Viewings: February 2024

Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest is not only the pick of the month, it’s also the highest rated film from the 2020s I've awarded since the blog’s creation. 

Other recent hightlights were Gianfranco Giagni's obscure, Italian horror gem The Spider Labyrinth and Don Medford's bitterly bleak The Hunting Party.

 

Film:

The Ghost Train (Walter Forde, 1941)*

The Secret Cinema (Paul Bartel, 1966/1968)*

The Hunting Party (Don Medford, 1971)*

The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman (León Klimovsky, 1971)*

The Crazies (George A. Romero, 1973)

Boss Ni**er (Jack Arnold, 1974)*

The Bitch (Gerry O’Hara, 1979)*

The Spider Labyrinth (Gianfranco Giagni, 1988)*

They Live (John Carpenter, 1988)

Carlito’s Way (Brian De Palma, 1993)

Self Catering (Robin Lefèvre, 1994)

Belly 2: Millionaire Boyz Club (Ivan Frank, 2008)*

Open Graves (Álvaro de Armiñán, 2009)*

Divinity (Eddie Alcazar, 2023)*

Dario Argento Panico (Simone Scafidi, 2024)*

Out of Darkness (Andrew Cumming, 2022/2024)*

Night Swim (Bryce McGuire, 2024)*

The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023/2024)*

Television:

Doctor Who - Various Episodes (Sydney Newman, 1963 - 2023)*

Mastermind - Episodes 23 - 26 (Bill Wright, 2023/2024)*

*First time viewings.

Dada Debaser Notes:

• For decades I've wondered if Richard France from The Crazies (1973) and Dawn of the Dead (1978) was the voice on the intro to Dr. Dre's Lyrical Gangbang. Still not sure.
  
• Night Swim is a contender for one of the worst films released this year already. The latest example of a short film that should not have been turned into a feature length.
• Shout out to all the blind buyers who copped the boutique blu-ray of the lo-fi, B&W, sci-fi borefest Divinty when they should have checked out LOLA instead. I did like the Kool Keith song from it, however.
  
• Other than they sound completely different, you can tell another actor was used to narrate the Game's character in the awful Belly sequel as he wasn’t name dropping anyone.
  
• Went film detective trying to identify a TV movie I watched back in the day where John Gordon Sinclair was cooked and eaten. Turned out to be Self Catering and still on Channel 4's website.
  
• Can’t believe people risked their lives during the Blitz to watch humourless Arthur Askey comedies.
• Nearly forty years after Opera (1987) and Cristina Marsillach is almost reduced to tears when reminiscing over her experience with Dario Argento in the latest documentary about him. Feeling the same way about Asia Argento's awful tattoos, to be honest.
  
• On paper, The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman has all the elements I look for in a great Paul Naschy film, but it pales in comparison to its quasi-remake, The Night of the Werewolf (1981).
  

And finally: