DRESSED TO KILL - Review By Greg Klymkiw - De Palma Masterpiece June 17, 2016 at TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX in major series entitled: Split/Screen: The Cinema of Brian De Palma

Dressed To Kill (1980)
Dir. Brian De Palma
Starring: Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson, Nancy Allen,
Keith Gordon, Dennis Franz, David Margulies, William Finley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

If Dressed To Kill was merely a tartly effective thriller, it might have been enough to solidify its place in film history, but the fact that it goes so much further is what keeps it to the forefront, where all great cinema deserves to be.

The fact of the matter is that cruelty is the driving engine of the film - not just cruelty for cruelty's sake, but to expose our own need to wallow in richly delineated sadism, especially as it's perpetrated upon others (those characters in the film who are all examples of lives that have "become unnecessary" - lives, perhaps, not unlike those belonging to most all of miserable humanity).

READ GREG KLYMKIW'S FULL REVIEW OF BRIAN DE PALMA'S DRESSED TO KILL HERE

BREAKER MORANT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Aussie Anti-War Favourite on Criterion

Bryan Brown and Edward Woodward await British "justice".

Breaker Morant (1980)
Dir. Bruce Beresford
Starring: Edward Woodward, Bryan Brown, Lewis Fitz-Gerald, Jack Thompson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

We'll do our best when crucified
To finish off in style, sir! - "Butchered to Make a Dutchman's Holiday",
a poem written by Harry "Breaker" Morant just prior to his execution.

Stories about nations executing their own soldiers are pretty much guaranteed to generate climaxes inspiring sheer, unbridled emotion, often resulting in copious tears from an audience, or at the very least, producing more than a few a catches in more than a few throats. Feelings of mounting anger and frustration are also par for the course since the executions are always a result of politics, petty bureaucratic manoeuvring, colonialism and major league ass-covering.

The greatest of them all is, of course, Stanley Kubrick's 1957 Paths of Glory with Kirk Douglas attempting to save a group of innocent soldiers from execution at the hands of a cold-hearted martinet. Some of my other favourites include: the great, near-forgotten 1974 NBC Television Movie The Execution of Private Slovik, written by legendary scribes Richard Levinson and William Link, directed by Lamont Johnson and starring Martin Sheen in one of his greatest performances; the recent 2015/2016 release of the heartbreaking Terence Davies picture Sunset Song, about a shell shocked soldier wishing to leave the front to be with his wife; And though there is no literal execution in it, the fate facing a shy young sailor in Hal Ashby's The Last Detail might as well be a death sentence.

Then there is Bruce Beresford's Breaker Morant from 1980, one of the many films to lead the Australian charge of internationally acclaimed box office hits. (The film was an especially huge grosser Down Under and eventually had an excellent shelf life in North America after initially soft openings).

This finely wrought courtroom (court martial) drama details the true story of commanding officer Lt. Harry "Breaker" Morant (Edward Woodward) and two of his men, Peter Handcock (Bryan Brown) and George Witton (Lewis Fitz-Gerald), all standing trial for the murder of (supposed) civilians in the fields of battle during the Boer War. The narrative is recounted in flashbacks during the tribunal presided over by pole-up-the-ass British military martinets. Director Beresford ably commandeers his superb cast through a compelling recounting of their actions in the field.

In spite of the fact that they've been handed a lawyer skilled only in corporate law, Maj. J.F. Thomas (Jack Thompson) offers a brilliant defence, and though history tells us otherwise, we're expecting either a full acquittal or, at the very least, no firing squad death sentences. Thomas throws everything, including the kitchen sink at the martinets, ranging from the trial being illegal as the men are Australian, not British, the very real facts that the enemy during the Boer War waged guerrilla warfare (wherein anyone could be the enemy), plus the astonishing facts that orders were given to Morant and his men to spare nobody (including an order to avenge an Australian soldier tortured to death by the Boers).

A Good Defence Means Nothing When
Brits Have Decided to Nail Aussies to a CROSS!

There is no question that Morant and his men have committed the wholesale slaughter of "civilians", but these are clearly not civilians. This is war, and as such, the most horrible things occur. This is not the case of Nazi-style genocide - it is warfare under impossible circumstances - period.

We're with the men to the tragic end of the film and the clear villains are the colonial imperialist British military. Oddly, director Bruce Beresford expressed shock over interpretations such as these. In a 2012 interview with Peter Malone, he said:

"I read an article about it recently in the LA times and the writer said it's the story of these guys who were railroaded by the British. But that's not what it's about at all. . . I always get amazed when people say to me that this is a film about poor Australians who were framed by the Brits."

Reading this, my immediate response is to assume Beresford's gone completely insane. Now sure, that might not be the entire story, but how can one deny that the overriding attitude of the movie towards the British is clearly anti-Colonialist. In the film's final few minutes, we're even treated to some choice, heartbreaking melancholy and exquisite sentimentality. Perhaps anti-colonialism within the historical context of this story wasn't Beresford's intention after all, but if not, then I'd have to assume he brought an innate Australian attitude towards the British. In fairness to Beresford, he does offer the following in the same interview:

"[The film] analysed why men in this situation would behave as they had never behaved before in their lives. It's the pressures that are put to bear on people in war time… "

Yes, I'm willing to accept this. It's one of the powerful anti-war elements of the picture, but the defence provided within the context of the court martial itself, within the very narrative of the film, does offer food for thought along these lines, but finally we can only react emotionally to what we see and experience, and that is: the men were subjected to an unfair trial in spite of a persuasive defence and it's clear that all the tea-and-crumpet-ingesting Brits have their minds made up from the beginning.

I watched the film again after reading Beresford's comments. I was still angered by the Brits and still deeply moved by the plight of the accused men. This did not change. I concluded that Beresford flipped his lid. This was the same film I saw in 1980, then several times over the next 35 years. It's the same movie millions of people have seen and loved.

It's a stirring film and an important one. And yeah, it still has me shuddering and spewing tears when Morant, just before being executed screams out: "Shoot straight, you bastards! Don't make a mess of it!"

