26th June 2008

Odd Discoveries Entertain Our Nation?

And we’re back. After a brief hiatus, which took in a bit of Cannes, a slice of the north of England, a smattering the old (fictitious) ultra-violence, some filming, a few actual screenings and a bit of regular job-job-type-job encompassing all of the above…what is confronting us in the near future ( ribbed) for our viewing pleasure?

No doubt Freeviewers and BBC iplayer users will still be clapping with almost paroxysmal glee at the wonderful season of mini film festivals currently airing over consecutive weekends on BBC4. In the first week, misanthropic philosopher of the people Rich Hall provided a marvelously individualistic overview of the American western. An absolute joy to watch. This past weekend, however, will have been of particular interest to Frightfesters as Matthew Sweet (the affable British film historian, not the Mark Chapman-looking folk singer who covered the theme tune to ‘Scooby Doo’) covered, in breathlessly comprehensive fashion, British B-movies.

The documentary “Truly Madly Cheaply” was an hour and half of utterly fascinating viewing. Alongside some wild and well-loved pieces of cult oddity like “Psychomania” and Lindsey Shonteff’s “Devil Doll” were some entrancing pieces of extremely strange-looking cinema indeed. The downside came with the realisation that, aside from the odd TV showing, perhaps the chances of having gorged oneself on the smorgasbord of eccentric delights offered by the mid-century British Film Industry were pretty slim. This is, however, not taking into account the existence of DVD distributor Odeon Entertainment.

Not a name that trips off the tongue alongside Tartan or Optimum or Revolver, perhaps, but Odeon have been toiling away these last few digitally versatile years, assembling a rather sumptuous array of little known treasures and esoteric treats of mostly British film. A fine selection of these was covered in Sweet’s documentary and my Amazon wish list now strains yet further with the weird and wonderful.

Only one of the more obscure titles had actually I encountered before: “The Black Abbot”. For the last couple of years, I’ve been a member of the quietly revered Gothique Film Society. A cadre of like-minded cinephiles patronized for years by the late Bob Monkhouse, himself a keen connoisseur of the macabre, the Gothique convenes once monthly most of the year, to watch pictures that quite frankly -- and I consider myself pretty well-versed cinematically -- I have never ever heard of. And it’s terrific. Quota quickies, Gainsborough thrillers and a bevy of cheap, slipshod pictures exploiting and capitalising on the more lurid traits more visible, mainstream fare: these kinds of ripe discoveries are the stock in trade of the Gothique.

“The Black Abbot” turned up on one of these eclectic double bills, crammed in next to one of the many incarnations of Edgar Wallace’s “The Squeaker” (Wallace is another figure worthy of note to discerning horror fans -- those books whose yellow covers gave their name to a whole genre of black-gloved whodunits? Edgar Wallace was a stalwart of the ‘giallo’ literary genre). A ‘quota quickie’ from 1934, “The Black Abbot” is everything you would expect: it’s creakily put together on very theatrical looking sets, was quite obviously filmed in about a week, has a slight and not particularly complex mystery surrounding the dark clad titular figure scaring the bejeezus out of the residents of a country mansion and it is brimming with awkwardly unrehearsed performances. But it has a breezy, earnest charm about it that’s missing from so much of today’s slickly packed horror/thriller cinema. Perhaps because it was made out of necessity and with no money rather than out of sheer, lazy carbon-copying on a studio budget meant there was more urgency, more verve and more personality brought to the whole endeavour. It’s not particularly good, yet the goodwill it engenders obscures a multitude of technical sins.

What the best films of the Gothique seasons -- many of which were bedfellows to those found lurking within the “Truly Madly Cheaply” documentary -- reminded me of most were the films of W.S. “One shot” Van Dyke, director of the delightfully chipper and quite brilliant depression era series of US masterpieces, the “Thin Man” films, with which no doubt many of you are familiar. They share the same boundless energy and unconventional charm. Condescending as it may sound, the pleasures they supply are in some ways untouchable. It’s something for which I pity audiences with more ephemeral tastes and attention spans and black-and-white-film phobias who would simply ignore them. There are over 100 years of history at cinema’s feet in the UK, let alone most developed nations on earth. Even with the ceaseless technology of today, we’re still able to scratch barely the surface as individual viewers.

Places like the Gothique Film Society, distributors like Odeon Entertainment and historians like Matthew Sweet are maintaining an important piece of our heritage. They are locked in an invisible battle with an encroaching mainstream that thinks it knows what cult is or what constitutes (or what popular opinion deems) a great, eccentric oddity. I’d argue that these parties are merely purveyors of socially-permissive “weird” pop-culture items which they erroneously labeled as “cult” without any genuine affection. All that is displayed is often a flippant glee at superficially celebrating something that’s acceptably odd, while still within the realms of the “hip” and, worst of all, “safe”. It’s phony and most of us can smell it a mile off.

The Gothique, (not to mention the West London Fantastic Film Society and the Duke Mitchell Film Club!) Odeon Entertainment and Matthew Sweet can be added to a list that includes: Sir Christopher Frayling; Alex Cox; Xavier Mendik; Alan Jones; McGillivray; Kermode; Joe Dante and the entire West Coast geek mafia and many others. They’re the ones who fight for, revere and unearth substance in the archaic and the anarchic, the orphaned and the usurped of cinema. They should be supported, encouraged and lauded at all costs: truly, madly and very deeply.

Just a couple of DVD releases piqued interest this week amid the flurry of anticipation surrounding the Frightfest programme announcement:

“A Bitter Sweet Life: Collector’s Edition” this is Kim Ji-Woon’s follow-up to his breakout “Tale Of Two Sisters”, which was a likeable, suspense-ratcheting, if slightly too austere black-haired ghost picture. “BSL” helped spearhead the wave of Korean Neo-Noir pictures heralded, it seems, by both the new century and a zest for mainstream cinema success in the wake of better-than-expected action/drama, “Shiri”. It’s a genre populated by the likes of “Public Enemy”, “Bad Guy” and, of course, Park Chan Wook’s infamous “Oldboy”. As those who encountered it at Frightfest 2005 will know, this is another gorgeously lensed, tightly wound coil of brutality, serenity and unctuous character turns, each succumbing to, and justly earning, their spectacularly poetic ends.

Here, Tartan double dips what was already a pretty comprehensive package first time around. So while Asian enthusiasts will likely remain unconvinced as to whether or not this is an essential re-purchase, it’s a perfect time for those who don’t own it to add it as one of the modest jewels in your Asian (simply regular) cinema collection.

“A Candle For the Devil”: from director Eugenio Martin, best known for the atmospheric Golem-inspired chiller “Horror Express” comes something that seems more fitting for his countrymen José Ramón Larraz, Armando Di Ossorio or Jess Franco (on a good day) to have produced. Religious mania and sexual frustration rear their heads (don’t they always) in a small coastal village as several guests become embroiled in the terror surrounding a guest house run by two elderly sisters. One of the guests is “Insemonoid”’s Julie Geeson who one hope gets off more lightly than her translucent-penis-cum-vacuum-cleaner experience in Norman J. Warren’s, er, seminal exploitation classic. This is from the good folks at Odeon Entertainment, ironically enough and comes highly recommended by another gentleman to add to the list above: BFI’s Sam Dunn, cult devotee and tireless champion of the forgotten gem. An example of which, he assures, this most certainly is.

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