Carrie

US | 1976 | Directed by Brian De Palms

Logline: An introverted teenager, harassed by her mother and humiliated by her classmates, finally unleashes her deadly telekinetic powers. 

I still vividly remember as a boy, the film poster key art with Carrie’s name in averted comas, slightly pixilated and undulating in huge letters with Sissy Spacek’s wide-eyed expression, her body and face drenched in blood. As far as I was concerned it looked like a truly adult horror film up there with The Exorcist (1973). Several years later it was among my early “adult” movie experiences on VHS.

Carrie was Stephen King’s first novel, and he sold the movie rights for just $US2500. It was a huge box office success for Brian De Palma, making over $US30m (made for less than $US2m). It made King a household name, and stars of Sissy Spacek and John Travolta, and provided Piper Laurie with her first big screen role since The Hustler (1961)! 

Carrie celebrates its 40th anniversary at this year’s Sydney Underground Film Festival and although the high school antics and dialogue of the students has dated (including actors who are obviously much older than the characters they’re playing), the movie still commands a strong sense of dread and foreboding, and it sports a terrific visual flair, both elements De Palma has always been able to elicit so well in his movies. 

Carrietta White is an outsider, a wallflower ruthlessly teased and taunted by her bullying peers at school, especially that super pretty, real nasty bitch Christine Hargensen (Nancy Allen). We see poor, naive Carrie suffering horribly in the girls’ chasing rooms, “Plug it up! Plug it up!”, while later at home Carrie’s sociopathic, religious fanatic of a mother, Margaret (Piper Laurie), almost terrorises the poor girl with guilt and shame, “I can see your dirty pillows!”

Well-meaning Susan Snell (Amy Irving, who years later would marry Stephen Spielberg) orchestrates it so her own boyfriend Tommy Ross (William Katt, who years later would become The Greatest American Hero) will take Carrie to the prom as a kind of perverse act of goodwill. But Christine and her dumb boyfriend Billy Nolan (John Travolta) plan to completely humiliate Carrie in front of the whole senior school.  

Margaret (Piper Laurie) forbids Carrie to go to the prom. But Carrie is determined, her sight blurred by the rose-coloured lenses of a boy’s false heart and fake intentions. There are demons at work. The Devil is at play. Carrie harbours a dark and troubling secret, and soon enough the whole town will know her name, feel her wrath. 

The movie’s opening scene the high school girls run naked in slow motion through the gym changing room while Carrie showers. It’s slightly bizarre as it unfolds, the viewer feeling a tad uncomfortable, there’s something not quite right. De Palma has always possessed a lurid fascination with voyeurism (he filmed the scene twice, one with full nudity and one with underwear worn, as he anticipated – correctly – that the film would eventually end up on Network television), and many his early movies demonstrate the power and vulnerability of the act of watching vs. the act of seeing. 

Carrie notices she is bleeding, menstruating. She is shocked, she is a late developer. This visual symbolism of innocent blood spilled juxtaposes beautifully with the evil blood spilled at film’s end, as well as providing the crucial key to Carrie’s burgeoning telekinetic power, itself linked to her sexuality.

Later during the movie’s climax Brian De Palma utilises a split-screen technique, a device he’d first used to great effect in his earlier movie Sisters (1973). It is both distracting, yet highly potent in creating a sense of disorientation, but also a sense of omnipotent menace and destructive immediacy. He has frequently been criticised for copying Alfred Hitchcock’s methods of cinematic suspense and eye for composition. In Carrie, and many of his other movies, this familiarity of mise-en-scene and use of suspense is apparent, but there is a dark, lurid and palpable quality to De Palma’s visual style which is all his own. 

The performances of Spacek and Laurie (who was Oscar-nominated), shine with malevolent glow. As mother and daughter, its a kind of dual-edged sword. It’s not Travolta’s best work (his role is a little thankless and peripheral if anything), and certainly Nancy Allen and some of the other support actors aren’t up to the same calibre as Sissy and Laurie, but De Palma makes sure his directing technique becomes a star in its own right; Margaret’s final confrontation with her daughter is a harrowing set-piece worth the price of admission alone.  

Carrie does not follow Stephen King’s brilliant novel faithfully, nor is it De Palma’s most accomplished work (Blow Out, Scarface, and Dressed to Kill are my personal favourites), but for late night popcorn and beer thrills, chills and spills, watching curiously familiar actors in much younger days, it’s a damn bloody treat, a black comedy even, and not to be missed on the big screen!

The digitally-remastered 40th anniversary screening of Carrie is at the tenth Sydney Underground Film Festival, Saturday September 18th, 10pm, Cinema 1, The Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 

The Fly

US | 1986 | Directed by David Cronenberg

Logline: A maverick scientist invents teleportation, but after an experiment goes wrong he slowly starts to mutate into a human-fly hybrid.

 "I'm saying I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it, but now that dream is over and the insect is awake."

In the world of nightmare cinema Cronenberg’s embrace and melding of sf concepts and visceral horror are unique and brilliant. His remake of The Fly (1950) is no exception, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this week. While some critics would accuse Cronenberg of trying to turn something truly base and repulsive into high art, the movie turned out to be the most financially successful and critically acclaimed movie of his career (it won an Oscar for Best Special Effects), and it also features a career performance from Jeff Goldblum.

Screenwriter Charles Edward Pogue originated the idea of doing a remake of the classic B-movie. When Cronenberg came onboard (after aborting from the Total Recall project he was set to direct), he made extensive re-writes, including changing the characters and re-writing all of the dialogue, but he retained Pogue’s central “fusion” and gradual mutation concept, and most of the plot points, and infused a wonderful edge of black humour.

Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) is an incredibly talented, but eccentric scientist. He lives alone in a warehouse space in a rundown building. Whilst at a convention he’s badgered into doing an interview by ambitious science journalist Veronica (Geena Davis). Brundle agrees, but only if he can show her his Big Secret, something that will change the world as they know it. The chemistry is obvious. They arrange for Veronica to document Seth’s experimental process.

When Veronica’s magazine editor Stathis (John Getz), and sleazy ex-boyfriend, finds out the kind of story she’s sitting on he interferes and starts making demands. Brundle becomes jealous of Stathis lurking in the background, and in a drunken moment alone he makes a rash decision, which results in a very serious consequence at the genetic-molecular level. What begins as superhuman strength and a ferocious libido is soon overwhelmed by “insect politics” and sub-human instincts.

There is a genuine bond between Goldblum and Davis (they became long-term partners during the making of the movie), and Getz plays the third fiddle as solid support. The special effects makeup work by Chris Walas is amazing for the time (Walas would go on to direct a lame, entirely unnecessary sequel). The physical degradation of Brundle is something in itself, right up to the animatronic monster, but also of note are the gore effects (the snapped wrist in the arm wrestle scene is a wince-inducing stand-out). A scene in the shooting script which was (unfortunately) never filmed had Brundlefly scoffing restaurant leftovers from a dumpster and a bag lady sees him and screams in horror and disgust. Brundlefly reacts by seizing the lady and disintegrating her head with his vile vomit, then after recoils in a moment of human realisation at what he’s just done.

David Cronenberg’s The Fly is so cleverly put together, so entertaining, and yet, so grand in its tragedy it’s almost Shakespearean. Apart from the 80s fashion and hairstyles the movie has aged very well, the production design (Cronenberg based the pods on his own Ducati motorcycle cylinders), special effects (note the revolving set, pioneered by Kubrick on 2001), the thematic content, even the basic science fiction principle is still as pertinent as it ever was, perhaps even more so in this rapidly over-congesting, technomaniacal world.

Cronenberg’s fascination with the disintegration of the body, the perversely close relationship between human and machine, the dangers of scientific experimentation, and the desire for dark adventure, are all superbly integrated in his re-imagining. Along with John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing, it is easily one of the best remakes ever produced. 

Blue Velvet

US | 1986 | Directed by David Lynch

Logline: A college student becomes willingly embroiled in the dark and dangerous world of a nightclub singer, and the psychopath who has kidnapped her husband and child.

Thirty years ago David Lynch delivered a comedy as dark as he likes his coffee, as black as midnight on a moonless night. It wasn’t seen as a comedy back then, it was perceived as a shocking neo-noir, the underbelly of small-town Middle America being slit open, its innards steaming in the smoky haze behind a seedy jazz bar. It’s a strange tale, distinctly Lynchian; the dreary normalcy of the mundane turned upside down, made perverted and grotesque. 

Blue Velvet is the kind of movie that I doubt would get made now. Certainly not funded in the same way, and certainly not with the kinds of actors who graced David Lynch’s deep crime melodrama three decades ago. Even more curious is that the executive producer, Dino De Laurentiis, had financed Lynch’s previous movie, Dune, which was a huge budgeted box-office bomb. It seems surprising Dino gave Lynch such a long leash again, but interesting to note the producer went uncredited.

Lynch was contractually obligated to deliver a two-hour movie to Dino. With his faithful editor, Duwayne Dunham (who would later direct episodes of Twin Peaks), they cut the original four-hour version down to exactly one frame shy of two hours. A few years ago, when the movie was being given the Blu-ray treatment nearly an hours’ footage of deleted scenes surfaced, long thought lost, and were included as a bonus featurette on the BD release. For some reason Lynch decided not include a couple of the most interesting lost scenes, so only a bunch of stills exist for those (first seen in the 2002 DVD release), in particular the “Look down” ear flush bathroom segment (a still of which ended up being used by media at the time), which was part of a longer scene inside Dorothy’s apartment, and a very curious “epilogue” debriefing scene with Sandy and Jeffrey at the sheriff’s department sitting at a table with a large branch/log in front of them.