War is cruel and unfair, but one cannot deny that honour and bravery exist amongst those men so savagely treated by it and who, in turn, have reduced themselves to killing machines for king and country.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

The Criterion Collection Blu-Ray/DVD edition of Breaker Morant is gorgeously transferred and includes a solid audio commentary featuring Bruce Beresford in 2004, new interviews with Beresford, cinematographer Donald McAlpine and actor Bryan Brown, an interview with actor Edward Woodward from 2004, a superb new short piece about the Boer War with historian Stephen Miller, an interesting 1974 documentary The Breaker, profiling the real Harry “Breaker” Morant, (with a 2010 statement by its director, Frank Shields), the theatrical trailer and an essay by scholar Neil Sinyard.

Order these films directly from the links below and contribute to the maintenance of the Film Corner

USA and the rest of the world: Amazon.com

Canada: Amazon.ca

U.K. Amazon.co.uk

DRESSED TO KILL - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Antonin Artaud, Meet Brian De Palma. Mr. De Palma, Meet Monsieur Artaud. Rejoice! The Gloriously Cruel 1980 Slice n' Dice Classic is now available on a gorgeous Criterion Collection Blu-Ray.

Dressed To Kill (1980)
Dir. Brian De Palma
Starring: Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson, Nancy Allen,
Keith Gordon, Dennis Franz, David Margulies, William Finley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

If Antonin Artaud's theories behind the Theatre of Cruelty carry any weight at all, they are rooted in the notion that an artist must force an audience to feel unconscious emotions by assaulting the senses of said audience. Though moviegoers are closer to the passive audiences Artaud despised, the fact remains that many of the greatest works of cinema reflect leading Artaud egghead Nathan Gorelick's assertion that cruelty is "the unrelenting agitation of a life that has become unnecessary, lazy, or removed from a compelling force."

It's possible that filmmaker Brian De Palma might not even be conscious of his Artaud-like use of cruelty in so many of his films, but I'd slap a few C-notes agin it with the ferocity of a hardened gee-gaw tout. Both referential to Alfred Hitchcock and furthermore, self-referential, De Palma's pictures nail our kneecaps into our seats, forcing us, with such tantalizingly, disturbingly beautiful images that we can do little but become active engagers in the spectacle of "unrelenting agitation" on the silver screen. Unlike Alex in A Clockwork Orange, we do not require our eyelids to be pinned back. Our eyes have no choice but to remain open as we engage in the truculent indignities tossed at the characters populating De Palma's works themselves.

As is my won't, I find myself drawn to fresh screenings of movies that were originally released during my youth in their initial theatrical releases. The viewing experiences from those halcyon days are so fresh and vivid in my mind that it's hard to believe the movies themselves are, in fact, decades-old.

(By extension I'm distressingly reminded that I am decades-older.)

This phenomenon of the "old" feeling "new" could, I suspect, be tossed off as the simple process of aging. No matter how many years pass, the art we tuned-in to so long ago feels like yesterday because it was part of what formed us as individuals and hopefully, if we have not changed too much with the times, we are who we are and the movies are what they are (and not so much were, but again, undoubtedly are).

Most of all, though, they are works that are as fresh today as when we first saw them. This is no mere pre-dementia-riddled shaking of the things-were-better-back-then-Shillelaghs. In many instances they felt ahead of their time when first seen decades ago and even now, they feel ahead of their time. They're usually far more fresh and vital than those works released literally just yesterday.

It probably has most to do with the fact that movies from our distant past, the ones that really counted at the time (like so many of De Palma's did), are imbued with the universal qualities one attributes to work that was made and exists beyond the mere ephemeral. They are classics, masterpieces which will live long after we and their filmmakers are dead and buried.

Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill is such a movie.

And, it is cruel beyond all belief.

In 1980, this terrifying, darkly hilarious and creepy thriller caused audiences to alternately howl with laughter, shudder with gooseflesh and jump out of their seats. It still performs these dutiful tasks every single time we see it and in those periods between laying our eyes upon it, the picture creeps into our consciousness whenever incidents in the real world remind us of its prescience, or when we see contemporary films of a similar nature that are clearly without the same style and intelligence or simply, because we're alone with our thoughts, dreams and/or fetishes and memories of the picture - all this is enough to infuse us with the frissons necessary to keep us alive. (Frissons rooted, of course, in the abject cruelty with which De Palma lavishes upon his characters and, by extension, we, the audience.)

The central arc of De Palma's original screenplay yields a work of seeming simplicity. A hot middle-aged babe (Angie Dickinson) cuckolds her cold, reserved second husband and is brutally murdered after a leisurely afternoon tryst with a hunk she's met earlier that day in an art gallery. The killer is a vicious blonde wearing shades who hacks Dickinson to pieces with a razor blade in an apartment elevator.

The killing is witnessed by a beautiful young hooker (Nancy Allen), who teams up with the dead woman's nerdy teenage son (Keith Gordon) to solve the crime. The woman's psychiatrist (Michael Caine) is concerned that one of his wacko clients is the killer, a transgendered young fella called Bobbie (voiced by William Finley, The Phantom of the Paradise himself). The hooker is stalked by the killer, resulting in a number of hair-raising set pieces (including an astonishing sequence on a subway platform and then, a moving train).

She's then meanly strong-armed by a coarse police detective (Dennis Franz) into filching an appointment book from the psychiatrist in order to circumvent the legal ramifications of client-doctor privacy. (This sequence is boner-inducingly sexy AND mind-fuckingly suspenseful.) And it's here that the picture barrels full steam ahead towards a climax so scary, it borders (for some) on multiple orgasmic spewing and shudders. AND, as per the De Palma we all know and love, we're blessed with an anti-climactic climax (a la Carrie), designed to tear more than a few new assholes out of the audience, sending them a-leapin' like frogs with firecrackers up their butts.

If Dressed To Kill was merely a tartly effective thriller, it might have been enough to solidify its place in film history, but the fact that it goes so much further is what keeps it to the forefront, where all great cinema deserves to be.

