Suspiria (1977)

As we head towards October, the season of the witch, it seems right that we celebrate some midnight horror films. And what better place to start than Suspiria, Dario Argento's art-house horror masterpiece from 1977. I remember seeing this at the Scala in King's Cross on the back of a late night double bill with Driller Killer. This was when you could smoke in cinemas, bring in cans of red stripe and get the nightbus home. Naturally it was full of blokes.

The movie is a prime example of a Giallo, the lurid Italian horror genre of the 60s and 70s of which Argento was a prime mover and shaker. Indeed Suspiria's intense colours and hyper sense of reality make it one of the best looking horror films ever made. Argento brings a classic style and depth of vision to the simple but effective storyline. What the movie has in style, it matches in suspense, compounding terror and hysteria. Suspiria bites hard with plenty of look away moments. It's not for the faint hearted.

The story is set in a Munich ballet school for girls. Suzy (a skull-like Jessica Harper) arrives one night off the plane in a nightmarish storm and heads for the Freiburg dance school where she has a placement. There she takes classes under the imposing Miss Tanner (Italian 1940s starlet Valli) while the faculty is run by the civil but curt Madame Blanc. And when expelled student Pat gets (very) brutally murdered by a mysterious black gloved hand, things take a turn for the strange and grotesque. Sure enough it's not long before Suzy discovers some pretty freaky things going on at Freiburg...

It's fair to say Argento eschews a believable narrative in favour of dragging out as much tension and chills as possible from the plot. We are deep in supernatural territory here and anything goes especially the surreal. Everything is aimed towards unsettling the viewer and if you love being scared then that's what you tune in for.

Italian prog rock band Goblin provide one of THE great horror soundtracks, an eerie lullaby that really hangs around after the final reel. Suspiria was one of the last films to use Technicolour, and primary colours are intensified beyond belief throughout the film. The dark blue silks of the walls inside the academy look plush and opulent whilst the blood red hallways outside the girls dorms are foreboding. The film is shot using anamorphic lenses which stretch the action across the screen and this heightens the senses further. Argento does not stint on the scares or macabre either. Maggots fall through the ceiling on the unsuspecting girls and beware the snarling crazed dog of the blind piano player. At one point Suzy and room-mate Sara go for a late night swim in the large ornate swimming pool in the academy basement. It's a superb example of mounting suspense and exploitation of the girls' vulnerability.

Argento's roving camera is always up for a strange angle in the name of art, tracking, panning, zooming constantly. Sometimes we see the action as a reflection from the other side of a mirror say, or a window. Mirrors and windows are continuing motifs throughout the film, whether broken or intact. The art direction as a whole in Suspiria is on point. Argento fills his scenes with art deco Italian furniture and wallpapers. In fact the whole films looks like that other great Italian art deco film, Bertolucci's The Conformist.

You can see echoes of Suspiria's style in Tony Scott's (RIP) 80s vampire flick The Hunger. The film also heavily influenced music videos trends from the early 80s, especially in those made by Julien Temple for The Rolling Stones and Depeche Mode. And Darren Aronofsky owes a huge debt to Suspiria to great effect in his own giallo of 2010, Black Swan. 35 years after it was made Suspiria still has the power to shock and scare the wits out of anyone who watches it. For fans of the genre, you can't ask for more than that.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

Been a long time since we rock and roll, so let's get back in the saddle with some classic mid-70s Sam Peckinpah. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is definitely one of Peckinpah's most personal films, although the sentimentality is a bitter one and it never gets in the way of a cracking tale with deeply Gothic undertones. The story starts as young pregnant Mexican girl Teresa is brought before her father and local Mr Big, El Jefe. The patriarch commands his henchmen to break her arm before she reveals the name of the father - Alfredo Garcia. El Jefe orders for the head of Garcia to be brought to him, and hires a ruthless team of bounty hunters/killers to find him, decapitate him, and bring back the proof.

