Hitchcock's FRENZY (1972) is like watching Benny Hill in Hell

 I saw Marnie on a big screen recently (at London's Prince Charles cinema) and was absolutely blown away. I vowed to give all Hitchcock films another go on a big screen.

Frenzy (1972) was his return to London and his return to shocking thrillers after several attempts at "realistic" Bond films such as Topaz and Torn Curtain.

I remember absolutely hating Frenzy first time I saw it. Watching it now I can appreciate it more. Very well made and shocking but surely still one of the seediest films every made, particularly if you remember the era. Like watching Benny Hill in Hell.

I'd put this near the bottom of my Hitchcock favourites not because it's bad, just because Hitchcock trying to imitate what is effectively a Hammer film is a weird experience. Doubly weird seeing Covent Garden functioning as a mundane fruit market and not a theme park cos play zone.

For all the sleaze it does have it's moments, the mundane pic below is the end of a particularly devasting tracking shot that must be up with the masters best.

(I tried to post this short review in IMDB but it required 600 characters so thought I may as well put it up here as well. For those who are interested my reviews there are as chris-726, IMDb member since November 2001)

Hollywood needs a new Raiders Of The Lost Ark, not a new Indiana Jones movie

I remember the movie era when Raiders of The Lost Ark was released. The big action franchise was Bond, and the latest Bond films with the very old looking Roger Moore and the returning Sean Connery in Never Say Never Again looked incredibly creaky and fake. Their stunts were a joke, plots were comedy contrivance, and they had the dusty reek of movies from a previous epoch.

And we heard Spielberg and Lucas, our fave directors of hot, sharp funny hip scifi movies were taking time out to do a mundane adventure movie set in the 1930s. WTF? (We might not have expressed ourselves that way)

Then Raiders opened and made the 1930s as fresh and real as exciting as anything in the Star Wars universe. Real stunts and locations with a sharp cool funny young actor and great cast. Add that to a thrilling supernatural sub plot and a magnificently ambiguous ending that has never been topped. Suddenly the Bond franchise looked as dead as a door-nail*.

Of course the Indiana Jones sequels followed all commodifying Harrison Ford as the center of the franchise, eventually moving it to the 1950s and now 1960s. I found myself thinking the other day how I would have felt if I'd been told in 1981 that they'd eventually make an Indy film set after 1940. I would definitely have said "wow that will be crap"

But that key 1930s setting is a bit of a distraction, vital as it is. It's nice to imagine a series of Raiders films not following Ford but following Marion, or Brody, or Belloq or even the Ark itself, but the truth is Ford had the mega star power, and it's inevitable that the sequels to Raiders would be vehicles around Indy.

But tied to Indy they have become the thing they once looked to replace. Dial of Destiny is Harrison Ford's Octopussy/Never Say Never Again. And the scary thing for Hollywood right now the nearest thing to a new equivalent of Raiders of The Lost Ark is... 

Mission Impossible 7 starring 61 year old Tom Cruise.

*What was the other new movie franchise making Bond look decrepit at this time? Deadly cool new actor Mel Gibson in white line nightmare that was Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior in the US). 

Imagine seeing Roger Moore's latter era Bond, then Raiders of the Lost Ark and then Mad Max 2 in the same year. 

Maybe Dial of Destiny has got it easy after all. 

Modern Star Wars Coping Strategy

 Star Wars Andor is very good. Kenobi, Book of Boba Fett and the Sequels are very bad. This is a coping strategy.

If you are still too angry at Kenobi, Boba Fett, The Adventures of Rey etc to enjoy Star Wars Andor you might find this helpful. This is how I deal with the bad Star Wars content.

Try and imagine that Star Wars today is coming at us from several different “gospels”

Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi is the saga told by the most respected original historical source, by an engaged classic storyteller for a main stream audience. The Original Trilogy is like Thomas Malory's 'Le Morte Darthur' is to the legend of King Arthur. It's the most respected source and set the template.

The Prequel Trilogy is a gospel based on census records told by a dorky ex diplomat mainly known for terrible romance novels

The Sequel Trilogy tries to explain real historical events but it’s based on juvenile conspiracy theories from a school history class 1000 years after the event.

The Mandalorian is history as pulp adventure story told by a very talented serial writer.

Boba Fett and Kenobi is history told by the primary school kids again, this time with crayons.

Andor is Star Wars history written by an ex-spy ... a source more used to writing desperately down beat realistic content. He probably ended up commuting suicide or getting pushed out of a window.

