104 in 2009 Week 45: Assassination Bureau and A Story of Floating Weeds

Back to the old speed, two movies per week.

The Assassination Bureau
Basil Dearden, 1969

An up-and-coming reporter (Diana Rigg) convinces Ivan Dragomiloff (Oliver Reed), the chairman of the Assassination Bureau, to accept a contract on himself. Little does she know that the man bankrolling her contract (Telly Savalas) is also part of the Bureau, and has a scheme of his own.

Boy, and it started off so well. After an amusingly slapstick montage of assassinations over the decades, The Assassination Bureau kicks things off with several clever, smartly written introductory sequences. There’s a little twinkle in the eye of every actor, the witty rejoinders just roll off of their tongues, and everything seems like it’s going to be great. In short order, the apparent structure of the movie becomes apparent: Dragomiloff will travel to various European cities and outwit the Bureau member in each location that is trying to assassinate him. Simple, but fun, and well-suited to Reed’s smug charm.

If only it had stayed as simple. Instead, the whole movie begins to deflate rather dramatically, as a plot to start World War I takes over the plotline and things just get too big and ponderous. We eventually wind up with a swordfight on a zeppelin. It’s really one of the worse flameouts I’ve seen – even the Reed/Rigg chemistry seemed to diminish as it went on. This could have been a modest but wonderful comedy/thriller, and for a brief moment it was – but it all just slipped away, right on screen. Such a shame.

4/10

A Story of Floating Weeds
Yasujiro Ozu, 1934

A traveling actor (Takeshi Sakamoto) brings his troupe to the city where his beloved nephew (Koji Mitsui) lives – but the nephew is actually his son, whom he abandoned out of shame over his profession. The actor’s current mistress (Reiko Yagumo) becomes jealous and plots to tear the family apart.

This is kind of an interesting production, a silent film made several years after they’d fallen out of style. It seems there may not have ever been a score attached to it, because the DVD offers a modern composition only as a secondary option. I can’t imagine watching it without music.

Overall, the story is extremely melodramatic and even starts to border on the silly at times. Fortunately, every time it threatens to fall apart, Ozu manages to pull things back together with a wonderful bit of low-key humanity, like the father and son fishing, the child actor protectively stuffing his porcelain kitty bank into his shirt like a kangaroo pouch, or the two people (names withheld for spoiler purposes) eating together on the train at the end. Touches like these, not to mention most of the cinematography, are beautiful enough that it’s easy to overlook the excesses of the plot.

6.5/10

Progress: 117 (Par +27)

104 in 2009: Week 44: Putney Swope and the last of the horror

Okay, I lied. We're not quite back to normal - I've got to list off the last of the eligible Halloween movies. But then we're back to normal. So here's the Halloween stuff:

The Unseen 1.5/10
And Soon the Darkness 7.5/10

And now, here's the first post-Halloween movie:

Putney Swope
Robert Downey, 1969

Putney Swope (Arnold Johnson, voice of Downey), the token black man on the board of an advertising committee is accidentally voted in to be the new chairman, due to the unwillingness of the other members to vote for each other. He renames the company “Truth and Soul.” Chaos ensues.

Putney Swope opens well, with a hilariously deadpan board meeting that ends with Swope’s election to chairman. Then, as if someone threw a switch, it all goes off the rails. The rest of the movie almost seems like a series of vignettes that are maybe a little too interconnected for the term to be accurate, but not by much. This wouldn’t really be an issue if it managed to remain as funny as the opening scene, but, despite a few howlers, it really kind of drags after that. Part of the problem is that much of the comedy is based on the idea of being offensive and outrageous, and a lot of what’s happening doesn’t have that effect any more. Because there frequently isn’t much of a joke beyond the outrageousness, there’s not much left. Plus, there’s a strongly self-congratulatory feel to all of the envelope pushing that’s a bit obnoxious. Still, I have to admit that some of the racial dialogue in particular remains somewhat. . . I don’t want to say shocking, but let’s go with surprising. I can definitely see how it became the cult classic that it is, but it mostly misfired for me.

3/10

Progress: 115 (par +27)

Haunt Review: The 13th Floor and Blood Shed

6100 E. 39th Ave. Denver, CO
http://getscared.com/

No picture for this one; couldn't get anything to turn out. It was too dark and the signs were all too far away. Which brings up the first thing I want to address - organization and signage. This is the one area where this haunt completely and utterly failed. When you pull up, there are four lines - two for ticket buying (regular and VIP) and two for the haunt (regular and VIP, again). This seems like a good way to do it, but there are no signs anywhere and the lines sort of much together. I would expect that, with a separate ticket window for each type of ticket, they might label each window so that, for instance, someone buying a VIP ticket doesn't wait in the longer regular ticket line unnecessarily. Alternatively, they could have staff directing people to where they need to be. This haunt always has massive crowds (lines around the block), and they really need to figure out how to deal with them better.