Cut to Mexico City and said hitmen pick up gigolo Garcia's trail through Bennie, a one time soldier and now a down on his luck piano player, holed up in a shady bar of tourists, ex pats and gringos. Bennie takes the job of finding his old pal "Al" Garcia (who he discovers is already dead and buried) on the promise of a ten grand payoff, and what follows is a dark and twisted road movie through the Mexican countryside as Bennie and prostitute girlfriend Elita (also Garcia's ex lover) go in search of Garcia's grave, the bounty and the head.

Warren Oates gives one of his most iconic performances as Bennie. On the surface Bennie is a money grabbing loser who constantly wears the same crumpled suit, clip tie and shades and is ready to play any tune requested, even murder. However Oates instills an air of resolve and integrity in Bennie. He is genuinely disgusted at his adversaries' violent attitude towards women. In fact he is the only male character in the film that treats women with any kind of respect and tenderness. Against all the odds, all he really wants is a better life for himself and Elita, hence his pursuit of the money. "Nobody loses forever" he spits as he starts his journey.

The film is really Bennie's story and Oates relishes playing the lead after a lifetime of memorable cameos and bit parts. Sure Bennie is a tad unhygienic (washing crabs from his nether regions with tequila anyone?). But his all or nothing death-wish in search of the prize gives the plot it's main drive and as such, Oates gives Bennie enough balls and gusto to keep the viewer interested through the two hour running time.

Also worth mentioning are the two nameless hitmen who head the search for Garcia. Clad in business suits and callously efficient, the pair are played by tough guy actor Robert Webber and the slightly effeminate Gig Young. Young nonchalantly tells Benny his name is Fred C. Dobbs - a reference to John Huston's classic gold digging tale The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, one of Peckinpah's main go-to points for Bring Me the Head. Kris Kristofferson also pops up on the road through Mexico as a rape-happy biker. And although not on screen for long, Emilio Fernandez brings an ominous presence to the film as Mexican gang-lord and top villain El Jefe. Fernandez had played a similar role as Mapache in Peckinpah's game-changing western The Wild Bunch a few years previous and brings menace and barbarism to proceedings here.

The film is Sam Peckinpah's baby though. After having his previous effort Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid slashed to smithereens by the studio, he took full control of Bring Me the Head, shooting on a small budget with locations and actors he knew and trusted to seal the deal. Peckinpah's eye for detail and colour is never better. The photography is both clear and vivid as we swap the seedy hotel rooms of Mexico City, piped with muzak and lit with neon strips and lava lamps, for the dusty backroads and hues of pastoral Mexico.

 

Deep down Bring Me the Head is another of Peckinpah's many westerns. When the movie starts, it seems that we are in familiar territory, the turn of the 19th/20th century perhaps and the end of the old west? However the convoy of 1970s American cars that leave El Jefe's hideout in search of Garcia is disorientating and, as a noisy jet lands in Mexico city, we realise that this is the modern world. The traditional western themes are all there - betrayal, honour, greed and revenge. It's just that the action is played out with automatic pistols and machine guns instead of Colts and Winchesters.

 

The biggest signifier that we are in cowboy territory though is in Peckinpah's use of Mexico. Mexico was always Peckinpah's spiritual home, so many of his characters have sought refuge or ended their days there. Billy the Kid holes up in his hacienda south of the border waiting for Pat Garrett to turn up for the last gunfight. Pike, Dutch and the rest of The Wild Bunch reach their end game at Mapache's palace in a hail of bullets, blood squibs and balletic slow motion photography. Even Doc McCoy ends up in Mexico in Peckinpah's "straight" action flick The Getaway. So, in it's own way, Bring Me the Head is Peckinpah's ode to the country and the myth that he helped create, that of Mexico as a land of wild and terrible freedom. And in Bennie we have Peckinpah's closest alter ego, an artist with a gun, at the end of his tether looking for a pot of blood-soaked gold...

 

"How you guys like baseball?"

