This film & its unbound character is no scream, rising up against whatever. No 'lone man against the world'. As the film states, he was already "mad" before the war, & the afterwards - as Japanese society rebuilt itself amidst the greedy, meddling hands of the many who felt they deserved something - made no difference other than to give him more space to explode.
In Stephen King's Cujo, King sets the scene of a community of pressurisation. Of normal structures & routines,…
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Graveyard of Honor 1975
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The Ghastly Ones 1968
I hesitate to say that any actor here gives a bad performance, or in most Milligan films. They fit perfectly into Milligan's maelstroms. He is at his finest when all his mediocre-to-bad elements are each humming in perfect unity within each section (acting, camera, post, etc) & they are then hurled twirling into the air to become something so much more than good or bad.
If you like one of Milligan's characters on first impression, the actor & the writer/cinematographer/director will have…
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Nightmare Alley 2021
A film that so neatly tosses its protagonist into Hell that I find myself wondering what compels an artist to want to pick another stone up and toss it so neatly into the pool of time. The splash is ornate, and the writers so thrilled will fill chapters on autuerist connections, but I found myself unconvinced by the gravity that claimed the plummeting object. The yarn spun is enthralling and performed oh so well, but the fit comes looser the…
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The Woman in the Window 2021
The character map of this film is just Joe Wright & Tracy Letts drunk with red string and pins. Someone took a photo of them tangled in it all, splattered in red wine, and handed it to the editor, saying: "THIS!"
Meanwhile, word is that Hitchcock sent a note from beyond after the preview screening to Mr. Wright, simply asking "Did you even watch any Brian de Palma?!?"The point of having everyone acting bananas is to camoflauge the dangerous person,…
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Transformations 1972
In going through an article on Vermont folk horror from Arrow Video's excellent American Horror Project Vol.2, in relation to DARK AUGUST, I was reading up on a spate of experimental witchy films from early 70s Vermont in Steven R. Bissette's informative essay. Through it I discovered this "experimental" short.
Made in 1972, it was screened independently throughout the region being one of a handful of "essentially secret films," writes Bissette in the Arrow booklet, "self-distributed by the filmmakers themselves…
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Surviving Edged Weapons 1988
A jewelled crown of paracinema, a prize that was never meant for mere mortals, Surviving Edged Weapons comes to us from a golden age of violence & silliness. It was a police training video, created for a professional elite to educate & enlighten. How a man jiggling at the speed of danger, hips flexing & thrusting, was meant to train a police officer in the ways of self defense remains a mystery. There are many mysteries surrounding this film, such as who the…
