movie review – Page 23 – The Magnificent 60s

The Amazing Transplant Man (1960) ***

Sci fi film noir. Anything that involves cult director Edgar G. Ulmer (Hannibal, 1960) tends to put an unusual twist on a tale and here he takes the kind of mad scientist who would be perfectly at home in the MCU and turns him inside out. In fact, Major Krenner (James Griffith) is pretty close in intent to Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) in the asterisk version of Thunderbolts (2025) in wanting to build an indestructible army.

His is going to be invisible. (Presumably, this would have been called The Invisible Man had Universal been more obliging.)

It was quite the thing as we have seen from I Aim at the Stars out the same year for the U.S. after World War Two to purloin German scientists, and here Krenner is one step ahead of the Government by snaffling Dr Ulof (Ivan Triesault).

The good doctor is given something of a free pass here because he’s been coerced into working for the major on account of his daughter being held hostage. And because he accidentally killed his wife during one of his experiments. But given he was working for the Germans in a concentration camp and his experiments, had they been successful, would have resulted in the creation of an invisible army for the enemy, maybe we shouldn’t be so lenient.

Ulmer isn’t so lenient with the rest of the bunch and there’s double cross all the way. Safecracker Joey (Douglas Kennedy) doesn’t show the gratitude you’d expect after being sprung from jail by Krenner and his moll Laura (Marguerite Chapman). Being amply rewarded for being a guinea pig isn’t enough and he reckons that if he can walk unnoticed into a government facility and steal nuclear materials, then he could just as well walk into a bank unnoticed and make off with the kind of cash that would fund retirement.

Laura begins to warm to the notion of sharing her bed with a hunky action man rather than a weedy pedant and even more to the idea of sharing the loot and the retirement. There’s also a resident thug Julian (Boyd Morgan) who’s been duped by the major into adding muscle to the operation.

*Clever publicity stunt. Joey is going to appear invisibly in person at every performance.*

So instead of the usual set-up of good guy, and a girl he met on the way (or vice-versa), intent on stopping the mad scientist, you’ve got the complete opposite, bad guy and hook-up planning to keep on being bad.

There’s a heap of good old-fashioned fun with the invisibility. Some trick photography to make Joey disappear but it’s more fun to watch the other actors throw themselves around to simulate being punched in the face or stroke an empty space and pretend they are touching a real human being, and to see vault doors miraculously open, or onlookers agape at watching a bag of loot hovering in midair. Or even better to see parts of Joey’s body unexpectedly materialize in the middle of a robbery.

You can’t build tension in normal heist fashion. You don’t need to endlessly go over an elaborate plan or hold your breath to see if a guard or some such is going to appear at an awkward moment or another obstacle get in the way, not when you can just walk in and walk out and nobody even know you’re there. So Ulmer doesn’t bother with that aspect, concentrating more on the personalities involved, each as mean and calculating as the others.

Even free pass Ulof, who could sabotage the project at any opportunity, decides it would be better if a hunky action man rather than another weedy individual took on that task. So he lets on to Joey that just as invisibility wears off so does his lifespan courtesy of the radiation which is slowly poisoning him. So it’s Joey who does the needful, not out of a hero’s ambition to save mankind, but out of pure revenge.

Thanks to the characters involved this is never corny. Old-fashioned maybe in an enjoyable old-fashioned way before it cost the world to create special effects.

It says a lot about the marquee quality of the stars that Marguerite Chapman (The Seven Year Itch, 1955) as the femme fatale is top-billed when she hadn’t been in a movie in half a decade and wouldn’t be in another one ever again. Douglas Kennedy (The Destructors, 1968) was a bit-part player and this was as close as he’d get to playing a leading man. Ditto James Griffith (Heaven with a Gun, 1969). But since mostly what they’ve got to show is malevolence nobody is being asked to step outside their comfort zone.

Ulmer filmed this back-to-back with Beyond the Time Barrier, with the two films forming a double bill.

Good fun.

Girl on a Chain Gang (1966) **

Trash and intentionally so, but with some unexpected merit. In the first place it was the forerunner of films set in the Deep South such as In the Heat of the Night (1967) and Mississippi Burning (1988) and where the former deals primarily in racism the latter adds Civil Rights to the equation. More pertinently, and to save us according this more acclaim than it deserves, it was the beginning of the Women in Prison genre. Writers, generally, date Jess Franco’s 99 Women (1969) as the beginning of that genre, but that’s mostly because it clicked at the box office, thanks to liberated censorship permitting more exploitation license.

To put it crudely, this is straight exploitation but given more credence because it’s not as vivid sexually in its exploitation. There’s rape and by later standards that’s discreetly done but there’s a complete absence of nudity.

Jean (Julie Ange), Ted (Ron Segal) and African American Claude (James Harvey) are stopped for speeding in Carson Landing, and subsequently arrested. Sheriff Wymer (William Watson) beats up the men in turn, fines them $150, which, luckily they can pay. They are let go but shortly afterwards arrested again on the trumped up charge of prostitution (her) and violation of the Mann Act (the men) for transporting a sex worker across state lines.