Down By Law (1986)

It's late. You are on your own, on the sofa, drinking coffee or maybe something a little stronger. If you smoke then you possibly have a cigarette on the go. Or maybe something a little stronger. It's a hot summer's night, the window is open and the lights and sounds of the street filter into the room. Your lady, fella, whoever has left you and you're seeking solace the only way you know, in the bosom of one of your favourite movies. You want to see one film and one film only. You want to watch Down By Law.

The story has a familiar premise, touching on both noir and new wave. Out of work DJ Zak (Tom Waits) and pimp Jack (John Lurie) are both set up for different crimes they did not commit and find themselves in Orleans Parish Prison in the same cell. It's pretty much hate at first sight and as time passes so their antagonism towards each other increases. The tension is broken up by their new cellmate, the Italian Bob (Roberto Benigni) who charms them with his homespun philosophies and colloquialisms into calling a truce with one another, before hatching a plan of escape. However the path to freedom is not an easy one, and once on the outside, the 3 cons have to rely on each other as well as their wits to stay alive in the Louisiana swamps.

Don't be fooled, this ain't your average prison break movie. Somewhat of a parable, Down By Law is an offbeat gem of a film about the foibles of human nature with intricately drawn characters and enough balls, style and essence of cool to keep you interested in a slow moving, yet engrossing storyline.

So how come it's this film that fits your mood? Perhaps it's the unlikely combination of it's three lead actors that does it for you. It's definitely a strange contrast. Avant-garde jazz musician John Lurie and singer/songwriter Tom Waits (fresh from Raindogs and Franks Wild Years) both posture to the camera in some sort of quasi-method as they are set up against the animated budding Italian comedian Roberto Benigni. Lurie looks and dresses like someone out of a 1950s gangster film, with his big features, suit and jazzy tie looking quite anachronistic for 1986. Waits with his chin warmer and DJ Lee Baby Sims rap is much more rooted in the present, a proper night owl to fit the spirit of the film. Benigni bounces off the pair of them and the walls, his wild hair and reactions more often than not the focus of attention when not much else is going on screen.

Or maybe it's the stunning black and white photography from Robby Müller? Sometimes roving, often just still, Müller's lens depicts the sweltering setting of pre-flood New Orleans and Louisiana - the streets, the houses, the tenement blocks, swamps and prison cells. Indeed at times the camera gives off as much attitude as the actors and Down By Law is a very beautiful film to watch.

More than likely though if you are watching this film then you prescribe to the unique and slightly twisted worldview of American independent film-maker Jim Jarmusch. Down By Law is more than the sum of it's parts and that is down to Jarmusch. From the initial moments when the first bars of Tom Waits' jagged bluesy Jockey Full of Bourbon strike whilst Müller's slow tracking montage of New Orleans life passes across the screen, through to the odd and somewhat open ending, Down By Law delights in its defiance of the rules of its genre.

A lot of this is down to the freestyle way the characters interact with each other. In fact the whole film has an improv feel to it. You can imagine Jarmusch sitting down with the actors, setting them a basic premise on which to act out the next scene, and then just letting it roll to see what happens, rather like a jam session. With the fresh comic touches of Benigni coming as light relief to the downbeat backstory and the actors opposite him, it's a plan that works brilliantly and makes for some very entertaining moments. The fact that it's Lurie who provides the film's dark jazzy score and Waits who's songs frame the movie just adds to the impression that Down By Law is a collaborative effort from all major players involved.

It's a tribute Jarmusch and all involved that you leave the film wanting to see more of Bob, Zack and Jack after the screen goes black. How do their stories continue? How do they end? In a crazy way a sequel going back to their lives further on down the line would be welcome. Because in Down By Law it is indeed a sad and beautiful world, and one that perhaps we can relate to.

Jailhouse Rock...

