You know the situation: you're watching something on TV and it ends but you leave the channel unchanged until something else begins. This is what happened to me on one of those countless movie cable channels. The movie started -- RED SUN comes on the screen -- OK it looks like a western. The credits begin and it's 
starring Charles Bronson. OK, I thought. The next name on the screen is Ursula Andress. A little unexpected, I thought, but whatever. The next name on the screen was then Toshiro Mifune. WHAT?!?!?!?!!!!! Toshiro Mifune?!?!?!?! Star of countless classic Akira Kurosawa films not the least of which was SEVEN SAMURAI which was remade as (*surprise*) THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN with (wait for it) Charles Bronson in it! OK, this is really interesting. And then the next name on the screen was Alain Delon. OK, now I've really slipped into some kind of Twilight Zone. The French actor who starred in my favourite film: Antonioni's L'ECLISSE as well as Melville's LE SAMOURAI -- together in one film with Charles Bronson, Ursula Andress and Toshiro Mifune?!?!?! By this point, the appearance of tragic French actress Capucine and British character actor Anthony Dawson were incapable of surprising me. So, needless to say, I was going to have to sit down and watch this movie. 
Now, before we start I want to say that this is not a great movie by any means. In fact, it starts out rather . . . well, OK I guess but not spectacular. But the sheer interest level of a western with THIS cast compels one to watch. And the nice thing is that, although RED SUN never becomes a classic Western, it DOES get better and better as it goes along. Thumbnail synopsis: a band of outlaws led by Link (Charles Bronson) holds up a train. On board happens to be the ambassador of the newly-opened-to-the-West Japan; this man is bringing a gift of a gilded ceremonial sword to the U.S. President. Before the train robbery is completed, however, Link's second-in-command Gauche (Alain Delon) double-crosses Link and blows up the train car Link is standing in; Gauche also makes off with the prized sword after killing one of the two samurai guarding the ambassador. Link is not killed, however, and is revived by the ambassador; who tells Link that he must help his samurai Kuroda (Toshiro Mifune) recover the sword in 7 days or else he'll have Kuroda cut Link's head off and the entire Japanese delegation will commit hari-kiri. 
Link and Kuroda set off on foot tracking the treacherous bandits while sparring with each other verbally and physically along the way. It's basically your "odd couple" thrown together by circumstance. After several deadly encounters, Link and Kuroda abduct Gauche's "girlfriend" Cristina (Ursula Andress) and propose to trade her for the gold and the sword.
Director Terence Young is probably most famous for directing a trio of James Bond films (DR. NO, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE and THUNDERBALL) as well as THE VALACHI PAPERS with Bronson and the rather abysmal BLOODLINES. Young's directing here is rather uneven; the bickering relationship between Bronson and Mifune as they travel through desert wastes can sometimes come off a little twee while at other times it works beautifully.
Ditto in the form of one awkwardly-done scene alternating with a truly skillful one. Bronson is nowhere near as effective as he was in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST but he is still rather charming and good fun. Mifune, however, is very impressive and his samurai commands the screen just as if he was in a Kurosawa film. Particularly in the fight scenes Mifune conducts himself beautifully with an impressive physical performance; he also provides the single most moving bit of acting in the film as he gives a speech explaining how his illustrious family have fought and died honourably for 400 years and the samurai way of life is slowly disappearing now that Japan has opened itself up to the West. Also there is nothing like seeing a sword-wielding Toshiro Mifune hacking his way through a band of outlaws or charging through attacking Comanches with sword a-flashing. Simply beautiful. Ursula Andress is suitably treacherous and rather badass in her role as basically the villain's moll; she gets her kit off which is also appreciated. Alain Delon seems to be having a good time as he gets to (very slightly) ham it up a little. Stir into this international stew noted film composer Maurice Jarre who did the score. Unfortunately for Jarre fans, this score is rather repetitive and not one of his best efforts. Another interesting aspects is filming the climax in a field of tall grass which surely must force the viewer to recall the waving grasses of ONIBABA. 
