Possibly a Grave Error

The man you see here is Dan Briggs. He is the director of the IMF (Impossible Missions Force), but his role as the team leader went up in smoke like so many reels of magnetic tape after the first season of Mission: Impossible. Turns out that Steven Hill is an observant Orthodox Jew and would not shoot after 4 pm on Fridays until sundown on Saturdays. This put a strain on his relationship with the seies and the other six seasons were led by Peter Graves as Jim Phelps.

Before recently being able to watch this first season of Mission: Impossible I had only heard the name Jim Phelps, but twenty-odd episodes later, I was hooked on Dan Briggs. Steven Hill played the role with a great subtlety, and the Peter Graves I knew was Captain Over.

This week I made the inevitable transition from Briggs to Phelps, jumping to season three due to circumstances beyond my control and I have to say...Peter Graves is allright so far. The first episode I watched, he disguised himself as a boisterous American Tourist in Europe and I felt like I was watching the caricature of Peter Graves that I knew from his more recent films: I was a bit nervous after that episode.

Now I've finished the first disc, and I think this will work out for the next six seasons. It is very different, but the returning supporting cast helps keep the familiarity high.

Same to same,

Capt. Hendry

"Bava"rian Fantasy

This past year I picked up the two box sets that comprise the Anchor Bay Mario Bava film collection and made him a bit of a personal film project for the year. Last night I watched what was described on the back of the slimcase packaging as "the film he'd envisioned his entire career..." Lisa and the Devil (this sentence was shortly followed by "after the commercial disaster of Lisa and the Devil). This rounded out a nice array of his work that I had now watched including Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, Baron Blood, Knives of the Avenger, Bay of Blood (a.k.a. Twitch of the Death Nerve) and 5 Dolls for an August Moon. I feel that even though I am saving some other gems in the collection for future viewing...much like keeping a fine vintage wine in the cellar...I

can say that I like Bava very much.

Italian cinema has a style all its own, and I love the way it permeates through all the genres of film. I especially love the way it embellishes the b-movie genres: Spaghetti westerns, ultra-violent cop dramas, sword and sandal, thrillers and horror. Bava touches upon all these genres, and adds a slight intellectual edginess in the visual style that I find immensely appealing. All his films have some moment that I find just beautiful, and while they may at times be a bit lacking in story or character, they are always saturated with stylization.


If you get the chance I highly recommend getting Black Sunday. It seems shockingly brutal for its time period. And it has some truly spectacular eyeball scenes.


Same to same,

Hendry

A Happy Halloween

This weekend I watched the remake of Halloween that Rob Zombie directed last year. I hadn't really heard much for reviews on this remake of the Carpenter classic, and I had assumed that this silence was indicative of a lackluster remake by the rocker-turned-horror-guru-turned-director. Turns out that I enjoyed the film immensely. I'm not sure why I enjoyed this film as much as I did, it could have easily just been a semi-euphoric delirium caused by starting this film at midnight and having a good bellyful of alcohol; but I think that the major factors at play were shooting style, casting and nudity.

Rob Zombie really comes into his own as a film director for this project. His last two films had their moments, but House of 1,000 Corpses felt like a huge music video to me, and while I can't remember if the specific problem with The Devil's Rejects was more a pacing or a stylistic issue, I pretty much remember just not liking it all that much. This film had a nice pace to it, especially considering the ambitious 124 minute running time. The shooting style echoed B movie seventies film, but at the same time took advantage of a larger budget and pulled off looking slick and run down at the same time. I think some of the best work was done with some point of view shots at the times of the victims' death, and Zombie definitely has a talent for painting a depressing picture of low class America that makes the viewer feel like pockets of Deliverance country exist in the middle of safe and sound suburbia. And I don't know if anybody else has ever done it, but the empty swimming pool was a brilliant little scene.

The casting was the other part of this film I loved. Udo Kier, Malcolm MacDowell, Cybil Dannning, Dee Wallace (Stone), William Forsythe and Brad Dourif brought solid acting to this project, and Danny Trejo and Tyler Mane both gave better performances than expected. This cornucopia of actors delivered smaller roles that all shine in their own way. Even Sherry Moon Zombie gave a performance that made her seem more a thespian than a go-go dancer.

That being said, the third factor that led to my enjoyment was the nudity. Nudity in wide release horror has been fairly scarce over the past few decades. At first I thought it was the greater focus on teen markets with films like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, but even recent horror films like the Saw series (at least the first one - the only one I "saw") 30 Days of Night and exploitation films like Grindhouse have lacked some tittaykapow! Zombie brings back those extended glimpses of nudity that were like the prize in a cereal box, waiting to fall into your hands when you least expect it.

Same to same,

Capt.