THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY

 

Publicity poster for The Burnt Orange Heresy (© Giuseppe Capotondi/MJZ/Rumble Films/Wonderful Films/Carte Blanche Cinema/HanWay Films/Ingenious/Sony Pictures Classics – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Last night's movie watch was a somewhat unusual choice for me – a crime thriller, with nary a monster or musical number or even a movie star of the animated kind anywhere in sight, or hearing. Moreover, its setting and storyline were also very intriguing, especially for a flick from this particular movie genre. So I decided to watch it (it was about to be shown on the UK TV channel Film4), and I'm very glad that I did. Even its title was suitably enigmatic – The Burnt Orange Heresy.

WARNING – SPOILER ALERT! Read no further if you don't want to know about this movie's storyline!

Directed by Giuseppe Capotondi, based upon Charles Willeford's eponymous 1971 novel, and released as an Italian/Engish production in 2020 by Sony Pictures Classics, The Burnt Orange Heresy stars Claes Bang as ambitious but under-achieving art critic James Figueras. One day, at the end of a class that he has given to a batch of college students in Milan, Italy, on the role and significance of art critics, James is approached by a young woman named Berenice 'Bernie' Hollis (Elizabeth Debicki) who has been sitting at the back of the class listening intently to his lecture, and the two swiftly find that they are attracted to each other in a meeting of minds and of bodies. In just a few days they become close friends, and when James receives a mysterious invitation to visit renowned and immensely-wealthy art dealer/collector Joseph Cassidy (Mick Jagger – yes indeed!) at his palatial mansion on Lake Como, he persuades Bernie to come along too.

When they arrive, Cassidy makes James an offer that if he accepts will boost his career immensely, but if he refuses will destroy him. The offer is the unique opportunity to interview the world's most reclusive artist – the truly enigmatic Jerome Debney (Donald Sutherland), who was last interviewed 50 years ago, shortly after the second of two major fires at his studio, which had destroyed all of his work.

In latter years, Debney has lived in a remote run-down house with a studio, tucked away in the vast grounds of Cassidy's mansion, away from the world and giving him the privacy to paint more pictures. But that is not all. The combined effects of the two conflagrations and Debney's obsession for secrecy and solitude mean that there is not a single Debney painting owned by any gallery or private individual anywhere in the world – and whatever new work he has created since the fires remains resolutely hidden from public view, and beyond the reach of even the wealthiest patron. Anything or everything is concealed within his fortress-like house, which is locked, bolted, and barred to a degree that would put Fort Knox to shame!

Interviewing Debney inside his house, and viewing at first-hand his hitherto-unseen, unknown, undocumented new works, would be the coup of a lifetime for James, and he knows it – but so too does the wholly unscrupulous, amoral Cassidy, which is why the price he is charging James for access to Debney is so high.

For in return for the interview, James must procure, i.e. steal, one of Debney's paintings and bring it to Cassidy, who will then become the only person or gallery to own a Debney artwork. If he refuses, Cassidy will make public various unsavoury facts about James's professional dealings that would ruin his reputation forever and possibly even send him to prison. So James has no option but to agree. However, he does not tell Bernie anything about this dark side of the deal, only informing her that he has been granted permission to interview Debney, living on Cassidy's estate.

When they meet the elderly Debney, they discover him to be a somewhat fey yet philosophical, paradoxical character, with his head in the clouds but also with his feet planted firmly on the ground, often talking in riddles but piercingly cognizant of whoever he encounters, in turn melancholic and melodramatic. Debney develops a natural rapport with Bernie, who enjoys listening to him talking about his life and work, but far less so with James, whose only concern is commencing the interview as soon as possible and seeing his studio's treasure trove of new, never-before-documented paintings. Finally Debney agrees to show them the contents of his studio as a precursor to the interview – but both Bernie and especially James are astonished to discover that there are no new paintings! All that the studio contains are blank canvases, signed on the back by Debney and annotated with surreal-sounding titles.

Debney reveals to them that in the 50 years since the second fire, he has painted nothing, due to disillusionment with what art can really achieve, as well as a need for stimulation, for novelty. And then he sensationally confesses that his disillusionment and needs had already begun some time before the second fire, and had actually driven him to start the fire – which until now had always been assumed to have been accidental in nature, not deliberate.

Stupefied by Debney's shocking revelations, and only too mindful of what Cassidy may well do if he learns the terrible truth, a now-desperate James covertly hatches an even more desperate plan. He will break into Debney's house and studio while the artist is away in town one evening, steal one of the signed blank canvases, then set fire to everything there to cover his tracks before making his escape. And this is indeed what he does, making off with a canvas that Debney had entitled 'The Burnt Orange Heresy', but keeping everything secret from Bernie, not to mention Cassidy, whose mansion they soon leave while he is away on business.

Back in his apartment in Milan and armed with his art critic knowledge of the abstract/analytic form that Debney's documented art had typically taken before the first two fires had destroyed them, James produces on the blank canvas a blazing sunset-like painting, inspired by the title 'The Burnt Orange Heresy' and in the style of Debney. Before he has chance to hide it, however, and while it is still wet, Bernie arrives on the scene, touches its surface with two fingertips and, guessing his plan to pass it off as a genuine Debney, angrily remonstrates with an increasingly self-deluding James, trying to instill in his panicked mind that this is not a real Debney, that it never can be anything more than what it truly is, a fake.

