Scum remains one of the toughest and most disturbing watches of all British movies of the 70s. A harsh look at the brutal life inside borstals, it was originally planned for TV, but it got banned and was subsequently remade to be released in cinemas. I still remember the scene where a pre-fame Ray Winstone…
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
Philip Kaufman’s 1978 version of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is one of those rare instances where the remake is arguably better than the original movie. Don Siegel’s version is a deserved classic of 50s paranoia sci-fi, justly remembered in particular for its ending, as the hero stands on a freeway shouting to no avail…
To Trap A Spy
i used to watch The Man from UNCLE TV series regularly as a kid. It was an unashamed American James Bond knock-off, featuring spies Robert Vaughn and David McCallum in a new adventure each week. Cheaply made, and largely forgettable plot-wise, it had some decent chemistry between the leads, some fun gadgets and a few…
The Big Heat
Fritz Lang’s 1953 crime thriller is now considered one of the classic film noirs. The movie stars Glenn Ford as a homicide cop. Plus, there’s an early role for Lee Marvin as a heavy who, in the movie’s most famous scene, throws a pot of boiling coffee in his moll Gloria Grahame’s face, badly scarring…
Chariots Of Fire
“The British are coming!” So claimed the screenwriter rather arrogantly onstage after winning his Oscar for Chariots Of Fire. Actually, they weren’t. Goldcrest, the UK studio which produced Chariots Of Fire subsequently lost a ton of money on director Hugh Hudson’s unmitigated disaster follow-up Revolution, starring Al Pacino. As a 20 year old I actually…
Shivers
Shivers was the first David Cronenberg movie to put him on the map as the master of ‘body horror’. It has a lot of his tropes in place – a chilly Canadian setting, weirdly named mysterious doctors, and a fair selection of truly gross-out moments (see his later Rabid, Scanners etc). The movie was also…
It’s A Wonderful Life
Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life is a Christmas stalwart – it’s upbeat message encapsulated in the climactic scene of a deliriously happy James Stewart yelling ‘Merry Christmas’ at passersby in a picture perfect snowy town. And yet…the vast majority of the lengthy run-time is actually rather bleak and depressing. Stewart’s character attempts suicide and…
The Way Of The Dragon
I’ve never been much of a fan of . It seems there are zillions of them, all very same-y, and I’ve struggled to sit through any of them. Enter The Dragon is still perhaps the best known from the entire genre, and that’s the only one I recall seeing in its entirety. I didn’t like…
Batman
“Duh duh duh duh duh….Batman!” As a kid, I used to love watching the Adam West 1960s TV series. I was a superhero comic book fan, and this was the first – indeed only – onscreen superhero. No matter that the Zap! Wham! Kapow! titles were unbelievably cheesy and the villains incredibly silly – it…
The Enforcer (2)
I’ve already posted about the Humphrey Bogart film of the same name, but this Enforcer was the third in Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry series. It’s an ok movie, but not a patch on either the original or the first sequel Magnum Force. This was the point at which the Harry movies started to become formulaic…