JACK THE GIANT KILLER (1962)

 

My official 50^th Anniversary Edition DVD of Jack the Giant Killer (© Nathan H. Juran/Zenith Pictures/United Artists – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My movie watch on 24 August 2024 was a stop-motion classic from the early 1960s – Jack the Giant Killer.

Directed by Nathan H. Juran, co-produced by Edward Small, and originally released in 1962 by United Artists, Jack the Giant Killer stars Kerwin Mathews as Jack, the film's valiant young farmer hero, and he had also lately starred as Sinbad in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, which was the first of the three iconic Ray Harryhausen stop-motion Sinbad-themed fantasy films. Indeed, because of perceived similarities, Columbia Pictures, who had released the above-named Sinbad movie, threatened to sue the makers of Jack the Giant Killer.

However, the latter avoided legal action by withdrawing the movie in its original form and re-releasing it with additional content as a film musical, the original non-musical version not being re-released for another 30 years. This latter is the version that I watched, however, courtesy of my special 50th Anniversary Edition DVD, which also contains an official folded-up poster of the movie.

Jack the Giant Killer is (very) loosely inspired by the traditional English fairy tale of the same title, but has been greatly expanded on screen, with an evil sorcerer named Pendragon (Torin Thatcher, who had also starred in The 7^th Voyage of Sinbad alongside Mathews) abducting Elaine (Judi Meredith), a Cornish princess, and conjuring forth all manner of monsters in an attempt to thwart Jack's bold attempts to rescue her.

These include not only the single-horned gigantic satyr that Jack had killed earlier when rescuing Elaine but also a two-headed giant, a flying dragon, and some dragon's-teeth warriors, all vividly brought to life via stop-motion animation (as was a bizarre tentacular sea monster that battled the two-headed giant), plus a host of incandescent skeletal witches engendered very effectively on-screen by a novel process dubbed Fantascope.

Yet although very satisfactory, produced as they were by master animator Jim Danforth in one of his earliest film assignments, these did not quite match Harryhausen's spectacular creations, but Don Beddoe as a bottle-entrapped, rhyme-riddling leprechaun who assists Jack in his battles against Pendragon and his minions provides some amusing asides.

Overall, therefore, Jack the Giant Killer is a highly entertaining fantasy film for all the family to watch and enjoy, shot in glorious Technicolor, and with every word of dialogue totally coherent, not a mumble to be mis-heard anywhere. Ah, the good old days!

Worth noting, incidentally, is that in 2013 two separate Jack the Giant Killer-themed fantasy movies were released. Both featured CGI-rendered giants and other monsters, as well as incorporating notable plot elements from another Jack-entitled English folktale – Jack and the Beanstalk. One of these films, Jack the Giant Slayer, was a big-name production, starring the likes of Nicholas Hoult (as Jack), Ian McShane, Ewan McGregor, Bill Nighy, and Eleanor Tomlinson, and is set in medieval times (click here to watch an official trailer for it on YouTube). The other film, Jack the Giant Killer (aka The Giant Killer), was a straight-to-DVD 'mockbuster', starring Ben Cross and Jane March, with Jamie Atkins as Jack, and is set in modern times (click here to watch an official trailer for it on YouTube). As I own both of these movies on DVD, I plan to watch them in the near future, and am particularly intrigued to see how the version set in modern times plays out.

Returning to the 1962 Jack the Giant Killer movie reviewed by me above: if you'd like to watch the official (albeit somewhat colour-diluted) trailer for it, please click here to do so on YouTube, or click here to watch on that site the entire movie free of charge (and in far richer colours).

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.

 

SMALL SOLDIERS

 

Publicity poster for Small Soldiers (© Joe Dante/Amblin Entertainment/DreamWorks Pictures/Universal Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 14 September 2024, I saw at a local market the intriguing 8-inch-tall vintage Hasbro action figure pictured at the end of this present review, a vaguely leonine character with an arrow quiver slung across his back. I learnt from the seller that he was from the late 1990s sci fi/comedy movie Small Soldiers, which I own on DVD but had never watched. So I bought the figure for £1 and the following evening I watched the movie. Let's just say that I much preferred the figure!