Clearly, no-one has ever told her that you should always be very cautious how you react with people you have only known for a few days, and of whose own reactions, especially their most extreme ones, in extreme circumstances, you have absolutely no knowledge or experience. Let's just say that Bernie shortly afterwards had a very close, lasting encounter with a very heavy ashtray, then with a deep secluded lake – and not in a good way…

As for James: after informing Cassidy (to the latter's great relief) that he had been able to procure a painting from Debney's studio before it had all burned down in the mysterious fire there, he found himself (courtesy of Cassidy's network of prominent contacts) in a much-elevated position within the art world. And when Debney died shortly afterwards of a heart attack, Cassidy was able to display 'The Burnt Orange Heresy' at a glittering public gathering of the art world's cognoscenti and paparazzi held in his mansion, proclaiming it (as he falsely believed it to be) the only existing Debney artwork in the world. Only James knew what it really was, a fake that he had personally created, and he had no plans whatsoever to go public with that information anywhere!

And then… another art critic at the gathering mentioned how clever it had been of Debney to sign the painting itself (i.e. not just the canvas on the back) in such a distinctive, personalized manner, with two of his own fingerprints, directly embedded in the painting. Almost paralysed with fear,, James realized of course that those were not Debney's but Bernie's, and that if ever Cassidy chose to verify the fingerprints, that is what would be found. But that was not all. Cassidy made a number of ambiguous remarks to him during the gathering that seemed at least to James to suggest that Cassidy knew more about what had really happened, including Bernie's watery wake, than he had any right to know. Cassidy also told James that although Bernie had mysteriously gone missing, a small painting had been sent to her by Debney just before his death, but as Cassidy had been informed that it was not signed, he considered it to be worthless from an art world point of view.

The movie ends with a brief view of this painting, which is in fact a sketched portrait of Bernie, and is now at her mother's house. The camera moves in, closer and closer, and just as the scene begins to fades and go dark, a microscopic signature can be momentarily discerned on the portrait – the signature of Joseph Debney. So there really is a single surviving Debney artwork in the world after all, but it’s not in Cassidy's mansion… (An even more ironic twist appears in Willeford's original novel, in which it transpires that Debney owes his esteemed reputation totally to art critics, never having actually painted anything in his entire career!)

Although taking time to get started, and seeming a little labored at times, it's not too long before the dark spell of The Burnt Orange Heresy begins to take hold, and once you're in its thrall you remain there for the remainder of the movie, with the final half hour or so being particularly engrossing, as it is by no means clear how it will end for any of the main characters.

Speaking of which: I have to state that Jagger is an absolute revelation as creepy Cassidy, portraying him as a masterfully restrained but ice-cold, veritably reptilian monster who would devour his own offspring in a trice if it would benefit him in any way to do so. And Donald Sutherland portrays the mystifying Debney very effectively, though it would have been most interesting to see how the character would have been played by the original choice for this role – none other than Christopher Walken. True, Bang and Debicki perform their respective lead roles well enough, but there is no doubt that supporting actors Jagger and Sutherland effortlessly steal from them every scene that they appear in. (Incidentally, the part of Bernie has been dramatically enlarged for the movie – she was only a minor character in the novel.)

Also worth noting – in fact you can't miss it – is a very specific motif that recurs throughout the movie. Namely, the image, or sometimes even the physical presence, of a fly as a secret symbol of evil. It features heavily in a story told in differing ways by different characters concerning an artist murdered by the Nazis during World War 2; James nearly suffocates when one flutters inside his nose while he is sleeping; a mysterious unposted envelope addressed to James and given to him at the public debut of the fake Debney painting at Cassidy's mansion is found when opened by James to contain several dead flies. And so on.

All very cryptic, clever, and curious – rather like this movie itself, in fact, which I thoroughly recommend to anyone interested in watching a crime thriller with a difference, a big difference.

If you'd like to watch an official trailer for The Burnt Orange Heresy on YouTube, please click here to do so.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

WHEN THE QUIFF WAS KING

 

Front cover of my official VHS sell-thru videocassette of When The Quiff Was King (© Ashley Sidaway/Best of British Films and Television Ltd/M.C.E.G. Virgin Vision (U.K.) Ltd – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 26 September 2022, nursing a pounding headache that evening, I decided to relax by watching not a movie as such but instead a recently-purchased VHS sell-thru video compilation. Created by Ashley Sidaway, released in 1990 by M.C.E.G. Virgin Vision, and with a running time of 55 minutes, it was entitled When The Quiff Was King, which contains a diverse selection of no fewer than 26 song-featuring scenes from classic British rock'n'roll movie musicals from the late 1950s and the 1960s.

Some of these movies, such as various Cliff Richard ones like Summer Holiday and The Young Ones, are still famous today, whereas others like These Dangerous Years (starring Frankie Vaughan), Tommy the Toreador and It's All Happening (two longstanding favourites of mine, both starring Tommy Steele), and The Ghost Goes Gear (Spencer Davis Group), somewhat less so.

Yet all of them in my eyes – and ears – remain just as fantastic today as they were way back then, when they were the soundtrack to my youth. So I felt the years (not to mention my aches and pains!) slip away as I watched and listened to them, drifting back to the golden age of my childhood when I had my family around me, with so much of my life and theirs still to experience, and long before mobile phones and the internet (wonderful inventions though they are) had appeared on the scene.

Instead, there was music with melodies, foot-tapping rhythms, and lyrics that actually rhymed – remember them? And unforgettable performers like The Shadows, The Hollies, Billy Fury, Lulu, Dusty Springfield, Freddie & The Dreamers, Shane Fenton (who reinvented himself in the 1970s as Alvin Stardust), and Lonnie Donegan, not forgetting of course the various other artists already mentioned by me above. And as all of these, plus many more, are present on this superb video compilation, I was guaranteed a very enjoyable, nostalgic evening of superb sound and vision. Bliss!

Such a shame, therefore, that at least as far as I'm aware, this wonderful compilation has never been re-issued on DVD – but if like me you still own a VCR, and if again like me you hanker back to British rock'n'roll at its very best, be sure to look out for it online, as it quite often appears for sale at reasonable prices on various internet auction sites.

Meanwhile, however, you can get a free taster of what to expect by clicking here to view on YouTube a mini-compilation of excerpts from When The Quiff Was King.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Back cover of my When The Quiff Was King video, providing a complete listing of the 26 song-featuring clips contained on it – please click picture to enlarge it for reading purposes (© Ashley Sidaway/Best of British Films and Television Ltd/M.C.E.G. Virgin Vision (U.K.) Ltd – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

COOL WORLD

 

My official ex-rental big box VHS video of Cool World (© Ralph Bakshi/Bakshi Animation/Paramount Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Ever since I first saw the Disney classics Mary Poppins at the cinema in the mid-1960s and Bedknobs and Broomsticks there in the early 1970s (not to mention in later years their wonderful Latin American-flavoured Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros), I have always been a big fan of live-action/animation mash-up fantasy movies. Among my all-time favourite examples from this genre (and which I own both as a DVD and as an ex-rental big box VHS video), however, is one that I consider to be vastly under-rated (especially by film critics) – Cool World, which I rewatched earlier today.

Directed by legendary American animator/painter Ralph Bakshi, and released in 1992 by Paramount Pictures, Cool World opens in Las Vegas during 1945, when American WW2 army soldier Frank Harris (played by Brad Pitt), newly returned home after being demobbed, takes his mother for a ride on his brand-new motorbike, but tragically they are soon involved in a horrific motoring accident caused by a drunk automobile driver in which Frank's mother is killed – and although Frank survives, he finds himself abruptly and mystifyingly jettisoned from our live-action world into a strange and often bizarre animated alternate dimension known as the Cool World, which is populated entirely by living cartoon characters called doodles – except for a single exception, that is.

For although he now inhabits an animated world and is surrounded on all sides by doodles, Frank resolutely remains a live-action human, or noid. Neither able nor interested anyway (after having lost his mother) in returning to his own live-action world, Frank reconciles himself to a whole new life here in the Cool World, where he becomes a tough, hard-nosed, film noiresque detective working with the local doodle police force, and assigned as his law-enforcing sidekick a chatty but friendly giant spider doodle named Nails (voiced by Charlie Adler).

Over four decades pass by, it is now 1992, but Frank remains the same age as he was on that fateful, deeply traumatic day in 195 when he entered the Cool World. Moreover, he also remains the only noid in the Cool World, but he has gained a doodle girlfriend named Lonette (voiced by Candi Milo) Unfortunately for them, however, their relationship has to remain strictly platonic – for whereas if a noid and a doodle have sex the doodle can then become a noid, there is also a considerable risk that the Cool World and the live-action world will entangle with one another, becoming unstable and experiencing devastating consequences.

Back in our live-action world, meanwhile, an underground comic-book cartoonist named Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne) is about to be released from prison after serving 10 years for murdering a man who had slept with his wife. During his sentence, Jack had kept himself occupied by drawing what had gone on to become a new bestselling comic book series that he had named Cool World, and which had appeared to him in dreams and visions.

Jack did not realise, however, that the animated world he'd been drawing actually existed, and had done so long before he'd first dreamed of it. Moreover, he had no idea that one particular character he thought was his own creation already existed for real in the real Cool World – a certain bold and buxom blonde aptly named Holli Would. For Holli not only could but also most assuredly would do whatever it took to achieve her ultimate goal – to become a noid, a live-action human.

And indeed, it was Holli who had sent Jack his dreams and visions of the Cool World. For what better way to achieve her goal, regardless of the dangerous risks that such a dramatic transformation may entail for the two worlds, than to seduce a naïve noid who mistakenly thought that he'd created her – poor unsuspecting Jack! (She had already tried to seduce Frank, but he had always rebuffed her amorous advances.)

So Holli duly lures Jack into the Cool World where, like a latter-day Pygmalion, and in spite of being confronted by Frank and warned in no uncertain terms of the possible dire consequences of noid-doodle intimacy, Jack falls headlong for headstrong Holli, who swiftly beguiles the carnal cartoonist into making out – and thereby making her a noid!

Thereafter, events take a number of very tumultuous turns, with a now thoroughly unstable Holli in every sense, constantly flickering back and forth from noid to doodle to noid again, determined to ensure that she remains a noid permanently – by harnessing the magical transformative potency of the Spike of Power.

Years earlier, this mystical artifact serving as a portal between the two worlds had been brought into the live-action world by a doodle named Dr Vincent Whiskers, aka Vegas Vinnie, who had utilized it to cross over from the Cool World into Las Vegas, whereupon he had purchased the Union Plaza Hotel there in the guise of Vegas Vinnie for the express purpose of concealing the Spike within the hotel's enormous neon name-sign on its roof's tower, where amidst all the glitz and glamour of Vegas those who may wish to utilize the Spike's power for evil or dangerous purposes would never find it. (Moreover, it later transpires that it was one of Dr Whiskers's early experiments with the Spike in the Cool World that had unexpectedly opened a portal into the live-action world and had sucked Frank through it into the Cool World straight after the motoring accident.)

Consequently, Holli launches a frenzied attempt to clamber up the tower to reach the Spike and release its power, with Jack and Frank begrudgingly joining forces in a valiant bid to stop her, but Holli pushes Frank off the tower, causing him to plummet to his apparent death far below. At the tower's summit, Holli finally seizes the Spike, but as soon as she does so a horde of monstrous doodles are instantly released from the Cool World, pouring forth into Vegas, whose surroundings and citizens in close proximity to the Spike begin morphing and warping, while Jack unfathomably transforms into a super-hero doodle!

