After Grog Blog

THERE WILL BE BUD

(By Nabakov.)

Given the recent discussion here about “Underbelly” and that it’s just been announced that Bud Tingwell is now permanently resting between engagements, I think it’s an opportune moment to revisit Uncle Bud’s performance as a really good bad guy in a tasty little and sadly neglected Australian crime flick, “The Money Movers.”

(1978. Colour. Script: Bruce Beresford. Direction: Bruce Beresford. Cinematography: Donald McAlpine. Score: NA.)

In the special edition 30 years on bonus special features docu, Bryan Brown shrewdly observes that MM was Australia’s “Reservoir Dogs” long before “Reservoir Dogs”. While it lacks Quentin’s smartarse flashbacks and flashforwards, MM has a very similar plot. And much tougher acting.

A bunch of crims planning a big heist, a mole in there somewhere and a bloody fucked up finale. And a much more squirmy torture scene, not least because lovable Uncle Bud is calmly and judiciously overseeing what happens when a pair of boltcutters explicitly meets a pair of feet. Yep this is the original “toecutters” flick. No namby-pamby cutaways to a dancing Michael Madsen, just an intense business negotiation. Conducted on plastic sheeting to protect the carpet.

Bud’s not the only well known Australian actor appearing against type in this tight and gritty thriller. Bruce Beresford had just returned to Australia and not seen much local TV for quite a while. So he cheerfully cast a lot of well-known faces without realising the characters they had built up in various comparatively innocuous TV series. And the actors apparently leapt at the chance to get down and dirty.

So MM features a whole bunch of veteran TV players like Bud, Terence Donovan, Tony Bonner, Ed Devereaux, Terry Camilleri and even Lucky Grills all gleefully swearing their heads off and rooting and shooting all over the place. And yes an excellent Bryan Brown performance before he started impersonating himself.

It’s one of very few Australian films where the dialogue in a daily workplace and of people under pressure sounds utterly believable. OK it’s the late seventies so the backchat and body language between the sexes is not all that PC these days (Watch Lucky Grills’ wandering hands. I suspect he wasn’t really acting at all) – but it all rings quite true for the time.

Another charming thing about MM is that it was based on a true story filtered through some intriguing possible bullshit. Specifically a novel by Devon Minchin who ran a security company in Sydney that was robbed in very similar way to the MM story. Some have speculated that Devon himself was in on the heist and wrote about it as a veiled taunt.

MM certainly depends on inside men and insurance company shenanigans as part of its plotting. But basically it’s a sharp, fast and bloody noir (albeit in Sydney sunlight) thriller bristling with Australian criminal machismo, triple crosses, quirky little touches and eye wrenching 70s décor.

And Uncle Bud Tingwell as one of the suavest criminal masterminds ever to grace a local film and keep the other bad guys on their toes. Or not as the case may be. Wherever you are now Bud, I’m sure everyone is tapping their feet along with you…whether they want to or not.

GrogFlog’s verdict: “If one of your mob told me, "Good morning," I'd put on my pajamas and go to bed. " 7 out of 10 toes.

Coming soon: “You will if you stick me with me darling.” – Lucky Grills (trad arr.)

PIMPERIUM

(By Nabakov.)

As part of Grogflog’s ceaseless quest to bring you the finest in obscure cinematic gems, I was the other day rummaging through a tray of discount DVDs and pulled out a neglected masterpiece of historical drama about ancient Rome. However, as it was only five bucks, I bought ‘Caligula’ instead.

(1979 and 1984. Colour. Script: Gore Vidal (credited despite his best efforts), Bob Guccione, Giancarlo Lui and Franco Rossellini (uncredited). Direction: Either Tinto Brass or Bob Guccione (depending on who you speak to). Cinematography: Silvano Ippoliti. Score: Bruno Nicolai and Renzo Rossellini.

After watching ‘Caligula’ for the first time in 25 years I am delighted to report it lived up to all my memories of it as a vast, bloody, ridiculous, campy and ornate mess overseen by a bunch of oversexed venal Italians with grandiose ideas. Bit like ancient Rome itself circa 40 AD.

The credits above hint at the kind of clusterfuck (literally in some scenes) the project became as all the principals fell out with eachother and lawsuits and alternate cuts started flying around.

‘Caligula’ went from a bold and noble vision to a gaudy pornographic pageant in about the same time that it took its namesake to go from popular young prince to psycho party tyrant. The unintended parallels you can keep drawing between the film and its subject matter is one of its effable charms.

Yes ‘Caligula’ does have some charms despite the fact it is an enormous freestanding gilt and plaster turkey.

The art direction, while quite possibly perhaps not 100% historically accurate, is pretty damn striking and I think probably captures the flavour of the times quite well. Not the ancient Rome of austere marble, military and senators but the gaudy cosmopolitan capital of empire.

There’s also some gaudy cosmopolitan acting as well. The posh English talent hired to add a bit ‘o class, know what I mean squire, generally seem to be enjoying themselves and don’t hold back. Helen Mirren proves again there’s more to being sexy than just looking sexy while Malcolm McDowell as Caligula and Peter O’Toole as Tiberius, rather alarmingly, don’t appear to be acting at all. Only Sir John Gielgud as a court advisor seems to be looking forward to dying as soon as possible.

And if your taste runs towards to gorgeous women in scanty clothing and modish gladiator sandals you might find the odd enjoyable hour or two here and there.

The version I just acquired contains all the naughty bits shot by Guccione Caesar with a bunch of Pets and well-endowed extras who I can assure you are definitely not acting in the orgy scenes. However the inclusion of these scenes is an excellent example of the lack of direction, in every sense, that assailed the project. There’s not enough to make the flick truly pornographic and too much to make it erotic. Personally I found the most arousing moments were generated by Helen Mirren’s expressions and body language in certain comprising but tastefully inexplicit scenes.

The funniest moments are not in the film itself but in the extras which included a “making of” documentary - actually shot during pre-production, once again displaying the narrative ineptitude typical of the whole project.

In retrospect, the doco was probably made to raise more funds from investors as Guccione Caesar reeled from being overcharged by the locals. Shades of Emperors staging games on credit to get the backing for campaigns to find the loot to pay for the games. The parallels continue.

Anyway, between footage of the vast sets being um…erected underneath breathless commentary (“a visionary undertaking…master craftsmen from across Italy…no expense spared..”), the key players talk about their great expectations for this grand project.

Guccione Caesar is funny enough as he sits, shirt open to the navel to display some serious seventies bling in his chest hair, in his gold and marble dining room (apparently not used as a set because it would have been too over the top) talking in monosyllables about why it’s such a serious artistic endeavour. “I feel ancient Rome much to teach about today, y’know?”

The real hilarity though is watching a suave and urbane Gore Vidal fluently and intelligently discussing his original script, completely unaware of what’s already going wrong behind the scenes and how the whole thing will end up. “The underlying question is how would someone act if they had been given absolute power of life and death over everybody else in the whole world.”

After watching the rushes, Gore would have had a good answer. He was so appalled that he traded his 10 points of the gross (that’s gross not net folks!) in exchange for having his name removed from the credits. But not before one version was released, billed as ‘Gore Vidal’s Caligula’ – leading to the waggish logline “Or least he wishes he was.”

But don’t let this Grogflog put you off lashing out five bucks if you come across ‘Caligula’ while fossicking around in a bargain bin. At the very least you’ll enjoy how the spirit of Little Boots lives on in some corners of today’s movie industry.

GrogFlog’s verdict: “You're an honest man, Proculus, which means a bad Roman! Therefore, you are a traitor! Logical, hmm?”

Two out of ten laurel wreaths. Oh Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus! I didn’t see you there. Did I say two? I meant two hundred! No, two thousand!

Coming soon: The end of the world featuring the United Fruit Company, the kind of animated feature Pixar will never make and some blatant salosism.

THE DOGS & BOLLOCKS

Recently watched The Great Macarthy. You may have heard TGM is a classic Aussie fillum. You heard wrong. You heard right if your idea of "classic Aussie fillum" equates to "must be rubbish", which is not an unheard-of connection.

TGM is a mess: think Alvin Purple meets the Club.

During the commentary, Bruce Smeaton, who did the music, concedes that "every country has to serve its apprenticeship" before going on to compare TGM to the Ealing comedies, but only the bad ones: "We talk about the Ealing comedies, but not all of them were funny. Some of them were pretty terrible."

TGM, though, is not completely unwatchable. Not for me, a Melbourne boy and footy fan. While it's a dreadful balls up as a fillum, it's worth a squizz for the locations and faces. The Lake Oval, the MCG and St Kilda beach are three of the more obvious settings. I didn't know they filmed scenes at half time of the 1974 grand final. And there are numerous football faces. There is also a scene set in Albert Park in which a young HG Nelson appears as an onlooker at a Nazi Party rally. Really.

Then there's this exchange during the commentary between Sydney executive producer Richard Brennan and Melbourne film bloke Paul Harris:

RB: "They're playing Fitzroy, a team that no longer exists. That is Fitzroy, isn't it?"

PH: "Yep."

Later, Brennan - but not Harris - almost concedes he got it wrong:

RB: "The team I identified as Footsroy is the Western Bulldogs."