What does this approach allow us to do? It means the essential story parts of the sequel trilogy, Kenobi and Boba Fett happened, we’ve just not seen the grown up version of the history yet.

For me :

Real events of Force Awakens, Last Jedi, Rise of Skywalker

The New Republic WAS destroyed by a fanatical high tech sect of the Imperial remnant. Depressing and difficult to explain without juvenile conspiracy theories. One history of the period is entirely told from the POV of one girl (Guess who)

Real events of Star Wars : Kenobi

There are some children who like to think General Kenobi was more active but - really? Most of it turns out to be misdirection put out by Rebellion intelligence.

Real events of Book of Boba Fett

There are a lot silly tales told about the history of Boba Fett, mostly by children who’ve had too much fizzy pop.

Do we have to worry about what is the essential real take on the events of Star Wars? No, again, for me, the real, real events which inspired the legend of a A Long Time Ago In a Galaxy Far Far Away probably concerned 5th dimensional beings at the heart of a neutron star shortly after the Big Bang. If you want to know why the director of American Graffiti felt compelled need to tell this story with humans as the main characters, in 1977, that is a tale probably best told by Phillip K Dick.

It's now cool to like Alien3, and Star Wars (Andor)

There are a couple of things I would have blogged about before now but somehow I couldn't find the way in in to the subjects. Disparate subjects if you're not a sci-fi nerd.

 

 

Star Wars Andor  is the new Star Wars TV series. It has been critically lauded so I'm saying nothing startling here, but just to reiterate, Andor is at least a decade more mature and sophisticated than anything we've seen previously from the Galaxy Far Far Away.

Alien 3 is a movie which came out 20 years ago and was critically reviled for good reason on release. As David Fincher's first movie it has been appreciated somewhat since by some critics and fans, though is still pretty much hated by popular film fat by mainstream film fan.

The settings of both are heavily influenced buy the landscapes of post-industrial England. 

One of the things that makes Star Wars Andor so special and such a success in comparison to other recent Star Wars content is it to use of striking real-world locations. In the same manner as it's predecessor movie Star Wars Rogue One used real world British locations, Star Wars Andor made use of real-world locations such as the Barbican Centre the McLaren Technology Centre and newly developed parts of Blackpool Pleasure Beach

The intelligent use of locations in Andor is striking on several levels. I recognised  many of these locations  and yet they still looked more exotic then the Fate locations in the other shows just because of their presentation I guess it also striking but parts of 21st century Britain look so convincingly dystopian when they are actually part of a real world reality. (another current sci-fi TV series I have not yet reviewed is The Peripheral which I did cover at length in book form when originally released. The Peripheral TV series also makes use of contemporary landmarks in London to populate a dystopian reality).

But the particular set location in and all that I want to draw attention to here is not a real world location. It is the huge physical set depicting the planet Ferrix, apparently built in a quarry somewhere in England, What makes this stand out to me is the familiarity of this alien setting in a galaxy far far away, a tight-knit working-class community surrounded by red brick deep class loyalty rigid social structures based on on the work and a cast iron resilience and loyalty.

Ferrix is very reminiscent of the working class communities in Yorkshire and the North which can be seen in movies such as Brassed Off.

Alien3 was universally loathed upon release but the revised Assembly Cut has given us an excuse to revisit it and maybe even appreciate it's unrelenting darkness. Once again somehow American directors and creators and production designers looked for an alien landscape and culture and went to post-industrial landscapes heavily influenced by the North East. The planet in Alien3 Fury 161 is a mixture of penal colony and abandoned industrial smelter. Anyone familiar with the ending of Newcastle set Get Carter will instantly see the giant cranes and bleak seascapes.

The inclusion in Alien3 of faces such Brian Glover, an icon of Northern England acting, makes this allusion even more more obvious.

In a different franchise, the introduction to Ridley Scott's original Blade Runner is another striking visual inspiration from the same area. 

In earlier versions of this blog this would probably have been a review. but I've never reviewed anything Star Wars here  despite being a massive fan since seeing it in Canada on initial release. I actually reviewed Alien 3 Assembly Cut a few years ago go before the release of Alien Covenant.

I guess I should try that all up now I've already said Star Wars Andor is brilliant coming in a close second behind Severance as my TV of 2022. Watching some of the standard Star Wars Disney output really tests your loyalty to something you love. There is obviously relief when you hear people saying Star Wars Andor is the best Star Wars not since the 70s, but ever they are not being entirely unrealistic.

Fan disappointment and disillusionment has also of course recently been a major problem with the recent Alien films, going right back to the crushing experience of Alien3. I never reviewed Alien Covenant upon release I was as initially uncertain of several plot surprises. 