Against this backdrop of apocalyptic bedlam, but courtesy of his ultra-powerful doodle alter ego, Jack nevertheless succeeds in capturing Holli and hauling her back into the Cool World, together with the Spike of Power, whereupon the monsters invading Vegas promptly disappear, and the city reverts to its normal stable state. But what about Frank – is he really dead?

Luckily for our taciturn hero, at the precise moment when she had pushed him off the tower Holli had flickered back into a doodle, and it just so happens that if a doodle fatally attacks a noid in the live-action world, the noid is not killed but is instead transformed into a living doodle in the Cool World, Consequently, that is precisely what and where Frank is now – a very much alive doodle equivalent of his former live-action self, and back in the Cool World.

So too on both counts is the treacherous Holli, and this time permanently. For although she is still a potentially dangerous doodle, there are no noids present in the Cool World any more for her to attempt to seduce as a means of becoming a noid and escaping again into the live-action world to wreak further havoc. Instead, she is now partnered in the Cool World to Jack in his eminently boastful and incredibly boring doodle super-hero form – a fate so dreadful that one almost feels sorry for her…almost.

In short, with the doodle monsters vanquished in Vegas, and the two worlds saved from mutual destruction, all is live and active again in the live-action world, and all is cool again in the Cool World. Moreover, with Frank now a doodle just like Lonette, there is no longer any barrier to their romance blossoming fully – and in the fullness of time no doubt giving rise to the patter of non-platonic tiny doodle feet…

Cool World is marvelously inventive, brilliantly imaginative, and decidedly surreal, its vibrant, eye-popping visuals (most especially those within the Cool World itself) are as daring as they are dazzling, veritably psychedelic at times, and its countless live-action/animation interactions are well-synced throughout; Kim Basinger and Brad Pitt in particular play their respective dual voiced-doodle/live-action-noid roles of Holli and Frank with great conviction; and the movie soundtrack is full of memorable tracks by the likes of Moby, The Future Sound of London, Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys, and Ministry, as well as a hip background score by Mark Isham, and even a song, 'Real Cool World', written exclusively for it and performed over its end credits by none other than David Bowie.

Consequently, with so much seemingly going for it, I was nothing if not surprised to discover recently that what for me will always remain a hugely enjoyable movie actually bombed at the box office, Cool World making a lifetime gross of only US$14.1 million against a reported budget of US$28 million. Why? What went wrong?

Two principal reasons seem to be indicated here. The first is that as a live-action/animation mash-up movie, Cool World may have followed too closely upon the metaphorical heels of Disney's unequivocal mash-up masterpiece Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which had been released a mere four years earlier in 1988 to universal acclaim, and had stupendously grossed at the box office seven times its US$50 million budget. Any movie from the same genre attempting to follow in the colossal big-screen footsteps of that cinematic blockbuster was almost guaranteed to be found wanting by comparison in the eyes of critics and public audiences alike.

Even so, Cool World may have received a more enthusiastic response from both of those categories of viewers had it not fallen foul of what I personally consider to be a second major reason for its box-office debacle. Just like its principal doodle character Holli, during its progression from concept to completion Cool World transformed – dramatically.

For although not widely realized today outside movie-buff circles, director Bakshi had originally planned Cool World not as the relatively tame PG13-rated film that was ultimately released (and which fatefully ensured, therefore, that it would be compared directly with Who Framed Roger Rabbit) but instead as something very different – an adult-oriented R/18-rated live-action/animation horror movie! In other words, a production much more akin in tone and content to earlier Bakshi movies like the fully-animated Fritz the Cat (1972) and Hey Good Lookin' (1982, which had initially contained some live-action sequences before these were eliminated pre-release in favour of it being another fully-animated feature).

However, even though they did formally accept Bakshi's proposed concept, the studio powers that be at Paramount apparently made it clear soon afterwards that they had very different ideas from Bakshi's with regard to what they wanted the movie to be. This resulted in a number of significant screenplay re-writes and revisions being carried out, none of which accorded with Bakshi's visions for it.

He had originally envisaged for Cool World a decidedly gritty, hard-hitting storyline, focusing upon a mixed-heritage child in the Cool World, with his mother a doodle and his father a noid. During a lengthy period incarcerated in prison, cartoonist noid Jack Deebs had created a series of Cool World comics containing a voluptuous female cartoon character named Debbie Dallas (a play on the title of the infamous 1978 pornographic movie Debbie Does Dallas), and with whom Jack had subsequently had sex after having been transported to the Cool World, resulting in the birth of their doodle/noid infant boy. When the success of his comics made him a star, however, Jack had abandoned doodle Debbie and their hybrid son, who grows up resenting his father so much that when finally an adult he decides to seek Jack out in the live-action world and murder him. Like I say, a much darker plot indeed from the one in the Cool World movie that finally hit the big screen in 1992!

Also, Bakshi wanted Brad Pitt to play Jack (he'd also considered Willem Dafoe), but the powers that be preferred a more established star (Brad was still a relative big-screen newcomer back in the late 1980s when Cool World was being conceived). So they selected Gabriel Byrne instead, resulting in Bakshi specifically creating the character of Frank for Brad to play instead, in order to have him in the movie after all. Bakshi also favoured Drew Barrymore for the role of Debbie (who'd be renamed Holli), but for the same reason as with Brad the studio selected Kim Basinger. And so, frame by frame, plot line by plot line, Cool World evolved and metamorphosed from Bakshi's raw R-rated original version into the toned-down PG13-rated released version.

Much as I love the latter movie, I cannot help but wonder what Bakshi's original Cool World concept would have been like had it been committed to celluloid. Judging from his various earlier mature-audience animated features like the afore-mentioned Fritz the Cat and Hey Good Lookin', both of which I also like very much, I think it highly likely that it would have been spectacular – as well as being a notable cinematic first as a live-action/animation mash-up horror movie. Alas, however, we'll never know, but what we do know is that Cool World currently does claim a notable yet poignant cinematic last – because more than 30 years after its release, this stunning movie remains the last big-screen feature-length film directed by Bakshi.

If you'd like to pay a visit to the Cool World via the movie version that was made, be sure to click here to watch an official Cool World trailer on YouTube and experience for yourself this nonetheless highly extravagant and thoroughly entertaining live-action/animation spectacle. Also, please click here to read my review of another Bakshi animated feature film, Fire and Ice.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Publicity poster for Cool World (© Ralph Bakshi/Bakshi Animation/Paramount Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

SHUKER IN MOVIELAND MEETS FORTEAN TIMES! SHARING SOME MONSTROUSLY-ENTERTAINING CREATURE FEATURE REVIEWS!

 

Front cover of the current issue (#446, dated July 2024) of the British monthly magazine Fortean Times, featuring yours truly as its cover star! (© David Sutton/Etienne Gilfillan/Fortean Times/Diamond Publishing Limited – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My film review blog Shuker In MovieLand hits the big time! A selection of its Fortean (and especially monster)-themed creature feature reviews has been compiled by me in the form of a monstrously-entertaining front-cover-linked lead article that has been published in the current issue (#446, dated July 2024) of the iconic British monthly magazine Fortean Times, or simply FT to its worldwide array of fans.

FT via its countless contributors and readers down through the decades has been steadfastly reporting and investigating across the vast and thoroughly fascinating spectrum of mysterious phenomena ever since the early 1970s (when it started out as The News), and I am very privileged to have been contributing articles and news reports (the latter via my regular, longstanding Alien Zoo column) ever since the 1990s, concentrating upon cryptozoology and animal anomalies of every conceivable (and inconceivable!) kind.

Moreover, as readers of this present blog of mine know, I am also passionately interested in movies, particularly fantasy and sci fi-themed ones, but never more so than those that incorporate monsters and other mystery or fantastical beasts. So in my latest FT article as highlighted here, I have collated a diverse selection of my Shuker In MovieLand reviews of creature features that I have very much enjoyed watching over the years. And I hope it will encourage you to watch and enjoy them now too.

I'm not going to say anything more regarding my article's contents, so as not to spoil the surprises awaiting FT readers, but I do wish to express my sincere thanks to FT's editor David Sutton and its art director Etienne Gilfillan for making my article an FT reality, with Etienne not only doing us all proud in not only assembling the dazzling collection of illustrations accompanying its text but also creating the front cover's truly amazing associated artwork!

 

Another magazie front-cover appearance, from issue #14 (November 1997) of the now long-defunct British monthly magazine Uri Geller's Encounters, to which I contributed a number of cryptozoological articles (© Nina Pendred/Paragon Publishing Ltd – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

No doubt you'll recognize the very handsome chap (cough cough!) attired in best Indiana Jones accoutrements taking centre stage on the FT cover as he prepares to cinematically confront a veritable host of horrors...and that's just the audience! – or most of it. For I also wish to highlight the delightful fact that the happy little lady with the extra-large box of popcorn is none other than my dear little Mom, Mary Shuker, who always enjoyed watching monster movies with me back in the good old days. How I wish that she were still here, to know that she was now a front-cover star! She would have been so proud. Thank you so much, Etienne, for such a wonderful and very touching tribute to her.

So, be sure to seek out and purchase a copy of FT #446 if you can (it's out now!), and have a monstrously good time reading about some very varied creature features of the cryptozoological and zoomythological kind. Go on, you know you want to!

For mor information concerning FT, please click here to visit its official website.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Close-up of the front cover of FT #446, showing Mom happily selling popcorn to a truly beastly audience! (© David Sutton/Etienne Gilfillan/Fortean Times/Diamond Publishing Limited – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

MOONCHILD

 

Publicity poster for Moonchild (© Alan Gadney/Filmmakers Ltd – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 19 May 2022 I watched, and then last night rewatched, one of the strangest films that I have ever seen (and that's saying something for me!). Not to be confused with the werewolf movie of the same title released two years earlier (not that it could ever be confused with any other movie, shared title or otherwise, frankly!), this trippy, quintessentially '70s fantasy confection of great visual beauty but insuperably abstruse content is Moonchild.

Directed and written by Alan Gadney, filmed by him in 1971, and given a limited commercial release by Filmmakers Ltd in 1974 (during which its somewhat melodramatic publicity marketed it as a horror movie, which I don't consider it to be at all), Moonchild actually originated as a university student film, a project produced and submitted by Gadney for his Masters degree thesis at the University of Southern California. I'd previously read a fair amount about Moonchild before finally watching it, which was just as well, because for much of its length its plot is by no means evident, and even when events ultimately seem more lucid, it is by no means certain that they actually are. This presumably explains why I have read several different interpretations of the storyline, but here is mine.

Moonchild opens with an art student (played by Mark Travis), whose name is eventually revealed to be Gavalin (spelling?) and whose zodiac birth sign is Cancer (with Moonchild being a name often applied to Cancerians, hence the memorable title of this movie) painting on canvas a former Christian mission, now converted into a desert hotel but retaining its very imposing original architectural beauty. While painting, he is approached by an amicable but decidedly eccentric old man (John Carradine) who introduces himself as a poet and Walker of the World, or Mr Walker for short. After giving the student some ungratefully-received advice regarding his artwork, Walker suggests that they visit the mission so that the student can see its impressive appearance at close hand.

When they enter it, however, they are swiftly confronted by the hotel's very severe and decidedly unfriendly Manager (Pat Renella), who coerces the student into booking in as a guest, with Walker also booking in. The student is allocated a room whose number is 7 (which is later seen to have especial significance).

