Dario Argento Week: Suspiria

Hey all and welcome to Day 1 of Dario Argento Week and I don't mind admitting  this next film has scared the crap out of me.  No kidding, from the elaborate pace, to the story, to the musical scores made by the progressive band Goblin, this film is just damn creepy and widely accepted as Argento's finest work.  From the imposing sets to the sinister death scenes this flick should keep even today's gore fans on their toes.  This is Suspiria.

Hmm, disturbingly lit in here but probably nothing wrong with that.

Miss Tanner: I had no idea you were so strong willed.  I can see that once you make up your spoiler about something, nothing will change it for you.  My compliments.







Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper of Phantom of the Paradise, Love and Death, Aspen, Big Man on Campus, It's Garry Shandling's Show and Mr. Wonderful) is an American ballet student that has flown in to Freiburg Germany to enroll in a prestigious dance academy, however arriving in the middle of the night she cannot gain access into the school and decides to spend the night in town.  As she goes to leave a young girl, Pat Hingle (Eva Axen of Ludwig, Orpheus 9, The Golden Mass, This Is the Night and Death at Work) is leaving the academy muttering to herself and irate is all hell.  Pat decides to stay at a friend's apartment while she works out what she will do with the rest of her life...  what remains of it, as no sooner she is done with her shower a lunatic crashes through the window smothering her face against a pane of glass while simultaneously stabbing her over and over before disemboweling her.  Pat's friend hears the ruckus and decides to investigate by pounding on the door, crying for help and then hearing nothing at all.  Bound with cable from the building, Pat is dropped through the stain glass ceiling and left to hang while Pat's friend is impaled with glass shards and metal below.  That is the thirteen minute mark, people so you just know there is going to be more to it than a random nutter.

Won't...  make... recital...  bleh.

The next morning, Suzy makes her way back to the academy and is met by Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett of The Housekeeper's Daughter, The Man I Married, Man Hunt, The Wife Takes a Flyer, Girl Trouble, Scarlet Street and Dark Shadows)  lead instructor Miss Tanner (Alida Valli of The Third Man, Senso, Eyes Without a Face, A Simple Heart, Inferno and Angel of Death) welcome Suzi in as Miss Tanner shows her around.  After meeting Sarah (Stefania Casini of For Love One Dies, Blood for Dracula, The Golden Mass, The Climber and Bloodstained Shadow) and Olga (Barbara Magnolfi of The Suspicious Death of a Minor, Ready for Anything, The Sister of Ursula and Cut and Run) and arranges to live off-campus rather than at the dormitory.
 
After a surreal encounter in the kitchen with the academy's cook, Suzy feels faint and awakens in a room hours later, where she has been moved in against her wishes.  Her doctors tell her she is not used to the climate and should have a glass of wine daily.  Reverse intervention!    The upside for Suzy that she becomes fast friends with Sara since they are roomies.   Strange happenings seem to keep occurring and people has suddenly up and left the academy with no rhyme or reason as Suzy starts to suspect this academy may be more than the brochure led her to believe.

A few notes on this film now.  Argento's original idea for the ballet school was to be populates with young girls no older than 12.  Due to the extreme violence in the screenplay the studio producer and father Salvatore Argento was stubborn in his belief that the film would be banned so the age limit was raised to 20 but the dialogue was not altered so the naive behavior and comments sound almost childlike.  Argento and the band Goblin composed the score together and he arranged for the band to play as loud as their speakers could manage on set and suddenly to bring about a truly startled and scared performance from his actors,
The screenplay was inspired by Daria Nicolodi's (writer/actress and Argento's lover) grandmother who claimed to have fled in the middle of the night from a German music academy because witchcraft was being secretly held there.

Katie Couric before morning coffee!

Dario Argento Week.

Hello readers of all shapes and sizes.  This week we will dare to spelunk in the dark recesses of one writer/producer/director/composer Dario Argento.  A man who has made you jump, shriek and possibly made you pee in your pants.   Between his psychological thrillers, his abstract dramatic horror films and his constant need to pair off people to find and stop serial killers, Argento has made us afraid of the dark on many levels.  