The fact of the matter is that cruelty is the driving engine of the film - not just cruelty for cruelty's sake, but to expose our own need to wallow in richly delineated sadism, especially as it's perpetrated upon others (those characters in the film who are all examples of lives that have "become unnecessary" - lives, perhaps, not unlike those belonging to most all of miserable humanity).

Dickinson's character is put through a veritable wringer of cruelty. It's not enough that De Palma lavishes his camera upon her lithe form in a steamy shower in the film's opening shots, but that he invades her privacy as she lathers herself, deep into her nether regions, giving herself physical pleasure through masturbation fuelled by fantasies of the gent outside the shower who lathers his face with shaving cream.

That her hands find their way to her genitals, caressing and cleansing them whilst harbouring "filthy" libidinous thoughts, are simply not cruel enough either: a muscular male hand must clutch Dickinson's mouth and smother her, while the other hairy paw finds its way down to her genitals to literally lift her up off the ground, the man's pelvis grinding into her backdoor regions and finally, the whole nasty, sexy affair climaxes, revealing itself to be an early morning dirty fantasy. The camera eye breaks through the steamy haze and upon the clear reality of Angie's brutish husband ploughing her, pronging her, skewering her with his coital missionary position thrusts as she barks out yips, yelps and moans, as convincing as an actress in a porn film or a $50 street whore hoping her screams of pleasure will get the john to dump his load and roll off. These fake utterances are to fulfil her husband's needs and not her own. Nice though the fantasy which precedes it.

The cruelty does not let up. De Palma teases us with an extended sequence in an art gallery where we see Dickinson lazily sauntering through, admiring the art, but also noticing a handsome gentleman ogling her. It's a gloriously dreamy, sexy dance between two people attracted to each other physically, but after so much tantalizing teasing, both she and the audience are ripped out of the reality of the seduction, until, that is, she's whisked into the back of a cab by the gentleman who proceeds to go down on her during the ride to his apartment.

Here De Palma allows the beleaguered housewife, a mere sperm receptacle for her husband, to experience full-on, full-blown passion. We feel for her. We're happy for her - so much so that we delight in the moments when she opens her afternoon lover's desk drawer to retrieve a note pad in which she can write some tender sweet nothings for the first man to give her multiple orgasms in God knows how long.

Here is where the cruelty lavished upon Dickinson is both horrifying and knee-slappingly hilarious. In lover-boy's desk drawer she discovers a letter from the NYC Dept. of Health which orders him to contact the city bureaucrats immediately. He has a VENEREAL DISEASE, a venereal disease which, of course, Dickinson will now have - little something to take home to her cuckolded hubbles.

Oh, and if you think this cruelty is going to let up, you're going to be sorely mistaken. Angie flees the apartment and into an awaiting elevator. A Mother and her weird daughter join the trip down and the rotten little brat keeps staring at Dickinson, ACCUSINGLY. The kid's face seems to read: "I KNOW YOU'RE A SLUT." It's at this point, our philandering housewife realizes she's left her WEDDING RING behind in lover-boy's apartment.

Once the Mommy and horrid child exit, she now needs to go back up to the love nest of venereal infection to retrieve the symbol of her marriage to cuckolded hubby. Alone on the slow ride up, the elevator stops, the doors open and she meets a grotesque looking blonde with a straight razor.

Her demise at this point is utterly relentless.

I'd also like to suggest that it's hilarious. Each step of Dickinson's traumas are hilarious. Not tongue-in-cheek, either. They're so grotesque, yet played so straight, we can't help but guffaw and whack our knees repeatedly like some corn-holing mountain-cracker-barrel hillbillies with missing teeth and dirty bare feet.

Because, of course, it is what we ALL are in the eyes of Master Artaudian puppeteer, Brian De Palma. We're all piles of shit who deserve to have our worst fears and pain drawn out. He lets us look into the mirror of his camera lens.

And make no mistake - poor Angie Dickinson's delicate dance into cruelty - is simply one of an ongoing series of characters in Dressed To Kill who undergo the scarily sadistic Loony Tunes hilarity which De Palma drags them (and us) through.

He places his characters under a magnifying glass, allowing the sun to slowly sear off chunks of their bodies and souls. The act of participating in this cruelty, however, means that we ourselves are under the magnifying glass.

The light, the visions of light which comprise cinema itself, are like the rays of the sun which De Palma turns on us, with considerable glee.

Ooooooh, he's such a nasty little boy.

But I love him all the more because of it.

Dressed To Kill is available on an all new restored 4K digital transfer of the unrated version, supervised by Brian De Palma on a gorgeous Criterion Collection Blu-Ray. The bevy of extras includes a new conversation between De Palma and filmmaker Noah Baumbach, new interviews with actor Nancy Allen, producer George Litto, composer Pino Donaggio, shower-scene body double Victoria Lynn Johnson, and poster photographic art director Stephen Sayadian, The Making of “Dressed to Kill,” a 2001 documentary, a new profile of cinematographer Ralf Bode, featuring filmmaker Michael Apted, an interview with actor-director Keith Gordon from 2001, a documentary from 2001 about the different versions of the film and the cuts made to avoid an X rating and amongst the trailer and essay, storyboards by De Palma. Feel free to order directly from the links below and contribute to the maintenance of The Film Corner.

BREAKER MORANT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Aussie Anti-War Favourite on Criterion

Bryan Brown and Edward Woodward await British "justice".

Breaker Morant (1980)
Dir. Bruce Beresford
Starring: Edward Woodward, Bryan Brown, Lewis Fitz-Gerald, Jack Thompson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

We'll do our best when crucified
To finish off in style, sir! - "Butchered to Make a Dutchman's Holiday",
a poem written by Harry "Breaker" Morant just prior to his execution.

Stories about nations executing their own soldiers are pretty much guaranteed to generate climaxes inspiring sheer, unbridled emotion, often resulting in copious tears from an audience, or at the very least, producing more than a few a catches in more than a few throats. Feelings of mounting anger and frustration are also par for the course since the executions are always a result of politics, petty bureaucratic manoeuvring, colonialism and major league ass-covering.

The greatest of them all is, of course, Stanley Kubrick's 1957 Paths of Glory with Kirk Douglas attempting to save a group of innocent soldiers from execution at the hands of a cold-hearted martinet. Some of my other favourites include: the great, near-forgotten 1974 NBC Television Movie The Execution of Private Slovik, written by legendary scribes Richard Levinson and William Link, directed by Lamont Johnson and starring Martin Sheen in one of his greatest performances; the recent 2015/2016 release of the heartbreaking Terence Davies picture Sunset Song, about a shell shocked soldier wishing to leave the front to be with his wife; And though there is no literal execution in it, the fate facing a shy young sailor in Hal Ashby's The Last Detail might as well be a death sentence.

Then there is Bruce Beresford's Breaker Morant from 1980, one of the many films to lead the Australian charge of internationally acclaimed box office hits. (The film was an especially huge grosser Down Under and eventually had an excellent shelf life in North America after initially soft openings).

This finely wrought courtroom (court martial) drama details the true story of commanding officer Lt. Harry "Breaker" Morant (Edward Woodward) and two of his men, Peter Handcock (Bryan Brown) and George Witton (Lewis Fitz-Gerald), all standing trial for the murder of (supposed) civilians in the fields of battle during the Boer War. The narrative is recounted in flashbacks during the tribunal presided over by pole-up-the-ass British military martinets. Director Beresford ably commandeers his superb cast through a compelling recounting of their actions in the field.

In spite of the fact that they've been handed a lawyer skilled only in corporate law, Maj. J.F. Thomas (Jack Thompson) offers a brilliant defence, and though history tells us otherwise, we're expecting either a full acquittal or, at the very least, no firing squad death sentences. Thomas throws everything, including the kitchen sink at the martinets, ranging from the trial being illegal as the men are Australian, not British, the very real facts that the enemy during the Boer War waged guerrilla warfare (wherein anyone could be the enemy), plus the astonishing facts that orders were given to Morant and his men to spare nobody (including an order to avenge an Australian soldier tortured to death by the Boers).

A Good Defence Means Nothing When
Brits Have Decided to Nail Aussies to a CROSS!

There is no question that Morant and his men have committed the wholesale slaughter of "civilians", but these are clearly not civilians. This is war, and as such, the most horrible things occur. This is not the case of Nazi-style genocide - it is warfare under impossible circumstances - period.

We're with the men to the tragic end of the film and the clear villains are the colonial imperialist British military. Oddly, director Bruce Beresford expressed shock over interpretations such as these. In a 2012 interview with Peter Malone, he said:

"I read an article about it recently in the LA times and the writer said it's the story of these guys who were railroaded by the British. But that's not what it's about at all. . . I always get amazed when people say to me that this is a film about poor Australians who were framed by the Brits."

Reading this, my immediate response is to assume Beresford's gone completely insane. Now sure, that might not be the entire story, but how can one deny that the overriding attitude of the movie towards the British is clearly anti-Colonialist. In the film's final few minutes, we're even treated to some choice, heartbreaking melancholy and exquisite sentimentality. Perhaps anti-colonialism within the historical context of this story wasn't Beresford's intention after all, but if not, then I'd have to assume he brought an innate Australian attitude towards the British. In fairness to Beresford, he does offer the following in the same interview:

"[The film] analysed why men in this situation would behave as they had never behaved before in their lives. It's the pressures that are put to bear on people in war time… "

Yes, I'm willing to accept this. It's one of the powerful anti-war elements of the picture, but the defence provided within the context of the court martial itself, within the very narrative of the film, does offer food for thought along these lines, but finally we can only react emotionally to what we see and experience, and that is: the men were subjected to an unfair trial in spite of a persuasive defence and it's clear that all the tea-and-crumpet-ingesting Brits have their minds made up from the beginning.

I watched the film again after reading Beresford's comments. I was still angered by the Brits and still deeply moved by the plight of the accused men. This did not change. I concluded that Beresford flipped his lid. This was the same film I saw in 1980, then several times over the next 35 years. It's the same movie millions of people have seen and loved.

It's a stirring film and an important one. And yeah, it still has me shuddering and spewing tears when Morant, just before being executed screams out: "Shoot straight, you bastards! Don't make a mess of it!"

War is cruel and unfair, but one cannot deny that honour and bravery exist amongst those men so savagely treated by it and who, in turn, have reduced themselves to killing machines for king and country.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

The Criterion Collection Blu-Ray/DVD edition of Breaker Morant is gorgeously transferred and includes a solid audio commentary featuring Bruce Beresford in 2004, new interviews with Beresford, cinematographer Donald McAlpine and actor Bryan Brown, an interview with actor Edward Woodward from 2004, a superb new short piece about the Boer War with historian Stephen Miller, an interesting 1974 documentary The Breaker, profiling the real Harry “Breaker” Morant, (with a 2010 statement by its director, Frank Shields), the theatrical trailer and an essay by scholar Neil Sinyard.

Order these films directly from the links below and contribute to the maintenance of the Film Corner

USA and the rest of the world: Amazon.com

Canada: Amazon.ca

U.K. Amazon.co.uk

PROM NIGHT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Classic Canuck Slasher Pic Gets a Stellar and Most Deserving Synapse BLU-RAY (in Canada via VSC)

A MAN
WITH AN AXE
TO GRIND
HAS A DATE
WITH YOU
FOR THE PROM!!!

Prom Night (1980)
Dir. Paul Lynch
Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Leslie Nielsen, Antoinette Bower, Robert A. Silverman, George Touliatos, David Gardner, Michael Tough, Anne-Marie Martin (AKA "Eddie Benton"), Joy Thompson, Marybeth Rubens, Casey Stevens, Jeff Wincott, David Mucci

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The slasher film exploded on the scene with a vengeance from the mid-70s to the 80s, "vengeance" being the operative word. Often involving a masked and/or fleetingly-glimpsed stalker with a bone to pick, this sub genre of horror was typified by young babes and hunks receiving their violent comeuppance at the hands of said killer. The scares were mostly rooted in shock cuts and the films' plots were coat hangers with which to hang a series of grotesquely gory killings upon.

