round. It’s probably a good thing there is no dialogue.
THE ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE (1954)
I don’t know how many films have been made of Daniel Defoe’s famous story based on the life of Alexander Selkirk, who really was abandoned on a desert island, but this one was highly lauded on release. I haven’t seen it since I was a kid. It has dated horribly, which is not unexpected. I was surprised Talking Pictures TV didn’t put up one of those disclaimers regarding ‘content and language considered acceptable at the time’, but there you go. Basically, a voyager gets shipwrecked on an island in the Pacific and spends twenty-eight years attempting to escape and survive. Eventually he rescues a south-sea islander from cannibals, names him Friday and the two share an unequal relationship that leads to rescue.
An odd project for director Luis Bunuel, until you recognise he’s more interested in the personal impact of isolation than he is in how Crusoe fashions his homestead, makes pots and pans, grows wheat, makes clothes, etc. He glosses over the practical in favour of the psychological. Dan O’Herlihy carries the whole movie as the title character. They filmed it in Bunuel’s backyard of coastal Mexico and the external photography is very pretty.
Been catching up on those Star Trek movies, one day at a time:
STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK (1984)
Celestial little number from the Star Trek crew that considers the possibility of life after death – although only for Vulcans, one assumes. Following directly on from The Wrath of Khan, director Leonard Nimoy forsakes his pointy ears and attempts to inject something of a more genial, companionable atmosphere into this mini-epic, focussing as it does on Kirk’s deep, unfulfilled love-affair with his Science Officer. The Admiral is less upset by the death of his son.
A fair outing, in fact, which is a half-way house between the baffling, impressively mounted first movie and the more conventional, less showy second. The whole thing appears to be done on studio sets, like the old TV series [mostly] was, with blue screen work in abundance and some extremely obvious special effects. The space ship model work is better than average however and the mortally wounded USS Enterprise is a thing to behold, battle scarred and weary as she mounts her final defiance. DeForest Kelly takes the acting honours, carrying the weight of Spock’s soul in his own craggy edifice. Christopher Lloyd cracks us up as a Klingon Commander of much stupidity.
Not a lot of tension, but I suspect the fans loved it.
STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME (1986)
After three sturdy entries, the Star Trek franchise took on time-travel and decided to go all out for comic effect. I think it is worth remembering that time travel as a concept was played fairly seriously until the 1980s and Back to the Future, which itself wasn’t devoid of world changing implications, albeit on a smaller scale than this outlandish epic.
The Voyage Home concludes a trilogy of interconnected movies, on this occasion with a diverting sense of fun and the impossible. I’m fairly certain they time-travelled in the Original Series – I can’t remember the episode titles, but I don’t think they were overtly amusing. McCoy references the adventures when he and Scotty offer 23rd Century technology to a 20th Century plastics engineer [“Aren’t you changing the future?”]. There’s also a clever nod to Some Like It Hot at the expense of Spock’s half-human / half-Vulcan split biochemistry ["Nobody's perfect"]. The film also blatantly references 2001 with a strange tubular space probe and all those indecipherable whale sounds.
The plot is as slim as a feather, writable on a postcard and, other than the obvious fish-out-of-water content, has a vague environmental eco-warrior subtext which feels more in keeping with the Original Series than the last couple of dour attempts. However, it isn’t entirely clear if the movie makers want the audience to be pleased it is the Earth being saved from oblivion or the Humpback whales being saved from extinction. Either way, the film turns out to be curiously heart-warming, which I didn’t expect. Leonard Nimoy would go on to direct Three Men and a Baby and here he demonstrates that comedy, not drama, is his forte. He’s aided by a crew-full of good, game performances.
Blink and you’ll miss one of our alumni: Vijay Amritraj has a small role as a Star Fleet Captain.
The Voyage Home is probably my favourite of the Star Trek films because of the comic rapport between the regular cast.
chrisno1 said:
I’m fairly certain they time-travelled in the Original Series – I can’t remember the episode titles, but I don’t think they were overtly amusing.
_______________________
I believe the first time they time travel is the all-time classicCity on the Edge of Forever, guest starring Joan Collins.
as you suggest, this one is not funny at all, but explored a very heavy philosophical question indeed: would it really have been better to prevent WWII before it started?
unfortunately I cant find any episode of the Original Series online. pity, because if theres any single episode an aspiring Trekkie should watch it is this one. And if you can only watch two, pair it with Trouble with Tribbles to get both extremes of the tonal range.
in this episode they literally walk through a portal to Earth's past. I think its a later episode where they establish they can time travel by sling-shotting the Enterprise round the sun. By the time of the late 1990s series Voyager, the writers introduce the Temporal Police, because the various Star Trek casts have interfered with the space time continuum too many times.
...speaking of casting, I spotted Miguel Ferrer, Special Agent Albert from Twin Peaks, as helmsman in the other ship, in the clip @Gymkata posted!
I am waiting for Great TV to start repeating Star Trek from episode 1. I haven't watched most of the episodes since the nineties. That Joan Collins episode was brilliant and so was Trouble with Tribbles. Problem is I can't take on too many projects what with The Saint, my books, MacLean and the Uni assignments...
I have watched a lot of the show over the years, I don't regard myself as a fan. I even remember that animated series you mentioned.
I'd forgotten about that one, wikipedia says it came first. and that was the one where they discovered they could slingshot round the sun.
again the plot centres round the need not to disrupt the timeline, but (without having seen if for years) it doesnt seem have the same weight the City on the Edge of Forever does, as the established-timeline-that-must-be-maintained is imaginary rather than WWII. Even fifty years later I'm sure we all have an opinion about the necessity of WWII and could debate the question until shouting starts and doors slam. and who wants to see Joan Collins sacrifice her life? heavy, heavy episode
btw, when I was watching The Persuaders recently, and got to that shows episode with Joan Collins (which is a heckuva lot more lightweight than her Star Trek episode) I decided she is by far my favourite of all the magnificent specimens who were ubiquitous on 60s teevee and/or film.
btw, when I was watching The Persuaders recently, and got to that shows episode with Joan Collins (which is a heckuva lot more lightweight than her Star Trek episode) I decided she is by far my favourite of all the magnificent specimens who were ubiquitous on 60s teevee and/or film.
