King Kong (1933)

Every legend has the basis of truth. Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) needs to finish his movie and has the perfect location – faraway Skull Island. But he still needs to find a leading lady. This is Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) who’s done a little extra work but has never played a large role. She has a romance aboard Captain Englehorn’s (Frank Reicher) ship the Venture with John Driscoll (Bruce Cabot). No one knows what they will encounter on this island but once they reach it they find terrified natives seemingly worshipping a giant and the beast now has Ann in his sights and she is quickly kidnapped. Carl and John have to make their way through the jungle looking for Kong and Ann, whilst avoiding all sorts of prehistoric creatures and once successful they determine to transport Beast back to New York City to publicise their new movie … Women don’t mean to be a bother. Gorgeous, eerie and inventive, with a fairytale theme that resonates through the ages, this is a classic of Pre-Code Hollywood and is so clever in its structure:  before she ever encounters Beast, Ann is filmed rehearsing her potential reaction to a monster, so we are always present in the moviemaking process and the notion of predatory males hangs over the story like a fug. A warning about civilisation, greed and Hollywood itself, this is one of the most brilliant, beautiful and tender films ever made. Directed by Merian C. Cooper (the miniatures) and Ernest B. Schoedsack (the dialogue scenes) although neither is credited; with magical stop-motion effects by Willis O’Brien and an original story by Cooper and Edgar Wallace, with uncredited rewrites by James Ashmore Creelman who was working on The Most Dangerous Game (also starring Wray) at the time; with a final rewrite by Ruth Rose, who was Schoedsack’s wife.This is notable for the first proper original Hollywood movie score, composed by Max Steiner.  It was beauty killed the beast

IT Chapter Two (2019)

I can smell the stink of fear on you.  Defeated by members of the Losers’ Club, the evil clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) returns 27 years later to terrorise the town of Derry, Maine, once again and children start disappearing. Now adults, the childhood friends have long since gone their separate ways and are scattered over the US. Town librarian Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa) calls the others home for one final stand. Bill Denbrough (James McAvoy) is a successful mystery novelist in Los Angeles married to successful actress Audra Phillips (Jess Weixler). Like the others he is haunted by what happened but mostly because he has forgotten or blocked things from his mind – he sought revenge for the loss of his little brother Georgie. His on-set issues with the director (Peter Bogdanovich) of and adaptation of one of his novels arise from the ending which nobody likes, not even his wife, who’s been lying to him for years. Bespectacled and foul-mouthed Richie Tozier (Bill Hader) has become a successful stand-up comic in Los Angeles.  The overweight little boy Ben Hanscom (Jay Ryan) is now a handsome successful architect living in Nebraska. Hypochondriac Eddie Kaspbrak (James Ransone) is a risk assessor in NYC and his marriage to Myra seems to mirror his relationship with his mother. Georgia accountant Stanley Uris (Andy Bean) cannot bear the idea of a return to the town because he is simply too afraid. The group’s only girl Beverly Marsh (Jessica Chastain) is a successful fashion designer whose violent marriage replicates the bullying she endured as a child. Damaged by scars from the past, the united Losers must conquer their deepest fears to destroy the shape-shifting Pennywise – now more powerful than ever… You know what they say about Derry. No one who dies here ever really dies. The second half of Stephen King’s IT has a lot to overcome 2 years after the first instalment and 29 years after it was brought to the TV screen in a mini series. Burdened by over-expectation, hype, and a (mis)cast lacking chemistry, this sequel to the beloved and hugely successful first film aspires to the condition of Guillermo Del Toro movies for some percentage of its incredibly extended running time and wastes a lot of it delving into the past in several rather unnecessary flashback sequences in which some transitions work brilliantly, others not so much. However the mosaic of personal history and occasional flashes of insight accompanied by some black humour restore the narrative equilibrium somewhat even if we all know this is not really about some clown-spider hybrid living in the sewer beneath a small town in Maine. Bill’s arc with his writing is a metaphor for the need to find an ending to a lifetime of latent fear for all the protagonists (it hasn’t stopped him being a bestseller). Grappling with the psychological impact of trauma, child abuse and guilt, this movie is all about burying their root cause:  way to avoid therapy, dude. Surely Pennywise is the ultimate recidivist in a movie where home is a word not just to strike fear but actually has to be carved into someone’s chest rather than being uttered aloud. This is a group of adults who notably have not reproduced.  In the attempt to join up all their experiences coherently there is a ragged logic but it tests the viewer’s patience getting there and after a protracted standoff with Pennywise there is a partly satisfying conclusion where the past has to be physically revisited and replayed, even if the film never reaches the emotional depths or charm one would expect, perhaps because the reality of Pennywise is not more artfully probed:  those character threads are left fraying at the edges. A delight lies in seeing author King playing the pawnbroker selling Bill his old bike and refusing Bill’s offer to sign his novel  – because he doesn’t like Bill’s endings. It could be King’s comment on half the films he’s seen adapted from his own books, especially relevant in a movie that quotes The Shining. Adapted by Gary Dauberman and directed by Andy Muschietti.  You haven’t changed anything yet. You haven’t changed their futures. You-you haven’t saved any of them

