Category Archives: Foreign Films

Daisies (1966)

Posted on September 22, 2013 | Leave a comment

daisies 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Girlfriends rebel from society.

Two young women (Ivana Karbanova, Jitka Cerhova) who are both named Marie decide that society has nothing to offer them and that they will not comply with its norms. They then proceed to jaunt through the streets of Prague causing havoc and destruction everywhere they go and with everyone they meet while also trying to find themselves and their true purpose in life.

This film is similar to Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, which was released the same year. Both films rely heavily on quick edits, jump cuts, bizarre imagery and unconventional narrative structures. The only difference is that at least Persona had a story behind it and two interesting characters. This film has neither. The two women behave too strangely to be relatable and the scenes seem disconnected. This is one film that takes the avant-garde, experimental approach to the most extreme. The result is a bit off-putting and took me until the halfway mark before I could get into it. Others may not even make it that far. Personal taste will gauge how much one gets into it as well as how much they get out of it.

On a completely visual level it is fascinating. The film goes from being black-and-white to color and then back again at random intervals. There is one scene in a restaurant where the scene changes to a different color filter each time a character speaks a different line of dialogue. The segment showing photos of a variety of butterflies done at a rapid fire pace is also interesting. The best part is probably near the end when the girls walk into a banquet hall and proceed to eat up all the food that is in it. In fact the film shows an amazing amount of eating. It seems like every other shot has the girls stuffing their mouths with some sort of edible. However, instead of making you hungry it ends up kind of grossing you out.

If there is anything that got on my nerves it was director Vera Chytilova’s use of sound. There was too much repetition of noises. For instance in the opening scene there is what sounds like a squeaking door that is implemented after each actress says her line that quickly becomes irritating. The slobbering, chewing sound as the girls eat the banquet food is overdone as is their background whispering that occurs near the end.

Many feel this is a movie about budding feminism and I would agree on that for the most part. I enjoyed how the women did not feel that they needed a man in their life to ‘be whole’ and in many ways seemed to manipulate and make fun of the male characters, or simply become bored with them especially when the men would convey to them their ‘undying love’.  However, to me it was more about the rebelling and disdain of the communist regime and living in an environment that promoted hard work and not much else. I liked the segment at the end where the two women proceed to be ‘good’ instead of ‘bad’ and try to clean up the mess that they made while trying to convince themselves that working hard will make them happy even though it really doesn’t.

I’ve seen a lot of weird sixties movies, but this one tops them all by a mile. It certainly doesn’t seem dated and easily transcends its era. Not only was it ahead-of-its-time, but I would maintain that it STILL is.

Although the runtime is listed as being 74 minutes the version I saw, which was from Czech New Wave, came out to being only an hour.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: December 30, 1966

Runtime: 1Hour

Not Rated

Director: Vera Chytilova

Studio: Ustredni

Available: DVD

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Posted in 60's Movies, Black & White, Foreign Films, Moody/Stylish, Offbeat, Surreal/Fantasy

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The Deadly Trap (1971)

Posted on September 17, 2013 | 6 comments

the deadly trap

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: They have their kids.

Philippe (Frank Langella) works at a high-tech job in a large corporation. For years he has been giving trade secrets to a mysterious organization that pays him handsomely for his efforts. Now that he is married and has children he has decided he no longer wants contact with this underground entity, but they refuse to leave him alone. When he is no longer willing to corporate they kidnap his two children, which sends his emotionally and mentally fragile wife Jill (Faye Dunaway) over-the-edge.

Dunaway’s amazing performance is the one thing that really helps propel a film that is otherwise too laid-back. I have always been an admirer of hers, but her performance here is great because it is so different from any of the other characters that she has played. Normally she is cast in parts of strong or manipulative women, but here she plays someone who is very fragile and does it with amazing effectiveness. I felt like she was a completely different person and showed a side to her that I didn’t think she possessed. Her face and expressions accentuate the fragility and she looks quite beautiful.

Langella is good on the opposite end. He plays a cynical and aloof man who snaps at his wife in an annoyed manner at regular intervals. The contrasting personalities and dialogue between them is interesting. In many ways he seems to playing an extension to the character that he did in Diary of a Mad Housewife and given the fact that Eleanor Perry wrote the screenplays for both films makes me believe that there had to be more than just a passing connection there.

The story has some interesting underlying elements that manage to retain a modicum of intrigue, but Rene Clement’s direction is too leisurely. The first hour gets bogged down with too much conversation and certain tangents that go nowhere. It is only in the last half hour that things finally get going and has some interesting twists, but by then it is too late. It would have been better had we seen some sort of face to the organization instead of having them portrayed in such a vague way. The movie is also in need of a lot more action although the part where Jill and her kids get into a car accident and get thrown from the vehicle is impressive since actual bodies where used, which is something I had never seen done before.

Spoiler Alert!

The film features several loopholes that will end up confounding anyone. One is that when the children are kidnapped they are locked in an upstairs room that has a loaded gun stashed away in the closet. The children get their hands on it and use it against their captors, but you would think that a sophisticated and large criminal group that this organization supposedly is wouldn’t be so utterly careless as to leave it there. Also, when it is found that the couple’s downstairs neighbor Cynthia (Barbara Parkins) has a connection to this organization and kidnapping the police shoot her dead at point-blank range instead of just arresting her and interrogating her in order to find the whereabouts of the kids. The biggest problem though is the ending itself where the kids are saved and everybody becomes one big happy family, which doesn’t jive at all with the rest of the film that had a constant murky undertones and a couple that was always squabbling. By having this otherwise dark thriller suddenly become ‘The Brady Bunch’ at the end is jarring in tone. It also doesn’t answer the fact that the organization was never caught and therefore will continue to harass him again, so why should they be all happy when the bad guys could strike at any moment?

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: June 9, 1971

Runtime: 1Hour 36Minutes

Rated R

Director: Rene Clement

Studio: National General Pictures

Available: VHS, Warner Streaming

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Posted in 70's Movies, Drama, Foreign Films, French Films, Kidnapping Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Mystery, Obscure Movies, Thrillers/Suspense

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I Love a Man in Uniform (1993)

Posted on September 11, 2013 | Leave a comment

I love a man in uniform

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Losing touch of reality.

Overly stylish, pretentious drama detailing an actor’s slow decent into madness. Henry (Tom McCamus) an otherwise anonymous bank employee finally gets his big break as an actor playing the part of a cop on a TV show, but then starts to take the role home with him. Intoxicated with the sense of power that he gets playing a man in uniform he eventually can no longer differentiate between the role and himself.

On one hand this is a fascinating and incisive drama. It examines an ambiguous area rarely touched upon anywhere else. Namely how an actor ‘becomes’ his role and how he learns to turn it off. It also questions whether anyone, even a trained actor, can be someone they are not as well as analyzing people’s need to become someone who is important, powerful, and in control.

Yet the film takes this and then suffocates it with a new wave mentality and a thumping techno music score. It looks like something made by a young guy who watched too many episodes of “Miami Vice”. The stylization gets strained. Trying to be both ‘important’ and trendy never gels and the attempt at mixing ‘real life’ grittiness with an artsy flair gets annoying.

The pacing is also off. The character becomes unhinged too quickly. Then we are treated to a never ending scenario of ‘will he or won’t he’ go completely bonkers. There’s about three climaxes too many and a couple of truly unnecessary scenes including a bank robbery, which is particularly dumb.

Star McCamus does his part well, but he also has a really big mole at the top of his forehead, which after a while becomes distracting. Brigitte Bako as the female love interest is pleasant to look at and an overall sweet character. The rest of the characters though are too dull, clichéd, or corrupt to be likable or interesting.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: September 10, 1993

Runtime: 1Hour 39Minutes

Rated R

Director: David Wellington

Studio: Alliance Communications

Available: DVD

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Posted in 90's Movies, Drama, Foreign Films, Movies from Canada, Psychological, Robbing Banks, Thrillers/Suspense

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The Grass is Singing (1981)

Posted on September 2, 2013 | Leave a comment

the grass is singing 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Farming isn’t her thing.

In memory of Karen Black who died on August 8th we will review on each Monday of this month an 80’s film that she starred in as well as a 70’s movie that she was in on Fridays. This film is based on the Doris Lessing novel and was filmed on-location in Zambia. The story centers on Mary a racist woman from South Africa who is bored with her job and lonely. She meets Richard (John Thaw) a simple man who becomes smitten with her. She is not as crazy about him but decides to accept his proposal of marriage simply as a way to escape her dreary existence and loneliness. He moves her to his farm where she finds the rigorous lifestyle difficult to adjust too. The isolation begins to wear on her already tightly wound temperament and eventually she begins to show erratic behaviors that become more disturbing and shocking.

The Zambia locations are captured in vivid style with a grainy film stock that makes it look like it were a documentary. The farm setting is indeed desolate and makes for great atmosphere. Director Michael Raeburn wisely refrains from using too much music and when he does he uses instrumentals from the native culture, which further elevates the film and gives it distinction.

The film stays pretty faithful to the novel and starts out in startling fashion with Mary being stabbed and bloodied on her backdoor step and then shifts back seven years where we see what lead up to it. The pace is slow, but involving and the characters are three-dimensional and believable. Mary’s breakdown happens in a deliberate and realistic fashion starting with little things that work into bigger ones. In the end you feel more sorry for her than frightened and thoroughly engulfed with her sad and pathetic circumstances.

This was Black’s last serious role before being quarantined in B-movie purgatory. This may also be one of her finest moments as she brings out the manipulative nature of the character quite well and I love the way she always seems to add quirky qualities to her parts. She also speaks with an authentic sounding South African accent.

Thaw is quite good in support and creates empathy from the viewer playing a very humble man looking for simple companionship with no idea what he was getting into.

There is some serious filmmaking going on here in a movie that makes some great points about life and human nature that is well worth checking out. The original theatrical release which is what I saw and able to obtain from a private collector runs a full 105 minutes. However, the American release which is available on DVD from Synergy Entertainment as well as Amazon Instant Video and goes under the title Killing Heat runs only 90 minutes and heavily edits out the explicit violence and nudity and has a narrative that is choppy and at times confusing.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Alternate Title: Killing Heat (U.S. version)

Released: September 18, 1981

Runtime: 1Hour 45Minutes (Original Version)

Not Rated

Director: Michael Raeburn

Studio: Chibote

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video (as Killing Heat)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Psychological

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A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die (1968)

Posted on September 1, 2013 | Leave a comment

a minute to pray a second to die

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: A gunfighter suffers seizures

Clay McCord (Alex Cord) travels to New Mexico where the Governor (Robert Ryan) promises amnesty to all outlaws. Clay finds himself at odds with the other outlaws who are traveling to the state for the same reason, which causes him to get involved in numerous gun fights and although he is an excellent shooter he also suffers from strange seizures that temporarily paralyze his arm. When he has these fits it makes him completely vulnerable to all those who might want to take advantage of him. He tries to keep this condition a secret while looking for a Dr. which he hopes can cure him, but the other outlaws get wind of it and start to track him down.

One of the biggest problems with this movie is that Director Franco Giraldi is no Sergio Leone and you spend the whole time wondering how much better this would have been had Leone directed it. Giraldi fails to have Leone’s visual style or lyricism. Everything is staged and photographed in a very conventional unimaginative way with a lot of choppy editing. The one fun and interesting scene that the film does have Giraldi screws up and it entails Clay as a young boy watching a group of cowboys laughing at his father and dragging him through the mud while he suffers an epileptic seizure. The crying boy becomes so distraught that he steals one of the men’s guns and then turns around and shoots them all dead. Instead of taking advantage of the scene’s irony and showing the men with shocked expressions and even possibly having them getting hit and falling down dead in slow motion Giraldi instead immediately cuts away the second the boy starts shooting, which doesn’t allow the scene to gel and stand out as much as it should.

The music is another issue and in desperate need of Ennio Morricone’s distinctive orchestral sound. Carlo Rustichelli the composer here has a score that places too much emphasis on the violins and creates a heavy, droning melody that would be better suited for a drama. The dialogue is also dubbed. I know a lot of Italian filmmakers did this especially during this era. I’ve never been sure why and I have never liked it although with Dario Argento’s horror movies it somewhat works because it heightens the surreal effect, however here it cheapens the production and cements it as a definite B-movie.

Cord doesn’t have the charisma or presence of a leading man. His deep voice and laid back delivery makes him sound like he is only half awake. He glides through the film with too much of a detached and unemotional persona. The biggest problem though was the character. This is a man who has no idea when his seizures will occur and knows full well the vulnerable position they will put him in and yet he continues to behave in a brash, cocky way with everyone he meets and singlehandedly tries to right every wrong when it would have been much more practical to simply lay low and blend in with the crowd.

Nicoletta Machiavelli is a beauty and although I wasn’t so sure about her acting her face was so appealing that I wanted to see her in more scenes and was disappointed when she got killed off so quickly. Veteran actor Arthur Kennedy who wears a wig gives his usual stalwart performance as the town’s marshal, but it is not enough to save the picture. Ryan is okay as the governor, but I found it hard to believe that a man who looked like he was clearly getting elderly would be able to punch out as many guys as he does let alone even one of them.

There are quite a few gun battles particularly during the first half, but they are generic and the final one really isn’t that exciting. The ending peters out with a whimper and this spaghetti western wannabe does nothing but make you long to go back and re-watch a classic one.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: May 1, 1968

Runtime: 1Hour 37Minutes (The DVD cover says 1Hour 58Minutes, but they’re wrong.)

Not Rated

Director: Franco Giraldi

Studio: Cinema Releasing Corporation

Available: DVD

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Posted in 60's Movies, Action/Adventure, Foreign Films, Italian Films, Spaghetti Westerns

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Paperback Hero (1973)

Posted on August 30, 2013 | Leave a comment

paperback hero

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Big fish small pond.

Rick (Keir Dullea) is a hockey player living in a small town on the western plains of Canada. To pass his time he imagines he is a gunslinger in the old west and makes himself the self-imposed marshal of the community.  Outside of Sheriff Burdock (George R. Robertson) the other townsfolk considered it an amusing and otherwise harmless quirk. Then Rick learns that his hockey team will be disbanded and he will be without a job. He is given an opportunity for employment in nearby Saskatoon, but he refuses it feeling that he will lose his ‘mystique’ in the bigger city. Slowly the strains and pressures of his situation start to get to him and eventually it culminates in an old fashioned gunfight right in the center of town between him and the sheriff.

If the film gets one thing right it is in the recreation of small town life. Filmed on-location in Delisle, Saskatchewan director Peter Pearson gives the viewer a wonderful and vivid feel of the town. Just about all the sections of the hamlet are captured including the inside of abandoned buildings, trailer homes and farms as well as a couple of nice bird’s eye shots. The remoteness and flat wheat laden terrain brings to life the region in an almost stunning clarity. Having grown up in a small town not too terribly far from the Canadian border I can say that this film hits-the-mark in its portrayal of people in the Nordic region. All the little dramas that can go on between people locked in a remote local as well as the scenes done inside a dark and dingy bar that many times can constitute as the place to go for a ‘night-on-the-town’ is amusingly well played-out.

However, despite having the right flavor the film lacks direction. It was hard for me to get into this because all the scenes were random and not connected together by all that much. The plot is thin and made up if anything by a series of vignettes.  The main character is brass, egotistical, deluded and arrogant. He treats women like they are his property. He beats up one and considers it minor because her bruises are only the ‘size of a quarter’. He talks about getting turned on by one woman while making love to another and then is surprised when she gets upset with him. Having a film built around such an unlikable character is not entertaining or interesting especially when we are given no history to why he became the way he is.

