Brian Hannan

Titanic (1997) ***** – Seen at the Cinema in 3D Imax

You might have thought it the height of Hollywood hubris for James Cameron to assume Titanic could steal the Valentine’s Day crown from Humphrey Bogart-Ingrid Bergman World War Two lovelorn Casablanca (1942). But bear in mind Casablanca had replaced Doctor Zhivago (1965) as the movie’s greatest love story and that, in turn, had superseded Gone with the Wind (1939).

Each followed a similar recipe – cataclysmic event, except Casablanca epic in scope, except Gone with the Wind memorable song, except Clark Gable introducing relative newcomers, perhaps most of all fabulous screen charisma between the male and female leads. Titanic, of course, has a late twentieth century vibe, more action than drama as the lovers, often pursued, hurtle from one potential disaster to another, and are within a lifejacket and a large enough piece of flotsam of a happy ending.

But where Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) and Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) exhibited world-weary cynicism and Zhivago (Omar Sharif), though his occupation, achieved maturity, Rose (Kate Winslet) and Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) are little more than blossoms blown on the wind, as innocent as a fresh coat of paint. Jack grows up fast, fast enough to hold his own among the upper class, strong enough to whisk Rose away from a life of servitude to a male ideal.

In some respects, to use the modern idiom, she is the ultimate Final Girl. On several occasions, she rescues him, plunging through the rising torrent to find him and cleave his handcuffs with an axe. She risks far more than he. Vengeful fiancé Cal (Billy Zane) and his ruthless henchman (David Warner) would easily chuck Jack overboard given the chance.

In essence, the story is light. Spoiled brat saved from a half-hearted suicide attempt, Jack embraced by Cal as a means of humiliating him, various attempts to smear Jack, Rose finding a freedom below stairs she never expected, shown a world of opportunity beyond her ken, taking the lead in sexual matters, lightly mocking Jack for blushing at her nudity even as she shamelessly and confidently strips.

And told against the backdrop of a ruthless caste system, where only the “better” people can survive and millionaires see “winning” as the embodiment of entitlement. Cameron holds up a mirror to the supposedly classless America and a world of enterprise where lifeboats are viewed as an obstacle to beautiful design. The two outsiders, Rose’s mother (Frances Fisher) and Molly Brown (Kathy Bates) are opposites, the latter, by dint of inheritance pushing her way brusquely into society, the former meekly trading her daughter for a life of privilege.

And the romance is given a twist when cold-blooded Cal proves to be as obsessed by Rose as Jack, the several times offered safe passage turning it down to pursue her, and not in the end as an object to be collected but as the subject of his restrained passion.

But you would need extraordinary acting to keep you glued to the screen when there were so many other astonishing visuals and even at the distance of a quarter of a century the power of DiCaprio and Winslet just blows you away. Sure, there is a bit of will she-won’t she, but once we’re past that it’s romance as a breath of fresh air, DiCaprio mixes devil-may-care with adoration, Winslet bristles, succumbs and then takes the lead, the sheer exhilaration of it all the bulwark against the drama of the slowly sinking ship.

It’s a fabulous scenario, Cameron careful to allow other elements to float into place, the officers assuming sacrificial stance, the hunt for the mythical jewel that kicks off the tale and provides meaningful coda.

I’m sure it helped that DiCaprio and Winslet were mere rising stars, otherwise I doubt if someone with more box office clout would have stood for the endless hours/days/weeks in freezing cold water (I don’t think you could heat it up even in a studio setting) and without their genuine travails it would not have worked so well.

It’s worth noting that DiCaprio went on to become – along with Brad Pitt – the last of the genuine stars and that he forsook the easy route of romantic lead for more interesting and complex characters and embraced an association with Martin Scorsese that took him to darker places than the likes of Paul Newman or Harrison Ford ever dreamed. Winslet, too, has enjoyed a memorable career, perhaps entranced too often by the arthouse, but you can hardly argue with one Oscar and six nominations.

On a personal note, I realised I had passing acquaintance with two of the actors. When I worked backstage at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, I would often come across Jonathan Hyde (the arrogant Ismay). One role he played quite astonished me. Not so much the role (and I can’t remember what it was) but, if you like, the preamble. When audiences entered the theatre they were faced with the sight of Hyde sitting on stage in full costume and in character, as if this was Method Acting taken to an extreme, waiting for the play to begin.

I was at university with Ron Donachie (the master at arms). We both studied Drama at Glasgow University. This course was never intended to produce actors, and mostly it set students on a path to theatre management and the like, including a friend Anne Bonnar who went on to head up Creative Scotland. But, of course, it was always a route into acting if that was your ambition. Ron Donachie and another friend Duncan Bell (British television series Heartbeat) took the opportunity. Needless to say, my stint at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe was enough to convince me that acting was not my forte.

Sgt Ryker (1968) ***

Universal pulled a fast one with this tidy courtroom drama. The studio resurrected a two-part television piece originally made as the The Case Against Paul Ryker five years before under the Kraft Suspense Theatre brand to capitalize on the unexpected box office success of Lee Marvin, the decade’s most unlikely new star after a straight run of hits from the Oscar-winning Cat Ballou (1965) through western The Professionals (1966) to The Dirty Dozen (1967).