Though America ended up popularizing the slasher film to almost ludicrously successful degrees during the reign of Rompin' Ronnie Reagan (the Halloween and Friday the 13th franchises leading the charge), it was, in fact, the Italians (via the gialli and most notably, Mario Bava's Twitch of the Death Nerve) and Canadians (from A Christmas Story director Bob Clark and his viciously viscous yuletide thriller Black Christmas) who hitched their horses to the post first.

Canada's history of transgressive cinema surely begins with horror films whilst working in tandem with a first-rate tax credit during this period and the country was responsible for more than its fair share of slasher epics. Prom Night is one of the very best slasher films ever made. Directed by Paul Lynch, the erudite Liverpool ex-pat in Toronto, Prom Night couldn't have been more far removed (at least on the surface) from his John Grierson/NFB-influenced feature dramas The Hard Part Begins, a gritty dive into tank town country and western bars and Blood & Guts, a journey into the sleazy world of professional wrestling. In many ways, though, Lynch's foray into the slasher oeuvre yielded the kind of anthropological observation of the period and astonishingly iconic images of horror that could only have come from a genuinely visionary filmmaker.

In lieu of hundreds, if not thousands of similar films made since, the simple narrative of Prom Night might suggest something fairly by-rote and even by the standards of the time it might have felt as such, though if truth be told, my own first helping of the picture first-run in 1980 yielded a genuine barrage of gooseflesh upon my then-youthful frame. Watching it again on the sumptuously-transferred Blu-Ray from Synapse Films and VSC, the movie not only sparked fond memories of its almost-religious litany of visual frissons, but astonished me - almost 35 years after first seeing it - by Lynch's phenomenal eye for the details of teen life during that period.

The tale wrought, albeit somewhat familiar now (though being one of the first of its kind, no fault of its own), begins with the accidental death of a little girl at the hands of her peers. It fast forwards six years later to the night of the prom which would have been her first as a junior, if she'd have lived. With enough red herrings to throw us off the scent of the true identity of the revenge-seeker, we follow the rigorously observed preparations, social interactions and mating rituals of teens, parents and teachers alike on the day of the prom. Once the festivities begin proper, we're treated to a chilling check-list of blood-soaked killings until the film's astonishingly choreographed climactic set-piece involving the killer, one of his intended-victims and the ass-kicking gymnastics of 70s/80s scream-queen Jamie Lee Curtis (progeny of Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis and star of John Carpenter's Halloween).

HOT BABES
SEVERED
HEADS

All the above is courtesy of director Lynch, screenwriter William (The Changeling) Gray and story writer Robert Guza Jr. (30-year-head writer of, I kid you not, General Hospital). Prom Night is written and directed to beat the band and it paid off in spades. On every level, it's a genuine horror classic thanks to its talents off and on the screen.

The casting is impeccable. Though Jamie Lee Curtis herself is slightly long-in-tooth compared to her fellow High School peers, she delivers a fun, smirking, wise-acre sensibility to the role that sets her far apart as the film's genuine and rightful star. In fact, her performance here is so good, it far exceeds her pre-and-post Prom Night work in Halloween and Terror Train respectively. It's here where we discover the beginnings of her sexy, funny and breezy talents that would best be exemplified years later in A Fish Called Wanda, Trading Places and Perfect.

The youthful cast surrounding Curtis, comprised mostly of burgeoning Canuck thespians, in addition to the formidable presence of Vagina, Saskatchewan-native Leslie Nielsen as the principal of the besieged Hamilton High (to be seen soon-after in the Airplane and Naked Gun franchises) and a stalwart roll-call of Canuck character actors as various teachers, cops and townsfolk, Lynch populates his film with a first-rate cast which blows away most of the assemblages of onscreen talent in other pictures of the slasher genre.

Some of the more outstanding members of the supporting cast include the terrific Canadian character actor and David Cronenberg regular Robert A. Silverman, especially great as the cancer-ridden artist in The Brood, and here playing a creepy school caretaker, an absolutely hilarious David Gardner straight-facedly spouting some of the most ridiculous psychiatric mumbo-jumbo captured on film, David Mucci as an utterly repellent unibrowed teen stud, stalwart Canadian TV and stage actress Antoinette Bower as the unhinged Mom of the little dead girl, plus Jeff Wincott, eventual action hero and Broadway star in one of his earliest movie roles.

Last, but certainly not least, the absolutely ravishing, sexy, blonde ice-princess villainess played by a brilliant Anne-Marie Martin (credited as "Eddie Benton" and years later, fulfilling the real-life role as Mrs. Michael Crichton). Hubba-Hubba defines this morsel of erection-inducing evil.

Great Canadian Character Actor: ROBERT A. SILVERMAN
Creepy Caretaker in PROM NIGHT, Cancer Victim in THE BROOD

Given the film's not-so obvious low budget, its look tends to also make mincemeat out of the period's other slasher films. Lynch brings a borderline documentary mise-en-scene to the proceedings which situate us in a time and place that was more than familiar to those who saw the movie in 1980 and astoundingly, brings everyone else back to it via the naturalistic time-machine-like essence of his direction. The varied, somewhat bucolic locations of a long-ago-and-far-away Toronto (albeit adorned with American flags), treat us to the leafy lawns of Canada's first planned suburban environment of Don Mills, actual schools secured by the co-producer who was actually a high school teacher with the Toronto Board of Education and the major setting of the abandoned building of death (a notorious Toronto asylum) from the picture's creepy opening.

Add to this the superb interior details of Rueben Freed's art direction, the perfect-for-and-of-the-period hair (really BIG), the garish makeup (really HORRENDOUS) and teflon costumes (undeniably UGLY) and we know we're in a film made by real filmmakers who know that such details make for a good picture that's also commercial as opposed to jaded market-driven accountants who generate machine-tooled money-grabs bereft of style and artistry.

