TARAS BULBA (1962) - Blu-Ray Review By Greg Klymkiw - Glory Be to Kino: BULBA on BRD!

On BRD at last! Thanks to
KINO-LORBER

Taras Bulba (1962)
dir. J. Lee Thompson
Starring: Yul Brynner, Tony Curtis
Review By Greg Klymkiw

“Do not put your faith in a Pole.
Put your faith in your sword
and your sword in the Pole!”
Thus spake Taras Bulba – Cossack Chief!(Played by Yul Brynner 1962)

These days, there are so few truly momentous events for lovers of fine cinema and, frankly, even fewer such momentous events for those of the Ukrainian persuasion. However, film lovers and Ukrainians both have something to celebrate. Especially Ukrainians.

WHO IS DAYANI CRISTAL? Review By Greg Klymkiw - Highly acclaimed by the Film Corner

America is so precious about its border
it kills thousands of people per year.
These are dirt-poor migrant workers.
They'll do work American WhiteTrash
won't do, yet they're murdered.
WHY?

GUMSHOE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Stephen Frears Debut Hardboiled Brit Kitchen Sink

Finney great as hardboiled schlub

Gumshoe (1971)
dir. Stephen Frears
Starring: Albert Finney, Frank Finlay, Billie Whitelaw, Janice Rule

Review By Greg Klymkiw

One of the most infuriating things is when a picture throws in everything, including the kitchen sink, and resembles a ratty patchwork quilt designed to comfort the posteriors of smelly hippies sitting on a cold, rain-soaked, mosquito-breeding patch of earth during some loathsome folk festival. On the other hand, there are patchwork quilts like Stephen Frears’s first feature Gumshoe which, like the work of a serious folk artist, is designed specifically for aesthetic scrutiny.

Frears’s long-form debut wanders between loving parodistic homage and straightforward detective drama – a picture that succeeds winningly in spite (or perhaps even because) of its desire to both comment on the form of detective fiction whilst being the thing itself. In this sense, Gumshoe comes close to satire, but because it doesn’t have a mean bone in its celluloid body (save for some of the roughing-up the genre demands) and never quite comes close to roasting the folly of humanity over an open fire in the Swift-like fashion we’ve become accustomed to, it doesn’t really earn the right to be called satire either. It earns the right, however, to be called a kick-ass picture that stays with you long after it’s unspooled.

Spinning the tale of clinically depressed schlub Eddie Ginley (Albert Finney) and his obsession to parlay a photographic memory of hardboiled detective movies into his own reality, Gumshoe uses every cliché in the Warner-Brothers-RKO book. Of course, so does Eddie, and he’s the one driving the narrative – a narrative where dream gives way to reality.

When we first meet Eddie, he’s undergoing therapy and working in a seedy working class Liverpool nightclub as an emcee, bingo caller and standup comedian. Longing to be part of the world of rumpled Humphrey Bogarts where he can merrily be dispensing wisecracks, justice and indulging in kisses and repartee with a bevy of femme fatales (and potential victims of the evils of higher powers), he’s a man in search of something, anything that can help him escape what a miserable drudge his life has become. Turning 31 years of age, Eddie treats himself to a want ad in the newspaper announcing his services as a gumshoe – a private eye for whom no job is too big, too small or too dangerous. Quicker than he can spit out a hard-boiled quip, he’s offered a seemingly routine job on a case that eventually extends well beyond its simple surface intrigue.

The convoluted mystery that follows is, like most mysteries, secondary to the world and style of the genre itself. What really sets Gumshoeapart is that Eddie’s just a regular Joe and most importantly, his stylized patter and adventures are set against a kitchen sink British backdrop that would definitely be more at home in the "Angry Young Man" genre of the early 60s where the likes of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Tom Courtenay and Laurence Harvey railed against the injustices of working class life, but seldom found a way to crawl completely out of the muck. Eddie’s character is certainly not unlike those abovementioned anti-heroes. His ex-wife Ellen (Billie Whitelaw), a woman he will always love, left him for his own brother William (Frank Finlay), a shipping magnate who offered the sort of stability Eddie could never provide and, even to the end, has no intention of ever providing.

And, of course, in any great crime drama, betrayal always cuts deeper than anyone involved in the proceedings could ever imagine and in Gumshoe, betrayal is laid on thickly indeed, pistol-whipping Eddie constantly in the face.

This is an incredibly strange, beautiful and compelling picture. I’ve avoided detailing too much of the mystery, not so much for the continual surprises it offers, but because there is a political backdrop that, while dated, seems to have as much, if not more resonance in our contemporary world of strife and the gradual discovery of this makes for extremely engaging viewing. Also, Eddie’s family situation is one that figures very prominently in the proceedings and this is an especially poignant touch.

Save for a clunker of a performance from Janice Rule (though she looks great) as a femme fatale, the movie explodes with great acting. Finney fits his role like a glove and frankly, it might be one of his best performances in a very stellar career. As his brother Willie, Frank Finlay is the icy epitome of familial meanness.

Neville Smith’s screenplay bristles with crisp hardboiled narration and dialogue and the characters are full of delightful eccentricities and subtexts that always add to the forward movement of the convoluted, but always compelling narrative. The cinematography by Chris Menges (The Killing Fields, The Mission) dazzles with its stunning virtuosity. Blending film noir stylings with garish kitchen sink realism, this is perhaps one of the picture’s greatest achievements. The lighting and compositions are in perfect tandem with the strangeness of the screenplay and the two worlds that are often separate, but occasionally blend together, is always a visual wonder to behold. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s weird-ass score that veers from parody to homage to out and out straight up romantic old-Hollywood stylings is occasionally jarring in the wrong ways, but more often than not, hits the notes it needs to.

