The Mark of Zorro

 Year:  1940

Director:  Rouben Mamoulian

Screenplay:  John Taintor Foote, story by Garrett Fort and Bess Meredyth, based on the novel The Curse of Capistrano by Johnston McCulley

Starring:  Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, Basil Rathbone

Running Time:  94 minutes

Genre:  Action, adventure

19th Century California:  Don Diego Vega (Power) is summoned home from Madrid by his father.  In California, Diego is horrified by how the local people are oppressed by the cruel and corrupt governor.  Outwardly coming across as a wealthy, cowardly fop, Diego adopts the secret identity of masked outlaw El Zorro ("The Fox") to fight for justice.

The swashbuckling hero Zorro had previously rode onto cinema screens in the 1920 silent film The Mark of Zorro, which starred Douglas Fairbanks in the lead role.  This is a spirited old fashioned adventure film, with some enjoyable action, and some exciting sword fights.  The film's title comes from Zorro's habit of marking things and sometimes people with three quick sword slashes to form the letter "Z".  Also it doesn't take itself too seriously and there is a welcome vein of humour throughout.  Tyrone Power is good in the lead role, obnoxiously foppish as Diego, but athletically physical and romantic as Zorro.  Basil Rathbone is good as the evil master swordsman who Zorro must defeat.  Linda Darnell doesn't really have anything much to do other than be courted by Diego, as she falls in love with his Zorro persona.  This is the kind of Saturday matinee film that really doesn't get made much anymore, and while it hasn't aged well in places, it is still a very entertaining film.   The Mark of Zorro has gone on to become part of the Batman mythos.  In both comic books and movies, it's depicted as the film that the young Bruce Wayne watched with his parent's the night that they were killed.  Although it differs among various versions whether it was the 1920 or 1940 film that they watched.  

Tyrone Power in The Mark of Zorro

The Big Heat

 Year:   1953

Director:  Fritz Lang

Screenplay:  William P. McGivern, based on the novel The Big Heat by William P. McGivern

Starring:  Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Alexander Scourby, Lee Marvin

Running Time:  90 minutes

Genre:  Thriller

While investigating the apparent suicide of a police officer, detective Sergeant Dave Bannion (Ford) finds himself pitted against a powerful crime syndicate that effectively owns the city including the police department.  When Bannion's wife is killed by a bomb that was intended for him, his pursuit for justice becomes a quest for vengeance.

This is a powerful slice of film noir from legendary director Fritz Lang, who began with such ground-breaking films as Metropolis (1926) and M (1931) before moving to America where he specialised in bleak crime dramas.  Beginning as a serial in the Saturday Evening Post by writer William P. McGivern, who subsequently published the story as a novel and wrote the screenplay for the film, the tale is tense and exciting, with often darkly witty, hard-boiled dialogue.  Beginning as a square jawed heroic tough guy, and devoted family man, Glenn Ford's Dave Bannion devolves into an obsessive antihero increasingly consumed by his desire for vengeance.  Gloria Grahame is impressive as the gangster's moll who becomes consumed with her own quest for vengeance as well as offering salvation of a kind for the tormented Bannion.  Jocelyn Brando, the older sister of Marlon Brando, doesn't really get to make much of an impression as the devoted wife before she gets blown up.  The film is surprisingly violent for the time, in particular the notorious scene where Lee Marvin throws boiling coffee in Gloria Grahame's face.

Gloria Grahame and Glenn Ford in The Big Heat

Wolfen

 Year:  1981

Director:  Michael Wadleigh

Screenplay:  David M. Eyre Jr., Michael Wadleigh and Eric Roth, based on the novel The Wolfen by Whitley Streiber

Starring:  Albert Finney, Diane Venora, Edward James Olmos, Gregory Hines, Tom Noonan

Running Time:  114 minutes

Genre:  Horror, crime, drama

New York City:  Troubled former detective Dewey Wilson (Finney) is brought back on the job when a wealthy property developer, his wife and their bodyguard are found brutally murdered.  As he investigates, Dewey connects the murders to a string of similar slayings throughout the city.  Dewey eventually discovers the existence of savage, intelligent wolf-like creatures prowling the city.