Claude turns down the chance of freedom that would be granted should he agree to sign a confession put to him in seductive fashion by the Sheriff’s squeeze Nellie (Arlene Faber). The cops lure the guys into attempted escape by leaving a door open, which, as you might expect, results in their demise. Jean, who has the sense to not take the bait, is raped.

Jean is convicted nonetheless of prostitution and at her trial vents her feelings. “You’re nothing but a bunch of pigs and murderers…It takes a whole town plus a phony judge and jury to convict me,” she spouts.

There’s not much time for her to spend on the eponymous chain gang because she seems to spend most of her time chained up. But because she lacks a “way of showing her appreciation” and thus being rewarded with a softer job of cleaning or cooking, she’s eventually added to the chain gang. Luckily, on her first day out, another prisoner Henry (Tom Baker) helps her escape and they head for the swamps. He sacrifices himself to save her but not before showering the Sheriff with snakes. When Jean is found, she becomes a witness against the corrupt cops.

I doubt if writer-director Jess Gross (Teenage Mother, 1967) had anything more on his mind than making a quick buck in the grindhouse/drive-in exploitation market, and that anything prophetic was purely happenstance. Most movies around this time in that genre sold more on promise than what they could deliver, and he had made his marketing bones through the U.S. distribution of the first two Mondo Cane (1962/1963) films as a double bill. He only directed three pictures and was better known as a producer including the lurid Whirlpool (1969) and the more legitimate Blaxploitation Sweet Sweetback’s Baaadass Song (1971).

In part because of censorship prohibition, this carries some weight because more is imagined than shown, sexuality repressed rather than expressed, but that was not the case with violence and while it’s not marked by the bloodletting that would later be de rigeur the cops hand out some stiff beatings, exemplifying not just their racist credentials but their antipathy to liberals from the big city.

This didn’t prove a breakout movie for the stars although William Watson had a reasonable career as a tough guy – Lawman (1971), Chato’s Land (1972). Julie Ange and Ron Segal only made one more film, Teenage Mother. James Harvey didn’t make another. Arlene Faber was the star of Gross’s other two movies, the last being Female Animal (1970), and she had a small part in The French Connection (1971).

Of minor historic interest.

F1: The Movie (2025) **** Seen at the Cinema in Imax

Buckle up – the summer blockbuster is here. And if you’ve got the sense to see it in Imax double buckle up because you’ve just never seen the like. As regular readers will know I’m a sucker for race pictures – Grand Prix (1966) that invented the genre, Rush (2013) and Ford v Ferrari/Le Mans ’66 (2019) the top trio in my book. And all driven by interesting narrative, a shade too much soap opera in the first, a real-life on-track duel in the second, and the machinations of big business in the third. And the last two with scenes that took place outside the racetrack that have stuck in my mind since – in Rush Niki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl) kicking into high gear in an ordinary motor to impress his soon-to-be wife, Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) taking Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) for a terrifying spin.

This one has jettisoned narrative complexity for thrills on the track and the sheer screen charisma of star Brad Pitt (Bullet Train, 2022) off it. For all my love of movies about motor racing I’ve never been compelled to watch any of the current F1 action or a single episode of the seven-season (and counting) Netflix series Drive to Survive, so my understanding of the rules is rather vague.

Here, you might come away with the notion that tires/tyres are more important than speed and that if you are mighty clever you can fry those rules within an inch of their lives and get away with it. And I’m not sure if the climactic set-up where the race is reduced to the equivalent of a golf play-off between four cars over three circuits of the track is actually a genuine element of the business.

So, ex-gambler thrice-divorced itinerant Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) who 30 years before was an up-and-coming Formula One Driver before an accident wrecked his career is tempted to return to the greatest arena of all by old buddy Ruben (Javier Bardem) whose racing team is on the point of collapse. He’s recruited as wing man to cocky up-and-coming talent Joshua (Damson Idris) who is repulsed by the idea of giving a second chance to an elderly citizen. The idea that Sonny will mentor the young guy is torpedoed when the younger ace nixes that notion.

But Sonny has got street smarts and knows how to win dirty. There are the usual reversals and obstacles, mostly self-imposed, before the team learn to back Sonny’s combat instinct.

And while the racing footage will take your breath away – even not seen in Imax it’s going to be a thundering visceral involving experience – it’s Brad Pitt who brings this one home. He’s one of only three surviving Hollywood stars, Leonard DiCaprio and Tom Cruise would be the others (though you could maybe make a case for Matt Damon), whose attachment can greenlight a picture and put the bucks into the box office.

*One of a posse of producers and one of the many real-life participants to make an appearance.*

Ever since a glorious entrance in Thelma and Louise (1991) he’s strode the Hollywood firmament like, as they say, a colossus, never taking the easy role, backing his own judgement, and often putting his own dough into projects (his Plan B shingle is one of the many production outfits credited here) and lighting up the screen with an easy charm.