Re-titled and hoping audiences would not notice the sleight of hand, this was thrown out into first run. By normal standards it would be deemed a flop for a star of Marvin’s newfound magnitude but the $1 million notched up in rentals Stateside and more overseas prove a handy cache of found money for the studio. Audiences might have smelled a rat when the star’s name came at the bottom of the opening credits with an “And” billing, which generally denoted guest – rather than main – star.

Still, despite being promoted as an actioner, posters show Ryker with machine gun in hand in the midst of a battle scene – there is such a scene but Marvin plays no part in it – it’s actually a decent drama, especially given the unusual background. Set in 1951 during the Korean War there’s nothing gung-ho about it. The Americans are retreating, evacuating Seoul, when army attorney Capt Young (Bradford Dillman) feels Ryker was short-changed during a trial that condemned him to death as a traitor.

Young and Ryker’s estranged wife Ann (Vera Miles) embark on a deadline-dogged mission – he’s due to be hanged in a couple of days’ time – to clear his name. Strafed by enemy planes during a trip from Tokyo to Seoul, there’s a hint of nascent romance. And when they are later caught together in a clinch, this adds to the murky atmosphere, Young facing court martial accused of the deadly sin of having an affair with a colleague’s wife and deemed a pariah by colleagues. He has another strike against his name – he dug up a grave.

The situation is exacerbated by high command caught between troops needing the morale-booster of seeing a traitor hanged and fearing scandal if they are found after the event to have sent an innocent man to the gallows. And there is the irony that Young, in his capacity as prosecutor, was the man who found Ryker guilty in the first place. He only ends up on the opposite side as punishment for exposing technical irregularities in the defence’s handling of the case.

Ryker doesn’t help himself by initially proving to be an unreliable witness, remembering in erroneous detail minor matters but not the one thing that could clear his name, whether his commanding officer, now deceased, had left a note clearing Ryker. The sergeant, caught behind enemy lines, had claimed he was acting under orders during a counter-intelligence mission.

So the odds are heavily stacked against Ryker, at the re-trial the sheer malevolence of his boss Major Whittaker (Peter Graves), and sex-obsessed pal Capt Appleton (Murray Hamilton) and what seems like ranks of generals barely concealed. The investigation focuses on finding missing items – watch, pen, notebook – of the dead officer, none of which it transpires helps the case.

The courtroom has plenty of the usual twists including a surprise witness proving Ryker fraternised before the war with a Korean general. So, with army politics and a downbeat take on war thrown into the mix it’s a generally absorbing drama.

Bradford Dillman (A Rage to Live, 1965), usually relegated to leading man or supporting star in the credits, one or two places below the star in the billing, gets the chance to shine, essaying both a man standing up for his principles against heavy opposition and a lover guilty of attempting to steal another man’s wife. Appearing in virtually every scene, he gives a better account of his acting skills than in most of his movies, far more than the often one-note performances to which he was consigned. One-time Hitchcock protegee Vera Miles (Hellfighters, 1968) doesn’t bring quite enough of the internal conflict to her role but she’s a reasonable sidekick.

Had any big studio been paying attention, Lee Marvin gave pretty good notice of his potential for star status especially the menace he could impart with just a glance rather than the showy over-acting to which he was inclined in previous villainous outings such as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). He’s careful to allow the shiftier and gloomier elements of his character to come into play rather than playing the role as heroic innocent. There’s good back-up from Peter Graves and allowed, a little leeway from their normal movie personas, Murray Hamilton md Norman Fell (both from The Graduate, 1967).

Buzz Kulik (Villa Rides, 1968) directed from a screenplay by Seeleg Lester (Change of Mind, 1969) and William D. Gordon (Cotter, 1973).

At a crisp 85 minutes it doesn’t outstay its welcome as long as you’re not taken in by the still-misleading poster. A good example of the species with excellent performances.

Plus, you can catch if for free on YouTube.

Swashbuckler (1976) **

Red faces all round. Uneasy pirate spoof that misses all its targets, coming close to resembling the kind of movie that gives turkeys a bad name and saved only by a spirited performance by Genevieve Bujold. Uber-producers Jennings Lang (Rollercoaster, 1977) and Elliott Kastner (Where Eagles Dare, 1968) should have known better but were seduced by the tantalizing returns for Richard Donner’s The Three Musketeers (1974) and its sequel which had revived the moribund swashbuckling genre.

Robert Shaw (Custer of the West, 1967) was nailed-on for the leading role since had made his name playing a pirate in British television series The Buccaneers (1956-1957) and was as hot as he was going to get after the double whammy of The Sting (1973) and Jaws (1975). However, the movie takes its cue from one of the chief supporting actors Major Folly (Beau Bridges).

It’s color-coded. In case we can’t tell a good guy from a bad guy, we’ve got the Man in Red, pirate Ned Lynch (Robert Shaw), shaping up against the Man in Black, unscrupulous Jamaican governor Lord Durant (Peter Boyle). Ned is presented as a seagoing Robin Hood, Durant as the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham, his ruthlessness somewhat undermined by his predilection for playing with toy boats in his bath and for getting his hairy back waxed.

Twin narratives quickly unspool. Ned rescues from being hanged shipmate Nick Debrett (James Earl Jones) while Durant jails island chief justice Sir James Barnet (Bernard Behrens) and steals his treasure.