And last, but certainly not least, threading this altogether is Frears’ bold, yet controlled direction. He clearly loves these characters and this world. And frankly, so do we.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½ Three and a half stars

Gumshoe is currently available on the Columbia Pictures Home Entertainment DVD label as part of their “Martini Movies” brand, which seems like a convenient way to lump a grab bag of catalogue titles under one banner. Alas, the banner makes no sense whatsoever with respect to the vast majority of films contained under it.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ORDER ANYTHING FROM AMAZON BY USING THE LINKS ABOVE OR BELOW. CLICKING ON THEM AND THEN CLICKING THROUGH TO ANYTHING WILL ALLOW YOU TO ORDER AND IN SO DOING, SUPPORT THE ONGING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER. BUY MOVIES HERE FOR SOMEONE YOU LOVE! OR HELL, BE SELFISH, AND BUY THEM JUST FOR YOURSELF

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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!

FRANK - Blu-Ray Review By Greg Klymkiw - Poignant indie gets terrific Magnolia/VSC BRD

THE
MANY
FACES
OF
FRANK

Frank (2014)
Dir. Lenny Abrahamson
Scr. Jon Ronson, Peter Straughan
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson, Scoot McNairy, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Francois Civil, Tess Harper
Review By Greg Klymkiw

Give an actor something to obscure their best feature and then see what they can deliver. I had occasion recently to recall Jack Nicholson in Tony Richardson's 1982 The Border where he was forced to wear sunglasses in virtually every exterior shot. Given that Nicholson was playing a Texas border guard, this not only made sense in terms of his character, but it shielded us from one of Nicholson's most expressive facial features. This resulted in one of his all-time best performances.

Given that by 1982 Jack's eyes and what he could do with them had already began to border on the cliched, we the audience were afforded the opportunity to see him render work that felt as fresh and vital as it had always been. It's as if the shades rendered the character even more internal - we had to work hard reading him, which made the proceedings rooted in a kind of reality it might not have otherwise had. Nicholson's movements became stiffer, slower and as he was playing someone who was on a slow burn, especially as he began to respond to the horrendous corruption and unfairness with respect to Mexicans sneaking across the border for a slice of America's pie of opportunity, we were able to almost put ourselves inside the character.

Most importantly, we had to respond to what he saw without necessarily having a full picture of how to read him.

IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Best Romantic Comedy - EVER - now available on a Stellar Criterion Collection Blu-Ray

SCREENWRITER - Robert Riskin
DIRECTOR - Frank Capra

FRANK CAPRA
MASTERPIECE
gets glorious
Criterion Collection
super-deluxe Blu-Ray
makeover!

It Happened One Night (1934)
Dir. Frank Capra
Scr. Robert Riskin
Starring: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert,
Walter Connolly, Jameson Thomas, Roscoe Karns, Alan Hale, Arthur Hoyt,
Blanche Friderici, Charles C. Wilson, Ward Bond, Irving Bacon, George Breakston

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"What she needs is a guy that'd take a sock at her once a day, whether it's coming to her or not."

So says hard boiled reporter Peter Warne (Clark Gable) to multi-millionaire Alexander Andrews (Walter Connolly), biliously referring to the magnate's spoiled heiress daughter Ellie (Claudette Colbert). Ah, how did it come to this? Then again, this is quite near the end of Frank Capra's romantic comedy It Happened One Night and Big Daddy doesn't flinch one bit over Peter's woman-walloping assertion. You see, near the start of the picture, Father Dearest responds to one of his grown-daughter's petulant temper tantrums by slugging her squarely in the kisser. A fat lot of good that did, though, since Ellie deftly dashes onto the deck of Daddy's yacht and plunges into the water, swimming away quite ably in her tight gown to join King Westley (Jameson Thomas), the dandy playboy she's eloped with and to whom Pappy Big Bucks is desperately trying to buy off with an annulment.

GABLE at his MANLIEST
COLBERT at her SEXIEST
Comedy & Romance at its FINEST

But it ain't gonna happen. Ellie's bound and determined to be reunited with her man and nothing's going to stop her. Nothing, that is, unless she falls in love with someone else.

Enter Peter Warne (Gable) the booze-swilling, tough-talking, two-fisted star reporter who's just been fired from his job for guzzling more hootch than making deadlines. Our star-crossed couple soon find themselves together on a milk-run bus from Miami, bound for the city that never sleeps, that glorious dirty town, New York.

They detest each other. At first. They are, however, more than willing to use each other. Ellie needs a smart cookie to get her back to consummate marriage to Westley before Dad scuttles it and Peter, knowing Ellie's elopement and mad dash is big news, needs a lollapalooza of a story to get his job back. Their cross-country road trip, fraught with all manner of peril, offers up the biggest of all - they're falling in love.

Seriously folks, could anything be more perfect in its simplicity? Well, uh, no. However, let it be said that Frank Capra, one of the most untouchably great directors of all time, here displays every conceivable iota of his gifts with the ferocity of a whirling dervish on a never-ending supply of crack cocaine. The equally legendary screenwriter Robert Riskin (who wrote eight - count 'em - eight films for Capra) creates two of the most indelible, loveable characters in any romantic comedy - like, EVER! - and generates dialogue and conflict that's seldom been matched and never been beaten. Capra's trusty cinematographer Joseph Walker (who cut his teeth on Canadian Nell Shipman's Arctic-shot Back to God's Country and eventually lensed twenty - yeah, count 'em - twenty films for Capra) delivers some of the most astonishing compositions, camera moves and lighting ever committed to celluloid. Eugene Havlick, no slouch in the editing chair (having cut two of Howard Hawks greatest pictures, His Girl Friday and Twentieth Century and, yup, count 'em, seven pictures for Capra), sliced and diced the footage with an impeccable sense of both comic and dramatic timing.

The bottom line is that for all the picture's inherent simplicity, Capra and his collaborators brilliantly imbued the picture with levels of sophistication and artistry few romantic comedies have ever (nay, will ever) achieve. The movie is as rooted in the comedy of Shakespeare, as it is in the fresh and contemporary well it draws from and hence, is both universal and never dated, especially in its astonishing portrait of class differences (and how they can come together), the clear divide between man and woman (plus where their paths do cross) and the lovely, sumptuous forays into the beauty of nature under the stars of night where romance yields itself up.

It Happened One Night is perfect. Not a frame is wasted, not a gesture is superfluous, not a single word uttered by any character any less than sheer poetry and visually, few films have come close (and even fewer have matched) the delicate shadings, the magical pools of shimmering light and the utterly dazzling chiaroscuros that are as tantalizing to the heart, to the very core of human emotion, as they are to the naked eye, one which is gently forced to remain wide open to dine greedily upon the love, humour and sheer romance of this genuine masterpiece. One that lives forever.

THE FILM CORNER RATING for the Film and the Criterion Blu-Ray production: ***** 5-Stars

It Happened One Night is, beyond even a shadow of a doubt, one of the most compelling arguments against anything less than home consumption of cinema on the Blu-Ray format and, perhaps most importantly, how the very medium of home entertainment continues to be raised to the highest levels of artistry - yes, ARTISTRY - by the Criterion Collection. Not only is the brand new 4K digital restoration with uncompressed monaural sound lightyears ahead of anything generated for this masterpiece, but the utter care and dedication of the entire Criterion CREATIVE team in terms of the overall package is one they will need to use as their own internal bar to match, if not exceed. I can still remember watching the historic American Institute Lifetime Achievement Award TV special honouring Frank Capra (and hosted, no less, by Jimmy Stewart) when it was first aired. It's stayed with me for over 30 years. To see it again on this home entertainment edition of the film was sheer magic. The somewhat conventional 1997 feature length documentary Frank Capra’s American Dream is still, by the sheer force of its interviews and clip selections, as fine a cinematic biographical portrait of Capra as we're likely to see - at least for now. Watching Capra's first-ever film, the radiant and moving 1921 San Francisco-produced silent short Fultah Fisher’s Boarding House, so astonishing in its new digital transfer (with a gorgeous, evocative new score composed and performed by Donald Sosin), that I needed to see it again immediately after my first helping to prove to myself I wasn't dreaming. In addition to a lovely 1999 interview with Frank Capra Jr. and the de rigueur inclusion of a trailer and essay booklet (along with a gorgeous new cover design by Sarah Habibi and Jessica Hische), the piece de resistance is clearly the magnificent all-new conversation between critics Molly Haskell and Phillip Lopate, both of whom engage each other and us in their love and near photographic recall of the picture. It's beautifully shot and cut. We get a sense of this lovely piece being an exquisite short film unto itself - a kind of My Dinner With Andre-like conversation with a narrative arc, if you will, of complete and utter adoration (and the sort of egg-head-isms about the film that are neither full of the usual bushwah inherent in such tête-à-têtes and proving to be as vital and wholly understandable to movie nuts, eggheads and real folk alike). This is a GREAT Blu-Ray. You need to own it. Believe me, you'll watch the movie and your favourite extra features over and over and, yet, over again. If you own the disgraceful Columbia Pictures DVD (so ludicrously overpriced when it first came out), just turn the disc into a coaster and use the keep case for some DVD-R of your home movies. Oh, and if you don't own a Blu-Ray player and High Def monitor - get them - NOW! It's the only way you'll be able to see It Happened One Night when you buy the Blu-Ray (which you must do - NOW!)

In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY It Happened One Night - HERE!

In Canada - BUY It Happened One Night HERE, eh!

In UK BUY It Happened One Night HERE

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH - Review by Greg Klymkiw - The Bard of Avon gets a delectable Roman Polanski bloodbath via this gorgeous Criterion Collection Blu-Ray!

Macbeth (1971)
Dir. Roman Polanski
Scr. Kenneth Tynan & Polanski

Stars: Jon Finch, Francesca Annis

MY MOM, MRS. RAPPAPORT, MACBETH and ME
a personal memoir & review by Greg Klymkiw

My late mother taught me to read by the age of 5. She did it with comic books. Not just ANY comic books, mind you, but via the wonderful Classics Illustrated series which adapted great literature in comic book form. At the end of every issue were the words: "Now that you've read the comic, read the original."

When Mom signed up a couple of years later for the Doubleday Book-of-the-Month Club - not for her, but for me - one of the "free" (of four) introductory titles she selected was "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare". (The other three were Pierre Boulle's "Monkey Planet", AKA "Planet of the Apes", "The Collected Works of Robert Louis Stevenson" and "The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe".) Being a sick puppy even at the tender age of 7, I chose to read "Macbeth" first. Of all the Shakespeare plays represented in those comics, it was the one story that ferociously consumed me. As a child, I was Regan in "The Exorcist" and the devil himself was the Thane of Cawdor.

My sweet, darling mother painstakingly read the play with me, both of us taking turns reading aloud to each other and often alternating roles. Through this process we oft-referred to the Classics Illustrated adaptation and Mom even bought a "Coles Notes" book (AKA "Cliff's Notes") to address stuff she herself didn't "get", just so she could make sure I did.

