Point Blank (1967), John Boorman.

I'm just going to treat this post like I'm on tumblr, because whether having a conversation in a room dressed monochromatically or showing LA in all its gaudy, late-60s beauty, Point Blank is all about being gorgeous.

With a mise-en-scene oddly (and wrongly) reminiscent of a musical with the scene's chorus of grizzled seamen gathering 'round, Acker prances around the docks braless to attract her future husband Lee Marvin.  As one does.

Lee Marvin and his now depressed wife, who has taken up with the guy who stole his loot. 

Power office in green.  Desks look so much handsomer minus computers.

Dinner date at the burger joint.  

Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson.  

Diner scene:  cut to bored teenage date.  She fascinates Lee Marvin, who ignores Angie to stare at this little moment of ennui.

 Carroll O'Connor, who injects fire into the last few scenes of Point Blank.  Sunglasses were so cool in the 60s and 70s.  Does he look 45 here?  He's 45 here.  

A History of Horrors: the Rise and Fall of the House of Hammer (2009), Denis Miekle.

James Carreras, Peter Cushing and William Hinds goofing around at the British Premiere of The Curse of Frankenstein on May 2, 1957.

A small post-war British film company manages to wrestle properties like Dracula and Frankenstein out of the hands of American goliath Universal Studios - what a great, still-relevant story in today's world of bloated, CGI-driven and completely dull blockbusters consisting of nothing but sequels, prequels, re-releases and remakes.  I keep wondering when the next Hammer-type evolutionary upstart is going to start making really fun junk that will draw moviegoers away from such not very tantalizing 2012 summer fare as a Matt Damon-less Bourne movie or yet another Spiderman.

Having found Denis Meikle's Vincent Price: The Art of Fear (2003) insightful and clever, I was looking forward to this history of the Hammer film company.  A History of Horrors tackles a larger cast of characters and a longer timeline but somehow Meikle's tone, one of constant disappointment, makes this book less enjoyable.  Appreciative of Peter Cushing (though he wags a finger at disappointing performances), Meikle does not seem to be much of a Christopher Lee fan.  He acknowledges Lee's contributions to the smash hit Horror of Dracula (1958) but reveals little sympathy for the actor's efforts to find more challenging roles beyond the caped seducer.  While he escaped some of the subsequent Hammer Draculas, Lee eventually played the character ad nauseum right up to Hammer's dying days.   

Meikle also casts a joyless eye at failed makeup efforts (I found counting these instances entertaining), from the distinctively un-Karloffian Frankenstein "resembling nothing more than the victim of a road accident," to the lacklustre appearance of Anton Diffring in the film The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959) wherein a contemporary critic is quoted as saying "the Hammer make-up man missed a stupendous chance."  This is echoed in observations about costuming efforts for The Gorgon (1964) "The Gorgon head is a construct of stupefying ineptitude," Meikle writes.  "Roy Ashton's mask (with the help from Richard Mills on this occasion) contributes little enough to the mood, but the wig is worse than useless, showing all too clearly exactly what it was composed of:  toy snakes." Hammer's distinctive use of colour is lost on the reader (at least in the softcover version I had) because there are no colour plates within the book - surely a misstep.  I caught Quatermass and the Pit (1967) recently on TV and found the colour even in this lesser Hammer effort quite stunning; (Meikle calls this film "a Technicolor travesty"). 

Meikle must be credited for admirably documenting the rise of Hammer, its blood and guts beginnings and then "t-and-a" phase and final decline.  The book draws on invaluable conversations with those involved during the Hammer heyday as well as the Hammer archive.  But the overall lack of enthusiasm or appreciation even of campy touches (which can be very entertaining, at least in retrospect) does the history a slight disservice.

Variety Club dinner showing Christopher Lee and his gorgeous wife Birgit (L), as well as James Carreras (centre, seated), and other Hammer execs.

Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011), Alex Stapleton.

The interviews these guys got:  Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Joe Dante.  Footage of Quentin Tarantino geeking out at Corman's Lifetime Achievement award Oscar ceremony.  Jack Nicholson's sausage fingers covering his bawling face!  My God!  Yet for all the access given to the makers of this documentary, the film never fully captures its subject.  Roger Corman, King of the B's, remains strange and elusive even as he sits chatting affably from his sofa.

Roger Corman, DIY filmmaker, is the man behind hundreds of exploitation films.  From the 50s to the 80s (and beyond) Corman's had his fingers in all trash tropes:  monsters (Attack of the Crab Monsters, 1957), hippies on acid (The Trip, 1967), beatniks (A Bucket of Blood, 1959), bikers (The Wild Angels, 1966).  Some retain cultural resonance -- Death Race 2000, Little Shop of Horrors.  Many have been forgotten.  As is mentioned in the documentary, Corman exploited people as well as material.  His dependence on bright young people willing to work for little just to get their hands on the cameras had him running an informal apprenticeship program for all the above mentioned directors and actors.  Some worked for him only once and moved on.  Others, like Nicholson, stuck out a ten-year slog before finding real recognition.

But there's a big chasm between Corman and his "pupils," a gap the documentary never bridges satisfactorily.  Aside from the Lifetime Achievement award scene, we don't see Corman interact with any of the famous filmmakers or actors he worked with.  Now in his 80s, Corman still hovers over junior editors clicking at Final Cut Pro.  He spends his days fiddling with Z-grade stuff like Dinoshark (2010) and Sharktopus (2010).  What made it impossible for him to go beyond bottom-of-the-barrel filmmaking?  What prevented him from ever really connecting with the creative personalities that were taking film into new directions?  A major gap in the documentary is the omission of any discussion of Corman's psychological makeup.  Yes, he is a penny-pincher and a bit of a square.  But other than that, Corman's psyche remains a tightly sealed biscuit tin.  We don't hear anything of his roots or upbringing,  fears or shortcomings.

The film does demonstrate how Corman's one real financial failure, coming from the production of The Intruder (1962), destroyed his hopes of ever resonating more deeply with moviegoers.  In The Intruder, a white supremacist (played by William Shatner) moves into a small Southern town to agitate against integration.  Corman must have faced massive disappointment; his passion for the film's message of tolerance went unappreciated.  "Some highly explosive material is handled crudely and a bit too clumsily for conviction," wrote Bowsley Crowther in a contemporary review.  Was Corman's heart broken too badly for him to ever try serious content ever again?  Who knows, Corman's World is too polite to say much more.  Personally, I've always found The Masque of the Red Death (1964) with its gorgeous use of colour to be Corman's creative high point.  But Corman's World skips over the whole Poe output with one wave of his dismissive hand.  

Corman's World is a decent intro to the man's oeuvre, but left me puzzled.  Did he even watch the movies he made?  What parts made him laugh?  Was he a political or religious man?  Corman remarks that a short stint in the military was the worst part of his life -- but the filmmakers leave this completely unexplored.  He's also quoted in a late-70s TV interview as saying that he finds spending millions on movie making "unethical."  But again, the thread ends there.  Despite the amazing interviews Stapleton captured here, there's also many missed opportunities.

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), Freddie Francis.

Christopher Lee illustrating the 1968 principle, which asserts that in the year 1968 the number of sexy men per capita shot through the roof.   This phenomenon has never been repeated, although I'm hoping it works on a 50-year cycle.

Dracula movies are like a game from the elementary school playground.  There's a lot of conditions, running from place to place and someone calling "safe" or "time out".  Even Dracula has his own rules regarding his victims:  brunettes are more often sleazier, happy to get anyone's attention and therefore of less appeal.  Blondes are always virginal and innocent, the real prize.  As a defiant and somewhat bitter brunette, I find this generally the inverse of reality.  

Despite the ridiculous title, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave hangs together like a decent custard.  In it, an arrogant priest exorcises Dracula's castle, slamming a giant crucifix through the front door so Dracula can't ever truly find "home" throughout the entire film.  Instead he is forced to live in someone named Gisela Heinz's smelly old coffin.  Seeking revenge against the priest, Dracula chases after his lovely niece Maria (played by Veronica Carlson) who is engaged to likeable, Roger Daltrey-esque Paul (Barry Andrews).  

Young lovers meeting in a garret window.

Action sequences do not appear to be director's Freddie Francis' forte (say that three times) but Dracula Has Risen remains engaging due to the quality of the leads.  A bit of stock footage is used mostly to good effect, and a strange prismatic lens effect (see below) is used to brighten the black-on-black scenes of Dracula lurking in the basement.  

Good heavens, should I point out to myself that I am typing Dracula Has Risen on the Easter weekend?  Speaking of which, I always find the threat of Dracula so toothless.  In Taste the Blood of Dracula (the next Hammer Dracula in the series), one of the characters says with dread:  "she is neither dead nor alive - she is undead."  Aside from the lack of sunlight, I don't see the downside to this.  As Norm MacDonald said, "to be dead on the inside is sad, but to be dead on the outside is way sadder."  What's the big deal about never dying but having to adhere to a few do's and dont's?  These Dracula stories substitute a lesser horror for a real one:  everyone dies.  Whether you may rise again all depends on your faith.  Happy Easter!

Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), Peter Sasdy.

TAAASTE IT!  Looks like paper mache volcano lava, tastes like strawberry jam.

Three middle aged-men act like respectable, church-going fathers by day and by night take a hansom cab to the East End of London and party hard.  When they tire of this, they hook up with a disreputable nobleman who dabbles in the black arts and arranges to inject some new thrills into their secret society by resurrecting Dracula.  Dracula then goes after the families of the three men who brought him back to life -- and of course, their buxom daughters as well.

This is not a particularly well-constructed Hammer horror despite it having enough naked boobies to please all the subscribers to Nuts magazine.  After the deliciously hypocritical abusive father William Hargood is killed off, the film completely deflates.  There's not too many Dracula films where his victims are detestable slobs who should be destroyed, but this one does.  They should have saved Hargood for last, because none of his other comrades in the secret society had fleshed out characters and so were of little interest to anyone.   

Surly William Hargood, played by Geoffrey Keen, and Madeline Smith as giggly prostitute. 

The film's last half consists of young ladies running after Christopher Lee, who brushes them aside like the jaded rock star he is at this point in the Hammer trajectory.  Anthony Higgens (here billed as Anthony Corlan, and who bears a striking resemblance to Topher Grace) tries desperately to sort everything out and save his girlfriend.  A slack last half gives way to a terrible ending, in which Dracula gets rather overwhelmed by religious iconography.  Rumour has it Christopher Lee was extremely reluctant to make this one.  You'd think a movie that begins by having a mentally handicapped person throw a pushy salesman out of a moving carriage would be so much more exciting!