The student soon discovers that the hotel is populated by a host of bizarre, highly mysterious, secretive persons. These include a hunchbacked simpleton named Homunculus (Frank Corsentino) who serves as a lackey (and is one of the very few characters in this film to sport an actual name); a shrewish, vituperative housekeeper/maid (Marie Denn); and a good-natured, ancient-looking man who turns out to be an alchemist (William Challee) and may have created Homunculus. Most distinctive of all, however, is the Maitre D' (Victor Buono), who is a religious zealot of volcanic temperament, liable to erupt at any moment, especially when confronting the Manager, with whom he has a decidedly inimical emotional relationship. There is also an enigmatic young woman (Janet Landgard) who appears fleetingly, but whenever she is pursued by Travis, who experiences vivid flashbacks featuring the two of them in scenes of romance and sexual passion, she somehow disappears.

The student also experiences other flashbacks, in which he is a soldier and various other persons, as well as visualizing an ecclesiastical inquisition attended by red-garbed monks, plus the maid as a fanatical prosecutor, and the Maitre D' as the Grand Inqusitor, with the student and the alchemist on trial for heresy. It is here that the student – and the movie's audience – finally learns that his name is Gavalin (he had somehow managed to forget it until then). Walker is also present, recording the proceedings but also attempting to plead the student's case, only to be harshly rebuked by the Inquisitor for interceding on the latter's behalf instead of confining himself to recording the trial.

These flashbacks appear repeatedly throughout the movie, interspersed between scenes of the student at the hotel, and can be quite disorienting due to their abrupt appearances and mystifying content – until, at last, all is revealed…or is it?

Apparently, the student is trapped inside some kind of reincarnation cycle, and so too within his cycle are all of the persons at the hotel. Every 25 years, he finds himself back at the hotel, from which he duly escapes, but is soon killed, and is then reborn, over and over again, down through time, with his present life being his seventh – hence the significance of his hotel room's number. Only when his sins are purged from his soul can the cycle end – and only then will he find salvation and peace, as too will all of those trapped alongside him within his cycle. According to one review of this movie that I've read, in his first, original life the student was himself a killer, a murderer, but I personally saw no firm evidence for this in the movie, unless the reviewer was referring to the past life in which the student was a soldier?

In addition, it appears that the Maire D' and the Manager are fighting one another for the student's soul, the former upon the side of good, the latter upon the side of evil (though again I've read reviews claiming that the Maitre D' represents evil). In addition, the alchemist is denounced as a heretic because as an embryonic scientist he challenges religious orthodoxy, and the student's interest in his activities brings him into conflict with the Maitre D' too, as does his fervour for the elusive young woman, who personifies lust. And through it all, Walker records it all, and speaks in riddles, as does everyone else, for that matter, for much of the movie's length.

Finally, in the movie's eventful climax, the student breaks free of the hotel, escaping into the hills with the alchemist, who informs him that he has fled further this time than in any previous life (meaning that he has shed more sins this time?) – but the Manager is in hot, murderous pursuit! Moreover, as the reincarnation theme of the movie has by now been revealed to its audience by the characters, it's no spoiler to say that because the student has still not attained a state of total purity, he does not elude the Manager.

Instead, inevitably, the student meets his end yet again – only for the final scene to see him very much alive outside the mission, just like he was at the beginning of the movie, but this time equipped not with a canvas and easel to capture its appearance but with a movie camera instead, confirming that time (and attendant technology) has advanced quite considerably (another quarter-century) since his previous arrival there. And who should walk up and begin talking to him again? None other than Mr Walker, of course – because the student's reincarnation cycle has begun once more. But will his eighth life end in salvation for him at last? The movie has reached its end, so we never find out.

The only movie that I've ever seen which in any way reminds me of Moonchild is Malpertuis (click here to read my review of it). Both are dark fantasies infused with an almost tangibly malign atmosphere, peopled by an unfathomable company of grotesque characters, and ensconced within an otherworldly, preternatural setting ostensibly contained within our reality yet effectively delineated from it, which cycles incessantly. Indeed, some reviewers consider Moonchild to be a New Age-inspired allegory for the grand circle of life that drives our entire planet and everything that exists within it.

Best acting performance for me in Moonchild is definitely Carradine's, endowing the twinkly-eyed and somewhat loquacious Walker with the necessary mystique and verbal dexterity to yield a convincing, ever-interesting 'Keeper of Words' (one of his own description of himself). And the much-missed Victor Buono could always be relied upon to give his customary masterclass in delightfully hammy, unrestrained over-acting, with his OTT Maitre D' virtually chewing the scenery during his hyper-histrionic theological outbursts against the Manager, the student, and anyone else he happens to encounter!

The sumptuous scenes inside the mission/hotel and its architecturally spectacular exterior were reputedly filmed at the Riverside Hotel in California, And apart from a pervasive greenish lunar tinge most prominent in scenes of the student fleeing through never-ending subterranean tunnels and passages within the hotel's claustrophobic foundations from pursuing figures in sinister black robes and hoods with unseen faces and undetermined motives, the colours inside the hotel are vibrant and very diverse. As for its music, this is unequivocally late 1960s/early 1970s in style, as epitomized by its haunting, psychedelic opening theme song.

Some reviewers have variously written off Moonchild as pretentious unmitigated nonsense or impenetrable art-house folderol, and it may have been its overall rejection by audiences and critics alike at the time of its release that resulted in Gadney becoming a cinematic one-hit wonder, inasmuch as Moonchild is the first and only movie that he ever directed. If so, this is a great shame, because notwithstanding its baffling plot, I personally found Moonchild to be an immensely engrossing albeit incredibly surreal fantasy, beautifully filmed and thoroughly captivating, and I can only wonder what extraordinary movies Gadney would certainly have gone on to direct had he stayed in the world of film-making, refining his creativity and expanding his directorial experience.