At the ripe old age of 14 I first saw Roman Polanski's film version of The Tragedy of Macbeth which my Mom took me to see when it opened first-run in Winnipeg at the Park Theatre on November 30, 1973, a good two years after it opened in the United States. As a kid, I'd been chomping at the bit to see it. Released in many markets as simply, Macbeth, I was well aware of the picture's existence as I'd started reading the show business trade bible "Variety" at the age of 10 and now, oh happy day, the movie was finally playing in our midwestern Winter City.

There were a whole whack of cool films playing in the 'Peg that weekend. It was the opening day of two amazing drive-in double features. In the west end of the city, A.I.P.'s The Little Cigars Mob featuring Angel Tompkins robbing banks with a gang of armed midgets and the jaw-dropping Ray Milland-Rosie Grier=grafted-together horror-comedy The Thing With Two Heads (both of which Dad took me to see on the Saturday night) and in the north end, Gimme Shelter and Monterey Pop were unspooling, but neither parent would take me to see those movies since the only music they enjoyed were Ukrainian Liturgies, Ukrainian Folk Songs, Nana Mouskouri, Mantovani and the Percy Fsith Orchestra. (The closest they ever got to Heavy Metal was Harry Belafonte.) That weekend in Winnipeg was ALSO opening night of Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye with Elliot Gould, but as I'd already ear-marked it to see alone during my usual Saturday afternoon movie forays downtown, I asked Mom if she could drive me all the way to the south-end Friday night and take me to watch the movie I'd so desperately wanted to see. She agreed.

Let's place this in perspective, folks. My Mother, a nice, polite, North End Winnipeg Ukrainian girl drove her son across town to sit with him and watch The Tragedy of Macbeth, Roman Polanski's blood-soaked, ultra-violent adaptation with, I might add, Lady Macbeth parading about in the nude whilst delivering her madness monologue. I don't know a lot of Moms who would do this for their progeny, but MY MOM DID!!!

By my teen years, I had occasion to read "Macbeth" again - this time within the context of a North End Winnipeg public school English class under the divine tutelage of Mrs. Elaine Rappaport. She was the best English teacher I ever had until my post-secondary years, and even then, she held her own with the best of them. The wife of noted Rabbi Sidney Rappaport from the Rosh Pina Synagogue in Winnipeg (he passed away in 2009), she was one classy, snappy, sharp-witted lady.

That said, and not wishing to toot my own horn, but she soon found herself face-to-face with the Macbeth-like madness lodged within the heart and soul of a teenage movie freak. After the astoundingly brave act of showing a bunch of kids a 16mm print of Polanski's film, I immediately dove in on the picture's violence, linking it to the despair and guilt Polanski must have been feeling over the murder of his beloved wife Sharon Tate at the hands of the Manson Clan. Years later I discovered that every Tom, Dick and Harry had made this same cliched, unoriginal and condescendingly simplistic observation.

So shoot me. I was a teenager. Besides, not a bad observation for a kid.

Though she tried to take issue with my comment, I knew Mrs. Rappaport was always ahead of the curve and I suspected, even at the time, that she mildly and politely disputed my precocious assertion so she could take our discussion away from a sickening murder that many kids in those days, even in high school, had been sheltered from.

I plunged ahead, though, and began recalling the specific date and explicit DETAILS of Sharon Tate's murder, in addition to the approximate dates as to WHEN the writing of the script and subsequent PRODUCTION of the film would have occurred. I then insisted that based upon the aforementioned findings, my point could not be disputed.

I'll never forget the sparkles in Mrs. Rappaport's eyes as she then launched into a brief elaboration of my point and then moved us on ever-so gracefully (and graciously) to discuss the differences between the film and play.

One week after my Mother took her final breath of life after a long battle with stomach cancer, I was reminded of her dedication to a precocious son's desire to read and obsess over all things "Macbeth" and, of course, the movies. I'm eternally grateful to her. My love for cinema, theatre and literature was both encouraged and indeed nurtured by her. She might well have been seen by the world as "only" a mother, housewife and part-time bank teller, but even as a kid I knew how she'd studied violin at the Conservatory of Music and eventually gave up a professional life as a musician to be a loving Mother and dutiful Wife. She had the soul of an artist which she saw in me also and did everything in her power to arm me with the means to never give up on my own desires and talents as she had done in the days when many women felt forced by societal pressures to do so. In the words of the old Russian-Jewish folk song, popularized by the Welsh songstress Mary Hopkins, "Those were the days, my friend".

Indeed they were.

In fact, the thought that we'll ever again see a Shakespeare film adaptation as truly great as Polanski's (and in fairness, I tend to include and acknowledge those elements Francis Ford Coppola borrowed for Godfathers I & II), is not something I take solace in. What I do accept wholeheartedly is that Polanski's The Tragedy of Macbeth is so "modern", so forward-thinking, so ideally faithful and intelligently interpreted that we do, in fact, have a film for the ages.

Polanski so wisely centres his film firmly and fiercely within Lady Macbeth's successful exertions of influence and then secondarily, that of the witch hags Macbeth encounters on the way home after his victories in war to fling himself into the loving arms of his wife. The good Lady's wifely influence provea to be too successful. Her ambitious husband's subsequent actions of lying, cheating, stealing, traitorously conspiring and committing murder in the coldest of blood is the stuff which all our dreams are made on. (Personally, I've always been aware of my own roiling needs, rooted as they were, and still are, in a kind of selfish know-it-all "quality" so that ultimately, the only possible influence I have to exert them, comes from me and me alone.)