Luckily, the screenplay by Ehren Kruger (Top Gun: Maverick, 2022) crackles and Pitt’s realism cuts through the social media engagement world inhabited by Joshua and the jargon-ridden world of the back-office team. “Hope isn’t a strategy,” he snaps. And there’s a lively verbal duel with designer Kate (Kerry Condon) and a couple of scenes where he takes what’s coming, especially from Joshua’s irate mum Bernadette (Sarah Nile), and one of those classic scenes where he dupes the youngster into thinking he’s won.

Usually enigmas aren’t this captivating, even Sonny can’t explain what drives him, but beyond a skeletal backstory, we don’t need to learn much about him because his whip smart delivery and scathing lines keep the audiences on their toes.

So Brad Pitt at the top of his game, excellent support from Javier Bardem (Dune: Part Two, 2024) and Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin, 2022). While Damson Idris (Snowfall, 2017-2023) isn’t in the breakout league of Glen Powell in Top Gun: Maverick, he still looks a talent to watch. Tobias Menzies (Outlander, 2014-2018) as a sneaky financier has a stand out supporting role.

Joseph Kosinksi (Top Gun: Maverick) does for earthbound speed what he did for supersonic speed in the Tom Cruise sequel.

Summer has arrived. Go see.

I Aim at the Stars (1960) ***

Could not be more controversial or contentious. But we’ve been here far more recently than six decades ago. Oppenheimer (2023) covered similar ground in terms of a scientist harnessing his brain to create a weapon of awesome destructive power. J. Robert Oppenheimer was also condemned as a traitor and though he did not switch allegiance he was excluded from the nuclear community after the Second World War.

Director J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone, 1961) sets out to achieve the impossible – create a valid biopic while trying to deal with the central issue that while German Werner von Braun (Curd Jurgens) directed the U.S. operation to put an unmanned rocket into orbit around the Earth he was also responsible for the V1 and V2 rockets that devasted London towards the end of the Second World War.

The first half of the movie is straightforward biopic, genius scientist overcomes obstacles to reach his achievement. Von Braun was “addicted to rockets” from a very early age and when the Nazi Government sought to use his skills to create a missile, he didn’t show much opposition. Although occasionally indiscreet about Hitler and the Nazi Party, he was able to overlook their shortcomings in the interests of science.

What could have been a dry biopic is filled out with romance. Von Braun eventually finds time to marry Maria (Victoria Shaw) who occasionally has reservations about his aims. His assistant Anton (Herbert Lom) has a more interesting relationship with the widowed Elizabeth (Gia Scala), Von Braun’s secretary. While refusing to marry him, she does carry on a longish affair (whether sex was involved is unclear) with him and you are given the general impression that she is more in love with her boss.

But that turns out to be a clever piece of sleight-of-hand. The reason she spends so much time with Von Braun is that she’s a British spy, copying blueprints with an ingenious miniature camera disguised as a working lipstick. And when she is caught by Anton, he is too much in love to expose her, though her reason for the espionage is that the Germans by mistake killed her husband.

At the end of the war, Anton is the only one among the top scientists who refuses to desert his country. The others decide to become traitors, choosing to defect to the Americans rather than the Russians. And at this point Von Braun comes face to face with his “conscience” in the shape of U.S. Major Taggart (James Daly) who initially is determined to try Von Braun as a war criminal. When higher-ups in the U.S. Government intervene and send the scientists to America to continue their rocket research, Taggart continues his verbal assault on the German.

The spy also turns up and clearly her regard for Von Braun outweighs her conscience, although she enters, eventually, into a relationship with Taggart (who goes back to his former profession of journalist), and attempts to soften his attitude.

Von Braun refuses to take personal responsibility for the thousands of Londoners who died as the result of his invention. He represents the idea of invention without repercussion or personal consequence. But it’s fair to say that all the arguments against the man are given a good airing.

However, there’s a serious omission in the narrative. The conscience of the higher-ups never comes into it. Nobody in a senior position in Government explains why Von Braun deserved a get-out-of-jail-free card and never entering the discussion – not even in the sense of realpolitik – is the issue of how the British must have felt when their ally appropriated the skills of one of their most dangerous enemies.

Ultimately, the picture leaves too many questions unanswered with the American people seemingly eventually worshipping the man who put an American craft into space. The British shunned the picture on release.

Technically, it looks pretty good. I couldn’t really tell from seeing it on the small screen whether the rocket footage was taken from newsreel or academic footage or whether it was shot specifically for the movie.

As played by Curd Jurgens (Psyche 59, 1964) Von Braun is not an easy character to like. Though billed higher, Victoria Shaw (Alvarez Kelly, 1966) makes less of an impact than Gia Scala (The Guns of Navarone), who has the best role in the picture, while Herbert Lom (Bang! Bang! You’re Dead!, 1966) does good work as the patsy and loyalist. James Daly (The Big Bounce, 1969) is mostly the mouthpiece for all the accusations you’d like to fling at someone like Von Braun.

J. Lee Thompson does as well as you might expect within the restrictions of the material. Written by Jay Dratler (Laura, 1944) in his final screenplay.

Flawed but interesting.

The Green Berets (1968) ***

Apart from attempts to justify the Vietnam War and a hot streak of sentimentality, a grimly realistic tale that doesn’t go in for the grandiosity or self-consciousnesss of the likes of Apocalypse Now (1979), The Deer Hunter (1978) and Platoon (1978). It’s been so long since I’ve watched this that my DVD is one of those where you had to turn the disc over in the middle.