I also wonder how a mere student producing a movie simply as a university project was able to enlist such a starry cast as John Carradine, Victor Buono, and William Challee. Yet like so much else concerning Moonchild, it seems unlikely that we shall ever know the answer to this mystery.

Moonchild may not be for everyone, but if like me you enjoy arcane Gothic fantasies with caliginous plots set in exquisite surroundings, then I definitely encourage you to give this undeniably weird but unjustly neglected masterpiece of the macabre a viewing – especially as if you click here you can currently watch the entire movie free of charge on YouTube.

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

The student (Mark Travis) and the Maitre D' (Victor Buono) (© Alan Gadney/Filmmakers Ltd – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only).

 

THE BRONX WARRIORS (aka 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS aka THE RIFFS)

 

Close-up of the front cover of my EV ex-rental big box VHS video of The Bronx Warriors (© Enzo G. Castellari/Deaf International Film/Fulvia Film/EV – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

After owning it unwatched for almost 40 years, last night I finally sat down and played my EV ex-rental big box VHS video of the English dub of a classic Italian action/near-future semi-sci fi movie from the early 1980s. Namely, 1990: The Bronx Warriors (aka The Bronx Warriors, The Riffs, 1990: I Guerneri del Bronx, and several other alternative release titles).

Directed by Enzo G. Castellari (who also takes a small acting role in it as the MC's vice-president), filmed in 1981, and released in 1982 by Fulvia Films, 1990: The Bronx Warriors (to give it its full title, as the year 1990 is central to its plot) belongs in some ways to the post-apocalypse survival sub-genre of science fiction movies, except that instead of the global disaster that usually features in them, here the devastation and gang rule is limited to a single borough of a single city, and has been caused not by nuclear annihilation but instead by officialdom's wholesale abandonment of said borough.

The city in question is New York City, the borough is the Bronx, and the year is 1990 – which is when, as announced in a brief preamble shortly after the movie opens, is when the NYC authorities gave up trying to fight the unrelenting crime wave that had overtaken this borough and abandoned it as a lawless no man's land. Since then, it has become a wholly feral hellhole, a ramshackle ruin of crumbling buildings and deserted homes, ruled by a diverse array of different gangs, each with its own fiercely-defended territory. And when it comes to the gangs, diverse is definitely the word to describe them.

The Riders, for instance, who take centre stage in this movie, is a no-nonsense motorcycle gang (some of its members were actually played by real-life Hell's Angels) led by the youthful albeit exceedingly tall Trash (played by Marco De Gregorio, but credited as Mark Gregory); whereas the Zombies, led by the charismatic Golan (George Eastman), zip around on roller skates in gleaming white shoulder-crescented costumes, wield deadly hockey sticks that are anything but jolly, and might have led to confusion with extras from Starlight Express – were it not for the incongruous fact that another gang, the ironically-titled Iron Men, actually do take their besequined sartorial inspiration from musical theatre (and are played by professional television dancers), but are no less violent than the other gangs all the same.

 

Trash (centre) in conference with some of his fellow Riders (© Enzo G. Castellari/Deaf International Film/Fulvia Film – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Also of serious note are the saloon-driving Tigers, led by the coolest dude this side of the Brooklyn Bridge, a kind of black Austin Powers known only as the Ogre (Fred Williamson), though he also styles himself King of the Bronx, and the other gangs pay him grudging, token respect as he is responsible for bringing into the Bronx from the outside world all manner of necessities, including food and especially weaponry – lots of it. Nor dare we forget the Scavengers, a gang of barely-human killers attired only in rags, who emerge from their subterranean hideaways to waylay anyone unfortunate enough to encounter these degenerate troglodytes who seem incapable of speech, communicating only via grunts and shrieks.

Clearly, the Bronx is not a safe place for any outsider to viait, which is why the sudden appearance there one night of a beautiful teenage girl named Ann (Stefania Girolami, the real-life daughter of director Castellari) attracts such interest – and not just from a group of Zombies who try to assault her, and from Trash who turns up in the nick of time to rescue her and take her back to the other Riders, where he swiftly falls in love with this veritable damsel in distress

For Manhattan's police and especially the exceedingly powerful president of a massive arms-manufacturing company based there named the Manhattan Corporation (MC) are soon aware of Ann's disappearance into the Bronx, thanks to a covert tagging device used by the MC called a gizmo. And because she just so happens to be the MC president's own daughter and therefore heiress to the entire company, he is determined to get her back safely, whatever it entails, and at whatever cost in money and human lives it takes.

With its core plot duly established, the rest of the movie is basically a thrilling series of set pieces initially involving inter-gang scuffles and skirmishes but followed by uneasy truces and co-operation in order to keep Ann safe once she reveals who she is and how she has fled because of her hatred of what the MC represents – its selling of weapons being responsible for untold killings and human suffering worldwide year after year. Needless to say, this is something that Ann wants no part of, but will be irrevocably linked to once she does eventually become its president.

 

Official concept artwork depicting a fraught scene featuring Trash opposing some inimical enemy bikers (but not present in the movie itself) (© Enzo G. Castellari/Deaf International Film/Fulvia Film – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Interspersed between the gangs' confrontations with one other are confrontations between the Riders (especially) and a psychotic Bronx-born mercenary named Hammer (Vic Morrow), who knows every inch of this godforsaken territory and has no scruples or conscience whatsoever in killing whosoever attempts to prevent him from recapturing Ann, having been hired and sent specifically to achieve this goal by her father. Reluctantly working alongside Hammer is another Bronx local, a deadbeat known only as Hot Dog (Christopher Connelly). Moreover, Hammer also gains a further ally when one of the Riders, Ice (John Loffredo), a treacherous, traitorous would-be usurper of Trash as leader of the Riders, volunteers to set gang against gang, which should enable the three of them during all of the undoubted ensuing mayhem to abduct Ann (and also, as Ice is secretly intending, to enable him to become supreme ruler of the Bronx when the gangs have all but exterminated each other.