Dullea does well in the lead and shows a lot more emotion and panache than one might expect from him especially when compared to his most famous role as the rather robotic Dave Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is always fun to see Elizabeth Ashley and here she plays one of Rick’s love interests, but her role is small and rather thankless though she does get shown in a long and explicit nude scene.

My favorite was Dayle Haddon as the alluring Joanna. Haddon has retired from the acting profession years ago, but was at one time a fashion model and she looks gorgeous here. The scene that takes place in an abandoned house where she tells Rick off and shreds his deluded ego while doing it in a quiet whispery tone is the movie’s best moment.

The segment showing a big hockey brawl where fans jump out of the stands to get involved and even the ref gets bloodied is fun. I also liked the part where Rick takes Joanna on car ride through the wheat fields. The camera is hooked up to the bumper of the car so the viewer gets an up close experience of watching the wheat thrash before them at high speeds. The standoff at the very end in the center of town is also interesting, but the film takes too long to gel and the main character is such a turn-off that it hurts the good points and ultimately makes this a misfire.

The movie also features the Gordon Lightfoot’s song ‘If You Could Read My Mind’, which is a great a song, but it has been played so much on lite-rock stations that instead of getting the viewer more engrossed in the movie it instead takes them out of it. The film works hard to create a gritty appeal and for the most part succeeds, which is why having a long segment with the song played over it doesn’t work and I would have left it out.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: September 21, 1973

Runtime: 1Hour 33Minutes

Rated R

Director: Peter Pearson

Studio: Alliance Film Distribution

Available: VHS, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Foreign Films, Movies from Canada, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

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Sands of the Kalahari (1965)

Posted on August 25, 2013 | Leave a comment

sands of the kalahari

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Stranded in the desert.

Based on the novel by William Mulvihill the story centers on a group of six individuals, five men and one woman, who fight to survive the blistering heat of the Kalahari Desert when their plane crashes after it’s struck by a large swath of locusts. Instead of working together as a team the group quickly disintegrates with infighting and tensions. The young and virile Brian (Stuart Whitman) who initially takes control of the situation starts to feel that his own survival would be heightened if there were less people needing food and water, so he decides to carefully eliminate them one-by-one, which leads to many interesting confrontations and a very unusual climactic finale.

Filmed on-location in Namibia the desert becomes its own character. The stunning sandy landscape is breathtaking and watching the characters walk along it under the crystal blue sky becomes almost awe-inspiring particularly during birds-eye view shots. The viewer feels like there are right there feeling the heat along with the rest of the characters. Writer/director Cy Endfield keeps things on an authentic level and stays for the most part faithful to the book with the exception of changing one of the characters who had been African American in the novel to Caucasian here. His use of actual animals is what impressed me the most particularly the baboons who become a major part of the story as well as seeing a live scorpion crawling up a man’s arm. The only real technical weakness is the cloud of locusts forming on the horizon, which looked like dust being sprayed on the plane’s windshield and when they started to splatter onto the window it looked more like scrambled eggs and not quite as impressive as I think the filmmaker’s had hoped.

I also had a bit of a problem with the Sturdevan character, which had been the plane’s pilot and is played by actor Nigel Davenport who attempts to rape Grace (Susannah York) after they had only been stranded in the desert for a day and a half. I felt this was too quick for people to so suddenly drop their civilized veneers and cave into their more animalistic urges. I could see this maybe occurring after being there for weeks or months, but I would think initially the urgency would be finding help and just plain surviving and sex being the last thing on anyone’s minds. This same issue occurs with Grace who becomes romantically attached to Brian and even professes her ‘love’ for him after only a couple of days, which again seemed too rushed. The romantic scenes make the film seem soap-opera like and gives it an unnecessary melodramatic feel that does nothing but bog down the pace.

Whitman whose career dissipated after the 60’s and was confined with less significant roles and films is memorable here. The character who comes onto the plane at the last second is initially big and brawny heroic and watching him devolve into a selfish anti-social man is interesting as are the scenes with him trapped in a hole. The segment where he throws a fire into a cave filled with baboons and then shoots the animals as they run out is quite startling. I also enjoyed York. She has always been a splendid actress, but here with her blonde hair matched against her red skin and torn dress looks genuinely sexy.