Directed by Joe Dante, and released in 1998 by DreamWorks Pictures in North America and Universal Pictures internationally, Small Soldiers has as its title characters a set of toys that have been rendered self-aware and with the ability to learn but also weaponised for serious battle-fighting, due to their having been inadvertently implanted with a top-grade, top-secret microprocessor intended for use in the USA's military defence programs!

Through faintly nefarious means, albeit for a good cause (to sell them at his father's ailing toy shop and thus bring in some much-needed cash), a complete set of both toy factions – the gung-ho Commando Elite soldiers, who are programmed specifically to win; and their alien but peaceful, non-aggressive foes the Gorgonites, who are programmed always to lose (with my newly-purchased action figure proving to be the lead Gorgonite character, an emissary named Archer) – come into the hands of teenager Alan Abernathy (Gregory Smith).

But it all soon gets totally out of hand, when the Commnado Elite soldiers declare full-scale war upon the Gorgonites, as well as upon any humans who try to stop them. Moreover, despite their small stature, these terrifying toy soldiers soon prove exceedingly adept at utilising full-sized – and potentially death-dealing – equipment to achieve their ends!

Alan's family and their next-door neighbours the Fimples, who include Alan's high-school love interest Christy (Kirsten Dunst), swiftly find this out to their cost, once Alan and Christy attempt to protect the hapless, helpless Gorgonites from the Commando Elite's merciless, sustained, and seemingly unstoppable onslaught.

And this is when and why it all became rather tedious for me. I'm not a war movie fan at the best of times, and the ongoing, ever more violent battles between the besieging toy soldiers and the besieged humans (and Gorgonites) holed up inside their homes seemed interminable during this movie's second half after an equally drawn-out setting of the stage for these battles in the first half. Put another way, it didn't take very long for my boredom threshold to be reached!

Having said that, I enjoyed watching how the neat twist of the ostensible heroes of this movie's toy contingent turning out to be the villains and its supposed villains proving to be the heroes played out. Certainly, the Commando Elite soldiers are thoroughly obnoxious, and become ever more so as the movie progresses, with no redeeming characteristics at all, whereas the Gorgonites, although much more sympathetic, are not given enough screen time, so the viewer finds it difficult (or at least I did) to bond with or root for them.

Happily, however, the bad guys did ultimately get their comeuppance, the good guys survived to set forth on an inevitably small-sized but scenic voyage of discovery here on planet Earth in search of their own world, and I added an interesting new movie action figure to my collection, so everything ended well.

It's just that I feel certain that Small Soldiers could have worked so much more effectively had it been a tight 45-minute featurette rather than a stretched-out 90-minute feature.

Finally, I can't bring this review to a close without mentioning that the voice cast for the toys (brought to life on screen via a combination of puppetry and CGI) was nothing if not eclectic. For it utilised not only Tommy Lee Jones but also actors from the 1967 American war movie The Dirty Dozen (including Ernest Borgnine and George Kennedy) for the Commando Elite soldiers, and cast members from the 1984 spoof rock movie This is Spinal Tap for most of the Gorgonites (but with Frank Langella as Archer), plus Sarah Michelle Geller of Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV fame and Christina Ricci from The Addams Family movies for some weaponised dolls! I told you that it was eclectic!

If you'd like to watch an official Small Soldiers trailer on YouTube, please click here to do so.

And 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; also, please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

My 8-inch-tall vintage Hasbro action figure of Archer, the Gorgonite emissary from Small Soldiers (photos ©  Dr Karl Shuker)

 

SPRING

 

Publicity poster for Spring (© Justin Benson/Aaron Moorhead/XYZ Films/Drafthouse Films/FilmBuff – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My film watch on 14 July 2024 was a quite extraordinary movie from 10 years ago entitled Spring, and best described as a body horror/modern romance.

It was directed by Jstin Benson and Aaron Moorhead who doubled-up in various other roles too (they co-produced it, with Benson co-editing it, as well as writing its screenplay, plus Moorhead serving as its cinematographer), and released in 2014 by Drafthouse Films and FilmBuff.