For the simple novelty factor alone, RED SUN is worth watching. I mean, where else are you gonna find Bronson, Mifune AND Delon in the same movie together. And as long as you're not expecting a classic, this western is something every film fan will probably appreciate.
We all know that Hollywood is still worshipping at the altar of CGI; that bloodless, ephemeral, lightweight form of special effects which is peculiarly unengaging and lacking in any sense of reality, weight or substance. The original CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981) was not what I would call a classic; however, at least the "dynamation" of the creatures by Ray Harryhausen has a feeling of reality and weight which CGI cannot match. Harryhausen's stop motion figures also have their own unique personalities which ALL of the CGI effects creatures in the remake sorely lack. Can it really be possible that nearly ten years after Peter Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS Hollywood is STILL lagging so far behind in the CGI department. I would liken the CGI creatures in CLASH OF THE TITANS (and most of the other recent Hollywood blockbusters, for that matter) as shadowy, insubstantial creatures that have only slightly more interaction with the live actors than rear-screen projection monsters in KILLERS FROM SPACE! But enough about the woeful CGI debacle. . .
The acting. This is another problem Hollywood seems to have and that is they can't seem to find anyone who has a personality. Their are only two "name" actors in CLASH: those being Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes. Both men have done fine work in the past. While Neeson is not anywhere near as somnambulistic as he was in 1999's STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM SCREENPLAY, he is not much better here. Fiennes does a slightly better job only in that he hams it up a little (and God knows this movie needs SOME life pumped into it). It's disconcerting, however, to speculate that Fiennes may have stolen Anders Hove's vocal performance as Radu in the SUBSPECIES series of films. Our "nominal" hero of the film is Sam Worthington (as Perseus) and he is as bland, lifeless and lacking in any spark of personality as he was in that other yawnfest called AVATAR. Granted, actors nowadays are pretty much second thoughts in movies of this kind and the special effects are meant to carry the film. However, as I've mentioned, the not-so-special effects certainly DON'T carry the film so we would like to see at least a couple actors stand out. And this brings me to my next point: there are a passle of guys hanging around Perseus. Apparently they're from the army of the city threatened with destruction. I'm not going to go into the actors who played them or the characters' names or anything like that because all during the movie I never knew their names or if, in fact, they were meant to be anything but interchangeable stick figures. So that's pretty much that.
The director is Louis Leterrier: the "household name" who brought us the underwhelming THE INCREDIBLE HULK a couple years ago. Another needless remake since the 2003 Ang Lee HULK was lightyears better. But that's another tale. Anyway, Leterrier doesn't seem to know how to a) tell a story properly, b) instill any sense of threat or suspense or, indeed, any involvement on the audience's part whatsoever. He has a frequent habit of lapsing into handheld camera for no particular reason; I suppose the cameraman was a drunken Spartan with burrs in his sandals. By the end of the film when the final credits ran, I was still waiting for the movie to start. Unfortunately, it never did. After seeing the events of the movie unfold before me, my overwhelming response was "So what". And oh, the look of the film. It certainly doesn't help when the overwhelming colour scheme of the movie is brown, brown and brown. If you're a fan of mud, you should love it! But for the rest of us, the unrelenting sameness of the film's look is extremely tiring. 
Now about the story. Or screenplay. Or whatever. If you have even a passing familiarity with Greek mythology, this movie will annoy the living shit out of you. Someone please tell me why Hollywood seems to think that a story which has stood the test of time for over 2000 years needs to be screwed with. Now, if an improvement is made then I'm all for it. Unfortunately, every "alteration" in the Perseus myth is for the worse and, even more to the point, doesn't make any sense in the movie itself. Let's not get into the fact that they portray Hades (Ralph Fiennes) like he's the Dark Lord Sauron when Hades was never evil (at least no more evil than any of the other Greek gods). Let's not discuss how Perseus is made to be some anti-gods iconoclast who hates the Olympians (even though he is the son of Zeus) but, at the same time, takes aid from Zeus. (Huh?!?). Let's not discuss how the giant monster scorpions are fought for about 5 minutes and then spend the rest of the movie being ridden around by our Greeks like Shetland ponies (!). Do we need mention how Medusa has the face of a Valley Girl, apparently? Is it necessary to go on about the stupidly conceived "power struggle" which finds Hades trying to "overthrow" Zeus in order to . . . what I wonder? Who knows. He's already Lord of the Underworld and the dominions of Zeus, Poseidon and Hades were amicably agreed to by the three brothers eons before this point. Oh, and there's that little thing about Hades not being evil in the first place. There can be no real explanation as well for Zeus' "knight in shining armour" appearance because, as we all know, this kind of armour was the latest fashion in ancient Greece. And finally, don't ask me why Pegasus is there since the famous flying horse doesn't really feature in the plot. If all of these little plot points seem to you to read like a hot mess, then you have a vague idea of what sitting through the movie will be like: you will be shaking your head and mouthing "What?!?" about every five minutes or so since there isn't any real internal logic in the film itself.
I went into CLASH OF THE TITANS hoping I'd like it (especially since the original 1981 version was, well, flawed). However, the film was just sooooooo dull and uninvolving that I ended up just getting more and more annoyed. Hollywood has once again managed to turn a rip-roaring adventure tale into a CGI yawn. The viewer would be much better served by passing up this bit of cinematic styrofoam and seeking out last year's History Channel dvd of the documentary series "CLASH OF THE GODS" in which many different myths (including the Perseus tale in the episode concerning Medusa) are depicted with style, artfulness and a great deal more fun, adventure and imagination. How badly does THAT bode for the creative bankruptcy of Hollywood's "Dream Factory" these days when a TV documentary series on the History Channel can out-fun a major Hollywood blockbuster. I hear there's a CLASH OF THE TITANS 2 in the pipeline. If you go see THAT one, you deserve whatever dreck you get. 
Director Juan Lopez Moctezuma was part of the "new wave" of Mexican directors following in the wake of Alejandro Jodorowski et. al. who specialized in what they liked to call "Panic" cinema; that is, putting enough raw, confrontational emotion up on the screen as to break down the audience's staid reactions. ALUCARDA goes a fair distance towards this goal. However, the well-known quote about the film from Psychotronic's Michael Weldon that the film has "more blood, loud screaming and nudity than any horror film I can think of" is actually quite misleading since it makes one think the film is a trashy exploitation sleazefest when actually it's a quite artfully made trashy exploitation sleazefest. The blood, while there is a lot of it, never became gory and the screaming, while there is also a lot of it, somehow wasn't as annoying as it usually is to me. Perhaps it has something to do with the images on the screen (which were almost lovingly shot by cinematographer Xavier Cruz) or the gothic, very organic sets (nightmarishly realized by Kleomenes Stamatiades). At times, ALUCARDA plays like the bastard child of Jesus Franco and Luis Bunuel. And as for the nudity? Well . . . yeah, there's plenty of that.
ALUCARDA surprised me first of all by not being a vampire film. Despite the "Dracula-spelled-backwards" title and the "story" credit from J. Sheridan LeFanu's "Carmilla", I'd be hard-pressed to point to more than a moment or two in the film where anything "vampiric" seems to be happening. Once or twice, maybe, but most of the film is a "Satanic possession"-type movie; evidence of this being that ALUCARDA is most often compared with Ken Russell's "THE DEVILS" and William Friedkin's "THE EXORCIST". While there are strong parallels with both films, there is also more than a passing resemblance to Brian D
The overly-helpful Sister Angelica (played with subliminal lesbian coding by Tina French) escorts the girl to her room/cell and leaves her with the promise that she can come to her with any of her needs. No sooner does Sister Angelica depart than Alucarda appears in the room. The word "appears" is deliberate because, in the first stunning shot of the film, Alucarda seems to coalesce behind Justine as if a shadow has suddenly taken concrete form. This immediately leads us to suspect that Alucarda is no ordinary girl. In a pre-credit sequence, Alucarda's mother (also played by Tina Romero) gives birth in a barn midwifed by a goatish shepherd. Is the baby's father Satan himself? We are never clued in to her father's identity but the hint is there. Before any time at all, Justine and Alucarda are as close as sisters . . . on the way to becoming even closer. An encounter with the self-same goatish shepherd/magic charm vendor leads the girls into devotion to the devil before one can say "teen spirit". 
