Barry Forshaw
WAKE IN FRIGHT Ted Kotcheff, director/Arrow
Rescued from destruction, Ted Kotcheff’s lost film is a considerable find. A middle-class schoolteacher, stuck in a government-enforced teaching post in an arid backwater, stops off in the mining town of Bundanyabba on his way home for the Christmas holidays. Discovering a local gambling craze that may grant him the financial independence to move back to Sydney for good, the opportunity proves irresistible. But the bad decisions are just beginning and a reliance on local standards of hospitality in “the Yabba” may take him on a path darker than ever expected. One of director Ted Kotcheff’s most impressive achievements, Wake in Fright simmers with a phantasmagoric nightmare quality and is immeasurably enriched by impeccable performances from Donald Pleasance as an intellectual doctor living in squalor (one of the best of his later films), Gary Bond, Sylvia Kay, and Chips Rafferty in his final role. An uncompromising picture of brutal, sexist Australian masculinity. But the director’s defence (in the extras) that he was not attempting to paint a totally negative picture seems perhaps disingenuous.
SLITHER, James Gunn, director/Visions
It’s always interesting to look back on a filmmaker’s career and see the earlier signs of accomplishments that were to flourish later. James Gunn is now best known as one of the heavy-hitters in charge of DC Studio’s new cinema strategy, with recast versions of Superman and Supergirl leading the charge. But one of the reasons Gunn was given this heavyweight responsibility was the success of his Guardians of the Galaxy films for Marvel and the enjoyably excessive TV series Peacemaker. Apart from spectacle, Gunn is always reliable when it comes to delivering action and character, both of which are in evidence in Slither, in which a small town is taken over by an alien plague. The film was praised sporadically on its first appearance, but is now given a silver disc showcase which shows it to its very best advantage. Watching the film in its new iteration proves something which should not be surprising: how accomplished and well-crafted it is. Clearly, right from the start of his career, James Gunn had what it takes to be an audience-pleasing filmmaker.
MADHOUSE, Jim Clark, director/Eureka Entertainment
One of the principal attractions of this spruced-up new transfer of Jim Clark’s Madhouse is the chance it affords the viewer of seeing various generations of horror film royalty. Vincent Price, of course, had ruled the roost in America in the horror genre since House of Wax in the 1950s, through Roger Corman’s stylish adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe and beyond. Peter Cushing to some degree was his British equivalent (Although he shared that honour with his frequent co-star Christopher Lee – the duo launched their horror careers with the groundbreaking Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula). Madhouse, however, also features a third star who had made a considerable impact with his first two films as a leading man, Robert Quarry: Count Yorga and The Return of Count Yorga. Despite being charismatic and commanding, his star was to be somewhat eclipsed after these films although he continued to work steadily. Interestingly, the behind-the-scenes conflicts in the film between Price and Quarry may have helped with the incendiary atmosphere that the film trades in.
TWO MUSICAL TREATS: BLUE MOON, Richard Linklater, director & MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG Maria Friedman, director/Sony
Admirers of the very best classic musicals have cause to celebrate with these very different films. Blue Moon is an unsparing biography of Richard Rodgers’ original lyric writing partner before his association with Oscar Hammerstein, the tragic Lorenz Hart. As the diminutive, self-hating musician, Ethan Hawke delivers a career-best performance as Hart, sitting in a bar on the opening night of Oklahoma!, the musical that was to signal his final break from Rodgers. The finest of all modern musical composers ,Stephen Sondheim was, in fact, a protégé of Hammerstein, and the new recording of his musical Merrily we Roll Along is a demonstration of why he attained the same kind of celebrity as his mentor.
HOUSE OF HAMMER Volume 1 and Coming From Hammer: The Count Uncensored
As the revitalised Hammer Films move from strength to strength, the latest issue is the first volume in a very welcome Series, House of Hammer, which is a freshly curated compendium celebrating the achievements of the Hammer Studio. The documentaries included here are fascinating, along with a packed booklet that will be catnip to lovers of the studio (and aficionados of Britain’s most enterprising studio are growing exponentially).
The company has told us that more delights are on the way. A landmark new 4K restoration of Dracula is coming, featuring long-lost footage unseen for over 60 years. Painstakingly restored in 4K from the best original archival materials sourced from around the world, Dracula (1958) returns to cinemas nationwide and on home entertainment this October, in its most complete form ever presented – just in time for Halloween.
EMPIRE OF THE ANTS, Bert I/Gordon, director/Eureka
His films may have been a battle between inventiveness and poverty of resources, but there’s no denying that the Director Bert I. Gordon left his mark on the cinema of the fantastic. Early hits included The Amazing Colossal Man and its sequel War of the Colossal Beast, but later in his career Mr B.I.G. (as he became known because of his initials) created a series of films based (very loosely) on the work of the most distinguished of British science fiction authors, HG Wells. That writer’s short story distantly supplied the plot here, with the illegal dumping of radioactive waste in the sea leading to grotesque (and lethal) mutations to menace Joan Collins, no less. The limited edition booklet features new writing on Empire of the Ants and ecological horror by genre film expert Liam Hathaway. Also included: The B.I.G. Picture – an interview with film historian Kim Newman focused on the life and career of the cult filmmaker.