The central action sequence is a kind of backs-to-the-wall Alamo or Rorke’s Drift siege. There’s no sense of triumphalism in the battle where the best you can say is that a reasonable chunk of the American soldiers came out alive but only after evacuating the staging post they were holding, more like Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down (2001) where survival is all there is to savor. It’s all pretty brutal stuff, the Americans handicapped by having to also look after the fleeing Vietnamese villagers taking refuge in their camp.

There are plenty grim reminders of how war has become even more devastating in the aftermath of World War Two. The Vietcong take, literally, no prisoners, seen as killing civilians as easily as soldiers. The Americans, for their part, have no compunction in using more sophisticated weaponry, with the addition of targeted air strikes.

Into the mix, somewhat unnecessarily, comes left-wing journo George (David Janssen) whose main job is to change his mind about the work the soldiers are doing, though admitting that to report the truth will lose him his position. He’s slung into the middle of a defensive action headed up by Col Kirby (John Wayne) to hold a position under threat against superior (in numbers) forces. There’s a fair bit of the detail of war but virtually zero about the strategy, whether that’s the U.S. Army’s plan to defeat the enemy or this individual unit’s method of defending this position. Apart from extending the perimeter of the camp to create a more effective killing zone, it’s hard to work out what the heck is going on, no matter how often orders are barked through field telephones or walkie talkies. There are squads out in the field and units in the camp and how the whole operation is meant to mesh is beyond me.

There’s not much time to flesh out the characters, save for “scrounger” Sgt Peterson (Jim Hutton) who adopts an orphan, Vietnamese soldier Capt Nim (George Takei) and Sgt Provo (Luke Askew). The rest of the motley bunch are the usual crew of monosyllabic tough guys and friendly medics and whatnot.

Though the emotional weight falls on Lin (Irene Tsu), fearing shame and being ostracized by her family for befriending the Vietcong general who killed her father and for whom she now lays a honeytrap, Kirby expresses guilt at having to kill anybody.

Despite being sent out to reinforce the position, the Americans are forced to retreat and enjoy only a Pyrrhic victory when the cavalry, in the shape of an airplane, arrives to mow down the enemy after they have captured the position.

The fighting is suitably savage, and there is certainly the notion that the Americans are not only being out-fought but out-thought and that no amount of heavy weaponry is going to win the day.

Possibly to prevent the idea of defeat destabilizing the audience, the movie shifts into a different gear, more the gung-ho commando raid picture that the British used to do so well, where Kirby heads up an infiltration team to capture the Vietcong general who has been seduced by Lin. This sets up a completely different imperative, all stealth and secrecy, the kind of operation that in the past would have been a whole movie in itself rather than the tag-end of one.

While the prime aim of this is to have the audience leave the cinema happier than if they had just witnessed the retreat from the camp, in fact it also serves two purposes. One is worthwhile, to emphasize the sacrifices made by the Vietnamese. Lin, having agreed to prostitute herself, fears being cast out as a result. But the other outcome of this mission is to kill off Sgt Peterson thus leaving the little Vietnamese lad even more orphaned than before.

John Wayne (The Sons of Katie Elder, 1965) doesn’t attempt to gloss over the weariness of his character. Jim Hutton (Walk, Don’t Run, 1966) shifts with surprising ease from comedy to drama. Even as a cliché David Janssen (Warning Shot, 1966) is underused. Watch out for Aldo Ray (The Power, 1968), George Takei (original Star Trek series), Raymond St Jacques (Uptight, 1968), Luke Askew (Flareup, 1969) and Irene Tsu (Caprice, 1967).

Three hands were involved in the direction: John Wayne, veteran Mervyn Leroy (Moment to Moment, 1966) and Ray Kellogg (My Dog, Buddy, 1960). Written by James Lee Barrett (Bandolero!, 1968) from the book by Robin Moore. Worth pointing out the score by triple Oscar-winner Miklos Rosza (The Power, 1968) especially the low notes he hits to provide brooding tension.

Certainly a mixed bag, the central superb action sequence weighted down by the need to find something to shout about.

Mill of the Stone Women (1960) ****

Character has generally been replaced by gore or slaughter in the modern horror film. Ever since Hammer ruled the roost, blood-letting has assumed greater and greater significance, and ever since The Exorcist (1973) the genre has traded on shock values. Current box office sensation Sinners (2025) has gone some of the way to re-aligning the balance with its emphasis on character and thematic symmetry.

So it’s somewhat reassuring to discover that prior to those developments there could be an absolute chiller of a tale where nonetheless character, and not just for the two principals, was all. I should tell you right away that there is a vampiric element in the drawing of blood but that is carried out in the more refined scientific manner of medical blood transfusion. And the undead do rise again, just to get that story point out of the way, but it’s not because an evil count refuses to be put to sleep, but out of a father’s love for his daughter.