Last week, in an attempt to make a visit to Avatar 2 to slightly more palatable, I re-watched the Alien films which I'm less familiar with. Alien3 Assembly Cut was as good as it was when I saw it a few years ago (which is to say still flawed but a huge improvement over the original release). Prometheus was I would say 20% better than my last viewing and I strongly defended it the first time round. With Covenant, now I could anticipate the plot, the second viewing was a huge improvement. If you felt these unappreciated Alien films were a disappointment initially I suggest you give them another chance. They are obviously meant to be surprising, different, and shocking.

 

Obsessive thinking on the subjects listed above has been hugely helped by several brilliant podcasts which I've been using to escape the news.  For Star Wars, the Rebel Force Radio podcast is a great example of an old time fan podcast which sounds like a great radio show run by two older guys with some opinions, but nothing too toxic. It sounds as warm and welcoming as NPR Car Talk if you're aware of that radio phenomena. I highly recommend it if you need to re-discover your enthusiasm for that much abused franchise.

For Alien, The Perfect Organism podcast really helps bring to life what you might be regarding as an even more tired subject. Their approach is unflinchingly cerebral and quite informed. Even their contentious arguments are well put and worth listening to. Alien3 is actually their favourite of the movies - it's now cool to like Alien3, the most hated franchise movie of the last 30 years!

There's a lesson for fans in all of this. If we can find ourselves coming to terms with and appreciating a movie in Alien3, which is a slapdash mess which starts by brutally slaying two favourite characters from the preceding classic movie, then surely fans long term can cope with any kind of substandard content. Redemption and forgiveness is probably somewhere down the line for the worst recent Star Wars content, but, when the garbage is peppered with nuggets of gold like Star Wars Andor (and Prey, the recent excellent Predator movie) there are always reasons to hang on in there and always give the creators another chance to get it right.

More on Alien

Ridley Scott's Alien and Hitler's favourite painting

The painting Isle of the Dead, created by Swiss symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin,  had a significant impact on the design of the planet in the film Alien: Covenant. The painting, which depicts a boat carrying a dead person towards an island with a mysterious and foreboding atmosphere, has influenced the film's portrayal of the planet as a bleak, desolate and ominous environment.

The painting had an iconic, almost meme like influence on pre WW2 Europe. It was immensely popular and attracted a wide variety of admirers. Freud kept a reproduction in his office; Lenin had one above his bed; Hitler bought one of the originals. Vladimir Nabokov wrote that reproductions of the painting could be “found in every Berlin home”

Alien Covenant concept Artist Wayne Haag (with the assistance of Steve Messing) intentionally referenced this painting at the request of Ridley Scott.

WH: There's a definite influence from ... I think I mentioned Böcklin. We referenced Arnold Böcklin a lot.

AVPForum: The 'Isle of the Dead', is it?

WH: Right. So there's a look and a feel to Böcklin's paintings, and that's what Ridley's aiming at. It's not so much the detail, necessarily, although he's big on trees. Oh he loved the trees.... but there's a general overall look and feel to his paintings that we were riffing off.

Isle of the Dead had a connection to Alien before the first movie went before the cameras. HR Giger, the famous conceptual artist behind the biomechanical creature designs throughout the Alien films, did several of his own versions of Isle of The Dead in 1977, two years before Ridley Scott enlisted him to work on Alien.

Isle of the Dead had already inspired a noir horror film directed by the 1940s master of atmospheric suspense, Val Lewton.

 The painting's use of dark and ominous clouds, combined with its focus on the boat's journey towards an unknown destination, creates a feeling of unease and foreboding. This same sense of dread and mystery is evident in the design of the planet in Alien: Covenant, which is characterized by its dark and desolate landscapes, shrouded in mist and mystery. The planet's surface is dotted with towering cliffs and eerie, moss-covered ruins, lending an air of ancient and unspoiled terror to the environment.

The use of the painting Isle of the Dead in the film's design also speaks to the themes of death and mortality that are central to the film. The painting's depiction of the journey towards the afterlife is mirrored in the film by the characters' journey to the planet, where they encounter danger and death at every turn. The painting's focus on the fleeting nature of life and the uncertainty of the afterlife is echoed in the film's exploration of the fragility of human existence in the face of the universe's uncaring and indifferent forces.