The goaty-guy presides over a nude lesbian scene in which he pierces each girl's breast and feeds the blood to the other. Things quickly spiral towards an all-out satanic orgy (in which the horned one makes his customary appearance). Before long, the two girls are shouting "Praise Satan" in religious classes and tempting a monk with some rumpy-pumpy.
Now, the interesting thing about this film is that we have been shown that Alucarda and now Justine are absolutely worshipping Satan here. However, the following sequence in which both girls are strapped to a cross and subjected to the "ordeal" of the church are so distasteful that we actually root for the Satan-worshipping teens. The anti-clericalism of Moctezuma's film is quite evident; however it's still not that simple because, however much we dislike the self-flagellating nuns and seemingly fanatical monk, the conclusion of the film shows us that they were, in fact, right all along. Claudio Brook's man of science Dr. Oszek bursts in and breaks up this distasteful "religious ritual" and berates them for their medieval torture methods; however after his blind daughter is threatened by Alucarda he quickly backs God's team. Incidentally, another interesting casting choice is that Claudio Brook's also plays the goatish shepherd role as well. Twinning is an ongoing theme in the film with these two double castings as well as the remarkable two red bugs examined by
As I've said, ALUCARDA has a sumptuous look (helped indeed by Mondo Macabro's dvd struck from the original negative). The crumbling convent looks as though it literally grew out of the earth and another building is draped with red cloth from every window. The main prayer/teaching room in the convent features a back wall sunken in shadows with vague carved figures (including the crucified Christ -- actually it looks like a MULTITUDE of crucified Christs) hanging as if leviating behind a sea of lighted candles. Actually, this scene looks very much like Tintoretto's painting of the last supper (which had hosts of ghostly angels hovering above as if composed of smoke from the candles). Compare them, children, and you just see if they don't!
Moctezuma does not go overboard towards surrealism but uses it sparingly in service to the film. The same cannot be said for his first film THE MANSION OF MADNESS (based on the Edgar Allan Poe story "The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether") which is something of an incoherent mess with flashes. The director's anticlericalism is pronounced but, as I've said, is undermined by the director's making the point that the church, however distasteful, was actually right all along. Also in contrast to THE MANSION OF MADNESS, ALUCARDA moves along at a fairly nice clip with very few draggy stretches; the earlier film was almost nothing BUT draggy stretches. The final image in the film -- the life-sized Christ on the cross enveloped in flames -- is a suitably enigmatic visual which can be read several different ways. All in all, ALUCARDA was something of a pleasant surprise: offering much more than I expected. A little too arty to be exploitation and a little too exploitative to be a critic's darling, ALUCARDA made little money or impact upon it's initial release and critics virtually ignored it. In recent years, however, it's becoming something of a cult film. Whatever ALUCARDA is, though, it's certainly an interesting and thought-provoking experience.