Silly faces of terror!!!

 I personally believe whatever warped this man allowed him to look at mundane objects as murderous torture devices or means of execution.  With more than 4 decades of terror, horror and thrillers under his belt, Argento is one of those few directors that loves to bring back cast members of previous films because he enjoys working with them, they are right for the part or simply he feels they will bring luck to the film's overall production.   Argento claims that most of his films are based on childhood drama and yet his own was relatively normal.  His main influence in story telling revolves around Edgar Allen Poe, The Brothers Grim and Hans Christian Andersen causing him to start writing for a journal magazine when he was in his teens, allowing him to later become an columnist and finally his love of film brought him to writing screenplays.

Similar to John Carpenter's minimalist approach to a set with low lightning, making an empty room look full on a screen and full spaces empty and deserted, Argento uses Panavision with an anamorphic lens to give a wide scope vision and open the crowd up to jump scares.  So please enjoy the week and maybe we will learn something...  other than what keeps us awake at night.

Sheesh, that girl photobombed the zombie??  WTF??!!

Sean Connery Week: The Name of the Rose

Howdy folks and welcome to Day 4 of Sean Connery Week.  Yesterday allergies were fun, fun fun and we got knocked back a day.  Today we will examine a cinematic masterpiece directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud (The Bear, The Lover, Seven Years in Tibet, Enemy at the Gates, Two Brother and Day of the Falcon) and based on Umberto Eco (Anthropologist, Medieval expert and writer of The Name of the Rose, Foucault's Pedulum, The Island of the Day Before, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas and the Bomb and the General)  create the ideal scenery of a tranquil monastery besought by what is deemed evil and a honest to goodness murder.  This is The Name of the Rose.

Can't read my lines without my glasses.

William of Baskerville: Adso, if I knew the answers to spoilers, I would be teaching theology in Paris.





Friar William of Baskerville (Sean Connery of The Red Tent, The Molly Maguires, Diamonds are Forever, Zardoz, The Man Who Would Be King, Just Cause and DragonHeart) and his apprentice Adso of Melk (Christian Slater of Heathers, The Edge, Pump Up the Volume, Young Guns II, Mobsters, Broken Arrow, Alone in the Dark and Mind Games) have traveled to Northern Italy to abby.   A death of unnatural causes raises hackles and superstitions as an important theological conference was to occur prior.   Over the week, more bizarre deaths happen and our two travelers come to the conclusion that the abbey is not all what it appears to be.

Yes, I too, loathe the barber here but he is learning.

William and Adso meet Salvatore (Ron Perlman of Blind Man's Bluff, Beauty and the Beast, Cronos, Hellboy and Sons of Anarchy), a jibbering and seemingly demented hunchback that knows many spoken languages and his protector Remigio da Varagine (Helmut Qualtinger of The Business of Plueckhahn, Ice Age, Tales from the Vienna Woods and Die Hinrichtung).  William deduces from Salvatore's speech pattern that he may have been one of the Dulcinian (deemed by the Franciscan sect as those that stray from the traditional teachings as heretics by the Catholic church and yet this movement was inspired by the Franciscan sect in the eyes of the Dulcinian) heretical sects and both men are possibly involved with the murders.

Meanwhile young Adso meets a semi-feral girl who has snuck in the Abby for food via sexual favors and he starts to fall in love with the girl.   Quick to bypass any and all accusations of the Devil's work, William and Adso uncover a massive labyrinth in the abbey's forbidden tower (Yes, a forbidden zone and there lies cranky irradiated apes) a discover a variable maze of books and scripture the likes William has never seen,  to even come across works of Aristotle in a time where most of his works were burned by the Roman Empire.  This is one of many philosophers that was seen as pagan in the eyes of the Church and must be slowly introduced back into the realms of man and it is this book, Aristotles's Second Book of Poetics that seems to be the center of all the deaths.

His investigations are put on hold thanks to the arrival of Gui (F. Murray Abraham of Serpico, The Sunshine Boys, The Ritz, Slipstream, Mobsters, Nostradamus and Star Trek: Insurrection) of the Inquisition,( a superstitious sect of the Church hellbent on ferreting out blasphemers and burning them at the stake or torturing people until they confess sins).  He has little time to hear anything William has to say and will find the sinner that would take these precious lives.   Yeah this is the same type of Catholic that shames a woman at an abortion clinic and not even bothering to find out the reason for her decision or nuttier idea mind his or her own business.   * Sorry, I will come down from my soap box now*  

Gui and William have butted heads more than a few times.  Gui finds William to be frivolous and taunts God with his forbidden views of Sciences while William views Gui as a myopic, narrow-minded savage that inflicts pain and death in the sake of his God.  Who is the true murder?  What is the reasons behind it?  Who stands to gain anything from these deaths.

Just a few tidbits on the film at this time.  The monastery was actually a set replica built on a hilltop outside of Rome, making it one of the biggest exterior sets built in Europe since Cleopatra or Conan the Barbarian.
Credited as "The Girl" Valentina Vargas was the only female role in the movie.    Robert De Niro auditioned for the part of William but Jean- Jacques Annaud didn't envision De Niro for the part when he announced there should be a sword duel between William and Gui.
Most of the dialogue had to be synced up in post production thanks to all the airplanes coming and over the hill.

You'll have to sell your landspeeder..

Sean Connery Week: Meteor

Howdy all and welcome to Day 3 of Sean Connery Week.  Clearly we have not had any Sci-fi and that needs to be corrected.  It would have been at this time I would have introduced you to Outland and how it follows the book rather well but...  I have already reviewed it so egg is all over my face figuratively.  So how about a nice Sci-fi themed disaster film instead?  It will be in Technicolor so a hint of nostagia for those of us that grew up on such.  With a cast consisting of Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, Brian Keith as a Russian and Henry Fonda as the President of the United States, how can we lose?   This is Meteor.

Sail Awaaaaay...!

Dr. Paul Bradley: Why don't you stick a broom up my spoiler?  I can sweep the carpet on the way out.





A comet of unknown origin has passed through Orion's belt and impacted Orpheus, the largest of asteroids in the belt causing a five-mile chunk of it to a collision course hurdling towards our humble planet.  Make no mistake, people this one is a planet cooker and Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck are not available to assist in its destruction.  With the U.S. government playing Operation: Cover Thine Ass as smaller fragments have hit the planet,  NASA contacts Dr. Paul Bradley (Sean Connery of You Only Live Twice, The Name of the Rose, Memories of Me, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Rock and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) a former NASA engineer and weapons platform designer to deal with the problem.  Director of NASA Harry Sherwood (Karl Malden of A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, Patton and The Streets of San Francisco) yanks Bradley from an ongoing yacht race and to Washington toot sweet to apprise him of the threat looming over the world.

Jeez, pretty boy at the controls again.  I WANT A TURN TOO!

Project: HERCULES is a nuclear missile platform in space poised specifically to contend with impeding asteroid strikes gets demoted from planet saver to hovering over the U.S.S.R. as a deterrent for nuclear war, one of the reasons Bradley left, may not be enough firepower to eliminate the asteroid.  Through the typical digging around Russian couriers, messages and codes the U.S. discovers that the Soviets also have a weapons satellite in orbit.

The President (Henry Fonda of The Tin Star, The Deputy, How the West Was Won, Once Upon a Time in the West and On Golden Pond) reveals to the world the existence of Hercules and how the collective eggheads at NASA says our armament may not be enough and pleads to Russia to offer whatever aid they can in this time of need.  Bradley suggests Dr. Dubov  (Brian Keith of The Yakuza, The Wild and the Lion, Centennial, Hooper and Sharky's Machine) a noted physicist in Russia to combat the problem at hand.  Dubov arrives with his interpreter Tatiana (Natalie Wood of Rebel Without a Cause, The Searchers, West Side Story and Splendor in the Grass) to offer aid and hypothesize about an existing platform Russia "may" have built.
With the collective efforts be enough?  Can Earth be saved?  Will humanity be spared The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?

