Monday, December 31, 2012

Episode #216: Up Tight!

Welcome to our episode sponsored by our good friends over at boulevardmovies.com!!!

This week it was Large William's choice and he chose Up Tight! (1968) directed by Jules Dassin and starring Ruby Dee and Roscoe Lee Browne amongst many others. We also cover a bit of feedback and you get a little discussion on a certain little western that was released in the last week.

Please continue to send feedback gang, we are behind a bit but we are thinking of doing a feedback show to get caught up. We love everyone that takes the time to send in an email or voicmail and we promise we will get to them!!!

Direct download: UpTight.mp3

Emails to midnitecinema@gmail.com

Voicemails 206-666-5207

Adios!!!




Saturday, December 29, 2012

Episode #215: Miami Dogs Connection

Welcome to our Christmas episode for 2012 and we have an action packed sleazefest in store for you this holiday!!!

This week the good folks at diabolikdvd.com have sponsored our show and Large William has selected Miami Connection (1987) directed by Y. K. Kim and Richard Park and Rabid Dogs AKA Kidnapped (1974) directed by the legendary Mario Bava, a film that was shelved for 23 years!!!

We hope you and yours have a great holiday season, much love from the GGtMC to all of you!!!

Direct download: Miami_Dogs_Connection.mp3

Emails to midnitecinema@gmail.com

Voicemails to 206-666-5207

Adios!!!





Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Circus Of Horrors (1960)


Dateline: England, 1947.  The police race to the home of Evelyn Morley (Colette Wilde), where the young-ish lady is in the process of smashing her boudoir to pieces dressed only in her skivvies.  You see, that rogue German plastic surgeon Dr. Rossiter (Anton Diffring) performed some illegal (?) work on the Ms. Morley, and now her face is a picture of grotesquery.  Fleeing down a winding road, Rossiter’s car explodes into flame as it careens down a mountainside.  Escaping by the skin of his teeth, Rossiter and his cronies, siblings Martin (Kenneth Griffith) and Angela (Jane Hylton), make their way to France.  There, Rossiter unveils his new face (pretty similar to the old one but no beard) and identity as Dr. Schüler, and he discovers that the scars of the recent war run deep.  The bad doc inveigles his way into ownership of Vanet’s (Donald Pleasence) circus by fixing the owner’s daughter Nicole’s (Carla Challoner as a youth, Yvonne Monlaur as a more mature youth) face.  The Circus Of Horrors rolls out.      

I cannot fathom getting plastic surgery, nor can I understand the compulsion people feel to do so voluntarily.  Certainly, the procedures have come a long way, and there are a great many folks who have benefited tremendously from the skilled hands of its practitioners, people who were maimed or deformed either by accident, intent, or caprice of nature.  But for those who feel that plastic surgery is some kind of fountain of youth, it is impossible to believe that they ever thought that it would do anything other than make them look even more risible and flat-out repellent than the ravages of time ever could.  They wind up resembling either crying-on-the-inside-style clowns or the sort of physical types Tod Browning would have given his eyeteeth to use in Freaks.  But one has to wonder; Have these people never seen someone who has had this kind of thing done?  Do they not realize that the odds on this operation having a positive outcome are slim to nil?  I can only assume that photos of plastic surgery disasters (apologies to Jello Biafra and Dead Kennedys) are banned in states like California.  Either that, or only blind people go in for plastic surgery.  The world may never know.

Sidney Hayer’s film (aka Le Cirque Des Horreurs aka Phantom Of The Circus) cannot really be classified as a Horror film, though it contains and is built on some horrific actions.  It was released the same year as both Psycho and Peeping Tom, and like those superlative films, tells the story of a psychopath (maybe more of a sociopath…).  Unlike those two films, though, Schüler does not struggle with the moral implications of his actions.  This is in part due to the fact that he is actually successful at what he does (professionally, anyway).  The prologue of the film doesn’t lay bare that he is a fraud perpetrating atrocities on people.  If anything, it’s the opposite, and we’re told this through his lackeys who comment that they have seen the doctor’s work firsthand restoring a child’s face.  Ms. Morley’s surgery was botched because she was trying to rush the procedures.  Her high-class sense of immediate gratification thwarts her own ends.  The audience doesn’t see Schüler’s previous successes, because one, Martin and Angela have no reason to deceive each other in private about the skills of their Teutonic compatriot, and two, the sight of Evelyn’s ugsome face attached to her come-hither body is both provocative and off-putting.  Of course, Schüler’s rampant narcissism is both his largest motivator and his greatest deficiency.  He cannot stand to not look perfect, and he desires this in those with whom he would associate romantically, the only exceptions to this being Martin and Angela.

Also in line with the Powell and Hitchcock films, the protagonist in this film is a voyeur.  But again, Schüler doesn’t hide this fact.  Unlike Norman Bates, who stares at his guests through holes in the wall, or Mark Lewis, who stares at his victims from behind his lethal camera’s lens, Schüler stands in the wings of the big top tent and gazes longingly at his objects of desire in full view of anyone who happens to be walking by and far more importantly, in front of Angela.  Angela desires Schüler’s gaze to be on her, and it is the one place it almost never is.  She cannot compete with his ideas of perfection in beauty, and her desperate fawning over the doctor’s every whim smacks of self-loathing.  In competition with Angela for Schüler’s gaze is Nicole, whose burgeoning sexuality she wants to offer up to the man who made her beautiful and in effect, created her as she is today.  Unlike Angela, though, when Nicole asks Schüler to look at her, he gladly does so, his eyes ravishing her every time.  And it is Nicole who will take the place of the circus’s top-billed attraction Magda (Vanda Hudson) and move up a notch in the head psycho’s estimation (when Schüler asks if Nicole loves him, she states, “Of course, I do.  You gave me life.”).  That this line isn’t pursued earnestly through to the end of the film and is, in effect, dropped once the direly bland and openly misogynistic Arthur (Conrad Phillips) shows up is frustrating, as it feels like the filmmakers went for the easier path, when they could have explored some truly dense and twisted areas of the human psyche.  

In a bizarre “beauty and the beast” way, Schüler enjoys looking at the obliteration of that which he bred and which has turned against him.  The women who he has transmogrified into beauties eventually reject Schüler’s amorous attentions, and since he cannot have them, no one can, and they must die.  His vainglorious nature calls for the death of those which he feels he deserves above all others.  And since his murders are all constructed to appear as accidents, he can smugly watch out in the open, innocence in his appearance, arousal in his gaze.  His hubris is boundless, and it requires constant feeding.  But like the cantankerous “gorilla” with whom he shares an animosity, ultimately it is Schüler’s inner base animal which will devour him.

MVT:  Anton Diffring’s performance is the perfect blend of charming exterior and chilling interior.  He doesn’t need to go big to get his point across, but even when he does, he is always convincing and disturbing, by turns.  This is a man you don’t want to be around, and the actor captures it masterfully, I think.

Make Or Break:  The knife throwing scene Makes the film for me.  We know what’s happening, we know what’s coming next, and even though the tension in the scene builds nicely, there is still a sense of aloofness in its depiction.  It’s almost as if Hayers is placing the audience in the same visual space as the film’s villain (something done throughout the film but which stands out in the murder scenes), so that we have the chance to experience the gaze the way Schüler may.  That we feel horrified rather than spent (or I did; I don’t know about you) at the scene’s climax is what differentiates us from the Schülers of the world.

Score:  6.75/10

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Friday, December 21, 2012

To All a Goodnight



In the VCR the 1980 slasher goes
Twenty minutes in and my anger grows
Nothing of interest has happened
I can barely see as the film is darkened
Fuck, fuck fuck! What a piece of shit! Fuck, fuck fuck! What a piece of shit!

Playing in the VCR, click, click, click
“To All a Goodnight” is starting to make me sick

Here come the characters who have no personality
Changing partners as if it’s a normality
A killer dressed as a Santa to do away with them
Not a single death is even a gem
Fuck, fuck fuck! What a piece of shit! Fuck, fuck fuck! What a piece of shit!

Playing in the VCR, click, click, click
“To All a Goodnight” is starting to make me sick

Here come the cops to save the day
Instead they just become more killer prey
Longer the film goes, the more bored I get
This is worse than being in financial debt
Fuck, fuck fuck! What a piece of shit! Fuck, fuck fuck! What a piece of shit!

Playing in the VCR, click, click, click
“To All a Goodnight” has officially made me sick!

MVT: The Christmas setting. Not that it made the film that much better.

Make or Break: The nerd who was offered sex by a sexy vixen and tried to turn her down. Bullshit!

