SHORT AND MOSTLY SHOCKING

Short Sharp Shocks. Vol 4. BFI, 2 x Disc set Blu Ray

Well, the BFI keep finding these obscure brief shorts and longer shorts in their archive. Are they worth reviving? The answer is both yes and no. Yes, when we get shocks, atmosphere and a creepy frisson from films going out on a limb (no pun intended). No, when even the description short is mistaken and the odd or experimental film soon feels overlong, pedestrian and clunky. 

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A BRAVE ODDITY

Golem (Piotr Szulkin) 1979. Second Run. Blu Ray.

My usual complaint about mainstream SF cinema is its dearth of ideas, whether they been politically satiric, philosophical or genuinely scientific. Very few films hit you with the power of their imaginative speculation to make you think and doubt. 

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SET IN STONE

The Stone Tape (1972) Peter Sasdy (Director) 101 Films – Blu Ray (To be released on 9th December 2024)

Nigel Kneale is a master at fusing the genres of horror and science fiction. He often claimed he wasn’t writing genre TV and film drama but simply good drama. At one level he’s right. Although he does employ generic tropes what’s far more interesting is his engagement with speculative ideas (both paranormal and ‘normal’) and the psychological conflict of characters observed with great empathy, satire and irony.

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A CASE OF DEJA VU

Starve Acre (2023) Dir Daniel Kokotajlo BFI Blu Ray.

At the beginning of Starve Acre a young boy named Owen cannot sleep. When his mother speaks to him he says that the whistling has gone now. The next day, when his parents are resting, under a tree, near a cricket pitch, they’re disturbed by a young girl’s scream followed by the cry of a distressed horse that’s just had one of its eyes injured. The attacker is Owen holding a bloodstained twig.

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RECOVERING THE OUTCASTS

The Outcasts (1982) BFI Blu Ray / Flipside. Robert Wynne-Simmons (Director) (24 September 2024.)

Very few films have a genuine Celtic/Pagan sensibility where environment and characters possess a mysterious and magical charge that feels authentically rooted in myth and legend. The cult favourite The Wicker Man is an obvious first choice. Then Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s still underrated Gone to Earth. 

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SCREENING SATAN

The Satanic Screen: An Illustrated Guide to the Devil in Cinema by Nikolas Schreck. Headpress, revised edition 2024.

“True to its mirroring nature, the satanic cinema has often portrayed the Devil as whatever force was perceived by consensus consciousness as embodying cosmic maleficence at the time.” 

HOOKED BY THE QUEEN

The Queen of Spades (Thorold Dickinson) 1949. ViaVision Imprint. Blu Ray

The Queen of Spades has been described as a horror fantasy, supernatural drama and ghost story. It has elements of all three. My preference, and elaboration, would be an early 19th century ghost story grounded in a much stylised Russian realism. 

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TESTING THE LIMITS

Joanne Morreale. The Outer Limits. Wayne State University Press, 2022.

 

“There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity....

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JUST WILD ABOUT HARRY

Ray Harryhausen Special Collection. Blu –Ray Box set. Via Vision 2023.

Unsealing this box set of eight Ray Harryhausen films I was reminded of the early 90’s when I met Ray Harryhausen at the Everyman cinema in Hampstead, London. He was delivering an illustrated talk on his work. Apart from myself, and a friend, the cinema was full of young animators who’d come to hear the master of stop-motion animation. It was an inspiring evening.

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THE FRIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

Ghost Stories for Christmas Volume 2 BFI BluRay. 3 disc set.

Director Lawrence Gordon Clark is celebrated for his direction of the seventies TV adaptations of the ghost stories of M. R. James. Clark brought a technical finesse, dramatic pacing and sensitivity to these productions. He was hugely sympathetic to the spirit of James’s writing. 

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A MORBID ACUTENESS

Chris Alexander. Corman/Poe. Interviews and Essays: Exploring the Making of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films, 1960-1964. Headpress 2023. 978-1915316073

From the very beginnings of cinema there have been adaptations of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Thou Shalt not Kill (1914) directed by D.W.Griffith up to the new Netflix series The Fall of the House of Usher (2023) there lay a long trail of films attempting to capture the frequently morbid sensibility of this hugely influential writer. 