The choreography on the dance floor, as well as the choreography of the action/suspense sequences is top of the line and most exquisite of all are the makeup and special effects (both sound and picture) which accompany the delectable killings. Given the picture's attention to detail and yes, even character, the body count gets to have its cake and eat it to by being equally thrilling as it is sickeningly horrifying.

And lest we forget that all of this is underscored by the tremendous music from the team of Carl (Black Christmas, Deranged: Confessions of a Necrophile) Zittrer and Paul (My Bloody Valentine, Popcorn) Zaza, the former focusing with Zittrer on the virtually Canadian-horror sounds-of-music from the period and the latter solely and astonishingly delivering the remarkable disco score.

Adorning Lynch's miss-en-scene is the piece de resistance of the cinematography by Michael New with its superb compositional qualities, effective lighting and superlative tracking and dolly shots, all without the benefit of today's ubiquitous steadicams. Especially delightful is the film's refusal to be afraid of grain when it rears its beautiful head - as much an effect of the picture's budget as it is the filmmakers clearly anticipating its inevitability and blending those lovely, dancing speckles perfectly within the film's narrative and aesthetic.

The film's iconic imagery, the black snow mask of the killer, the composition involving the slasher gripping his axe in the dark hallways and most indelibly, the never-to-be-forgotten shot of a gorgeous victim-to-be as she raises her head slightly above the top of a black science lab table until we glimpse her terrified eyes as they reflect eerily and murkily upon the surface of the desk, lit only by the exterior street lamps casting their glow upon the lab through the big, smudgy, frost-paned windows.

One of the many great tag lines that accompanied the picture's inspired marketing campaign announced:

"If you're not back by midnight... you won't be coming home."

Don't make the mistake of Hamilton High's victims. Come home, come back to the joy and genius that is Prom Night, the slasher film of a generation, the little engine that could and the one true crowning glory of the entire oeuvre.

THE FILM CORNER RATING:
**** 4-Stars (film)
***** 5-stars (the Synapse Films/VSC Special Edition Blu-Ray)

For both fans of the film and eager students of filmmaking, the Special Edition Blu-Ray of Prom Night from the visionary Synapse Films and released in Canada via the equally visionary VSC, you simply can't go wrong with this mega-keeper of home entertainment packages. The 2K scan of the HD transfer in 16x9/1.78.1 is magnificent - so much so I doubt the film has looked this good since its first 35mm prints in theatrical release (in addition to both the original, gorgeously mixed-mono tracks and a 5.1 surround sound mix created just for the Blu-Ray). The extra features are a fountain of delights: Plenty of trailers, TV-spots, Radio-Spots and stills, all providing a glimpse at truly ingenious motion picture marketing; a good half-hour of never-before-seen outtakes, a short, but fascinating glimpse into the footage added to the TV versions to stretch it out when the shower scenes needed to be trimmed for primetime, including some excellent and genuinely humorous scenes involving Leslie Nielsen, Jamie Lee Curtis and Hamilton High's ditzy temp secretary); a decent feature length commentary track which includes some terrific observations by Lynch and screenwriter Graham. Alas, the pathetic non-moderation of moderator Paul Jankiewicz does little to rein things in properly and given Lynch's observations in interviews over the years as well as his moments in the disc's accompanying making-of documentary, there are many missed opportunities to delve more specifically into more practical and artistic aspects of the filmmaking process. The real cherry on the ice cream sundae here is the aforementioned doc. Entitled "The Horrors of Hamilton High", this 40-minute short film is obviously the work of people who know and love the film and it features anecdotal meanderings only when necessary (like Leslie Nielsen's on-set penchant for utilizing a fart-sound gizmo almost constantly during production) and a whole clutch of superb practical information on the aesthetics of filmmaking and storytelling that should have been on the commentary track if it had been properly moderated. That said, the commentary is worth the price of slogging through if only to hear the seemingly gentle-toned Lynch deride "Terror Train" director Roger Spottiswood for scumbaggishly going against his word to Lynch. Amusingly, Lynch refers to Spottiswood as the director of "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot". I could only have been happier if he'd added his own experience at the hands of turncoat Roger to that of poor Sam Peckinpah's when the Ottawa-born filmmaker ended up playing studio hack during the butchering of the masterpiece "Pat Garret and Billy the Kid". Well, we can dream, can't we? In any event, slight disappointment with the commentary track aside, the Blu-Ray Special Edition of Prom Night is easily one of the best discs of the year!

Klymkiw reviews 3 Classics presented as retrospective screenings at the 2014 (FNC) Festival du nouveau cinéma in Montreal. Samuel Fuller's THE BIG RED ONE, Ken Russell's CRIMES OF PASSION, King Hu's DRAGON INN

From D-Day to the Liberation of the
Death Camps, LEE MARVIN leads an
all-star cast in SAMUEL FULLER'S
autobiographical masterpiece of
WORLD WAR II.

The Big Red One: The Reconstruction (1980/2004)
Dir. Samuel Fuller
Starring: Lee Marvin, Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine, Bobby Di Cicco, Kelly Ward, Siegfried Rauch, Stéphane Audran

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Samuel Fuller made films that pulsated with the stuff of life and yet, at the same time, crackled with the pulpy, hard-boiled crispness of paperback potboilers and tabloid news rags. The guy was a true original and his 1980 classic The Big Red One practically reeks with the stench of death.

It's one of the great war movies of all time and is quite possibly one of the few explorations of men in battle to benefit from an exquisite amalgam of both the terrible truths it conveys and Fuller's terse, almost machine-gun-like style of presentation. Fuller, of course brought the life experience of being an investigative reporter to bear upon all his films, but he also infused them with his horrific exposure to the senseless waste of humanity during his years as an infantryman in the legendary Big Red One of the title.