In conclusion, the influence of the painting Isle of the Dead on the design of the planet in Alien: Covenant has been significant. The painting's eerie and ominous atmosphere, combined with its themes of death and mortality, have helped to create a sense of dread and mystery that is central to the film's portrayal of the planet. The use of this painting in the film's design speaks to the filmmakers' commitment to creating a unique and immersive environment, one that evokes a sense of unease and foreboding that stays with the viewer long after the film has ended.

The real surprise of the recent Alien prequels is that the real antagonist is not the Alien, but the rogue AI, David 8, fantastically played by Micheal Fassbinder. It is in the spirit of David 8 that I dedicate this entry in my blog to my new friend ChatGPT, as just about everything above this paragraph was generated by a (helpful) AI.

More on Alien and Isle of The Dead

More on Alien

The 21st Century has arrived at last (unpublished post from onset of COVID)

(14/04/2020)

Some of us have been eagerly awaiting Century 21 since watching “futuristic” Gerry Anderson shows in the 1970s. When the actual date switched over 20 years ago we were all laughing about the overreaction to a virus, the Millennium Bug. 

Since then, with the exception of 9/11, the 21st Century has pretty much looked like the end of the 20th. Same stupid types of people in charge, same stupid working practices, same stupid economics.

Well it seems after keeping an impatient audience waiting since the dawn of the new millennium, in February 2020 the 21st century finally pulled back the curtains and marched on stage with a shocking new act, a revival of a horror show from 1918.

As one of the million internet articles I’ve read has noted, in a shockingly quick time we have left one historic era, the Post 9/11 period, and entered another. I’ve been wondering for some time why the 21sr century felt so much like the end of the 20th, and how much longer the Gaffa Tape Economics would continue to hold together.

And initially it just looked like a month off work. 

Such was the avalanche of time you felt the need to immediately fill it with worthwhile stuff. As I txted to a young friend worried about how we would all get through this 

“It’ll be a different world after and probably a better one - in the meantime if I don’t learn t play my guitar during this I’m going to sell it”

It would have been perhaps easier for me if I was at home in Devon rather than covering my partner in the urban Sout East. But probably not. I’ve already spent very long period alone in that location and it really didn’t do much for me. I might have been able to concentrate better without worrying about another person and her cats, but there are obvious benefits which outweigh the negatives.

One of the non obvious benefits was getting into Liza Tarbuck’s Saturday show on BBC Radio 2.
Even the worldwide lock in apocalypse we are going through could not make me a Radio 2 fan generally, but I have to say Tarbuck’s show, a favourite of my partner, has become a ritual, not just because of the wit and almost Pythonesque silliness, but a semi 6music ear for lost songs, and a psychic intuition for selecting the exact tune for the mood of that moment.

Tarbuck’s show the weekend before the months long lockdown, when we were all still slightly giddy and still in shock, ended with Vic Damone's version of Irving Berlin's Let’s Face The Music and Dance, which seemed to hit the note in March perfectly

"There may be trouble ahead
But while there's music and moonlight
And love and romance
Let's face the music and dance

Soon, we'll be without the moon
Humming a different tune, and then
There may be teardrops to shed
So while there's moonlight and music
And love and romance
Let's face the music and dance
Dance
Let's face the music and dance"

Five weeks later into the lockdown, when millions are wondering if the psychological effects of this will be permanent, a play of Radio 2 perennial Joan Amatradings 'Me Myself I' hit me like like an Exocet missile. Isolation is a problem for some, claustrophobia is a problem for others, loneliness is a worry for many. For those of us loners, used to living alone, who quite like isolation and regularly need to seek it out, finding ourselves trapped in the same building and absorbed into their world, even a loved one, for over a month, is not easy.

"I want to be by myself
I came in this world alone
Me myself I
I want to go to China
And to see Japan
I'd like to sail the oceans
Before the seas run dry"

Calling Tarbuck the herald of the 21st century is probably a but much but it is an unacknowledged gem. Tarbuck’s show also uses parts of John Barry’s Cotton Club as incidental music. That made me an instant fan.

Otherwise I’ve been trying to relearn D&D, blogging about motorsport, watching old races and trying to binge on Netflix but it has been surprisingly hard. This post was also prompted by Dave Chen on the Westworld podcast who also has had a rough time concentrating. For the first two weeks regular exercise and avoid book reading seemed to be the way but as it has gone, as the vital routines I’d planned slowly dissolve into a yearning just to GET OUT.

It is difficult as many are saying, without any kind of structure, even from the sporting schedule, it is difficult to concentrate on anything outside the daily briefings and death count. Computer game sims of sports have become the actual sport in the space of six weeks.

Obviously working at the front line would be worse, and that's not even just the health staff. The death rate of bus drivers in London is a sobering stat.