The King of Comedy (1983)

This article was first published at Den of Geek last year, you can read it in full here

The names Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro in tandem on a movie poster are a seal of quality for many a film lover. The pair have had a hand in some of the darkest and most thrilling moments that mainstream American cinema has had to offer, often making the blood curdle and the adrenalin shoot into overdrive. Their films together excel in exploring the outer limits of machismo, psychosis and extreme violence, with little or no regard for the censor or those of a nervous disposition. Taxi Driver, Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Raging Bull. These aren’t just your run of the mill Saturday drive-ins, these are some of the most original films of their time, and ones that get better with repeated viewings.

One film missing from that list is Scorsese’s biting satire on the nature of celebrity: The King of Comedy. Underappreciated at the time of release, it has been re-evaluated over the years and is now regarded as a major work in both their careers. The King of Comedy was Scorsese’s follow up to his award-winning boxing biopic Raging Bull, again with De Niro in the lead role. It was the opening film at Cannes in 1983 and was released later that year. Scorsese was actually set on making his torturous biblical epic The Last Temptation of Christ as his next film. However De Niro, coming off a Best Actor Oscar for his gruelling portrayal of Jake La Motta, wanted to make a comedy (can you blame him?), and presented Scorsese with a script that had been lying around Hollywood for years, written by film critic Paul Zimmerman.

Set in a noisy and bustling New York City, The King of Comedy tells the story of Rupert Pupkin, an autograph hunter verging on stalker and wannabe stand-up comedian, who daydreams his way into the life of his hero: talk-show host Jerry Langford. A chance encounter between the pair backstage after one of Jerry’s shows leads the delusional Rupert to believe he has a shot at stardom. However, after a series of knockbacks and humiliations, Rupert, along with his seriously unhinged female accomplice Masha, also a Jerry-worshipper, take matters into their own hands and kidnap Jerry in an attempt to fulfil both their dreams.

This is very much an actor’s movie driven by character, dialogue and a simple plot, rather than Scorsese’s usual frenetic camerawork and editing. De Niro plays totally against type as the naïve and hapless nobody Pupkin (“often mispronounced and misspelled”). With his hair plastered to his forehead in a terrible matted side-parting, his pencil moustache and cheesy grin spreading over his face, and his grey three-piece suit and red tie/hanky combo looking cheap and gimmicky, Rupert Pupkin is one of the all-time great cinematic geeks. It’s a brilliant characterisation from the award winning actor, and a long way from his heroic and macho roles in The Deer Hunter and The Godfather Part II.

De Niro’s finest moments come about during Rupert’s daydreams. These are mostly would-be scenarios that he imagines taking place between himself and Jerry. Rupert’s basement bedroom is a shrine to Jerry and the show, with life-sized cardboard cutouts of his idols and a full-scale mural of an enraptured audience, in front of which he practices his comedy routine. In a scarily funny interlude, Rupert, imagining that he now has his own talk show, conducts a one-sided conversation with said cutouts of both Liza Minnelli and Jerry as his guests until he’s interrupted by the shrill voice of his mother ordering him to keep the noise down. It’s De Niro at his loopy best, acting and reacting against silence as if in front of a CGI blue screen.

The film critic Pauline Kael has described Pupkin as “Jake La Motta without fists”. But surely Rupert bares closer resemblance to De Niro and Scorsese’s other great disturbed dreamer, Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle? Both characters live out their lives as a daydream and at times the lines between fantasy and reality are misty to say the least. Both of their escapisms are born of frustration and alienation with the world at large.

Travis dreams his violent hallucinations with good intentions. His distress is spawned from what he sees around him and his wish for a better world. However, Rupert’s flights of fancy are totally tied up with his own dreams of celebrity and stardom. His total and undiluted faith in himself and his talents are as misplaced as his terrible jokes. So that when reality comes crashing home he takes desperate measures to fulfil what he believes to be his destiny as being crowned the new King of Comedy. Who is the more dangerous then – Travis or Rupert? Travis wants to help people. Rupert ends up threatening Jerry, the lines between love and hatred crossing over via our good, old friend: jealousy.