That Persuaders episode is one of the best IMO. I loved the twist at the end and Joan looks great in it, very 70s chic. The humour was well matched to the drama as well. Isn't Ferdy Mayne in it as a despicable Italian Count? A classic.
A dismal entry into the Star Trek canon which, after previous attempts to show the folly of playing God, decides to actually show us God himself, or some version of him anyway. Turns out he’s a mixed up, vengeful kind of fella. Didn’t they battle computers with God-complexes in the Original Series? It certainly feels like a seen-it done-it.
The movie starts genially enough with some fun in Yosemite National Park, proceeds to a hostage rescue on Nimbus III that resembles the Seventh Cavalry charging Moss Eisley on Tatooine and then goes all ponderous on us for an encounter with a deity of immense power who is rumbled by Kirk in a mere seconds.
The vantage deck featuring the ship’s wheel from the original Civil War Enterprise showed a hint of panache missing through most of the escapade. The three major players are fine and it is good to have a reasonably convincing villain in Laurence Luckinbill’s Sybock, a renegade Vulcan with powerful mystic awareness. Scotty and Uhura seem to be getting romantically involved. Nice touch that. Otherwise, really, who cares? Certainly not God, I venture.
STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (1991)
A final fling for the original Enterprise crew and a fair effort all round. The film isn’t perfect, stuck with its television origins and an aging cast, but it is engaging, firstly with bouts of humour, then a series of well-designed intrigues that have their roots in those innovative TV shows, and latterly a Klingon vs Federation showdown. The fans get the things they’ll know and love and the casual viewer isn’t confounded by what they watch. The constant Shakespearian references thudded like irons on bells, and the script is undeniably clunky, but the film looks bright when it needs to be and dark when the tension mounts, which is often. At least the god-complex themes have been consigned to history.
It is quite an achievement for a franchise to get six movies out in a little under twelve years and also, I feel, quite an achievement to watch them all in few days. Speaking as an ambivalent viewer, there’s only so much Star Trek a man can take and these films, watched close together, are by turns both interesting and dreadful. I vaguely remember watching this in the cinema. I don’t remember thinking it was as good as this.
The third, and best, of the “Dollars” trilogy. This one serves as a prequel to the other two, taking place during the American Civil War. It pits Eastwood’s Man With No Name (nicknamed Blondie in this one) against Eli Wallach as Tuco and Lee Van Cleef asAngel Eyes as they battle to find a horde of buried gold. Full of sweeping vistas and lingering closeups, it is justly considered the greatest Spaghetti western of all time and one of the greatest westerns ever. It’s really incredible that director Sergio Leone could make such a movie with a cast of hundreds on a meagre budget of 1.2 million dollars. The Civil War battle is extraordinarily powerful and the final scenes in the graveyard as Tuco runs around searching for the grave to the music of Ennio Morricone’s The Ecstasy Of Gold is iconic. I’m not usually a fan of movies that stretch to three hours but this one is an exception. There seems to be some extra scenes that I haven’t seen before in this version so I’m presuming it was previously edited for running time.
Not really a spoiler, but it’s interesting to contemplate what The Man With No Name did with all the money he got away with in this movie before he appeared virtually penniless in A Fistful Of Dollars. Would have made a good sequel.
Essential viewing.
9/10
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
the final scenes in the graveyard as Tuco runs around searching for the grave to the music of Ennio Morricone’s The Ecstasy Of Gold is iconic.
@CoolHandBond I agree. I watched this film in the cinema a number of years back on a cleaned up print and that scene is a masterpiece of editing, camera, music and Eli Wallach crazy-eyed acting. If you want to see how men can be driven mad by the lure of gold - this is the way to picture it. Morricone's score is fabulous here, drawing us slowly then faster and faster and faster as Tuco walks, jogs, sprints to find the grave, the whole landscape vanishing into a blur as the music reaches feverish crescendos - then BAM! A zoom on the gravestone and silence accept his breathing. This kind of sequence is the reason I love movies.
Comments
and..
FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN (1967)
Another Terence Fisher blood fest, this one involving Peter Cushing’s Baron Frankenstein, who not content with discovering how to resurrect corpses, has now discovered a method to preserve a man’s soul after death. His driven and maniacal existence doesn’t sit well with his charming, drunken friend and assistant Dr Hertz, who acts as grave robber, lab technician and surgeon. Together the two men steal a dead murderer’s soul and transplant it into the body of his scarred lover, who committed suicide on learning of his guillotining. This is a grim old tale all-round, with more than its share of horror, most emanating not from the ‘monster’ created by Frankenstein, but from the local population, particularly the prejudiced constabulary and a group of nasty rich boys who tease the deformed serving wench Christina to her – and our – total crawling embarrassment.
Once resurrected and given a new face – weren’t cosmetics wonderful in the 1800s? – poor Christina wrestles with her new given soul, that of the even poorer Hans, her executed lover. Rather like Peter Lorre’s severed hand in The Beast with Five Fingers, we now have a soul taking over a whole body. The metaphysical aspect is touched on, but the filmmakers prefer to dwell on the titillating features of the story, most obviously the concept of a man inhabiting a woman’s body and enacting acts of love and sex with his / her male victims before dispatching them. Because the writers are so torn between themes, the film doesn’t work on an intellectual level or as an exercise in outright terror.
Peter Cushing is once again a wholly dislikeable Baron. The audience has a lot of sympathy for Susan Denberg’s Christina who swaps an ashamed and under protective father for an overbearing mad-as-a-Chinese-cat scientist. A Hammer curio, not entirely successful, but worth a look.
I agree, though it's missing the one ingredient which would make it even better (I hesitate to say perfect, because of course it can't be)- Peter Cushing. This isn't to knock Andrew Keir, who does a splendid job as Father Sandor.