At the beginning of the film, we learn that Macbeth (Jon Finch) has done magnificently in battle. The manner in which Polanski sets this up is simply masterful. Who will ever forget the murky skies overlooking the bodies and blood upon the muck, the poor flailing sod being ball and chained to death and the kind of mad horror in actor Jon Finch's eyes as Macbeth's otherwise poker-face surveys the damage/victory he's wrought.

This is the horror Polanski thrusts us immediately into and it's impossible to unglue one's eyeballs from the proceedings. This tragedy of Shakespeare's is indeed a work of horror and Polanski seems to understand this better than any other filmmaker who tackled the play (including, I might add, the rich, evocative, but fatally flawed Orson Welles version). When Macbeth has been named Thane of Cawdor by King Duncan for leading a successful decimation of the enemy (and capturing the rebel leader who previously bore the title), we get the tiniest glimmer of pride - perhaps even a smidgen of happiness - in Macbeth, this newly honoured young warrior.

Fate has other plans for him though. Encountering a gaggle of horrendous hags - witches of the most odious order - Macbeth hears and is infected with their prophecy that he will be King. Though he attempts to eschew thoughts of such glory, he won't have a chance against the most powerful witch of all, the extremely mortal, but bewitchingly concupiscent, mind-alteringly ravishing Lady Macbeth (Francesca Annis).

Polanski's first triumph was in casting these two actors. Finch, many of whom will remember as the strangely unlikeable loser protagonist Richard Blaney in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy, is such an astonishing Macbeth I suspect I'll never be able to imagine the face of the character with any other visage. Finch so brilliantly captures the various shades of Macbeth's intensity as it percolates slowly whilst his alluringly magnetic Lady places thoughts of being King in his mind - almost taunting, shaming him into desiring as quick an ascension to the throne as possible - one in which only murder can pave the way to.

Annis, of course, is the ultimate Lady Macbeth. She is not only stunning in every camera-loves-her respect, but she delivers her desires with the deftness of a fox and increasingly with viper-like stings which soon latch unshakeably onto Macbeth's manly psyche.

If murder be the only way, so be it.

Polanski continues to focus upon their relationship throughout until the narrative shifts into Shakespeare's astonishingly wrought parallel descents into derangement of the most fevered order. As Macbeth becomes more tyrannical, Lady Macbeth begins to slip into madness. They both lose their souls - in fact, Polanski emphasizes that it's their deep love, their bottomless pit of passion which is the unholy instrument which undoes both of them. Lady Macbeth's madness causes her to erupt into guilt so appallingly, deeply, debilitatingly and destructively molten whilst the crown-thieving maniac Macbeth fills his dwindling spiritual reserves as his soul pours out paranoia which is as catastrophic in its decimation of his humanity as the guilt is so ruinous to his lady.

When I first saw The Tragedy of Macbeth as a kid, I still remembering how I chuckled out loud, receiving odd stares from both my Mother and audience members. I soon kept my guffaw-bursts in check, but later revealed to my mother in the drive home after the screening that every single time Macbeth looked upon a potential enemy (i.e. murder victim), it reminded me of those fantasy sequences in the Fleischer Popeye cartoons when a starving Wimpy would look at virtually any living thing and imagine them to be a pig, a cow, a chicken - anything he could slaughter and eat. Seeing the movie again on the Criterion Blu-Ray I got the same thoughts. I'm convinced that Polanski intentionally staged, shot and cut Finch's glares at his eventual victims - not in homage to the Fleischer cartoons, but certainly with the same mad, darkly hilarious undercurrent which Fleischer imbued his own films with.

Not only are we tantalized with one blood spattering grotesquerie after another, but Polanski wisely has Lady Macbeth wander buck naked throughout the castle as she delivers her madness monologue. Let's not make the mistake here of downplaying Polanski's genius as a showman - he's the ultimate showman. He dazzles us with both prurience and a veritable rampage of brutality. Shakespeare was a showman, too. Let's not forget that. If anything, Polanski's delectably and suitably exploitative indulgences allow us one HELL OF A GOOD SHOW whilst at the same time, shove our faces in the sheer horror of Macbeth and his Lady's respective madness.

Seeing The Tragedy of Macbeth during one of the most emotionally draining periods of my life was exactly what the doctor ordered. Running parallel to this sentient drainage in my own life were also feelings of sentiment and nostalgia - I couldn't help but do the math as I faced so much of what I loved in a place that reminded me how these things of beauty were either gone or about to go and would soon be relegated, and in fact were actually being consigned to the hallowed place of memory.

The Tragedy of Macbeth as deftly rendered by Polanski did what any great work of art should do. Here I was, watching a work written over 400 years ago and interpreted in a version from over forty years ago and it touched me on a very personal level.

I thought, with the indelible sharpness of crystal that SOME women, like my Mother and English teacher, inspire the sun, moon and stars of the mind, while others, as scribed by Shakespeare, inspired pure NAKED ambition.

Luckily the ambition inspired by the two great women in MY early life was fully clothed.

THE FILM CORNER RATING for Film and Blu-Ray: ***** 5-Stars

The Criterion Collection Blu-Ray of The Tragedy of Macbeth is yet another example for me of the genuine art of creating home entertainment for as rich an experience as possible. The 4K transfer was personally approved by director Roman Polanski and as such, both sound and picture are as mind blowing as one could imagine.

The extra features are a pure goldmine of information, insight and education. An all-new one hour documentary entitled Toil and Trouble: Making “Macbeth” includes wonderful contemporary interviews with Roman Polanski which provide a marvellous retrospective glimpse into his film from the position of having to discuss it over forty years after it was made. The doc is fleshed out with appearances by production executives and actors (including Annis herself).

The 1971 Frank Simon documentary Polanski Meets Macbeth delivers a historical look at the making of the film and includes footage of the cast and crew on set. It's thoroughly fascinating.