Quite the most fearful element here is the preponderance of unrequited love. The man whose medical skills saves a woman’s life is rejected by her, she in turn is ultimately rejected by an unforeseen suitor while he, in turn, for a time turns his back on his long-term girlfriend. The father also shows he has little loyalty to the man who deserves that most of all.

But let’s start at the beginning. In nineteenth century Holland, land of canals and dykes you will recall, student Hans (Pierre Brice) arrives at the watermill owned by Professor Wahl (Herbert Bohme) to write a report on the macabre carousel he has devised, a feat of engineering running on levers and gears and wheels, that present a “theater of death” populated by very lifelike inanimate statues. While there, he espies a beautiful woman.

Hans’s girlfriend Liselotte (Dany Carrel) is immediately jealous and unsure whether he loves her as much as she, a childhood friend, loves him. Back at the mill, Hans encounters smug Dr Bohlem (Wolfgang Preiss) who is on constant call to look after the professor’s very ill daughter Elfie (Scilla Gabel), the aforementioned beauty.

Although for mysterious reasons Elfie’s life depends on the doctor’s ministrations she rejects his overtures with haughty disdain. Meanwhile, she seduces Hans. Although initially smitten, Hans soon realizes the error of his ways. But Elfie, who it turns out has seduced many male visitors, becomes obsessed with him. Before he can break off their relationship, she collapses and dies.

Hans is accused of murdering the girl. Out of his wits, he’s sedated by the doctor and when he wakes up is convinced he has seen Elfie alive and another woman trapped in a room. He is persuaded by the professor and the doctor that he is going mad and he flees the mill, in theory never to return. The professor and doctor have kidnapped local girl Annelore (Liana Orfei), sometime life class model and chanteuse, and revive Elfie via a blood transfusion from the captive. The pair don’t need to get rid of the body, the professor transforming it into one of his very lifelike sculptures by covering it in wax.

Liselotte’s jealousy evaporates when she has Hans all to herself, nursing him back to health, and he asks her to marry him. Though nagged by his visions, he manages to dismiss them until he sees a photo of Annelore, whom he previously never met, and whom he glimpsed tied up in the mill.

Meanwhile, the doctor has discovered a serum by which Elfie can live a proper life, and it only requires one final transfusion. To that end he’s kidnapped Liselotte. But the doctor is determined to extract a price. Knowing that Elfie will no longer be dependent on him, he demands her hand in marriage. Despite what she owes him, she still, as high-and-mighty as before, rejects him. Using the same argument, the doctor appeals to the professor who is even more outraged at the idea, given the doctor was thrown out of his profession for malpractice and is an ex-convict.

The professor is even less grateful than his daughter and kills the doctor. Having witnessed the transfusion so many times, he begins to carry it out himself. But at the critical moment, he can’t find the serum. And it’s gone. When the doctor fell, the bottle of serum in his pocket smashed.

Hans rescues his fiancé while the mill burns to the ground, the wax melting from the sculptures betraying the skeletons underneath.

Most of the horror is left to audience imagination. There’s no gore, no throats slashed, very little blood, not even a scream. It’s the most discreet horror picture you’ll ever see and all the more effective for it. We probably didn’t need the scene of the conspirators gloating and giving away their evil plan but otherwise it works a treat.

All the characters are given clear identities, father and daughter gripped by obsession, doctor by the delusion of marriage as reward, Hans wayward in his affections but sensible enough to recognize stifling love when he sees it, and even Liselotte is best defined as overly jealous.

It’s handsomely mounted too, and the mill interiors have all the eerie trappings of the normal castle. Pierre Brice (Old Shatterhand, 1963) and Scilla Gabel (Sodom and Gomorrah, 1962) are given license to overact, and while Dany Carrel (Delphine, 1969) works through gritted teeth, Wolfgang Preiss (The Train, 1964) and Herbert Bohme (Secret of the Red Orchid, 1962) are the epitome of the cultured villain.

Unable to call upon a vast cauldron of blood to splatter, this is a more intelligent horror picture, directed with measured cadence by Giorgio Ferroni (The Lion of Thebes, 1964) from a script by the director, Ugo Liberatore (The Hellbenders, 1967) and Giorgio Stegani (Death on the Fourposter, 1964).

Rewarding watch.

Dangerous Animals (2025) *** – Seen at the Cinema

Steven Spielberg made his reputation dangling human bait to sharks and audiences lapped it up. I’m surprised it’s taken this long for a psychotic serial killer to understand the visceral thrill of watching victims die screaming as they are torn apart by sharks and churn up the sea in a froth of blood and guts. As you know I’m partial to a sharkfest and though this isn’t on the same epic scale in terms of destruction as Sharks under Paris (2024), given I was pretty fed up watching the dire Ballerina (let’s hope she’s excommunicated from the John Wick universe), I toddled off to see this without much in the way of expectation.

It’s pretty much in the Old Dark House line of horror pictures, good-looking young men and women imprisoned by a nutcase of the intelligent version of the species that recently surfaced in Heretic (2024). Aussie boat skipper Tucker (Jai Courtney) has a legitimate business taking tourists out shark-watching in a cage. And he’s got a side hustle in picking up vulnerable tourists – on gap years and the like or trying to escape the confines of the past or hiding out from consequence. He either catches his unwitting prey on land or waits till they turn up on his boat singly or in couples and not part of an organized tour from which their absence would be automatically noticed.