Venom (2018)

You know for a smart guy you really are a dumbass. TV investigative journalist Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is trying to take down Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), the notorious and brilliant founder of the Life Foundation who is constantly announcing new supposedly life-enhancing initiatives.  Eddie opens up confidential files belonging to his district attorney fiancée Anne Weying (Michelle Williams) which causes her to lose her job and leave him. He is fired by his TV station for his impropriety. While investigating one of Drake’s experiments in symbiotes (aliens merging with humans), Eddie’s body merges with the alien Venom – leaving him with superhuman strength and power. Twisted, dark and fuelled by rage, Venom tries to control the new and dangerous abilities that Eddie finds so puzzling and yet so intoxicating but Drake sends out his team to ensnare him… Do you ever feel like your life is one monumental screwup? How bad is this? Perhaps it should have been called Contempt if that misnomer wasn’t already the title of a classic of French cinema. Dreadful acting (Hardy is no movie star, just a terrific actor prone to insane levels of idiot savant mugging way too early here, tipping us off about the high comedy to come), terrible writing, stupid plotting and lazy presumptions. It takes about forty minutes or so for this film to finally find its feet as a satirical fantasy by which time I had found myself wondering how many more superhero movies can deal with silly sloppy seconds, bizarre virtue signalling in diversity casting (this year’s Elon Musk avatar is played by a Pakistani) and dumb allusive socio-cultural commentary including a leading lady dressing like Britney circa Baby One More Time. However once Eddie is hilariously taken over by The Host I was moved to think about the magnificently bad Saoirse Ronan movie of that name; the fourth level of jihad (‘feast upon the infidel as would a parasite upon a host’) which of course is all about the Islamic takeover of the white world; and the edicts of mindfulness (proto-neo-liberal zealotry extolled by Google’s Jolly Good Fellow along with all other Big Tech surveillance monsters); and it was then that I realised that this is in fact an expertly crafted warning about all sorts of contemporary ills:  mass immigration, uncontrolled technology, globalisation, narcissism, unsupervised pharmaceutical experiments and endless superhero movies. Obviously it’s set in Northern California, the boomer and millennial nightmare running the world. It’s dark and Blade Runner-y, as if we needed reminding that Philip K. Dick was telling us all about fifty shades of surveillance for at least forty years in the last millennium. This, then, is what happens to the universe when you’re busy buying Starbucks coffee and checking your iPhone and doping yourself with anti-depressants that persuade you that totalitarianism is okay while disinhibiting your urge to protest, and scarfing medical marijuana which is the real cure for your paranoia about the internet, and, you know, there’s nothing wrong with anything, it’s your attitude to it that needs to be corrected because you’re pathological and everything Mark Zuckerberg does may not be ethical but by crikey it’s legal! Be afraid, suckers. Make the new the primary focus of your life. Jeff Pinker & Scott Rosenberg and Kelly Marcel adapted the Marvel characters created by Todd McFarlane and David Michelinie and it was directed by Ruben Fleischer, responsible for an outing called Gangster Squad, a production that was so hypnotically awful I forgot what it was about while I was watching it (mission accomplished) to the point that I lost the plot and practically lost the will to live. Is it me? Even Jesus Christ himself would say, Enough. Get it over with. Crucify me, guys. Instead we have expertly crafted lines like, God has abandoned us… I won’t. And the voice inside Eddie’s head that tells him, Your world is not so ugly after all.  And Anne finds that power is indeed a bit of a sneaky thrill: Oh  no! I just bit that guy’s head off!  Sheesh. Maybe this works after all, Spider-Man in reverse. Like civilisation, this is poisoned.