Two other extra features are so wonderful, they could have been the ONLY value added elements and I doubt anyone would have been disappointed. The first is Polanski's co-screenwriter Kenneth Tynan being interviewed by the great Dick Cavett in 1971. The piece not only allows us the privilege of meeting with the brilliant Tynan to hear his perspective on the process, but as per usual, we get yet another example of just what a great interviewer Cavett was.

Secondly, and perhaps the most vital document is Two Macbeths from the wonderful 1972 British TV series Aquarius. This is must-see viewing for anyone who loves film and theatre as we are blessed with a conversation about "Macbeth" between Polanski and the noted theater director Peter Coe.

In addition to the supply of trailers and a Terrence Rafferty essay within a lovely booklet, this Criterion Blu-Ray is yet again adorned with a stunning cover design from Sarah Habibi whose work is so consistently amazing that I almost wish she could just design every Blu-Ray and DVD cover for every movie I love.

Needless to say, this Criterion Blu-Ray is a keeper folks.

ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Good Xmas Family Fun For All

Plop this in front of the brats
and get some shuteye

Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007)
dir. Tim Hill
Starring: Jason Lee, David Cross

Review By Greg Klymkiw

As far as family-friendly Christmas-themed movies go, Alvin and the Chipmunks is never going to be considered a perennial favourite in the mold of It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol or Miracle on 34th Street, but it does provide solid entertainment for the kiddies (lots o’ laughs from anyone 10 or under) and mild entertainment for anyone older (lots o’ smiles and a few chuckles) – especially anyone old enough to have sentimental memories of the “original” Alvin hit songs and TV series from the late 50s/early 60s and the 80s animated revival.

Alvin, to the uninitiated, is the head of a squeaky-pitched trio of singing chipmunks who are pals with the loser songwriter David Seville who hits the big time when he stumbles upon the furry ear-shattering musical stylists. Seville, in the original cartoons, spends much of his time chipmunk-sitting his charges and keeping those pesky, but warm-hearted little songsters from getting into all manner of troublesome hijinx. He also bellows out the immortal, stern cry, “A-a-a-a-a-a-l-l-l-l-l-l-l-vin!!!!!” whenever he discovers something is amiss and realizes that it’s probably the work of the troublemaking-est chipmunk of them all.

The 2007 big screen rendering of these characters, is pretty much more of the same, only with live-action “adult” characters and digitally animated fur-balls. Within the confines of a simple, predictable feature-length tale, Dave (the mildly offensive, barely palatable Jason Lee) discovers the chipmunks, becomes their surrogate Dad and eventually loses them to smarmy Ian (a very funny David Cross), a dastardly music promoter. The sleaze ball, in familiar fashion, exploits the chipmunks, screws Dave, but gets his ultimate and well-deserved comeuppance when goodness prevails and all are reunited in grand fashion.

It’s quite the emotional whirlwind – for seven-year-olds, mostly.

What makes the movie relatively agreeable to less-discriminating adults (and those, like me, who should know better, but have a soft spot for squeaky-voiced chipmunks) is the genuinely funny and, at times, endearing musical numbers. In fact, that insane, insipid, and utterly insidious “classic” Chipmunks Christmas song “Christmas Don’t Be Late” will never leave my brain. Initially left behind in the fog of my wayward childhood, the song has been reintroduced to me by this movie and is now emblazoned, carved, burned and branded into my very soul. My God, I feel like Barbara Steele at the beginning of “Black Sunday” who receives the mark of Satan from a hooded executioner. My psyche has been thoroughly scarred forever by those trilling chipmunks. The fur-balls and their squealing, while never at the forefront of my thoughts, are lodged in there like an admittedly oxymoronic migraine of pleasure.

In case you’ve forgotten the lyrics, let me inflict them upon you. The tune will come ever so quickly to you and remain there forever. Besides, I shouldn’t have to suffer alone:

Christmas, Christmas time is near
Time for toys and time for cheer
We've been good, but we can't last
Hurry Christmas, hurry fast
Want a plane that loops the loop
Me, I want a hula hoop
We can hardly stand the wait
Please Christmas, don't be late

The brainchild behind the chipmunks was the late actor and songwriter Ross Bagdasarian and frankly, there’s no denying his impact upon popular American culture. As a young man, Bagdasarian appeared in the original (and legendary) Eddie Dowling Broadway stage production of William Saroyan’s Pulitzer-prizewinning play “The Time of Your Life”. Bagdasarian and Saroyan, cousins and fellow Armenian-Americans shared a love of the arts and most importantly, sentimentality and whimsy. (In fact, the cousins actually co-wrote the song “Come on-a My House” which became such a huge hit for the legendary songstress Rosemary Clooney.) Alas, unlike his more celebrated older cousin Saroyan, Bagdasarian won no Oscars or Pulitzers. He did, however, snafu a couple of Grammy awards, and in so doing, entertained and delighted millions of children (and a few of those aforementioned adults who should know better).

This particular legacy, which is nothing to be sneezed at, acquits itself very nicely in this fluffy, harmless feature. And for those inclined, the two-disc DVD version includes a handy-dandy digital copy of the movie suitable for iPods and iPhones. This is especially handy for chipmunk-obsessed kids on long car rides. Just make sure they’re watching with earphones so the journey can be chipmunk-free for the driver.

So feel free to stuff your little nipper’s stocking with the version that includes the Blu-Ray, DVD and digital copy. Whilst Alvin and his chipmunks yearn for a Christmas that does not come late, the rest of us can yearn for a Christmas that comes as early as possible and dissipates as quickly so that life, in all its splendour, can move on.

