Black Moon Rising - Harley Cokeliss - 1986

As time goes by, I find myself succumbing to nostalgic pangs for increasingly stereotypical joys of 80s/90s technology, you know the usual “remember when we all had to make cassette mixtapes rather than iTunes playlists, it was so much more individual etc”. This redundant longing for a more ‘innocent’ time came to mind again recently when thinking about how I had first seen Harley Cokeliss’ Black Moon Rising.

I’d finally got a TV for my very own room when I was 12, and oh the joys I had watching late night film showings on the four glorious channels we had back then. The amount of ‘discoveries’ I made just through pure chancing on short TV guide synopsis, stay up late, headphones in, glued to that cathode ray tube. BBC 1 playing the garish splatter end of Hammer films on a Friday night (think Twins of Evil (1971), Scars of Dracula (1970)), the mighty cult cinema bin that was Moviedrome on BBC 2, and the various mid budget 80’s & 90’s action and horror films ITV would fill the post 11pm void with, of which, for a while, this picture was a mainstay.

Some years later that I found out the story is actually credited to my first true film love John Carpenter, though further investigation showed that although he had written the script, it was as a hungry young filmmaker fighting for scraps in the early seventies. His influence therefore isn’t particularly noticeable in the finished product, only Lalo Schifrin’s synth ‘n’ drum pad laden score bears anything resembling his work.

The film’s plot follows Quint a professional thief doing a line in government espionage. If you’re expecting an Ethan Hunt type though you’ll be let down, Tommy Lee Jones’ blue collar burglar is more a post Lee Marvin cynical street tough, who would rather spend his time sinking a few in dive bars and pool halls.

His latest assignment has gone awry, and he finds himself hunted by rival Marvin (fans of Early 80’s US Hardcore will be excited to find that he’s played by Fear’s chief antagonist Lee Ving!) and in trouble with his government masters (represented by the late Bubba Smith A.K.A. Hightower!). Quint crosses paths with a trio of aspiring car producers, whose latest supercar project is subsequently stolen by a group of car thieves led by Nina (Linda Hamilton in the between Terminator’s doldrums) who in turn is in the service of corporate overlord Ed Ryland (Robert Vaughn, who mined a fine line in this sort of yuppie kingpin role during the 80’s).

The hiring of Quint to retrieve this supercar becomes the central focus of the plot, and oh what a piece of work the car is, it’s introduced to us screaming across desert flats at 300 mph in a complete knock off of the opening credits to Knight Rider. Alas this supposedly ultra desirable supercar is somewhat of a joke to look at, I think the makers were thinking Bertone (y’know like the Stratos Zero featured in the King of Pop’s ego fest Moonwalker (1988)), but alas it looks more like something I would have drawn as “a car from the year 2010!” as a 10 year old child.

The film follows a predictable but nonetheless entertaining enough path, Quint and Nina join forces and get it on to some smooth jazzy vibes, Quint receives a retribution beating for his earlier indiscretions and the set piece finale sees Quint and the supercar crew taking on Ryland in a low budget skyscraper infiltration that brings to mind certain Nakatomi Plaza adventures that would follow a few years later.

My love of films being set in night time Los Angeles has been well documented previously i’m sure, and as usual this is the primary reason the film still holds fond reminiscence for me. All I need are some slick city street driving scenes and frequent cutaway shots to blue sheen skyscrapers and i’m drooling. This films provides such ‘Mannian’ (is that a term yet? If not, i’m coining it) neo-noir delights aplenty. It’s one of those films you can get on bottom rung DVD company labels in £1 shops, pick it up, it’s a more than competent, fun, throwaway actioner with a tasty mid 80’s vibe and a comedy hot wheels car, go on.

Drive - Nicolas Winding Refn - 2011

For Bob...