Alongside De Niro, acting honours go to Jerry Lewis as his namesake Jerry Langford and Sandra Bernhard as Masha. Lewis made a career of playing wacky, goofy roles in screwball comedies during the fifties and sixties alongside Dean Martin. In fact both Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra were considered for the role of Langford before Scorsese settled on Jerry Lewis, and the former funny man brings a weathered seriousness to the role. The pressures of celebrity are always apparent in the creases on his forehead, in his terror as he tries to exit backstage from a gig surrounded by baying and clawing fans, and in his pent-up rage when faced with a deluded Rupert turning up at his house in the Hamptons for the weekend. It’s a powerful and understated performance.

Bernhard provides an uncomfortable raw carnal presence as Masha, even more besotted with Jerry than Rupert is. Striding through midtown Manhattan stalking her prey, Bernhard plays Masha as a sexual terrorist who will stop at nothing to get her man. At that stage in her career, Bernhard was a budding stand-up comedian and she uses all the uncompromising improvisational skills she learned in the clubs to bring Masha to life. Her guerrilla tactics come to a head in Masha’s one scene alone with Jerry. Stripped to her underwear in her apartment, she sits opposite a gagged and gaffer-taped Jerry over a perfectly laid dinner table, informing him in no uncertain terms what the evening has in store for him. It’s a scene played to perfection by both actors, and also beautifully shot by Scorsese. Lit by candles alone, it is almost Kubrick-like in its clarity and eye for minute detail.

The King of Comedy has rich black humour in spades, celebrating the comedy of humiliation at its core. Not surprising then really, that a proud and Conservative Reagan-era America found it difficult to identify with the themes and characters on show. Indeed, The King of Comedy was a commercial and critical failure - “The Flop of the Year” as Entertainment Tonight announced it on air.

Despite its initial unpopularity, The King of Comedy is a very entertaining film. Along with Sidney Lumet’s Network, it’s one of the most insightful movies about the power of television and its effect on the TV generation. Today The King of Comedy has more relevance than ever. In a world where people will do anything to the point of embarrassment for their fifteen minutes, and where bog standard reality shows bestow celebrity and stardom on those with little or nothing to say for themselves, the movie has a harsh ring of truth. Is it really better to be a king for a night than a schmuck for a lifetime?

The fine line between fan and stalker...

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

When I was 12 years old, for the summer holidays my parents hired a holiday cottage in the countryside for a couple of weeks. At night I used to sneak downstairs to watch films when they had gone to bed. I remember watching Rosemary's Baby late at night on BBC2, it must have been the first scary movie I ever watched. Needless to say, it petrified the living shit out of me. I couldn't sleep that night and even had to turn off the radio alarm clock next to my bed as the digits were throwing a strange green light around the room which looked like some kind of supernatural spirit. If any film gave me a love of late night cinema then it was this one.

Rosemary's Baby is still one of my favourite horror films. It's a beautiful movie to watch, shot in a dreamy soft focus haze with script, actors, makeup and musical score all manipulated by director Roman Polanski to create a sense of increasing fear and claustrophobia. It's beauty lies in the way it relies on psychological scares rather than on blood, guts and gore, of which there are very little. It really is a well crafted film, depicting a nightmarish take on one of the most natural and happy of situations - getting married, getting your own place and having kids.

Based on a novel by Ira Levin and adapted for the screen by Polanski, the story is simple but gripping. Young couple Guy and Rosemary Woodhouse move into The Bramford in New York, a Gothic apartment block with an unsavoury history of cannibalism and witchcraft. Guy is a struggling actor and Rosemary plays the dutiful wife, dreaming of kids and a happy life with her husband. Their neighbours are Roman and Minnie Castevet, a rather peculiar and sinister elderly couple who take an interest in the Woodehouses after their own young tenant commits suicide.