Just a few interesting notes about the film at this time.  Both Brian Keith and Natalie Wood could speak fluent Russian in real life.  Wood's parents were Russian immigrants and Keith was stationed overseas.
Given the language and violence of the film it would now fall under R Rating, prior to MPAA's stringent restructuring it was still deemed PG and would remain so until Christian Moralition influenced the MPAA in 1985.
Brian Keith was cast in the role at the last minute when Donald Pleasence dropped out of the role.  The spaceship Traveler II was actually modeled after NASA's first manned space station "Skylab".

Say, you guys aren't whispering about me, are you?

Number #475: Sean Connery Week: The Anderson Tapes

Howdy folks and welcome back to Sean Connery Week Day 2.  This next movie may have slipped by some of the younger fans as the language is a bit racy, the action a bit rough and a product of the early seventies.  Connery rarely gets a meat and potatoes villain role that you cannot help but empathize with.   This is The Anderson Tapes.

Sean Connery for Hair Club for Men

The Kid: America, man!  You know, it's so beautiful I wanta spoil it.








20 years of his life, John "Duke" Anderson (Sean Connery of From Russia with Love, Diamonds Are Forever, The Terrorists, Murder on the Orient Express, A Bridge Too Far, The Untouchables and The Hunt for Red October) is finally being released after paying his dues for his safe cracking days.  He openly mocks the prison official/ councilor and points out the injustice of society on robber barons, marriage and advertisement found a grife in the system but the guy that steals the magazine honoring these schmucks is a criminal.  

Out and about in New York City connecting back with his estranged girlfriend Ingrid (Dyan Cannon of Shamus, Heaven Can Wait, Coast to Coast, Deathtrap, Author! Author! and Out to Sea) who lives in a posh high rise on 91st Street in Manhattan.  Duke goes to a Mafia don for financing with Angelo (Alan King of Hit the Deck, Miracle in the Rain, Bye Bye Braverman, Lovesick, Memories of Me and Casino) to prep his own four man team to pull a worthy heist and having enough funds to live on while they get their gear together.

Hello Dolly!

However Anderson gets another price tag attached to a fourth man into his crew the thuggish scumbag called Socks (Val Avery of Love and Bullets, The Amityville Horror, Quincy M.E., Sharky's Machine, The Sting II, Easy Money and Renegade) which Anderson is less than thrilled to add in his crew but deals with it.  Anderson takes in how much surveillance from the various alphabet federal agencies, from cameras, bugs and tracking devices seem to originate from private and public agencies viewing his entire plan of operation.

The plan is executed during Labor Day weekend disguised as Mayflower moving crew, severed the phone and alarm wires as they move up each floor, gathering all the residents as they went and moving them along as they rob each apartment.

Can the cops stop our second-story men in time?  What could possibly be the swag they are after that is worth this much effort?

Quick few observations and facts about this movie now.   This is the first movie Connery dropped the toupee since the last Bond film.  This was also Christopher Walken's debut film at the age of 28 when I thought he was ten years younger.  That man had a baby face.    Spot the commander of the S.W.A.T. team is as original SNL cast member Garrett Morris, and he took this so seriously that he spent a month learning muzzle discipline, team building and combat insertions.  Pretty cool.

Tell me he has stop farting in here.

Sean Connery Week: Dr. No

Welcome to the beginning of Machismo Week er... um I mean Sean Connery Week where we start at one of the most recognized by Connery fans alike.  The James Bond series.  Our first Bond to hit the big screen and there are more than a few mixed feelings on the fellow.  Some say Roger Moore captured the character better, others feel Connery was too brutish for the elegant part.  I say shush I wish to watch the movie.   With that in mind, we tackle the first iconic movie of the ongoing franchise.  This is Dr. No.

The Odd Couple have a falling out.

Dr. No: East, West, just points of the compass, each as stupid as the spoiler.






Stationed in Jamaica, John Strangways of British Intelligence keeps a watchful eye on the lands making mineral and geological surveys awaiting their results when he is mysteriously killed and his body removed as if he was never there.   Miles away in a casino a lengthy game of Baccarat is coming to a conclusion as James Bond (Sean Connery of An Age of Kings, Marnie, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, Shalako, The Anderson Tapes and Highlander) wins the hand and Miss Sylvia Trench's (Eunice Gayson of Count of Twelve, The Last Man to Hang, The Ship Was Loaded, The Revenge of Frankenstein and From Russia with Love) affections.  He is called away from the table to answer a call from his employment Universal Exports (a cover for British Intelligence MI-6 division)  and is whisked away to headquarters to his superior M (Benard Lee of the River House Mystery, Rhodes, Murder in the Night, To Hell with Hitler, Fortune in Diamonds, Beat the Devil and Thunderball) who informs him the Americans are conducting rocket launches from Cape Canaveral but someone or some thing jamming radio transmissions causing disruptions and as always the Americans assume the Russians are at it but M wants Bond to find the culprit behind this and stop it.

10 to 1 no one was looking at their cards too well.

 












Bond is required to work with the CIA in a joint-effort to end this plot before it leads to a world-wide incident.  Bond flies out to Jamaica to follow up on Strangways' notes, discover if he is been removed from the picture and to complete the mission.  Finding the fisherman in Strangways' photos, Quarrel (John Kitzmiller of Variety Lights,  Valley of Peace, Night of the Vampires and  Uncle Tom's Cabin) Bond is snagged out of view where Quarrel and some of his buddies jumps him only to get their collective butts handed to them and he hears a gun cocked aimed at him by Felix Leiter (Jack Lord of Man of the West, Stoney Burke, 12 O' Clock High and Hawaii Five-O).  Once the dust settles and all parties relax, our spies confirm the information and speak of the bauxite mine on Crab Key Island owned exclusively by the reclusive Dr. Julius No.  

Bond and Quarrel head to Crab Key under the cover of day for night shot and where Bond meets a dish in a white bikini the name of Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress of Sins of Casanova, 4 for Texas, What's New Pussycat, The 10th Victim and Clash of the Titans) when Quarrel is discovered by a tracked vehicle designed to look like a dragon shoots flame at him burning him alive while Bond and Ryder are captured No's men and he tells Bond the details of his mastermind plan to show the sheer scale of difficulty his mission was from the start.  Also I think he is a poor host who likes to rub it in his enemies' noses.  Bond must escape, stop No and rescue Honey from the island compound before he commits his radio wave device on yet another rocket.

Some interesting facts about the film now.  Connery is said to have worn a toupee in all the Bond films due to premature balding.   Novelist and Bond creator Ian Fleming wanted his cousin Christopher Lee to portray Dr. No due to his representation of Fu Manchu.  Both Noel Coward and Max von Sydow turned down the roles as well and finally the role went to Joseph Wiseman who was voice dubbed.

Being terrified of spiders Connery attempted the tarantula scene with a sheet of glass and the sheets but it didn't look realistic so stuntman Bob Simmons laid in the bed for the re-shoot claiming it was the scariest stunt and didn't blame Connery for being creeped out.

Kinda says it all doesn't it?

Sean Connery Week

Thanks to a bum tooth being yanked, followed by errands and a migraine appointment I realize that Random Picks Week was cut very short and I do plead for forgiveness.  To make it up to my readers I present to you Sean Connery Week.  We will go over films we know by heart to the more obscure.  I will however NOT be review Zardoz so for those of you that were interested in my take on that, keep on wondering.
We will be looking at a career that spans more than 5 decades, the original Bond and ranging from Drama, Comedy, Science Fiction and Action.

Very few men could pull this look off you know.

So for the Scotish, 6'2" lefty managed his fair share of rough and tumble heroes throughout his career and probably the only man to turn down the role of Gandalf simply due to the 18 months furlough in New Zealand and didn't get the novels.

With 94 film credits to his name including lending his voice to the video game James Bond 007: From Russia with Love and voice over for Draco of Dragonheart, Sir Connery has been revered as the 24th Greatest Movie Star of all time by Entertainment Weekly and has been parodied in countless SNL skits, referenced via pop culture and TV series.   Hell I do an impression of him and frankly I would like his opinion on it.   Anybody have his number offhand?

No, I will not sing, "Underneath the Mango Tree."