Lynch’s story plays on classic noir tropes, the visual narrative uses many of the genre’s shadow play, mystery elements, while the classic femme fatale role is curiously perverted in the character of Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), who spends much of her screen time exuding a mysterious and dangerous allure, part victim, part seducer. She encompasses the movie’s title of fear and desire; of loose sexual attraction – to naïve young Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) and violent thug Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) – and freak show ("He put his disease in me!") to Jeffrey’s chaste love interest Sandy (Laura Dern) and her conservative family.

The sexual symbolism, especially the Oedipal complex, and Lynch’s burrowing orifice fetish, provides the movie with much of its grotesque fascination. From the camera probing inside the severed ear that Jeffrey finds in the grass, to the bugs and beetles - Jeffrey’s Aunt Barbara (Frances Bay) is fixated on a terminate problem – and shooting Dorothy’s face in extreme close-up, sideways, her red lipstick mouth essentially becoming a vagina. But it’s not a titillating kind of sensuality, more of an oppressive, overwhelming force, beckoning and imprisoning.  Lynch returns several times to the close-up image of flames flickering, suggesting a strange mutability echoing our lead characters.

What became most apparent on this 30th anniversary screening was the satirical tone that Lynch injects into this subversive, yet surprisingly simple thriller. He plays with the conventions of wholesome Americana (note the red, white and blue in the opening scene), daytime soap television, the conservatism of bygone eras, such as the 40s and 50s, the stilted dialogue and both wooden and hysterical performances, elements he would return to, but with greater crossover appeal and success in his masterful TV series Twin Peaks.

The enigmatic qualities of Blue Velvet are still evident, but the movie feels more conventional, a little less shocking. Certainly Dennis Hopper’s menacing, volatile Frank is still the movie’s main draw card (infamously Hopper contacted Lynch during the audition process insisting he cast him as he declared, “I am Frank!”), and in his one scene, Dean Stockwell’s high-as-a-kite Ben, steals the limelight as he mimes to Roy Orbison. It’s a shame the terrific character actors Brad Dourif and Jack Nance weren’t given more screen time.  

Blue Velvet is a movie that has aged in curious fashion, teetering on the precipice of “deep trash” - the mechanical robin with the bug in its mouth – yet its absurdist streak and nightmarish fabric keeping the soap from washing the darkness clean. 

Blood Father

France | 2016 | Directed by Jean-François Richet

Logline: An ex-con is reunited with his estranged teenaged daughter and must protect her from the relentless drug dealers who want her dead.

Link (Mel Gibson) has seen better days, a decade ago, before he did nine years for a bunch of stuff he’d probably rather forget, but he’s gonna need to call on those resources and skills soon enough. He’s passing time and making a quick buck inking cougars and wastrels from his desert trailer park. His wife doesn’t want a bar of him, his AA sponsor, Kirby (William H. Macy), lives a few trailers along, and his teenaged daughter, Lydia (Erin Moriarty) ran away a couple of years back. 

Lydia is a pretty, wayward girl. She’s gotten in over her head. Hitched up with a dodgy drug thug, Jonah (Diego Luna), whose cartel connections are very dangerous. Things go pear-shaped during a house invasion-cum-enforcement, and Lydia finds herself at wits’ end. She makes a call to daddy, who drops everything to scoop her up in his big arms. Link soon discovers his 16-year-old daughter is not the pristine apple of his eye. Just as swiftly the angry Latino lads are on the scene, and even worse, The Cleaner (Raoul Trujillo), a sicario, has his sights set firmly on Lydia, and whomever gets in the way.

Author Peter Craig (son of Sally Field) has adapted his own novel with Andrea Berloff, who recently penned the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton. It’s an absolutely cracking script with dynamite dialogue, and provides Gibson with a really strong return to form, and Blood Father is so much better than his previous attempt at a comeback, Get the Gringo. Y’know, it really is a crying shame Gibson wasn’t cast as an aging Max Rockatansky in Fury Road. But that’s another kettle of fish.

It might be American pulp fiction, but it’s a French production, and perhaps that’s why it has such a sharp, fresh edge to it. Richet is excellent at pacing and delivering blistering set-pieces. His epic two-parter, Mesrine, which starred Vincent Cassell, was one of the best crime dramas of the past ten years. He handles the violence and menace with brutal efficiency, reminding of Luc Besson and Martin Scorsese when they were at the top of their game.

It’s definitely Mel’s vehicle, but Erin Moriarty delivers strong support. I wasn’t entirely convinced at first, but she won me over. The Latino support cast are all solid, but special mention must go to Michael Parks, who plays Link’s shell-shocked, old crony Preacher. He doesn’t have a lot of screen time, but boy, he chews the scenery in blistering, leathery fashion.

Blood Father is classic genre fare, and boy is it a load of hard fun. There are some great slaps of comedy, and it’s a real pleasure to watch Mel take the bull by the horns again. Action thriller fans would be foolish not to catch this on the big screen. One of my favourites of the year. 

Hush

US | 2016 | Directed by Mike Flanagan

Logline: A deaf and mute novelist, who has retreated to an isolated house in the woods, is terrorised by a serial killer armed with a crossbow. 

First things first; the poster design and title do not provide this movie any favours. Glancing at the poster one could be confused into thinking the movie is an edgy romantic drama. Okay, maybe that’s stretching it a little, but hey, this movie deserves much, much better in both departments. But quibbles aside, the increasingly prolific filmmaker Mike Flanagan, on his third feature, delivers his most potent and tense movie yet. 

This is basic nightmare fare, plain and simple, but Flanagan isn’t trying to invent the wheel, he’s not trying to be enigmatic and weird like his first movie, Absentia, he’s not trying to be clever and twisty, like his second movie, Oculus. This is a cat-and-mouse game for horrorphiles, and it delivers in spades.

Maddie (Kate Siegel) is a novelist. She is also deaf and mute, following an infection and surgical complications when she was a teenager. She has moved into a secluded two-storey house in the woods to enable her some quality, solitary time, work on her latest manuscript, and perhaps also to escape a failed relationship. Her neighbour, Sarah (Samantha Sloyan), swings by to return her latest book, Midnight Mass, and compliment Maddie on her writing. She asks how the author comes up with her amazing endings. Maddie replies that she hears a voice in her head describing multiple endings, and she has to choose the best one. 

Sarah leaves, night falls, and Maddie is alone. She Skypes her sister, Max (Emma Graves), but is unaware that a masked intruder has snuck inside the house and has stolen her mobile phone. The Man (John Gallagher Jr.) is a psychopathic killer, armed with a crossbow, and he proceeds to make Maddie’s life a living hell. Maddie's deafness means she is severely handicapped, but the Man wants to draw out his hunting game for as long as possible, so he's prepared to let Maddie sweat bullets for awhile.

There’ll be tears before bedtime. There will be blood. 

Hush is essentially a two-hander, between Maddie and the Man, and both deliver excellent performances. Providing strong support in two small, but important roles, are Sloyan and Michael Trucco as John, a friend of Maddie’s who turns up and is confronted by the Man pretending to be a cop. 

What also elevates Hush above the usual trappings of such low-budget, single-location, small cast, fare is the violence, and the special effects used to execute it. It’s by no means a gore-fest, but the violence depicted is very realistic, and it adds a dramatic tone to the movie. This movie could easily have been derailed by special effects that weren’t convincing, but the bloodletting is done to perfection in what appears to be a nicely balanced combo of practical and CGI effects. 

Stephen King, a big fan of the director's work, Tweeted that he thought Hush was as good as Halloween and Wait Until Dark, and it’s obvious Flanagan, who co-wrote the screenplay with his lead actor (also his wife), and edited the movie, has a firm and very impressive hold on the suspense dynamics that make a top notch nightmare thriller. With a brisk eighty-minute running time Hush is seriously tense, and knows when to pack serious punch. This will no doubt end up as one of my year’s favourites. 

Baskin

Turkey | 2015 | Directed by Can Evrenol

Logline: A police squad are called in as backup to a remote and abandoned police station only to discover it is the lair to a horrific, demonic cult. 

“Hell is not a place you go. You can carry Hell with you at all time. You carry it inside you.”

Channelling the surreal, nightmarish cinema of Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci with the kind of passion only a True Believer can harness, Baskin is indeed a startling and powerful fever dream piece. The debut feature from young Turk Evrenol, based on an effective short from a few years back. What the movie lacks in plotting, it more than makes up for in atmosphere and intensity. This is, without a doubt, one of the most visceral and grotesque horror movies of recent years. But, like all great horror movies, it conjures its own tenebrous, unique beauty.

Arda (Gorkem Kasal) is the young gun in a five-man squad dining at a café resturarant, discussing all things blokey. His colleagues are Yvuz (Muharrem Bayrak), Apo (Fatih Dokgöz), Seyfi (Sabahattin Yakut), and their boss Remzi (Ergun Kuyucu). A distress call comes in from a remote township, Inceagac. They jump in their police van and head out on the rural two-lane blacktop to investigate. But, much to their confusion, the road is endless. 

