The promise of this Jack McHenry written and directed movie is straightforward: “Let’s take the micky out of the old Agatha Christie rip-off movies of the 30s”. It’s a simple, evocative, and, to the right kind of person, enthralling concept, and about the first 20 minutes of the film do a good job of it. But, much like the best murder mysteries, things suddenly go awry in the best possible manner. Continue reading
Because “Why not?”, and as it makes picking viewing easier, Trash Or Treasure is going through every movie in “Science Fiction – Double Feature”, the opening song for that trash culture classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
This week
Then at a deadly pace
It Came From Outerspace
And this is how the message ran…
Because “Why not?”, and as it makes picking viewing easier, Trash Or Treasure is going through every movie in “Science Fiction – Double Feature”, the opening song for that trash culture classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
This week
Then something went wrong
For Fay Wray and King Kong
They got caught in a celluloid jam
Whilst this touts itself as “HG Wells’ The Invisible Man”, it’s fair to say that certain liberties have been taken in transferring the classic novel to the silver screen. It’s also fait to say that given the source now being 125 years old, and the basic “man goes invisible, then goes batshit” plot being intact, that the average viewer these days won’t notice. They also, with some rather impressively preserved copies being available at a crisp 2k, won’t notice any problems with the sound or images.
Because “Why not?”, and as it makes picking viewing easier, Trash Or Treasure is going through every movie in “Science Fiction – Double Feature”, the opening song for that trash culture classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
This week
Claude Rains was The Invisible Man
When Hammer Films decided to break away from the dramas and comedies that were the staples of their first twenty years of ripping off Ealing Studios, they did so with “The Quatermass Xperiment”; a remake of the 1953 BBC Television series written by Nigel Kneale. The studio was over the moon when it got an X rating for all it’s terror and tension, ensuring that everyone would want to see it and that the press would hate it. Combined with ground-breaking special effects, the cultural excitement of the then-not-even-named “Space Race”, and the marketing genius of putting it in cinemas the same weekend as when the BBCs Quatermass 2 series started, it was an amazing financial success. Thus, Hammer immediately started work on a follow up film, with only the slight snag of Nigel Kneale telling them they couldn’t use any of his work or characters because Hammer had changed so much with the first one.
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Giving recommendations on movies from the early part of cinema history is always a tricky thing, because they all have a similar aesthetic that can’t be avoided. For a start, due to a combination of technical restrictions and the shadow of the theatre, the pace is always slow to modern tastes. The visuals of sci-fi and horror were also far more constrained, partly to avoid the censor’s knife and partly as the audience would be disappointed if either saw them in the full eye of the camera. The result of this is that old black and white films often fall into the pigeonholes marked “artefact of genre history”, for those seeking enlightenment, or “kitsch novelty items”, for those who like a good eye roll. Both miss the point that these films can just be fun in their own right. The She-Creature, a 1965 B-Movie originally on a double bill with It Conquered the World, is a great example of this. It’s not a might perfect movie, now as then, but it certainly has charms to offer a willing audience.
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