As so often happens, however, the best-laid plans often fail to come to fruition, and Ice's is no exception. Let’s just say that when Hammer's actions falter, prompting the MC to send in a private army brandishing fire-throwers in addition to the usual artillery, the movie's climax is horrifically violent, with a truly apocalyptic death count, though in a last-minute twist, who is killed and who  survives may not be who you are expecting – it certainly caught me by surprise.

Overall, The Bronx Warriors is very redolent of other Italian movies of this genre that were emerging at much the same time, as well as Hollywood's cult 1979 classic The Warriors and John Carpenter's 1981 neo-sci fi thriller Escape From New York, as well as Australia's Mad Max franchise. In turn, it went on to inspire countless more action flicks in this same movie mould.  Consequently, as I'm a longstanding fan of such films there was nothing to see in it that I hadn't already seen countless times, with the albeit well-staged series of fight scenes beginning to pall after a time for me (though I can well understand why this movie attracted such fandom when first released to audiences who were far less accustomed back in the early 1980s to such superbly-choreographed spectacles).

On the plus side: despite this being a very violent movie there is scarcely any gore to be seen anywhere in it (though there may be more in uncut, unrated versions), which as far as I'm concerned is always a good thing – I'm a firm believer in the Hitchcockian approach to movie-making, i.e. gore is not more. Harnessing the human imagination can yield far greater scares and chills than anything presented fully on-screen.

 

The Ogre (actor/former American football player Fred Williamson) and Witch (actress/model/former Italian Olympic swimmer Elisabetta 'Betty' Dessy), his whip-lashing Tiger lady, luxuriating in their groovy Bronx pad (but actually filmed in Rome, Italy, whereas most outdoor scenes were indeed filmed in NYC itself (© Enzo G. Castellari/Deaf International Film/Fulvia Film – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Despite being a secondary character, The Ogre is certainly the most memorable in this movie, due to Williamson effortlessly stealing every scene that he appears in. Also arresting is Eastman as the Zombies' imposing crimson-garbed leader Golan (but named as Golem in some reviews read by me), making a pleasant change (at least by comparison) from his more (in)famous previous roles as cannibalistic serial killers (in Anthropophagus, 1980, and Absurd, 1981)! And Girolami's Ann is suitably pretty and decorous, contrasting sharply as the living Beauty against the dead, decayed, disintegrated Beast that had once been the thriving Bronx.

Conversely, although his fight scenes, motorbike riding, and stunts throughout the movie are both formidable and faultless (which is particularly noteworthy as he did everything himself, not using a stuntman double), and although I had no problem with his acting skills either (in spite of this movie being the very first that he'd appeared in), I did have a problem accepting Gregory as Trash, the all-powerful leader of a seriously tough adult biker gang.

My problem lay with the fact that Gregory had only just turned 18 (not 17, as often mistakenly claimed) when he filmed his role as Trash, and, unlike various other actors who can look much older than their real age, he really did only look 18. True he was tall, muscular, and undeniably very handsome, but he was clearly just a teenager, and as such I found it difficult to suspend disbelief in order to accept how someone like him could ever have become leader of a biker gang whose other members were all older, in some cases considerably older, than him (or at least looked it).

Perhaps it is no accident, therefore, that in publicity posters and on my video's front cover, Trash is portrayed in vibrant artwork depictions as a clearly much older, far more savage, bloodthirsty figure in full warrior mode, presumably to provide additional encouragement to viewers to watch the movie. Check out the three pictures below to see what I mean.

 

Trash, as seen from left to right in decreasing order of savagery (and in increasing order of reality) – click pictures to enlarge for viewing purposes (© Enzo G. Castellari/Deaf International Film/Fulvia Film/EV – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Worth noting, incidentally, is that Gregory came to director Castellari's attention after Gregory's fiancée sent a photo of him to Fluvia Film, which resulted in Castellari requesting Gregory to attend an audition. Whatever Castellari saw there, he evidently liked very much, youthful age notwithstanding, because Gregory ultimately won the lead role of Trash over 2,000 other applicants. Yet by the end of the 1980s, Gregory was shunning the film industry limelight entirely, for reasons still unclear (though he'd begun to suffer emotionally), and slipped into almost total obscurity thereafter, tragically dying via suicide in 2013 aged only 48. One of the few films that he made before turning his back on the world at large was a Bronx Warriors sequel entitled Escape From The Bronx, which was released in 1983, and which I now plan to watch too.

Meanwhile,, despite taking such an inordinately long time to do so, I am very happy to have finally watched The Bronx Warriors, and I can confirm that for me it was certainly well worth the wait. Equally, if you are also a fan of this movie sub-genre, I feel sure that you will enjoy it too, particularly if you watch it in the context of its production and release during the early 1980s, i.e. over 40 years ago, and don't attempt to compare it directly with the effects-exploding blockbusters of today's cinematic experience. The Bronx Warriors is very much a film of its time, and therefore should be judged accordingly.

If you'd like to experience briefly the barbaric Bronx of 1990 in this action-packed alternate-timeline movie, please click here to watch an official 1990: The Bronx Warriors trailer on YouTube; or click here to watch the entire movie free of charge there.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

The full front cover of my ex-rental big box video of The Bronx Warriors (© Enzo G. Castellari/Deaf International Film/Fulvia Film/EV – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)