Fuller himself was present at D-Day and made it to the liberation of Nazi Death Camps. He knew what it was like to be in battle and he especially understood both male camaraderie and the sickening heartache of encountering the remnants of massive genocide. He put all of this into The Big Red One.

Though he approved a much shorter version of the picture for theatrical release, he always regretted not holding out for his lengthier version. Thanks to a shooting script, detailed notes and the dogged persistence of film critic Richard Schickel, we're now able to experience a version of the film that's much closer to what Fuller intended.

It's one corker of a war movie - touching, exciting, wildly humorous and finally, deeply moving. With gruff Lee Marvin leading the charge, Robert Carradine as a cigar-chomping Fuller surrogate and a post-Star Wars Mark Hamill, we're told the tale of several survivors through a harrowing tour of duty. Bodies blow to bits, blood splashes liberally, tanks creak over raw terrain and finally, we experience the charred remains in Nazi Death Ovens.

Fuller hands us one episode after another that evokes the horror of war. Lee Marvin, especially, gives the performance of a lifetime. Seeing him befriend a starving child-survivor of the Death Camp is proof positive of Marvin's versatility.

It might also be the only time Lee Marvin will have you in tears.

NOTE: Samuel Fuller's daughter Samantha, who played a war orphan in The Big Red One, will be present at the FNC screening to introduce the film and engage in a question and answer session.

THE FILM CORNER RATING:
***** - Five Stars

I WILL KILL YOU! I WILL SAVE YOU! HARLOT!

Crimes of Passion (1984)
Dir. Ken Russell
Starring: Kathleen Turner, Anthony Perkins

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This is a rare opportunity to see Ken Russell's deliciously scary, funny and perverse thriller in 35mm, thanks to screenwriter Barry Sandler's collection at the Academy Film Archive. (Sandler will also be present for the screening.) It's sometimes hard to believe certain films are as old as they are. Crimes of Passion turns 30-years-of-age and it feels as insanely cutting-edge and over-the-top as it did when I first saw it first-run. FNC will be screening the rare director’s cut which has been available on DVD, but I can assure you, there's nothing like seeing its grotesque colours and glorious grain on actual film. You'll be able to thrill to Kathleen Turner's sexually-explicit, no-holds-barred performance as a repressed housewife who transforms herself by night into the ultra-hote-babe China Blue.

This alluring, albeit low-track street hooker, engages in all manner of aggressive sexual gymnastics as an addictive, though empty antidote to frigidity. Matching Turner's brilliant, outrageous performance is everyone's favourite Psycho Anthony Perkins as a demented preacher malevolently stalking her. He will save China Blue, even if he has to eventually snuff her out. She has another stalker, though. He wants to love her. Oh, what's a $50-per-trick hooker supposed to do? Decisions. Decisions.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** - Four Stars

Beware of sneaky, sword-wielding EUNUCHS!!!

Dragon Inn (1967)
Dir. King Hu
Starring: Bai Ying, Miao Tien, Han Ying-chieh, Shih Chun, Cho Kin, Hsieh Han

Review By Greg Klymkiw

In the middle of nowhere lies the last outpost before the border, a godforsaken hellhole called the Dragon Gate Inn. This is where political exiles are banished to during the Ming Dynasty of ancient China. When the cruel Emperor executes one of his officials, the unfortunate's family are booted out of town and sent packing to the ends of the earth. Sadly, exile isn't their only problem since the big bad ruler has sent a nasty eunuch to spy on them and eventually effect their deathly eradication from the planet. Like some mad kung-fu spaghetti western, a whole passel of deadly killers descend upon the Inn and we're treated to intrigue and action. King Hu was one of the grand masters of cinema and his masterpiece Dragon Inn was recently afforded a gorgeous 4K digital restoration - all the better to take in the sumptuous vistas, cleverly composed (and designed) interiors and the astounding choreography and direction of some of the most stirring sword fights and hand-to-hand combat ever wrought within martial arts movies. Hu's frame is always lively, his moves masterful and his sense of spatial geography always dead-on. Here you'll have the opportunity to witness a director at the peak of his considerable powers, working in tandem with ace choreographer and action helmer Han Ying-chieh. Between the two of them, Dragon Inn is one of the most thriller martial arts pictures of all time - one which influenced Tsui Hark, John Woo, Jacky Chan, Ang Lee, Zhang Yimou and yes, Quentin Tarantino. It's a classic in all respects. Best of all, it feels like it could have been made yesterday.

The skill and technique on display has not dated one single, solitary bit and you'll constantly be catching your breath, doing double takes and needing to pinch yourself to make sure you're not dreaming. And even though it feels as modern as all get-out in terms of its movie-making sophistication and savvy, the fact truly remains that they actually don't make 'em like this anymore.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** - 4-Stars

For further information visit the FNC - Festival international du nouveau cinéma de Montréal website HERE. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER THE AFOREMENTIONED FILMS FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS BELOW, AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.

In Canada - BUY The Big Red One HERE, eh!

In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY The Big Red One - HERE!

In the UNITED KINGDOM - BUY The Big Red One - HERE!

In Canada - BUY Crimes of Passion HERE, eh!

In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY Crimes of Passion - HERE!

In the UNITED KINGDOM - BUY Crimes of Passion - HERE!

In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY Dragon Inn - HERE!

In the UNITED KINGDOM - BUY Dragon Inn - HERE!

PIKOO (Pikoor Diary) & SADGATI ( The Deliverance) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Two Short Mid-Length Television Films by Satyajit Ray - The Films of Satyajit Ray @ TIFF Bell Lightbox #tiffcinematheque

Don't miss a single one of these great films on display at TIFF Bell Lightbox in the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". From visionary programmer James Quandt, this is one of the most important retrospectives ever presented in Canada. If you care about cinema, you can't afford to miss even one. Heed the warning below!!! The Film Corner & Mr. Neeson mean business!!!

The evil of castes in Sadgati (above),
the tragedy of infidelity in Pikoo (below).
Satyajit Ray used the medium of idiocy to transmit
work that tackled important themes that genuinely affected
and continue to affect the lives of people all over the world.

