Eyewitness (1970)

Aka Sudden Terror. Twelve year old daydreamer Ziggy (Mark Lester) is an accidental witness to a political killing on a Mediterranean island where martial law obtains, after which he is attacked himself by the perpetrator, policeman Paul Grazzini (Peter Vaughan) who is assisted by Victor Grazzini (Peter Bowles). He gets separated from his older sister, Pippa (Susan George), then they are helped by their grandfather, a retired Colonel, Papa (Lionel Jeffries) and a resourceful bystander with the moniker Tom Jones (Tony Bonner), taking refuge at the lighthouse where the family lives. Meanwhile police Inspector Galleria (Jeremy Kemp) goes on the trail of the killers but ends up where Ziggy is hiding and the boy goes on the run, fleeing for his life as the men close in and calling to his best friend Ann-Marie (Maxine Kalli) … Adapted by Ronald Harwood from the 1966 novel by Mark Hebden (aka John Harris) with some uncredited work by Bryan Forbes who was head of EMI at the time. John Hough directs a surprisingly violent and not completely coherent thriller on an island that remains unnamed (it was shot in Malta) that has strange moments of humour and unusual tonal shifts. Jeffries’ role is so odd that you imagine he’s going to kill his own grandchild. George’s relationship with Bonner is not entirely clear.  It’s a real shock when a child is shot in cold blood but never mind it’s not little Mark Lester. An oddity with a terrific soundtrack which was assembled by Jonathan Demme, a rock journo in London at the time.

Night of the Big Heat (1967)

Aka Island of the Burning Damned/Island of the Burning Doomed. We must avoid injecting fear into an already dangerous situation. Novelist Jeff Callum (Patrick Allen) and his wife Frankie (Sarah Lawson) run a pub called The Swan on the island of Fara, on the English coast.  Jeff hires former lover Angela Roberts (Jane Merrow) as his secretary and she arrives in the middle of an unseasonal and stifling heatwave – it’s winter, yet unusual things are occurring with cars stalling and TVs blowing up and sheep are dying inexplicably. Scientist Godfrey Hanson (Christopher Lee) arrives and rents a room at The Swan, setting up motion sensor cameras and taking soil samples and Jeff confronts him about what might really be happening and discovers that extra-terrestrials are in their midst so it’s time to get local doctor Vernon Stone (Peter Cushing to lend assistance as the temperatures rise and everyone seems to be losing their mind and what on earth is down in the gravel pit? … If the heat goes on like this it could very likely drive us insane!  Adapted by Ronald Liles from John Lymington’s novel, this had previously been adapted for broadcast by ITV in their Play of the Week slot in 1960 and Doctor Who husband and wife screenwriting team Pip and Jane Baker were hired to do this rewrite. This Hammer Films iteration has the key players in the studio and is all the better for it: that alien protoplasm ain’t got nothing on these guys, living in a pressure cooker of sex and fear. It’s nice to see Patrick Allen – that terrifying voice that so dominates my childhood memories is actually quite the thesp:  hark at him explain to his wife what the deal is with the smouldering minx Angela:  I wanted her! I wanted her body! It was completely physical, I promise you! while Lee is his usual earnest self as the de rigeur scientist, completely rational for a change, with Cushing, as ever, battling evil.  Merrow is marvellous as the vamp, going crazy, like everyone, in the sweltering heat. Satisfying sci fi very well handled by Terence Fisher. He’s a peculiar chap – but he’s got guts

 

The Vanishing (2018)

Aka Keepers. In 1900, three lighthouse keepers, James (Gerard Butler), Thomas (Peter Mullan) and the newcomer Donald (Connor Swindells) depart for their six-week long sojourn at the remote Flannan Isles lighthouse. After a storm, they find a boat with an apparently dead man who’s been flung out of it. But when Donald tries to winch up a heavy trunk that’s fallen out, the man rises out of the water and tries to kill the youngster – before he defends himself. Thomas is the first one to open the trunk and finds it filled with gold ingots. Then the dead man’s friends Locke (Søren Malling) and Boor (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) turn up … Written by Joe Bone and Celyn Jones, and adapted from a true-ish story of the disappearance of three men from Eilean Mor Lighthouse, this admirably dour outing has a surprisingly effective psychological mechanism, one that was used to similar effect by John Huston decades earlier in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, itself a masterpiece of greed, guilt and amoral behaviour. It has that and old-school brutal violence going for it in a narrative stripped to the bone. The landscape may be different but the murderousness is of a highly vicious quality. Shot around the Mull of Galloway, Port Logan harbour, Killantringan Lighthouse near Portpatrick and Corsewall Lighthouse  near Stranraer.  Directed by Kristoffer Nyholm.