And maybe, just maybe, with the kids plugged into iPods, it can be a peaceful Christmas for all.

And to all, a goodnight.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **½ Two and a half stars

Alvin and the Chipmunks is available on Blu-Ray and DVD from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

WHIPLASH - Review By Greg Klymkiw - J.K. Simmons & great editing ignite screen in searing drama so delectably reminiscent of the best 70s existential male angst cinema

Student and Teacher: FULL METAL JACKET - as it should be!

"GOOD" is never good enough!

"You are a worthless pansy-ass who's now weeping and slobbering all over my drums like a nine-year-old girl! 

Whiplash (2014)
Dir. Damien Chazelle
Starring: Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Melissa Benoist, Paul Reiser, Chris Mulkey
Review By Greg Klymkiw

"If you deliberately sabotage my band, I will fuck you like a pig." - Teacher to Student, Whiplash

So barks Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), a jazz instructor at a tony private music conservatory in the dirtiest of towns, the glorious NYC. Fletcher is a character who makes Gny. Sgt. Hartman (R. Lee Ermey) in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket look like your kindly old Grandma Apple Doll.

There's no two ways about it.

Fisher's a major-league prick-to-the-nth-degree, but his aim is true.

Do you think I'm fuckin' stupid? I know you were "the one"!

He believes his students are the best of the best, but frankly, for him, that's not good enough. He demands they push their gifts harder than a prize studhorse slams a mare in heat. He demands true force. He demands self-inflicted pain as well as the infliction of pain. He demands greatness. Fletcher might be bi-polar or passive-aggressive (accent on aggressive), but he knows damn well that he must be cruel to be kind. Inspiration comes to the talented only by slamming their faces repeatedly against a brick wall, and then, like some abusive parent, offering words of solace (when warranted) and continuing the cycle again and again until the student either breaks through or is broken. It's the only way. And God help you if you're just "good". The Gospel According to Fletcher (and frankly, any such teacher in the real world) is this: "There are no two words in the English language more harmful than good job."

I personally believe in this philosophy and perhaps it's why I partially and so strongly responded to Whiplash, the searing story of Fletcher and his cruel, brilliant and passionate relationship with Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller), a drumming prodigy who seeks to be greater than great.

Being the greatest musician of the 20th century is anyone's idea of success.

That said, I think my personal connection to this philosophy is a drop in the bucket compared to the nasty, rip-snorting drama writer-director Damien Chazelle has wrought with this relentless sledgehammer-to-the-face of a film. I've not been so charged during a movie in a long-time. In fact, Fletcher's ferocious demands and almost vindictive bashing of students' psyches, and in particular, that of the equally obsessed student Andrew, has the visceral force of a great vigilante picture with equally compelling cat and mice at the forefront - only here, the mouse definitely becomes no mere cat, but a man - all MAN and a real one at that! Simmons's performance knocks you on your ass, but Teller holds his own with the man of iron resolve.

NOT MY TEMPO

Add to the mix, gorgeously gritty cinematography by Sharone Meir (a delicious blend of 70s pulp and colour-tinged noir) and the editing of Tom Cross that has you breathless - almost from beginning to end. I say "almost", only because Chazelle's screenplay wisely settles down with occasional moments of tenderness twixt father (Paul Reiser) and son and the less-compelling, but ultimately necessary doomed romantic relationship between Andrew and a sweet, young thing (Melissa Benoist) who must come last on the lad's list of life priorities.

What I love most about Cross's cutting is the fact that neither he nor Chazelle back away from making bold (some might erroneously say "obvious") cuts that draw attention to the virtuosity of the cinematic storytelling. I'd argue, however, it works in tandem with the mise-en-scene and the screenplay to drive a story about the sheer intensity of creation. As well, one cannot deny the tale's rhythms of mano a mano twixt Fletcher and Andrew. The act and art of creation is a war zone and Cross understands the macho tempo of this dynamic. Though Cross's cutting is flashy, it never once descends to the herby-jerky of so much contemporary cutting. Part of this comes from the wise compositions Meir and Chazelle have settled upon as well as a spectacular retro lighting scheme that plunges us into that astonishing world of 70s existential male angst - more than appropriate given the natural of the story.

The climactic sequence Chazelle delivers is a musical equivalent to a great action-suspense set-piece. Here is where the aforementioned collaboration between Cross, Meir and Chazelle explodes in all its richness. It had me breathless and on the edge of my seat upon a first viewing. Subsequent viewings have allowed me to bask in its sheer cinematic razzle-dazzle.

The movie is not at all pleasant, but its very disagreeable tone transcends all pathetic notions of palatability and finally serves up one entertaining and provocative series of cinematic blows to the gut.

The Film Corner Rating: **** 4-Stars

Whiplash is currently in release via Mongrel Media.

BERKSHIRE COUNTY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Hot babysitter-in-peril thriller superbly directed, intelligently written and laced with female-empowerment undertones.

In the middle of nowhere, on All Hallows Eve:
THERE WILL BE PIGS!!!

BABE IN PERIL: FROM DATE RAPE
TO HALLOWEEN HOME INVASION!

Berkshire County (2014)
Dir. Audrey Cummings
Starring: Alysa King, Madison Ferguson, Cristophe Gallander,
Samora Smallwood, Bart Rochon, Aaron Chartrand, Leo Pady, Robert Nolan

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Pigs get a bad rap. They're gentle, friendly and intelligent creatures. Alas, in the parlance of western culture, since time immemorial, really, the pig has been synonymous with a variety of grotesqueries such as filth, greed, gluttony, violence, corruption and most decidedly, just plain uncouth behaviour. With that rather unfair but common understanding of piggishness, it seems only appropriate that the damnable porkers abound malevolently in Berkshire County, the dazzling first feature by Canadian filmmaker Audrey Cummings. On the surface and at its most basic level, it could be seen as a simple, straight-up babysitter-in-peril-during-a-home-invasion thriller.