Stolen treasure being fair game, Ned and Nick hijack a coach-load of it, while Sir James’s on-the-run daughter Jane (Genevieve Bujold) ends up in their hands. Not being as black-hearted as his nemesis, Ned puts Jane ashore, but still a bit black-hearted humiliates her in a swordfight, and is disinclined to help her save her imprisoned father.

However, Jane has a trump card. For reasons unknown, Durant is heading back to England with a cargo of 10,000 dubloons, too tempting a target for any pirate. Naturally, nothing goes as planned but, as you might expect, there is a happy ending.

This might have worked, since all the ingredients are there, the laughing cavalier, the spirited woman, the humorous sidekick, the unprincipled villain. You’ve got an historically-accurate pirate ship for once, unlikely romance between high-born woman and charming scallywag, simple rescue-imprisonment-rescue scenario, and ample scope for swordplay.

Except the dialog is awful, the ship too small to accommodate any fighting so the pirates are landlubbers for the most part, and except for the duels between Ned and Jane and Ned and Durant, the swordfights are all kind of bundled together, and every now and then the action stops so we can hear a verse or two of a sea shanty sung by nobody in particular.

Though Ned and Nick trade cringeworthy, and in one case downright offensive, limericks, the best (only) laugh comes when Ned chucks Jane off a roof onto a canopy and follows up with the line “It worked.” It doesn’t help that Durant’s pederastic tendences are played as a joke. Everywhere you look people are turning cartwheels or are “blithering idiots” or “pawns” and as you might expect there’s a cat-fight and a monkey around to relieve a jailer of his keys. You are just praying for a shark to come along to put the cast out of their misery.

In the midst of this feast of over-acting along comes Genevieve Bujold (Anne of the Thousand Days, 1969) who must think she’s in a different picture. She is a feisty one all right, not above putting a knife to a man’s cojones, or kneeing them in that region, and, given the lawless state of the island, branded a criminal for wounding a rapist. At least she takes the whole thing seriously rather than as if being in a Mel Brooks picture.

It’s hard to know who to blame: the stars for acting as if enjoying a holiday from more serious fare; director James Goldstone (Winning, 1969) for failing to get the recipe right and employing a jaunty score that undercut everything, or writers Jeffrey Bloom (11 Harrowhouse, 1974) and Paul Wheeler (Caravan to Vaccares, 1974) for making a mess of the ingredients in the first place.

Of course, I am hardly blameless in drawing your attention to this, a sudden enthusiasm for pirate pictures sending me dashing into the wrong decade.

Watch for: Robert Shaw making a bid for the all-time Golden Raspberry; an unrecognizable Peter Boyle (Taxi Driver, 1976); Beau Bridges (Gaily, Gaily, 1969) doing his best Frankie Howerd impression; James Earl Jones (The Comedians, 1967) sounding normal, minus the deep-throated vocal tic on which he made his name; and so many inanities it falls easily into the So Bad It’s Good category.

In Cold Blood (1967) *****

Unfairly overlooked in favor of the Coppola/Scorsese grandiose perspective on gangsters, this changed the shape of the crime picture as much as the best-selling book altered the way readers regarded murderers. Neither whodunit, whydunit nor film noir, nonetheless it invites us into the world of the senseless crime, providing an extremely human portrayal of two men if not natural born killers then their pitiful lives always going to lead them in the wrong direction.

Although Perry Smith (Robert Blake) is a fantasist, dreaming of becoming a singing star in Las Vegas, determined to find the lost treasure of Cortez, and convinced a giant bird protected him from vicious nuns in an orphanage, his life did already verge on the fantastical. His mother, a Cherokee, was a star rodeo performer, his father a gold prospector in Alaska, but the mother, an alcoholic, choked to death on her own vomit and the father (Charles McGraw), a hobo in all but name, is astonished that the child he brought up, so he believes, to recognise right from wrong, would stoop to crime. As a child Perry and siblings watched his mother have sex with clients and his father viciously beat her with a belt. Perry is addicted to aspirin to minimize pain from a leg injury, and you can’t help but feel sorry for this otherwise fit young man massaging the massive disfiguring scar, the result of a motorbike accident.

Dick Hickock (Scott Wilson) is a very charming cocky personable con man, leaving a trail of bad checks behind him as he masquerades as a best man who has come out without enough cash to buy a wedding outfit for his buddy and, with his convincing patter, hoodwinking store clerks not just into accepting a check for the goods, later to be sold, but also cashing a personal check. His father, too, is stunned to hear his son had criminal tendencies.

Fatherhood is represented as a holy grail. Hickock enjoyed being a parent until he was caught with another girl and had to do “the decent thing” i.e. abandon existing wife and child. The parents of both boys have wonderful, emotion-filled, memories of loving and being loved by their children.

From another prisoner, Hickock has been told of the “perfect score,” a rich farmer called Clutter in Kansas with $10,000 in his safe. The plan, to which Smith has only momentary objection, is to leave no witnesses. Even muttered in grandiose manner, this phrase surely, in anybody’s mind, conjures up slaughter, Smith’s only saving grace that he prevents Hickock raping the daughter Nancy (Benda C. Currin). Their haul amounting to $43 and a radio, you could imagine the thieves wiping out the family in a fit of fury. But that’s not the case, it’s just cold-blooded thinking, an element of leaving no trace behind.