Aquaman (2018)

He is living proof our peoples can co-exist. Once home to the most advanced civilisation on Earth, the city of Atlantis is now an underwater kingdom ruled by the power-hungry King Orm Marius/Ocean Master (Patrick Wilson). With a vast army at his disposal, Orm plans to conquer the remaining oceanic people – and then the surface world. Standing in his way is Arthur Curry/Aquaman (Jason Momoa), Orm’s half-human, half-Atlantean brother, the son of lighthouse keeper Tom Curry (Temura Morrison) and Atlanna Queen of Atlantis (Nicole Kidman) and the true heir to the kingdom’s throne. With help from royal counsellor Vulko (Willem Dafoe) who advises caution, and Princess Mera (Amber Heard), who urges him to take on his half-brother, Aquaman must retrieve the legendary Trident of Atlan and embrace his destiny as protector of the deep… I solve my problems with my anger and my fists. I’m a blunt instrument and I’m damn good at it. I’ve done nothing but get my ass kicked this whole trip. I’m no leader. Technically, the dog days of summer ended two weeks ago but it seems right now like they’ll never end. So, to matters nutty and comic book, a film that didn’t need to be made, a mashup of every action/superhero trope with ludicrously good visual effects, a plot contrived from many old and new stories and a big surly but charismatic guy obsessed with his mom. So far, so expected. Except that this works on a level that’s practically operatic while also plundering sympathies of Pisceans such as myself for creatures like seahorses, who have their own army, not to mention an octopus with a fondness for percussion. Got me right there. And then some – with frogman David Kane reinventing himself as supervillain Black Manta (Yahya Abdul Mateen II), pirates, messages in bottles, gladiatorial combat, wormholes, the centre of the earth … For those who care about this kinda stuff, Arthur/Aquaman first showed up in Batman Vs. Superman and then materialised in Justice League but here he’s part of a Freudian under the sea show that’s quite batty and compelling. Obviously Dolph Lundgren shows up, as King Nereus. Written by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Will Beall, from a story by Geoff Johns, director James Wann and Beall, adapting the Mort Weisinger and Paul Norris story/character. Directed with no-holds-barred gusto by Wan. A total hoot from start to finish about evolution, equality and what lies beneath. Crazy fish people, mostly.  Jules Verne once wrote: “Put two ships in the open sea, without wind or tide… they will come together”. That’s how my parents met: like two ships destined for each other

Tormented (1960)

No one will ever have you! Jazz pianist Tom Stewart (Richard Carlson) lives on the beach in Cape Cod and is preparing to marry Meg Hubbard (Lugene Sanders) when old flame Vi Mason (Juli Reding) turns up to stop him and falls to her death from the local lighthouse when he refuses to lend her a hand as the railing breaks.  Wet footprints turn up on his mat, a hand reaches out to him, Vi’s voice haunts him and he starts behaving strangely particularly in front of Meg’s little sister Sandy (Susan Gordon).  Blind landlady Mrs Ellis (Lillian Adams) explains to him that similarly supernatural stuff happened when someone else died in the area. Then the beatnik ferry captain Nick (Joe Turkel)  who took Vi to the island to see Tom appears and starts getting suspicious that she never returned particularly when wedding bells are in the air … I’m going to live my life again and stop running. With a pedigree crew – director Bert I. Gordon co-wrote with regular collaborator George Worthing Yates – who did the screenplays for some great pirate movies and sci fis including Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers, which starred Hugh Marlowe, frequently mistaken for Richard Carlson – you’d be expecting a class act. And it’s a good story hampered by a minuscule budget which gives off a different kind of aroma. The effects are hilarious – particularly good is some woman’s hand entering frame when Tom is in young Sandy’s company and he hits it and runs off.  Sandy sees nothing, of course. My favourite moment is when Vi’s disembodied head appears and Tom reaches out and enjoys a tussle with a blonde wig which he then wraps in paper and throws down a step only to have it picked up by his blackmailer and opens it only to find dead flowers. Despite Carlson’s character mutating into a murderous beast and his ex spinning a Monroe-esque vibe, and the hilarious hey-daddy-o exchanges with the beatnik boatman (whom you’ll recognise as Lloyd the bartender in The Shining), by far the most complex performance comes from young Gordon (the director’s wonderfully talented daughter). The ending is satisfying indeed if you like really proper ghost stories. However if you think you’re going to hear some decent jazz, well, it’s hardly a priority in a camp outing such as this. This was Sanders’ last film in a strangely brief career.  She’s a perfume, she’s a footprint, she’s a hand, she’s a space in a picture

In The Cut (2003)