The team he identified as Fitzroy, then Footsroy, then the Western Bulldogs is Footscray. No doubt you joined those dots long ago. Fitzroy are gone, Footscray of 1974 have been replaced by the Western Bulldogs, and Footsroy only existed if you count the failed 1989 merger between Footscray and Fitzroy.

Coincidentally, look who showed up in TGM: post Footsroy coach Terry "Squirrel Grip" Wheeler, who has just grabbed a ball.

GIMME SOME NECK

Once upon a salad day, weekend TV was full of bio-pics about the likes of Knute Rockne - of Ronny Reagan's "Win one for the Gipper" fame - Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Monte Stratton, Lou Gehrig, George Gershwin, Bonzo the Chimp. None would be considered cinematic masterpieces. Well, Bedtime for Bonzo goes very nicely. Most were formula fluff: concerned mums... sorry, moms, grumpy/quirky dods, apple-pie love interests, challenges met, success achieved, an early death.

That's not to say the silver screen eulogy is a thing of the past, or more correctly, a thing of the passed-on. There are still a bazillion heart-string tugging true-death stories to be told. Prefontaine, The Life and Death of Anna Nicole, The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom... you know, the classics. There are also high brow affairs like American Splendor, and high detail affairs like John Adams. Both of which I liked, both of which starred Paul Giamatti, although Adams was a bit boring.

Shows like John Adams have a side benefit. My best friend is a history teacher. Since starting in the caper he has sought out videos and now DVDs about historical characters to show in class. This obviously fills time in what can be a pretty dry topic, to most kids anyway, but it is also a solid buttress on which to hang a class. What student isn't keen to watch a movie, or sit in the back playing games on his/her phone undisturbed. Afterwards the teacher can follow up with a discussion about the bona fides of said movie. And who knows! There may even be the odd inquiring mind that discovers a hitherto untapped interest in history. Would that my oafs had even a rudimentary awareness of anything historical. Then I might be spared the stupidest riposte known to ape-kind: "I wasn't even born then."

My main problem with bio-pics, though, is that you know what's about to happen.

This wasn't the case - eventually I'm at the point - with Pierrepoint, as it was known on Foxtel on Tuesday.

Pierrepoint is about the life of Albert Pierrepoint, the bloke what strung up 608 (allegedly) British and German scrotes, tow-rags, nonces, war criminals and at least one innocent John Hurt (think about it), from 1933 to 1955.

That I didn't know anything about Pierrepoint was undoubtedly an advantage. Call me churlish for dinner, but when I watch a new film I don't want to know the story. (If you are like me perhaps you should have stopped reading this post somewhere in the first paragraph.) The other key advantage was the three main actors: Timothy Spall as Pierrepoint, Juliet Stevenson as his wife Annie, and Eddie Marsan as his pal Tish. All were uniformly excellent. The tone, as you might expect of a film set mainly in British jails, is grey and sombre, but it is never a reflection of the content. In fact, what, on the surface, could have been bleak and depressing, is anything but. That's not to say it is a riotous laugh fest, a black comedy, Carry on Holloway. Nor is it in-your-face: Oz, Stir, McVicar, Short Eyes. It's just an engrossing and thought-provoking film about a hangman. It works.

Naturally, given the difficulty in translating fact to film, there are the usual inconsistencies. But I won't reveal them here for reasons spoiler.

If you happen to spot Pierrepoint in your Foxtel guide or down the local Video Blockbuster, check it out.

THE THINGS

Reminiscent of Nosferatu, when the spooky, crew-less Demeter sailed into a foreign port, a lone stranger scuttles through the snow and away from a mysterious ship that has anchored near Barrow, Alaska. The stranger, it transpires, is there to prepare the way for the town to be invaded by vampires when it sinks into the frozen Arctic isolation of 30 Days of Night.

(The opening scene is the best looking in the film; most of the rest of 30 Days looks sound-stage shabby.)

30 Days, based on the comic book graphic novel of the same name, is not up there with the better vampire movies - Black Sunday, Martin, Daughters of Darkness, Near Dark, John Carpenter's Vampires, Nosferatu (both), Salem's Lot (the original) - but it's not bad. If you are not a vampire fan you probably won't find anything to like, but if you are like me and have a life-long affection for the genre, then you will more than likely enjoy it. There's the odd new idea, too, although there are plenty of vampire/horror clichés to keep the faithful happy: whooshes, shadows, suddenly appearing baddies, watch out behind you!

And these are not your debonair Hammer bloodsuckers. These toothy monsters are more like a pack of (strange dialect speaking, with subtitles) rabid wolves, stalking Barrow in packs, ripping the throats out of the town's inhabitants.

Should you watch it and enjoy it you will probably agree with me that it's better than big budget bloat like Coppola's Dracula and Interview With A Vampire. I've got this theory that big money should steer away from horror. It's not a rigorously researched theory by any means, in fact, it just came to me then, but it's a theory nevertheless. You'd think that pots of money could make for some pretty handy effects, but more often than not the best horror films have low budgets.

Anyway, one day I'll review a film without making comparisons to other films. One day I might even address a film on its merits. But don't hold your breath. 30 Days of Night. Check it out.

THE U-SUAL SUSPECTS

(By Nabakov.)

If you’re going to Beat The Devil, then who better than with a crew like Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre, John Huston, Truman Capote and Bernard (“Q”) Lee larking about in the sunny post-war Mediterranean?

(1953. B&W. Script: Truman Capote and John Huston. Direction: John Huston. Cinematography: Oswald Morris. Score: Franco Mannio. Ex-bullfighter’s limousine: Hispano-Suiza. Stills photographer: Robert Capa - yes, the Robert Capa.)

BTD was based on the eponymous novel by larrikin British journalist Claude Cockburn (under the pen name James Helvick) who, amongst other moments in his highly checkered career, had his 1930s current affairs magazine The Week shut down by a law suit after its film critic, one Graham Greene, suggested in his column that Shirley Temple’s screen persona was deliberately exploited by her handlers to appeal to pedophiles.

So as you’d suspect, the book was a pretty dark and very funny satire about a motley bunch of adventurers chasing after the rights to African uranium deposits. But after Truman Capote and John Huston spent many nights together on location consuming mucho whiskey to turn it into a film script, often producing pages barely in time for the next morning’s shoot, BTD metamorphosed on screen into Casablanca on nitrous oxide.

The plot is a farcical collection of double, triple and quadruple crosses where everyone’s lying, even when then they lie about why they are lying. Bogie, whose independent production company Santana financed the flick, apparently gave up on trying to follow the story and decided to just trust that Huston and Capote knew what they were doing.

Which was writing brilliant lines for and getting brilliant performances out of a brilliant cast in locations from a lugubrious Italian port hotel to the rust bucket tramp steamer the SS Nyanga, captained by Captain Haddock’s Levantine cousin, to flyblown Moroccan prisons presided over by fez-wearing, hubble bubble-smoking suavely corrupt bureaucrats.

And BTD is also beautifully lensed by in sunny noir by Oswald Morris whose other DOP credits include ‘Lolita’, ‘The Spy Who Came In From The Cold’ and ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ which has some interesting resonances with BTD. Huston seemed quite drawn to the theme of Western hustlers becoming unstuck in foreign lands.

Bogie cheerfully sends up his usual hard-bitten soldier of fortune with a heart of gold character, Robert Morley and Peter Lorre take turns outdoing each other as two of the most implausible, hapless and entertaining screen villains ever and Jennifer Jones and Gina Lollobrigida are equally gorgeous and completely crazy femme fatales. Especially Jennifer, who in a seemingly artless way, turns everyone else’s nefarious schemes completely on their heads.

All the secondary characters get right into the spirit of it as well, not least the Nyanga’s droll deadpan purser (Mario Perrone) who apparently has dealt with far worse than this mob and the Galloping Major (Ivor Barnard), five feet of  knife-wielding fizzing rabies in a bowler.

I’ve always felt a easy way of padding out a film review was just to cut ‘n’ paste some juicy screen quotes. However I am above such lazy devices.

GrogFlog’s verdict: “I’m a typical rare spirit. I was an orphan until I was twenty, then a rich and beautiful woman adopted me.” 8 out of 10 lies.

Coming soon: Burt Lancaster and his deadly typewriter, a surprisingly submersible Gene Hackman and GrogFlog’s all-time top 10 movie themes which should inspire the kind of gracious and reasoned comment thread that has made the blogosphere what it is today.

HIGH AFTERNOON

Ben Wade: "Byron acts pious. Few years ago, when he was under contract to central, I seen him and a bunch of other Pinks mow down 32 Apache women and children."

~~ 3:10 to Yuma

Dan Evans (Christian Bale) is a rancher with problems: drought, debt, a son who thinks Evans is a wuss, one leg. Evans wants to clear his debt and win the respect of his son. And who knows - maybe if he completes the task, his luck will change causing it to rain and his leg to re-atta... no.

Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) is an outlaw: hot women, charm, quick on the draw, quick on the drawing, everyone likes him... well, mostly everyone if you exclude the people who want to kill him, and he has been arrested pending transfer to Yuma prison for hanging.

There's Evans' debt sorted. For $200 he volunteers to escort Wade from Bisbee to Contention where Wade can be put on the eponymous 3:10 to Yuma.