Swerving to avoid a bloody figure the van ends up in a watery ditch. The policemen are bloodied, bruised and shaken, but okay. A local family on an amphibian night hunt find the dazed men a curiosity, and the young girl with the bucket full of frogs, speaks in a foreign tongue, warning the men that tonight two worlds will merge. The men walk into the adjacent woods and find the source of the distress call. An abandoned police car and a derelict station. 

Made for apparently $350,000 Baskin (which translates roughly as “police raid”) boasts impressive production values and solid performances. It’s a small cast and the entire movie takes place at night, like a true take-no-prisoners horror movie. Special mention must be made of Mehmet Cerrahoglu as Baba, the father figure cult leader. He is short in stature, but his extraordinary appearance will send shivers down the most jaded horrorphile’s spine. 

I first saw Baskin at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain last year. After the screening, at the unofficial festival bar, known as Nirvana, where all the guest filmmakers would often end up, I met the director. I was convinced the actor who played Baba was under elaborate prosthetic makeup. But Can showed me otherwise when he pointed to Mehmet sitting on a stool in the corner of the bar and encouraged me to introduce myself. I was too freaked to do so, and instead went to the bar to order another stiff drink. The movie had had that kind of effect on me, and to see Baba in the flesh, so close, was more than a little unnerving.

Baskin rests firmly on its deliberate, claustrophobic, nightmare fabric, and it’s a stylistic I am more than happy to entertain, especially when the dream logic is handled so effectively. While there is much interweaving of the time and space continuum, there are two distinct halves to the narrative; first half dealing with the police squad at the restaurant, in particular Remzi and Arda discussing disquieting memories of their youth, and the second half dealing with the police squad in the confines of “Hell”. The sense of dread that permeates the first half dovetails nicely into the peeled back extremism of their descent into a kind of Hades. It is here, in the bowels of the darkened husk of the police station, that the men are confronted by the filth and depravity of a malevolent coven, and subjected to their (our) worst fears with brutal precision. 

Baskin is a real witches’ brew, the stench of horror rising off the ground like excremental steam from the underworld. It’s a horrorphiles’ demented delight. Throw caution to the wind, leave your conventional sensibilities at the door, and slip your hand inside Baba’s clammy clasp, for he will guide you through the wretched Darkness, but squeamish beware, this “assault” will most definitely make you shudder. 

 

Baskin screens as part of the 10th Sydney Underground Film Festival, Saturday September 17th, 6pm - Cinema 1, The Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

1964 | US/UK | Directed by Stanley Kubrick

Logline: An mentally-unhinged general triggers a very possible nuclear holocaust that a war room full of politicians, officers, and joint chiefs of staff frantically try to stop.

Following the success of his adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel Lolita. Stanley Kubrick adapted the political thriller Red Alert by Peter George, bringing in the subversive mind of writer Terry Southern as collaborator. Together they created one of the most blackly comic satires on nuclear war, slyly infused with sexual innuendo, ever brought to the screen (much to author George’s chagrin). Of course, much of the movie’s controlled, yet anarchic brilliance is owed to the amazing triple threat performances of Peter Sellers. 

Like a kind of chamber piece, with essentially just three locations; Burpelson Air Force base, a B-52 bomber, and the Presidential War Room, the movie traces the attempt to prevent World War III, or, more precisely, prevent a doomsday device from being activated. Sellers plays Captain Mandrake, of the UK Royal Air Force. He also plays US President Merkin Muffley, and he plays the President’s scientific advisor, Dr. Strangelove, a happens to be a former Nazi (and still struggling with it). George C. Scott plays General Turgidson, the trigger-happy nutcase who causes everything to go pear-shaped in the first place. Slim Pickens plays Major Kong, the pilot of the Strategic Air Command 843rd Bob Wing, who first receives the “Wing Attack Plan R” order. 

There is an inherent theatricality to the whole movie, which Kubrick controls with a deft hand. The technical credits are legendary; the monochrome cinematography, especially in the War Room, courtesy of Gilbert Taylor, is stunning, Ken Adams’ production design of the War Room set is a work of art, apparently inspired by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Kubrick heightens the set’s surreal quality by shooting many of the scenes in long shot. 

Of the three roles Sellers plays it is that of Strangelove which is the most memorable. It is revealed that Strangelove’s real name is Merkwürdigliebe (which actually means Strangelove in German). He suffers from “alien hand syndrome”, and it is this affliction which provides many laugh-out loud moments, as Strangelove fights his own arm and gloved hand from reverting to Nazi-esque behaviour, such as the SS salute. Sellers is (in)famous for improvisation, and Kubrick allowed much horseplay from Sellers. Keep in mind, Sellers was paid $US1m for his role, which was over half of the movie’s budget. Famously, Kubrick exclaimed that he got three roles for the price of six. 

Indeed, Sellers almost owns the movie, or threatens to, just as he does in Kubrick’s Lolita. His natural charisma spills off the screen. The Strangelove character only has two scenes in the whole movie, the least screen time of all three of Sellers’ roles, but it is the character which defines the movie, and of course, the movie was named after the character, to the point where many critics refer to the movie, affectionately, as “Strangelove”. 

There is a legendary deleted scene, a custard-pie fight which breaks out in the War Room at movie's end. Kubrick felt the scene was simply too farcical, and would grate against the more deadpan satirical edge of the rest of the movie. In the cut scene President Muffley gets a pie to the face, and General Turgidson cries out, “Our gallant young President has been struck down in his prime!” President Kennedy was assassinated the same day as a test screening of the movie had been scheduled. 

Dr. Strangelove might well be a jet-black comedy of manners/errors, yet Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” has never felt so dramatically resonant and eerily haunting. Special thanks to Spike Milligan for that inspired suggestion. 

 

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb Blu-ray is courtesy of Madman Entertainment & ViaVision. The disc contains a wealth of extras, including featurettes on the comic genius of Peter Sellers, and the early work of Kubrick, and vintage interviews with Sellers and George C. Scott.

 

White Girl

US | 2016 | Directed by Elizabeth Wood

Logline: A college girl moves into Queens, NYC, with a close friend, and quickly becomes involved with a local drug dealer, which leads to reckless behaviour, addiction, and deep trouble. 

Leah (Morgan Saylor) and Katie (India Menuez) arrive in Queens, New York City, and begin unloading furniture and belongings into their new home in a second storey apartment. The local hoods give them the thrice-over, but the girls seem pretty streetwise. It soon becomes apparent they’re less urban savvy, and more party hungry. It’s summer, it’s hot in the city, and class is several weeks away, so it’s time to chill, smoke cones, and get funky with your new neighbours. 

Blue (Brian “Sene” Marc) and his buddies, Nene (Ralph Rodriguez) and Kilo (Anthony Ramos), hang in the street smoking blunts and dealing baggies of “white girl” (coke) to the street urchins. Leah has already been seduced by her sleazy magazine boss, where she’s employed until the start of fall semester, but now Leah wants to be more in control. Much to Katie’s initial annoyance she finds Blue and his cohorts in their living room with Leah. But it’s not long before Leah is being screwed on the rooftop by Blue, and Katie has paired off with Kilo. The partying is in full swing.

This is Elizabeth Wood’s first feature, and she’s based her screenplay on her own experiences as a student which she kept in a journal. It certainly feels autobiographical, and there is an authenticity to the characterisations that reinforces this. The most affecting element of the movie is the moral grey area of all the characters, as in real life, everyone is “flawed”, nothing is black and white. Leah is certainly naive, and she makes the same kind of mistakes many of us might have made when we were young and dumb, or even when we weren’t so young. 

The frankness in which Wood depicts her main characters is refreshing (like snorting coke off your boss's cock in a club toilet, snigger), and thankfully we're seeing more and more of this kind of real-life authenticity within the indie scene. I applaud directors, and even more the actors, who are prepared to step outside their comfort zones in order to provide a movie with a high level of authenticity. It’s not the first time we’ve seen this kind of hedonism and reckless abandon, and I’m reminded of James Toback’s Black and White, and Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen, but it’s handled with a strong sense of ownership, and lead by a strong cast. 

Morgan Saylor is terrific in the central role, with her vulnerable looks, then mischievous grin, she’s like a cross between Dominique Swain and Bijou Phillips, from many moons ago. It’s a courageous role, and demanding indeed. Equally good is Menuez. Both actors capture a curious sassiness, confident, yet fragile. The support cast are solid. 

Wood obviously relishes directing the party scenes, several of which take place in a grungy club in Chinatown, where the revellers really let their hair down. These lingering scenes certainly hammer home the excesses of Leah’s drug-pig, promiscuous behaviour, then the cab ride kick-on home in a typical post-club haze. What goes up, must come down, and down it will tumble, hard. But by the movie’s halfway mark it feels like the director is more keen to stay up in the clouds of high, than get down to brass emotional and socio-political tacks. 

Where White Girl really frays is during the movie’s third act and the seemingly rushed ending. Leah is struggling to deal with the consequences of her greed and recklessness, and she’s enlisted the aid of a curious, opportunistic lawyer (played with just the right amount of sardonic humour by Chris Noth), but the ramifications of her addiction doesn’t match the intensity of her partying. In reality the comedown would be far more gruelling, and the consequences of her actions would come back to bite much harder than they do. Wood opts for an easy way out, a rather obvious “rug-pull”. 

The epilogue, however, does make a valiant effort to reign in the hollow reality. If you’re gonna play with the bull, prepare to get stuck by the horns. Yes, there is a commentary on today’s youth culture submerged deep within White Girl, streaked with a very bitter, almost nasty sense of humour. Leah is tragic, at times pathetic even, but somehow she prizes out our empathy, and it’s a surprisingly affecting movie, but ultimately, despite all the good times, a sad one. Wood is definitely a talent to watch, and I look forward to her maturing as a director. 

Suburra

Italy/France | 2015 | Directed by Sefano Sollima

Logline: A powerful gangster intent on transforming the Rome waterfront into a new Las Vegas has involved a corrupt politician and rival mobs, but soon finds the common goal jeopardised and a war erupting. 

The new Italian gangster movie is something to behold. Last year’s Black Souls was a sumptuous, slow-burn affair, with a deep, brooding atmosphere, and a tightening screw of tension. Now another crime drama, this time with a more deliberate thriller technique, has been unleashed and its even darker, more convoluted, and packs an even bigger wallop. Suburra, which translates as “slum” and refers to the red-light waterfront district part of Rome, is the amazing new feature from a director who previously worked in television. 

Partially funded by Netflix (apparently a US tv series is set to follow) , and based on a successful novel, the story features an ensemble cast, and in classic gangster tradition, follows a series of confrontations, threats, machinations, and inevitable clashes and chaos. With terrific performances all-round, it makes for a sensational piece of neo-noir cinema. 

Malgradi (Pierfrancesco Favino) is an ambitious politican, intent on furthering his power by pushing a bill through in order to get the dream of Samurai (Claudio Amendola)’s realised; a sprawling waterfront “Las Vegas”. The Vatican Bank are also involved financially. In the opening scenes Malgradi is indulging in his penchant for high end call girls and crystal meth, a hotel room threesome that spells the beginning of the end. 

Soon there are numerous dodgy characters involved, from Sabrina (Guila Gorietti), the glamorous hooker, Spadino (Giacomo Ferrara), a gypsy pimp, Sebastiano (Elio Germano), an upper class pimp, “Numero 8” (Alessandrio Borghi), a powerful, cocky thug, Viola (Greta Scarano), his smack-addict lover, and Mandfredi (Adamo Dionisi), the volatile patriarch of the Ancacleti clan. It’s not going to end well. In fact, the movie begins with an inter-title stating “seven days before the Apocalypse” and proceeds to count down the week, as events unfold and escalate. 

Everything about Suburra is executed with style, conviction, and panache. The cast alone is a knock-out, but the cinematography, in all that sumptuous rain, is a character in itself. I’m not familiar with any of the actors, but they own their characters with aplomb. There are all the great elements we know and love about gangster movies, especially the hard-hitting violence and the intrigue and sabotage. Sollima injects a potent dose of sexuality into his tale, with his decadent hotel tryst. But there is also a sensual level imbued in the relationship between Numero 8 and Viola, a bond that will ultimately provide the movie with its sting in the tail. 

The brooding score, composed by electronic outfit M83 (chiefly Frenchman Anthony Gonzales), is the resonate atmospheric spine of the movie, especially a powerful reoccurring theme that progresses with soaring vocals. Their songs feature in numerous other movies, but here they have been the freedom to compose for the entire movie, and it works a treat. 

Suburra isn’t interested in reinventing the wheel, and the best gangster movies don’t try and fix what’s not broke. The directors of great noir thrillers and mob movies understand that these movies rely on the intelligent, effective use of its tropes and stylistics. If you fill the movie with a killer cast, design it authentically, execute the violence with no compromise, take no prisoners, and, above all, maintain that Shakespearean edge of “tragedy”, then you’re home and hosed. Sollima does this par excellence with Suburra, and, the copper-tasting icing on the cake is, he leaves you soaked in the rain, wanting more. 

Another year’s favourite, done and dusted. 

Suburra screens as part of the 19th Revelation - Perth International Film Festival, Saturday 9th July, 6.30pm & Friday 15th July, 8.45pm. 

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

2016 | NZ | Directed by Taika Waititi

Logline: A manhunt begins after a juvenile delinquent, pursued by his disgruntled foster uncle, embarks on a troublesome bushland escapade.

For his fourth feature the talented Kiwi filmmaker returns to the endearing narrative perspective of a young, cheeky Maori boy, just as he did in the acclaimed coming-of-age Boy (2010). This time it’s a broader comedic tale of shenanigans and misadventure, as Ricky (Julian Dennison), a rebellious young teenage boy, is sent to live with an eccentric foster aunt, Bella (Rima Te Waita), and her grumpy partner Hec (Sam Neill) on a farm. Fate intervenes and Ricky and Hec find themselves at the pointy end of a manhunt when a gung-ho child service social worker, Paula (Rachel House) decides the unhinged uncle has abducted the young runabout. Much hilarity ensues. 

Based on the cult yarn Wild Pork and Watercress by the late Barry Crump, a legendary Kiwi author, who wrote a bunch of semi-autobiographical novels based on his experiences as a no-nonsense man of the bush, the adaptation is seemingly set in a hybrid time, partially the late 80s (when the books was first published) and partially the present, a kind of no man’s time. It fits rather snugly. Waititi’s screenplay enables him to wax lyrical with Crump’s wilderness verse and yet still fashion what feels like an original narrative. It’s a wonderful not-quite-coming-of-age story that settles into a grand love of New Zealand’s rural geography, or, the bush, as we Kiwis affectionately call it. 

In the midst of Ricky’s grand adventure he is taking time out and watching television and sees a nature documentary featuring herds of wildebeest. Later, whilst trying to explain their own plight to Uncle Hec he references the nomadic beasts, naming Hec and he “wilderpeople”. This moment of quirky, poignant humour perfectly encapsulates the whole movie, and it is a signature Waititi moment too. 

The casting is choice, especially Julian Dennison, the nuances of his performance are superb. He plays perfectly against Sam Neill’s surly Hec, a farmer who just wanted to be left alone. And it’s alone they are. Together. Neill delivers one of the best performances of his career, in fact I’d go so far as saying it’s my favourite Neill role (after The Piano and Possession). I was actually reminded of my own late father, another Kiwi actor, in a few scenes, so it certainly tapped into something personal for me. Big props, also, to Sam Scott’s outfit Moniker for the fantastic score. 

Hunt for the Wilderpeople cleverly balances the joy of awkwardness and the clumsiness of being happy. There is a cheekiness, a naughtiness, combined with an innocence, an unpretentiousness that is innately New Zealand, and hard to put your finger on, unless you are a Kiwi yourself. In just four features, and a bunch of shorts, Waititi has nailed himself into the very grain of what it is to be native Kiwi, with all its virtues and foibles. It’s like Waititi is in a school playground with us, playing silly buggers, and we might end up having to stay in, maybe write lines, but who cares!

Among many funny and endearing moments (Waititi’s cameo as a preacher is priceless), two that keep coming back to me are Ricky catching the classic NZ Flake chocolate ad on television, and after Ricky and Hec crash through the bush in the borrowed Toyota LandCruiser - mimicking the classic television ad that featured Barry Crump and Lloyd “Scotty” Scott - they career over the top of a road as a hapless tourist, played by Lloyd Scott, is looking the other way. Gold. 

It’s hard not to be affected by all the hype. The movie has done gangbusters in the homeland, becoming the highest-grossing weekend opener and first week grosser for a Kiwi movie in New Zealand history. It’s going to become another Goodbye Pork Pie, loved the world over, Ricky will become a national treasure, Uncle Hec will have his own stamp, and Waititi will go on to direct a Hollywood superhero movie. Oh wait, hang on, that last part is already happening! Chur, bro!

Super

US | 2010 | Directed by James Gunn

Logline: After his wife falls under the influence of a drug dealer an ordinary guy becomes a superhero, but is severely lacking in heroic skills. 

Dorky Frank (Rainn Wilson) loves beautiful Sarah (Liv Tyler) and they wed in a blissful bubble soon to be burst. Sarah likes the bong and it seems she likes more what “interesting” Frank can offer. 

WHAM! 

Jacques (Kevin Bacon) steals Sarah away, seducing her with harder drugs and longer nights. Frank falls into misery and despair and in desperation he turns to God to show him the light that will back his true love. God touches Frank and presents a vision of superness. 

BAM! 

Frank takes heed from The Holy Avenger (Nathan Fillion) and transforms into Crimson Bolt! Saying “Shut up, crime!” and armed with a trusty wrench, Crimson Bolt dishes out extreme prejudice – justice – to those evil crime doers: the drug dealers, the child molesters, those who profit off the misery of others, those that butt into queues! 

THANK YOU, MA’AM! 

Super is a fantastic slap in the face for comic book fans, freakazoids, and those who like their comedy laced with toxic darkness. Gunn takes the satire bull by the horns and bites the morality bullet, then spits it back out, and says “Fuck you!” … If you follow your heart, the surface shit melts away leaving the truth exposed like a bleeding organ. Take that organ and squeeze it ‘til it hurts. Life is full of emotional pain and bitter irony, a journey where Murphy’s Law can pound you into the ground. But the “super” inside you can prevail! 

Gunn worked for the Troma camp cutting his perversive, subversive teeth and getting his hands grimy and calloused on Tromeo and Juliet. He wrote the excellent screenplay to Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead (2004) re-boot, he wrote and directed the hilarious science-fiction-horror spoof Slither (2006), and most recently delivered, arguably, the most entertaining Marvel movie yet, Guardians of the Galaxy. 

The movie’s relatively low budget (considering the cast) doesn’t hinder the movie’s intent, as Gunn delivers cleverly and economically. He elicits sensational performances from his two leads, with Ellen Page causing unexpected ripples of cosplay lust through the audience when she dons that slinky eye-mask as Frank’s sidekick, Boltie! Gunn winks at his fans by casting Michael Rooker as one of Jacques’s thugs, as Rooker was the lead in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986), the movie that apparently had the biggest impact on Gunn’s in his formative years.

Putting it bluntly, but succinctly, Super kicks Kickass’s arse! The movie’s amorality, its sly, and oh so wicked sense of humour, the graphic ultra-violence that shocks as much as it triggers satisfaction; all of it is a superb manipulation of convention and expectation. Oh, and a bang-on soundtrack to boot! Pop some corn, rip the scabs off some tinnies, roll some blunts, whatever, just leave your sensibilities at the door and get in amongst it, this is an anarchic hoot of the highest order. 

Control

UK/USA/Australia/Japan | 2007 | Directed by Anton Corbijn

Logline: The story of Ian Curtis, the singer of seminal UK indie band Joy Division, whose personal and professional troubles lead to him committing suicide at age 23.

"When routine bites hard, and ambitions are low/And resentment rides high, but emotions won't grow/And we're changing our ways, taking different roads."

It was inevitable that a biopic would be made on the short life and even shorter career of one of the most important English bands to emerge from the debris of the punk era; Joy Division, a four-piece from Manchester with a perpetually sullen lead singer by the name of Ian Curtis who had an extraordinary and inexplicable stage presence, and who wrote some of the most profound lyrics in the history of pop music.

It was perfectly fitting that the person who would champion the story of Ian Curtis (newcomer Sam Riley) and Joy Division was the man who had photographed them from the start, who had captured their steely passion and poker-faced conviction in the raw visual poetry of monochrome; sweating, staring, drawn, and driven. Anton Corbijn was instrumental in creating their Factory Records image, and in tribute he helmed his first feature, this brilliant personal study called Control.

"Why is the bedroom so cold? Turned away on your side/Is my timing that flawed? Our respect run so dry/Yet there's still this appeal, that we've kept through our lives."

Based on the book Touching From a Distance written by Ian’s widow, Deborah Curtis, and superbly adapted for the screen by Matt Greenhalgh, Control balances delicately the fevered atmosphere of Joy Division’s meteoric rise with the trials and tribulations of Ian’s crumbling marriage to long-suffering Debbie (Samantha Morton in fine form) as he juggled his inner demons, an affair with a German music journalist Annik (Alexandra Maria Lara), and his professional commitments. As much as he wanted it all, it became all too much.

Sam Riley delivers arguable one of the greatest performances of a dead rock star ever committed to celluloid; he is Ian Curtis, not so in looks, although there’s definitely a strong resemblance, but in the body language, the physicality, the nuances. Understandable Riley won numerous awards, as did Corbijn for his stunning directorial control (excuse the pun), as well as Matt Ruhe’s luminous black and white cinematography (actually shot in colour and changed in post, but it still looks fantastic).

A big pat on the back must also go Toby Kebbell as the band’s manager, and to the rest of the band actors: James Anthony Pearson, who plays guitarist Bernard Sumner, Joe Anderson, who plays bassist Peter Hook, and Harry Treadaway, who plays drummer Stephen Morris. Corbijn initially planned to have the actors mime to playback recordings of Joy Division, but after a few rehearsals it was decided the actors were proficient enough to play the songs for real, which they do, sensationally.

"Do you cry out in your sleep? All my failings exposed/And there's a taste in my mouth, as desperation takes hold/Yet it's something so pure, just can't function no more."

Control is a beautiful tragedy. It’s a known fact that Joy Division came to a crashing end with Ian’s suicide by hanging in May of 1980, just days before the band were due to fly to America for their first ever tour. In April, and again in June, of that year the band released Love Will Tear Us Apart, one of the rawest, most heart-wrenching, yet finest modern love songs ever composed. Joy Division chose not to disband; instead they soldiered on, recruited Gillian as keyboardist, and transmogrified into New Order, a brilliant outfit in their own right … yet the legacy Ian Curtis and Joy Division left on the indie music scene will remain untouchable, bordering on mythical.

Down By Law

USA | 1986 | Directed by Jim Jarmusch

Logline: When three mischievous strangers find themselves sharing the same jail cell after each being set-up, framed or simply acting in self-defence, they escape into the wilderness of the Louisiana everglades.

Maverick indie auteur Jim Jarmusch hit the nail of bittersweet irony squarely and beautifully on the head with this black and white jazz riff on unlikely friendships forged in times of despair. It is arguably one of the most egocentric comedies of the 80s, and certainly one of Jarmusch’s crowning achievements, along with his monochromatic masterstroke Dead Man and the short Coffee and Cigarettes – Somewhere in California, all of them as elusively existential as they are ristretto black in humour.

Down by Law was Jarmusch’s third feature (and the only feature he’s made with American financing) and his first using Robby Müller behind the lens. Müller, a magician of monochrome, casts the film with superb tones and textures; the weathered homes along the streets of New Orleans, to the luminescent jungle of the everglades.  This is film noir transplanted from the city and off the beaten track. It’s a fairy tale love story, but you’d never see it coming. It’s the buddy flick transmogrified. It’s a jam session of mood swings.

Zack (Tom Waits, in brilliant form) is an out-of-work disc jockey. He’s been given the boot by an irate girlfriend (Ellen Barkin, hilarious opening scene), and drunkenly takes the offer of a hot drop-off. Jack (John Lurie) is a pimp who should know better, ‘cos the jailbait and a tip-off gets him in hot water with the long arm of the law. Roberto (Roberto Benigni) is an Italian tourist who finds himself in the deep end with some thugs and ends up killing a man with a billiard ball by accident; “Eees a sad and beautifohl world.”

The three of them find it difficult coping with the claustrophobia of the tiny jail cell they’ve been thrown in. Roberto tries to lighten the mood, but only aggravates the other two who don’t want a bar of each other. The numerous scenes behind bars are some of the movie’s funniest. Each character is a wonderful contrast against the other two; the laconic posing of Jack, the languid witticisms of Zack, and the manic observations and interjections of Roberto.

The soundtrack is fantastic; incidental music provided by John Lurie, and a selection of songs (taken from Rain Dogs album) performed by Tom Waits. It fits the mood of the movie hand in glove. As does the long takes, breezy editing, and rambling narrative. Like all of Jarmusch’s work, the emphasis is less on the narrative structure as a whole and more on the individual moments that glide together.

In the movie’s second half – after an hilarious night spent in a shack where Roberto quotes famous American poet Walt Whitman – our three intrepid fugitives arrive at a small cottage. Roberto is chosen to investigate. He doesn’t return, and later Jack and Zack hear him laughing with a woman. It is here we meet gorgeous Nicoletta (Nicoletta Braschi) and it is from her humble abode that the three men will part ways.

Down by Law left such an indelible impression on me when I first saw it at the Wellington Film Festival in '86; in terms of mood, atmosphere, the nuances of character and acting, the unassuming, yet utterly poetic direction, it immediately became a personal favourite and has remained in my inner sanctum of cinema for more than twenty years. Savour it like fine boutique bourbon.

The Invitation

US | 2015 | Directed by Karyn Kasuma

Logline: While attending a dinner party at his former home, a man begins to suspect that his ex-wife and her new husband have a sinister agenda that involves all the guests. 

Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his partner Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) are driving up into the Hollywood hills, on their way to a dinner party being held at Will’s former residence, which he once shared with Eden (Tammy Blanchard). Eden now lives there with her new husband David (Michiel Huisman), having returned from two years in the wilderness. Eden is keen to reconnect with some of her dearest friends, and David is more than willing to facilitate the reunion. But there will be tears before bedtime. And there will be blood. 

Will and Kira’s drive into the affluent suburb is given an ominous sign when they accidentally hit a coyote. Will is forced to end the badly injured creature’s life with a tire iron. Kira is mortified. They relate the incident to the other guests upon arrival, much to everyone’s horror. But these things happen, all creatures die at some point, and fate’s intervention can be most cruel. 

It isn’t long before Will’s wariness gets the better of him. Eden has changed, and Will suspects she hasn’t properly dealt with the tragedy of their life together, the death of their young son. New husband David is eager to show the guests a video of the encounter group they spent time with overseas, that helped Eden deal with her grief. Sadie (Lindsay Burdge) is Eden and David’s houseguest (lover), and she is champing at the bit for everyone’s undivided attention. 

Everyone is slightly rattled by the downbeat video, and endeavours to lighten the mood. Will feels the walls closing in. Paranoia and dread will be served upstairs on the mezzanine in an hour. 

The Invitation is a fabulous example of what can be done in Tinseltown outside of the iron grip of the studios. Financed completely independently, shot for around $US1m, with terrific direction from Kasuma (I’ll forgive her for Jennifer’s Body, that was mostly Diablo Cody’s fault), a top notch cast, and a rip-snorter of a screenplay by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi that slow-burns with serious heat, culminating in a perfect ending, that reminded me of the same kind of envelope-pushing denouement from the excellent UK horror The Children (would make for a great double-feature). 

Booby Shore’s lush, fluid cinematography, the palette all olive, burgundy, chocolate, and umber, and almost entirely set within the plush pad with a garden that gazes out over Laurel Canyon, The Invitation is a brilliantly orchestrated psychological thriller seared with the nightmare tones and execution of classic horror. It’s not over until the fat lady sings, but she may never leave the green room. 

One of the reasons The Invitation works so well is the perspective is held firmly in check from Will’s point of view. It is his curiosity, his anxiety, his confusion, his sense of alarm that the audience connects with in palpable degrees. Yet, with each little twist of the screenplay, and they are small, yet quietly devastating, the bigger picture blurs, then sharpens in focus. The odd moments Will witnesses; Sadie, nude from the waits down, eyeing him from the bedroom, happy, dreamy, content Eden putting a bottle of barbiturates in her drawer, the grief counsellor’s creepy message on David’s laptop, David lighting a red lamp hanging from a tree in the garden … All these seem to be part of a dark design that tightens the screw of Will’s concern. 

It’s time to raise your glass.

It’s hard to single out best performances, but Tom Hardy lookalike Marshall-Green definitely holds fort, with Tammy Blanchard’s emotionally unhinged presence providing a great juxtaposition, and Huisman’s laidback charm is the perfect dark nemesis to Will’s burgeoning intolerance. The Invitation is Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen for the end of days, a masterful study in deceit, and definitely one of my favourite movies of the year. 

The Invitation screens as part of Tasmania's Stranger With My Face International Film Festival, Friday, 15th April, 8pm. 

Cat People

US | 1942 | Directed by Jacques Tourneur

Logline: A man marries a foreign woman who fears the curse of her ancestors, that she will turn into a panther if she kisses her husband.

Producer Val Lewton made several low-budget “horrors” for studio RKO. With Cat People he employed French ex-pat Jacques Turner at the helm, who eschewed the usual horror trappings and went for a more atmospheric look and feel, and an ambiguous tone in dealing with the movie’s themes and plot devices. It makes for a sublimely affecting drama; a tragedy torn by the talons of horror. 

Oliver Reed (Kent Smith), a naval construction engineer, meets Eastern European fashion designer Irena Dubrovna (the perfectly cast Simone Simon) at the zoo, where she discards a strangely macabre sketch she has made of the black panther. Reed flirts with her and before you can say “Meeeeeow!” they’ve fallen in love and married each other. However, Irena is afraid of an ancient Serbian curse that spells that a woman can not be kissed by a man; otherwise she will transform into a panther and kill.

Due to Irena’s intense emotional anxiety the couple does not consummate their marriage. Reed instead becomes closer to his work colleague Alice Moore (Jane Randolph) whom admits to being in love with him. Reed arranges for Irena to be treated by his friend psychiatrist Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway), but it becomes apparent Dr. Judd has an unprofessional agenda. When Irena discovers she is losing Oliver to Alice she becomes jealous and hateful. She schemes and stalks, her stealth inexorably leading her into the lion’s den. 

Oliver Reed admits to Alice that he is strangely drawn to Irena, that he has to look at her when she’s in the room, has to touch her when she’s near, yet as soon as Alice admits to her desire to be in a relationship with Reed he makes the decision that he is no longer in love with Irena; the pressing desire for sexual companionship has quashed his patience. Then when Irena becomes fully aware of Alice’s intent on Reed she unleashes her dark inner beast. It is this carnal creature that she so desperately wants not to be her nemesis, so she can enjoy what any normal woman does. 

Dr. Judd, however, sees this repressed sexuality as an untapped elixir that needs to be released. “What should I tell my husband? Naturally he’s anxious to have some word,” Irena ask him after their session. “What does one tell one’s husband? One tells him nothing,” Dr. Judd replies with quiet authority. 

Cat People is a unique study of repressed sexual desire and deep-rooted emotional upheaval. It also deals with sly deception and moral corruption. The horror of the movie is not so much the actual killing, but the fear of being consumed by something that should be so pleasurable, yet is a plague upon the senses. 

Tourneur plays brilliantly with light and shadow, the sound and editing. There are several stand-out scenes, most notably when Alice is stalked by Irena along a road at night, with just the sound of their stilettos clacking on the pavement, then quiet, then the roar of a panther is drowned out by the loud swish of a bus pulling into shot beside Alice at the roadside. The wedding reception scene in a restaurant has a great moment when another striking Eastern European woman (credited as The Cat Woman) seems to recognise Irena and says to her “Mia sestra.” Irena looks frightened and quickly makes the sign of the cross.

My favourite scene, and one that has become a classic of suspense, has Alice being stalked again as she takes a swim in an indoor public baths. Irena as a silhouetted panther growls and circles the pool while the dappled light dances feverishly across the walls and ceiling. 

Tourneur went on to direct the haunting I Walked With a Zombie (1943) and my favourite classic film noir, Out of the Past (1947), but he nailed those elements first in Cat People. It’s a classic noir-esque horror-drama, and like Don Siegel’s classic of dread and paranoia Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), it belies its meek origins, transcends the genre, and resonates with the chilling sensuality of a strange and troubling dream. 

Come and See

Idi i Smotri | Russia | 1985 | Directed by Elem Klimov

Logline: In Nazi-occupied Russia a peasant boy joins a group of partisan soldiers as they travel across a war-ravaged countryside. 

“And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.” --- Chapter 6, The Book of Revelation (The Apocalypse of St John the Divine), The New Testament

Without a doubt the most devastating and profoundly anti-war movie ever made, Elem Klimov’s semi-autobiographical account of a teenage boy unwillingly thrust into the atrocities of war in WWII Byelorussia (Belarus), fighting for a hopelessly unequipped resistance movement against the ruthless Nazi fascist forces, witnessing scenes of abject horror, as he slowly loses his innocence, inexorably loses his mind, his face eventually resembling that of a frightened old man, his soul finally a ruined sentinel. Come and See is the unfettered poetry of hell on earth.

Come and See (the literal Russian translation is Go and Look) follows adolescent Florya (Aleksey Kravchenko), a Belarusian villager, on a dark odyssey set in 1943. In the movie’s prologue he is fooling around with a young boy on the sand dunes, both pretending to be vigilant soldiers fending off the evil Germans. Florya uncovers a rifle amongst the military debris, his inspiration to fulfil a staunch patriotic stance and join the Soviet resistance. Later at his house with mother and two kid sisters the partisans arrive to collect him, much to the dismay of his mother, who has already lost her husband. 

In a forest clearing Florya is integrated with the village comrades who have formed the small ragtag resistance, but his tattered boots result in him being left behind as a reserve. Disappointed Florya wanders off and meets Glasha (Olga Mironova), a pretty, slightly older girl, who appears touched, in love with a partisan commander. Florya and Glasha spend moments together, finding pockets of beauty and laughter amidst the trees and a light rain, but a sudden bombing destroys the brief tranquility, causing temporary deafness, and sends Florya and Glasha back to his family abode where true horror presents itself, and the two teenagers are forced to flee for their lives, through a hellish swamp, and into the midst of the terrorised survivors of the village. Florya’s interpersonal nightmare has only just begun… 

Klimov wrote the powerful story many years before it was made. Taking inspiration from a novel called Story of Khatyn by Ales Adamovich, combined with his own wartime experiences, witnessing the atrocities of the Nazis, Klimov and Adamovich penned a script titled Kill Hitler. They were forced by authorities to drop the Hitler reference, even though the intent of the title was suggesting that one should kill a Hitler – demon - within you to prevent the worst. Taking their new title directly from The New Testament’s Book of Revelation, they fashioned an episodic journey of discovery and resignation, atrocity and genocide, and the screenplay was filmed in chronological order. The central character of Florya, who is in almost every scene, becomes a metaphorical vessel, the innocence that is blackened and defiled, left looking like a battered old man by story’s end. His character represents his entire people. 

WARNING! FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILERS!

In a scene near movie’s end Florya is approached by a young woman in a daze whom he had left much earlier on with the other villagers (she looks so similar to Glasha that perhaps it is Florya's memory of her superimposed). The woman’s lips are torn, blood runs down her thighs. She had had managed to escape the burning barn with her baby only to be brutally gang raped and beaten terribly. To Florya (and to the audience) she represents the ruined beauty of love and life, as Glasha had told Florya of her desire to have children. The image is seared onto the retina, just as the final moments of the movie are forever imprinted in the mind’s eye. Seeing a framed photo of Hitler, cracked, lying in a muddy puddle, Florya takes his rifle and begins firing into the picture, and as he does so WWII archival footage and images burst across the screen, playing in reverse, regressing in time: corpses in the concentration camps, der Führer congratulating a German boy, 1930s Nazi party congresses, Hitler's combat service in WWI, Adolf as a schoolboy; and finally a portrait of the infant in his mother's lap … Florya stares hard into the innocent face of the baby, eyes glazing over, staring into the camera … Into the abyss.

Captured with astonishing realism (and shot in 1.33:1 ratio), yet infused with flashes of the surreal, director Klimov’s bold statement is without a doubt the most disturbing war movie ever made. It is also happens to be one of the most mesmerising, and how it balances this contrast of aesthetics - beauty and grotesquerie - is brilliant. There is a streak of absurdist humour and clever use of irony that winks slyly at the audience from time to time, with characters often talking directly to camera as they converse with each other. There is the moody, ambient synthesizer score, and hypnotic use of Steadicam (which much of the movie was filmed with), both of which add a curious, modern sensibility, but not incongruous. Come and See is state of the art filmmaking, yet unpretentious, never once feeling contrived, or bombastic. Many of the uniforms were original, and (much to the horror of Hollywood) real ammunition was used in some scenes!

Klimov doesn’t shy from the ghastliness of war; characters are blown to bloody bits, burnt beyond recognition, and in the movie’s most harrowing, and prolonged, sequence, an entire village is forced into a wooden barn and burned alive as the Nazi soldiers and officers gather around and admire their handiwork like its an exhibition for their amusement. Everything that happens on screen really occurred. Six-hundred-and-twenty-eight villages, with all their inhabitants, were burned to the ground. The wretched Holocaust tears at the very core of humanity. In an interview Klimov stated how the sense memory of that appalling horror carried through the generations of Belarusians, making it difficult for the actors having to recreate the war crimes that destroyed their people. 

The performance of young Aleksey Kraychencko is nothing short of miraculous - apparently his hair going grey during the shoot! But I tilt my cap to Olga Mironova, and to the rest of the support cast, all of them delivering exceptional performances. Oleg Yanchenko’s stunning original music is integral to the movie’s intense atmosphere, and a few sourced pieces are used to superb effect; Strauss’s The Blue Danube, Wagner’s Tannhåuser overture, and finally, hauntingly, the Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem. The entire movie can be seen and heard as a series of funereal movements dressed with suitably sombre and sobering images and sound.

Indeed, after viewing Come and See one is never the same. It is a tenebrous and monumental work, a deeply-etched, expressionist tour-de-force, a masterpiece of cinema.

Elem Klimov never directed again. His work was done. 

Apocalypse Now

US | 1979 | Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Logline: During the Vietnam War a US captain is forced into one final mission; to locate and terminate the command of a rogue and delusional US colonel. 

“I turned to the wilderness … And for a moment it seemed to me as if I was buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets. I felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an impenetrable night.”

There are very few nightmare movies as visually, viscerally and psychologically affecting, as profoundly immediate, despite their historical settings, as Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. There has been so much said and done, so much dirty, bloodied water under the war-torn bridge of this extraordinary production, that any humble review in the wake of its questionable destruction, its primal majesty, its philosophical musings is purely grist to the mill. But a few more words scattered to the critical winds won’t hurt. This is a movie that has remained in my heart of dark delights ever since I first saw it cropped on a dodgy rented VHS with its original end credits rolling over a montage of the Kurtz compound being destroyed by what appeared to be an air-strike. It is one of my three favourite movies of all time; it is a war movie to be experienced like a “bad” acid trip, infused with dangerous awe and nightmarish wonder. 

“Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I never wanted another.”

It is 1969. Captain Willard (Martin Sheen in a career performance) is a Vietnam veteran on the edge, well-seasoned, overcooked, but craving, is plucked from his squalid hotel room in Saigon and given an important intelligence briefing by Colonels Corman (G.D. Spradlin) and Lucas (Harrison Ford): “To proceed up the Nung River in a Navy patrol boat. Pick up Colonel Kurtz's path at Nu Mung Ba, follow it and learn what you can along the way. When you find the Colonel, infiltrate his team by whatever means available and terminate the Colonel's command … Terminate with extreme prejudice.” 

On board the PBR (patrol boat, riverine) is his “streetgang”; Navy Chief Phillips (Albert Hall), Californian surfer Lance (Sam Bottoms), Bronx boy “Clean” (Laurence Fishburne, just 14 years old when filming started), and New Orleans machinist “Chef” (Frederic Forrest). Willard notes they’re “mostly kids; rock and rollers with one foot in their grave.” After a bizarre excursion accompanying Lt-Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall, terrifyingly impressive) and his air cavalry on a “Ride of the Valkyries” - “Someday this war's gonna end ...” – Willard and his crew begin in earnest their deadly mission up the Nung River into the heart of darkness … 

“I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream; that's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor ... and surviving.”

Apocalypse Now is less a conventional narrative arc, and more a series of incidents and set-pieces building toward a final metaphorical assassination. It is war as allegory, movie as experience, nightmare as expressionist deliverance. Wholly inspired by Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, a perilous journey into a quagmire of humanity, and based on an original screenplay by John Milius titled The Psychedelic Soldier, director Coppola pared everything back and then laid on the audio-visual schematics with a spade. Michael Herr was brought in to write Willard’s excellent narration. His intention was to create a spectacular adventure rich in theme and the philosophic inquiry into the mythology of war. The end result was a strange and demanding experience ahead of its time, yet distinctly of its time. 

Apocalypse Now was one of the last masterpieces of arguably the greatest decade in the history of film. Shooting began in 1976 and lasted sixteen months. Over 200 hours of film ended up in the can. The stories that floated around the production have become the stuff of legend, many of which are recounted in the brilliant companion-piece, Hearts of Darkness : A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991), made by Coppola’s wife Eleanor, who courageously documented the entire production on a 16mm camera. 

Coppola had an incredible crew working for him, chiefly cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (probably the greatest DOP working at the time), production designer Dean Tavoularis, and editor Walter Murch, who also acted – very importantly - as sound designer. It was Murch who also supervised the exceptional “Redux” extended director’s cut which was released in 2001. The main additions of which are an extension of the Playboy bunnies performance sequence (and later their amorous encounters with Willard’s crew), a lengthy French plantation sequence where Willard and crew are wined and dined by a group of colonialists led by Hubert (Christian Marquand) who expound America’s military blunders and the history of Indochina over Bordeaux and opium, and Willard indulges in a little amorous interlude of his own with the lady of the estate, Roxanne (Aurore Clément).

Carmine Coppola’s amazing score (co-composed with Francis), which utililises the Moog synthesizer to stunning effect (duplicating helicopter blades, and creating a palpable sense of menace and exhilaration) is a key character of the movie, as is the use of The Doors’ The End during the ritualistic, and climatic, killing sequence at movie’s end. A real caribou was slaughtered (as part of native custom) and the effect is truly disturbing. 

“I tried to break the spell - the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness - that seemed to draw [Kurtz] to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had driven him out to the edge of the forest, to the bush, towards the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations.”

In a rare-as-hen’s-teeth workprint (which only exists in bootleg form, and clocks in at nearly five hours) there are several notable sequences that were never included in either the original version or the Redux version. The whole movie was set to songs by The Doors, and the entire length of The End is used over the movie’s stunning opening montage sequence which features a Vietnamese prostitute sharing Willard’s bed, then abandoning him to slide into a pitiful haze. Numerous other scenes are longer or have alternated takes, most importantly, the role of Colby (Scott Glenn), the soldier sent in before Willard, who has gone bamboo. He is instrumental in Willard completing his mission, yet inexplicably Coppola decided to leave out a pivotal scene where Colby shoots dead the photojournalist, is subsequently mortally stabbed by Willard, and then encourages Willard to kill Kurtz. 

The dawn strike on “Charlie” goes on for nearly half an hour and features a musically evocative “ballet” of the choppers as they fly toward their destination. Another earlier workprint scene has Willard, in his narrow “tiger cage” being carried down to an area in the compound where Kurtz’s native followers, including Colby and Lance (who has completely lost the plot), dance and taunt Willard, and sacrifice a squealing wild pig. The workprint’s assassination sequence – set to the entire length of The Doors’ When the Music is Over -  is a very expressionist take, with much ritualistic chanting and dancing that culminates with Willard plunging a spear through a guard and a baby whom the guard has held up in front of him as defence! Willard then enters Kurtz’s sleeping quarters to deliver the final machete blow. 

The five-hour workprint is an unbridled mural of sensuous insanity, in all its unwieldy structure, its indulgent, uneven rhythms, it’s bootleg low quality. I seriously question Coppola’s decision for Redux to re-insert the plantation sequence and further scenes involving the Playboy bunnies, and yet leave out the scenes involving Colby, the photojournalist, and Willard’s complete stalking of Kurtz.

“In a war there are many moments for compassion and tender action. There are many moments for ruthless action - what is often called ruthless - what may in many circumstances be only clarity, seeing clearly what there is to be done and doing it, directly, quickly, awake, looking at it.”

Props must go to Dennis Hopper, who plays the photojournalist - “The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad”- with deranged glee, and whom was struggling in his own dark wilderness, and deeply grateful to Coppola for offering him the work. Last, but not least, Marlon Brando, who plays Kurtz, and who turned up on set with the utmost arrogance, having not read the script, nor Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (which Coppola had instructed), 40kg overweight, and threatened to quit (and keep his $1m advance). However, his presence in the movie, although often in shadow, can not be undermined by his impudence. Brando provides Apocalypse Now with a true sense of bombastic megalomania. 

“The horror! The horror!”

In any form Apocalypse Now is a masterpiece of cinema, a portrait of war as the Devil’s work; a seductive nightmare. 

The Deer Hunter

US | 1978 | Directed by Michael Cimino

Logline: Follows a group of close friends’ celebration of a wedding, the damage of war, and finally, a desperate reunion.

This is the story of a group of friends, their happiness and sorrow, their camaraderie and competition, their bond and separation, from the grey steel and concrete protection of a small town to the humid, endless nightmare of the Vietnam War … and back again. 

This is the story of how love, hope, and human frailty, amidst the cruelty and violence of combat, irrevocably changed their lives. Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter is a harrowing masterpiece, yet an undeniably beautiful movie, and one of a handful of truly untouchable American movies from the last forty years. Breathtaking as it is heartbreaking. 

Michael (Robert De Niro), Steven (John Savage), Nick (Christopher Walken), Stanley (John Cazale), John (George Dzundza), and Axel (Chuck Aspegren) are steel workers and close friends of Russian heritage in the Pennsylvanian township of Clairton at the base of the Appalachian Mountains. It is late fall of 1967. Steven is about to get married to pregnant Angela (Rutanya Alda), and he, Michael and Nick are about to head off to the Vietnam War, so the wedding is both a ceremonial celebration and a farewell. 

The narrative is divided into three very distinct acts; the wedding, the war, and the aftermath. The movie begins at dawn with the steel workers finishing their shift and heading straight to Welsh’s Lounge, their friend John’s bar, for pre-wedding drinks. Then it’s time for formalities, a traditional Eastern European wedding, which sees the friends in a rambunctious mood. In the early morning light, still in tuxedos and brandishing beer cans, the five men (minus Steven who’s ensconced in his wedding nuptials) drive up into the mountain range for a deer hunt. Later with the large buck, which Michael has shot and roped to the front of the car, the men arrive back at the bar to enjoy a final carouse. 

The second act suddenly throws the audience into the midst of a jungle combat hell as Mike, Steve and Nicky try to survive the horror of the war. They are taken prisoner by the Vietcong, caged below a riverside hut along with other POWs, and forced, one by one, to play Russian Roulette for the perverse amusement of their captors. Steven’s fragile mental state is severely tested, as is Nicky’s endurance level. Michael is the pillar of strength. But the men are eventually separated. 

Back home Michael, now a decorated Airborne Ranger, struggles to cope with reintegration. Several years have passed. Steven has also been brought back, but is in hospital and self-imposed seclusion. Nick hasn’t returned from South-East Asia. Linda (Meryl Streep), Nick’s fiancée, seeks comfort with Michael, now that he is home safe (albeit damaged goods). Michael learns from Steven that Nicky is in Saigon, and he is determined to bring him home. 

The extraordinary screenplay (which feels like its been lifted from a novel) is from a story outline by Michael Cimino and Deric Washburn (Camino claims to have completely re-written Washburn’s delivered script), and was partly based on a 1975 script called The Man Who Came to Play by Louis Garfinkle and Quinn K. Redeker, about men who travel to Las Vegas to play Russian Roulette. An arbitration dispute prior to the movie’s release secured Garfinkle and Redeker a story credit on the film. With nine nominations, including Best Actor (De Niro), Best Actress (Streep), and Best Cinematography, the movie ultimately won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Supporting Actor (Walken), and Best Sound. 

The naturalistic performances are amazing (Walken, De Niro, and Streep – who improvised most of her lines - are revelatory, and it was John Cazale’s last movie as he was suffering from terminal cancer). The storytelling is superb, Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography is stunning, especially the scenes of Michael stalking the deer on the mountainside both before and after the war. But it is Cimino’s meticulous attention to production design (the entire movie was shot on location, no big sets were built) that lifts The Deer Hunter’s game considerably. Indeed, this is one of those rare examples of everything coming together magnificently. It is a disquieting tour-de-force, an emotional tour of duty. 

It’s a demanding movie, with the wedding and deer hunt taking up nearly an hour of screen time, yet the narrative and pacing flows effortlessly. I first saw the movie on VHS as an impressionable young teen and it left an indelible impact, in visual terms definitely (especially the disturbing Russian Roulette scenes), but more importantly as being one of my very first truly adult movies in terms of the way the narrative unfolded, its tone, the emotional weight. I saw it again a couple more times in the following decades, and then again in recent years (after a long hiatus), and felt the calibre of its storytelling and themes resonated more strongly, more significantly than ever before. 

I remember, aged ten, when The Deer Hunter was first released, and seeing the large poster pasted on a street wall, the image of Michael clutching his hunting rifle perched on a rock, the title appearing strangely benevolent, almost arcane, and the censor’s rating, R18, reminding me this was a movie I would not be seeing for quite some time, and wondering to myself, if it’s a war movie, why is it called The Deer Hunter? I guess I’ll understand when I’m grown up. Sure enough, the symbolic importance of Michael as a hunter, as a soldier, as a compassionate, flawed man, really only became clear to me once I had become an adult. 

As an adolescent I was impressed by the visceral intensity of the second act (the war), and the tragedy of the third act, but the ramifications of the men’s bond and as individuals, set up in the first act, weren’t as affecting. Seeing it recently again after many years was a profound experience. I’ve changed, the movie hasn’t. The theme song, Stanley Myers’ Cavatina (performed by guitarist John Williams), is still as pivotal and haunting. Some of the movie’s subtleties and nuances that I wasn’t aware of in those earlier viewings now appeared like treasures. The choices we make define who we are, even in the face of terrible odds. 

The Deer Hunter grabs you, shakes your hand, spits at you, slaps you hard in the face, embraces you, lets you cry on its shoulder, and finally whispers in your ear, something like … Life is frivolous, life is joyous, life is fragile, life can be bitter, and life can be cruel, but life is vibrant, and life is affirming, and life … life goes on. Even after the nightmare, the inescapable tragedy and loss of war. Life goes on.

The War Zone

UK/Italy | 1999 | Directed by Tim Roth

Logline: A teenage boy, frustrated with his family’s move away from the city, struggles with his relationship with his sister, and hers with their father. 

Tom (Freddie Cunliffe) is a sullen, acne-ravaged 15-year-old with his hormones simmering. His very pretty 18-year-old sister Jessie (Lara Belmont) whom he is close with is, plays aloof and secretive. Their mother (Tilda Swinton) is heavily pregnant and their father (Ray Winstone) is stern and preoccupied, seemingly with work. The family has moved from the bustle of London to the bleak coastline of Devon and into an old farmhouse. Tom feels alienated, having abandoned his friends, and now becoming uncomfortably aware of his sister’s sexuality. Further more he senses something is not quite right in the family dynamic. 

Actor Tim Roth gets behind the camera and directs Alexander Stuart’s adaptation of his own novel, The War Zone, into a searing, emotionally devastating juggernaut that obliterates the concept of the well-adjusted nuclear family. Although there are only three scenes of violence ( a car crash, a beating, and a stabbing), none of which are graphic, The War Zone is one of the most gut-wrenching and wounding dramas ever made, as it deals with the most intimate and taboo of relationships, its inevitable exposure, and its immediate and shocking aftermath. 

The battle lines are only never drawn in this combat zone, for there will never be victors, only victims, and collateral damage. Incest between father and daughter is one of the most powerful beasts of betrayal, and The War Zone exhibits this demon as a cold stark nightmare of moral confusion. As complicated as the situation is for Jessie and Tom, the reality is simple; their father has descended into hell and is taking the family with him. The old WWII bunker on the seaside cliff top is first a crime scene, throughout a metaphor, and finally a sanctuary. 

Operating almost like a play, Stuart’s screenplay has only a handful of settings; the rural family house, the local pub, the bunker, the desolate beach, the hospital, and a London housing estate flat. Most of the movie takes place in the house, and the only notable characters outside of the family are the small roles of Lucy (Kate Ashfield), a local family friend who recognises Tom’s sexual frustration, Nick (Colin Farrell, in one of his first features), another local who Jessie has a sexual escapade with much to Tom’s chagrin and further confusion, and Carol (Aisling O’Sullivan), Jessie’s older city friend who Jessie talks into seducing Tom for purely selfish reasons. 

The movie is beautifully shot by cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, capturing the landscape and natural light with all its darkened hues absorbing the psychological darkness of the terrible secret, the rugged terrain reflecting the inner domestic turmoil, the rain beating down like Nature’s disdain. Simon Boswell’s orchestral score juxtaposes the brooding nightmare with its lilting refrains; The War Zone is a ghastly poetry of sorts, capturing elements of natural beauty and smothering them with a jagged shroud of evil. 

One of the most provocative and disturbing elements of The War Zone - apart from the harrowing scenes of Tom spying on his father sodomising Jessie in the bunker, and in the hospital where the mother discovers her baby is bleeding and Tom warns her - is Jessie’s moral confusion and the bonding ambiguity that lingers between her and Tom. There is a grey subtext that suggests Tom might be sexually attracted to his sister, and this awkward attraction is something Jessie doesn’t repel. She allows Tom to see her fully nude, they wrestle and cuddle, Jessie slaps Tom in the face by bringing him down to the beach where she intends to have sex with Nick. Later Jessie brings Tom to her experienced friend Carol in order to get him laid, only to interrupt the pair almost out of jealousy.

WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILER!

In the final scene, after Tom has escaped to the bunker in a blinding moment of psychological masochism, Jessie arrives to console him. “What do we do now?” Tom asks, but Jessie doesn’t answer, so Tom closes the heavy iron bunker door, shutting the camera and audience out, a helicopter shot slowly rising away from the desolate landscape. 

The primary evil has been vanquished, but so much damage has already been done, it is apparent the ingrained trauma will probably never heal, and possibly a form of sustained dysfunction is firmly in place. The War Zone is a shattering drama, superbly directed and acted, especially brave young Lara Belmont in her debut. It won a slew of international awards. No doubt an exhausting experience for director Tim Roth, just as it probably was for Gary Oldman on Nil by Mouth, as neither actor has directed another feature since. Curiously, on the inside cover of my DVD edition are a series of behind the scenes photos showing Roth, Belmont and Cunliffe smiling and enjoying themselves at work as if to remind the viewer this was only a movie, but, just like Nil by Mouth, and aspects of Naked, it is a nightmare is all the more haunting because the horror it depicts is a very real and prevalent hell that happens all over the world, all the time, not just England.