La Belle et la Bete (1946)

Children believe what we tell them.  Jean Cocteau’s masterful interpretation of the classic fairytale proved hugely influential on a certain Walt Disney – this is a film of actual moving parts with arms holding candelabra, illuminating and grasping. The tale of thwarted masculinity transformed by the love of a young woman finding her own way as she searches for her father starts out as a story of the quotidian but magic lies beneath:  the crystallising of the term magic realism. A truly beguiling fantasy, beautifully staged and intriguingly performed by Jean Marais as the monster/prince and Josette Day as Belle, this is a shimmering post-war dream of ornamentation and desire, a sensual miracle of cinema, a poetic exegesis on the liberating power of love. Co-directed by René Clément. How will I find my way home? I got lost in the forest

Rampage (2018)

What are you, some kind of international man of mystery? Primatologist Davis Okoye (Dwayne Johnson) a man who keeps people at a distance but shares an unshakable bond with George, the extraordinarily intelligent, incredibly rare albino silverback gorilla who has been in his care since he rescued the young orphan from poachers in Africa. They joke in sign language. A rogue genetic experiment gone awry in outer space with the deadly pathogen falling into wildlife parks in California and Florida and mutate this gentle ape into a raging creature of enormous size. There are other similarly altered animals – starting with a grey wolf who takes out the soldiers sent to kill him. As these newly created alpha predators tear across North America, communicating via sonar and destroying everything in their path, Okoye teams with discredited geneticist Kate Caldwell (Naomie Harris) to secure an antidote, fighting his way through an ever-changing battlefield to halt imminent catastrophe commencing among the skyscrapers of Chicago.  Luckily his training in Special Forces gives him the ability to confront the dangers they face but he must also save the now fearsome creature that was once his friend….. Of course – a wolf that can fly!  Or, gorilla goes ape, in this interspecies mutant/hybrid cross between King Kong and Godzilla only it’s neither as serious nor as silly as those classics. The third collaboration between Johnson and director Brad Peyton (which presumably qualifies as a kind of auteurist effort) this starts in a space station with a giant rat, an explosive scene sequence which used up a lot of the FX budget and shards of an exploded rocket with this dangerous pathogen wind up all over the shop, as you do. Hence the shonky CGI mayhem. Jeffrey Dean Morgan turns up as a good ol’ boy Other Government Agent (I always knew they existed) and after their plane is wrecked by a growing George, he and the big friendly giant (The Rock) and Harris go after the brother and sister gene manipulator team (Malin Akerman and Jake Lacy) responsible for this lunatic experiment. Adapted from an Eighties video game, by Ryan Engle and Carlton Cuse & Ryan J. Condal and Adam Sztykiel, this is never quite as fun as it should be but you might just shed a tear from that rheumy worldweary eye at the fight to the death. If animals hate you they eat you. You always know where you stand

Joy to the World 1984

The Gremlins (1984) sing a Christmas carol!

The Reptile (1966)

Half woman – half snake! England in the early twentieth century. Harry Spalding (Ray Barrett) inherits his brother Charles’s cottage in Clagmoor Heath following the man’s mysterious death. He moves in with his new wife Valerie (Jennifer Daniel). They are not welcomed by any of the locals save for the publican Tom Bailey (Michael Ripper) who tells him Charles died of the Black Death. The local crazy Mad Peter (John Laurie) may be the only person who knows what’s going on:  a Malayan curse has turned the daughter Anna (Jacqueline Pearce) of Dr Franklyn (Noel Willman) into a snake woman… You’re like your brother – obstinate! With a screenplay by Anthony Hinds (as John Elder), this was filmed by director John Gilling back-to-back with The Plague of the Zombies for Hammer and it shares its elegance and controlled atmosphere (and some of its major cast and sets) but let’s face it, it’s fairly silly. The actors are splendid – particularly Pearce as Cobra Girl and Laurie as Mad Peter, with Ripper great as ever – and there’s a flavourful score by Don Banks, making this a most enjoyable excursion into mind control with some terrific set pieces. This was cut to avoid an ‘X’ rating and was then passed in full in 1994.  If you take my advice you won’t live there