As for the respect of his son. If Evans completes the task his son will finally look down to him. (That's a gag. You'll get it when you see it.) That's because Wade's gang will be trying to stop Evans getting their boss to Contention; and where Evans will be able to demonstrate singularly cartilage-popping athleticism for a one legged man.

This version is different to the 1957 film with Van Heflin (Evans) and Glenn Ford (Wade). The Yuma 2007 has much greater emphasis on the journey from Bisbee to Contention; more blood, bullets, stunts and pyrotechnics; more is made of Wade being transported to Yuma to be hanged; and a significantly different ending. In fact, the later version's day-new-mont is barely believable. The ending here doesn't seem to fit, or be even close to necessary. I'd like one of the people involved, or a savvy critic, to explain precisely why they decided to end the film like they did. (Second thought & possible spoiler: maybe Yuma 2007 is true to the book while the makers of Yuma 1957 did a Natural and squibbed it.)

The earlier film also showed why 1950s directors like Budd Boetticher and Anthony Mann are so highly esteemed. They didn't have the technological advantages - if they can be called advantages, and not short cuts - or the freedom of expression we call swearing and splattering with blood. But within around ninety minutes they told all that needed to be told.

Not that Yuma 57 is great and Yuma 07 bad. More like Yuma 57 is pretty good and Yuma 07 is better than average. Feel free to quibble about the relative scales. Maybe it's an expectation thing. I assume lots of Fifties films will be excellent, I assume lots of Naughties films will be rubbish.

Yuma 07 has been referred to as "the best western since Unforgiven". That's like saying the A Bigger Bang is the best Stones album since Steel Wheels. Unforgiven just goes. Come on, own up - you walked out at the end, blinking, slightly puzzled, "Was that boring?" and wondering what all the fuss was about. I know I did. And there have been barely any good westerns since 1992. (Check out an under-rated TV western called The Jack Bull.)

The cast is solid. Werner Herzog is right about Crowe: "his underplaying here is in many ways as hammy as if he were overplaying, and that's just fine." Bale is suitably grim as the one-legged rancher with something to prove. Ben Foster gives good psycho as Wade's offsider Charlie Prince. Peter Fonda is better than usual as a Pinkerton's man. In the extras he makes some crack about "Acting is what us actors do." Ironic coming from someone with as dreadful a track record as Fonda; he's been in some shockers. He should consider himself lucky to have been carried by the likes of Warren Oates, Harry Dean Stanton, Jack Nicholson, to name a few. My favourite role in Yuma 07 is Dallas Robert as Grayson Butterfield. I've never heard of him before, but he does a bang up job here as a stage coach owner who accompanies Evans to Contention. I dunno. Sometimes you just like a role and I like Butterfield.

Anyway, it's better than "if you've nothing better to do" but not as good as "you must see it."

IN THE BEACH

12th September, 2009. Tonight, if you aren't watching Collingwood v Adelaide, check out this fillum which is on ABC2 at 8:30.

We open on a early sixties English seaside resort town promenade. Rockers lounge in menacing attitudes. The soundtrack - a crude yet potent piece of proto-psychobilly (“Black Leather, Black Leather, Kill, Kill, Kill”). Whip pan in on the gang leader, a very young and slim Oliver Reed, sardonically toffed up in a tasty hacking jacket and black gloves, hanging his umbrella off the horn of a massive statue of a unicorn. Surely these must be the damned. But no…

(1963. B&W. Script: Evan Jones, Direction: Joseph Losey, Cinematography: Arthur Grant. Score: James Bernard.)

The one or two of you left that are still are aware of Grogflog can break out the champers now – I’ve finally got around to this Oliver Reed fillum I’ve coyly mentioned over the years. But enjoy that drink while you can. 'These Are The Damned' is one of the darkest, most brooding, nihilistic movies you’re ever likely to see during your short miserable life.

On the bright side, a 23-year-old Ollie is excellent in it, radiating screen charisma from every orifice, Joseph Losey demonstrates he can make a great film without a Harold Pinter script and it is the most truly horrifying product ever to come out of Hammer at its peak.

For the first act, you think you’re watching some weird psycho-sexual melodrama involving bikie gang incest and an hapless American tourist, intercut with a passionless affair between a sculptress and a top secret boffin.

But then the story starts to knit these characters together to drag us into a real horror buried underneath the ruggedly picturesque Dorset coast.

And what makes this horror really um…horrifying is that the people responsible have the best intentions and that those who stumble into it are doomed by those they reluctantly try to save. No monsters, no blood, just the awfully decent stiff upper lip chaps of the Brit science-military-security establishment calmly and logically walking down a sterile CCTV-surveilled corridor to eternal damnation - for the very best of reasons. Trying to be as humane as possible about how they go about preparing for the unthinkable. If this is what takes to save the human race, are we really worth saving?

Or to look at it another way, no way Hollywood (or even the 28 Zombies Later crew) could ever remake it now without smoothing over the central appalling sting. Well maybe Cronenberg or Romero but they’ve already got their own riffs about hell going on.

Even though the movie’s over forty years old and the tech has dated massively, it’s still a nightmarish noir techno-chiller, not least because you just don’t see the big idea coming for the first half. OK, well now maybe you will. But what you won’t see coming are the weird human relationships that poisonously blossom under such unnatural circumstances.

It’s great looking film too, all moody craggy black and white. And with brilliant sound design as well that moves from crazed pyschobilly to the detached and controlled breathing of the State. There are echoes of Nigel Kneale, John Wyndham, John Blackburn and JG Ballard but the central sound is a genuinely chilling cry from tiny mouths.

And the ending holds out no hope for anyone. Just the prowling blank-faced helicopters (WS-55 Whirlwinds, natch) watching the damned die, only following the orders of the equally damned.

GrogFlog’s verdict: “Help me! Help me!” 8 of 10 dead kids.

Coming soon: When the fuck is my local DVD parlor gonna get the “Phantasm” series in on disk? Don Coscarelli was on some kinda crazed surrealistic roll there for a while. Not worth ordering online but certainly worth a Grogflog.

TWO-BIT BLACKTOP

Grogflog returns. And returns to its original mission statement as well. Which was not just to say good things about good movies, but also bad things about bad movies as well.  And “The Brown Bunny" is very very bad indeed. Not even in a “so bad it’s good way” or superbad dogz! or bad in a way that challenges conventional wisdom. It’s just bad - and bad in a way that really leaves a nasty taste in the mouth and the mind.

(2003. Wan colour. Script: Vincent Gallo. Direction: Vincent Gallo. Cinematography: Vincent Gallo. Score: Vincent Gallo. Producer: Vincent Gallo. Set design: Vincent Gallo. Costume: Vincent Gallo. Makeup: Vincent Gallo. Hair: Vincent Gallo. Catering: Vincent Gallo, etc, etc)

I thought I should finally check this one out because of the various controversies surrounding it. Like getting booed at Cannes (well OK, that sounds interesting) and Chloe Sevigny sucking the Gallo genitalia for real in front of the camera (which sounds like a refreshing change from doing it to get in front of the camera).

The IMDB synopsis blandly states: “Professional motorcycle racer Bud Clay heads from New Hampshire to California to race again. Along the way he meets various needy women who provide him with the cure to his own loneliness, but only a certain woman from his past will truly satisfy him.”

There is however a twist at the end which I won’t spoil, mainly because the nearly two hours of utter bloody tedium leading up to it will do that first.

I can handle cryptic narratives that never quite knit themselves together, deal with viewpoints that take me outside my comfort zone, appreciate the subtle nuances of emotionally allusive landscapes and don’t automatically equate lack of technical flair with lack of good storytelling. 

But "The Highway Hare" commits the ultimate filmmaking sin. It’s as fuckin' boring as batshit rabbit poo.

At least fifty percent of the screen time is taken up by Vincent brooding over his rugged looks in the rear view mirror as he drives through the dullest bits of the American Midwest and Southwest.

The women he meets along the way are given desultory parts that require them to be irresistibly and unthinkingly drawn to this magnetically monosyllabic loner on his odyssey of the soul across the lower 48.

The hand-held, grainy 16mm blown up to 35mm cinematography and crackling ambient sound-heavy audio are trying very hard to signal this is like real, man, it’s like the authentic voice of a damaged poetic soul. It makes your teeth hurt to watch how he strains to make it look like the kinda film he's not actually making.

Do you really reckon a quite soigne and MILFy indeed Cheryl Tiegs, while leaving a gas station, would spontaneously initiate a, like just like real life dude, heart to heart conversation with some strange, mumbling and utterly uncharismatic ferret in a leather jacket that looks like it was bartered for a gram of bad speed? The whole scene played like a bad porn setup without the actual bad porn. That pretty much sums up the whole "The Road Rabbit" experience in toto for me.

Well perhaps Vince does have hidden charms. If you’ve got a spare 50K, why not find out for yourself? Ladies only though. And naturally born too. I’d like to think he was tongue in cheek with that offer but judging from "The Bronze Beast”  I suspect he really thinks he’s a walking wet dream. Which maybe he is, but only in his shaky, grainy, blown-up hands.

And yes, the blowjob scene with Chloe? Short, frank, utterly unerotic, no pop shot and as hamfistedly and coyly faux naturalistic as the rest of the flick.

To be fair, some of the on the road scenes did capture a certain vibe about motoring through the USA which I enjoyed for the first 30 seconds or so. But really I found this flick as tedious as watching some inner city adland hipster carefully shape his facial hair for 119 minutes to look like a street desperado. A truly pretentious art film pretending it’s not. Which is far worse than other way around.

It's such bad faith in all senses of the phrase. Implicitly claiming to be emotionally real and so powerful because of its studied cruddiness yet quite unable to deliver any believable characters, interesting story or creative va-va-voom. The perfect mirror image of some honestly shitty straight to DVD movie that knows it's not much chop but hopes you'll get a kick, and they'll get a dollar, out of some hearty exploitation of base human desires.

Did I mention "The Lurid Lupine" is also just bad in the classic sense of the word? Bad. Narcissist newt waste nodules. Preening poodle hemroids in fitful motion. Really bad. I'd feed the master reel and its creator to a feral pig if I could possibly find one willing to stoop that low and open up that wide. It's bad. Complete crap really.

The most entertaining thing to come out of “Vincent Does Himself” was a great exchange of insults after Roger Ebert shitcanned it.

Vincent: “Ebert is a fat pig with the physique of a slave trader.”
Roger: "One day I will be thin, but Vincent Gallo will always be the director of The Brown Bunny."
Vincent: “I put a hex on your colon and hope you die of cancer.”
Roger: “Enduring a colonoscopy would be more entertaining than watching The Brown Bunny”
Vincent: “I was misquoted. I meant his prostrate.”

If only the flick itself had such quality dialogue.

GrogFlog’s verdict: “I'm not going to be okay, Bud.” 1 out of 10 rabbit droppings.

Coming soon: Look, I will write about this amazing Oliver Reed flick soon, I promise. Or hands up anyone for a Phantasm retrospective with The Tall Man as guest commentator. And also an elephant stamp* for any one who can pick this fillum quote: “Our complaints are brief. We make them against the nearest wall.”

*Competition not open to Aftergrogblog employees and their families.

HOT CROSS STUNNER

So you've seen Lock, Stock, Honour and Obey Sexy Gangster No. 1 Layer Cake and you think yer hard? Well yer nothing, not even a fuckin' toe rag, until you've clocked the biggest, baddest Brit gangster movie of 'em all, The Long Good Friday.

(1980. Colour. Script: Barry Keeffe. Direction: John MacKenzie. Cinematography: Phil Meheux. Score: Francis Monkman.)

It's Good Friday and Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) has just Concorded back to London from the other side of the pond. He marches through Heathrow as the credits roll over the brassy bouncy theme song (think Roy Budd meets Elton John), every cocky little inch the Napoleon of the London underworld ("Who's big enough to take you on?" "Well, there were a few." "Like who?", "Yeah, they're all dead.").

He's got bent city aldermen and the filth on his payroll and he's about to go seriously legit, having stitched up a pact with the US Mafia to wash their casino skim through redeveloping the London Docklands.

To seal the deal, he just has to wine, dine and sweet talk a Yankee mob boss (the late great Eddie 'Alphaville' Constantine) over the long Easter weekend while showing off his London manor. Piece of cake, right?

But someone has just declared war on Harold. ("Nothing unusual," he says! Eric's been blown to smithereens, Colin's been carved up, and I've got a bomb in me casino, and you say nothing unusual?")

So for starters, Harold and his faithful minder Razors ("Or as the youth of today call him, the human spirograph.") start checking a few leads out ("Go on shoot him! Put some muck on the walls.").

But no joy there, chummy, and things keep escalating ("You don't crucify people! Not on Good Friday!"). Someone out there really wants the big smoke's godfather wrecked and ruined.

Meanwhile his upper-class mistress (Helen Mirren) tries to hose down the Mafia bigwigs ("The Yanks love snobbery. They really feel they've arrived in England if the upper class treats 'em like shit.") who are getting freaked out by the level of violence in merry olde England.

So Harold pulls out all the stops, sending his mob-handed and weaponed-up crew out ("Remember, scare the shit out of them, but don't damage them. I want 'em conscious and talkative. And lads, try and be discreet, eh?") to literally turn the London underworld upside-down.

And just as Harold finds out whom he's really up against, the Mafia bails 'cos it's just getting too rich for their blood. Harold takes this badly ("A sleeping partner's one thing, but you're in a fucking coma!") but remains undaunted and decides to go all continental instead ("I'm setting up the biggest deal in Europe with the hardest organization since Hitler stuck a swastika on his jockstrap.").

All he has do now to win his promised world is personally settle one outstanding account. And he does. But the other side doesn't keep books like decent gangsters. Also they employ a silent but nubile young Pierce Brosnan as one of their main killers.

The final scene between him and Bob Hoskins, underpinned by Francis Monkman's killer soundtrack, is pure "Death On The Serengeti" evil cat meets big elephant face off with neither twitching more than an odd muscle. Best screen showdown ever. And I say that as a hardcore Sergio Leone aficionado. It really is that good. (OK, your mileage may vary here, you fucking toerag.)

GrogFlog’s verdict: "It's Good Friday. Have a Bloody Mary." 9 out of 10 thumps around the earhole.

Coming soon: Yes, finally Oliver Reed and irradiated kids, how opera and splatter flicks can play together well and a big rabbit punch for a truly crappy movie that tried to sell itself otherwise.

LAND OF POD

Why remake good films when you can improve bad ones instead as Michael Caine observed just before cheerfully accepting a wad of cash to appear in a crappy remake of Get Carter.

Now apparently they've remade Invasion of the Body Snatchers again with the Nicole Kidman pod in the lead (Didn't she learn anything from the The Stepford Wives fiasco?) and a bloke who directed Inspector Rex eps at the helm.

Why not instead extend the franchise sideways like Body Snatchers: The Invasion Continues did?

(1993. Colour. Script: Raymond Cistheri and the inimitable Larry Cohen for screen story and Stuart "Re-Animator" Gordon, Denis Paoli and Nicholas St John for screenplay. Direction: Abel Ferrara. Cinematography: Bojan Bazelli. Score: Joe Delia.)

Body Snatchers was clearly packaged as a low budget, straight to video movie, probably just to exercise the screen option before it lapsed. But producer Robert H. Solo, whose credits range from Russell's The Devils to the 1978 Snatcher remake, assembled the likes of Larry Cohen, Stuart Gordon and Abe Ferrara (if you know whom none of them are, then I suggest you’re a pod person yourself) and probably told 'em "we've got fuck all budget but it's already in profit on video pre-sales so do whatever you like."

And what they did was come up with a film that excellently updated the creeping noir paranoia of the original. Among the clever twists are setting it on an army base where identically clad people unemotionally follow orders whether they have been podded or not and intelligently reworking the rules of the Body Snatcher universe.

Given the low budget, the special effects aren't too bad at all. But Larry, Stuart, Abe et al were all smart enough to realize the best special effect of all is great acting driven by great scripts.

Body Snatchers most powerful moments come from unexpected plot twists and great lines delivered by great actors. Like R. Lee Emery as the Base Commander who just can't wrap his head around what's going on, Forest Whitaker as the Army psychologist who does his head in when he realizes what is going on and Gabrielle Anwar, whose seductive full frontal nude scene takes place under circumstances that'd turn your trouser tent into a sleeping bag for a peanut.

And there's Meg Tilly's utterly chilling and precisely delivered speech that captures the spine of the movie, and which starts like this - "Where you gonna go, where you gonna run, where you gonna hide? Nowhere... 'cause there's no one like you left." – and then it gets even more spooky.

There are some bullshit happy ending explosions at the climax but it still has a suitable ambiguous conclusion. Look we're not talking a milestone in western cinema here but if you like a good creepy SF horror thiller that's much better than its cover art would suggest, do yourself a favour.

GrogFlog's verdict "We'll give 'em hell, Malone! We'll show 'em what the human race is really made of!" 7 out of 10 pods.

Coming soon: More "coming soons".

IN LIKE FREUD

Even despite Mike Meyer's best efforts to turn the genre into Carry On Farce, swinging sixties spy movies still offer some unique charms. As does any good satire about the mores of its time. And there is one film which manages to combine both in a way not seen very much at all – The President's Analyst.

(1967. Colour. Script and Direction: Theodore J. Flicker. Cinematography: William A. Fraker. Score: Lalo Schifrin! With occasional songs by Barry "Eve of Destruction" McGuire)

And starring the late great James Coburn (with his teeth gleaming like scrabble tiles as usual). But this is not the James of In Like Flint etc. Instead he's Dr Sidney Schaefer, a cheerful New York psychiatrist into Zen Buddhism with a cool batchelor pad, a sweet young girlfriend and living the good life.

Until he's hired as the President's analyst. At first Sidney's delighted and honoured by this opportunity to help secure the future of the free world until he discovers just how much analysing the Oval One needs. In fact Sidney can't have a quiet meal, go to the john or snuggle up his girl without being interrupted by an urgent summons from the POTUS.

So Sidney flips out and goes on the run, now pursued by the world's secret services who want to get their hands on his body because they want to know what's inside the Prez's head. So much for the plot which is basically an excuse to take the piss out of everything and anyone prominent at the time – from spy movies and cold war politics to hippies and J. Edgar Hoover to chardonnay liberals and head shrinkers.

