Archive for August, 2007

Certainly not the pinnacle of the Cushing/Lee teams output, this is a guilty pleasure from my youth. The horror legends play a pair of scientists on a train to Europe with Lee transporting a mysterious find he made in China.

An alien intelligence that drains peoples brains through their eyes, a mad priest who thinks it’s the devil made flesh and Telly Savalas as a loony Cossack captain are just a few of the pleasures this Spanish production have to offer.

Cushing and Lee both give better performances than the film really deserves and one wonders how much of the dialogue was ad-libbed by the pair. There’s a wonderful scene where Cushing thinks he’s scored with a beautiful woman who’s onboard the train without a ticket, only to find his style cramped by Lee when it turns out the pair are sharing a compartment.

The standout moment though comes when Lee and Cushing are confronted by the police inspector onboard the train, who points out that one of them could be the host for the creature. “Monster!?” a shocked Cushing retorts “We’re British, you know!”

What better way to start a series on celluloid sleuths than with the most famous fictional detective of them all?

This was Rathbone’s first appearance in the role he would become famous for and while the focus of the story is more on Watson during the films middle section, it’s Rathbone’s commanding presence that is the films enduring image. He’s not exactly the Holmes of the books, he’s a little too affable for that, but he captures the essence of the character.

Nigel Bruce’s bungling Watson is a world away from the literary creation but so endearingly buffoonish that it’s easy to forgive. In this first entry in the series he’s far less comic relief than he would become in later entries (although he has his moments) and manages to carry the films second act.

For me there are three great Holmes’, Rathbone in the ‘30s and ‘40s, Peter Cushing in the ‘50s and ‘60s (and a final appearance in 1984’s Masks of Death) and Jeremy Brett in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Brett was the closest to Arthur Conan Doyle’s books but all have their charm.

Of course as well as being the greatest fictional detective Holmes is also one of fictions great junkies and surprisingly, given this was made in 1939, they manage to squeeze a reference to that in right at the end. “Oh, Watson, the needle!” calls Holmes and Watson grabs his medical bag and follows him out the door. It’s my favorite moment in this terrific film.

Monday is animation day for the foreseeable future (with the exception of the week after next when I’ll be at FrightFest) and to start the ball rolling we have this award winning anime film from the director of Perfect Blue.

The story is about an actress searching for a artist she once helped escape from the authorities and who left her with a mysterious key. The film cleverly uses a couple of filmmakers making a documentary on the actress as a means to flashback through her life and career.

In someways this reminded me of Aronofsky’s The Fountain, both films tell epic love stories and both blur the line between reality and fiction (and both climax in outer space). Ultimately though this is a less satisfying experience than The Fountain with the payoff less rewarding.

Perfect Blue is one of my favourite Japanese animated features, the kind of film Argento would make if he made anime, Millennium Actress has a more pretentious feel to it, sort of arthouse anime. It’s not a bad film, just not as good or as clever as it thinks it is.