Hmm, I'd beg to differ, as I think in this circumstance the unexpected nature of the piece is what makes it so good. Cushing I feel would have tipped it into the expected and remove some of the tension. The monastery under siege and the fact the brethren openly kill vampires has an intriguing sacrilegious subtext that would not exist had Van Helsing been present.
I still agree that it's probably the best Hammer Dracula, but I would have Cushing in all of their movies!
I have to disagree with you two guys - Dracula (1958), or Horror Of Dracula outside the UK, is the best in my opinion. Would agree with Peter Cushing in all the movies though!
VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1960)
This is a very effective eerie chiller based on John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos novel. One morning in a sleepy English village all the inhabitants suddenly lose consciousness for a number of hours. Anyone trying to enter the zone also falls to sleep. The authorities set up an exclusion zone and then everyone wakes up, seemingly unaffected until two months later all the women of child bearing age are found to be pregnant, accusations of infidelity and extramarital sex abound. The children are born with unusual characteristics and develop rapidly and with the power of telepathy. The children begin to influence the villagers with their powers including making some of them kill themselves. The villagers need to form a plan to stop the children.
Wolf Rilla directs in a restrained manner which makes the children a terrifying force to be reckoned with. Adorned with padded wigs they really are menacing. George Sanders and the marvellous Barbara Shelley play parents of the children’s leader. Laurence Naismith (DAF) plays the doctor and Michael Gwynn (Fawlty Towers’ Lord Melbury) is an intelligence officer.
It’s interesting to see the attitudes of the period - don’t miss this one.
This thread may be of interest to you and @chrisno1 https://www.ajb007.co.uk/discussion/44426/your-favourites-from-hammer-films
That was a long thread - thanks for posting the link - a few films I had forgotten about and many I have never taken in. I used to have a slim photo book entitled something like House of Horror, a Pictorial History of Hammer, which had a brief synopsis, cast lists, production credits, and stills from every film, plus a few critiques and historical footnotes about the history of the studio. I bought it in the early 1980s - chiefly because it featured a lot of photos of half-naked women - a great attraction for a 12 year old - but I found it an essential movie guide. I have no idea where it went, but I don't have it now. Probably one of those house clearances. The post in that thread which I found most amusing was the one about the 'terrifying' Mutiny on the Buses - it is often forgotten Hammer Pictures made sci-fi, comedies and domestic dramas as well as thrillers and horrors.
Gulp !
JAWS (1975)
A political allegory disguised as a shark hunt which exposes the corrupt underbelly of local politics in smalltown coastal America. A Great White Shark arrives in Amity to inflict maximum retribution for his misrepresentation by composer John Williams. Steven Spielberg sends the Three Stooges after him, this time in the form of three outcasts: a drunken game fisherman, a novice marine biologist and a family man who happens to be the inept police chief, newly appointed from New York. He can’t swim. Handy.
Interesting for a hour or so until the glorified extended ocean safari takes precedence over everything else. Hemingway’s Old Man Santiago this is not; one begins to feel sorry for the bloody shark. The unfortunate fish turns out to be a poorly realised mechanical rubber monster. It was better before we saw it. Jeez, don’t filmmakers learn? Hitchcock worked up more horror throwing feathers at Tippi Hedren in The Birds. [Yes, I know he used sodium vapour overlay, but you get my point.] A screeching, biting, animalistic soundtrack helped too. This looks exactly what it is and Williams’ orchestral score intrudes everywhere. A tensionless exercise not helped by frequent ad-breaks; over exaggerated and overdrawn at every turn. The director revels in action, but it’s the smaller, intimate moments and those beachfront flashes of early directorial impetus that best succeed. Unfortunately, there just aren’t enough of them.
Probably worked better in 1975; these days we have The Shallows.
DRACULA AD 1972
The main weakness of this late Hammer Dracula flick is the embarrassing attempt by writer Don Houghton to draft hip dialogue for a countercultural gang of Chelsea youngsters who get mixed up in satanic rites and fall prey to Christopher Lee's revived Count: it's a middle-aged man's excruciating take on youth-speak. Fortunately Lee doesn't demean Dracula by swinging into Carnaby Street personally: the Count's twentieth-century self chooses to remain within the dark confines of a deconsecrated church, St Bartolph's, and its graveyard. His wayward victims come to him rather than the other way around.
Overall, this is my favourite Hammer Dracula, despite the cringeworthy screenplay. (Bear in mind that I'm writing as the same guy whose favourite Bond film is DAF!) I love the hybrid mix of generic elements. We get conventional Hammer gothic (Peter Cushing vs. Lee in their first 'Dracula' face-off since '58), overshot by allusions to the contemporary Highgate Vampire case and mixed with elements of 'A Clockwork Orange' (Christopher Neame's Johnny Alucard is a thrill-seeking, anti-establishment sadist), an emergent glam rock evolving from bohemian hippydom (Stoneground's 'Alligator Man' is a catchy number, which might have been worthy of an early T Rex album*), Euston Films' TV series 'Special Branch' (Michael Coles, later a guest actor on 'The Sweeney', is a gritty detective, freely admitting he's out of his depth when the serial killer he's investigating is suspected to be none other than the Prince of Darkness) and Dr Who (Cushing's Van Helsing is grandfather to Stephanie Beacham's Jessica, just as William Hartnell's Dr Who was grandfather to Carole Ann Ford's Susan. Cushing himself had also played a grandfatherly Dr Who, for the big screen, but in 'AD 1972' Jessica is probably closer to the TV Third Doctor's contemporary companion Jo Grant, for whom Houghton was also writing in 1970/71, than to Susan. In 'Who' Katy Manning is on record as saying that she resisted lines which gave Jo too much 'fab' or 'groovy' vernacular. In a similarly conservative spirit, Ms Beacham's Jessica is ultimately her grandfather's grandaughter, despite her association with Alucard and friends: she reassures Van Helsing that she doesn't do drugs or pre-marital sex and she weeps bitterly over the fatal consequences of her gang's forray into black magic.)