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THE COMPLETE NIGEL KNEALE

Andrew Screen, The Book of Beasts. Headpress 2023.
Andy Murray. Into The Unknown, The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale. Headpress 2017.

Does a book examining the six episodes of Nigel Kneale’s television series, Beasts warrant 430 pages? Beasts is a large, attractive paperback with copious black and white illustrations and undoubtedly a labour of love from author Andrew Screen.

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THE FORTEAN POWELL AND PRESSBURGER

Nathalie Morris and Claire Smith (Editors) The Cinema of Powell and Pressburger. (BFI Bloomsbury, 2023

Pamela Hutchinson. The Red Shoes. (BFI Bloomsbury 2023)

Readers of Magonia have a marvellous opportunity to enjoy the current celebrations of the work of scriptwriter Emeric Pressburger and director Michael Powell. We have a new book about them and a season of their films. 

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GOTHIC MELODRAMA, CATS AND PSYCHEDELIA

Morgiana (A film by Juraj Herz) Czechoslovakia 1972. Second Run Blu Ray 2023

The hectic action of Morgiana occurs in an unspecified time though it’s probably late 19th / early 20th century. The plot is simple: two sisters Viktoria and Klara (played by the same actress Iva Janzurova) inherit a fortune after the death of their wealthy father. Viktoria’s left a small castle, jewellery and other possessions. 

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THE GOTHIC SPIRIT

Laurin, a Film by Robert Sigl - Second Run. BluRay 2023

James Oliver’s booklet-notes for Laurin make the valid point that Gothic tends to be played out in modern cinema as pastiche. That being unsympathetic to the romantic trappings of the Gothic, audiences have long turned away from the old Hammer film approach (Terence Fisher’s Dracula outings) and embraced something more knowing and self-conscious (viz-Mark Gattis’s BBC TV version of Dracula).

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ISLE OF STONE

Enys Men (2022) Directed by Mark Jenkin. Screening in UK-wide cinemas on 13th January 2023.

Firstly the title Enys Men, the 'men' is pronounced “mane” and the two words mean a stone island in Cornwall. And on this island a Menhir is a standing stone dating from the Bronze Age. It might be part of some core explanation for the happenings in Mark Jenkin’s 91 minute film poem: or simply a teasing folklorist clue of sorts. 

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A VERY HAUNTED CHRISTMAS

Ghost Stories for Christmas Vol 1 (BFI Blu Ray Box set - 3 discs)

I first picked up an M.R.James story when I was thirteen. But I didn’t finish reading it. Casting the Runes proved too disturbing. So I pulled the duvet over my head and tried to sleep. Aged sixteen I bought a complete M. R. James collection, still found them scary but they no longer kept me awake. I thought my boyish anxiety of the supernatural had gone. 

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GAWAIN AND THE GREEN NIGHT

David Rudkin, director. Gawain and the Green Knight. Network DVD.

This 1991 TV film adaptation of the famous medieval poem has one of the oddest plot lines involving a mutual promise of decapitation and quasi-redemption – chop of my head and prove your loyalty to me! Its Christmas time, at the court of King Arthur. A giant of a man arrives on horseback. He is vegetative green in appearance: unsheathing his sword he requests someone to take part in a be-heading contest. The Green Knight’s head is immediately chopped off by Arthur’s knight, Gawain. After a year has passed Gawain must then be decapitated by the Green Knight.

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NOPE

Nope. (2022) Directed by Jordan Peele. Universal, 2022.

My first reaction to Jordan Peele’s highly personal UFO film Nope didn’t have me crying out Yep but announcing with a contented smile on my face, Maybe? Nope is definitely a mess but a very entertaining, intelligent, creative mess. A film that’s both bloated, about twenty minutes overlong, and at the same time exact - speedy idiomatic dialogue where you have to be quick off the draw to catch.)

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TOO NEAR THE SUN?

Jindrich Polak (Director) Ikarie XB1 1963. Second Run : Blu Ray.

'Ikarie' translates into Icarus referencing the Greek legend of the man who flew too close to the sun only to have his wax wings melt. In the year 2163 the Ikarie space station leaves Earth to voyage to the Alpha Centauri solar system where the astronauts believe they will find intelligent life. The forty crew members (male and female) are communally engaged. 

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