Guy begins to socialise with the Castevets whilst Rosemary prefers to stay at home. Guy's career simultaneously begins to take off and he and Rosemary try for children. On the designated night of conception Rosemary faints after eating some of Minnie's "chocolate mouse" and then suffers a bizarre delusional sequence where she is raped by the devil whilst the naked inhabitants of The Bramford (Minnie and Roman included) look on and chant in praise of Lucifer. In the morning it turns out that Guy had sex with her whilst she was passed out... and a few weeks later Rosemary discovers she is pregnant.

Polanski has a habit of setting his movies in claustrophobic environments - Repulsion, The Tenant and the soon to be released Carnage are all set in apartments whereas the main action of Cul de Sac takes place in a desolate lighthouse. He also delights in the unravelling of the psyche, especially the female one - Repulsion again, What? and parts of Chinatown and Bitter Moon being good examples.

In Rosemary's Baby, Guy and Rosemary's apartment seems to take on a life of it's own, in Rosemary's mind anyway. What starts as her ideal family home turns into a prison and the scene of her nightmares, quite literally in fact with one of the most realistic dream sequences committed to celluloid projected onto the wall and ceiling above her bed as she sleeps. Shot mostly from her point of view, we are never totally sure if the dream is really happening or whether it is all a figment of her imagination, much like the demonic plot that drives the story forward to it's perverse conclusion. As the uncertainties, pains and struggles of pregnancy continue, so increases Rosemary's paranoia and mistrust of all of those around her as her mind begins to fragment.

No scary movie is complete without a scary soundtrack and Polish jazz musician Krzysztof Komeda provides an excellent score to Rosemary's Baby with creepy clarinets and bassoons clamouring unexpectedly at shocking moments, mirroring the strange plot turns and unsettling camera angles that Polanski uses to heighten our sense of dread. This all serves to wind the tensions and suspense tightly, much in the manner of classic Hitchcock, and when the release and revelations come they are shocking and leave behind a distinctly bitter aftertaste.

Central to the success of the movie are excellent performances from Mia Farrow as Rosemary and John Cassavetes as Guy. Farrow brings a fragile innocence to the main role. Her sparkling blue eyes are so full of love and happiness at the beginning of the film, yet as the movie progresses they change drastically, widening in horror as her worst nightmares become reality. Cassavetes is the perfect choice for the self centred Guy, a little bit sleazy and totally caught up in his own pursuit of fame and fortune. Star of the show though is Ruth Gordon in an Oscar winning turn as nosey neighbour Minnie. Intrusive, fussy and oddly birdlike in her makeup and appearance she provides a disquieting presence with her home-made drinks, cakes and pendants that she pushes on the pregnant Rosemary. Also worth a mention is Sidney Blackmer as the equally alien looking Roman Castevet and Hollywood stalwart Ralph Bellamy as high society gyno Abe Sapirstein respectively.

The tragic aftermath to the release of Rosemary's Baby, the murder of Polanski's pregnant wife Sharon Tate by the Manson family the following year, is well documented. The bizarre events of her death left a shadow over Polanski's subsequent career with many of his films dealing with personal disasters, psychological breakdowns and the grotesque. The movie itself has left a large legacy on cinema as a whole. It's immediate influence can be seen in a wide range of 70s demon-shockers such as The Omen and The Exorcist, as well as in studies of the female mind such as Robert Altman's Images and French art house horror flick Possession. Most recently it was Darren Aranofsky's brilliant Black Swan that drew largely on the themes, mood and suspense generated by Polanski in Rosemary's Baby.

Rosemary's Baby is a must see film for horror aficionados and for those with a penchant for all things that concern the occult and witchcraft. It will keep you thinking and wondering long after the last bars of the strange lullaby theme tune have played and the TV screen fades to black. Anyone for Tannis?

