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! 

Dracula AD 1972 (1972), Alan Gibson.

Johnny Alucard (Christopher Neame) holds a Black Mass.

Oh dear!  Fourteen years after The Horror of Dracula, and we've got Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee back - in a lame Scooby Doo Dracula.  Stephanie Beacham is Jessica Van Helsing, the swinging teen descendant of vampire killer Dr Van Helsing.  The bad apple in her kooky gang, Johnny Alucard, turns out to actually be a disciple of Dracula, whom he resurrects in a dark arts ceremony.  Dracula goes on a hippie chick biting spree all over Chelsea, puzzling local cops.  

Some of the dialogue is unbelievably bad, like this exchange which brings a whole action sequence to a complete halt:

Anna:         Professor Van Helsing!  I've been looking for you  everywhere!

Van Helsing:  Who are you?

Anna:         Anna. I'm a friend of Jessica's.

Van Helsing:  Jessica?

Anna:         I phoned you just now and your housekeeper said neither of you were there, and then she said something about the cavern.

Van Helsin:   Do you know where Jessica is?

Anna:         Your housekeeper said she's gone to the cavern.

Van Helsing:  No, she's not there.

OH MY GOD, people! While you are blabbering on THIS could be happening RIGHT NOW!

Christopher Lee, taking a bite out of the first hippie he lays eyes on.

This film is good for laffs but mostly awful and there's only a bit of cleavage to get excited about.  I would also like to complain to someone about the lack of muscle cars in this.  If you're going to show a bitching hot rod on the movie poster, there better be one in the movie! 

"Honest grandpa, I only do a little weed but it's nothing to get excited about."  Peter Cushing must have been visualizing the deposits into his chequing account to make it through these scenes.

I don't know how these cops are going to solve any mysteries - they have too many awesome 70s office gadgets to distract them! 

Saved the best for last.  Blinded by an amazing rack!

Horror of Dracula (1958), Terence Fisher.

John Van Eyssen as Jonathan Harker.

Horror of Dracula is a gorgeous little movie.  Jimmy Sangster took the very familiar Bram Stoker tale, swapped a few relationships and timelines, and made a neatly trimmed, spiritually faithful adaptation.  The Stoker novel is weighted down by the narrative of Jonathan Harker's diary.  In Horror of Dracula, the diary is still there:  boiled down to a gleaming red gem on the screen.  The characteristic Hammer technicolor is visually reminiscent of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, which had occurred only five years prior to the making of the film.  

Queen Elizabeth's coronation, Westminster Abbey (1953).  A red palette and capes galore.

In Horror of Dracula, Jonathan Harker is already up on his vampire lore and out to get Dracula.  This injects some vigor into the character, who is typically depicted as an emasculated victim.  Unfortunately, Harker only succeeds in upsetting Dracula when he drives a stake through the heart of his longtime girlfriend. In retaliation, Dracula tears a photograph of Lucy, Harker's fiancee, out of its frame and hunts her down.  Cushing as Van Helsing (minus the tedious German accent) looks as though he drank a quart of vinegar before his entrances but solidly holds the story together.  And Christopher Lee was kind of a hunky dude back in the day.  I had no idea!

Peter Cushing as Van Helsing and Janina Faye.

Face/Off (John Woo), 1997.

This would have been more impressive if they hadn't just used a sharpie.

MAN, this is a dumb movie.  And not nearly as fun as The Rock, an equally bombastic piece of insanity.  It's hard to believe this was from the late 90s.  One of the ridiculous climactic scenes looked exactly like the shooting location for for Madonna's Like A Prayer video -- from 1989.  I was just waiting for Jesus to come alive and make out with someone!  Kitschy effects like star bursts and slo-mo have not aged well, either.

Everything is over the top and yet still not wholly exciting, mostly because of the pretentious tone.  We have brothers named Castor and Pollux (you know, like the semi-divine twin brothers from Greek mythology, duh) and each scene is soaked in the bloated orchestral tootings and scrapings of John Powell.  

Nicolas Cage is decent (although we get "boring" Cage for most of the time, after he swaps faces with John Travolta).  Travolta just can't pull off the demanding role of Sean Archer, both the "toughest cop in the country," and a grieving father.  He also does a lousy job of imitating a wild Nic Cage.  (And what's with the Alien-like open-palm caress he does on his wife and daughter's faces?)  Yet Face/Off's 138 minutes were almost worth it just to hear Margaret Cho and John Travolta exchange this dialogue (if only because I thought she said "dick"):  

- Sir, did you just have a surgical procedure?
- What do you mean? 

- Well, was the stick...successfully removed from your ass?

Endhiran (2010), S. Shankar.

Aishwayra Rai Bachchan and Rajnikanth in Endhiran.

So, I hear this Tamil action star Rajnikanth is such a badass that he gets his own "Chuck Norris" type jokes.  As in:

Rajnikanth never wet his bed as a child.  The bed wet itself.

The only man who ever outsmarted Rajnikanth was Stephen Hawking.  He got what he deserved. 

Rajnikanth can throw the Thackerays out of Mumbai. 