I am a confirmed lover of the neglected places of life: the off-the-beaten-path, the road less taken, the forgotten and overlooked, the mercifully free of crowds. I prefer the secluded corner to the wide-open spaces. My first home as a child had a large basement of exposed cinder-block walls. This subterranean dungeon contained the abandoned detritus left by a departed father: old-fashioned furniture, a desk, a work bench with tools hanging on the peg board above it - the outlines of hammers and saws exactly drawn around them in black magic marker. Sometimes the basement would flood after a heavy rain. Shades of Gormenghast! I discovered a few old paperbacks down there (2 of which appear above) as well as some old textbooks containing various short stories for somebody's long-ago English class. These books may have belonged to anyone; I still don't know. However, I have them all still. A much similar event to this happened in the young life of Stephen King (as relating in his excellent but dated study of horror 
There is just such a haven of books calling to me now; a place where the bookshelves do indeed go on and on across two storeys. A place that sits quietly in the small town of Mullica Hill on the banks of the Mullica River. Couched among the antique shops awaits Murphy's Loft. Back in the mid-1980's my cousin Loran and I both attended Glassboro State College (now Rowan University). During a blazing hot summer day in May, we both decided to ditch classes and make the not-inconsiderable drive to Mullica Hill. Along the way, the sky darkened to an angry purple and the roiling, lowering clouds assured us that we were in for a violent summer storm. Would we even make Mullica Hill before the downpour? Well, just as we pulled into the gravel drive which led us behind the house where Murphy's Loft lies, the skies opened up in a torrential rain. We ran for the door and stumbled into the bookstore. It was silent as a tomb; that particular complete silence which is amplified by the contrasting white noise of the rain outside. It was also very dark inside the book shop. No lights except for one tiny bulb burning over a desk - dimly picking out the faint edges of countless spines of books everywhere. Hello? Was anybody there? It didn't look like it. Perhaps the proprietor had been dragged into the walls by a huge, slug-like creature like one pictured on the cover of some old issue of 
I leant upon a coppice gate
The story opens with the retelling of the legend of the 3 royal crowns of Anglia as the camera pans a chilly and deserted beach. An archaeologist is seen digging on a small hill. A strange cloaked man insists there is "No digging!" When the archaeologist brushes him aside, the strange man grabs a weapon (is that a bill hook?) and basically hacks the archaeologist to death with it. 
12 years later we find an amateur treasure hunter named Paxton vacationing at the same location on the Norfolk coast. He appears to be out of work and, toting a book called "The Legend of the Anglian Crowns", 
plans on doing a little digging around. It's the off season, so the only other guest in the hotel is a Dr. Black: a frequent lodger who likes to come to the area to paint landscapes. 
During a visit to the local ancient church, the vicar tells Paxton that the locals still believe in the legend and, in fact, there was a family called Ager who had traditionally been charged with guarding the crowns against snoopers. In fact, 12 years before William Ager, the last of his line, had murdered an archaeologist who was searching for the crown. Ager now lies buried in the cemetery by the church. Boots, the caretaker of the hotel, denies having ever heard of the Ager family but Paxton is unconvinced. Paxton finds a journal having belonged to William Ager in a rare book store and tracks down Ager's former house. The woman living there complains of seeing a tramp who has been hanging around the woods. 
All during these searches, Paxton is vaguely aware of a distant, cloaked figure who seems to be following him and staring. Telling Boots that he must return to London for the night on business, Paxton instead hops a train with his shovel and goes out to where his research seems to hint the crown may be buried; yes, it's the exact same spot the archeologist was murdered. Paxton begins digging -- but he has the uneasy feeling of being watched. After night falls, Paxton unearths a human skull then a spearhead and finally the royal crown of Anglia. 
Thoroughly spooked at this point, Paxton secretes the crown about his person and begins to leave -- only to be chased by the terrifying figure. The next day Paxton boards the train and, as he is waiting for it to depart, a porter opens the door as if to usher another passenger into the car. However, there is no one there. Paxton hides the crown inside his suitcase in his hotel room and notices Ager's journal has been sliced to ribbons. A mysterious, wheezing cough is heard in the room next door -- where no one is staying. Later, Paxton encounters Dr. Black painting a beach scene. Black points out that there is a figure standing in the distance. 
Paxton eventually tells Black about the crown and, completely wigged out by now, asks the doctor to accompany him while he returns the crown to where he found it. Now Paxton is convinced he is being stalked by the ghost of William Ager and he will find no peace until the crown is returned. Later, while alone in his room, Paxton is suddenly plunged into darkness as the candles are extinguished. Strange sounds are heard within the room and, panning a torch across the room Paxton catches a glimpse of a ghastly pale figure squatting down over the suitcase containing the crown. 