A 1973 Chevy Malibu. Not quite the quintessential example of the American ‘Muscle Car’, but certainly in keeping with the aesthetics of the needlessly large, gas guzzling, yet somehow intensely attractive beasts that once roamed the American Highways, cruises through the streets of a Los Angeles straight out of the Michael Mann textbook. Brightly lit corporate headquarters aim towards the sky, surrounded by a shimmering neo-noir freeway vista that stretches on forever, a mid 1980s vision of the perfect city, detachment as a dreamy aspiration. Inside the car though, a beautiful couple, the man, mesmerising, with the channelled stoic cool of Delon in Le Samourai (1967), McQueen in Bullitt (1968) and O’Neal in The Driver (1978), is tempered with a warmth, exchanging stolen glances with the Jean Seberg esq waif like beauty in the passenger seat. The Soundtrack, reminiscent of Brian Eno’s ambient Apollo soundscapes swells towards transcendence as their hands clasp over the gearstick, and my heat skips a beat with joy.

I’m concerned, has Nicolas Winding Refn somehow found a Being John Malkovich (1999) like portal into my mind? As with Drive, he somehow seems to have formed a chimerical combination of everything I look for in a movie. Whilst it carries all the signifiers of 80’s pulp genre cinema I love so much (Neon titles, pounding score, car chases, love story, mobster double crossings and a vengeance delivered with Tom Savini esq levels of grue), the delivery echoes the influences of my even more beloved 1970’s New Hollywood (characters defined by mood and actions rather than needless exposition, Robby Muller esq. Cinematography and a disturbing thesis on the violent capabilities of man). It’s not without a knowing wink does the gangster Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks) deliver the line "I used to produce movies. In the 80s. Kind of like action films. Sexy Stuff. One critic called them European. I thought they were shit".

The plot, as should be the case in mock genre exercises is simple enough, a lonely ‘best in his trade’ wheelman/mechanic/part-time stuntman finds himself falling in love with the young mother in the next apartment, unfortunately the young mother’s husband is being released from prison and owes money, which if not paid will see retribution served upon the wife and child. Upon agreeing to help for her sake, the driver finds himself involved in a botched heist, which leads to a price being put on his head by local Mafiosi.

Our unnamed protagonist (Ryan Gosling), as stated, carries himself like the anti-heroes of films past. He opens the film as the archetypical cinema wheelman, calm, collected; every word and move carefully planned (and like most male viewers, proves the subject of my biggest mancrush since John Cusack in Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)). Yet unlike his hollow eyed Melvillian predecessors, this detachment begins to crumble upon meeting Irene (Carey Mulligan), whom his desperation to protect as the film spirals out of control begins to reveal a hitherto unseen proclivity for violence buried within him, he can and indeed shockingly does lose control of his Eastwood toothpick chewing surface cool, though rather than feed us a backstory explaining away this side of his nature, this remains as an ambiguity. As this violence begins to take hold, Refn asks questions about the brutal capabilities of man when cornered, and also by making it all so visceral asks questions of the viewers enjoyment (parallels with Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (2005) haven’t gone unnoticed).

It has been noted by many critics of the film that considering its title is Drive, there is a distinct lack of this titular aspect. I’d disagree with this, there are several showcase scenes showing our protagonist at work, and rather than the empty spectacle of quick cuts that usually make up the car chase, Refn again chooses to echo the subtler pleasures of a cinema thought lost. Like in the previously mentioned Bullitt or Two Lane Blacktop (1971), the sounds of a rev counter redlining, and a quick gear shift carry just as much excitement as a crossroads pileup.

On I could go, but I think my love for the film is suitably conveyed. This is very much fanboy worship thinly disguised as criticism, for this is one of my favourite films of recent times. I’m male, 18-30, and have pretentions towards enjoying a more cult and ‘cultured’ variant on genre cinema, it was pretty much destiny for me to fall in love with this picture, and so it goes...

Young and Innocent - Alfred Hitchcock - 1937

The British period of Hitch’s career often finds itself boiled down to a case of The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938) (i.e. the two with Criterion Releases) considered as must sees, the rest, essentially throwaway. This of course is far from the case and solid arguments can be made for the greatness of The Lodger (1927), Blackmail (1929), Sabotage (1936) and the film that gave this blog its name, the original version of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). Many feel that Young and Innocent too deserves a more respected place within the Hitchcock canon; alas I’m inclined to disagree to an extent.

The film, whose title when mentioned in casual conversation sounds considerably less wholesome until mention of its directors name, actually fits safely within the mode in which we find a good percentage of Hitch’s output, that of ‘the wrong man’ thriller. Following the murder of a renowned actress, a friend of hers Robert Tisdall (Derrick De Marney) finds her body and is himself accused of the murder, with a flimsy case of motive placed upon him due to money being left to him in her will.

He manages to escape custody and proceed to go on the lam, coercing the local police chief’s daughter Erica Burgoyne (Nova Pilbeam) into aiding him in escaping the manhunt, and to help in his quest to find a tramp who has in his possession (wait for it... *cough*), a raincoat of Tisdall’s which was stolen by the murderer, had its belt used in the murder and was then given to the tramp and which will thus prove Tisdall’s innocence and lead to the capture of the real murderer... right... Not that I have any problem with outlandish plots from Hitch, a man whose oeuvre often features credibility stretching macguffins in order to progress matters, but a used raincoat?

The film actually opens in a startling fashion; we immediately bear witness to a raging domestic argument while a thunder storm thrashes away in the background, in an unusual turn, our murderer is revealed right away in an oppressively atmospheric scene transported from the bleak noir this film never manages to become. The following ten minutes manage to retain some of this downbeat vibe, as Tisdall finds the victim’s body washed up on the shore, and soon finds himself accused and fingered for the blame by a seemingly corrupt police force wishing to close the case quickly despite a paucity of strong evidence.

Once Tisdall makes his rather farcical escape from custody though, the film becomes more a comedy road caper than intense thriller. Those hoping for a Bonnie & Clyde hit the Home Counties scenario will find themselves rather disappointed. A lot of the blame for this can be attributed to De Marney’s performance, his Tisdall comes across as so smug and self assured that his innocence will be proven that the audience is never really given to worrying for his fate. Pilbeam’s ‘Jolly what-ho’ attitude towards the situation is also rather more Enid Blyton than Hitchcock, further reducing the suspense.

Pilbeam’s Erica has the makings of an interesting character, she appears to have taken over the maternal role for her large family (the actual mother an unexplained absentee), and as the eldest child suddenly betraying her chief of police father to go on the run with Tisdall, this makes for an intriguing act of rebellion against her re-positioning within the family hierarchy that is never fleshed out.

Once we can gradually accept this as one of Hitch’s lighter pictures though, there are small rewards to be garnered. Edward Rigby’s turn as the sought after tramp ‘Old Will’, is a humorous one, and the closing set piece features one of those classic ‘Hitchcockian’ virtuoso camera moves that we see at least once a film. In this case an audacious pan and zoom across a ballroom as Hitch zooms right into an extreme close-up on the face of the murderer revealing his presence within the room (in a scene that also has an unpleasant reminder of a world before 'The Black and White Minstrels' were considered tasteless...).

Fluffy, throwaway, and with slight central performances, Young and Innocent may be second grade Hitchcock, but it still manages to entertain just enough in its brief 80 minutes to make it worthy of inclusion in any personal ‘British period’ Hitchcock retrospective you may be planning.

By the way if you embarrassed to ask for a copy of the picture at your local DVD retailer due to its misleading title, why don’t you try its alternative American title of The Girl Was Young? Hmmm actually.....

Duel - Steven Spielberg - 1971

Ahh 1971, a landmark year for the ‘New Hollywood’ crowd by anyone’s estimation. Billy Friedkin released his first masterwork with The French Connection, Peter Bogdanovich released what is arguably his only masterwork with The Last Picture Show, a young beardy future mega-lo-maniac made THX 1138, not to mention Altman’s McCabe & Mrs Miller, Ashby’s Harold and Maude, Monte Hellman’s Two Lane Blacktop, Alan Paluka’s Klute, Richard Sarafin’s Vanishing Point..... well you get the picture. In the midst of all this, a young California State dropout was stuck doing episodes of Night Gallery and low budget TV movies. Given a project to direct a quickie adaptation of a Richard Matheson short story out in the California desert, the youngster just happened to create a genre masterpiece, and the breakout that would soon make him the world’s most bankable director. This of course was Steven Spielberg, and the little TV Movie in question Duel.