For starters, the main CIA and KGB agents are old acquaintances equally cynical about their employers.  Hoover's a paranoid puritanical midget, as are all his agents, and more at war with Alan Dulles' tweedy collegiate CIA than with the commies. The flower power and British beat bands show more enthusiasm for drug deals than peace and love. Every analyst is in therapy with another trick cyclist. The liberals are heavily armed and taking karate lessons to protect themselves against their neighbours. And even the kids have their own "little bugger" phone tapping kits.

There's also lashing of classic swinging sixties spy and "it's a happening, baby!"  business as well.  Psychedelic VW buses full of stoned hippies, sinister assassins with blowpipes, silencers and garottes, acid freakouts, funky New York art galleries, cars that turn into boats and room sized computers that blink and beep.

And lurking and waiting, the ultimate bad guys with a really appalling master plan. In fact this flick has the all-time fiendish mastermind – one that actually exists for real man! and is still manipulating our lives today for their evil ends. You'll know it when you see it in this wacky zany Get Smart for grownups romp.

Beyond that, there’s lots of tasty little extras like Jill "Spider Baby" Banner as a hippie chick, the first ever on-screen reference to the Canadian Secret Service, a lovely 60 foot motor yacht called the "Mata Hari" and some surprisingly poignant and pointed backstories for the main CIA and KGB dudes. And at least one "Dizzy Gillespie for President" t-shirt.

It’s a lotta fun, very funny peculiar and full of some serious funny ha ha business as well. And James Coburn's groovy threads are the shizzle.

GrogFlog's verdict: "If I was a psychiatrist, which I am, I would say that I was turning into some sort of paranoid personality, which I am!" 7 out of 10 blowpipe darts.

Coming soon: Humphrey Bogart in a customized bullfighter's limo, my mea culpa for Daniel Craig as Bond and the real secret behind Thirty Two.

DRESSED TO KILL

Two men in suits and sunglasses walk into a blind school, tip out a vase of flowers, terrorise a secretary, and shoot a teacher. Sounds like fun, right. Still, it’s not precisely the done thing; not the tipping of flowers, anyway. To experience the thrill we need the magic of movies, in this case Don Siegel’s The Killers.

(1964. Colour. Script: Gene Coon. Direction: Don Siegel. Cinematography: Richard Rawlings. Score: Don Ray and John Williams. (Yes, that John Williams.)

The Killers starring Lee Marvin, John Cassavetes and Ronald Reagan, is a remake of a fine 1946 film by Robert Siodmak that starred Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner. They are based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway.

The two are roughly the same in structure. Hired goons bump off a “nobody” who was a “somebody” until he met a girl. The girl being a certified Femme Fatale, sans accent. Both then go to flashback to tell what happened to said somebody.

The difference is in the detail. Burt Lancaster is/was a boxer while John Cassavetes is/was a racing car driver. This difference is neither here nor there; they could have been dentists, if that’s what it took to advance the story. Mind you, had Cassavetes been a dentist, he mightn’t have been much of a getaway driver.

The main change is Siodmak's heavy focus on Lancaster and Gardner at the expense of hired goons Charles McGraw and William Conrad. A mistake. The goons are superb and deserved more screen time. Was it because brilliant goons were a dime a dozen in the 40s? Anyway, it’s a mistake Siegel gleefully corrects as he shifts the focus from Cassavettes and sleazy squeeze Angie Dickinson over to hit man Lee Marvin and his apprentice Clu Galager. Galager almost steals the film, but not quite. Lee Marvin is still Lee Marvin and not often upstaged. In The Killers you can see his progress from The Big Heat and Bad Day at Black Rock, and forward to Point Blank. Will we see his like again?

Ronald Reagan plays a dodgy gangster. “I approve of larceny; homicide is against my principles.” Yeah, right. The Gipper is excellent as Jack Browning. (His offsider is popular 60s shlub Norman Fell.) Ironically, the film with the future president had its TV release shifted to theatres because it was deemed too violent in the aftermath of the killing of the previous president. One scene in particular is framed through the scope of a sniper.

But the movie is still very much Siegel. Tight storytelling, good bad guys, bad good guys, no nonsense. You can see all the traits of his later films Dirty Harry, Escape from Alcatraz, Telefon, The Shootist, The Black Windmill, Charley Varrick (one of my favourites), The Beguiled, Two Mules for Sister Sara and Coogan's Bluff. Sure, some are dodgy, especially those I liked as a youngster such as The Beguiled and Two Mules, but all of them are dead easy to watch.

I will say, though, that I've never much been a fan of flashback. Even here I would have preferred it if Siegel had found another way to tell the story. I've never quite worked out why storytellers want to tell you the end at the start.

So, before Nabakov returns to G-Flog you with Convoy, Hotel New Hampshire and Lost Horizon (Who can resist a film where George Kennedy sings?), check out The Killers. Both Killers, if you like, they come in the same package. The former is a recognised “classic” of noir, while the latter although not as polished, is well worth a squizz. While you're at it, try to spot the Tarantino influences.

GrogFlog’s verdict: "There's only one guy who's not afraid to die; that's a guy who's already dead.” Is Don, is good.

Coming soon: You'll love Rod Steiger in shades.

DEAL OR NO DEAL?

Who doesn’t like a nice hand of poker occasionally? Especially when you’re playing for not having your kneecaps smashed by a Russian mobster who listens to his Oreo cookies before shoving his chips out. By now you’ve probably guessed I’m talking about Rounders, one of the most criminally ignored taut little melodramas of recent times.

(1998. Colour. Script: David Levien and Brian Koppleman. Direction: John Dahl. Cinematography: Jean Yves Escoffier. Score: Christopher Young sounding like a jazzier Barry Adamson.)

Miramax basically dumped this small (US$12 million) flick on the market with fuck all promotion ‘cos they were getting jiggy at the time about hitting the big time with Shakespeare In Love and ‘cos none of Rounders’s cast were big draw cards back then.

But we're talking here about an utterly inimitable flick that's gonna be revived many times long after Paltrow, J. Fiennes, Affleck and co have gone to the great test screening in the sky. We're talking about a flick that features Matt Damon, Edward Norton, John Turturro, Martin Landau, Famke Jansson and John Malkovich, all delivering brillant performances as a bunch of hustlers, mobsters, fuckups and femme fatales playing poker for high stakes in low dives across New York.

Both the screenwriters used to be ‘rounders’, poker players who make the rounds of floating games and the plays, beats, jargon and dialogue just crackles with insider knowledge. In fact, apparently the US DVD includes a commentary track from four World Champion Poker players.

But you don’t have to be a pokerhead to enjoy this razorsharp, gritty and chip-chewing flick directed by John Dahl, who’s made some of the best contemporary modern film noir flicks around like The Last Seduction and Red Rock West.

He brilliantly captures a semi-covert world where Texas Hold ‘Em is played for money, love, power and ego by Russian gangsters in illegal gaming dens, yuppies in cigar bars, union officials in meeting halls, golf pros in country clubs, cops in hunting lodges, trust fund babies in Yale Association clubs, judges, DAs and law professors in City Hall and by suckers at Atlantic City.

The story is centred around Matt Damon as a failing law student and ambivalent rounder who starts off trying to build his stake for an entry fee to the World Poker Championship in Vegas, but blows it all and cashes in his chips to go straight. Then his old childhood friend and former hustling partner, Edward Norton (who gives what I think is his best performance ever - as a charming, brillant, sleazy fuckup) is released from prison and wants to start up the old team again and then everything goes right off the rails.

And even if they do manage to get back on track, waiting at the end of the line is Teddy KGB, a sinister and eccentric Russian mobster with a cookie fetish and the worst dress sense you’ve ever seen on screen, who relishes fucking people up across the poker table. No prizes for guessing which actor called John Malkovich plays Teddy.

Not only is the acting uniformly brilliantly even down to the extras with one line of dialogue, Rounders has a great look and feel as well. All the locations seem utterly believable as they range across the whole socio-economic spectrum of New York from blowjobs in manky strip club toilets to the polished brass and bullshit of yuppie hangouts. You can actually smell these places. And a note perfect soundtrack that captures the emotional highs and lows of living a life of nerve, chance, well-fingered Benjimans and pissed-off lovers.

And even though I’m not much of a poker player and a lot of the plays and jargon went right over my head, the big games in the flick themselves are incredibly suspenseful, and not always for the reasons you may think. One of the most scrotum-tightening lines during a game in Rounders is “Wow! That’s one big fucking elk’s head!” which has nothing to do with the actual fall of the cards. Yet.

Look boys and girls, GrogFlog’s never steered you wrong before (aside from that ill fated post about the South Korean edit of “The Sound of Music” with all the songs cut out, which Tony fortunately deleted before it emerged online). Trust me on this call. Honestly. You can't see any tells here can you? So take a punt and see Rounders. Dahl and co flopped a nut straight here. You don’t have to like cards to enjoy it. Just movies.

GrogFlog’s verdict: “If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker.” Four aces out of five.

Coming soon: John Huston and Truman Capote get it on, James Coburn drops acid, Harvey Keitel behaves badly and Jennifer Tilly wants your body.

STRIKE UP THE BLONDE

"Put no lights on the Christmas tree mother, I'll be in the electric chair tonight."

Yes, there's only one film where you'll hear a mobster pitch that line as a song title to a Tin Pan Alley publicist dealing with a client who's only musical talent is impersonating a steam whistle. And that flick is, has to be, and is got to be The Girl Can't Help It.

(1956. Technicolor! Script: Frank Tashlin, Garson Kanin & Herbert Baker. Direction: Frank Tashlin Cinematography: Leon Shamroy. Score: Too many good musicians to mention. Just watch the bloody thing.)

Imagine a Warner Bros cartoon version of Some Like It Hot in glorious gaudy Technicolor with a much much better soundtrack.

Frank Tashlin directed quite a few Warner Bros cartoons before he started working with live actors in "Girl". But it was still all one big cartoon to him, opening and closing with Duck Amuck funny business playing games with the fact you're watching a movie.

And in the hour and half in between, you're treated to a brilliantly-coloured screwball comedy about mobsters and showbiz that just barrels along constantly flinging out single, double and triple entendres, setting up scenes of classical farce and showcasing some of the best rock and roll and r'n'b talent ever.

It's got Jayne Mansfield showing she was an even funnier and more um, upfront comedienne than Monroe, B-movie stalwart Edmond O'Brien as a bullheaded mobster, Tom Ewell as the often flustered but always fast-talking press agent trying to stay afloat, Barry Gordon as a wisecracking paperboy who's perhaps growing up a little too fast and Henry Jones stealing every scene he's in as O'Brien's lugubrious sidekick. And the sets and clothes are also perfectly cast - from the niteclubs and batchelor pads to the fedoras and slinky tuxes and nightgowns.

Did I mention it's also got some good music too? Like beautifully shot and recorded live performances by Fats Domino, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, the Platters, Eddie Cochran, the Treniers and more, all capture at the height of their powers.

And the whole package was co-written and directed by one of the main people behind Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepé Le Pew and Porky the Pig and who's now jiving along to Little Richard and Gene Vincent while asking Jayne Mansfield to sashay a bit more as she walks along a hot New York street clutching bottles of milk to her bosom.

Frank then went to make Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter and a bunch of Martin and Lewis flicks including Artists & Models. But I reckon “Girl” is still his masterwork, a gorgeous cartoon of our dream of America at it's funniest, craziest, sexiest, most stylish, zany, rock 'n' rolling peak. I can also testify from personal experience it's a great date movie, leaving whoever has accompanied you laughing so much they can't help it. It certain beats the pants off and then delivers a massive Looney Tunes wedgie to Be Cool.

GrogFlog verdict: "If that's a girl, then I don't know what my sister is!" 6.89655 out of 10.

Coming soon: GrogFlog contemplates its freshly extracted digit. Actually I'm sorta in a Dean Martin, James Coburn, Robert Mitchum groove at the moment. So if you're looking for a critical re-evaluation of the role of the Matt Helm movies in dealing with the shifting personas of male sexuality in the sixties, you're fresh out of luck. It's Dean's suits I'd rather blog about.

LOUT OF AFRICA

There’s been a lot of yarpie bashing here lately. And quite rightly so. They really are so bashable. But in the interests of fair play, can I draw your attention to a great little South African (SA) noir action movie, Stander? Ja? Hank yew?

(2003. Colour. Script: Bima Stagg. Direction: Bronwen Hughes. Cinematography: Jess Hall. Score: David Holmes and Neil Sparkes plus an eclectic mix of old, new and just out there first and third world pop songs.)

Despite the crappy cover, Stander is really worth a punt at your local movie mart if you’re into gritty yet stylish crime thrillers with sly humour and some unexpected twists in the tale.

Firstly because it’s based on a true story that would be unbeliveable if it was presented as fiction. Andre Stander’s short and colorful life was sorta like the Postcard Bandit meets Roger Rogerson meets Ned Kelly - but as a wild colonial boy in a wig and false ‘tache hooning in a yellow Porsche Targa through the streets of Jo’burg after knocking over yet another bank...sometimes the same one twice in the same day. Yes, that really happened, amongst many other Stander outrages against the public order.

Secondly because it is a beautifully shot flick. Think Michael Mann’s Heat or Collateral set in 70s South Africa. OK, take your time to digest that concept. I’m talking stunning landscapes intercut with super kitsch period interiors, all shot with crisp cool and deft but subtle emotional angles. A lotta thought was put into making the scenery and sets help carry the story here. And this flick sounds great too. The soundtrack effortlessly segues between cool black African music and really ball the wall rock. (I'd nominate Stander for best use of an Iggy and the Stooges song in a bank heist.)

Thirdly, it’s got both an excellent script and plot (No Virginia, they’re not the same thing.) They take a bit of license with the original story, but not that much, and only really to deliver a couple of clever  twists at the end.

Fourthly, it’s got some really kiff acting man. Deborah Unger’s in there as the main boy’s love interest, all fiery cheekbones and nude conscience wrestling. Ashley Taylor plays it very low key yet with a lot of power as Stander’s former best friend and fellow cop ordered to shoot him on sight ‘cos Stander’s brazen outlawry has utterly humiliated the SA police/security establishment. There’s Marius Weyers, last clearly spotted as the male lead in “The Gods Must Be Crazy”, who is also pretty damn good as the aging SA Police General looking for religious consolation to deal with a son turned rogue elephant.

And the always entertaining Dexter Fletcher as Stander’s unstable Aussie sidekick - who fails to escape as disguised a Hassidic Rabbi escourted by his shapely blonde shoplifting “niece” when he could, and instead checks out permanently in a blaze of glory, facing down a SWAT tean while sporting nothing but two pistols and a pair of silk boxer shorts.

However the actor really using more than enough gun here is Thomas Jane, who is brillant as Stander himself, the smart, cocky and charismatic SA police detective on the fast track to the top. But who then has a ”fuck it all” moment after shooting an unarmed man in a riot and instead becomes SA’s greatest bank robber, a master of disguise and subversive media folk hero. Basically Stander is sorta like a Wilbur Smith/Robert Ruark anti-hero - a tough bastard who turns on a immoral and corrupt society...and one that's so regardless of skin colour. This flick's subtext is that apartheid fucked up everyone from Afrikaans Police Generals to Soweto gang leaders.

However it’s no bleeding heart movie. Appalling and violent behaviour comes in all colours here. But essentially it's a shit-hot, wryly funny and sunny noir thriller with stunning action sequences, set in a strange and beautiful land at a time when everyone had problems seeing their own worlds in black and white. And yes, it is a TRUE STORY. Weird place, weird times, weird guy, weird life, great flick.

GrogFlog’s verdict “Everyone else is on riot duty now? A white man could get away with anything today!" 8 out of 10 hi-speed getaways in blond wigs.

Viewer tip: There’s no subtitle option on the Stander DVD I watched and those yarpie accents do get up your nose a bit.

Coming soon: Yeah, yeah, I will get around to the irradiated Oliver Reed and James Coburn on acid flicks eventually. But after watching Stander, I sorta feel like shooting up a really bad and corrupt film now. Any recommendations? The winning suggestion scores a free hyperlink to IMDB.

TITS ONLY ROCK n ROLL

GrogFlog's back from the hols, tanned, rested and ready. When we started this thing, sex and violence were highlighted as key themes so inevitably we'd get it on with Russ (big tits!) Meyer sooner or later. So we'll start with the first film he ever made for a major (big tits!) studio, Beyond The Valley of The Dolls for 20th Century (big tits!) Fox.

(1970. Colour. Script: Roger Ebert (yes, that Roger (small tits!) Ebert) and Russ Meyer. Direction: Russ Meyer. Cinematography: Fred J. Koenekamp. Score: Lynn Carey, Paul Marshall, Stu Phillips, Bob Stone and The Strawberry Alarm Clock. And a special shoutout to hair stylist Edith (big tits!) Lindon who went well above and beyond the call of duty on this one.)

We open on a sweet, naive girl pop group (with big tits!) from the sticks, heading for the big time in LA - only to be plunged into a maelstrom of kinky sex, bouffant hairdos, drugs, sleazy lawyers, polyester shirts, big tits! even more kinky sex, greedy flower children meeting tawdry showbiz tinsel, lesbians with big tits! acid rock, black magic and big tits! But true love (and genuine big tits! as opposed to fake ones) triumphs in the end and the gentle people live happily ever after while the baddies all die by the bullet and the sword. So much for the plot (but not the big tits!).

You cats should really dig this flick. It's a real gas man. The costumes, the hairstyles, the sets, the big tits! the art direction and the actors and other props all come across like something out of an X-rated Brady Bunch. And it's chock full o' lines like: "I'd like to strap you on sometime.", "Lance Rocke is no Prince Valiant.", "There's juice freaks, and pill freaks, and then everybody's a freak! What you need is grass or a downer or something.", "I beseech you to get thine ass in gear and garb your angry loins.", "You will drink the black sperm of my vengeance." and that old pickup line we've all used so many times "I've got a wading pool of mayonnaise!"

Not to mention yer classic scenes of loving couples (with big tits!) running through sunny meadows in slo-mo, freakout parties full of big tits! in Hollywood hot tubs, old straight guys getting stoned for the first time in hippie pads and hip photographers coaxing hot vogueing out of strategically nude models with big tits!