...OK, I don't understand the last one.

Rajnikanth is so tough, he can kick a mosquito's ass! 

Endhiran had some internet buzz in North America (one of the Youtube clips is titled "Best Action Scenes Ever!!!), for its over-the-top CGI effects.  The story is a boilerplate Pygmalion:  a scientist (played by Rajnikanth) creates a sophisticated robot (also Rajnikanth) but to provide it with a sense of morality, the robot is also equipped with emotions.  The robot gets a tingly sensation from the scientist's fiancee, but she doesn't want to honeymoon in Kashmir with a tin man.  Something else happens, blah, blah, blah (the movie is 3 hours long), humungous CGI ending.

I found Aishwayra Rai Bachchan's character Sana incredibly undersketched.  She's the heroine, with no other supporting evidence other than the fact that she's gorgeous.  Let's forget she seems about twenty years too young for Rajnikanth, is in her mid-30s but apparently still in university, and would have flunked all her courses if she hadn't cheated.  How can everyone be in love with Sana whens he is not much more than a manipulative twit?


Endhiran certainly throws a lot of magic tricks at us (and some are quite inventive) but the over-reliance on CGI creates a kind of visual monotony, especially the scenes where the robot has made infinite duplicates of himself.  There's just something less awe-inspiring about an action scene knowing that it was pieced together by a computer geeks in a dark room, instead of by real blood-and-guts guys busting each others' chops.  

RA.One (2011), Anubhav Sinha.

The magazine version:  guess what, most of my fans! You will never be able to afford this!

The first thing I saw in India was a massive, stories-high billboard:  Shah Rukh Khan advertising Tag Heuer.  I'd never seen a billboard of this size.  And there was not one, but endless billboards.  The entire route from the airport to the hotel was papered with ads:  I could see nothing but Shah Rukh Khan selling watches.  American movie stars will only shill for luxury products in countries most of their fans will never go to.  What are they protecting?  And what was it that makes Shah Rukh Khan able to do so, without compromising his image as movie star?

RA.One: a modern-day Ravana.

Well, part of it is that Shah Rukh Khan is kind of the Tom Cruise of Bollywood, not the Jack Nicholson or the Dennis Hopper.  He's never had much of a problem with "the system" or been particularly angry at authority.  "The Shah Rukh Khan persona was ceaselessly available for consumption on television and in print ads," writes Anumpama Chopra in her book King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema.  "The Shah Rukh Khan brand was innately urban.  Shah Rukh was a yuppie who loved and pined in Armani suits," Chopra says.  Khan is an unabashed capitalist, one whose happy confidence sells well abroad. Khan's film  Dil Se (From the Heart: 1998), an "unqualified flop" in India, was the first film to break into UK film charts.  

Shah Rukh Khan and co-star Kareena Kapoor in a booty-respecting dance sequence from RA.One.  Please Bollywood:  quit with the autotune!  It really blows chunks.

RA.One is a good example of the kind of film the world seems to be producing, in an effort to cash in globally.  It's partly set in London.  The storyline is relatively juvenile and totally implausible:  a nerdy dad designs a computer game to impress his son; the game's villain becomes real and must be stopped.  The film borrows touches from Terminator, Iron Man, The Matrix and other American sci-fi/superhero movies, is saturated in CGI effects, yet stays fairly Bollywoodesque in tone.  Shah Rukh attacks everything with gusto.  (Does he have the energy of a panther, sleeping in the sunlight for the other 23 hours of his day?)   He plays two characters:  buffoon father with a clownish mop of hair, and superslick videogame hero GA.One.   The overall effect, however, left me lukewarm.

What I really need to do is hunt down Endhiran, and this Chitti character...  this guy looks like he means business!

Rajnikanth makes an appearance in RA.One, as Chitti!

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), Werner Herzog.

Doing the Nosferatu hunch.

Do you think Herzog just let Nicolas Cage loose to say whatever he wanted?  Cage plays a cop, addicted to painkillers and coke after an on-the-job injury, who's been tapped to lead a multiple murder investigation.  His chief asks if he thinks he's up to the task but after that, no other characters really question the hallucinogenic reality they're swimming in, Cage's own druggy perspective.  Nobody questions his actions, no matter how implausible they are.  Cage walks with a bent figure, oddly immobile face, his hair hanging on his scalp at an unnatural angle.  I know this isn't the hot punk from Valley Girl anymore, but dude doesn't even look like the age-denying, hair-dying Nicolas Cage we know and love.

I loved this and found a lot of it insanely funny.  Moments of absurdity are calmed by segments in which animals appear.  A fighting fish trapped in a cup, an alligator looking over an accident scene - all mesmerizing.  The movie begins and ends with people underwater, aquatic life sliding by unconcerned by the human story around them.  Do fish have dreams?

Iguana-cam.  Iguana's head is blocking Val Kilmer, another once-hot 80s casualty.

Multitasking.  I'm driving, I'm trying to locate my hooker girlfriend in Missouri, I'm protect a teen witness, I'm about do coke off the steering wheel and there's this happy go lucky golden retriever breathing on my neck!