There are also shades of Bond in 'AD 1972'. The movie begins spectacularly, 'in media res', with a pre-credits sequence pitching the nineteenth century iterations of Dracula and Van Helsing against each other for a 'final confrontation' in Hyde Park: the pace and style of that remind me of DAF's violent PTS, which welcomes Bond's nemesis Blofeld to a red-herring hell. Moreover, Mike Vickers' score echoes elements of John Barry's Bond music of the period, blending this with contemporary TV cop show-ish stylings, jazz funk and vaguely ecclesiastical, gothic melancholy. I suspect that, with a degree of reciprocity, some of Vickers' themes may even have influenced Barry's rushed but evocative work on TMWTGG (1974), reflecting Lee's dark persona as Scaramanga.** (A year on from 'AD 1972', 'The Satanic Rites Of Dracula' was to continue to magpie Bond in low-budget fashion; notably, Cushing takes the elevator to confront the shady D D Denham - actually Dracula - in his top-floor office of a tower block, discovering his true identity, just as Sean Connery drops in on recluse Willard Whyte - actually Blofeld - in his Whyte House penthouse suite in DAF.)
Three of 'AD 1972''s misguided youths, Caroline Munro, Christopher Neame and Michael Kitchen, would of course all later turn up in Bond films themselves, in different decades (in TSWLM, LTK and GE/TWINE respectively, as Naomi, Fallon and Tanner). To my mind, Caroline Munro gives one of the most affecting performances as a victim of Dracula that we get in the entire Hammer series: her freaky death scene is really rather disturbing. Neame is well over the top throughout, but Alucard's own demise after a tussle with Cushing is memorable and amusing, running through a playbook of what undoes the Undead - all in the domestic setting of his trendy apartment.
As ever, Cushing and Lee are superb. Van Helsing is dignified but determined, quietly harbouring expert knowledge about the evils of vampirism and bearing the burden of doing what needs to be done, while Dracula is the smouldering epitome of transgressive charisma and vengeful appetite. Alan Gibson's direction of the climactic battle at St. Bartolph's is spot on: it's gripping, well choreographed stuff. It has to be said, though, that Dracula is a little too easily defeated - for one "who's commanded nations!" (Lee's repeated insistence in the early 70s on including a bowlderised line or two from Bram Stoker, as a condition of donning the fangs for Hammer yet again, results sometimes, as here, in awkwardly jarring dialogue.)
Despite the uneven lurch into a contemporary setting I'd argue that 'AD 1972' is largely respectful of Hammer's Dracula legacy. For example, Alucard's role is structurally similar to that of Lord Courtley (Ralph Bates) in 'Taste The Blood Of Dracula' (1970) and when, near the end, Cushing taunts Lee with, "Look on me... look on me and remember!" it's as though he's referring not only to the events of this film's PTS but also to the 1958 film.
"Rest in final peace" (or at least until 1973 and 'Rites' - the inferior direct sequel).
*https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=18RKwISa6JM
**https://www.ajb007.co.uk/discussion/52169/john-barry-and-mike-vickers#latest
Here's a piece which Caroline Munro kindly signed for me at a Film and ComicCon a few years back. Laura Bellows is her 'AD 1972' character. I prioritised this for a signing even over her Naomi material!
I think this is the book you’re referring to @chrisno1 it was published by Lorrimer and was excellent - it had several pages of artwork for proposed Hammer films that never got off the ground which looked like good projects. They didn’t turn up that often at my shop but when they did they would sell for a minimum of £50.
Film 4 is showing the first 10 Star Trek movies over the next couple of weeks, so I am dipping in. I didn't watch The Motion Picture because I saw it recently and posted a review, which I have reproduced here:
STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE (1979)
There was a long gestation period for this movie, which was floated as a film, then a TV show, then a film once more. In fact there’s a long gestation for everything on show, period. A half-decent idea is spoilt by over enthusiastic special effects from John Dykstra and Douglas Trumbull which over power almost every scene. Robert Wise didn’t know a thing about Star Trek, although he had science fiction pedigree with The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Andromeda Strain. He creates a workmanlike piece which aches to be important but merely looks elaborate. At 132 minutes the adventure is too long to hold our interest without any of the expected phaser battles and fist fights. I enjoyed the psychological dilemma which plays out as Kirk and Spock begin to realise they are dealing with a sentient logic computer whose journey in the universe began three-hundred years ago. Its origin proves to be a worthwhile revelation.
The familiar faces acquit themselves adequately, but no more than that. I missed the funky sixties fashions. Persis Khambatta, a model turned actress who quite possibly has the best legs I’ve ever seen in a movie – and wears one of the very shortest mini-dresses – is probably the most watchable component of a block-by-block building narrative. When her navigator Illa is taken over by the alien machine V’Ger, things momentarily get interesting, but Wise hasn’t got a firm hand on this space ship’s steering column and he becomes beholden to the effects maestros. The end is an ethereal mess and the whole has something of 2001 about it. They did all this sort of thing much better in the sixties, on telly and in fifty minutes. Not truly as terrible as many fans and casual viewers would have you believe, but it is very slow and would struggle to interest the uninitiated.
STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982)
Some observers claim this is the best of the Star Trek movie spin-offs. If so, that’s setting the bar extremely low.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture attempted to do something unique with the theme of futuristic space exploration by turning the idea on its head and having Earth be the civilisation under inspection. Audiences didn’t like the esoteric ending and the lack of any violent incident left most viewers wondering what kind of adventure they were watching. This was the age of Star Wars, remember? Star Trek 2 attempts to rectify the situation by returning the fledgling franchise to its television roots. So we have a returning villain in Ricardo Montalban’s genetically empowered Khan [rather good in a pantomime fashion], some decent phaser battles between star ships and a revenge plot that doesn’t really take much understanding. Sciencey stuff comes in the shape of the Genesis Project – or Man Plays God, as I like to think of it – a creation machine and a destroyer of worlds all at once.
Thing is, if you take out the extended preamble that revisits Kirk’s uneasy promotion to an admiral and the padding of his past love life, replace the revenge plot with a crazy idealistic scientist and cut out the business with the trainee recruits – who include Kirstie Alley as a Vulcan Star Captain – you basically have a fifty-two minute movie: the exact length of a television episode. The film only seeks its core fanbase, so it barely scrapes above average in the casual interest stakes. Of course, the fans all loved it for that very reason, dodgy special effects and all.
Personally, and having never watched it before, I can’t see what all the fuss is about.
For a somewhat dissenting view, as a lifelong Trekkie Star Trek: The Motion Picture (ST:TMP) has always been one of my favorite movies. Yes it is slow paced and went thru a torturous development but it also has a lot of interesting hard sci-fi ideas and if you look past the reliance on effects it pushes the characters of Kirk and Spock to some very interesting places. Spock in particular goes thru a pretty big evolution here; in the old TV show his human and Vulcan halves were often at odds with one another and ST:TMP tackles this head on; by the end he has learned to reconcile his two halves and the peace he finds thru that resolution informed Leonard Nimoy's performance as the character thru the rest of the movies he appeared in. Kirk also has an interesting arc; at the start he is obviously out of his element, not having been in the captain's chair for an extended period and not being familiar with the workings of his new ship. He makes mistakes and must come to terms with his own failings and put his ego aside. The movie is also really true to the classic Star Trek philosophy of people working together to find a non-violent solution to a seemingly impossible problem; they don't resort to violence to defeat V'Ger, instead helping it evolve into a higher form of life. The film also has really amazing production values with sets and designs that still look fresh by today's standards. A familiarity with the original series is definitely needed to fully appreciate the movie but I think if you look below the shiny surface, there is a lot there to think about. Not sure which version of the movie you saw, but if possible I'd suggest checking out the Special Director's Edition which was released last year as it scales back on the effects and brings more of the character development to the forefront.
I largely agree with your review of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (ST:TWOK). As a straightforward action vehicle it can be entertaining but in many ways it deviates the most from Trek's hopeful philosophy of people working together to find common ground. Starfleet is transformed from a largely peaceful, exploration focused organization into a quasi-military one. Also, the film is a sequel to the episode Space Seed from the old TV show; that episode was quintessential Trek as after Kirk and crew defeat Khan they actually give him what he wants, putting him on a virgin planet to tame in the hopes that the trials they will face to master their new home will make them better people and erase their arrogance and hubris. Spock even comments on how it would be interesting to return to that world in 100 years and see what had sprung from the seed they had planted (thus the title). ST:TWOK flushes that hopeful ending down the toilet so that it can tell a pedestrian revenge story with a disappointingly predictable and very anti Star Trek final confrontation. The performances are great, especially Montalban as the revenge crazed Khan and Shatner as a Kirk suffering a mid-life crisis but it's also a shame that this movie has served as the template for so many of the Star Trek movies that followed it.
@TonyDP Thanks for that take on ST:TMP, my review is one of those that I should really reassess - but I don't do that, I like to leave things as they are - and the film's major flaw IMO is the pacing, which I mention. I am not sure how you could speed it up though. I agree with most of your comments, especially those around the V'ger storyline which I believe is far more demanding than most of the other Trek movies. I did enjoy the effects and the sets [I call them elaborate, I think] although the costumes are only so-so. The review probably doesn't talk up what I enjoyed enough. When ST:TMP is good, it is very good, but it dawdles too much for me. I watched the 132 minute version. As a side note, Halliwell's gave ST:TWOK no stars. Monthly Film Bulletin hated it too.
chrisno1 said:
Audiences didn’t like the esoteric ending and the lack of any violent incident left most viewers wondering what kind of adventure they were watching. This was the age of Star Wars, remember? Star Trek 2 attempts to rectify the situation by returning the fledgling franchise to its television roots
__________________
I think this gets the Original Series wrong. Sure there were scenes of conflict and occasional bursts of action in the teevee show, but mostly it was Kirk Spock 'n' McCoy standing round the bridge debating philosophy. The tone of Star Trek may have been very different from the new Star Wars, but Star Trek was not forgotten at all in 1979, it was ubiquitous in syndication. Filmgoers wouldve known what to expect, but the problem was the first film was much slower and more pretentious than the old show had ever been. your comparison to 2001 is good, the first film may have been trying for that sort of tone. More recent revivals of Star Trek, especially the Jar Jar Abrams movies, have tried to "update" Star Trek as a more conventional action franchise, and I consider them Star Trek in name only. I want the characters to stand round the bridge and debate philosophy!
Have we all seen Star Trek the Animated Series? thats the missing link between the original series and the films. The original cast returned to do the voices, and James Doohan and Majel Barrett did the voices for most of the "guest" characters. Limited animation allowed them do show some more ambitious images than the practical special effects of the live action series, and there were some really weird looking aliens now working on the bridge.
I think this gets the Original Series wrong
No, it doesn't. I refer to the expectations of the Star Wars type audience - albeit somewhat lazily - then list the aspects of the Original Series which are easily identifiable to most as the basis for the film: crazy villain, clear plot, some science, some action. I'm not commenting on the wider merits of the Original Series at all, which are many and varied.
ah gotchya, my fault for being obtuse.
Having been the right age at the right time, and in a school full of nerds, all of us lined up repeatedly to see Star Wars on first release (for the next year, every child's birthday party included yet another trip to see Star Wars). and all of us were quite familiar with Star Trek long before Star Wars came out, it was nerd-bible along with comic books and Tolkien.
maybe if I'd run with a less nerdy crowd I would have experienced a different sort of Star Wars audience?
@caractacus potts, regarding Star Trek: The Animated Series, I have it on DVD and will rewatch it regularly. While the animation was quite limited it was really heady stuff, especially given the Saturday morning kiddie time slot it was assigned. It also tackled some pretty weighty topics with episodes such as The Magics of Megas Tu where Kirk defends a benevolent alien at a Salem Witch Trial who ends up being what we would call the devil (that one ended up being banned in some markets). The show even had some elements that Gene Roddenberry cribbed for Star Trek: The Next Generation over a decade later including the first appearance of the holodeck. Sadly, these days it seems the animated show gets largely ignored with regard to established continuity. Roddenberry himself once even said he didn't consider it part of established canon (though I think he might have retracted that at some point) and I think people have used that to marginalize it to some degree. Personally, I disagree as I think it presents some really good stories with thought provoking ideas behind them.
BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935)
Unofficially the greatest sequel film ever made, the best Frankenstein horror film ever made, Universal Pictures’ best-ever horror movie, one of the top ten greatest horror films ever, etc, etc, etc, one feels unable to criticise this hoary old thing from 1935.
Boris Karloff revives his own dead Monster from the 1931 original and goes tramping around the countryside terrorising kids, maidens and blind old men. He’s petrified of fire, has learnt to speak, loves a drink and a fag and desperately wants a mate. Meanwhile evil psychologist Dr Pretorius reckons he’s found a method of genetically engineering a live human, but needs Dr Frankenstein’s assistance in reactivating the heart and brain. Pretorius plans to provide a partner in the living dead for the poor old shouty Monster. Dr Frankenstein, haunted by his past, looks seriously ill. Actor Colin Clive was an alcoholic who worked almost the entire movie half-cut. Probably wise. His performance is mania personified, mirrored by Karloff’s frightful turn. Sanity – or insanity, depending on how you look at it – is provided by Ernest Thesiger as Dr Pretorius. He’s a weird one. Fifteen minutes in, he persuades Frankenstein to his attic and presents him with a half-dozen ‘living dolls’, including a king, a queen, an archbishop and a pretty ballerina who only dances to Mendelssohn. Creepy isn’t the half of it: Pretorius is a first order raving lunatic.
The film is framed by a prologue of some length at which Lord Byron congratulates Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley on her as yet unpublished novel. Keen to know why she killed off her tragic monster, Percy Shelley asks his wife to continue the tale, and she begins to relate a chapter omitted from the original film version, segueing us neatly into a fiery flashback. It appears both the Doctor and his Monster escaped the blazing fire at the mill…
Elsa Lanchester, who never quite became a star, but would always remain remembered for her role as the titular bride, dominates proceedings late on. Her hissing, scowling Bride is a thing of both beauty and terror. Lanchester has the dual role of Mary Shelley, a clever piece of casting which hints at the darkness residing inside all writers of fiction.
The whole project is enormous. Huge sets abound. The music score is loud and proud. The special effects dominate. Lots of shouting. Bad accents. Many over the top performances in a cast of Universal regulars. The mixing of jazz-age art deco with nineteenth century fashions is hilarious. A comedic delight which threatens to undermine Mel Brooks forever. A film that occasionally still shocks too. It’s a complete mess, really, but it succeeds on pure energy and gusto alone. You can’t quite believe what you are watching, never certain if the film asks to be taken seriously or not. Director James Whale is on record as stating he wanted the picture to be a “real hoot.” It probably is, one way or another.
THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957)
An important movie in cinema history for being the first top-rank horror film to utilise colour for shock purposes. The blood is vividly red, yes, but importantly the shadows are also spectacularly dark, the women alabaster white, the clothes opulently brown, gold and green, the candles and gas lamps sparkle, the sky shimmers an azure blue, even at night, and the Creature, that poor lost soul, is freckled with black scars and duck-shell skin. This is an Eastmancolor extravaganza which attempts to paint its horrific portraits and actions, the guilty and innocent, in primary shades, yet hawking beside them are the deep shadows, contrasts and bursting light of a gothic tradition and the old masters, like Caravaggio and Rembrandt.
Perhaps what is most interesting is the smallness of the scene. Universal’s Frankenstein pictures tended towards German expressionism, as exemplified by the huge sets and over-acting. Hammer, with less of a budget, chose to focus on character and storytelling, building not by incident but by personal intent. So here we have Peter Cushing’s Baron Victor Frankenstein, a genius scientist, but a man so subsumed to his own satisfactions that he has quite simply begun to lose his own grip on reality. This is quite possibly Cushing’s greatest performance on screen and one of the greatest ever seen in the horror genre.
For all the ghastliness of Christopher Lee’s impressively made-up Creature, the real horror lies within Victor Frankenstein himself. Not only does he treat his creation like a bad dog – chained to an attic wall and fed on scraps – but he shows total contempt for everybody who surrounds him. Robert Urquhart’s nominal hero Paul Krempe gets a foretaste of the coming troubles when he meets the teenage Baron [a wolfishly young Melvyn Hayes] who engages him as a tutor. As their roles reverse, Paul sees through the Baron’s external façade of obsessive brilliance and recognises the darkness of his intent, the god-arm he is wielding. When the Baron decapitates a corpse, splashing blood stains on his pristine silver grey coat without a care, director Terence Fisher draws closer and closer to Paul’s pained features. This forms comparisons to the earlier close-up of Peter Cushing as he listens to the heartbeat of a rejuvenated cat. One is alert, fascinated, exalted with success; the other is appalled, uncomprehending, revolted. The contrast is used again and again to emphasise the Baron’s increasing single-mindedness and eventual mania: his cutting down of a hanged man, his outrageous claims of resurrection, his ignorance of social graces, his captivation with a sculptor’s severed hands or a pair of blue glutinous eyes.
This Frankenstein is no prodigious scientist, although he just might be a genius. As played by Cushing he is an ogre in a lab coat. He’s even engaged in a one-way affair with the house maid, Justine, raising a triad undercurrent of sexual frigidity, passion and longing between the Baron, Justine and the Baron’s wife Elizabeth, a subtext completely absent from Universal’s interpretations. Hazel Court and Valerie Gaunt [Elizabeth and Justine] become the first of many blushing victims feted for revealing a heaving decolletage. The Baron barely blinks; he takes what he wants whenever he wants it and damn the nation. Cushing’s so convincing he can turn a simple stroke of his wife’s cheek into a gesture of ghoulish menace. His deception, abuse and waste of Justine is as arrogant and conniving as any heartless lothario. That he commits murder to achieve his ends completely escapes his reasoning. So too the fact his eureka moment comes via an accident of nature: he really ought to listen to Paul Krempe who attempts to advise him that man shouldn’t meddle in the natural order as no good will come of it.
As his world collapses, Frankenstein blames everyone but himself. It is only at the very end, when his wife finally discovers the truth in the attic – a bit like poor Jane Eyre – that he finally realises creature creation may not be such a good career move. Too late, both for him and the monster: the latter is burnt to death; Frankenstein exits, stage left with a guillotine rising before the fall.
None of this is to say the film isn’t impressive. Filmed entirely on studio sets, it manages to feel expansive while never reaching beyond the laboratory, a prison cell, a bedroom and a drawing room. The make-up is good, as are the costumes. The sets demonstrate how miracles can be worked within tight budgetary constraints. There’s a sense of disorderliness and bustle to the Frankenstein household which seems to fit well with the Baron’s chaotic experiments. Throughout, director, photographer [Jack Asher] and editor [James Needs] provide us with plenty of visual dramas to occupy our eyes and minds. James Barnard’s music sounds fresh and incisive. Curiously, the film is mostly comprised of implied shocks and the gore count is very low, although the reveal of the Creature is certainly as stunning as it was in the 1931 original.
Splendid entertainment, a very short runtime, and a big thank-you to Peter Cushing.
You may want to check out Queensland, Australia for your visit @Gymkata because it was filmed there in its entirety!
Two tales of loneliness watched over a bank holiday with nothing to do and no one to see...
THE RED TURTLE (2016)
Shipwrecked on a desert island, a man goes insane caring for the corpse of a dead turtle. A strange environmental fantasy whose excellent hand drawn animation and emotive music score fails to hide a dispiriting centre. The turtle of the title isn’t very nice and nor is the man; the tale which evolves is deeply unsatisfactory all-round. It’s probably a good thing there is no dialogue.
THE ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE (1954)
I don’t know how many films have been made of Daniel Defoe’s famous story based on the life of Alexander Selkirk, who really was abandoned on a desert island, but this one was highly lauded on release. I haven’t seen it since I was a kid. It has dated horribly, which is not unexpected. I was surprised Talking Pictures TV didn’t put up one of those disclaimers regarding ‘content and language considered acceptable at the time’, but there you go. Basically, a voyager gets shipwrecked on an island in the Pacific and spends twenty-eight years attempting to escape and survive. Eventually he rescues a south-sea islander from cannibals, names him Friday and the two share an unequal relationship that leads to rescue.
An odd project for director Luis Bunuel, until you recognise he’s more interested in the personal impact of isolation than he is in how Crusoe fashions his homestead, makes pots and pans, grows wheat, makes clothes, etc. He glosses over the practical in favour of the psychological. Dan O’Herlihy carries the whole movie as the title character. They filmed it in Bunuel’s backyard of coastal Mexico and the external photography is very pretty.
Been catching up on those Star Trek movies, one day at a time:
STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK (1984)
Celestial little number from the Star Trek crew that considers the possibility of life after death – although only for Vulcans, one assumes. Following directly on from The Wrath of Khan, director Leonard Nimoy forsakes his pointy ears and attempts to inject something of a more genial, companionable atmosphere into this mini-epic, focussing as it does on Kirk’s deep, unfulfilled love-affair with his Science Officer. The Admiral is less upset by the death of his son.
A fair outing, in fact, which is a half-way house between the baffling, impressively mounted first movie and the more conventional, less showy second. The whole thing appears to be done on studio sets, like the old TV series [mostly] was, with blue screen work in abundance and some extremely obvious special effects. The space ship model work is better than average however and the mortally wounded USS Enterprise is a thing to behold, battle scarred and weary as she mounts her final defiance. DeForest Kelly takes the acting honours, carrying the weight of Spock’s soul in his own craggy edifice. Christopher Lloyd cracks us up as a Klingon Commander of much stupidity.
Not a lot of tension, but I suspect the fans loved it.
STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME (1986)
After three sturdy entries, the Star Trek franchise took on time-travel and decided to go all out for comic effect. I think it is worth remembering that time travel as a concept was played fairly seriously until the 1980s and Back to the Future, which itself wasn’t devoid of world changing implications, albeit on a smaller scale than this outlandish epic.
The Voyage Home concludes a trilogy of interconnected movies, on this occasion with a diverting sense of fun and the impossible. I’m fairly certain they time-travelled in the Original Series – I can’t remember the episode titles, but I don’t think they were overtly amusing. McCoy references the adventures when he and Scotty offer 23rd Century technology to a 20th Century plastics engineer [“Aren’t you changing the future?”]. There’s also a clever nod to Some Like It Hot at the expense of Spock’s half-human / half-Vulcan split biochemistry ["Nobody's perfect"]. The film also blatantly references 2001 with a strange tubular space probe and all those indecipherable whale sounds.
The plot is as slim as a feather, writable on a postcard and, other than the obvious fish-out-of-water content, has a vague environmental eco-warrior subtext which feels more in keeping with the Original Series than the last couple of dour attempts. However, it isn’t entirely clear if the movie makers want the audience to be pleased it is the Earth being saved from oblivion or the Humpback whales being saved from extinction. Either way, the film turns out to be curiously heart-warming, which I didn’t expect. Leonard Nimoy would go on to direct Three Men and a Baby and here he demonstrates that comedy, not drama, is his forte. He’s aided by a crew-full of good, game performances.
Blink and you’ll miss one of our alumni: Vijay Amritraj has a small role as a Star Fleet Captain.
The Voyage Home is probably my favourite of the Star Trek films because of the comic rapport between the regular cast.
chrisno1 said:
I’m fairly certain they time-travelled in the Original Series – I can’t remember the episode titles, but I don’t think they were overtly amusing.
_______________________
I believe the first time they time travel is the all-time classic City on the Edge of Forever, guest starring Joan Collins.
as you suggest, this one is not funny at all, but explored a very heavy philosophical question indeed: would it really have been better to prevent WWII before it started?
unfortunately I cant find any episode of the Original Series online. pity, because if theres any single episode an aspiring Trekkie should watch it is this one. And if you can only watch two, pair it with Trouble with Tribbles to get both extremes of the tonal range.
in this episode they literally walk through a portal to Earth's past. I think its a later episode where they establish they can time travel by sling-shotting the Enterprise round the sun. By the time of the late 1990s series Voyager, the writers introduce the Temporal Police, because the various Star Trek casts have interfered with the space time continuum too many times.
...speaking of casting, I spotted Miguel Ferrer, Special Agent Albert from Twin Peaks, as helmsman in the other ship, in the clip @Gymkata posted!
I was also thinking of Tomorrow is Yesterday.
I am waiting for Great TV to start repeating Star Trek from episode 1. I haven't watched most of the episodes since the nineties. That Joan Collins episode was brilliant and so was Trouble with Tribbles. Problem is I can't take on too many projects what with The Saint, my books, MacLean and the Uni assignments...
I have watched a lot of the show over the years, I don't regard myself as a fan. I even remember that animated series you mentioned.
chris said
I was also thinking of Tomorrow is Yesterday.
______________________
I'd forgotten about that one, wikipedia says it came first. and that was the one where they discovered they could slingshot round the sun.
again the plot centres round the need not to disrupt the timeline, but (without having seen if for years) it doesnt seem have the same weight the City on the Edge of Forever does, as the established-timeline-that-must-be-maintained is imaginary rather than WWII. Even fifty years later I'm sure we all have an opinion about the necessity of WWII and could debate the question until shouting starts and doors slam. and who wants to see Joan Collins sacrifice her life? heavy, heavy episode
btw, when I was watching The Persuaders recently, and got to that shows episode with Joan Collins (which is a heckuva lot more lightweight than her Star Trek episode) I decided she is by far my favourite of all the magnificent specimens who were ubiquitous on 60s teevee and/or film.
btw, when I was watching The Persuaders recently, and got to that shows episode with Joan Collins (which is a heckuva lot more lightweight than her Star Trek episode) I decided she is by far my favourite of all the magnificent specimens who were ubiquitous on 60s teevee and/or film.
That Persuaders episode is one of the best IMO. I loved the twist at the end and Joan looks great in it, very 70s chic. The humour was well matched to the drama as well. Isn't Ferdy Mayne in it as a despicable Italian Count? A classic.
And more...
STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER (1989)
A dismal entry into the Star Trek canon which, after previous attempts to show the folly of playing God, decides to actually show us God himself, or some version of him anyway. Turns out he’s a mixed up, vengeful kind of fella. Didn’t they battle computers with God-complexes in the Original Series? It certainly feels like a seen-it done-it.
The movie starts genially enough with some fun in Yosemite National Park, proceeds to a hostage rescue on Nimbus III that resembles the Seventh Cavalry charging Moss Eisley on Tatooine and then goes all ponderous on us for an encounter with a deity of immense power who is rumbled by Kirk in a mere seconds.
The vantage deck featuring the ship’s wheel from the original Civil War Enterprise showed a hint of panache missing through most of the escapade. The three major players are fine and it is good to have a reasonably convincing villain in Laurence Luckinbill’s Sybock, a renegade Vulcan with powerful mystic awareness. Scotty and Uhura seem to be getting romantically involved. Nice touch that. Otherwise, really, who cares? Certainly not God, I venture.
STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (1991)
A final fling for the original Enterprise crew and a fair effort all round. The film isn’t perfect, stuck with its television origins and an aging cast, but it is engaging, firstly with bouts of humour, then a series of well-designed intrigues that have their roots in those innovative TV shows, and latterly a Klingon vs Federation showdown. The fans get the things they’ll know and love and the casual viewer isn’t confounded by what they watch. The constant Shakespearian references thudded like irons on bells, and the script is undeniably clunky, but the film looks bright when it needs to be and dark when the tension mounts, which is often. At least the god-complex themes have been consigned to history.
It is quite an achievement for a franchise to get six movies out in a little under twelve years and also, I feel, quite an achievement to watch them all in few days. Speaking as an ambivalent viewer, there’s only so much Star Trek a man can take and these films, watched close together, are by turns both interesting and dreadful. I vaguely remember watching this in the cinema. I don’t remember thinking it was as good as this.
Pleasantly surprised.
THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966)
The third, and best, of the “Dollars” trilogy. This one serves as a prequel to the other two, taking place during the American Civil War. It pits Eastwood’s Man With No Name (nicknamed Blondie in this one) against Eli Wallach as Tuco and Lee Van Cleef asAngel Eyes as they battle to find a horde of buried gold. Full of sweeping vistas and lingering closeups, it is justly considered the greatest Spaghetti western of all time and one of the greatest westerns ever. It’s really incredible that director Sergio Leone could make such a movie with a cast of hundreds on a meagre budget of 1.2 million dollars. The Civil War battle is extraordinarily powerful and the final scenes in the graveyard as Tuco runs around searching for the grave to the music of Ennio Morricone’s The Ecstasy Of Gold is iconic. I’m not usually a fan of movies that stretch to three hours but this one is an exception. There seems to be some extra scenes that I haven’t seen before in this version so I’m presuming it was previously edited for running time.
Not really a spoiler, but it’s interesting to contemplate what The Man With No Name did with all the money he got away with in this movie before he appeared virtually penniless in A Fistful Of Dollars. Would have made a good sequel.
Essential viewing.
9/10
the final scenes in the graveyard as Tuco runs around searching for the grave to the music of Ennio Morricone’s The Ecstasy Of Gold is iconic.
@CoolHandBond I agree. I watched this film in the cinema a number of years back on a cleaned up print and that scene is a masterpiece of editing, camera, music and Eli Wallach crazy-eyed acting. If you want to see how men can be driven mad by the lure of gold - this is the way to picture it. Morricone's score is fabulous here, drawing us slowly then faster and faster and faster as Tuco walks, jogs, sprints to find the grave, the whole landscape vanishing into a blur as the music reaches feverish crescendos - then BAM! A zoom on the gravestone and silence accept his breathing. This kind of sequence is the reason I love movies.