Oct 31st
Black Sunday**
aka: Mask of the Demon                     

 Barbara Steele in her most famous horror role. If looks could kill....

(Ita 1960)

A 17th century vampire witch is executed but two centuries later tries to invest the soul of her descendant.
For Halloween, one of the best of the Italian horror cycle for lurid Gothic atmosphere, taking the elements of Hammer and adding a little extra grisly detail, and though crassness and an overbearing score is added to the American International version of the film (under its shorter title), its success overseas set the director on a path of more cult horrors to come.

Written by: Mario Serandrei, Ennido De Concini, from a story by Nikolai Gogol.
Producer: Massimo De Rita.
Director/Photography: Mario Bava.
Starring: Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Andrew Checchi, Ivo Garrani, Arturo Dominici, Enrico Olivieri, Antonio PIerfederici, Germana Dominici.
Music: Roberto Nicolosi, Les Baxter (US version).
Production Design: Giorgio Giovannini.

Preceded by:
Tom & Jerry in
The Invisible Mouse**
(US 1947. 8m.; d: William Hanna, Joseph Barbera; p: Fred Quimby.)

 

Oct 30th
Crossing Over**    

(US 2008)                

Struggles of various immigrants in present day Los Angeles in becoming US citizens.
Sometimes trite and sentimental but often compelling and well acted racial melodrama, generally more believably convincing than the similarly themed and Oscar-winning Crash.

Written and Directed by: Wayne Kramer.
Producers: Wayne Kramer, Frank Marshall.
Starring: Harrison Ford, Cliff Curtis, Ashley Judd, Ray Liotta, Jim Sturgess, Alice Eve, Alica Braga, Summer Bishil, Justin Chon.
Photography: James Whitaker.
Music: Mark Isham.

+ see also The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Preceded by:
It's Not Me, It's You
(GB 2013. 3m.; Five blokes discuss how women should be treated like pets.;  w, d: Luke Forsyth; p: Kirsten Larson.)

Oct 23rd
Rush** (15)                 
Cineworld Ipswich

GB 2013

The intense rivalry between racing drivers Niki Lauda and James Hunt, which culminated in a showdown in the 1976 Formula 1 season.
Patterned in the style of Senna but as full-out drama rather than documentary  with top-notch talent, and despite the writer's usual slanting of the truth (Lauda was almost as much of a womaniser as Hunt), the film is a memorable moral and sporting joust between two latter-day knights of equal character flaws and strengths. Good 70s period detail too.

w: Peter Morgan
d: Ron Howard
s: Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Bruhl, Alexandra Maria Lara, Olivia Wilde, Pierfrancesco Favino, Stephen Mangan, David Calder, Alistair Petre (as Stirling Moss), Julian Rhind-Tutt, Natalie Dormer

Oct 19th
The Lady from Shanghai**                          
(BFI South Bank - London Film Festival)

US 1947 (released 1948). Columbia. 87m. bw

An Irish sailor is framed for murder by a sinister lawyer and his mysterious wife.
Lively studio thriller made in comparatively routine manner by Welles as a favour to Harry Cohn, with room for some eccentricities including the striking Hall of Mirrors finale.

Written and Directed by: Orson Welles, based on the novel "If I Die Before I Wake" by Sherwood King.
Producers: Orson Welles, William Castle, Charles Lederer, Fletcher Markle.
Starring: Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, Everett Sloane, Glenn Anders, Ted De Corsia, Erskine Sanford, Carl Frank.
Photography: Charles Lawton Jnr, Rudolph Mate, Joseph Walker.
Music: Heinz Roemheld.

+ the screening at the LFF was the world premiere of the latest 4K digital restoration

++ partly filmed on Errol Flynn's yacht the Zaca, with Flynn himself allegedly in one of the nightclub scenes

Oct 14th
Wes Craven's New Nightmare                  

(US 1994)

Heather Langenkamp is menaced by the evil of Freddy Kruger into making one more film about him to save her young son.
Intriguing postscript to the Nightmare on Elm Street series descending into the ultimate in self-parody, with director, stars and studio executives playing themselves and the film becoming a Chinese puzzle of a film within itself. The interesting premise unfortunately does not really have any chance to establish itself, before one hysterical set piece follows another and becomes just another Freddy farrago, but the idea did lead Craven in the direction of the Scream series.

Written and Directed by: Wes Craven.
Producer: Marianne Maddalena.
Starring: Heather Langenkamp, Miko Hughes, Robert Englund, David Newsom, Wes Craven, John Saxon, Tracy Middendorf.
Photography: Mark Irwin.
Music: J. Peter Robinson.

Oct 12th
King Lear*                                           

(GB/Denmark 1970)

The elderly King Lear unwisely divides his kingdom between his daughters, who drive him mad.
Bleak and depressing film version of a great play where only the ending should be truly depressing. Here the tone is set from the start. Plenty for the actors and Shakespeare scholars to chew upon, but a turgid experience for general audiences.

Written and Directed by: Peter Brook, from the play by William Shakespeare.
Producer: Michael Birkett, Mogens Skot-Hansen.
Starring: Paul Scofield, Irene Worth, Susan Engel, Anne-Lise Gabold, Jack MacGowran, Alan Webb, Cyril Cusack, Patrick Magee, Tom Fleming, Ian Hogg, Robert Lloyd, Barry Stanton.
Photography: Henning Kristiansen.
Production Design: Georges Wakhevitch.

Oct 8th
Behind the Candelabra** (15)                          
Odeon Colchester

The concealed love affair between Liberace and his adopted "son" Scott Thorson from 1977 onwards.
Made for television because no film studio would touch the material (shamefully) in spite of the star cast, and quite intense in its central  relationship which negates some of the supporting stars who are underused, this is still a consistently interesting and well made biopic, even if Douglas's campness slightly over-emphasises Liberace's homsexuality even more than Liberace would allow!

d: Steven Soderbergh
s: Michael Douglas, Matt Damon, Dan Aykroyd, Rob Lowe, Scott Bakula, Debbie Reynolds

Film Colchester evening

The former Colchester bus station cafe was the unusual latest venue for a similarly unusual bunch of local short films from enthusiastic local film makers, as well as Timothy Truelove's Date with Destiny, an amusing but slightly overstretched self-parody of the romantic comedy genre.

The evening also included a preview of the upcoming Colchester Film Festival, with one intriguing item that I noticed featuring Chris Langham as a dementia suffering father at a football match.