 

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

Do you know what good ol’ Jack Burton always says at a time like this?  Hard-boiled truck driver Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) gets caught in a bizarre conflict within and underneath San Francisco’s Chinatown. An ancient Chinese prince and Chinatown crime lord Lo Pan (James Hong) has kidnapped a beautiful green-eyed woman Miao Yin (Suzee Pai) engaged to marry Jack’s best friend Wang Chi (Denis Dun).  It happens right before their eyes at the airport just as she sets foot on American soil. Jack must help his friend rescue her before the evil Lo Pan uses her to break the ancient curse that keeps him a fleshless and immortal spirit but has to battle old Chinese gangs, a 900-year old sage, an ancient army, sorcery and a monster in a labyrinth… Only a dream can kill a dream. John Carpenter revels in macho self-mockery, dumb heroics and Chinese tropes (or clichés) in this kung fu comedy thriller with Russell gleefully playing hard as the wisecracking bozo trucker who just has to help out his friend especially if it means getting the other girl in the picture, Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall) who brings to mind Hawksian heroines. W. D. Richter adapted the original 1880s-set western written by Gary Goldman and David Z. Weinstein and turns it into a rambunctious modern genre-bending martial arts fantasy with tongue set firmly in cheek, much in the style of Raiders of the Lost Ark. This doesn’t let up until the final frame – and even that promises more action! Russell is ideally cast in a role which director Carpenter described as a sidekick who thinks he’s the leading man. Great, daft fun. Take what you want and leave the rest – just like a salad bar! 

Army of Darkness (1992)

If I get the book, you send me back.  After that, I’m history.  Ash (Bruce Campbell) is transported back to medieval days, where he is captured by the dreaded Lord Arthur (Marcus Gilbert) and enslaved with Duke Henry the Red (Richard Grove) and some of his men. Aided by the deadly chainsaw that has become his only friend, he is recognised by Wiseman (Derek Abercrombie) as the saviour who’s dropped from the sky.  So he is sent on a perilous mission to recover the Necronomicon or Book of the Dead, a powerful tome that gives its owner the power to summon an army of ghouls. Wiseman advises that he must say the words Klaatu Barada Nikto to safely get the book. However, Ash forgets the last word and an army of the dead resurrects to attack Arthur fortress and recover the Necronomicon. … My name is Ash and I am a slave. Close as I can figure, the year is thirteen hundred A.D and I’m being dragged to my death. It wasn’t always like this, I had a real life, once. A job. The third installment of the parodic Evil Dead series, this can be summed up as a cross between A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and Jason and the Argonauts. Our reluctant hero Campbell is as compulsively watchable as always in a script by director Sam Raimi and his brother, Ivan Raimi.  Aided and abetted by the wondrous Sheila (Embeth Davitz) who is rendered undead Bride of Frankenstein-style following their romantic interlude, he battles live and skeletal alike assisted by his trusty saw, earning his enemy’s respect by killing monsters in a pit and rising to the challenge of this kinetic military onslaught.  Daft and funny, this is agreeable stuff with an ending straight out of Planet of the Apes. As you were.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1959)

To think at a moment like this I’ve no pad and pencil to record it all! Edinburgh geologist Oliver Lindenbroook (James Mason) and his assistant Alec McEwan (Pat Boone) set off on an expedition to the center of the earth. Following directions found in an inscription hidden in volcanic rock, the explorers travel to a volcano in Iceland to begin their journey. Along the way, a widow of a famous scientist Carla Goteberg  (Arlene Dahl) and an Icelander Hans Belker (Peter Ronson) join their party. However, the treacherous terrain and prehistoric monsters are not their only concern when rival scientist Count Saknussemm (Thayer David) is on their trail… With Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch adapting Jules Verne, you know you’re in for a humdinger action adventure fantasy and so it proves, with Mason returning to the author a few years after giving us his anguished Captain Nemo. Even Pat Boone warbling My Heart’s in the Highlands can’t deter us from enjoying monsters, subterranean flora, romancing Scots, an underwater ocean, a rumbling volcano and being sucked into the magnetic vortex that is the core of Earth itself with Dahl going through a virtual orgasmatron at the climax. Quite fabulous. Directed by Henry Levin with a score by Bernard Herrmann.