He screams in horror. Boots and Dr. Black enter to find Paxton alone and sobbing over the suitcase. Paxton and Black return to the excavation site later that night. Black stands watch with a torch while Paxton re-buries the crown. All the time the ghost of Ager watches from the nearby woods. 
The next morning, Dr. Black suggest Paxton and he go for a walk. The two men depart as Boots watches. Moments later, Dr. Black emerges from the hotel asking Boots if he's seen Paxton. Flabbergasted, Boots informs Dr. Black that Paxton just went off with someone he swore was the doctor. Dr. Black hurries off in the direction they went. Eventually he catches up enough to see Paxton being chased by the mysterious figure and running for his life. It seems returning the crown will not be enough to appease the vengeful spirit. What happens next? Well, I won't spoil it. Suffice it to say that the ending underlines the fact that one should not meddle in otherworldly events.
A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS is a thoroughly creepy and, at times, genuinely frightening experience. Anyone having seen WHISTLE AND I'LL COME TO YOU however will no doubt notice a STRONG resemblence between this film and the earlier one. The bleak seaside setting, the buried object, the ghostly watcher from afar. However, even with the strong sense of deja vu while watching, I believe the viewer will find A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS to be a thoroughly enjoyable, flesh-crawling fright. Peter Vaughan plays the part with wonderful understatement. Paxton is not out to harm anyone -- he simply wants to make a name for himself and feel important. The viewer will feel a great sympathy towards Paxton when, after having taken that foolish fatal step, he can seem to find no way to extricate himself from the terrible mess he's place himself into. There are a couple truly frightening moments; the scene in the darkened hotel room is a chilling highlight. All in all, A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS is a deft and sure realization of a truly spooky ghost story. Watching it in the dark on a windy night will no doubt have you crawling out of your skin! 
The documentary itself is a little on the "cursory" or "lightweight" side and has now been far outshone by the more recent "THE WITCH'S DUNGEON: 40 YEARS OF CHILLS" dvd. Nevertheless, HALLOWEEN: THE HAPPY HAUNTING OF AMERICA is well-worth catching; especially in it's newer 2-disc 10th anniversary dvd which includes a brand-new 2007 documentary which is basically H:THHOA Part 2. Roebuck takes up residence in California's Magic Castle (the scene of Boris Karloff's recording of his classic LP "An Evening with Boris Karloff & His Friends"). The second installment of the documentary does boast higher production values (since the original seems to have been shot on video and is a little blurry). 
Also included on the second disc are a welcome grouping of special features including a live on stage magic performance by Roebuck in his Dr. Shocker guise which attempts to replicate the early 20th century Spook Shows of lore. Besides "Dr. Shocker's Halloween Spooktacular", the dvd also boasts a photo tour of Roebuck's personal horror museum "Dr. Shocker's House of Horrors", and a round table discussion about horror called "Raw Talk" featuring Roebuck, Williams, Tony Todd, Christa Campbell, John Gulager and Don Coscarelli.
Oh yes, I have to mention my favourite line in the film and the only laugh-out-loud moment in the whole proceedings. In the prison camp hospital ward, the German warders play phonograph records of Beethoven. As a German officer is leaving, he turns to the British POWs and states proudly: "Beethoven! Here's a good German!" Whereas immediately a British voice cheekily shouts back: "Yeah, he's DEAD!!!" My one qualm about the film is that the end snuck up on me rather suddenly. Of course, this is a truism in the entertainment world: "always leave them wanting more" and I did find myself wishing it had gone on a little longer. In the final analysis, I am not really predisposed towards the World War II prisoner-of-war movie. As is the case with any other genre, I only like it if it's a very good movie. THE GREAT ESCAPE, of course, is one. THE WOODEN HORSE is another.