I wanna get married once… just for my mom. Frannie Avery (Meg Ryan), a middle-class lecturer in New York City, witnesses a sexual incident that could have been the prelude to a murder by a killer roaming the city. Detective Giovanni Malloy (Mark Ruffalo) arrives to interview her following the murder of a young woman in her neighbourhood which he’s investigating with his partner Ritchie Rodriguez (Nick Damici) but their relationship soon moves from personal to passionate.  Soon she comes to suspect that he is the serial killer he claims to be hunting down so who can she really trust? …  You know what your problem is? You’re fucking exhausting. Fuck this, you know, I was doing just fine before I met you, just fine. Susanna Moore’s novel was a new take on the subject matter of that controversial exercise in female masochism Looking for Mr Goodbar and Nicole Kidman spent five years shepherding the adaptation by Moore and director Jane Campion (with co-writer Stavros Kazantzidis) only to bail on the lead role when her marriage to Tom Cruise ended abruptly. Thus it was that America’s romcom sweetheart Ryan stepped into the dark heart of this voyeuristic thriller in a performance that seemed to frighten critics even after her impressive turn in the earlier Courage Under Fire. This is a formally beautiful, graphic and stunningly shot (by Dion Beebe) analysis of female sexual desire and as such twists the usual misogynistic genre tropes even as the body count mounts. Some of Ruffalo’s scenes may grate but Jennifer Jason Leigh has a fantastic role as Ryan’s tragic, romantically obsessed sister and Kevin Bacon has a terrific (unbilled) part as a man with whom Ryan has had relations and he is now stalking her. Ryan is superb, not just technically, but emotionally, and this is intense on every level, an intelligent slasher film with things to say about what women really want and how dangerous that can prove. The final sequence, when she contemplates the scene of her intended death, is outstanding, a masterpiece of empathy. I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees

The Light Between Oceans (2016)

You only have to forgive once. Shellshocked WW1 vet Tom (Michael Fassbender) gets a job as lighthouse keeper off the coast of Australia. On the mainland, he encounters the lively Isabel (Alicia Vikander) who proposes to him. She’s desperate to have a baby but suffers two brutal miscarriages which affect her state of mind. Her prayers for motherhood are finally answered when an infant girl washes up on shore in a rowboat with a dead man inside. Tom thinks they should notify the authorities but ultimately gives in to Isabel’s wish to keep the girl. Fate strikes when Tom sees Gwen (Rachel Weisz) on the mainland at her husband and baby’s grave when they bring the little girl Lucy to be baptised. Three years later they meet again and Tom makes a decision that will upend the family they have made with another woman’s child and Isabel takes revenge …Adapted by Derek Cianfrance from the novel by M.L. Stedman, this looks very pretty indeed. It is however a dangerously nutty maternal melodrama that proves what we have always known – women with children suffer from a very specific derangement and women who lose them are crazed, as the parallel actions of the very different mothers prove – because when Gwen decides Tom isn’t guilty of her husband’s murder she will hand back Lucy (or Grace, as she was originally christened) to the woman whom Lucy truly loves – as long as Tom goes to the gallows for a non-existent crime. Isabel was intent on punishing him for losing the child she persuaded him to steal. Has she gone too far? Do you think?! So we are pulled to the brink of madness and then – and then … Like a toddler pulling on your little finger, you’ll be tugged into this bizarre story that is performed with alarming conviction by all concerned. Thank goodness Jack Thompson and Bryan Brown are at hand to push things back, just a tad. Everyone looks like they’re straight from the pages of a Boden catalogue. Know that you have always been beloved

A Stolen Life (1946)

What could possibly be better than a Bette Davis film? Why, a film with two Bette Davis performances, of course! And this, her first self-produced outing, is a compelling drama with that hoary Forties trope of the good twin/bad twin variety. Reserved artist Kate Bosworth (I know…) goes to visit her cousin Charlie Ruggles at the family’s enormous cottage getaway on Martha’s Vineyard only to fall for lighthouse keeper Glenn Ford, whom Davis ensured to cast. Their cosy dates are usurped by the visit of her identical twin Pat, a confident, glamorous and highly sexed character who masquerades as Kate, steals her beau, marries him and then dies in a boating accident with her twin, after which Kate pretends to be her and discovers the truth about her sister’s life …  This is a brilliant, Grade A melodrama, a blend of noir, horror and psychology, playing on Davis’ complex duality, all set on open seas, fog-shrouded cliffs, chi-chi Boston townhouses and an artist’s garret. Davis’ performance as her introverted Self and her own Other – rumoured to be based on professional nemesis Miriam Hopkins! – is captivating. This was technically a remake, the story having already been made in England before WW2, adapted from the source novel by Karel Benes with Elisabeth Bergner in the lead. But this is very much a Hollywood adaptation by Margaret Buell Wilder and the screenplay came from the practised hand of hit playwright and novelist Catherine Turney, a woman regularly hired by Warner Bros for the films of Davis and her other great rival, Joan Crawford. I’ve written an essay on the subject which you can find here:  http://www.offscreen.com/view/double_life_part1.