But enough about the line - how were the haunts? Kind of a mixed bag. Blood Shed is first, and is the more modest of the two, running probably only a third of the length of the 13th Floor. It was, in some ways, the more effective of the two due to the fact that everything seemed to be running at full steam. The actors were well placed and worked for their scares, sticking with characters and not relying on the simple "jump out of the darkness" effect. Props and sets were fairly minimal with the exception of a few rooms, but what was there worked well. Quite enjoyable, but over far too soon.

After you exit Blood Shed, you are directed to the second of three lines for the 13th Floor (the first was outside, pre-Blood Shed). Entertainment for the line consisted of dancing girls on a stage, which was fairly amusing. Still, the haunt is very strictly designed around a particular theme with associated mythology, and I think it would have been better to spend the line time presenting some of that mythology.

Once you get through the line, there's a short (fake) elevator ride down to the underground 13th Floor and you reach the third (mercifully short) line - then it's finally off into the haunt. One thing I'll say for the 13th Floor - they have some really nice moments. Some of my favorites included a walk over a bottomless pit, a pitch-black hallway that you have to feel your way through (with bugs on the walls), a giant snake leaping out of a corpse, the spiked wall, and a ghostly bride who kept disappearing around the corner in front of us. The problem is that in between these great moments, there was frequently a whole lot of wandering through dark hallways with nothing happening. Also, there seemed to be some technical issues - at one point, we walked through what clearly was a vortex tunnel, but it wasn't vortexing. Also, near the end, there was a very impressive giant demon monster/thing, but it seems like it ought to have been moving, just a little. Still, overall, I think the good outweighs the bad - but given just how popular the place seems to be, I was expecting a little more oomph.

7/10

36, 37, and 38. The Black Cat, Behind the Mask, and Phantasm II

Finished off the month with three movies tonight that I'd seen before, so I'm just going to hit them all at once, and briefly. We'll be back to our standard weekly format for postings starting tomorrow.

The Black Cat
Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934

This was my movie club pick, and didn't go over all that well. I also think it wasn't as good as I remembered, but I still like it, primarily for the fun of watching Karloff and Lugosi chew the scenery at each other and for the fantastic set design. 6/10

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
Scott Glosserman, 2007

One of the more clever horror movies I've seen in the past several years, even if not everything works as well as it could. The way they use the structural conceit, switching between documentary and horror movie, to influence the plot and characters is very impressive. Also, Nathan Baesel's performance as Leslie Vernon is fantastic. They do sledgehammer several points well beyond what would be reasonable, though, and the ending segment drags on a bit (not that it shouldn't end where it does, but some of the fat earlier in the segment could be trimmed). Still, very good. 7.5/10

Phantasm II
Don Coscarelli, 1988

I love the Phantasm series. They're ridiculous, cheap, poorly acted, and are largely incoherent from a storytelling standpoint, especially between films. But then there's that spark of creativity and fun that turns it into something special, completely unlike anything else out there. This may well be my favorite of the four; at the very least, it's the most rewatchable for me. 6.5/10

35. Mil gritos tiene la noche (Pieces)

Juan Piquer Simon, 1983

The first and last time I saw Pieces was long, long ago. It was my first Eurohorror, although I didn't realize it at the time since they go to great (well, moderate. Well, they sort of try) lengths to make it seem American. Mostly what I remembered was that there was an abundance of a) blood, b) naked girls, and c) bad dubbing. I'm pleased to report that my recollection was correct, and Pieces is primarily made up of those three elements.

Actually, that's not entirely true. There is a fourth element - sheer madness. How else to explain such wonderful/horrible moments as skateboarding through a mirror, the kung-fu professor, the chainsaw in the elevator, "BASTARD!", or the ending? These are not the fruits of a logical mind. I can't even really explain them in any way that you would believe - you just need to see them for yourself. It's kind of funny - the movie is so bizarrely wrong most of the time that the occasional beautiful and/or atmospheric shot (like the killer walking into the dance studio) is extremely jarring.

In a way, I kind of loved this movie. It's terrible. Horrible. Awful. But I still kind of loved it. Doesn't mean it gets a good rating, though.

3/10

34. And Soon the Darkness

Robert Fuest, 1970

A bit slow, but Fuest manages to build an tremendous amount of dread out of the idyllic French countryside and his love of deep composition keeps things visually interesting. Approximately half of the dialogue in the movie is unsubtitled French, which helps increase the feeling of alienation and was a very wise choice. The reveal of the killer at the end, while not a big surprise, was handled in a nicely creepy fashion - however, the final resolution left much to be desired. Still quite good on the whole, especially compared to a lot of what I've seen lately.

7.5/10

33. The Unseen

Danny Steinmann, 1980

Not especially bad, but completely forgettable. Which is actually kind of worse, in a way.

1.5/10