Heather (Ella Newton) and Greg (Liam Greinke) fall into the unannounced category. They get the shark experience but then Greg makes more intimate acquaintance with the predators after he’s knifed in the throat and tossed overboard.

Not only does Tucker like to watch he likes other victims to watch – someone dying. In full Spielberg mode he films the deaths. So he goes on the prowl for another victim, kidnapping the more sassy Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) in the middle of the night. She’s got a good deal more fight in her than the hapless Heather and manages to find a device to unlock the handcuffs chaining her to a bed, makes a makeshift shank from a broken piece of plastic and is adept at wielding a frying pan or harpoon or any other device that comes within range.

In between delivering homilies on the wonder of the shark, Tucker indulges in his dangling, the screaming Heather chopped to ribbons while Zephyr, strapped to the best seat in the house, is unwilling witness.

Luckily for Zephyr, she has smitten Moses (Josh Heuston), a one-night stand, and he has more detection skill than the cops who are not really interested in yet another beach bum who’s gone off without telling anyone. He tracks down the boat and invites himself to the party. Turns out between them they have more than a smattering of shark lore and when Josh is lowered into the water knows that the sharks will leave him alone if he doesn’t thrash about.

But drugged and chained up the pair have little chance of escape unless the doughty Zephyr goes full tilt escapologist boogie and gnaws off her thumb off to facilitate the cuffs slipping over her hand.

Unfortunately for her this picture is so full of twists there’s very little chance of a clean getaway and even when she makes it to the shore by swimming Tucker, thanks to a dinghy with an outboard motor, is on top of her.

It’s not as gruesome as it sounds, though you will want to avert your eyes when Zephyr starts gnawing on her thumb, and director Sean Byrne (The Devil’s Candy, 2015) emulates his idol Spielberg by turning less into more, ratcheting up the tension through anticipation and some terrific footage of marauding sharks. It helps that he doesn’t have a lascivious bone in his body, there’s no sexual assault, no drooling over half-naked women, no wet t-shirt nonsense.

Hassie Harrison (Yellowstone, 2020-2024) is the latest in a bunch of feisty women who refuse to conform to the scream queen norm. Jai Courtney (The Suicide Squad, 2021) is exceptionally creepy as the learned soft-spoken psychopath. Written by Nick Leppard in his debut.

Sean Byrne knows how to turn the screws.

Tornado (2025) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Cult’s a strange creature. Try to cultivate it from the outset and chances are you’ll strike out – the days of Quentin Tarantino hitting a bulls-eye are long gone. So, basically, what you’re left with these days is a picture that flopped on initial release but gradually developed exceptional word-of-mouth and maybe found a welcome home in streaming or on the retrospective circuit if that still exists. But that process takes several years, and the best hope these days is that it gives the director or star a lift. In this case, the door’s been left open for a sequel.

And on paper this sounds an awful conceit. Samurai swordsmen on the loose in antique Scotland? We’re talking 1790, for goodness sake. Were they shipwrecked, enslaved? We never find out. Back story here is in short supply and that’s all to the good because tension never dissipates.

There are only a couple of tropes – a pair of mewling nepo babies suffused with entitlement is as far as that goes.

The rest is original, intriguing and directed with authority. You’ve got gangsters, puppeteers, a circus troupe, and skeletons playing the violin. Twists are in short supply – the expectation that a knife thrower might turn into a male lead is dashed, and dust settling on the top of a piano which should give away the presence of a fugitive is ignored.

The tale is one of greed. And of the greedy feeding upon the greedy. By chance, travelling samurai puppeteer Tornado (Koki) spots the theft of a thieves’ haul of gold by a young pickpocket (Nathan Malone). She helps the boy secrete the two bags of gold in the caravan of her father Fujin (Takehiro Hira). But then she tosses him out of the moving caravan with only one gold piece for his trouble.

When the thugs led by Sugarman (Tim Roth) catch up, her father, unaware of his daughter’s complicity in the theft, is killed protecting her. So the girl and the boy go on the run. There’s none of the usual bonding of thieves.

Sugarman’s son Little Sugar (Jack Lowden) knows the girl has stolen the gold and in rebellion against his father determines to have it all to himself and not above killing off a colleague who gets in his way. Sugarman is a ruthless thug, setting fire to the encampment of the circus troupe for hiding the girl, and not above knifing his son to death.

Tornado doesn’t show the slightest sign of remorse at being the reason for her father and the boy and a strongman who protected her being killed nor for being the cause of the circus troupe being rendered homeless. She’s as amoral as the rest of them. But in the end she does put them all to the sword.

So, theoretically – and this is how it’s being marketed – it’s a revenge thriller or a samurai western (which has already been done with Red Sun, 1971) and both attempts at categorization are way off the mark. It has much more in common with Tarantino, of infighting among gangsters, but it’s so splendidly done, with terrific composition and use of the widescreen that it touches the cult mother lode, in that it is indescribable, creating a world of its own, set in a lawless world where the strong dominate and the weak run for cover. And it’s also a world where you better not get wounded, because that will be cue for someone else to take advantage.