Sure, it most certainly is that, especially if that's all you're looking for. However, it's not quite as straight up as one might suspect. The reason it works so superbly is that the simple premise is successfully mined to yield several levels of complexity which add to the picture's richness. Most notably, there's the matter of the movie's virtuosity. Cummings directs the picture with the kind of within-an-inch-of-her-life urgency and stratospheric level of craft that, with the whiz-bang cutting of editor Michael P. Mason and Michael Jari Davidson's evocative lensing, yield a horror suspense thriller that infuses you with creepy-crawly dread and one astounding scare set-piece after another.

That, frankly, would be enough to spew laudatory ejaculate right in the face of the whole affair, but on a deeper thematic level, Cummings and screenwriter Chris Gamble offer up a delectably sumptuous and varied buffet for an audience to gobble up with the ferocity of snuffling hogs at the trough. Berkshire County is an intense, topical, nasty, darkly funny and even politically-charged feminist horror picture in the tradition of other leading Canadian female genre directors like the Soska Sisters, Karen Lam and Jovanka Vuckovic.

It's proof positive, once again, that Canadian WOMEN are leading the charge of terrifying, edge-of-your-seat horror-fests that are as effectively drawer-filling as they are provocative and politically astute. It's unabashed exploitation injected with discerning observational power.

HALLOWEEN BABYSITTER
VS
PIGGLY WIGGLIES GALORE!

The film begins during a Halloween party in the rural enclave of the film's title. The gorgeous teenage girl-next-door Kylie Winters (Alysa King) arrives adorned in the sexiest Little Red Riding Hood costume imaginable. Heads swivel in her general direction, but none more so than that of the handsome Marcus (Aaron Chartrand), a hunky stud-horse-man-boy from the local high school. He, like the other small town, small-minded fellas is swine (of the male chauvinist variety) incarnate.

In what's possibly one of the more disturbing acts committed in any genre picture of recent memory, Kylie is plied with booze, coerced - essentially date-raped - into blowing Marcus. Unbeknownst to her, she's captured on his smart phone movie camera which he promptly uploads to cyber space for all to see.

Though the film has previously opened with a creepy Kubrickian traveling overhead shot of the county's forested, isolated topography (a la The Shining), Cummings and Gamble plunge us into very unexpected territory. Initially, the horror is neither supernatural nor of the psychopathic variety, but a monstrous act of sexual abuse, followed by the insidious cyber-dissemination of pornographic images of said abuse and then the teasing, bullying and shame experienced by Kylie who was the target of the abuse and subsequent derision levelled at her by peers.

Ripped from the headlines of a veritable myriad of similar cases involving tragic sexual abuse, we are privy to one of the more abominable aspects of contemporary teen culture. In Canada, the most horrific example is that of Nova Scotia teen Rehtaeh Parsons who, plied with booze and gang raped on camera, committed suicide when the images went viral. What faces Kylie is so debilitatingly nasty that she's the one made to feel like a pariah - as if she were to blame. Even Kylie's repressed dough-headed mother blames Kylie for bringing scandal upon the family.

To add insult to injury, Kylie is further estranged from those who should be offering support when she is practically forced by her mother to take a Halloween night babysitting gig at an isolated mansion on the outskirts of the community. That said, Kylie seems to welcome the peace and isolation the job might afford, far away from the piggish behaviour of her abuser, his stupid friends, her idiot mother and everyone else who teases and/or affixes blame upon her. A gorgeous mansion with all the amenities and two sweet kids has Heaven on Earth written all over it. Or so she (and we) think. She (and we) are wrong about that.

THIS LITTLE PIGGY
CAME HOME!!!
He has a butcher knife
. . . and friends!

Pigs, you see, are lurking in the woods. Not just any pigs, mind you, but a family of travelling serial killers adorned in horrifying pig masks. And these sick fuckers mean business. Happily, Cummings and Gamble have fashioned a terrific female empowerment tale within the context of the horror genre. By focusing, in the first third, upon the teen culture of abuse and bullying and then tossing their lead character into a nail-bitingly terrifying maze of sheer horror, they, as filmmakers and we, as an audience, get to have the whole cake and eat it too. The final two-thirds cleverly and relentlessly presents one seemingly impossible challenge after another and we're front-row passengers on a roller coaster ride of mostly unpredictable chills and thrills until we're eyeballs-glued-to-the-screen during some deliciously repellent violence and, of course, a bit of the old feminist-infused empowerment.

Joining a fine tradition of home invasion movies like The Strangers and You're Next, it's a film that, in its own special way exceeds the aims of those seminal works because it places the horror in a context of the kind of horror which has become all too real in contemporary society. In a sense, the film's target audience, teens and young 20-somethings (and middle-aged horror geeks who've never grown up) will get everything they want out of the picture - and then some.

And just so we're not feeling too warm and fuzzy after the film's harrowing climax, Cummings spews a blood-spattered shocker upon us - one that horror fans have seen a million times before, but when it's served up right, we're always happy to see it again. So take a trip to Berkshire County. It's a fork in the road (and blade in the gut) worth choosing.

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

Berkshire County, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the esteemed Shriekfest Film Festival in Los Angeles, enjoys it's Canadian premiere during the 2014 Blood in the Snow Film Festival at the Magic Lantern Carlton Theatres in Toronto. It will be released in Canada via A-71 and is being sold to the rest of the world by the visionary Canadian sales agency Raven Banner.