Viewings: August 2024

Soi Cheang's roaring actionfest Twilight Warriors: Walled In and László Benedek's revenge thriller The Night Visitor were unequivocally the film highlights this month. 

Amazed I never discovered Peter Graham Scott's mini-series Children of the Stones until now. Probably the best slice of vintage TV I've watched in ages.

Film:

The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (Riccardo Freda, 1962)

The Possessed (Luigi Bazzoni, Franco Rossellini, 1965)*

The Sorcerers (Michael Reeves, 1967)

Mississippi Mermaid (François Truffaut, 1969)*

The Night Visitor (László Benedek, 1971)*

Tony Arzenta (Duccio Tessari, 1973)*

Dead Man’s Letters (Konstantin Lopushansky, 1986)*

Spectre (Marcello Avallone, 1987)*

Door II: Tôkyô Diary (Banmei Takahashi, 1991)*

Deadly Instincts AKA Breeders (Paul Matthews, 1997)*

Bruiser (George A. Romero, 2000)*

Napoleon: The Director’s Cut (Ridley Scott, 2023)*

Borderlands (Eli Roth, 2024)*

The Killer (John Woo, 2024)*

Kinds of Kindness (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2024)*

Longlegs (Osgood Perkins, 2024)*

Sting (Kiah Roache-Turner, 2024)*

Trap (M. Night Shamalamadingdong, 2024)*

Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (Soi Cheang, 2024)*

Television:

 Doctor Who - Inferno (Sydney Newman, 1963-2024)*

Space: 1999 - Various Episodes (Gerry Anderson, Sylvia Anderson, 1975-1977)*

Children of the Stones - Complete Series (Peter Graham Scott, 1977)*

Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense - Child's Play (Val Guest, 1984)*

Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense - The Corvini Inheritance (Gabrielle Beaumont, 1984)*

Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense - In Possession (Val Guest, 1984)

Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense - A Distant Scream (John Hough, 1984)*

Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense - Paint Me a Murder (Alan Cooke, 1984)*

Mastermind - Episodes 1-3 (Bill Wright, 2024/2025)*

 

*First time viewings.

Dada Debaser Notes:

• Banmei Takahashi's horror thriller Door (1988) is one of my fave discoveries so far this year, but its sequel has absolutely no connection and belongs in an entirely different genre (erotic drama) altogether. Just cashing in on the name, I suppose.
  
• There aren't enough words to describe how bad Borderlands is.
• As far as nightmarish, nuclear holocaust films go, Soviet cinema's Dead Man's Letters gives Threads (1984) a run for its money. Way too Tarkovsky for me, though.
• M. Night’s new film is unbridled nepotism and serves as a shameless promo for his daughter’s turgid music. Her acting is worse than Sofia Coppola's performance in The Godfather Part III (1990).
• The Possessed is the art house giallo Antonioni ought to have made instead of Blow-Up (1966). You can liken it to his Decadence trilogy (without its pretentiousness, thankfully).
  
• Yorgos Lanthimos proves he can't make an entertaining anthology movie; three bizarre stories, each of them dragged out to almost an hour in length, and still laced with predictable twist endings. Heavily reliant on its celeb cast acting strange to carry it and to indulgently appease Lanthimos' weirdo fetish. By no means horrible, but why watch the epic slog that is Kinds of Kindness ever again when you can watch any of Amicus' superior portmanteaus?
  
• Was hoping for Mississippi Mermaid to be as good as Truffaut's other Hitchcockian film, The Bride Wore Black (1968), but even peak era Catherine Deneuve flashing her breasts couldn't save it from being a snoozefest.
• Disappointed with Longlegs. Obvious inspiration is taken from many cat and mouse horror thrillers, winding up worse than the sum of its parts. Nicolas Cage's performance in it was exactly what I expected.
  
• RIP Alain Delon! The French actor plays another trench coat wearing assassin in the actioner Tony Arzenta. Decent film with a great supporting cast and locations, but nowhere near in the same league as Le Samouraï (1967).
  
• Speaking of assassins, the demake of the heroic bloodshed classic The Killer (1989) is absolutely atrocious. Nathalie Emmanuel might have gone from Hollyoaks to Hollywood, but John Woo went from Sam Peckinpah to Sam Smith. What a fall off.
  
• I wrote about my fave movie scenes set inside a supermarket this month. 

Geeked for Strange Darling (2024) and The Substance (2024) being released next month. Curse my luck they're out on the very same day!