The one-on-one confrontations between the characters especially the one between Grimmelman (Harry Andrews) and Brian and then later between Brian, Grace and Mike (Stanley Baker) is what helps the film really stand-out. I would have liked it played-out a bit more, but the twist that comes at the end is indeed unexpected and leads to one of the more unusual climactic sequences you will ever see.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Release: November 24, 1965

Runtime: 1Hour 59Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Cy Endfield

Studio: Paramount

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video 

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Posted in 60's Movies, Action/Adventure, British Movies, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a rural setting, Outdoors

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Wedding in White (1972)

Posted on August 23, 2013 | 3 comments

wedding in white 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Ending is a kicker.

Jeannie (Carol Kane) is a shy 16-year-old girl living in a small, bleak Canadian town just after the war who is raped by her older brother’s army buddy. Her parents (Donald Pleasance, Doris Petrie) respond as if it is her fault and resort to some extreme even shocking measures in order to ‘save the family honor’.

This is a solid little drama with good scene construction. The pacing is deliberate and an ending that really packs a wallop. The sets and location look authentic for the period and the characters are believable. Jeannie’s friend Sara (Christine Thomas) seems like a very typical teenager no matter what time period and her interactions with Jeannie show the realities of teenage friendships and makes for an interesting sidelight from the main story.

Kane is impressive acting in a style I’ve never seen from her before. Pleasance is solid as usual and his Canadian accent sounds almost authentic, but it is a bit overdone. Petrie is also quite good as the mother. She really brings to surface a character that is so cloistered she is unable to make any clear decision for herself.

The story itself is the real strong point. It is convincing, insightful, and well-crafted and brings out a sort of darkness and ‘evil’ that can come from ‘wholesome small towns’ and ‘God fearing people’. It shows how having a rigid morality can sometimes create a sort of immorality and also brings to light the lies people wish to live by and how at times it can cloud their better judgment, but most of all it’s a study at  how easily sensitive, fragile people can get sucked away and how sadly common it is.

This is a film designed to leave you feeling shocked, angered, saddened, and maybe even a little repulsed. This is quality viewing that deserves more attention.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: October 20, 1972

Runtime: 1Hour 43Minutes

Rated R

Director: William Fruet

Studio: Cinepix

Available: DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Drama, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies from Canada, Movies with a rural setting

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The Handyman (1980)

Posted on August 22, 2013 | 2 comments

the handyman

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: He’s unlucky in love.

Armand (Jocelyn Berube) is a chump of the first order. Everything he plans or does never seems to work out. He writes a letter to his mother describing how he has finally gotten himself married and how ‘he won’t die a bachelor’ only to have her walk out on him after only a few months. He tells his best friend the secret place where he hides all of his money and then the next day the friend steals the money. He brings in a new roommate only to have that man listen in to his private phone calls and when he does meet an attractive woman who he thinks is interested he gets her a romantic gift only to have her and her friends laugh at him behind his back. “The world is made up of two types of people,” he states “Those that take and those that are taken and I tend to be the latter.”

Things seem to improve for him when he gets a job fixing up the house for bored and attractive housewife Therese (Andree Pelletier). She is unhappy with her marriage to Bernard (Gilles Renaud) who is indifferent to her feelings and more interested in his golf game than her. She considers Armand’s unpretentiousness refreshing and Armand of course becomes immediately smitten. The two make an attempt at an affair, but as usual Armand gets in over-his-head.

One of the things that really stands out in this movie is the way Armand and Therese’s relationship unfolds. In most movies it always seems like love at first sight and both people get animalistic urges that they can’t contain and impulsively jump into the sack, but here it is much different. For one thing their attraction for one another progresses at a much slower and more realistic pace and does not come to a head until after several months. Both parties are shown contemplating their next move and their desire for one another is constantly being balanced by their reluctance at knowing how much trouble and guilt they will have if they do go through with it. How they respond to each other after they have sex is equally revealing and the quirky relationship that Armand later has with Therese’s husband is also quite interesting.