The Black Bramford

Villain (1971)

Villain is a violent British gangster flick from the early 1970s. Set in and around London it's a classic tale of the decline and fall of East End gang leader and hard man Vic Dakin. Dakin's normal racket is blackmail and with the help of his cohort Wolfe he entices the aristocracy and members of parliament into ready made honey traps. However with the police on his tail and a rat in his gang, Dakin runs the gauntlet in organising a big money snatch on a security van. Vic has to compromise his plans by including a rival gang boss in the scheme and when the robbery is botched he's forced on the run, turning on his allies as the net closes in around him.

Villain is made from the same mould as Get Carter and The Long Good Friday although truth be told, it's probably not as good as either. It doesn't have the style of Get Carter or the political relevance of The Long Good Friday. What it does have going for it is a snarling and seething performance from Richard Burton as Vic Dakin. Throughout the 60s Burton was one of the biggest names in cinema, and one of Britain's most celebrated film stars. His fame had as much to do with his acting skills as it did his notorious drinking habits and stormy marriage to Elizabeth Taylor. Along with other such luminaries as Oliver Reed, Richard Harris and Peter O'Toole, Burton raised hell on every film set from Hollywood Hills to Pinewood Studios.

But by 1971, his star was on the wain. The iconic lead from "Night of The Iguana" and "The Spy Who Came in from The Cold" had resorted to making a series of big budget flops  with his real life co-star Elizabeth Taylor. Boom! was an overblown pretentious drama and The Comedians, although based on good source material by Graham Greene, was a mistake. The pair had bounced and riffed against each other drunkenly in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf but for the rest of the 60s their private and screen lives bled into one another and the pair lived and extravagant lifestyle of hangovers and public spats.

The role of Vik Dakin is quite obviously based on Ronnie Kray (with a touch of James Cagney in White Heat) and it lets Burton show off his brutal side. The violence is implicit right at the start when he uses a disloyal croupier as a punchbag before slicing off his tongue with a cut-throat blade for talking too much. The blood drips from the window that the dying man is hanging from and Burton quips "bleedin' pigeons". The next scene shows him returning home after a night out with the boys to his elderly and much loved mother who he dotes upon. The mother fixation is another link to The Krays, as is Burton's resonant East End accent (with a hint of the valleys peeking through) and his and his gang's dapper attire. Velvet suits, big ties, heavy leather overcoats and silk cravats and hankies abound. Dakin may not be as controlled as Michael Cain/Jack Carter but he's on a par in the cruelty and style awards. Also, no one looks more menacing and camp with a stocking over his head as Richard Burton.

Apart from his mother, the only other relationship Dakin has is an aggressive semi sexual one with Ian Mcshane's pimp and blackmailer Wolfe. It's an intriguing angle of the movie. Dakin obviously fancies Woolf and the only way he can express his desire in their main bedroom scene together is with his fists before the screen fades to black. Mcshane plays Wolfe with an easy charm, like a delinquent Lovejoy but attracted to and by both men and women. There's nothing tender about their liaison, in fact it's a very sadistic affair with Mcshane the submissive to Burton's threatening sugar daddy.

Alongside Burton and Mcshane, Joss Ackland gives a sterling and weaselly performance as Dakin's focus of hatred Ed Lowis, constantly sucking on chalk tablets to settle his bilious stomach ulcer. Donald Sindon is a sleazy presence as a dodgy MP and Del Henney, who starred in Sam Pekinpah's Straw Dogs the same year, gives it some menace as thug Webb.

Curiously Villain was scripted by comedy writers Dick Clements and Ian Le Frenais, with American actor Al Letieri (who specialised in playing gangsters himself) also getting a writing credit. Adapted from James Barlow's novel The Burdon of Proof, the script fairly crackles along with Burton getting to say some classic dialogue and one liners, all through his death mask grin. The film was directed by Michael Tuchner who has a filmography as long as your arm in television on IMDB. And Villain does has a very TV movie feel to it with low budget production values and a very quick and simple filming style. Even the claret, which flows freely, has a very ketchup look to it.