And that’s just what they do, committing an almost perfect crime, no fingerprints, just the mark of the sole of a shoe imprinted in blood. There’s a red herring – old man Clutter had just signed off on an insurance policy worth $80,000. But detective Alvin Dewey (John Forsythe) has to solve the crime the old-fashioned way, with inter-state cooperation and months (years in reality) of footslogging. Dewey could have been straight out of film noir with his nippy one-liners and epigrams.

*Other than Alfred Hitchcock, it was unusual for a reissue double bill to comprise*
*two films by the same director.*

Unlike the novel which concentrated as much on the aftermath among the shocked townspeople, the film focuses on the manhunt and Dewey’s deft way with newspapermen and colleagues. The four murders occur off-camera, but by that point we already know the outcome. There’s a virtue-signalling coda that shows the inhumane conditions in which murders were kept on Death Row, but that is countered by a marvellous speech by Dewey on the inequities of being a cop: hounded by media and public for letting someone get away with heinous crime, generally getting a tough time over police methods, lambasted after catching them for not doing it quickly enough, and then having to stand by while media and public launch an outcry to prevent the killers being executed.

All shade, the documentary style achieves the contradiction of appearing sparingly told yet with a wealth of character detail (location and time are ignored) and none of the grandeur and faux community spirit invested in gangsterdom by the likes of Coppola and Scorsese. Smith and Hickock would never pass the entry test for the Mafia given that at least required discipline and the ability to follow orders. Minus the killing spree, these characters might have survived a little longer in the underclass before ending up inside again.

All three principals are brilliant in the understated manner demanded. Robert Blake (Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, 1969) is the pick, tormented by future dreams and past nightmares, but Scott Wilson (In the Heat of the Night, 1967) has the stand-out scene, gulling store salesmen with his finely worked con, and there is a sense of the big brother in the way he looks after his friend. This might well be the best work by John Forsythe (Topaz, 1969).

And it certainly is one of the finest movies made by writer-director Richard Brooks (The Professionals, 1966) who handles a very difficult subject with at times such delicacy it is almost a complete departure in style.

Bank of Dave (2023) *** / No Stars

Take One: A quite superlative courtroom scene sets the tone for this David vs. Goliath clash of a Burnley minibus dealer taking on the might of the British Establishment. In truth, my heart had sunk at the stereotypical opening – posh London lawyer sent “oop north,” his first encounter with natives unintelligible, his client first seen in a pub doing karaoke. And set against the background of the financial crash caused by arrogant and inept big banks, the stall is set out too obviously.

But, gradually, it acquires a different tone, of two outsiders fighting the system, less-than-high-flying corporate attorney Hugh (Joel Fry) trying to gain acceptance in a working-class town, working-class millionaire Dave (Rory Kinnear) battling to gain a foothold in banking circles to put forward his controversial notion of a new bank – the first in 150 years – that dealt only with small businesses.

There’s a toe-curlingly awful romance as Hugh can’t quite put into words his feelings for Dave’s niece Alexandra (Phoebe Dynevor), a Cambridge-educated NHS doctor, and she can’t quite help him along. Banking guru Sir Charles (Hugh Bonneville) has Dave in court on a trumped-up charge. Anyone Hugh trusts in the City does the dirty on him while locals he distrusts are confusingly helpful.

The Banking Powers-That-Be make up the rules as they go along, leaving Hugh with a £12 million shortfall to fill before he can get up and running.

So there’s a lot of ducking-and-diving on both sides, born publicist Dave constantly coming up with entrepreneurial wheezes, the opposition attempting to thwart him at every turn. Business pictures are a hard sell unless the product is drugs or sex, so it’s no surprise this isn’t about setting up a business, even one with righteous credentials (i.e. helping the little guy), but rather about poking a finger in the eye of Big Business, Big Banking, Big Government and anything else that isn’t Little (i.e. good).

Along the way it turns into a warm-hearted feel-good movie with characters you might recognize and situations you might appreciate and although the ending is a tad predictable I was surprised how moved I was. Rory Kinnear (Men, 2022), rarely given anything more than a supporting role, shines as the larger-than-life Dave and Joel Fry (Jasper, if you remember, from Cruella, 2021) goes from romantically inept to courtroom genius and back again while Bridgerton graduate Phoebe Dynevor has a slow-burner of a role. Debut feature of Chris Foggin from a screenplay by Piers Ashworth (Fisherman’s Friends, 2019).

At the high end of streaming material in that it was an enjoyable watch and no complaints about a big film which should have been seen in the cinema.

Take Two: But then I wanted to learn more about Dave and his banking initiative. And lo and behold very little of what you see on the screen is true. The big court case is a figment of the writer’s imagination, which means that however low Big Banking stooped it didn’t stoop this low. And so, it transpired, was the need to raise £12 million. And so was the fundraising concert by Def Leppard and so, too, I guess was the odd million thrown into the kitty at the last minute by Hugh to get Dave over the line.

So, much of Bohemian Rhapsody wasn’t true either and I was always in awe of the bar scene in A Beautiful Mind (2001) in which asking girls to dance is used to demonstrate the Zero Sum theory on which mathematician John Nash made his name, rather than some more complicated explanation. And it’s true, Dave was taking on the Establishment and nobody had set up a bank in 150 years and the financial industry was in crisis and you could ask who were these people to judge who was fit to run a bank when these were the same banking bosses who had squandered gazillions on ill-advised loans. And I’m sure it was a hell of battle. That he didn’t, in fact, win, because the bank Dave did set up is not a bank in the financial meaning of the word.

And, of course, it highlighted the inequities in a system that can reward with bonuses bankers who made a whopping loss.

So I’m really in two minds. I enjoyed it at the time but that enjoyment quickly palled when I realized it was all invention. I just wondered if there was a better and more incisive way to skewer the Big Banks than this.

On Netflix.

The Magic Vault – Return of the Reissue

You are probably aware by now that Hollywood reckons the very movie to fill the Valentine’s Day gap this year is the love story that took Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet to a watery grave – Titanic (1997). The date might be a surprise but with Avatar: The Way of Water conquering box offices worldwide a re-run of his previous gigantic success was always on the cards.

What might come as a shock is how much Hollywood has come to rely on oldies to fill gaps in the release schedule – so much so that a reissue of a biggie has been slated for every month in the forthcoming year. As you are probably aware from my discursive writings on the subject, the reissue has been a staple of the industry since the 1960s, and as often as not appearing when stocks of new films were at a low ebb.

Covid was an unexpected production disaster and with new films in short supply and audiences falling short of the norm the studios felt it better to hold on to big films until cinemas were back to something approaching normality. Thank goodness someone in Hollywood can count because anniversaries make up a hefty chunk of the excuses to trot out old pictures. Anniversary used to mean a celebration of a classic made 25 or 50 years ago, but that notion has been taken to extremes, so any year seems fair game, 20^th, 45^th now pretty common.

But anniversary was not in the main the driving force last year. Some pretty big fish were summoned from the vaults to work their magic. The original Avatar (2009) brought in another $76 million worldwide – positioning it just outside the global top 50 for 2022. Interstellar (2014) knocked up another $72 million, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) $45 million, Leonardo DiCaprio in Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) worth an extra $14.8 million and the original Jurassic Park (1993) added $10 million to the coffers.

What must have seemed like nothing short of frantic experiment clearly struck a chord with audiences, so studios are taking to the reissue on a regular basis.

For a time it was Casablanca (1942) that had been the unexpected filler of the St Valentine’s Day gap. But it could hardly compete with Titanic, but rather than lose the opportunity for another annual outing, this has been re-scheduled for the beginning of March.

In April there will be a further chance – in a genuine 25^th anniversary big bang- to see Jeff Bridges and John Goodman in the Coen Bros cult favorite The Big Lebowski (1998). Musical Grease (1978) – 45^th anniversary? – with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John is the May pick. Hardly an unusual notion this, Grease has already had more than its fair share of reissues.

You might think it’s Travolta again in June, in Hairspray (2007), but actually it’s the John Waters original, made in 1988 – 35^th anniversary!! – that became the basis of the Broadway musical. It boasts an all-time cracker of a cast – Sonny Bono (of Sonny & Cher fame), Divine (Pink Flamingos, 1972), pop star Debbie Harry (Videodrome, 1983) of Blondie, future talk show host Ricki Lake in her movie debut, and comic Jerry Stiller (father of Ben).

For the holidays what could be better than a 40^th anniversary outing for National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983). Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo fire up their engines for July and look out for Eugene Levy, John Candy, Jane Krakowski and Christie Brinkley in small parts.

It’s a straight-out 50^th anniversary slam-dunk for Enter the Dragon (1973), the kung fu actioner that cemented Bruce Lee’s reputation and sent the world into a brief glorious paroxysm of kung fu exploitation vehicles that even impinged on James Bond. Catch it in August.

You’d never guess it’s 35 years since Rain Man (1988), but don’t worry that will surely form the main plank of the marketing for its revival in September. Tom Cruise is of course still a big noise, less so Dustin Hoffman and director Barry Levinson, but they both won the Oscar, and fans of Hans Zimmer (Oscar nominated) will be more than happy to celebrate the score that brought him worldwide attention.

There’s been more than enough publicity attached to the filming of The Birds (1963), what with Tippi Hedren’s accusations of her treatment, but this 60^th anniversary re-release might provide opportunity to reassess what I consider to be Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest achievement. That’s out in October.

Al Pacino’s turn as Cuban gangster Tony Montana in Brian DePalma’s Scarface (1983) – 40^th anniversary – was not a huge hit at the time, audiences too easily put off by the violence and the over-the-top performance, but it’s now become a cult classic so expect big numbers to turn out in November.

Rounding out the year, unless someone can come up with something bigger/better before then, is A Christmas Story (1983) – 40^th anniversary. You’ve probably forgotten all about this unless you can remember this is where the iconic “tongue frozen to flagpole” idea originated. Directed by Bob Clark, perhaps in reparation for Porky’s (1981), it sees Melinda Dillon (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977) as the mother appalled her son wants a BB gun for Xmas. Wonder how that idea will play out these days!

I am already trawling through any film made in a year ending in 4 or 9 to see what Hollywood can base an anniversary re-showing on for 2024.