Spring centres upon young American Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) who flies on a whim from the States to Italy in order to escape his grief after his mother succumbs to cancer. While staying in a small village near Naples, he meets a mysterious young woman named Louise (Nadia Hilker) who is very adept at evading questions but is also very keen to have unprotected sex with him, so they do.

The movie's viewers, but not Evan, are then privy to some grotesque scenes in which Louise shape-shifts into bizarre, monstrous entities, during which phases she kills and devours various animals and also murders a young man who approaches her in a dark alley one evening, mistaking her for a prostitute.

After Louise abruptly breaks up with Evan, however, he unexpectedly turns up at her home to try to resolve matters, but is terrified to find her writhing on the floor in the form of a hideous multi-tentacled monster that reminded me of Greek mythology's Scylla. However, he succeeds in injecting her with a hypodermic syringe that she always keeps close by for a medical condition that she has never elaborated upon to Evan, and he watches as she gradually transforms back into human form.

During the lengthy explanation that follows, Louise informs Evan that she is a 2,000-year-old immortal entity who renews herself every 20 years, on the spring equinox of that year, by becoming pregnant and then absorbing the resulting embryo's stem cells. Just prior to each regeneration, however, her body becomes wildly unstable, causing her to metamorphose erratically into previous monstrous incarnations, as has been happening now, and is the reason why she broke up with Evan, to keep him safe from her dangerous ravages.

Evan pleads with Louise to give up her immortality and become mortal so that they can be together as a normal mortal couple – but even though she does love Evan, is her immortality too powerful a gift, or curse, for Louise to be willing or even able to sacrifice?

The special effects are brief but effective, especially the climactic tentacled monster reveal scene, which is positively Lovecraftian and  quite horrific. On the downside, there is far too much wholly gratuitous bad language, which becomes ever more grating as the film progresses. Otherwise, however, Spring is a thoroughly offbeat but engrossing romantic fantasy, quite unlike anything that I've seen before.

If you'd like to watch an official trailer for this movie, please click here to view one on YouTube.

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.

 

LOST TIME (aka BODY SNATCHERS)

 

My official DVD of Lost Time (© Christian Sesma/Spotlight Pictures/Ace Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My movie watch on 7 September 2024 was the 10-year-old straight-to-DVD sci fi/horror movie Lost Time (aka Body Snatchers), and I now understand why I was able to buy its DVD recently at a car boot sale for the princely sum of 10p…

Directed and co-written by Christian Sesma, produced by Spotlight Pictures, and released in 2014 by Ace Entertainment, Lost Time stars Luke Goss, an erstwhile late 1980s/early 1990s British teeny-bop pop star who performed with his twin brother Matt in the UK boy band Bros before reinventing himself a decade later as a successful actor in the USA (including major roles in the likes of Blade II, Hellboy II, Princess of Persia, and Tekken). Here, he plays an American cop named Carter, and the movie itself opens with his girlfriend, a young woman called Valerie Dreyfuss (Rochelle Vallese, who also co-wrote this movie's screenplay as well as its soundtrack's title track), suffering from terminal cancer, and whose sister Melissa (Jenni Blong) is devotedly caring for her.

But returning home from hospital one evening, their car suddenly cuts out, a blinding light encompasses them, and Valerie passes out. When she regains consciousness hours later, however, she is horrified to discover that Melissa has vanished. Nor is she all that has vanished – so too has Valerie's cancer. For, inexplicably, she is now totally cured.

So Valerie utilizes her new-found good health by devoting every waking moment of the next four months trying to find her sister, but when not awake she experiences hideous nightmares of alien entities operating upon her. Yes indeed, we're into alien abduction territory here, explaining the movie's title, which alludes to the frequently reported loss of time experienced by alleged abductees.

A mysterious author, Dr Xavier Reed (Robert Davi), who has written a book with that selfsame title and which deals with people's experiences that are similar to Valerie's, duly attracts her attention, and after meeting him she accepts an invitation to visit his sanctuary – a retreat where such people go to find answers. So she goes, but finds a lot more there than answers – namely, the terrifying realisation that her nightmares were not dreams, but were instead visions of what will happen to her there.

Reed and his staff are all aliens in assumed human form, and are hell-bent on harvesting human DNA in search of the so-called god gene with which to save their own species from impending extinction. Trapped inside the sanctuary, Valerie faces being experimented upon by them and her DNA stolen, not to mention having via an excruciatingly painful operation a centipede-like creature inserted into the base of her spinal cord to control her mind, but boyfriend Carter is hot on her trail after she goes missing.

Will he save her, will they find her sister, will any semblance of a coherent, cohesive plot emerge, will the constant soundtrack oscillations from much-too-quiet dialogue to far-too-loud music and ear-splitting, blood-curdling shrieks at all-too-frequent intervals ever stop, and will the cameramen locate some colour film and lighting equipment after shooting most of the movie in virtual b/w and in the dark?

Luke does his best to hold together and bring some much-needed level-headedness to this rambling, shambling, flight-of-fancy folderol. But when every time that some crucial plot-explanatory dialogue is spoken it is simultaneously drowned out by a cacophonous sound effect or some equally noisy blasts of 'music' (I use that term very loosely here!), you just know that he is doomed to failure.

Worth noting, incidentally, is that the movie tantalizingly ends with a startling twist occurring in its final moments (even more startling, in fact, than the veritable angel entity who makes a highly unexpected, unheralded appearance a short time earlier in finest deus ex machina mode), intimating that a possible sequel might have been under consideration at that time, but nothing has emerged to date.

That may be for the best, however, because at least as far as I'm concerned, the only Lost Time that I experienced here was the 90 minutes or so that elapsed while I was watching this flimsiest of flicks.

Nevertheless, if for some strange reason you'd actually like to watch an official trailer for Lost Time, please click here to view one on YouTube.

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.

 

SORRY TO BOTHER YOU

 

My official UK DVD of Sorry To Bother You (© Boots Riley/Significant Productions/MNM Creative/MACRO/Cinereach/The Space Program/Annapurna Pictures/Universal Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My movie watch on 19 April 2024 was a decidedly strange but engrossing satirical sci fi comedy movie from six years ago entitled Sorry To Bother You, which wickedly lampoons the perceived evils of capitalism run wild.

Directed by Boots Riiley, released in 2018 by Universal Pictures, and set in an alternate Oakland, California, Sorry To Bother You stars LaKeith Stanfield as feckless young adult waistrel Cassius 'Cash' Green, who, desperate for money to avoid eviction for not paying his rent, takes a job as a bottom-rung telemarketer.

However, and to everyone's surprise (not least of all his own!), a gift for vocal mimicry makes Cash so inordinately successful a telesales operative that he soon attracts the attention of Steve Lift (Armie Hammer), the CEO of an enormous but highly controversial company called WorryFree.

WorryFree makes its gazillions from employing poor people via lifetime contracts, for which they receive free housing and food for life in lieu of wages, but they must work there in perpetuity. In short, a (barely) legal form of slavery – but as Cash discovers when invited by Lift to take on a very special role there for the eye-watering sum of $100,000,000 during five years in that very special position, that ain't the half of it!

No indeed, for in a truly shocking manner, Cash finds out that Lift's scientists are actively but covertly transforming the company's contracted workers into bizarre half-human half-horse monstrosities called equisapiens, because such entities will work harder and longer than normal humans. The first equisapien seen in the movie is actually played  by Forest Whitaker, wearing an animatronic horse head (see later for more details).

 

Cash and two friends encountering a couple of equisapiens in Sorry To Bother You (© Boots Riley/Significant Productions/MNM Creative/MACRO/Cinereach/The Space Program/Annapurna Pictures/Universal Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Cash, realising how he has been lulled by financial greed into this realm of horrors, plans to expose Lift's abominable actions, but Lift has already taken drastic steps to ensure Cash's compliance, Let's just say that those steps are not to be sniffed at – or, more precisely, are not to be sniffed, literally!

Darkly funny but also bitingly acerbic, and co-starring Danny Glover as Cash's older co-worker Langston (Glover had originally been penciled in for the lead role of Cash until conflicting work commitments meant that he had to decline it), Sorry To Bother You certainly appeals to my more outré cinematic tastes, and is definitely well worth a watch. It takes its title, incidentally, from the conversation opener that Cash and the other telemarketers habitually use when engaging with prospective clients over the phone.

Also worth noting is that in stark contrast to so many bizarre on-screen monsters featuring in modern-day cinema, the equisapiens were created not by CGI but by more traditional physical means, utilizing a horse body suit and an animatronic head operated out of screen shot by puppeteers, including one who specifically operated the head's eyes. Each equisapien has its own unique head (designed and built by Amalgamated Dynamics, who also created suits for Alien and Predator), but the same horse body suit is used for all of them.

If you'd like to view an official trailer for Sorry To Bother You on YouTube, be sure to click here, and for a dramatic spoiler trailer revealing the enslaved equisapiens, click here.

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.

 

 

LIMBERING UP FOR LAMBADA MOVIES!

 

My ex-rental big box VHS videos of Lambada and The Forbidden Dance (© Joel Silberg/Cannon Pictures/Warner Bros / (© Greydon Clark/21^st Century Film Corporation/Columbia Pictures – both images reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 20 August 2024, my evening's double movie-watch was definitely a nostalgia night for me, as the two musical films that I watched first became known to me in the early 1990s, when they were regularly available for hire in big box VHS video format at Blockbusters and the many other video rental shops that abounded in every town here in the UK back then. Both of them had as their at least nominal theme that sultry, sensual Brazilian dance the lambada, famed for the intimacy displayed by its dancing partners, and which became an international craze for a short time between the late 1980s and early 1990s. It even spawned a global hit song, 'Lambada', released by the French/Brazilian pop band Kaoma in January 1989. Not only that, several movies were swiftly produced on the back of this dance, to capitalize upon its popularity while it lasted (which wasn't very long, as it happened).

The most famous of these movies were the two American ones watched by me two evenings ago. However, although I was well aware of them from seeing their boxes on display in the video rental shops, I only ever got around to actually hiring out and watching one of them, Lambada (probably because it centred around a rebel biker character who rode the kind of chrome-gleaming mega-Harley that I, as a young starry-eyed biker newbie back then, could only dream about!). The other movie, The Forbidden Dance, conversely, which centred around an ostensibly feisty Amazonian tribal princess, stayed resolutely upon the rental shops' shelves. Once these shops all closed down, however, I never saw either movie for hire or sale anywhere (I'm not even sure if they were ever released in sell-thru video or DVD format), and eventually I all but forgot about them – until just a fortnight ago when, while idly browsing ex-rental big box videos listed on ebay, I chanced upon a seller who had one of each of these two lambada movies for sale. So, with fond memories of my video rental days duly rekindled, I lost no time in buying both of them straight away, and when they arrived I finally watched The Forbidden Dance after a mere 30+ year delay, and rewatched Lambada after the same length of time since originally watching it. So now, here are my compare & contrast views and reviews of thse films, which, as I subsequently discovered, were involved in as much off-screen trials and tribulations as ever occurred on-screen in either of them!

 

 

My ex-rental big box VHS video of Lambada (© Joel Silberg/Cannon Pictures/Warner Bros – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

LAMBADA (aka LAMBADA: SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE)

Directed and co-written by Joel Silberg, and released by Warner Bros on 16 March 1990, Lambada (or Lambada: Set The Night On Fire, to give it the full title by which it is sometimes known in order to distinguish it from The Forbidden Dance aka Lambada: The Forbidden Dance – more about their titular turmoil later), stars J. Eddie Peck as mild-mannered Clark Kent-like maths teacher Kevin Laird at an elite Beverly Hills college by day but who secretly becomes at night a leather-jacketed Harley-riding ex-street gang member named Blade when, while revisiting his teenage downtown LA neighbourhood, he lambadas with the best (and worst!) of them at a barrio night club named No Man's Land. However, just like Superman he does this for all the right reasons, because whilst there he also teaches maths and other school subjects for free in one of the club's back rooms to a group of impoverished but eager-to-learn local youngsters in order to help them pass their School Certificate.

Unfortunately, however, Kevin's double life threatens to come crashing down around his ears when one of his Beverly Hills college students, Sandy (Melora Hardin), happens to pay No Man's Land a visit and spots him there. Worse still, as a result of seeing him in his Blade persona, she develops a serious crush on him, much to Kevin's great concern, because he is a happily-married man who has no romantic interest in her, she is in any case a minor, and her unreliable boyfriend Dean (Ricky Paull Goldin) is insanely jealous about how attracted she is to Kevin (even though it is plainly unrequited) – a highly volatile concoction that could all too readily explode Kevin's teaching career. All sorts of close shaves and comic confusion subsequently arise, but as this is fundamentally a candy-floss feel-good flick, with the kind of wildly implausible, impractical, unfeasible plot that is invariably par for the course in this genre of lightweight movie, everything turns out just fine in the end.

If you are expecting a deep, thought-provoking cinematic experience, Lambada may not be the film for you! What makes it watchable and, indeed, successful by and large as a thoroughly entertaining, enjoyable movie is the undeniable on-screen chemistry between its two leads, Peck and Hardin, plus the sizzling lambada dance scenes featuring a sizeable company of dancers in No Man's Land (there are rumours that these included a very brief appearance by a young Jennifer Lopez, but I didn't spot her). They were choreographed by breakdancer/choreographer Shabba-Doo aka Adolfo Quinones, who also co-stars as Ramon, a troublesome bad boy character within the group of downtown youngsters being surreptitiously taught at the club by Kevin/Blade. Having said that, in view of this movie's title it is surprising how unconnected the lambada dance is to the main plot, featuring in it as little more than an occasional diversion rather than a central, defining aspect of it. Nevertheless, it was good to watch this movie again after more than three decades, and I still found it enjoyable – and yes, despite now having owned two Harleys myself, I still coveted Blade's truly awesome rolling thunder machine! (The closing credits confirm that it had been loaned to Cannon Pictures by Harley-Davidson Motor Co itself, which may explain why it received so much screen time!)

 

 

My ex-rental big box VHS video of The Forbidden Dance (© Greydon Clark/21^st Century Film Corporation/Columbia Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

THE FORBIDDEN DANCE (aka LAMBADA: THE FORBIDDEN DANCE)

Now to my first (and currently only) viewing of The Forbidden Dance (according to its storyline, incidentally, the lambada is the forbidden dance because it was banned in Brazil for 50 years – yeah, right!). Directed by Greydon Clark, and released by Columbia Pictures on 16 March 1990 (yes indeed, the very same day as Lambada – more about this non-coincidence later!), The Forbidden Dance (aka Lambada: The Forbidden Dance aka The Forbidden Dance Is Lambada, to give it the two alternative full titles by which it is sometimes known in order to distinguish it from Lambada aka Lambada: Set The Night On Fire) stars former Miss USA Laura Harring in her movie debut as Nisa, the daughter (and hence princess) of the king of a native Brazilian Amazonian rainforest tribe whose jungle home is about to be destroyed by an American petroleum company who has purchased the tribe's land by dubious means and is now demanding their eviction. Nisa and the tribe's shaman, Joa (Sid Hauig), imbued with supernatural powers, travel to Los Angeles hoping to meet the company's chairman and call a halt to its plans for their homeland.

Not surprisingly, Nisa's valiant but naïve plan fails to achieve any success, but after unknowingly (by both parties) being hired as a maid by said chairman at his swish Beverly Hills mansion, she encounters his layabout adult son Jason (Jeff James), whose only passion in life is dancing. When he takes her to one of his elite night clubs and dances the lambada with her, he loses all interest in his fractious, brattish girlfriend Ashley (Barbra Brighton), who is not best pleased about this and plots revenge. Meanwhile, once he learns from Nisa the plight of her people and jungle home, Jason hatch a plan with her to win a dancing contest, whose prize is an appearance on national TV via a dance spot in the televised show of none other than real-life band Kid Creole and the Coconuts, thereby giving them precious screen time in which to inform America's nationwide audience about what is happening to the rainforest.

Like Lambada, therefore, this movie has a highly simplistic, unrealistic storyline, but again like Lambada, it is a very entertaining confection of comedy, confusion, and only relatively mild elements of threat and danger, culminating in the inevitable happy ending, and plenty of dancing – not to mention some priceless scenes featuring the surreal powers of shaman Joa! However, on a more serious level it also does not shy away from exposing the racism and prejudice prevalent at that time between certain segments of American society towards Hispanics. Moreover, whereas in spite of its title Lambada only features the eponymous dance almost in passing, in The Fordbidden Dance it is vey much at the heart of the plot throughout the movie, and actually features Kaoma's hit song (conspicuous by its absence in Lambada) as well as the afore-mentioned Kid Creole and the Coconuts, plus the title song 'The Forbidden Dance' sung by José Feliciano. Last, but by no means least, the movie carries a credit dedicating it to the preservation of the rainforest, which can only be a good thing, seeking to promote this vital ecosystem's conservation. So, well done 21^st Century Film Corporation and Columbia Pictures!

 

RIVALRIES ABOUNDING!

Although Lambada was one of the first lambada-themed films off the mark as far as going into production was concerned, the perceived lucrative movie links with this exotic, erotic dance soon launched others in its wake, including most prominently The Forbidden Dance. I'm not sure how much (if any) of the following is true, but I've read in numerous sources that this latter movie was conceived, written,  filmed, and released in a mere matter of weeks, with the original intention of beating Lambada into the cinemas. However, it failed to achieve this goal, though it did succeed in being released on the very same day, 16 March 1990, as Lambada. Making matters even more contentious, The Forbidden Dance was originally entitled Lambada: The Forbidden Dance, but this was deemed one dance step too many as far as the producers of Lambada were concerned, who successfully sued to have the word 'Lambada' removed from their rival film's title, which is why it is now known simply as The Forbidden Dance (though the word 'Lambada' does appear prominently in publicity posters, video covers, etc for it).  Moreover, to eliminate any possible additional confusion between the two movies, the phrase 'Set The Night On Fire', which was originally merely a tag-line for Lambada, is often elevated nowadays to the status of official subtitle for it.

One further source of confusion, which I've seen on several websites, is the claim that Lambada is the sequel to The Forbidden Dance, which as shown here is plainly nonsensical, because the two movies were entirely unrelated, and Lambada actually went into production well before The Forbidden Dance. However, what is true is that there were initially plans for a bona fide sequel to The Forbidden Dance, provisionally entitled Naked Lambada! The Forbidden Dance Continues, but disappointing box office returns for The Forbidden Dance caused these plans to be abandoned.

Speaking of box office returns, Lambada proved the more successful of the two films, earning US $4,263,112 against the US $1,823,154 grossed by The Forbidden Dance (though clearly neither of them was a big hit). Lambada's relative success over its rival was possibly because of its more experienced lead cast members, with J. Eddie Peck in particular being at the peak of his film career at that time (he later concentrated on high-profile roles in TV blockbuster soaps, such as Dynasty, Dallas, The Young and the Restless, All My Children, etc). Incidentally, be sure to check out here my review of his previous movie, The Bite, a monster/horror film released in 1989. True, Harring not only was incredibly beautiful in every scene but also radiated charm and appeared thoroughly captivating, and James's character Jason was extremely likeable, but they lacked the overall experience and on-screen chemistry of Peck and Hardin imho. One major plus for both movies, however, is their respective soundtracks, each of them bursting with vibrant songs from its film.

Finally: I mentioned earlier that several lambada-themed movies were released during much the same period of time. Apart from the two reviewed here, others include the 1989 Turkish movie Lambada, the 1990 Brazilian/Italian movie Lambada (aka Rhythm and Passion), and the 1991 Brazilian movie Lambada starring Thiago Justino. There were also various additional lambada-themed movie projects that were planned but never produced, including Blame It On Lambada, Lambada: The Sound of Love, and even a comedy, Lambadamy, as well as the afore-mentioned sequel to The Forbidden Dance, Naked Lambada!

 

If you feel like engaging in some vicarious lambada action, be sure to click here to watch on YouTube an official trailer for Lambada, and click here to watch on YouTube an official trailer for The Forbidden Dance. I suppose that some may consider these movies to be guilty pleasuees, but I don't feel remotely guilty about watching them, and neither should you – both are thoroughly entertaining, which is what movie-watching is all about, being entertained!

Also: 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.

 

'Clark Kent' Kevin transformed into 'Superman' Blade, and not even needing a phone booth to change in!

 

 

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.