The Double is an Italian movie that begins with a man getting shot in a parking lot. The rest of the film consists of flashbacks from the dying man’s life, trying to piece together how he got there. That’s an interesting idea. This is not a great movie. You can read all my thoughts over at Cinema Sentries.
I’ve become a big fan of 1970s Italian crime thrillers. Italy was going through what they now call the Years of Lead back then, which was a period of high crime and political turmoil. Their films often reflect that in the best possible way. This film pushes the politics more than the crime or the thrills, which makes it just a little bit dull. But there is still some good stuff, as you can tell from my review.
I don’t know why I still watch exploitation movies. I know why I used to watch them – they are filled with exciting action, violence, and naked flesh, but I can get that anywhere now. Certainly in ways that are far better produced and more interesting than what appears in most exploitation flicks. But when an offer for a film called Waves of Lust appears to me, I immediately say “yes.”
I guess I’ll always be a sucker for this stuff. You can read my review of the film (which isn’t bad, actually) over at Cinema Sentries.
Exploitation films seem so strange through a modern lens. By design, those films are filled with excessive violence, sex, and nudity, things that are often frowned upon today. I loved those films as a younger person, mostly because of those excesses. I love them as a much older person, but I’m much more understanding of the arguments against such things. Still, there is something wonderfully entertaining about films that take things to the extreme.
The title and cover art of So Young, So Lovely, So Vicious…make it sound like nothing but dumb exploitation cinema. In truth, it mostly is exactly that. This is a film loaded with gratuitous nudity, and yet it is surprisingly tender and interesting. I’m not necessarily even against films that are just exploitative and offer nothing else, but I find it fascinating when they do attempt something more.
This is by no means a great film, but it is an interesting one. You can read my full review over at Cinema Sentries.
I feel like I grouse a little too much about not having much of a readership. In truth, it isn’t that big of a deal. Sure, I wish more people read my stuff, but I’m not actually trying all that hard to gain a readership. I write because I like to write.
But I also realize that I tend to write about relatively obscure stuff. I don’t go to the movies every week and catch the hot movies. I don’t even tend to watch them at home and write about them. I watch stuff like this – an obscure Italian murder mystery that wasn’t likely known in the US when it came out, much less 50 years later.
Sometimes I tell myself to write about new things, or at least popular ones, but I can’t help myself. I watch what I like, and I write about that.
Oh well. This film may be obscure, it is certainly strange, but it was also pretty good. You can read my full review here.
I’ve probably said this before, but one of the many things I love about the state of home video these days is that there are so many boutique labels putting out so many wonderful, obscure movies. Movies I’d never even know existed if it weren’t for these releases. There are entire genres I wouldn’t even know about if it weren’t for boutique labels. Poliziotteschi, for one.
That Italian crime subgenre was completely unknown to me until I started reviewing some of those films, and now it is one of my favorite genres (as you can see from my reviews). Young, Violent, Dangerous is kind of a subgenre of Poliziotteschi, which, like the title implies, involves young men who have come to a life of crime more or less out of boredom.
It isn’t a great film, but I love that we not only have access to this type of film but we can own it in restored HD. I call that a win-win. You can read my full review over at Cinema Sentries.
Lamberto Bava was the son of Mario Bava. Mario Bava was one of the great Italian directors of the 1960s and 1970s. A former cinematographer, Mario Bava’s films are gorgeous, often filled with bright, bold colors and fantastic camera placements. Lamberto wasn’t nearly as good, but he still made some fun films.
Body Puzzle isn’t great, but it has a great idea. A serial killer is collecting various parts of his victims to create…well, I won’t spoil anything, but it’s a fun concept that’s a little clunky in its execution. You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.
Apologies for getting this out late. My daughter had a sleepover last night, and I decided to stay up late watching a French adaptation of an Agatha Christie story with my wife rather than write this. I think you will understand.
Baron Blood was directed by the great Italian genre director Mario Bava. It was made late in his career (he’d only direct three more films before his death) when he was having trouble getting financing for any film. Beloved as he is now, Bava’s films rarely made much money when they were released.
As such, the film has plenty of style and looks amazing, but falls fairly flat in the storytelling department.
Peter Kleist (Antonio Cantafora), an American university student, comes to Austria to visit his ancestral castle. While there, he learns that his Great-Grandfather was a notorious sadist who tortured and killed hundreds of villagers, earning him the nickname Baron Blood. Legend says that the Baron burned a witch at the stake, but before she died, she cursed him with a spell that would allow him to rise again from the grave only to be eternally tortured by her.
Naturally, our hero, along with his friend Eva Arnold (Elke Sommer) enacts the curse and raises the baron from the grave.
But first, Joseph Cotton.
Although he is top billed, the legendary actor doesn’t appear until at least half an hour into this 90-minute film. He plays Alfred Becker, an eccentric millionaire who buys the castle at auction.
Actually, no, my timeline is off. Peter and Eve do use an incantation to raise the Baron from the grave before Becker shows up. They do it at midnight, but the clock strikes 2 ( the exact time when the Baron was murdered), and blood runs under the door, but they don’t actually see the Baron. Before they can read the recantation, a wind knocks the scroll into a fire, and it is lost.
Although they do not know it, the Baron has risen, and he kills the previous owner of the castle, hence the auction, hence the showing up of Alfred Becker.
He kills a few more people, and our heroes try to find a way to lift the curse. Etc. The plot follows a pretty standard path from there.
Cotton feels out of place here, like he’s not quite sure what he’s doing in this film. He was in his late 60s at the time, making a string of low-budget horror movies, which I can only assume was a low point in his career. Sommer seems to be the only one having any real fun, and she’s a delight.
What makes it worth watching is the setting and Bava’s usual fantastic use of color, light, and shadow. Shot on the grounds of a real castle, he makes great use of the gothic setting, complete with a tower, torture chamber, and lots of enormous chambers that give the director plenty of interesting angles to shoot from.
It is far from Bava’s best work, but even average films from him are well worth watching.
I’ve got a terrible sinus headache, and I’m utterly exhausted from work, but I’m dedicated to fulfilling my goal this week of posting multiple things per day. Luckily, I still have a backlog of things I’ve reviewed for Cinema Sentries and not posted here.
And here we go.
Caliber 9 is a terrific Italian Poliziotteschi that blends plenty of action with a hard-hitting political message. It’s from director Fernando Di Leo and he never lets you down. It also has Barbara Bouchet and if you know her you know it is worth watching.
You can read my full review over at Cinema Sentries.
I’ve talked about Dario Argento, the Italian horror director, many times on this site. He’s one of my favorite horror directors, and certainly my favorite director of Gialli. For a time, during the 1970s and 1980s, he styled himself as something of an Alfred Hitchcock figure – a persona bigger than the movies he made. He produced and hosted several different television series for Italian TV and Severin Films has boxed them all together in this nice little set.
You can read my full review of everything inside over at Cinema Sentries.
themidnightcafe.org 