This is a mixture of gory horror, police procedural and social commentary.  While the different aspects of the film don't always hang together particularly well, it is a slick and often suspenseful monster movie.  Albert Finney is very good as the cynical rumpled detective for whom carnivorous wolf spirits are just one more story in the Naked City.  Diane Venora is good as the criminal psychologist who Wilson is partnered with, and there is good support from Gregory Hines, as Wilson's pathologist friend, Edward James Olmos, as a Native American activist, and Tom Noonan as a sinister wolf expert.  The film gets good milage out of the run-down inner city setting, and it has some really effective horror moments.  It uses a kind of electronic effect to depict the point of view of the Wolfen, which is slightly overused but effective, and also features a few too many fake scares where a character is startled only for them (and the audience) to realise that it's nothing.  The Wolfen themselves are kept mostly off screen only appearing fully towards the end of the film.  The explanation as to what the Wolfen actually are (a kind of Native American animal spirit) is muddled, particularly at the end.  While the Wolfen aren't strictly speaking werewolves, they are lycanthropic enough for the film to be lumped in with the other, better known, werewolf movies released at the time, namely The Howling (1981) and An American Werewolf in London (1981), both of which were more successful at the Box Office.  Despite its flaws, Wolfen is consistently suspenseful, and intriguing, the police procedural elements and the New York setting are effective, and the script has a welcome vein of cynical, hard-boiled humour.  The plot is intelligent, and while the different themes don't always hang together, the film deserves credit for trying to do something different with some well-worn tropes. 

Albert Finney and furry friend in Wolfen

 

She Said

 Year:  2022

Director:  Maria Schrader

Screenplay:  Rebecca Lenkiewicz, based on the book She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey

Starring:  Carey Mulligan, Zoe Kazan, Patricia Clarkson, Andre Braugher, Jennifer Ehle, Samantha Morton, Ashley Judd

Running Time:  129 minutes

Genre:  Drama

In 2017, New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor (Kazan) and Megan Twohey (Mulligan) investigate allegations by actresses Rose McGowan, Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashley Judd against powerful film producer Harvey Weinstein.  As they investigate the claims, Kantor and Twohey uncover a history of abuse by Weinstein stretching back decades, against numerous women.

When allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein, co-founder and one time head of Miramax Films, with his brother Bob Weinstein, and later co-head of The Weinstein Company, first hit the headlines in late 2017 it had a seismic impact not just in Hollywood but around the world, helping to ignite the #MeToo movement against sexual abuse and harassment.  Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor, who investigated and reported on the claims for The New York Times, detailed their investigation in the 2019 book She Said.  The world of journalism has always provided a rich source for filmmakers, and the film certainly echoes the classics of the genre, such as All the President's Men (1973) and Spotlight (2015).   However, the film moves away from the some of the cliches of boozy, chain-smoking, fast-talking men, barreling down corridors, shouting, instead the journalists are depicted as hard-working, dedicated, professionals who have full lives outside the newsroom, and we see both Kantor and Twohey at home with their respective young families, and Twohey's struggle with postpartum depression, having recently given birth.  Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan both give strong, empathic performances in the lead roles, and Samantha Morton and Jennifer Ehle give powerful performances as two of Weinstein's victims.  With such a recent, high profile and important case, filmmakers have to perform a very delicate balancing act, between creating a compelling piece of drama, while more importantly not exploiting, or sensationalising the horrific crimes.  The film mostly plays as a docudrama and, wisely, the decision is made not to centre Weinstein, who is only glimpsed once in the film, towards the end and only seen from behind amidst a huddle of people striding through the New York Times building.  Mike Houston provides Weinstein's voice on the phone rasping insults and threats to the journalists.  Weinstein's crimes are not dramatised.  Instead we have victims giving their accounts over images of empty hallways and dishevelled hotel rooms.    At one point a recording of voice recording of Weinstein harassing and threatening Ambra Gutierrez is played.  The film's main issue is that the story is so recent, and has been so well-covered, that most viewers will already be familiar with it all.  However, even while the story may be familiar, and the pacing is sometimes uneven, this is a compassionate and gripping film.  

Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan in She Said

The Dunwich Horror

 Year:  1970

Director:  Daniel Haller

Screenplay:  Curtis Hanson, Henry Rosenbaum and Ronald Silkosky, based on the short story The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft

Starring:  Sandra Dee, Dean Stockwell, Ed Begley, Lloyd Bochner, Donna Baccala, Joanne Moore Jordan, Sam Jaffe

Running Time:  90 minutes

Genre:  Horror

At the Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts, student Nancy Wagner (Dee) becomes fascinated with the strange Wilbur Whateley (Stockwell) who is desperate to get his hands on the University's copy of a very rare and valuable book knows as the Necronomicon.  Nancy accepts Wilbur's invitation to spend some time at his mansion in the nearby small town of Dunwich.  At the mansion, Nancy is disturbed by Wilbur's grandfather (Jaffe).  It turns out that the Whateley's have a very bad reputation in the town.  Wilbur is obsessed with using the Necronomicon to bring back the "Old Ones" who used to rule the earth, and plans to sacrifice Nancy in an occult ritual.

American writer H. P. Lovecraft has been hugely influential in the fields of horror and science fiction.  In particular his brand of cosmic horror known as the "Cthulhu Mythos" which postulates that long ago, Earth was ruled by monstrous creatures known  as the "Old Ones" who, due to their evil ways, were banished to another dimension by the yet more powerful "Elder Gods".  The immortal Old Ones still exist and are eternally desperate to get back and reclaim their dominion over Earth.  They can be summoned by various rituals and incantations, which have thoughtfully been written down in various ancient grimoires, most famously the Necronomicon.  While Lovecraft has certainly been influential his work has proved challenging to filmmakers.  His conception of creatures that can drive to madness any human unfortunate enough to so much as look at them is difficult to render on film, even with CGI.  Lovecraft is also controversial due to his blatant racism and misogyny.  There have been successful Lovecraft adaptations, however, such as Re-Animator (1985), From Beyond (1986) and Color Out of Space (2019).  This film, from the stable of B-movie maestro Roger Corman, is enjoyable enough, but not one of the best.  Incidentally, Roger Corman previously directed one of the first Lovecraft adaptations, The Haunted Palace, which was officially part of Corman's series of eight films based on Edgar Allan Poe, but the plot is actually from the Lovecraft story The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.  Loosely based on the 1928 short story by Lovecraft, The Dunwich Horror does a decent enough job of putting Lovecraft onto the screen.  Although Sandra Dee never really seems particularly frightened by the goings-on around her; Dean Stockwell gives an intense, quiet performances as the wicked warlock, and is really the film's highlight.  Veteran actor Ed Begley, in one of his final roles, seems slightly embarrassed in his role as the heroic professor who races to save the day.  Talia Shire (here credited as Talia Coppola), who would go on to appear in The Godfather and Rocky series, appears in a small role as a nurse.  The film is full of bizarre psychedelic effects, which are lively if unintentionally funny, and frequent dream sequences, which just really seem shoehorned in to get some nudity into the film.  The film is watchable enough, and there is enough going on that it never really gets boring, however it is likely to disappoint Lovecraft fans and is probably not enough to convert non-fans.  

Dean Stockwell in The Dunwich Horror

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror

 Year:  1922

Director:  F. W. Murnau

Screenplay:  Henrik Galeen, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker

Starring:  Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, Greta Schröder, Alexander Granach, Ruth Landschoff, Wolfgang Heinz

Running Time:  84 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Wisborg, 1838:  Young clerk Hutter (von Wangenheim) is sent by his sinister boss, Knock (Granach), to a remote castle high in the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania to negotiate the purchase of a house by the mysterious nobleman Count Orlok (Schreck).  Hutter soon discovers the horrific truth that Count Orlok is a blood-thirsty vampire or nosferatu.

