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)