January 12th, 2008
Posted by
Ian W |
Martial Arts, Movie Reviews |
no comments
This is the film that gets credited as starting the Kung Fu craze of the ‘70s; although I’d argue that it merely cashed in on the success of the Kung Fu TV series that was on the air six months before this reached US cinemas. It did show there was a big screen market for this kind of thing and it opened the floodgates for the Asian movies that followed.
It’s the old rival martial arts schools story that features some spectacular fight sequences, although many have an over reliance on wire work. The editing is a little choppy at times, not so much in the fights, which flow quite nicely, but in the scene transitions. There are times where it takes a minute or two before you realise what character you’re with and where they are.
The film features an abundance of cool bad guys, from the evil martial arts master and his son, to some particularly nasty Japanese hired assassins. They all get there comeuppance by the end of the movie, most at the hands of the hero. The best scene though is a fight in the dark that doesn’t even feature the good guy. It’s a scene that is superbly atmospheric and also manages to do the impossible and humanise the previously insidious villain.
January 12th, 2008
Posted by
Ian W |
Movie Reviews, Westerns |
no comments
Sydney Pollack isn’t a director I associate with westerns, when I think of Pollack I think of films like The Yakuza, Absence of Malice or Tootsie, films with a contemporary setting. Yet Pollack directed the excellent Jeremiah Johnson as well as this hugely enjoyable comedy western so it’s perhaps a shame he hasn’t made a few more oaters.
Most successful comedy westerns tend to spoof the genre, sending up the characters and situations that are familiar to genre fans. The Scalphunters is one of the few that manages to be funny without playing the whole thing for laughs. That it’s so funny is down to William Norton’s witty script and the fine playing of the leads, in particular Burt Lancaster and Ossie Davis.
It’s this Burt/Ossie double act that generates the bulk of the comedic moments, as the cantankerous trapper Joe Bass (Lancaster) and ex-slave/would-be-Indian Joseph Lee (Davis) are thrown together when Bass is forced into trading his hard earned pelts for the black man. The banter between the two is a delight with Lancaster getting more laughs in the first twenty minutes than he did in the whole of The Hallelujah Trail.
Once the pair are parted the laughs don’t dry up completely but the film does become more of a straight action western as Lancaster goes after Telly Savalas and his band of scalphunters (including Shelley Winters). He picks off the gang gorilla style, slowly witling their numbers down and Pollack delivers some fine action scenes. For a director who got his start in television and had only made the jump to the big screen a few years prior to this, he makes remarkably good use of the 2.35:1 aspect ratio.
January 12th, 2008
Posted by
Ian W |
Horror, Movie Reviews |
no comments
Some things are just damn creepy and topping that list, just under clowns and mimes, are scarecrows. Given that fact, William Wesley was on to a winner with this low budget horror flick from the late eighties, a film that has plenty of gore along with a wickedly black sense of humour.
Rather than pit the straw filled ghouls against the usual array of airheaded teens the film features a group of criminals making their getaway after a big heist. When one of the gang attempts to make off with the loot alone, parachuting out of a plane at night into a seemingly deserted farm, the rest head after him. But the farm is far from deserted, as they soon learn to their cost.
From the moment our outlaw band set foot on the farm the film has a menacing atmosphere. As they hunt for their traitorous companion and the stolen moola through the fields they are stalked in turn by the scarecrows. The film doesn’t concern itself with why the scarecrows are up and about, instead providing a few hints and allowing the viewer to fill in the blanks. The why is never the important part of films like this and, by cutting out pointless exposition, Wesley gets down to the good stuff that much quicker.