And Beyond is populated by characters like porn star Ashley St Ives sporting at least two sets of false eyelashes (and big tits!), the "World Boxing Champion" who seems strangely unable to afford a shirt (apparently so he can keep showing off his big tits!), a sword-wielding pop Svengali (with big sideburns!), the young Pam (big tits!) Grier already getting her foxy brown on, Martin (medium sized tits!) Bormann moonlighting as a bartender...and entering upstage right into various party scenes, a much-loved Russ Meyer regular - Charles Napier's chin, followed only a few minutes later by Charles (big jaws!) Napier himself.

But wraparound kitscharama (and big tits!) aside, Beyond the Dolls is also worth seeing 'cos Russ is actually a technically brillant flick helmer. The narrative accelerates like a '70 Corvette (with big tyres!), the cinematography is super crisp, shots are vividly lit and framed (especially when they feature big tits!) and the razor-sharp editing should be taught in film schools now. Plus some of the music still holds up pretty well in a Nuggets lost psychedelic treasures kinda way (You can really shake your big tits! to the soundtrack).

Basically, Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls is well beyond parody - and yet weirdly perceptive about the riffs, characters, big tits! and general vibe of swinging sixties LA crashing headlong into the whole Manson Family thing. Watching it now, it's clear some of the actors ( and their big tits!) were already about to get lost forever in the murky canyons of fin de siècle LA back then. But the flick itself is still a fucking hoot. Such is the godlike, pre-pomo genius (and big balls!) of the man that us mere mortals knew as Russ Meyer.

GrogFlog's verdict: "This is my happening, and it freaks me out!" 6 out of 10 big tits!

Viewer Tip: Watch it with subtitles enabled. There's some funny and seriously whacko lines that get lost among the overlapping party dialogue and big tits!

Coming soon: Burt Lancaster and his deadly typewriter, secret Government experiments on kids, James Coburn getting in like Freud and big tits!

HAMELOT

If you're a young first time feature film director who's assembled a cast that includes Jeff Bridges, John Huston, Anthony Perkins, Eli Wallach, Sterling Hayden, Ralph Meeker, Toshirô Mifune, Richard Boone and Elizabeth Taylor, then you better have a damn good story to tell boy! Well William Richert found one in Richard Manchurian Candidate Condon's novel, Winter Kills which became the movie called, um, Winter Kills.

(1979. Colour. Script & Direction: William Richert. Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond. Score: Maurice Jarre doing Bernard Herrmann.)

Winter Kills is all about the riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma packaged as a complete mindfuck about who really shot President Keegan in Philadelphia in 1960. It's in the tradition of great seventies paranoia films like The Parallax View and Three Days Of The Condor except it's also bloody funny – a deadpan black comedy full of great one-liners and absurdist setups. And yes it does reveal who took out the contract on Keegan.

It's pointless outlining the plot 'cos by about halfway through you're as baffled as the dead President's hapless half-brother (Jeff Bridges) who's trying to follow the thread through the labyrinth.

Just sit back and enjoy the ultimate conspiracy fairytale played out with gusto by some great actors playing great characters. There's Tony Perkins in charge of a supercomputer that can blackmail anyone, Sterling Hayden in a biblical beard leading his own private tank corps, Elizabeth Taylor as the President's foul mouthed procuress, Eli Wallach playing Jack Ruby bullied and manipulated by Ralph Meeker's mobster, Richard Boone acting sideways to everyone else as an oil rig foreman and Toshirô Mifune musing on the futility of it all.

But it's really John Huston's film. He reprises his Noah Cross role as a Joseph Kennedy (who Huston knew and disliked) patriarch with immensely ruthless and amoral glee. Often surrounded by bimbos ("You reckon they're feeling my nuts under the blanket son?"), handing out blackjacks and brass knuckles ("Look after them. They have sentimental value."), guarded by M-16 wielding doctors during his regular blood changes and with the CIA smuggling his cigars in from Cuba, Pa Keegan steals every scene he's in and a lot more too ("I'm the Jupiter of thieves.").

The story behind the making of Winter Kills also fits the overall vibe. The initial money was put up by big time pot smugglers who washed their ill-gotten gains through the Emmanuelle flicks before decided to invest in a "proper film". But when one was found handcuffed to a hotel room bed, shot through the head, and the other got sent down for twenty years, production on Winter Kills stopped for 18 months until Richert raised the rest of the money by making a quickie film in Germany in the meantime.

Winter Kills has now been re-released in a very nice DVD package with some excellent extras, including the complete script as a PDF file, some of the best production design sketches I've ever seen and a great interview with a very funny and charming William Richert. So if you want to know who really shot President Keegan, this is the film for you. It makes JFK look like an Oliver Stone flick.

GrogFlog verdict: "They will pile falsehoods on top of falsehoods until you can't tell a lie from the truth and you won't want to know the truth." 7.7 out of 10.

Coming soon: Fatal kids in secret labs, eyes without a face, gay US Treasury agents on acid and James Coburn gets Jungian.

TWO LEGGED FREAKS

Suicide Girls? Hah! Middle-class art school dropouts who have never hacksawed to death an innocent postman in their tiny little lives. If you really want hot sexy killer gothic chicks, then you cannot afford to pass by "Spider Baby".

(1968. B&W. Script: Jack Hill. Direction: Jack Hill. Cinematography: Alfred Taylor. Score: Ronald Stein with Lon Chaney Jr singing the title song.)

T'was actually shot in 1964 by horror and exploitation schlockmeister Jack Hill ("The Big Doll House", "Foxy Brown" and "Coffy" are some of his more notable accomplishments) but not released until 1968 – mainly I suspect because no one knew how the fuck to market the thing. Alternative titles were "Attack of the Liver Eaters" (no livers are actually eaten) and "Cannibal Orgy - or the Maddest Story Ever Told" which is sorta half right.

The fixings for this feast are all tried and true. Weird genetically disordered family in gothic mansion, the loyal old family servant as surrogate wrinkled-browed father, distant grasping rellies who come to a sticky end, creaky cobwebbed corridors, moonlit forest strolls, disgusting dinners and something really foul lurking in the cellar.  Beautifully filmed too.  The best artfully artificial cinematic chiaroscuro since "Night Of The Hunter" – which also shares the same demented noir fairy tale approach.

But "Spider Baby" serves up the old ingredients with a flavour that's like nothing else you've tasted.  It's really a very sweet 'n' sour movie. "Nothing is really bad" as the wrinkled retainer Lon Chaney Jr says at one point. It's not supposed to be a comedy but can't stop quietly cackling to itself be a real horror movie. Someone described it as  "Luis Bunuel meets the Addams Family" but even that doesn't really capture the tone.

And the tone is set by some amazing acting. For starters it's Lon Chaney Jr's last role and he's never been better since. Carol Ohmart is wonderful as the gredy low-rent black widow-in-suspenders cousin, as are Quinn Redecker as her amiable and dopey husband and Karl Schanzer as their fussy pompous lawyer.

And in one way or another, they all meet their end at the cutting-edge hands of the gorgeous murderous Merrye sisters, Elizabeth (a blonde Beverly Washburn) and "Spider Baby" herself, Virginia (the brunette Jill Banner).

Beverly is great (I wouldn't kick her out of my deathbed) but it's really Jill Banner's film. She is fantastic as the title character, a sweet deadly gothic Lolita who can't tell the difference between affection, sex, procreation and death. For those of you down the back, let me repeat myself. JILL BANNER IS FANFUCKINGTASTIC AS "SPIDER BABY"! She can hatch my eggs anytime. Hundreds and hundreds of 'em.

...

OK, I've finished hyperventilating into a brown paper bag from Safeway. If you get a chance to see it, do so. (I meant the movie not the brown paper bag). You'll never look with true lust in your heart at another Suicide Girl again.

Oh yes, I'd also like to say Rock Hudson is excellent in this flick too. But honestly I can't. Mainly 'cos he's not in it. "Spider Baby" is gravid with sly early 60s Mad magazine put-ons like that. And the exteriors are dog-eared postcards of the then remote and dusty LA valleys that later spawned the likes of Charles Manson's homicidal harem.

GrogFlog's verdict: "Just because something isn't good doesn't mean it's bad." 6 out of 10 for the film. And 18 out of 10 for Jill Banner.

Coming soon: "Black leather, black leather, smash, smash, smash", "I'm the Jupiter of Thieves",  "I guess it's just one of those ex-felon, pro-acid kind of non-smoking homes" and "You told me fairy tales... about the President getting shot... and your erect nipples."

PET SOUNDS

Well we've had healthy lashings of sex and violence here recently but the Ashes aside, perhaps it's time GrogFlog spruiked something that's more of a family flick. If the adventures of a young lad and his loveable mutt are more your thing, then why not check out "A Boy And His Dog"?

(1975. Colour. Script: LQ Jones from a short story by Harlan Ellison. Direction: LQ Jones. Cinematography: John Arthur Morrill. Score: Tim McIntire, Jaime Mendoza-Nava and warped snatches of John Philip Souza.)

It's all about the merry japes of Vic (Don Johnson) and his dog Blood (a largish scruffy wire-haired terrier voiced by Tim McIntire) in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. What? Sorry, didn't I mention the flick starts with an atomic explosion montage wrapped up by a title card that reads "World War IV lasted five days. Politicians had finally solved the problems of urban blight"?