Two Short
Television Films
By Satyajit Ray

Pikoo [Pikoor Diary] (1980) *****
Dir. Satyajit Ray
Starring: Arjun Guha Thakurta, Aparna Sen, Promod Ganguli, Victor Banerjee, Soven Lahiri

Sadgati [Deliverance] (1981) *****
Dir. Satyajit Ray
Starring: Om Puri, Mohan Agashe, Gita Siddharth, Smita Patil, Richa Mishra

Review By
Greg Klymkiw

Prepare to be devastated. Satyajit Ray's in the house. Two short films he made for television during the 1980s and in glorious colour, no less (juxtaposing the lush, stunning compositions with the dark subject matter), are movies that pack enormous wallops from within their slender running times, a mere 28 minutes for Pikoo and a slightly longer mid-length running time at 52 minutes for Sadgati.

We're talking 80 minutes to be completely drained by Ray's staggering portraits of infidelity and India's foul, backwards caste system respectively. Both movies offer far more food for thought and dramatic punch than the vast majority of films made back then. As for now, most films do little more than offer ephemeral frissons for audiences too indoctrinated to realize they've being force-fed buckets of faecal matter by cash-grubbing, cynical nest-featherers. These two films are both monumental achievements and stand as a testament to their filmmaker, but also the visionary broadcasters who allowed Ray to make these stunning, short one-off dramas. There are certainly few, if any, contemporary broadcasters who'd allow this now and chances are, none of them know who Satyajit Ray was anyway and worse, wouldn't know great filmmaking even if it was represented by some meaty schwance slapping them in the face through a glory hole with a little sign dangling from said appendage that specifically indicated the content of the communion host they were about to receive down their greedy gullets.

Pikoo creates a slice of life in the acrimonious existence of an affluent family which results in a tragic event that should have been avoided, but given the social conditions a patriarchal society creates, it almost seems inevitable. Much of this tale is recounted through the eyes of a little boy, the title character. His love for his Mother and Grandfather are passionate and intense, though his feelings for his father seem almost non-existent. Ray provides a hint in the film's opening that the patriarch of this household is an uncommunicative, absent prig who spends more time preparing himself for a day at work than bothering to even acknowledge his sweet little boy. All poor Pikoo can get is a half-hearted wave from his Dad as the distracted breadwinner drives off to work.

Pikoo's mother affords the boy with love and attention, but even she is distracted. Firstly, she's more than a tad preoccupied by learning that her husband is aware of her infidelity. Strangely and just a bit selfishly, and in spite of the fact that she and her husband have argued all night (which we find out when Pikoo confides this to his ailing grandfather), the lonely Jezebel spends far too much time fretting that her lover (described to Pikoo as an interior decorator who must be addressed as "Uncle") will carve out time from his day to come over and deliver the vigorous poking she requires.

The story unravels with canny simplicity and leads to a horrendous moment of reckoning that affects everyone, but especially the innocent party in this whole sordid affair - a sweet little boy who is far too young to be aware of the sickening reality of his family's domestic strife and worst of all, having to make a discovery that will haunt him forever.

If Pikoo isn't enough to drag you through hot coals, Sadgati (aka Deliverance) will pretty much stuff you screaming into the flames dancing ever-so menacingly in a wood-burning stove. A tanner wishes to receive a blessing and advice on the most auspicious day to hold his daughter's wedding. The local Panditji (Hindu Brahmin Priest) is more than willing to oblige, but as the tanner is of the lowest social strata, our Man o' God cavalierly demands the father-in-law-to-be perform the most menial, back-breaking physical labour.

What occurs is one of the most harrowing and savage indictments of India's caste system imaginable. The Holy Man regards the Tanner with such contempt that his demands are tantamount to torture. He knows the poor guy recently suffered from a debilitating fever, yet he forces him to chop wood from a petrified log using only a dull, rusty axe. The task is impossible, but the Paditji takes an almost sadistic pleasure in both humiliating the man and forcing him to carry out the physically draining work in the hot sun, without food, drink or adequate rest. As the tanner goes about the business of sheer futility, the Panditji takes naps. Between naps, he barks out orders and insults.

The result of this act of psychopathic abuse is cruel and pointless. The aftermath is even more sickening. Ray uses colour in this film to its fullest juxtapositional effect. You will, I guarantee you, never forget the gorgeous sunset upon the rich dark countryside as a man's rotting corpse is dragged through the mud and unceremoniously dumped with utter disdain.

Pikoo and Sadgati are, once again, two more masterworks from Satyajit Ray. Whether he delivered feature drama, short works of fiction and even occasional documentary portraits, there are few filmmakers who have (or ever will) achieve the long string of greatness he delivered.

Pikoo & Sadgati are presented together at TIFF Bell Lightbox on July 11, 2014 at 9:30pm as part of the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". This might be your only chance to see this masterpiece the way it was meant to be seen, so get your tickets NOW and GO. Visit the TIFF website for further details by clicking HERE.

DON'T FORGET TO BUY YOUR SATYAJIT RAY MOVIES FROM THE LINKS TO AMAZON.CA, AMAZON.COM and AMAZON.UK, BELOW. DOING SO WILL ASSIST WITH THE ONGOING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.

*BUYERS PLEASE NOTE* Amazon.ca (Canadian Amazon) has a relatively cruddy collection of Satyajit Ray product and generally shitty prices. Amazon.com has a huge selection of materials (including music and books) and decent prices. Amazon.UK has a GREAT selection of Satyajit Ray movies from a very cool company called Artificial Eye (second these days only to the Criterion Collection). Any decent Chinatown sells region-free Blu-Ray and DVD players for peanuts. Just get one (or several - they can be that cheap) and don't be afraid of ordering from foreign regions. The fucking film companies should just merge the formats into one acceptable delivery method worldwide. Besides, you can order anything you want from any country anyway.

AMAZON.CA:

AMAZON.COM:



AMAZON.UK: