The Cinematic Alphabet

This year's blog post will be one suggested by the great Rupert Pupkin over at Rupert Pupkin Speaks.

Sayeth he:

My friend Sherrie over at Citizenrobot came up with this list idea and I think it's a fun one. Along with our friend Sean over at Cinema-Scope we've all decided to put together our Cinematic Alphabets. Favorite films for each letter. Forget about Dr. Seuss, this is how I plan to teach my little girl her ABCs. We invite other bloggers to join us in putting out their own alphabets and are very curious what others' lists will look like!

So here's my stab at it. 26 favourites which are, to paraphrase critic David Thomson, "masterpieces, oddities, guilty pleasures and classics (with just the odd disaster)"


A is for All That Heaven Allows



B is for The Bravados



C is for Christmas In July



D is for Dark Passage



E is for The Exorcist III



F is for Force Of Evil



G is for The Great Silence



H is for High Anxiety



I is for I, Madman



J is for Jacob’s Ladder



K is for King Of New York



L is for The Last Embrace



M is for Midnight Run



N is for Necronomicon



O is for Out For Justice



P is for A Place In The Sun



Q is for Quiz Show



R is for Retribution



S is for The Seven-Ups



T is for Torso



U is for Umberto D.



V is for Vault Of Horror



W is for Waxwork



X is for XXX2



Y is for Young Sherlock Holmes



Z is for Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession

2010 In Pictures #8

1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982)
Dir: Enzo G. Castellari

Must I revoke my Mondo card for being weirdly underwhelmed by Enzo Castellari’s The Bronx Warriors? Mad Max and Doomsday aside, I feel I’m just not a fan of the post-apocalyptic stuff. This includes Escape From New York. I simply can’t shake the feeling that the overwhelming majority of the genre consists of a lot of aimless wandering around building sites avoiding shadey characters who weren't able to get into variety of terrible nightclubs.

It’d be disingenuous to not admit a few of stand-out moments which enliven the narrative stagnation, though albeit momentarily.

* the excellent random dummer who accompanies an early death scene. He's plainly the star of the show
* Fred Williamson in his extraordinarily array of exceedingly camp silk shirts
* Vic Morrow laughing both in and out of a helicopter.

However, there are two major problems which are insurmountable.

Major problem #1 is with The Bronx Warriors's post-apocalyptic status: it is not actually set after any discernable apocalypse.
Major problem #2 is with The Bronx Warriors’ location: many scenes in the BRONX Warriors are demonstrably filmed in BROOKLYN and STATEN ISLAND.

Having said this, Shameless Screen Entertainment's DVDs are, regardless of the film's individual merits, pretty indispensible for any exploitation fans' cinema library.

2010 In Pictures #7

The Exterminator (1980)
Dir: James Glickenhaus

The reputation of this James Glickenhaus film, at least to me who has only just caught up with this delightfully sleazy piece of post-grindhouse exploitation cinema, has been sketched out as that of a cheap Death Wish knock-off. Which is wildly unfair, given the tone, atmosphere and peculiar poise Glickenhaus lends both his screenplay and the direction of his performers.

Like William Lustig’s Vigilante -- and more importantly very *unlike* Michel Winner’s more coldly punitive Death Wish -- there's a begrudging love of New York here. Winner has a foreigner’s detachment which screams like a tabloid headline whereas The Exterminator and Vigilante possesses the weary deference to violence as a way of life, something to be rallied against at the cost of a man’s soul rather than his quest for simple blood vengeance. This what is drives these latter "knock offs".

It’s something Glickenhaus’s film shares with its more overt forebear: John Flynn’s Rolling Thunder. There, too, a man who was once demonstrably human has returned from Vietnam a virtual automaton, his moral compass skewed so that his primary mode of behaviour is a terrifyingly measured, primal and, most chilling of all, *lucid* defense of his fellow citizens at the mercy of the ruthless, avaricious and plain wicked. There’s even a yearning country ballad (reprised, bizarrely but just as hauntingly in The Ninth Configuration) that's evocative of a happier, simpler and more heartfelt era, accompanying the opening credits.

The Exterminator is the best kind of reactionary cinema. Sombre and sorrowful nihilism without resorting to tabloid didacticism to make its points.

2010 In Pictures #6

Play Time (1967)
Dir: Jacques Tati

Utterly beguiling Jacques Tati comedy-fantasy-tableaux…*thing*. It’s almost indescribable. Though it has no story, no real central characters and no set pieces to speak of, it’s surreal, very funny and dazzlingly constructed in every way. One of those pictures which it’s difficult to fathom was actually crated by somebody. A remarkable and quite lovely experience.

2010 In Pictures #5

Un Sulla Ultra (Perversion Story) (1969)
Dir: Lucio Fulci

...in which, strangely for a Fulci, there’s not an awful lot of *actual* perversion. This was 1968 for Cthulhu’s sake: was sleeping around considered perverse?? It has a fabulous Riz Ortalani score and great last act twist that is kind of E.C. Comics in its own way and I certainly didn’t see it coming. I wonder if Clint Eastwood saw it before he made True Crime? (Joke. Sort of.)

2010 In Pictures #4

The Seven Ups (1973)
Dir: Philip D'Antoni

Producer-turned-director Philip D’Antoni’s hard-nosed cop thriller is the mid-point between Lumet and Friedkin. The slow burn drama of Prince Of The City collides with bursts of tight, terrific action that, while not quite matching the intensity of The French Connection, honestly, blows Bullitt out of the water. The car chase conjured up here is a real jaw-dropper and inexplicably unheralded when discussing great vehicular mayhem.

2010 In Pictures #3

The Children (2008)
Dir: Tom Shankland