So anyway we have Vic and Blood making their way through a mise en scene that predates the Mad Max movies when it comes to paying with rusty tins of food and checking in weapons to get into dusty anarcho oasises for a night of relative safety from the bandits and muties.

It's in one of these desert dens that Blood tells Vic he smells a disguised woman (Oh yeah, also forgot to mention that Blood is telepathic and Vic is perpetually horny) who turns out to be the bait to lead Vic to a massive underground bomb shelter where a "Committee" is trying to keep the Norman Rockwell dream of America alive despite somewhat trying circumstances. Which includes the fact that the men living underground for so long in a radioactive world are now all shooting blanks. Quite unlike the young rude, crude but very virile alpha male Vic - who soon gets introduced to technology more often seen in Royal Agricultural Shows.

And then the film gets really weird.

But what holds it all together is LQ Jones' (A rugged old industry pro - google his acting credits for starters) sturdy but thoughtful direction and a lotta fucking great acting.  A young and callow Don Johnson is actually pretty damn good playing a young and callow hyper-aggressive male predator. Jason Robards is even better as the ruthlessly urbane head of the troika running the "Committee", effortlessly stealing scenes just by eating a sandwich or sternly questioning an innocent Maltese terrier.

The real star though is the dog playing Blood. The best animal acting you will ever see, regardless of CGI'd pigs and all that jazz. LQ Jones said in the DVD commentary the dog was seriously considered for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar and I believe him. I'm sorry I can't dig up the dog's real name but he (at least I think it's a he) really is so bloody brillant as the boy's best friend, hiding his true feelings behind sardonic one-liners. And he and Don do make up the heart of what is basically a great buddy movie. Women? By the end, they're just something to jaw about by the campfire.

All weirdness aside, it really is a great story of a boy and his dog. Get it out for a nice family night in…and down deep under.

GrogFlog's verdict: "Right now I'm hungry and I want to get laid, so find me a broad and we'll go to the promised  land."  7 out of 10. Or 11 out of 10 if yer are the proverbial dog on the internet.

Coming soon: Oliver Reed remains irradiated,  gay communist torture, the Addams Family for grownups and who really shot President Kerrigan.

GRIND GUIGNOL

Call me a bit of a romantic if you like, but I can't help feeling productions like "Mandingo Ass Blasters #17" didn’t quite deliver on the promise of porn's golden age. Back in the late 70s and early 80s, they put some time, money and effort into adult flicks like "The Opening Of Misty Beethoven", "Babylon Pink" and "The Devil In Miss Jones". And then there was (cheesy jazzfunk soundtrack screeches to a stop)… "Café Flesh" (1982).

(At this point I'd normally provide production credits, but in this case they're not helpful in sourcing the flick or would be spoilers for the rest of this GrogFlog. So read on gentle reader.)

To be fair, you couldn't really call Café Flesh a porn movie. Yes, there is some penetration and ejaculation but sexually arousing you is not the aim of the folks behind this bizarre V-movie. You'd spend more time pinching yourself than touching yourself inappropriately while watching this crazed little number.

Written pre-AIDS but set in a post atomic war future, Café Flesh sets the scene with title cards and a VO about how after the Nuclear Kiss, 99% of the survivors are sex negatives who can't do it anymore without getting really sick – while the 1% who are sex positives and can get off with nothing worse than le petit morte, have to perform for the sterile majority’s pleasure at Café Flesh. It’s a real eros/thantos dichotomy thang, complete with a coherent plot, symbolic caged songbird shit…and lashings of hair gel.

Café Flesh the venue is a strange, neon-splattered bunker of a nightclub, run by "Mum" with Mr Joy as a proto-Buscemi doorman sardonically tending a bank vault-like entrance - and presided over on stage by Max Melodramatic (Andrew Nichols), a mutant cross between Cabaret's Joel Grey and Lenny Bruce at his foulest.

In fact the whole flick is like Cabaret meets Liquid Sky with a soundtrack by Devo gone sleazo. Or this case, a soundtrack by Mitchell Froom, who went onto produce acts ranging from Los Lobos to Cibo Matto, become a de facto member of REM and marry Suzanne Vega. And the scriptwriter, "Herbert W. Day" is actually Jerry Stahl who also moved on write episodes of "Twin Peaks", "Northern Exposure", "ALF" and several other TV series before penning "Permanent Midnight" about how his smack habit fucked up his writing career (until he wrote a book about it though).

To cum to the point, Café Flesh is a seriously strange movie – partly because it's trying to be seriously strange on a small budget and big coke-addled hopes, and partly because the hardcore sequences are staged as seriously strange and very unerotic and twisted performance art numbers.  Rat-nosed milkmen, back projected oil pumps, bone-wielding babies, nude babes with monocles and Hitler mustaches and finger clicking tuxedo arms sticking out of the floor take what prosaic porn plumbing there is in the flick well into some XXX Twilight Zone freakiness.

And throughout it all Max Melodramatic is taunting both the nightclub audience and you the viewer about why you like to watch. He's rubbing your nose in the fact he's getting off on the fact you need to watch the show to get off. But I defy anyone to get off, or even wood, while watching this very very very peculiar piece of Nu Wave polyester art anti-porn.

GrogFlog verdict: "Welcome to the carnal charnel house." 1 out of 10 if you're there for the sex. 7 out of 10 for the high weirdness.

Coming next: Oliver Reed gets irradiated, Don Johnson gets hoisted with his own petard, Lon Chaney Jr gets blown up and Jason Robards eats a sandwich.

HAMMER TIME

Welcome to a new dynamically-enabled paradigm shift in delivering content-rich online experiences to generate more sticky eyeballs. Yep our host, that great raconteur, humanitarian and patron of the arts, Tony the T, has generously allowed me to do a little Grog Flogging (film blogging) here from time to time - basically about odd little films I think are unjustly overlooked… or bloody overrated. And since blogland has the attention span of a dog just let out of the car after a long drive, I'll try and keep it short and mainly about flicks with lots of sex and violence.

I'll start gently with a well-known cult classic (ie: bloody hard to see and some confusion over the director's intended ending) that’s now finally on DVD - half a century after it was made: "Kiss Me Deadly".

1955. B&W, natch! Script: Albert Isaac Bezzerides. Direction: Robert Aldrich. Cinematography: Ernest Lazlo. Score: Frank De Vol, also feat. Nat King Cole, Franz Schubert and strange hissing noises.

So what's the fuss about? Well, it's the atomic-powered, crazed mutha of a movie that stomped classic film noir into the gutter. Before it, there was there was "The Big Sleep", "The Third Man", "Pickup On South Street", "The Lady from Shanghai", "The Killers" (the 1949 version) and "Criss Cross". But after they spawned their sneering, swaggering bastard child, "Kiss Me Deadly", there was nowhere really left to go but "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" and eventually "Night Of The Living Dead". It was the genre's Gotterdammerung.

Deadly kept all the ingredients of the original Mickey Spillane book. Mysterious damsels in distress, urbanely evil masterminds, nympho gangster molls, glinting drug-laden hypodermics, stone-faced henchmen, cynical wise-cracking cops, hard-boiled but soft-curved blondes with snub-nose .38s and a merry sidekick who dies hard. And bourbon. Lots of bourbon.  But then Deadly got really wild.

For starters, our main boy, Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) is a completely amoral, sleazy ratbag. He slaps innocuous folks around at the drop of a fedora, his private dick operation is basically a sexual blackmail racket that would make Jake Gitties blanch, he treats his luscious jazz ballet dancing secretary, Velda Wakeman (Maxine Cooper) like shit and he keeps stealing other people's smokes (the whole bloody packet too). However Mike seems be to be raking in the mazuma, even though he's a thieving bastard with the Lucky Strikes. He drives a succession of classic 50s roadsters even shapelier than his women and his "What kind of man reads Playboy?" pad has one of the first answering machines ever seen on screen – all bakelite console and big tape spools.

But what really makes Deadly leap off the screen and slap you around is the utterly bravura filmmaking that delivers a very post-modern (ie: no one gives a shit if it makes sense or not) story. The lighting and camera angles often push noir conventions till they scream for mercy, while even the bit players seem to have stepped out of a stag film parody of the original Twilight Zone. It opens with a metaphorical bang and closes with a literal one. And in between it’s grainy, grimy 50s LA gothic at 120 mph. There's a brainsnapping title sequence (reverse credits, rolling backwards as well, over a car windshield and accompanied by sobbing and panting overlaid on a moody jazzy ballad) followed by an artfully just off-screen torture scene that gives you the willies even now. And that's just in the first few minutes.

And a savage, smirking but increasingly baffled Mike Hammer stalks through this nihilistic, shadow-sodden, off-kilter world, pulling judo moves here, smashing fingers and Caruso records there and puzzling over a clue hidden in a Christina Rossetti love sonnet, but always blind to what's really going until the light's so bright, it burns everything up.

No wonder Lynch, Scorsese, Tarantino, Ellroy, Frank Sin City Miller, and so many others, deftly lifted moves, motifs and riffs from this flick just like Mike Hammer would your cigarettes. See it or take one in the kisser, pal.

GrogFlog's verdict: "Va-Va-Voom! Pretty POW!" 8 out of 10.

Coming soon: 70s sci-fi porn, the young Oliver Reed, arthouse coprophagia, telepathic dogs and wrinkled retainers.