Although I felt that actor Berube’s bushy mustache and 70’s hairstyle seemed a little overdone I still found the character to be highly amiable. You tend to feel for the guy even after he makes one blunder after another. Actress Pelletier is certainly attractive, but her thick Nordic accent was a bit of a turn-off although probably realistic for the region.

My only complaint from this otherwise widely hailed low budget obscurity is the fact that the Armand character doesn’t grow or evolve at all. This is a man that knows he has a weakness for being taken advantage of, but doesn’t do anything about it. Watching him perpetually self-destruct to the point that he finds himself living out of his car and even contemplating jumping off a bridge is frustrating and depressing. Showing him having just one defining uncharacteristic moment where he somehow manages to transcend himself would have been much more satisfying and in some ways more realistic.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: March 14, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 39Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Micheline Lanctot

Studio: Les Films Reno Malo

Not Available at this Time.

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Dry Humor, Foreign Films, Low Budget, Movies from Canada, Obscure Movies, Romance

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Repulsion (1965)

Posted on August 18, 2013 | 1 comment

repulsion 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: She loses her mind.

Love or loathe him one thing is for sure the controversial Roman Polanski has made some great movies and since today marks his 80th birthday I thought it would be good to review one of his films this being his first English language one. The story, which was written by Polanski and Gerard Brach centers on Carol (Catherine Deneuve) a beautiful but lonely young woman living in an apartment with her older sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux) and Helen’s boyfriend Michael (Ian Hendry). Carol seems detached and troubled and when Helen and Michael go off for the weekend Carol begins to suffer hallucinations while inside the apartment that becomes increasingly more frightening and eventually leads to murder.

The film works at a slow and deliberate pace that some viewers may feel put-off by. Personally I felt it was effective and made it more realistic although things really don’t start to get intense until the final hour. For me it was the little things that made it intriguing for instance the way Carol becomes fascinated with the distorted reflection of herself in a teapot, or a rolling bottle of nail polish. Nothing is over-the-top, but instead subtle and restrained. This is one of the few films that seem to understand the thought process of the mentally ill and makes you feel like you are really inside their head and seeing things as they do, which is what makes it so unnerving. The low-key approach works because like with an actual person having a breakdown it starts with little things that slowly morph into bigger ones.

Polanski shows incredible control over the material. The stark black-and-white cinematography helps to heighten the ugliness of the situation. The variety of camera angles and movements creates an almost hypnotic effect. I loved the way, as Carol gets further into her demented state, that the dimensions of the apartment begins to change, or the hands coming out of the walls. My only complaint is I wished some of these effects had been played up even more. The rape sequences are quite effective and surprisingly explicit for its time period. Yet instead of hearing Carol’s screams during these moments we instead hear the ticking of a clock, which somehow makes it even more disturbing.

Deneuve gives one of her best performances and she was at the peak of youthful beauty here. The blank almost zombie-like look in her eyes is penetrating. You get the feeling that she not only truly understands the madness of her character, but actually is the character. Patrick Wymark is also memorable as the landlord who goes from being bombastic and demanding to kind and cuddling and eventually sexually deviant in a matter of only 10 minutes.

Normally I always like a background to the characters and when they are missing or vague I find it a weakness to the script while here it is strangely a strength. We can surmise that she was most likely abused sexually when she was younger, but the who, when, and why is never made clear. This though somehow makes the character and the situation more compelling and reflects back to how psychologically fragile the human condition can be and how these things can happen to anyone. The final tracking shot, which stops on a picture of Carol as a child showing an angry look on her face is great.

The imagery and psychological approach to this thing is still one-of-a-kind. The movie viewing experience on this one remains potent and aptly deserves its classic status.

repulsion 2

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: October 2, 1965

Runtime: 1Hour 45Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Roman Polanski

Studio: Compton Films

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 60's Movies, Black & White, British Movies, Classic, Foreign Films, Horror, Moody/Stylish, Psychological

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