Crime | Cagey Films

Organized crime, political corruption and bourgeois complicity: four Italian Mafia movies

Posted on July 3, 2024July 3, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Cesare Mori is sent to Sicily by Mussolini to break the power of the Mafia in Pasquale Squitieri's The Iron Prefect (1977)

Radiance maintains its high standard with a pair of releases devoted to Italian films which tackle the intricate interconnections between organized crime, politics and civil society. Cosa Nostra (1968-75) is a three-disk set of collaborations between director Damiano Damiani and star Franco Nero which approach the theme using different genre tropes, while Pasquale Squitieri’s The Iron Deputy (1977) presents historical context with the fact-based story of a crusading official who uses brutal methods to break the hold of the Mafia on Sicilian society in the 1920s.

Emilio Fernández’s Victimas del pecado (Victims of Sin, 1951): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on June 26, 2024June 24, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Emilio Fernández’s Victimas del pecado (Victims of Sin, 1951), newly restored in 4K from the original nitrate negative, is a Mexican musical melodrama loaded with tragedy punctuated with ecstatic dance numbers from star Ninón Sevilla, who plays a cabaret dancer whose life is upended when she takes responsibility for an abandoned baby. Taut direction by Fernández and stunning photography by the masterful Gabriel Figueroa provide a remarkable showcase for Sevilla’s considerable talent.

Winter 2024 viewing, part two: Vinegar Syndrome

Posted on February 28, 2024February 26, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

A brain chip turns Erica (Jade Leung) into a killing machine in Stephen Shin's Black Cat 2 (1992)

Recent Vinegar Syndrome releases offer a range of genres and styles and widely varying degrees of satisfaction – there’s Hong Kong action, Indonesian horror, experimental indie sci-fi, neo-noir and feminist vigilante violence, giant rats, Biblical horror and quite a bit of sex and violence.

The Criminal Acts of Tod Slaughter on Blu-ray from Indicator

Posted on January 10, 2024January 7, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

James Dalton, the Tiger (Tod Slaughter) becomes desperate at the end of George King's The Ticket of Leave Man (1937)

Indicator closed 2023 with one of their finest offerings yet – a four-disk, eight film box set of blood-and-thunder melodramas produced, and mostly directed, by George King and starring the inimitable Tod Slaughter as a roster of heinous villains portrayed with gleeful enthusiasm by an actor who devoted his long career to preserving an art form incubated on Victorian stages and largely fallen out of favour by the time these films preserved it with such relish. With striking restorations, mostly from original nitrate negatives, supplemented with commentaries, interviews and Slaughter-related ephemera, this is definitely the highlight of the past year.

Allen Baron’s Blast of Silence (1961): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on December 20, 2023December 19, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Documentary background detail in Allen Baron's Blast of Silence (1961)

Shot on a small budget, first-time writer-director-actor Allen Baron’s Blast of Silence (1961) is a taut film noir about an out-of-town hit man beginning to question his career as he closes in on his target in New York a few days before Christmas. Striking documentary images of the city, presented on Criterion’s Blu-ray from a new 4K scan, serve as background for the killer’s existential doubts.

Crime and Horror from Radiance

Posted on December 13, 2023December 12, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Cynthia (Barbara Steele) descends into the cellars in search of answers in Riccardo Freda's The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962)

A sampling of releases from new U.K. label Radiance covers a range of favourite genres from the 1960s and ’70s – from classic Japanese yakuza film Big Time Gambling Boss (Kôsaku Yamashita, 1968), to the American indie horror Messiah of Evil (Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz, 1973); from the Swedish police procedural Man on the Roof (Bo Widerberg, 1976) to a pair of Italian Gothic horrors separated by a decade, the perverse The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (Riccardo Freda, 1962) and The Night of the Devils (Giorgio Ferroni, 1972), a contemporary retelling of the final story from Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath (1963); topped off with a revisit to Gordon Hessler’s Scream and Scream Again (1970), which seems to get better every time I see it. All of them come with excellent presentations and a wealth of extras, including commentaries, documentaries, interviews and visual essays.

Recent Noir releases from Indicator and Arrow

Posted on December 6, 2023December 5, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Filmmaker William Wyler was known for his complex compositions in depth in The Desperate Hours (1955)

Indicator’s Universal Noir #2 box set gathers six minor movies from the late 1940s, most of which can only qualify as noir if the definition is severely stretched, while William Wyler’s consummate craft lifts B-movie tropes to the level of art in The Desperate Hours (1955), beautifully restored on Arrow’s new Blu-ray edition.

Claude Chabrol’s La cérémonie (1995): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on November 22, 2023November 20, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Sophie (Sandrine Bonnaire) and Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert) become allies against the bourgeois Lalievres family in Claude Chabrol’s La cérémonie (1995)

Four decades into a career which began with the New Wave, Claude Chabrol delivered a masterpiece with La cérémonie (1995), a psychological mystery adapted from a Ruth Rendell novel. Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert play a pair of working class women whose bitterness and resentment drive them on a collision course with the bourgeois Lelievre family. Criterion’s new Blu-ray edition provides some illuminating supplements on the director and his two stars.

Fall 2023 viewing: Arrow Video

Posted on November 15, 2023November 13, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Cloistermouth (Nicholas Hoye) panics when he realizes his privileged position is threatened in John Mackenzie's Unman, Wittering and Zigo (1971)

A selection of new and slightly older Arrow releases range from ’70s Japanese gangster movies by Kinji Fukasaku to David Cronenberg’s icy adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s Crash (1996), from an early feature by John Mackenzie combining a satire of class with psychological suspense to a sampler of sci-fi and horror movies produced in the ’80s by Charles Band’s Empire International Pictures.

The transgressive art of William Friedkin

Posted on October 4, 2023October 2, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Bad behaviour is attributed the Devil in William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973)

William Friedkin’s death in August prompted a look back at his most significant work from the ’70s and ’80s, a run of movies which were controversial and only intermittently commercially successful. At his best, Friedkin’s cool, detached approach to dangerous subjects resulted in powerful movies which influenced the direction of popular genres and his work from that period remains challenging today.

Tag: Crime