This classic silent horror film is technically the first adaptation of Bram Stoker's famous novel Dracula.  However the adaptation was unauthorised and unofficial.  The filmmakers approached Stoker's widow, Florence Stoker, for the rights to adapt the film, but they decided that they couldn't afford the price she was asking, and so they just decided to go ahead anyway.  When Florence Stoker found out, she was furious, and sued the filmmakers, bankrupting the studio, with the court ordering all copies of the film to be destroyed.  However it had already been exported internationally and some prints resurfaced in France and the United States.  The film is one of the most influential horror films ever made.  While not as heavily stylised as the surreal dreamscape of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), it is part of the German Expressionist movement, in which the character's inner worlds are reflected in the outer world.  Viewed today, it does suffer from overly melodramatic acting, as well as director F. W. Murnau's decision to use sped-up motion in scenes such as the carriage driving through the forest, and Orlok loading his coffins into a cart.  Murnau, apparently thought that sped-up motion was scary, but today it looks more comical than anything else, although at this point cinema was still very new and was still trying to find it's own language and style.   In fact some of Murnau's innovations work very well, for example the novel Dracula is told through diaries, journals, newspaper cuttings, and so on, and Murnau carefully designed the intertitles of the film himself to replicate the pages of old books and documents.  Despite being 100 years old, the film is still hugely effective, and is still one of the greatest vampire films ever made.  The vampire in Nosferatu is based on the traditional European folkloric vampire, as a hideous reanimated corpse rather than a suave lounge lizard in evening dress.  Max Schreck makes an indelible impression as Count Orlok, a cadaverous figure incased in black, his hands as grotesque talons, bat-like ears, bald, with a pinched face and sharp, rodent-like fangs.  The vampire is explicitly connected with disease, arriving in the town of Wisborg, accompanied by hordes of rats, and bringing the plague.  Schreck's portrayal was so convincing that there were rumours at the time that he really was a vampire.  The rumour inspired its own film Shadow of the Vampire (2000), a fictionalised version of the filming of Nosferatu starring John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe.  The film contains some unforgettable images, such as Orlok on the death ship; the shadow of the vampire creeping up the stairs towards his victim; and also the climax where the vampire is dissolved by the rays of the sun.  Possibly the film's biggest contribution to vampire lore is the idea of the vampire being destroyed by sunlight.  In Dracula, the vampire is weakened by sunlight, but it is not lethal.    Nosferatu was remade in 1979 as Nosferatu the Vampyr, written and directed by Werner Herzog, with Klaus Kinski as the vampire, and another remake is set for release in 2024.  Although originating as an unauthorised adaptation of a popular novel, Nosferatu has grown beyond its origins, casting an indelible shadow that lingers to this day.

Max Schreck as Count Orlok in Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror
     

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

 Year:  1976

Director:  John Cassavetes

Screenplay:  John Cassavetes

Starring:  Ben Gazzara, Timothy Agoglia Carey, Seymour Cassel, Azizi Johari

Running Time:  135 minutes (cut to 109 minutes)

Genre:  Drama, thriller

Cosmo Vittelli (Gazzara) owns and operates the sleazy, failing nightclub Crazy Horse West in Los Angeles.  To make matters worse Cosmo owes a large gambling debt to the Mob.  The gangsters order Cosmo to kill a bookmaker, Harold Ling (Soto Joe Hugh).  After some less than gentle persuasion, Cosmo reluctantly accepts his task, but soon finds the hit is much more complex than he had expected.

Writer, director and actor John Cassavetes appeared as an actor in a number of big Hollywood movies such as The Dirty Dozen (1967), for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and most notably a starring role as Mia Farrow's traitorous husband in Rosemary's Baby (1968).  However, he is most influential as a writer and director, and his echo is still felt today in the world of Independent Cinema.  Despite its seemingly conventional thriller plot, in terms of style and approach, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is anything but conventional.  More a character study than a thriller, the film focuses on the dilemmas and pressures of Cosmo Vittelli, a man whose entire world is this sleazy club, and who puts all of the money he earns back into the club, as well as spending a lot of time and effort writing and directing the cheesy cabaret acts, hosted by the club compere "Mr. Sophistication" (Meade Roberts), even though he knows that the audience only care about seeing naked women.  He also has a severe gambling problem.  To celebrate making his last payment on a previous debt to a loan shark, he immediately goes out on a night on the town and ends up losing everything on poker.  Ben Gazzara, who saw Vittelli as a kind coded version of Cassavetes himself, gives a great performance, giving Vittelli a kind of down-at-heels charm, and a cocktail of hope and despair.  As is common with Cassavetes' work, the film has a loose, documentary style look, filmed guerrilla-style on the streets and in nightclubs, restaurants and homes.  The performances, which include Cassavetes regular Seymour Cassel and veteran gangster movie actor Timothy Carey, have a naturalistic, improvised feel about them.  The film was originally released in 1976 with a running time of 135 minutes, and immediately tanked at the box office, being withdrawn from general release after a week, with even Gazzara stating that it "was too long".  Cassavetes re-released the film in 1978 in a much shortened version of 109 minutes, with scenes drastically rearranged and some new footage.  For a long time this was the only version available, but in 2004 the 109 minute and 135 minute versions were released on DVD, so now you can watch both, should you care to.

The eagle-eyed viewer may notice a familiar face in some of the crowd scenes.  David Bowie sat in on much of the filming, just to watch Cassavetes at work, although he was not involved in the film.  However he can be glimpsed in the audience during some of the nightclub scenes.

Ben Gazzara in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie