It would be lovely if BBC2 revived the weekend horror double bills - great fun and it would give me a nice nostalgia hit.
Nice selection here, T … we need you at the ‘Beeb’ making these programming choices.
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le samourai
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Thank you, Aldo. 
I couldn’t do a worse job than the dross that is currently on the BBC…
Happy viewing, and keep watching out for my double/triple horror bills, on a Saturday night…
Coming attractions:
Two mummies, and a blood-thirsty Dracula…
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So last year I saw Friday the 13th (1980) and thought it was really poor. I loved the concept, but the execution was so poor, it´s a wonder it became so famous. Anyhoo, today I saw The Burning, a F13 ripoff, and it did everything the original film did, but better. The camerwork was very good, the characters were likeable, the writing, while not earth-shattering, was very good, the effects were sublime, and the film had tension. Despite being a knock-off of a knock-off, it was very good. So if anybody else liked the concept of Friday the 13th, but thought it was very poorly executed, watch The Burning!
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Last night: The Iron Claw (Durkin, 2023)
Throughout the 70s and on into the mid 80s, former wrestler Jack “Fritz” Von Erich ran a wrestling promotion out of Texas called WCCW or World Class Championship Wrestling. By the late 70s the stars of the promotion were his own sons Kevin (the older brother, the better pure wrestler) and David (by far the better mic worker and therefore the better all-round wrestling entertainer). Fritz had had a son prior to Kevin but he’d died aged six. He’d had another three sons after David, too: Kerry, Mike, and Chris*. By the time Fritz Von Erich died in 1997, all but one of his sons had predeceased him.
This all-too-real-life pile-up of tragedy upon tragedy was known as “The Von Erich Curse”, and is the subject of The Iron Claw (named after the Von Erich family submission hold), starring a Hulk-like Zac Efron as Kevin Von Erich and Lily James as Pam, Kevin’s eventual wife.
I had a kind of grim fascination with the Von Erichs over the late 80s and early 90s when the bulk of their troubles befell them although, given we only received WWF (as was) programming over here in the UK and there was no YouTube or internet to inform me, I was only able to keep up via my monthly copy of Pro Wrestling Illustrated. The only Von Erich to enjoy significant WWF airtime was Kerry, also known as The Texas Tornado, when he enjoyed a run - including a short stint as the Intercontinental Champion - in WWF from 90-92(ish) and, even then, Kerry was carrying a quite stupefying personal setback about which I knew absolutely nothing until long after his WWF tenure had ended.
So how was the movie? Well, I was probably always going to like it because of my interest in the subject matter, no matter how heavy it might become (and it does). Still, I couldn’t help but feel that some of the beats of their respective careers were rushed through, to such a degree that, if I hadn’t had foreknowledge of their lives, I wouldn’t have been able to keep pace with the events on the screen (or at the very least been suitably invested in their plight). That said, mrs.caress had no prior knowledge of the Von Erich family whatsoever and she enjoyed it.
*Chris Von Erich, the youngest of the Von Erich boys, was almost 22 when he committed suicide by gunshot in 1991. However, his entire existence has been omitted from the movie altogether. Writer/director Sean Durkin felt that it was just one tragedy too many for a two hour movie to be able to withstand. I disagree with this omission, but I understand Mr. Durkin’s reasoning.
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This looks great, and I can’t wait to see it somewhere down the line.
A great summary of the film, Asa.
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Last 10:
- Franco: Virgin Among the Living Dead 8/10
- Scott Pilgrim vs the World 8/10
- Cassavetes: The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (cinema) 5/10
- Girdler: Manitou (cinema) 4/10
- Freda: Horrible dr. Hichcock 6/10
- Mann: Bend of the River 7/10
- Itami: Tampopo 6/10
- Pakula: Comes a Horseman 7/10
- Franco: Greta The Wicked Warden 5/10
- Szulkin: GA-GA: Glory to the Heroes 7/10
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Tell me this is an error in scoring ??? There’s something terribly wrong here !
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I know right? Scott Pilgrim is easily a 9! 
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Scott Pilgrim is kinda guilty pleasure for me. Stupid but entertaining eye candy.
Chinese Bookie… I haven’t yet seen Cassavetes film I have truly liked and Bookie just seemed the most pointless I’ve seen so far.
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Saturday night is triple ‘Horror’ night… 
To start, two ‘Hammer’ classics, from 1956 and 1968…
And, to finish, this shocker from 2010.
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Waterworld - Ulysses Cut
I have a soft spot for this film and the longer cut makes it better I think.
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Burn! (a.k.a. Queimada) (1969) D-Gillo Pontecorvo. Starring Marlon Brando, Evaristo Marquez, and Renato Salvatori. Co-written by Franco Solinas. Soundtack by Ennio Morricone. Produced by Alberto Grimaldi.
I just watched Gillo Pontecorvo’s ‘Burn!’ for the first time in years. Director Pontecorvo and screenwriter Solinas (A Bullet for the General, The Big Gundown, Tepepa) teamed up to make another commentary on anti-colonialism after the 1966 movie, The Battle of Algiers. This time, the drama centers around the Caribbean island of Queimada in the early-1800s. Queimada is a Portuguese colony with an economy run on sugar plantations and is ripe for a slave revolt.
Brando plays Sir William Walker is an agent provocateur for British intelligence who recruits a local ragamuffin named Jose Dolores (Marquez) to lead a slave revolt against the Portuguese colonial government. The Portuguese are defeated, slavery is abolished and Dolores is hailed as a freedom fighter by Walker and the new republican government, run by the sugar plantation owners. However, not content to let Queimada be run by a puppet government answerable only to the sugar plantation interests, Dolores leads his army in a guerrilla war against the Queimada government, Walker, and British imperial interests.
Fans of SW’s will see some familiar faces from the Italo-western cinematic pantheon, like Joseph Persaud (Girano, the Flamenco of Death-dancing bandito in Adios, Sabata), Franco Fantasia (the circus owner in the beginning of Return of Sabata), and Giampiero Albertini (Irish patriarch Joe McIntock, also in Return of Sabata). All the Sabata alumni make sense when we consider the film’s producer, Alberto Grimaldi. Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack from Burn! is just as distinct, identifiable and haunting as the film itself.
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That’s Gitano, which just means gypsy
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Yep. That’s the auto-correct for ya 
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Lone Star Criterion Blu-Ray
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The Big Combo - Noir with Lee Van Cleef
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Saturday night is ‘Horror Night Triple Bill’… 
This week, gory offerings from 1958, 1971, and 2003.
1958 ‘The Trollenburg Terror’, AKA ‘The Crawling Eye’
1971 One of ‘Hammer Studios’ best later offerings…
2003 A remake of the classic 1971 ‘Willard’ original.
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Last night: V/H/S/85 (Guerrero/Bruckner/Kermani/Nelson/Derrickson, 2023)
The sixth and most recent entry into the now 12 year-old found-footage horror anthology franchise (and the third in three years since horror streaming platform Shudder took ownership of it), in which up-and-coming new voices within the genre mix with horror veterans in submitting short, mostly unconnected tales of terror held tenuously together by the premise that said tales have been uncovered on grungy VHS tapes, lending them all a grim, voyeuristic “video nasty” aura.
This latest doesn’t stray from the formula so if you’re at all familiar with the V/H/S movies you’ll know exactly what you’re getting into here but, where the quality between shorts often veers wildly from fantastic to f#ckawful, V/H/S/85 is possibly the most consistent entry of the bunch; a largely satisfying crop with no clear standout - I think my favourite might’ve been the Spanish-language God of Death from Gigi Saul Guerrero in which the very real Mexico City earthquake of 1985 briefly opens up a shrine to an ancient Aztec deity - but where the weakest entry (TKNOGD, in which a performance artist incorporates a proto-VR segment into her act and gets more than she bargained for) isn’t all that far behind the others.
If you like a low-budget, gnarly horror or two, V/H/S/85 (and, indeed, the V/H/S franchise generally) comes recommended. If you don’t like one tale, another will be along in a minute.
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