Final Score: 2/10

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972)

Do most people actually have a favorite color?  I know mine seems to change each time the question comes up (which is not often, I grant you).  I mean, I can completely understand having a least favorite color (olive green aka puke, I’m looking at you), but do folks really have a color they absolutely can’t live without?  I suppose they must, since some people feel compelled to festoon their entire living space in one pigment (or slight variations in tone thereof) to the point of obnoxiousness.  I know, because I have worked in houses like that.  I have worked in a house where it was literally floor to ceiling white (we won’t get into additive and subtractive color theories here) with slight gold highlights.  My question would be why?  Why would you spend money decorating your house in a color which will get dirty the instant you breathe on it?  Never mind that it looks like a Kubrickian or Fuestian movie set, it’s completely impractical to me.  Between you, me, and the wall, I think this type of behavior reeks of obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Granted, it’s not as harmful as skinning people, because everyone is only beautiful on the inside or running around in a red cape killing people, but it’s still damned odd, to my point of view.  You don’t have to agree.  But you know you do, right?

Kitty Wildenbrück is a young, pleasant girl who likes to play with her red-dress-wearing dolly.  Her precocious sister Evelyn enjoys tormenting her sibling, and steals said toy.  Intruding on Grandfather Tobias’s (Rudolf Schündler) study, the sisters scream at each other until Evelyn is mesmerized by a rather gruesome painting on the wall.  Suddenly, the diminutive brunette is seized with an uncontrollable rage, and she proceeds to stab the doll to pieces.  Naturally, this is a good time for Tobias to tell the daughters about the family curse, wherein the Black Queen kills the Red Queen, because she didn’t want to share her man.  The Red Queen later returns from the grave and proceeds to kill six people (wait for it…), with the Black Queen being the final one (…and there’s the seven).  This curse rears its head every hundred years and is due to occur again in about fourteen more.  Leap forward fourteen years, and the adult Kitty (Barbara Bouchet) is now a photographer with a successful German fashion company and boinking the openly adulterous Martin (Ugo Pagliai).  But soon Grandfather Tobias is found dead, and a woman matching Evelyn’s description is seen fleeing the castle (of course, he lives in a castle) wearing a red cape and laughing maniacally.  The Red Queen has claimed her first victim.

Emilio Miraglia’s The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (aka La Dama Rossa Uccide Sette Volte aka The Lady In Red Kills Seven Times aka Cry Of A Prostitute: Love Kills) bears a few non-significant but definitely noticeable similarities to his The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave released the prior year.  Both focus on characters obsessed with someone they believe to be dead.  The deceased are both named Evelyn.  The two films include characters who have been (and probably still should be) locked in an asylum.  They both involve a mystery which is both more and less unbelievable than one would suspect at first glance.  Taken by themselves, there’s nothing all that outstanding about these similarities.  They are all common facets in the Giallo subgenre (excepting the name Evelyn, obviously), and Miraglia certainly knows his way around them.  However, what struck me the most in this film is how the subgenre’s devices are used in a dual capacity.

When we think of duality in film, we expect to be presented with double images as a visual metaphor.  Things like mirrors, reflections, and so forth are typical for this type of motif.  Miraglia doesn’t go that route, though, and I think that’s wise, because it is a practice which can just as easily tip its hand and give away all of the story’s surprises (Gialli being films difficult to second guess to begin with).  Doubles are things which can work better as a theme than as a story element.  It’s all in the user.

The main binary idea behind the film, to my mind, is in a juxtaposition of reality (or cinematic reality, at least) and artifice.  It starts in the very first sequence.  Evelyn steals her sister’s doll, and because of the influence of the painting of the Black Queen stabbing the Red Queen (kind of odd in the grand scheme of the plot, but still…), she starts stabbing the doll with the negligently placed (family?) dagger.  Already the folkloric world has infiltrated the real world.  Tobias believes in a family curse to an absurd degree, and he even allows this belief to govern his life and decisions.  The Red Queen is a story come to life, literally enacting a fantasy which is difficult to put any credence in if we accept that this film is set in the “real” world.  Using montage rather than any clever compositions, the filmmaker creates a dichotomy between verity and fiction.  

Miraglia contrasts the fictive tale of the Red Queen and her exploits against the concrete world of Inspector Toller (Marino Masé) and his quest to find the killer in his jurisdiction.  The scenes involving Toller and the police serve two purposes (duality again).  First, they are exposition to give the audience background information on characters, primarily, but they also serve to give a procedural perspective on the case.  Never mind that the police are as ineffective here as they are in almost every Giallo ever filmed.  Second, they provide a sense of verisimilitude to the goings-on which are ludicrous on their face.  In my opinion, they also serve to kill the film’s pacing (a third, most assuredly unintended, purpose).  In the police scenes, we are in a world of dreary brick walls and hard, flat lighting, just like the world we actually live in.  Contrast this with the scenes involving the Red Queen, which are stylishly lit and choreographed and normally take place away from any semblance of civilization (if you’ll notice, a large portion of these scenes occur in castles, villas, parks, and empty streets).  In some ways, it is problematic to determine which side the filmmaker favors (that’s not to say that he has to favor one over the other).  After all, the plot revolves around murders caused by a character who shouldn’t exist, and we know that there is no way the final explanation can be anything other than mundane.  Yet, like great Gialli, not only is the explanation banausic but it also contains several preposterous aspects, so that even when the last shot disappears from the screen, we’re still left with the struggle between real and imaginary, film and life, presentation and representation.  We decide.

MVT:  The most valuable thing for me is the mystery aspect of the story.  One of the most enjoyable things about Gialli is in trying to play along and unravel the mystery before the other characters do.  It is usually a hopeless pursuit, as there will be so many twists and turns and revelations so far out of left field, you tend to accept them more because of their lunacy rather than in spite of it.

Make Or Break:  The Make is the dream sequence that appears about halfway through the film.  It marries real and unreal in the same shots, summing up the film neatly.  It is also the most stylishly directed portion of the film in my opinion, and puts Miraglia’s skills behind the camera front and center.

Score:  6.75/10

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Monday, December 17, 2012

Episode #214: Ghost Dog Justice

Welcome back to the GGtMC!!!

Sammy has returned from an illness that plagued him last week and Will is back and full of FIRE!! This week we brought long time friend to the show, The Back of Forest Whitaker's Neck, on for some coverage and we have some doozies for ya!!! We covered Steel Justice (1987) starring martin Kove and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) directed by Jim Jarmusch with Forest Whitaker and Henry Silva!!!!

We had a great time discussing these two films with a man we consider blood when it comes to love of cinema!!!

Direct download: Ghost_Justice.mp3

Emails to midnitecinema@gmail.com

Vociemails to 206-666-5207

Adios!!!

METAL




Friday, December 14, 2012

Zero Tolerance (1994)



“Zero Tolerance” has quite a few qualities that I love in an action film; guns and explosions (naturally), wacky villains, it takes place (mostly) in Las Vegas, is set during Christmas and stars Robert Patrick. Never mind that it’s a run-of-the-mill revenge thriller that doesn’t do anything out of the ordinary plot-wise. Jeff Douglas (Robert Patrick) travels to Mexico to apprehend Ray Manta (Titus Welliver), a drug pusher who’s a part of the White Hand, which is not like the Ku Klux Klan (that’s proven by the inclusion of LaFleur (Jeffrey Anderson-Gunter), a Jamaican drug pusher).

Some of Manta’s lackeys commandeer the vehicle he’s traveling in and kill Douglas’ two partners. They’re quickly disposed of by Jeff who amazingly steers the wheel while his dead partner’s foot is lodged on the gas pedal. He’s also able to shoot at the motorcyclists chasing him until he hops out. Naturally, cars catch on fire and they explode. That happens a lot on this film! I can’t think of another action film with this so many cars on fire than “Zero Tolerance”.

Just as it seems Manta has gotten away, he sneaks up on Douglas and puts a gun to his head. Ray needs to transport a shipment to his partner, Helmut Vitch (Mick Fleetwood), in Las Vegas. Since he’s a wanted criminal, the only way he can make it past the border is with an FBI agent. Knowing Jeff wouldn’t oblige simply via a gun to the head, he has his family taken hostage. If he takes him to Las Vegas, they live. If not, they die.

As Jeff asks Ray if they’re still alive throughout, he’s consoled with this statement: “Of course they’re alive! I’m not some sick scumbag!” He is some sick scumbag. Jeff’s family was murdered immediately after he agreed to the assignment. He was set up to die as well, as the limo he traveled in was rigged to explode. For reasons unknown, he hightails it out of the vehicle just in time (though he’s hurled onto another car, then run over by a truck) and saves himself. My guess is he seen the drivers and other passengers slowly escaping and thought something was fishy.

The White Hand thinks he’s dead, he finds out his family is and, after being taken off the case and put on mandatory vacation, takes justice into his own hands. He starts in Las Vegas by storming into Vitch’s casino and shooting him point blank in the skull while playing poker (which was badass). From there, he travels around the States tracking down the rest of the gang. He’s stripped of his badge, but his former boss isn’t having anybody following his tracks. We learn he actually gave Jeff an alias and wants him to kill the White Hand. Once he does, he’ll be taken into custody and be put in the gas chamber.

Megan (Kristen Meadows), being the leader of his fan club, learns of this and follows his trail in order to save him. She understands his anger, as her mother was raped and murdered by a hoodlum who’s living scot-free in Florida, but knows killing him won’t bring her back and will only cause her trouble. This is a thankless role that Meadows handles well. Nobody wants to be the voice of reason in an action film, as most of the audience will be rooting against her (we want to see the bastards get their comeuppance). She does her best to not only convince Jeff why this is wrong, but also the audience. I’m not saying it worked, but she tried.

From that plot description, you can probably guess where this film is going. You can probably send me a message detailing the plot points. While watching the film, you don’t really care about that. It’s a standard revenge thriller and you’re happy that it is. You want the comfort of familiarity. You’re just hoping you get many scenes of Robert Patrick being a badass and mowing down drug pushers. You get a lot of that and will be thoroughly pleased by it!

MVT: Joseph Merhi’s direction. While he’s so-so working off the dialogue scenes (from the script written by Joe Hart), he handles the action phenomenally! It’s not groundbreaking stuff, but it’s highly entertaining!

Make or Break: The scene where Douglas shoots Vitch point blank at a casino in front of anybody. Not only was this badass, it showed that Jeff had lost all sense of right and wrong and wasn’t going to be doing everything smoothly. Sure, he’ll be a one-man wrecking crew, but not a smooth one.

Final Score: 7/10

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Episode #213: Deadly Victim

Welcome to another glorious episode of the GGtMC!!!

This wee we bring you coverage from all over the globe, Sammy was out sick and we had to go to the bench for some help this week. We brought in Jake McLargeHuge from Podcast Without Honor or Humanity, Death Rattle Aaron (THE MAN) and CD-R from way out on the west coast of Canada!!!

The boys reviewed Deadly Memories AKA Body Shop (2002) directed by Donald Farmer and starring Robert Z'Dar and William Smith and The Victim (1982) directed by Sammo Hung.

Direct download: Deadly_Victim.mp3

Thanks for everybody that helped get the show out this week!!!

Emails to midnitecinema@gmail.com

Voicemails to 206-666-5207

Adios!!!




Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Sands Of The Kalahari (1965)



The first time I went on an airplane, I was not scared.  I was flying to visit my uncle in New Hampshire, and I was probably about thirteen or fourteen years old.  I had no butterflies in my stomach.  I had no trepidation about looking out the window at the ground so many miles beneath my feet.  As a matter of fact, I kind of liked flying.  Unfortunately, my feelings are not the same today.  I have been on more flights than I would care to count which have flown through hellacious turbulence (the actual number is probably far less than ten, but I feel that’s more than enough, don’t you?).  I have been on flights where it felt like we were coming down for our landing at a (shall we say?) not-so-great angle.  I’m sure that when you’re piloting a flight like that, you have a large degree of control, and the danger is as minimized as it can be.  That said, I am an inveterate misanthrope and distrustful of most people, so my faith in airline pilots is about the same as the distance I can throw them (did I mention I have a bad back?).  I realize that the odds of being involved in a fatal airplane accident is about one in a million, but more often than not, I feel more like the one than the million, especially mid-flight when it feels like the large metal coffin you’re gliding through the air in (as well as your bowels) are about to make fast friends with Mother Earth.  Now, just add in a swarm of locusts, and you have Cy Endfield’s Sands Of The Kalahari, a film which has done nothing to alleviate my phobias about aviation, whatsoever.   

When their flight to Johannesburg, South Africa is delayed, a small group of passengers, including Grace Munkton (Susannah York), Mike Bain (Stanley Baker), Mr. Grimmelman (Harry Andrews), and Dr. Bondrachai (Theodore Bikel) find a small cargo plane willing to take them that evening for a nominal fee.  Piloted by the jovial-but-caddish Sturdevan (Nigel Davenport), the plane takes off with one additional passenger, great white hunter Brian O’Brien (Stuart Whitman).  Running afoul of the previously mentioned winged insects, the plane goes down in the middle of the (you guessed it) Kalahari Desert, and the survivors are faced with two choices: live or die.

Simply put, this film is in the Survival subgenre, yet what’s interesting in this one is the setting.  It’s not so much that it’s set in the desert (there are scads of movies about characters stranded in a desert), but what this particular desert says about the story.  The film came out at a time when apartheid was still national policy in South Africa and only two years after Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for his anti-apartheid efforts.  However, the rest of the world was not really on board with South Africa’s practices at this point, even though the United States had only just passed their own anti-discriminatory Civil Rights Act in 1964.  The film very subtly addresses the idea of segregation within its first few minutes.  As Grace makes her way along the airfield, there are bunches of African kids hanging on the fence, calling out and gesticulating.  It’s not that they are portrayed as particularly dangerous but more as full of life and energy, and they almost seem to be taunting the white people who pass them by, the fence the only thing keeping the whites safe (in their own minds, at least) for now.  Upon entering the airport terminal, there is almost total silence.  It is unnatural, this quiet, but it also serves to describe the differences of the racial divide.  The whites inside the terminal are cold and lifeless.  Here they are guarded and distinctly separate from the rest of the world outside the door.  In a sense, then, it can be argued that the locusts which take down the plane and the travails that follow are a sort of revenge on the people who have partaken in and enabled the racism which has divided the nation by the very land itself.

This sort of story set-up will typically lend itself to a microcosm cast, a sampling of different types representing different sections of society and watching how they interact under great stress.  Not so much with Sands Of The Kalahari.  Aside from the affable Grimmelman and the timid Bondrachai, the characters are rather unlikable.  Sturdevan is a misogynist pig and a borderline rapist.  Bain is a self-pitying drunk with a bad leg (making him an even more flawed and incomplete man who could never be a suitor for Grace’s affections).  Speaking of Grace, she starts off as a tease but quickly becomes an opportunist giving herself over sexually to O’Brien, because he is the most traditionally masculine and capable of keeping her alive.  O’Brien is a bloodthirsty paranoiac who is only looking out for number one (and not really caring if he steps in number two).  Even without any redeeming values among them to make them sympathetic, there should still be something there to keep the audience following their tale.  Unfortunately, they all seem to act out of character at a moment’s notice, seemingly in attempts to garner said sympathy, but these changes felt forced and hollow to me.  I would guess this has to do with the film being an adaptation of a novel (by William Mulvihill), so the episodic feel (which should help us see the characters as more rounded individuals) simply leaves one with a rather uneven impression.  Oddly, this also appears to reinforce my theory that South Africa wants to have its vengeance on these people.  Making them jerks just makes it easier for the audience to want it done.

We expect this type of ordeal to be either transformative or truthful.  That is, we expect the characters to either become different people from how they started or to show who they truly are behind any façade they may wear.  I would actually argue that it is both transformative and truthful.  The trials and tribulations set before a character are going to change them, even if it is only for the duration of their misfortunes.  And since character is shown by the actions one takes under pressure, we are seeing these people for who they really are.  Ergo, the transformation is in the stripping away of the fronts people put on in polite society and showing in public who they are behind closed doors.  That the characters in this film are not really worthy of the redemption we would normally afford someone who has undergone a trial by fire is a bit of a letdown.  But then again, the filmmakers only seem to be interested in judging (and punishing) one of them in particular, and since no standard of conduct is laid down or enforced in the diegetic world, how can any of these characters be either damned or praised, since the film itself doesn’t want to do it?  This non-judgment doesn’t make them any more appealing, though, and I personally wouldn’t want to spend five minutes with the majority of them outside of this movie.  But then, that’s my prerogative, isn’t it?    

MVT:  Endfield’s direction is clean and clear, and along with Director of Photography Erwin Hillier, he has a fantastic grasp of widescreen cinema.  Every inch of the screen is used to amazing effect, and the film is gorgeous from start to finish.

Make Or Break:  The Make is the scene when O’Brien is down in a hole and desperately flinging himself at the sheer walls in a vain attempt to free himself.  As he clambers around, he babbles incessantly, and his character is finally stripped bare.  It’s a great moment and only beats out the final scene for me, because it was the point at which I decided I like this film.

Score:  6.75/10

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