Lima

Italy in the 1970s suffered a significant rise in crime, with the Mafia in Sicily, kidnappings in Sardinia, and organised crime in the major capitals, especially Rome. That's why the genre of polizioteschi was so popular at that time, because it promptly reflected the era, sometimes in an exaggerated and colourful way, sometimes keeping its feet on the ground and describing reality more truthfully. This film belongs to the latter. It deals with the impotent laws, the tied hands of the police, the consideration of reinstating the death penalty, self-appointed judges from among the people who are not far from lynching, etc. There are also frequent exemplary executions at the hands of the so-called "anonymous police" and the struggle of a principled commissioner (the excellent Salerno) against these killings and law enforcement at the hands of someone other than the police themselves. No wonder the commies were so keen on showing this film in cinemas, because it "held up a mirror to the rotten capitalist society", as the Red ideologues of the time liked to say and the TV announcers repeated like a mantra before every similarly oriented film.

Solid handmade production design, still without digital crap (understandably), interspersed with simple eight-bit graphics here and there, but otherwise terribly confusingly told. It lacks a dramatic arc, a more capable writer, and the characters act like idiots at times. The fact that this film opened the door to Hollywood for Emmerich proves that, in the eyes of studio bosses, they don't care about a meaningful script and skillful storytelling, they’re looking for craftsmen who know how to deftly manage budgets, preferably to save money without visual compromise, in other words, a lot of bang for the buck. I can't deny Emmerich one thing: his films always look more expensive than they actually cost.

This film is interesting mainly for two reasons: it’s one of Quentin Tarantino's main sources of inspiration, and then because it’s not at all similar to Mario Bava's previous films, but rather you can feel the influence of his son Lambert. That's why it doesn't play on atmosphere, but rather on the constant fear of death of two kidnapped people, and it's closer to pure exploitation than to the poliziotteschi genre, thanks mainly to the two-meter tall George Eastman's antics (the scene when he forces a woman to urinate standing up in front of the villains is physically unpleasant). There’s no explicit violence except for one single scene, rather psychological terror, stemming from verbal assault and the constant fear of the two kidnapped women that the bandits will later forcibly get rid of them. The fact that the camera does not leave the interior of the car for about seventy per cent of the film's runtime also creates a cramped mood. The final unexpected twist is excellent, but otherwise it does not make a major imprint on the viewer's soul. I like Bava’s previous films better.

We live in a time when mainstream film production is mostly fucked, with Hollywood eating itself with remakes and remakes of remakes and digital versions of new classics, cinemas deploying mostly overblown CGI coloring books (the more effects in the battle of Marvel and DC Comics, the better, and the Transformers get their due too). Only some of the horror and indie scene has retained its charm – I'm not at all fond of this direction cinema has taken over the last decade. I guess I'm getting older and I don't keep my finger on the pulse of the times (and mostly I don't want to), so films like this are a balm for my soul. A slowly, deliberately told story, with impeccable direction of the actors, yet the central theme of the apocalypse is approached in a novel, refreshing way – we don't see it, but we feel it through the dialogue, even as the surroundings go on with their normal rituals. I've always understood and liked Stanley Kramer's films. Paraphrasing Mozart: "Stanley, your fellow knuckleheads understand you." :o)

A gem pulled from Cinemaggedon. Dumb entertainment created just to show 30 beauty pageant winners from all over the world parading around in their swimsuits. The first half is alright. Through overlapping dialogues, surprisingly sprinkled with one funny line after, it deals with the founding of the Health and Exercise magazine, its business plan and finally the idea to create something like a beauty and health centre in a place called Health Acres. In the second half, there's a 10-minute swimsuit workout, beauty pageant winners – couples in swimsuits – parading around with flags in a stadium like at the Olympics, parties attended in robes and underwear (probably healthy), and guests forced to exercise as part of the daily routine to keep fit and eternally young. Simply, a cult of beauty and youth as a religion and overall one big 80-minute movie oddity.

Average poliziotteschi. It's spectacular to the eye, lethally paced, there's always something going on, action after action after action, but it's all so shallow and superficial. Moreover, I had a decent déja-vu during the training of the commando – something I’d already seen in two other polizioteschi films. The direction is not very inventive and some scenes border on unintentional naivety. The performances are truly awful at times, including Marcel Bozzuffi, who had charisma but was not a great actor by any means. It’s a kind of consumer product, a film made to order in the fashionable trend of Italian cinema of the 1970s.

A screenwriting masterclass. A fantastic slap in the face of the greedy capitalist system of hard-core, savage financial jungle led by scummy Gordon Geckos, an economy without regulation and feedback controls. No other film in the last 10 years has shown better how the invisible hand of the market is ripping our asses off, that a few individuals can profit handsomely from your misery thanks to the greedy policies of the banks, that we are somehow to blame for everything, thanks to our indifference, and that everything will be borne financially by the common folk of the middle and lower classes. And as the closing credits show, history unfortunately repeats itself and will continue to repeat itself as long as man lives.

Poster tagline: DEEP INTO SPACE THEY STREAK... PLUNGING INTO A LIMITLESS WORLD OF FEAR AND EXCITEMENT... CHALLENGING THE VAST UNKNOWN IN MAN’S MOST PERILOUOS UNDERTAKING!!! I had a hunch that Siodmak was behind this rather tedious affair. It rides on the popularity of Destination Moon, including the serious scientific approach that turns into something Red Dwarf would poke fun at. So for an hour of the 80-minute runtime, we watch the serious preparation of three astronauts before going into space, including a centrifuge simulating gravitational overload (which can also be seen in the Bond film Moonraker with Roger Moore), but the whole thing is terribly dry and uninteresting, with four interior rooms alternating with occasional period shots of the technology of the time, plus a love plot for the ladies. What I appreciate, though, is the depiction of the spacecraft’s launch. They may be edited shots from the launch of V2 missiles, but at least the astronauts don't take off in leather jackets with a bag on their heads (like in the contemporary Rocketship X-M or When Worlds Collide), and there are even folding seats, allowing better fixation during overload. But then even Mr. Grygar's hair would fall out in horror, because they catch meteors by simply flying close, opening the door of the rocket and grabbing the meteor like a tennis ball in the hand. But this naivety is simply a product of the times, nothing that would disturb a seasoned viewer of science fiction today :o)

Poster tagline: SUDDENLY, IN THE MYSTERIOUS HEART OF THE AMAZON, YOU'LL SEE A DINOSAUR BATTLE TO THE DEATH, A FRESHLY HATCHED TYRANNOSAURUS, A SEA SERPENT EMERGING FROM THE DEPTHS OF A LAVA LAKE, CARNIVOROUS PLANT TRAPS AND SPIDERS STALKING HUMAN VICTIMS!!! One would almost like to say that the period poster sums it all up nicely, but of course the reality is a bit different. First of all, this is not a full-fledged adaptation of Doyle's novel, but rather a one-off with the simple effects offered by the golden age of Hollywood. The first act, when the action is interspersed with real shots of the Amazon, slightly gives the impression that we are simply "there", in the heart of a massive jungle, but the rest is purely studio work – i.e. models of rocks, trees, flora and iguanas and one small alligator with bone ornaments glued to their bodies to look like prehistoric lizards. When the camera picks them up, they crawl among models of trees, which they knock down, but otherwise I can't say a bad word against the effects – especially the rear/front projection – they look quite nice and believable for their time; in short, the higher budget must have had some effect. There's also a "battle of the dinosaurs", i.e. an alligator and an iguana biting each other frenetically, a prehistoric savage with tons of make-up and her savage tribe mates, love and hate between two members of the expedition (one played by a star of the time, the charismatic Michael Rennie), an eccentric scientist, a giant spider in front projection, and that's about it. Admittedly, even reading a comic strip in ABC magazine gave me more of an experience and insight into Doyle's seminal work, but I won't be mad at this film for that, it was quite an enjoyable watch.

I haven't seen such a visually sophisticated film in a long time. And so bizarre. Ken Russell was original in every way, his films were a genre unto themselves, probably closest to the label gothic horror, mixed with visual ideas as if from the work of Alejandro Jodorowsky. In the first half, the action is on the sidelines, with an obscure panopticon of horny nuns, the Mother Superior with a hunchback who dreams of the penis of the head priest (brilliantly played by Oliver Reed), who sexually pleasures his flock from all walks of life in the fantastic backdrop of the fictional French town of Loudon (the film must have been terribly expensive). The rest of the film, when the holy inquisition starts working, is a truly dark spectacle (in the manner of Witchhammer) and the scene of the devil exorcising the naked nuns will haunt my mind for a long time. At times it was too bizarre, even for me. Such a bold artistic vision wouldn't be possible today, I don't know any film studio that would risk financing something like that.