Tornado transitions from rebellious daughter – “who put you in charge” she complains to her father – moaning about being bored and can’t take the job of being a puppeteer seriously, and she’s not that good either at paying attention when her old man tries to teach her more swordfighting. And, of course, she’s to blame for the death of her father. Her instinct is to run and hide and wait till the brouhaha dies down. And it’s only when she realizes that she can’t effectively carry two heavy sacks of gold that she decides to cut and run – with the emphasis on the cutting, slicing and dicing the gang till there’s only Sugarman left and he’s, ironically, dying anyway from a wound inflicted by her father.

So not your ideal heroine. In the old days she’d have been an innocent, guiltless, only taking up the sword or gun after her father was killed by ruthless villains. It’s all the more interesting for not going down that route.

The choices director John MacLean (Slow West, 2015) doesn’t make define the picture. There’s no love interest, Little Sugar and Tornado could as easily have conspired to make off with the dough, or some narrative device could have thrown them together. But both want all the gold for themselves. The knife expert you think is being introduced to come to her rescue. But no go there either.

Tim Roth (Rob Roy, 1995) is superb as the cold-eyed gang boss and Jack Lowden (Slow Horses, 2022-2024) as his shifty son and MTA Koki makes a startling debut.

It’ll be gone from cinemas by the time you read this review but look out for it on a streaming platform and I hope it will prick your interest as much as mine.

Impasse (1969) ***

The kind of desultory B-movie Burt Reynolds was relegated to before Deliverance (1972) sent him on his way into the superstar stratosphere. And you could see why he might as easily have ended up at the lower level. This was his third stab at top billing and he’d have another two goes before Hollywood gave up on him and he tried again (he’d been in the shortlived Hawk series in 1966) in television as Dan August (1970-1971). In what could have been a career breakout – 100 Rifles (1969) – he was left trailing the wake of the incendiary combo of Raquel Welch and Jim Brown.

When you’re at this lowly level in the Hollywood pecking order, you are destined just to take what comes your way. This is set up as mission-picture-cum-heist but it takes way too long to get under way and there’s little tension on what passes for the heist.

More time is spent on chief thief Pat Morrison (Burt Reynolds) organizing his love life with main squeeze Mariko (Miko Mayama) who happens to be the wife of one of his recruits Jesus (Vic Diaz). He’s on board because he was present at the World War Two secret mission on Corregidor where the Yanks stashed away $3 million in gold. Morrison has tracked down two others who were present – Apache Draco (Radolfo Acosto) and racist Hansen (Lyle Bettger). But there’s a complication – they were blindfolded during the operation.

Morrison could have found the gold just through the medium of Jones (Clarke Gordon) who led the expedition. But there’s a complication. He’s too ill to make the trip. And just when Morrison needs him there’s a further complication – he’s kidnapped by The Wombat (Jeff Corey) who wants his share.

Meanwhile, to further delay the team getting going, there’s a further complication. Jones’s daughter Bobby (Anne Francis), a tennis champ, becomes involved. But there’s a complication and we’ve got wait a while till she sorts out how she’s going to deal with hippie tennis groupie-cum-stalker Penny (Joanne Dalsass) and we find out whether she swings both ways. That factor is never properly determined but just to complicate things further – and set up the climax – Morrison beds Bobby much to the anger of Mariko. And the fact that Morrison was in a relationship with Mariko sets up another complication when, once the trip gets underway, Jesus finds out.

There’s some colourful background to while away the time in between Morrison getting his shirt off and the various fisticuffs and shootouts that delay the mission getting started. Eventually, the reach their destination. The loot is hidden in a tunnel and is found by the trio re-enacting the previous circumstances, blindfolded as before and counting off the individual number of steps each took in the tunnel. There’s another complication – what did you expect? – because before the final steps are completed they hit a wall and it does take them way too long to work out that the edifice must have been constructed after the gold was hidden.

And just when they’re making their getaway there’s a complication. Philippine soldiers are waiting and they’re all shot except Morrison who is captured. And it’s then he discovers the price of his two-timing Mariko, in revenge she’s informed on him.

Way too complicated to be set up as a star-making vehicle for Burt Reynolds (Sam Whiskey, 1969), but he does exhibit some of the persona that would later be his trademark, the smug grin and the naked chest, easy with fists and charm. Anne Francis (The Satan Bug, 1965) adds sparkle but she’s not in it long enough and she’s distracted by father and groupie. Jeff Corey (Seconds, 1966) is otherwise the pick.

Directed by Richard Benedict (Winter a Go-Go, 1965) from a script by John C. Higgins (The File of the Golden Goose, 1969). The complications don’t have the black comedy feel of The Hellbenders (1967) and mostly hold up the story up rather than adding tension.

Come at it as a supporting feature and it would be more enjoyable than if you had paid your hard-earned dollar to see it as the main feature.

Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) ****

You can keep your Succession dramas with families squabbling over a mere business empire. And even the more woke Snow White (2025) doesn’t remotely tackle the realities of marriage in medieval times when the role of a woman, in an era when more children died in childbirth or soon after than actually survived, was to produce an heir. And not just random in gender. But male.

So, on the one hand, you can sympathize with the dilemma of English King Henry VIII whose Spanish wife Katherine, while eminently fertile – several babies died in childbirth – had managed only one male offspring, who died shortly after birth, and one female, Mary. All the queen had given him, rails Henry (Richard Burton), are “dead sons.” So with the future of one of the biggest kingdoms in the world at stake, Henry isn’t keen to leave it in the hands of a woman. Even if he can arrange a suitable marriage, it would inevitably mean letting the kingdom fall into the hands of someone he doesn’t trust.

But in the twisted world of inheritance, here’s the rub. Henry shouldn’t be king. His elder brother Arthur should have, except he died before he could succeed to the throne. And Katherine, married to Arthur, should have been Queen. But Spain at that point was as powerful, if not more so, than England, so Henry decided to marry his sister-in-law, on the basis that the marriage was never consummated, and the Pope, the authority in such matters, gave the go-ahead, glossing over the technicality of what was considered in those days incest.

So, Henry comes up with a cunning plan. He will go trophy-hunting and marry a younger wife. This isn’t just because he’s fallen in love with Anne Boleyn (Genevieve Bujold). He doesn’t have to marry her to have sex with her. He’s already having sex with her mother (Valerie Gearon) with the tacit approval of her father (Michael Hordern) who receives benefits in kind.

To add complication, Anne is promised in marriage already, and deeply in love. Siring a bastard son would inevitably cause an inheritance battle. So legitimizing the relationship seems the only way forward. This time the Pope isn’t keen, mostly because the Spanish have invaded the Vatican and if he wants to survive he can hardly annoy his captors.

But when the Pope refuses, Henry takes the nuclear option, and splits from the Catholic Church, not just taking advantage of the old church vs state argument, but also made aware by Thomas Cromwell of the sudden increase in wealth acquiring the items of the Catholic Church would bring.

Sorry to bore you with a history lesson but this intriguing backdrop – as well as the dazzling performances – is what twists this away from lush costume confection into riveting drama. This was the peak of a trend in historical movies that shifted the emphasis from heroic action to the down’n’dirty. Camelot (1967) to some extent had begun the trend but only dealt with infidelity and was given something of a free pass because it focused on the iconic Knights of the Round Table and a legendary love affair. The Lion in Winter (1968) primarily concentrated on inheritance.

Depending where your sympathies lay this was either corruption writ large or a battle to free the ordinary man from the yoke of religion.

Primarily, it works because it revolves around the human drive, the king refusing to bow the knee to anyone, Anne Boleyn seduced not just by gifts but by this older man who is much more virile and passionate than her younger somewhat effete fiancé (and who couldn’t be dazzled by a man risking his kingdom for her love?) – and the courtiers looking after number one, always seeking a way of winning the king’s favor, and as importantly, not losing it, for that could lead to banishment or execution.

No one dares stand in Henry’s way – except Sir Thomas More (William Squire) and here he’s merely a small subplot (not center stage as in A Man for All Seasons, 1966) – not even the religious hierarchy, especially Cardinal Wolseley (Anthony Quayle), head of the Catholic Church in England, who keeps a mistress.

The tragedy is that the cunning plan unravels. While Anne is fertile enough, she gives birth to a girl, Elizabeth (the later Virgin Queen). Convinced she’s not going to present him with the male heir he so desperately desires, he hatches a conspiracy that sees her executed for adultery and treachery, leaving him free to marry again and continue his mad obsession.

So we’ve got all the back-biting and bitching we expect from court, plus regal revelry, costumes, castles, and in the middle of it all a driven king and a feisty woman, not by any means a pushover, and not either going unwillingly into his bed. This would be a match made in heaven except that’s probably the last place, the way things stand, the king would be welcome. He’s very aware of excommunication and it shows the power of the Catholic Church that its teachings are so embedded in his brain that he fears that consequence.

This is rich in performance – Richard Burton (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1965), Canadian Genevieve Bujold (The Thief of Paris, 1967) and Anthony Quayle (East of Sudan, 1964) were Oscar-nominated. The only significant figure in the production not to receive one of the movie’s ten nominations – including for Best Picture – was director Charles Jarrott who pulled the whole thing together. Maybe it was thought he was rusty, not having helmed a picture since Time to Remember seven years previously.

The acting is particularly well-judged by the two principals, Burton could easily have lurched into cliché, and Bujold into passivity. Others worth noting are Irene Papas (The Guns of Navarone, 1961), Michael Hordern (Khartoum, 1966), Valerie Gearon (Invasion, 1966) and Peter Jeffrey (The Fixer, 1968).

Based on the play by Maxwell Anderson (The Bad Seed, 1963), screenwriters John Hale in his movie debut and Bridget Boland (Gaslight, 1940) manage to balance what could be dry subject matter with fragility and tragedy.

There couldn’t be a better demonstration of women used as pawns and collateral damage in male power struggles.

Totally absorbing.