Unfortunately Villain did nothing to resurrect Burton's career and, bar his award winning role in Equus, the 70s was a lean patch for him (The Medusa Touch anyone?). Still he's at his very best as Vic Dakin and Villain is definitely worth a watch for Burton strutting his stuff and putting the frighteners on those burkes who lack respect - "Respect! Respect! You don't know what it is. Unless you're Vic Dakin. Tell 'im, someone. Tell him!"

Watch the whole movie here...

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010)

Not enough British films on here so how about we stay on the rock'n'roll tip with this homegrown gas from last year? Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll is the biopic of Ian Dury, that mercurial singer, songwriter and entertainer from the capital. The film charts Dury's rise from his pub and punk rock roots in North London to chart topping stardom in the late 70s/early 80s when he reached the dizzy heights as the face of the British New Wave music scene.

Dury belongs to that long tradition of British drug fueled and psychedelically inspired poets, artists and musicians, going back to The Romantics and taking in Syd Barrett, The Beatles, Julian Cope and pop artist Peter Blake. In fact Blake taught Dury at art school and also designed the album cover to the Dury tribute album Brand New Boots and Panties which was released after the singer's death. And there's a lot in the movie that could have been designed by Blake himself. The vivid opening credits and other animated scenes mirror Dury's colourful and violent lifestyle and look straight out of the artist's hand.

Central to the enjoyment of the film is a spellbinding performance from Andy Serkis as Ian Dury. Serkis has for so long been the "undisputed king of mo-cap acting" (© Den of Geek) with stand-out animated roles in Lord of The Rings, King Kong and most recently Rise of The Planet of The Apes and Tintin. Here he gets the chance to show off his acting skills and he grabs it with both hands. Serkis plays Dury as the classic rock star - cruel, angry, selfish, foul mouthed... yet still immensely talented and inspirational with no time for fools or compromise. With his dark eyes switching from pools of pathos to menacing daggers in an instant, he totally inhabits what must be a career defining role.

Serkis is ably supported by a fine cast of British actors. Naomi Harris and Olivia Williams play his lover and wife respectively, both with long-suffering dedication. Tom Hughes cuts a modish figure as Dury's writing partner and musical sounding board Chaz Jankel. Ray Winstone and Toby Jones take up opposing roles of good and evil as Dury's father and sadistic school warden Hargreaves. Possibly best of all is child actor Bill Milner who plays Dury's son Baxter, cover star of New Boots and Panties and bewildered drifter through the bohemian milieu that Dury sets up in his North London commune existence.

The background to the story is of course Dury's battle with polio. Diagnosed with the disease as a child, the singer learnt to live with the affliction throughout his adult life, coming to terms with the fact that he was in his own words a "raspberry ripple". However, like Dury himself, the film never steeps itself in pity or asks for our sympathies. Instead it exalts the twin life skills of standing on your own two feet and of rising to prove the world wrong when knocked to the ground.

Much credit for this should go to rookie director Mat Whitecross and script writer Paul Viragh who treat their subject matter with a nice balance of reverence and levity. Whitecross learnt his trade under Brit director Michael Winterbottom, editing the music based love story 9 Songs. Before that he cut his teeth as a pop promo director (albeit for kings of bland Coldplay) so he has previous in capturing the essence of a live music performance. And indeed the movie is expertly shot and cut to showcase Dury's work, with Serkis singing all the songs live, charging energetically from one hair raising theatrical performance to the next.

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll plays out as part rock concert, part music-hall and part Brechtian theatre piece as the singer introduces episodes of his life, holding court on stage as if hosting a one man show in the fringe. I guess if you were to compare it to any other film it would have to be something like Pink Floyd - The Wall, especially in it's non linear structure and the way it mixes childhood memories with music. But whereas The Wall celebrated depression and broken ideals, Sex & Drugs is all about fighting and beating the system. Or in Dury's case, how to avoid death and obsolescence by being magnificent.

Eskimo... Arapaho...