Things might snap back to normal for a while but the principles have been established for the rest of the century. Having seen the effects on emissions, the age of mass commuting is over. That will have giant knock on effects to the economy in London and the housing market generally. The thrill of street food and claustrophobic mass gatherings might fade. Pubs might make a comeback after this as drinking at home might be repulsive for a while. Come to think of it anything other than sleeping at home might be repulsive for a while. Estate agents will have bumper decade as people try to permanently escape their prison cell of 2020. Relationship councillors and divorce lawyers will be a growth industry. And grief councillors obviously.

(14/04/2020)

Putin’s KOMBINAT is to the Soviet Union what the Nazi regime was to Imperial Germany

We don't have an official term yet for Putin's flavour of political regime. William Gibson saw it in 1993. It's the KOMBINAT.

William Gibson has a good record of anticipating the future. Famously he coined the term "cyberpunk"in his first novel in 1984 in which he set the popular perception of the internet. He is famous for that first trilogy of books, but his second trilogy, known as the Bridge trilogy, quickly fell victim to the law of "nothing dates as fast as yesterdays tomorrow".  Published in the early 1990s and set only a decade later, the Bridge books still read pretty cool noir but it's an alternate future with no phones or Web 2.0. Some might prefer this nightmare dystopia /s.

Admittedly he's only a decade away, but some things Gibson gets pretty on the nose. Pandemics, which seemed to begin with HIV, are now a regular occurrence. As per the first trilogy the middle class is shrinking fast and society is dividing into tech driven super rich and crime inflected everyone else. Crime is riddled with Russian money and it has a solid political origin. "Kombinat" is the name given by Gibson to an evolved Communist state which is now explicitly controlled by organised crime. It seems to be sanctioned by all the other states of Gibson's Bridge world so operatives are actively acquiring new technology from locations like San Francisco and Japan. 

You might respond immediately that for all it's issues Putin's Russia is not communist! It is extreme capitalism! Well, give it time, because the more Putin's state walks like the Soviet Union, and quacks like the Soviet Union, the more those weird years in the middle look like a Weimar daydream without the sexy dancers.

Having given the Kombinat a name suddenly it's place in history looks a lot less accidental, a lot more familiar. It is common currency now to compare Putin with Hitler ("Putler") but less so to compare his regime explicitly with the Nazi Party. Compare the timelines however - 1918-1933, and 1987-2000. The fall of the Kaiser's Germany without invasion. The fall of the Soviet Union without a hot war. Economic chaos follows alongside liberalism. Nationalism as a excuse to unify. Idolisation of the past. Hatred of the future. Staged terrorism events to justify crack downs.

Soviet Union like Imperial Germany has a once mighty proud empire lost in a war that barely touches the homeland, creating no sense of real defeat. The undefeated younger generation of the old regime uses gangsterism and brutality to return to power based on militarism nationalism. and unrestrained capitalism.
In its first form this state is highly confident and aggressively expansionist. Though Imperial Germany seemed to coming to its senses late in 1914 and the Soviets barely had the resources to invade a third world state at the end, their expansionist ambitions were baked into the political mindset for the rest of the world to see.

In its second form the Nazi/Kombinat is still expansionist but only as part of a self pitying litany of grievances for past injustices. Where Imperial Germany/Russia has actual plans for the territories it seeks to acquire, the Nazi/Kombinat barely has a plan beyond invade and then “watch the world burn". There is no self justified philosophy of "white man’s burden" here, just looting, rape and destruction that would shame the Mongols.

Though not explicitly anti Semitic in its earlier more intellectual form in Imperial Germany/Soviet Union, the more aggressive populist Nazi/Kombinat is bitter, narrow minded and obsessively anti-Jew.

Some of this analysis falls apart when you consider the chasm between the class background of Imperial Prussians and Soviet leaders, and perhaps there are less actual war vets in Putin’s regime than there were in Hitler's, but the patterns of behaviour and outlook do look remarkably similar to me, and if we are looking for a term for Putin’s flavour of Nazism - KOMBINAT is as good as any I’ve come across.

Notes

Readers of Gibson's most recent trilogy will be aware that 22nd century London is run by The Klept (derived from kleptocray), descendants of the Russian super elite which escaped to London from what I'm now suggesting we call the Kombinat.

Since writing this post I've become aware of a Russian documentary of the same name, reviewed positively here -
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jan/24/kombinat-review-dark-eerie-doc-on-russias-socialist-city-of-steel
It seems unconnected to the Gibson term.