The Cape Town Affair (1967) **

It was too much to hope that a remake of Sam Fuller’s Pickup on South Street (1953) could match the original. Universal had made a decent job of a second bash at Beau Geste (1966) and Madame X (1966) and Twentieth Century Fox should be applauded for having the cojones to even attempt a reimagining of the John Ford classic when it tackled Stagecoach (1966). Generally speaking, remakes were seen as opportunities to feature up-and-coming talent rather than established marquee names.

So it was no surprise that Fox opted for rising stars in James Brolin (The Boston Strangler, 1968) and Jacqueline Bisset (The Detective, 1968), graduates of its talent school, though perhaps more of a stretch to relocate the Fuller classic to South Africa’s Cape Town. Interestingly, the key role of the informer went to Claire Trevor, star of the original Stagecoach (1939). But while she is a decent replacement for six-time Oscar nominee Thelma Ritter (Move Over, Darling), Brolin was no match for the snarling Richard Widmark (The Bedford Incident, 1964) and Bisset pales when set against Jean Peters (Viva Zapata, 1952).

It’s really the acting that lets it down because it’s virtually the same plot as Pickup on South Street. On a bus in Cape Town pickpocket Skip McCoy (James Brolin) steals a wallet from the purse of Candy (Jacqueline Bisset). Unknown to him, she’s a courier, the wallet containing microfilm of a state secret. Unknown to her, she’s working for the Communists. Unknown to either of them she’s being tailed.

Sometime tie salesman, sometime hooker, sometime police informant Sam (Claire Trevor) identifies Skip as the most likely suspect. Secret service agents investigating his beach shack find nothing. Candy has better luck, Skip a sucker for a pretty face – and a sucker punch. She’s a bit quick in falling in love, he’s a bit too ready to ask for money, but eventually they work together to sniff out the Commies, not that that takes much. The fights are somewhat desultory and the only decent twist comes at the end when, by now loved-up, he is treating her to a romantic dinner, but still up to his pickpocketing tricks purloins the cash to pay from her handbag.

Brolin doesn’t do much but shout and come over like a male model while Bisset turns on the waterworks at the drop of a hat. If it wasn’t for the title, you wouldn’t even know this was set in Cape Town, no focus on city landmarks. There doesn’t look as if there was any budget to speak of.

Robert D. Webb (Pirates of Tortuga, 1961) directed without a hint of the comedy he injected into the swashbuckler. You can’t really blame Harold Medford (Fate Is the Hunter, 1964) for the actors messing up his screenplay.

Worth seeing if you want an example of how a rising star can surmount a debacle. Bisset went straight from this into The Sweet Ride (1968), The Detective (1968) and Bullitt (1968). But Brolin had no such luck. After a supporting role in The Boston Strangler he wouldn’t make another picture for four years and not win another starring role until Gable and Lombard (1976).

I had come at it, as is the undoing of many a movie fan, with the idea of finding a hidden gem, the long lost film of stars at the outset of the careers. Beyond the fact that Bissett looked classy and had a steal of a voice, and Brolin had at least looks, there was little worth finding. But, hey, you might be a completist and think this worth the effort.

Pretty Poison (1968) *****

Faultessly prophetic. Acquiring significantly greater power than at initial release. You can easily imagine Dennis (Anthony Perkins) these days as a conspiracy theorist on social media. You can picture Sue Ann (Tuesday Weld) as the impressionable acolyte learning at his feet. What she picks up most is the art of manipulation. And it’s done with marvelous flair, disturbing information slipped in at the right moment, and so focused are we on Dennis we scarcely notice Sue Ann’s transformation.

There’s a sense of Big Brother – Dennis evades his probation officer for a year to prevent his activities being overseen – and untrammelled big business, the chemical factory nonchalantly poisoning the local river. And it all takes place in Humdrum U.S.A.: hot dog stands, teenagers practising for parades, evenings at the movies, necking in the woods, mindless jobs in factories, with just a hint of overbearing police wielding a moral big stick.

*Classic example of the marketing team getting cold feet. Fox didn’t know how to sell this*
*in the subtle fashion it required so it came over in the bulk of the advertising*
*materials as second cousin to “Bonnie and Clyde.”*

The 1960s had taken a new line on the wicked women of the 1930s and the femme fatales of film noir. They might be mentally disturbed like Lilith (1964) or scrapheap fodder like Bonnie Parker (Bonnie and Clyde, 1967), but more likely to be cartoon villains decorating spy movies. This follows a completely different path, exploring latent tendency that might have remained hidden forever except for encountering the right spark.

Dennis is an outright oddball, a fantasist who has created for himself another world of being a secret agent intent on thwarting an alien plot. (Less intense than A Beautiful Mind, 2001) Some people, the next door neighbor, for example, who without question drops in spools of microfilm at the chemist for development under her own name, are easily taken in. Others are not, his employer at the chemical factory itching for an excuse to fire him, Sue Ann’s mother (Beverly Garland) who catches him out too easily.

Dennis snares gullible bouncy blonde Sue Ann in textbook style. He elicits mystery, popping in and out of her life, peppering her with secret codes, tradecraft, warnings, a farrago of information that would appeal to the insecure. She goes from girlfriend to accomplice, an eager participant in Dennis’s admittedly clever plan to cause the plant to shut down. But when he is rumbled by the nightwatchman and rooted to the spot in fear, it’s Sue Ann who comes to the rescue, clubbing the interloper, pushing his body in the river, sitting triumphantly aside her still conscious victim holding his head under the water.

The twist is: reality has paid a visit. Dennis is shocked at the murder. Although his past is now revealed, he is remorseful that it caused unfortunate consequence. Sue Ann’s reaction is the opposite. She wants post-murder sex. Cool to the point of calculating, remorse scarcely entering her vocabulary, taking command, spinning a web Dennis doesn’t see coming.

It plays out brilliantly, even to the point of Dennis taking comfort in the fact that he has spawned a murderess, one who might embark on an endless killing spree, such is the attractive innocent mask she hides behind.

You would put down Anthony Perkins (Psycho, 1960) as warped the minute his lop-sided grin slips into place. But there’s a youthfulness to this nutcase, always sprinting away, and he’s not, like Norman Bates, sitting in a lair awaiting potential victims, and, in a sense, he’s humanized by a beautiful woman falling in love with him. He’s out there like a con man with the practised patter that’s going to snare the pliable. If he was planning to wage war on the chemical polluters we’d be on his side immediately, and although that kind of action wasn’t yet going to turn anyone into an automatic screen hero, it does now, so a contemporary audience would be inclined to view him through an entirely different, and more sympathetic, prism.

Perkins’s playing is perfectly judged. He takes the mickey out of stuffy superiors, smart enough to elude the probation officer for a year, astute enough to find a job that gives credence to his secret identity, ingenious enough to come up with the perfect crime, and certainly his vulnerability evokes audience sympathy, especially when it transpires he may be the subject of unlawful judgement.

But Tuesday Weld (The Cincinnati Kid, 1965) is this movie’s gift. She is stunningly believable, both as the innocent dupe and the calculating killer. Yet she never emerges from her teenage dream. Even when her actions are clearly more grown-up she remains winsome and youthful. If Perkins is revealed as a child who had never grown up, Perkins becomes an adult in teenager’s clothing.

It’s only at the end you think perhaps this movie should be read back-to-front and that Perkins was the victim all along. (Arthouse filmmakers have been more celebrated for less.) Which would make her the mother (or perhaps daughter) of all femme fatales. There is no limit to what she going to get away with. If it was made today, there would be a sequel a year.

Noel Black (Run, Shadow, Run/Cover Me Babe, 1970) was the cult director’s cult director, eventually making a living in television, and only occasionally managing a big screen effort. This would have been a twisty enough number at the time but has rightly grown into a cult.

The Chalk Garden (1964) ***

You couldn’t make a movie like this now because (plot spoiler, I’m afraid) even the dottiest of old ladies would make at least a better attempt at collecting a reference from a prospective employee for fear she might be hiring someone disreputable. Though I doubt if many employers would expect a governess to turn out to be a murderess.

That this movie chimes with a contemporary trope – the criminal wanting to prevent others from following in their footsteps – makes it far ahead of its time. Made today, of course, the unruly child rather than merely threatening to unleash her arson impulses would probably have burned the house down.

So it’s more a drama of manners, if you like. Very presentable but clearly down-on-her-luck Miss Madrigal (Deborah Kerr) is taken on by Mrs St Maugham (Edith Evans) as governess for her grandchild Laurel (Hayley Mills) because nobody else wants the job. Laurel’s outrageous behavior has sent a score perfectly well qualified ladies scurrying. Madrigal is hardly fazed by anything Laurel can get up to.

But the child is clearly suffering abandonment issues, her beautiful mother Olivia (Elizabeth Sellars) having gone off with another man. Grandmother incites grandchild to hate the mother. But Olivia’s maternal instincts have kicked in and she wants her child back. While Madrigal can deal with Laurel’s tantrums she is less fortified against the child’s inveterate snooping. Finding a mysterious suitcase leads Laurel to fantasize about Madrigal’s past.

Mostly the film is a four-hander, butler Maitland (John Mills) playing a significant role in proceedings, not least in his effortless management of the wild child. Quite why a such a pragmatic and assured gentleman should end up in this remote mansion is another mystery and thankfully there is no attempt made at playing up the cliff-top location in a suspenseful manner.

Mrs St Maugham is imperious but not entirely practical, either in setting child against mother or in trying to grow flowers in such chalky soil, though Madrigal appears to have sufficient horticultural knowledge to set her straight on the latter and attempt to intervene on the former.

There’s a deadline of sorts. Olivia is coming to remove the child. Whether she goes willingly or not doesn’t matter. Madrigal sees her role as trying to prepare a child to love her mother and be more grown-up than the adults around her and forgive her.

Madrigal’s guilt unnecessarily causes her to reveal that she had been jailed for murdering her stepsister, having been as resentful and jealous of the girl as Laurel currently is of her mother. Mrs St Maugham had called on old acquaintance Judge (Felix Aylmer ) for legal advice on how to prevent Olivia getting the child. He was the presiding judge in Madrigal’s case. Imagining he had not forgotten the trial – which of course he has – she feels duty bound to blurt out the truth before she is humiliated. The confession helps Laurel realise how dangerous a path she is on and pushes her towards reconciliation rather than revenge.

It has all the making of a well-made play which is hardly surprising since it is based on Enid Bagnold’s Broadway success, at one time mooted as a film to star Joanne Woodward and Sandra Dee. So it moves along in the traditional three-act manner, plenty space given to establishing characters, introducing the undercurrents and leading to revelation and resolution.

So, mostly, it depends on the acting. Luckily, it is excellent. This was Hayley Mills in transition, far removed from Disney saccharine of The Parent Trap (1961) and about the same distance from the full-blown adult bottom-baring of The Family Way (1966). She projects a great deal more torment than in either of those films and comes across as believable, not exactly a young hoodlum but left to her own devices and starved of parental love only a matter of time before she would commit a crime of some kind.

Deborah Kerr hadn’t made a film in three years but her screen persona had shifted from the passionate – From Here to Eternity (1953), An Affair to Remember (1957), The Sundowners (1960) – to the repressed. Her spinster introduced in The Innocents (1961) had a great deal in common with her spinster of The Night of the Iguana (1965). But this is a different kettle of fish. Here, she exudes capability but with a self-awareness that undercuts such confidence, trying to keep a lid of emotions she struggles to handle.

John Mills (Tunes of Glory, 1960) casts a sardonic eye on the household while Edith Evans (The Whisperers) portrays a sorely wounded matriarch. Director Ronald Neame (Gambit, 1966) cleverly opens up the play, using the cliffs, gardens and rocky beach to considerable effect, but keeps the drama taut. John Michael Hayes (Nevada Smith, 1966) produced a workable screenplay.

Apologies for giving away the story, a good watch more for the acting than the twist.

Unwelcome (2022) ***- Seen at the Cinema

Cult contender, assuming some basis in Irish legend. Otherwise, Straw Dogs (1971) meets Yoda with a side order of Barbarian (2022) and a touch of Se7en (1995). Someone’s definitely got it in for the Irish this year, but those finger-chopping Banshees have nothing on this little number.

After enduring a home invasion in the city, heavily pregnant Maya (Hannah-John Kamen) and cowardly husband Jamie (Douglas Booth) head for the Irish countryside, having inherited a rundown cottage from his odd aunt. Only thing is, warns neighbor and local publican Maeve (Maimh Cusack). you have to leave out a bit of bloody liver every day beside the back gate to assuage the Redcaps aka little people aka leprechauns aka goblins aka anything else you want to make up.

The story goes said aunt sacrificed her baby to save her dying husband, but it turns out the baby went missing, aged two, and was never found. Frosty reception at the local inn, a la An American Werewolf in London (1981), is a prank but the family of builders headed by a gobby Daddy (Colm Meaney), and his three kids, the gobby one from Derry Girls (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell), a thin gobby lad (Chris Walley) – with “the brain of a rocking horse” – and a peeping tom of a giant (Kristian Nairn) are on the malevolent side.

Not content with stealing any spare cash, Jamie’s stash of chocolate biscuits and his beer, and stirring up anti-English sentiment, smoking joints when they should be working and generally acting like workshy cliches, they constantly challenge the milksop Englishman who can thump a punchbag to his heart’s content but finds it hard to raise a finger in anger.

Beyond the gate there’s some kind of magical silent wood and a stone house. And feral creatures, Yoda-shaped, with shark-like teeth who might be able to fly and might have something to do with a nearby castle. A drunk man might have gone missing. Maya might be seeing what isn’t there. It’s that kind of film, mostly suggestive until it suddenly catches fire. Then it’s an onslaught.

And if you can take the Redcaps as being covered in Boy Scout badges and displaying some neat dance moves and a climax that seems relentless with Maya forced to become Final Girl since Jamie is about as helpful as having Jack Whitehall on your team. There’s more rain than in the Seven Samurai, though, to be fair, we were warned it rains 365 days a year in Ireland, Jamie treated as punchbag, the creepy giant trying his hand at rape, the thin one about to make his bones as a murderer, childbirth, the girl full of sexual swagger, decapitated heads in shopping bags, slicing, dicing, shotguns and shillelaghs and, you guessed, it a frying pan, and ending with the barmiest, although to some extent logical, image imaginable.

Like any cult contender, your first reaction might well be to laugh your head off at the preposterous goings-on but strangely enough it does work. While continuing to proclaim his manly abilities, and his sworn duty to defend his wife, Jamie is very much the modern husband, that is to say useless, completely lacking the protection gene, leaving it to the gutsier woman to clean up the mess that his unnecessary bravado creates.

*Had I seen this poster which gives the entire game away I wouldn’t have gone.*

To her credit, Hannah-John Kamen (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, 2021) goes the whole nine yards, continually playing the supportive wife to a weakling, turning the paranormal to her advantage, not averse to pulling the trigger should the occasion demand. There’s little backstory to hang her character on, apart from a desperation to conceive given a previous abortion. But she has to deal with a continually changing scenario, negotiation with the wayward family, calming the giant, taking narrative center stage.

And it might be better going into it without cinematic preconception. If you’re of the age of the target audience you might have never seen Straw Dogs, therefore the villainous quartet might not appear descendants of the previous film, and, like Barbarian, you might happily accept the importance of babies to the modern horror picture.

A bit too long perhaps, and at times you might not know whether to laugh or applaud, but in the great tradition of The Evil Dead (1981) you might come back for more. Not a horror film in the gore/splatter league, and not that thoughtful either, but still capable of exerting a cinematic spell.