Thrillers | Cagey Films

Giallothon!

Posted on April 24, 2019August 13, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

A sadistic killer (Michele Renzullo) stalks Venice in Mario Landi’s Giallo a Venezia (1979)

Severin’s box set of Sergio Martino’s All the Colors of the Dark (1972) and Federico Caddeo’s documentary All the Colors of Giallo (2019) provides a masterclass in the poetically sordid Italian genre which flourished so briefly from the late 1960s to early 1980s. The collection of eighty-two giallo trailers with a four-hour commentary by Kat Ellinger are alone worth the price, but there’s a lot more – including two CDs of giallo scores and several informative interviews, as well as a supplementary disk which surveys the German krimi genre.

Hammer on Blu-ray from Indicator, part two

Posted on April 17, 2019December 10, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Tallulah Bankhead as Mrs. Trefoile, a religious fanatic obsessed with her son's purity in Silvio Narizzano's Fanatic (1965)

Indicator’s first box set of Hammer films on Blu-ray is an uneven selection of the studio’s mid-’60s output, including two of their best along with two of their weakest releases. Alongside Michael Carreras’ mediocre Maniac (1963) and The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964), we get The Gorgon (1964), on of Terence Fisher’s finest Gothic horrors along with Silvio Narizzano’s debut feature, Fanatic (1965, aka Die! Die! My Darling!), the best of Hammer’s psychological horrors, all sporting excellent transfers and informative special features.

More late winter viewing, part two

Posted on April 10, 2019February 13, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

An experimental serum revives and mutates dead soldiers in Julius Avery's Overlord (2018)

Style trumps substance in several recently viewed movies: from Stefano Sollima’s troubling depiction of mythic threats on the U.S. southern border in Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018) to Julius Avery’s disappointing exploitation of World War Two horrors for cheap thrills in Overlord (2018), from Drew Goddard’s ersatz Tarantino-like narrative play in Bad Times at the El Royale (2018) to Kenneth Branagh’s glossy rehash of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express (2017).

Hammer thrillers on Blu-ray from Indicator

Posted on March 20, 2019March 26, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Val Guest's The Full Treatment (1960) opens with the dramatic aftermath of a car crash

Indicator lavish attention on four less well-known, non-Gothic Hammer Films productions in their second box set devoted to the company: Criminal Intent focuses on a range of bad behaviour from murder to bank robbery and child molestation in four films which, while not all entirely successful, illuminate the studio’s versatility.

Watching genre, in black-and-white

Posted on March 6, 2019March 16, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Scary kids: alien offspring threaten England in Wolf Rilla's Village of the Damned (1960)

Three very different features – Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946), John Guillermin’s Town on Trial (1957) and Wolf Rilla’s Village of the Damned (1960) – illuminate the varied pleasures offered by genre in the hands of seriously committed filmmakers.

Brief viewing notes, Winter 2019

Posted on February 13, 2019January 17, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Modest visuals, great storytelling in Fred Zinneman's The Day of the Jackal (1973)

A brief survey of recent viewing ranging from classics to contemporary, from class to cheese: thrillers, sci-fi and horror featuring black magic, killer robots, demons, evil stepdads and retro-’50s rock-n-roll biker gangs.

Italian cops and killers

Posted on January 23, 2019December 10, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Sociopath Giullio Sacchi (Tomas Milian) wreaks havoc with an ill-conceived kidnapping in Umberto Lenzi's Almost Human (1974)

Inspired by the international success of Dirty Harry and The French Connection in 1971, the Italian poliziotteschi quickly became a versatile genre reflecting the political paranoia and nihilism of the ’70s; three recently viewed movies show a range of approaches to the genre.

Year End 2018

Posted on January 2, 2019October 8, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Boriska (Nikolay Burlyaev) oversees the firing of the bell in Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev (1966) ...

Despite continuing rumblings about the demise of movies-on-disk, numerous companies continue to produce excellent editions on disk of a vast range of movies covering the entire history of cinema. Once again in 2018 there were far more releases than even an obsessive viewer could keep up with.

Recent Arrow Blu-rays

Posted on November 28, 2018December 10, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Butoh dancer Tatsumi Hijikata as Jôgorô, a man determined to create a society which is an affront to Japanese propriety in Teruo Ishii's Horrors of Malformed Men (1969)

I’ve recently sampled a broad range of movies from Arrow Video, from Japanese classics to obscure gialli, recent horror and an original and disturbing Mexican movie which combines marital drama, dark eroticism and a very disturbing alien.

Brief comments, part two

Posted on November 21, 2018October 16, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

The deadly Daruma doll in the bloody opening scene of Takashi Miike's As the Gods Will (2014)

More brief notes on recent random viewing choices; another mixed bag of classic fantasy, generic thrillers, dramas drawn form real life, spectacular martial arts and gritty war action, and a scattershot, off-the-wall satire by “the world’s worst living director”.

Tag: Thrillers