This is hardly an early example of the Spielberg we know and erm... love? today though. Duel is instead a film with such a studied minimalist framework and structure that I feel you can comfortably place it alongside the more radical studio funded works of the period, such as the aforementioned Two Lane Blacktop.

The plot can be described within the briefest of synopses, a white collar salesman named David Mann (Dennis Weaver), is driving across southern-eastern California when he suddenly finds himself terrorised by the unseen driver of a large tanker truck. After initially toying with Mann, the truck driver begins to attempt to kill him, forcing Mann to have to eventually fight back.

This barebones approach to the plot is complemented by Spielberg’s minimal usage of dialogue, which finds itself trimmed down to exclamations of disbelief from Mann together with the occasional (and somewhat unnecessary) inner monologue. The soundtrack is equally minimalist, largely making use of the diegetic, such as the truck’s roaring diesel engine and the asinine radio talkshows that emit from Mann’s car stereo.

Whilst Spielberg himself refers to the film as a simple chase picture and nothing more, the framework allows us to place our own subtexts onto the film. Certainly European critics of the time (upon seeing the extended 90 minute theatrical European release) saw the film as variously an ‘indictment of machines’, or a film of ‘Father’s failing and women taking control’. Most famously some critics read the film as a battle of the ‘middle-class bourgeoisie vs. the working classes’. This is the thesis with which my own view of the film aligns most closely.

I personally read the film along the lines of the other road movies being made by youthful directors of the period, films which were consumed by a sense of displacement, disillusionment, and anger. I see Duel as channelling this countercultural anger into a pointed attack on the white collar Middle American bourgeois. Where most of the other road movies of this period, despite their generally downbeat tone, still managed to exude a certain romanticism towards the freedoms of the open road. Duel instead sees the road as a purely hostile and dangerous place.

The film’s protagonist ‘David Mann’ can be seen as a stereotypical symbol of mid-scale corporate America. An everyman salesperson under pressure to meet targets, white collar, conventional tie, driving one of the best selling 4 door family saloons of the period in the form of the staidly designed Plymouth Valiant, and with a malcontent wife and two children at home in a detached house on a quiet suburban street. Weaver brilliantly embodies Mann as stuffy, uptight, a heart-attack waiting to happen and nothing if not emblematic of the revised ‘American Dream’ that the good capitalist American of the 1960s should aspire to.

If we see our protagonist as a symbol of white collar America, our antagonist, the unseen driver of the grime ridden, seemingly unstoppable juggernaut that terrorises him, can be seen as a twisted descendent of the pioneer spirit. A primal road man whose unwillingness to conform to societal values, can be seen as the corrupted offspring of Tom Joad back for revenge on a system that denied his own American Dream.

If the counterculture had taken a certain satisfaction in ironically embracing symbols of the American pioneer spirit (for example, Billy & Wyatt in Easy Rider (1969)), as defenders of the right to a spiritual freedom oppressed by modern American attitudes. Then Spielberg appears to take pleasure in turning this in its head. The displaced wanderer of the American highways is now the aggressor and oppressor, with Mann now the victim in what has been quoted as “a Kafkaesque world in which seemingly random and inescapable acts of psychological torture flourish and thrive”.

Spielberg emphasises the towering presence of the truck roaring up to Mann’s rear bumper with intimidating close-ups. Something we notice at these times is that the trucker’s front bumper is covered in licence plates from other states across the country, displayed like proud trophies from his previous victories. This destroyer of conservative normalcy and decency is gradually swallowing up the nation, picking it off state by state.

So if we can see the truck as a symbol of bourgeois fear, we can take this further and consider Spielberg’s own suggestion that, rather than Mann being scared of the trucker attacking him, it is more a fear of loss of control. This proves for the most interesting reading of the film on a contextual level. This is a Middle America scared of losing control of the stability and prosperity it had enjoyed since the economic boom of the 1950s. American conservative values were being challenged by the counterculture, political dichotomies seemingly dividing the nation in two.

Spielberg refuses to provide any comfort for Middle America, and so the film concludes with Mann having to resort to his own sense of primal instinct, a complete ‘loss of control’ of his own restrained conservative demeanour, he can only attempt to guarantee his survival by ridding himself of his white collar symbol (his car) in order to defend against his aggressor. Spielberg suggests that Mann has had to resort to the mindset of his adversary in order to survive, resulting as Ryan Gibley has stated in the "crumpled defeat of the middle-American male".

Oh yeah, the film’s a bloody exciting thrill ride too...

Crash - David Cronenberg - 1996

David Cronenberg adapting the work of J.G. Ballard was always a combination that made a lot of sense. If you look at Cronenberg’s debut Shivers (1975), the similarities between that and the same years High-Rise by Ballard are unmistakable. Thematically they both choose to represent technology as the next logical step in human evolution, often presenting worlds where the human body morphs with machinery in a transgressive creation of a ‘new flesh’. A world where sexuality is usually represented as a bourgeois bating series of perversions and is censor worryingly often presented as a consistent partner to violence. Therefore it goes without saying that Crash will unsettle many viewers, and it did of course suffer a campaign of attempted censorship in the UK by that bastion of wholesome goodness and righteous indignation that is the hateful rag The Daily Mail.

The film follows one James Ballard (played by everyone’s favourite cinematic sexual deviant Mr. James Spader) as he and his wife Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger carrying the look of a haunted femme fatale accidentally transported into the 1990’s) find that their sexual relationship has descended into an emotionless series of extramarital affairs, tales of which they regale each other with in an attempt to bring some excitement back into their relationship. This world is changed when James is involved in a major car crash, in which the husband of Dr. Helen Remington (an unusual casting for Holly Hunter) is killed. James forms a tentative relationship with Remington which sees them becoming increasingly involved with a car crash fetishist cult led by Vaughan (The much underused Elias Koteas, making the most of his opportunity to bring a wild eyed fervour to the film).

Whilst there was every chance that the film could have turned into a sex ‘n’ pyrotechnics exploitomess, in the more than capable hands of David Cronenberg it becomes a captivating study of modern day disinterest and isolationism. The decision to relocate the film from the novel’s original setting of the motorways surrounding London’s Heathrow airport to the nondescript freeways and underpasses of Cronenberg’s hometown Toronto proves to be an inspired one. The film feels like it is taking place nowhere and everywhere, as I mentioned in my recent review of Radio On (1979), the car can prove to be a perfect site for examining technology as self imposed segregation. There are no open freeways here, just the busy soul destroying gridlock of inner city travel. We often see the city viewed from the Ballard’s high rise apartment, a vista of grey tower blocks separated into grids by interchanges and intersections.

Cronenberg also takes the decision to leave the characters as largely emotionless blank surfaces, this purposely leaves the viewer with little to connect to, we never find out the reasons for the malaise of the characters or why they find themselves sexually drawn to the body destroying viscera of the car crash. It is this refusal to demonise or even attempt to rationalise their actions that often brings about uncomfortable feelings in the viewer, especially in the case of Catherine, who due to lack of exposition on her characters part, makes her compliance in some of the more forcefully sexual scenes somewhat ambiguous.

Anyone complaining about the films lack of character driven depth would be missing the point though. The refusal to elucidate any plot points is due to the films preoccupation with surfaces, from the metallic sheen of a showroom Mercedes, to the car part tattoos that James and Vaughan chose to cover their bodies with. The only interior Cronenberg is ever concerned with here is that of the body violated, a thematic concern seen throughout his entire oeuvre from the low budget head explosions of Scanners (1981) to the body as site of disintegration and decay seen in the relatively big budget reworking of The Fly (1986). Here we see it as evident as ever, most infamously in the provocative scene featuring a sexual liaison between Patricia Arquette’s Gabrielle (a perfect physical embodiment of the man/machine transgression) and James, in which her leg scars are put to... interesting... use... Though it should be noted that the films risqué subject matter does prove to be more restrained and suggestive than the more sensationalist types would have you believe.

Ballard’s warped increasingly retro-futurist visions found their perfect outlet in Cronenberg’s odd simulacra of existential modernity, in a fascinating film that is all style, no substance, and all the better for it. A fine addition to the Cronenberg canon.