SMK-3 Reviews

The Countess Died of Laughter (1973)

Last in the series

[2 September 1998]

The "Frau Wirtin" films were a series of period sex comedies, made in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is hard to believe, but the literary inspiration to these films really is a song. The films featured a surprisingly large number of established actors in less than establishing performances, and a less than surprisingly large number of less established actresses out of their clothes.

This one, the last in the series, seems to be (outside the German speaking countries) the most widely distributed of the lot. Not to put a too fine point upon it: it is clearly the worst film of the series, composed to a large extent out of clippings from the earlier films embedded in a very thin new plot about who is going to inherit the estate of Susanne, the "Frau Wirtin" of the title. There are several female candidates with a lifestyle just as promiscuous as Susanne's.

The technical quality of the English dubbing is truly atrocious, but then this film does not really deserve any better treatment.

Ein langer Ritt nach Eden (1971)

Sex western from the bottom drawer

[2 September 1998]

An incredibly bad piece of trash. This is a German Sex-Western, compared to which the US productions of this subgenre (like Lee Frost's "The Scavengers" from 1971) shine as cinematic masterpieces with towering acting performances and glorious set pieces. We are talking bottom drawer stuff here, of a hundred-drawer cabinet, rivaling anything Edward Wood Jr., A.C. Stephen and Demofilo Fidani ever made.

The acting stinks abominably, the set pieces are a joke. It does not work as a Western, it doesn't work as a sex film, it doesn't work on any level.

One of the worst films ever made.

Sabata (1969)

Best of the Sabata series

[2 September 1998]

Several spaghetti westerns inspired a number of sequels focussing on a particular kind of shady hero. Beside the widely known "man with no name" there are (amongst others) Django, Sartana, Ringo, Spirito Sancto and this one, Sabata.

Sabata is partly inspired by 'For a few dollars more', since Lee van Cleef plays the bounty hunter Sabata as a character with similar features to his Colonel Mortimer. Especially noticeable is his collection of shooting gadgets. Western fans are used to the never-reload always-hit one-mile -range magic revolvers of classic westerns. In this film, Sabata wins a shoot-out by simply staying out of the range of his opponents revolver and shooting him with one of his long-range weapons.

Despite being a bounty hunter, Sabata has his peculiar code of honor, as opposed to the villain of the piece, the sleazy rich land owner Stengel, played superbly by Franco Ressel. As you might expect there is little doubt how it will all end but director Parolini keeps us guessing about Sabata's next moves.

A superior spaghetti western.

My Father's Wife (1976)

Midlife Crisis

[19 August 1998]

The middle-aged couple Laura and Antonio have a problem, a problem with their sex life: Antonio fails to perform at night and Laura is getting increasingly frustrated. To add insult to frustration Antonio does better when confronted with younger flesh and when his wife finds out she too seeks a younger lover. However, this is more than Antonio's Latin ego can take...

This is a very peculiar kind of film, not the sort of thing you normally find in Anglo-Saxon countries. On the one hand the film is exploitative in the way it depicts the sex, the drama, uses its nude scenes, resolves the tension etc. On the other it takes its subject (sex problems in middle age ) perfectly seriously. The leads come across as believable people: they aren't the "I'm over forty, I should have no sex" bygones of mainstream cinema or the lecherous dirty old men and women of exploitation cinema.

Hot Chili (1985)

Teenage Sex Comedy in Mexico

[14 August 1998]

In many respects, Hot Chili is a typical teenage sex comedy: lots of T&A, lots of slapstick humour, lots of ridiculed adults, some destroyed property, and a little bit of teenage romance to give our heros a more likeable personality.

The story resolves around 4 American (male) teenagers who go to Mexico for a holiday job in a hotel. Needless to say they also try to get laid and succeed in that ambition. Of course, they have to overcome some difficulties, like escaping the claws of the blood-and-sex thirsty dominatrix Brigitte or avoiding being shot by her jealous husband.

The film does not it take itself seriously for one minute and that alone makes it a lot more watchable than most films of this genre. The comedy element is unsophisticated but in its own way appropriate. Hot Chili does not really have any sex scenes but plenty of nudity and suggested sex. The acting honours go to people in supporting parts who deliver their one-liners quite nicely: "First I kill Salami boy, then I'll play the drums. "

Still, Hot Chili is a film directly aimed at young (about 14 to 24) male viewers; it has little to offer for a wider audience.

Death in a French Garden (1985)

Erotic Thriller, French Style

[9/10 · 13 August 1998]

Péril en la demeure is a rather unusual little thriller, in which musician David Aurphet starts an affair with the mother of his pupil. Her husband finds out and David's life has some nightmarish turns. I have to admit that my description makes it sound rather conventional but it certainly is not.

It is debatable how well this film works as a thriller, but there is no doubt that the love scenes between Nicole Garcia and Christophe Malavoy are absolutely stunning. They ooze sensuality and are almost like a ballet, both people moving sensitively, slowly, and silently, suggesting, responding to the other, teasing and hesitating, touching and retreating. These few little scenes belong to the most erotic moments ever to be put on celluloid.

Walk on the Wild Side (1962)

A cat walk whets our curiosity

[13 August 1998]

In case you are going to watch this film, do not come late or you are missing the film's best asset: Saul Bass's title sequence showing a cat on the move, straying around (as cats do), but apparently going somewhere and being as elegant about it as only cats can be.

It was inevitable that at some point the cat food companies would come in and rip off this little gem for their purposes, so you may find it strangely familiar.

Charley Varrick (1973)

Matthau's finest action film

[12 August 1998]

Charley Varrick didn't make a big splash at the box office in 1973. Perhaps people couldn't accept Walter Matthau as an action star and the title is rather unimaginative (blame the studio: Siegel wanted the title "The Last of the Independents" which would have been perfect).

The reason couldn't have been the movie: this is a classic. Walter Matthau plays the title role (of either title) as the last independent pesticide pilot and the last independent, err, bank robber. One day he hits the big time, so it seems, but the loot was apparently deposited by the Mafia. Being chased by both police and the mob, Charley Varrick has to be on his toes all the time. Soon the police doesn't figure any more but the mob's harder to get rid of.

Of course, Don Siegel is a specialist of the action genre and again he provides a very fine specimen that never falters and always keeps us guessing, right to the surprising end. Matthau's performance is absolutely brilliant, obviously being helped by his expert sense of timing. Since his other attempts in action thrillers were also quite convincing (especially in The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3) it is rather puzzling why there weren't many more films exploiting this side of his talent.

Inevitably, one day Hollywood will give Charley Varrick the remake treatment , it is too good to be overlooked. Not a prospect I particularly cherish.

Finian's Rainbow (1968)

Politically Correct Musical Fairy Tale

[12 August 1998]

Finian's Rainbow is fairy tale musical. Interestingly, it also is about racism and it takes a direct stand against it. Unfortunately, this meant that the time interval between the point in time from which it was possible to make such a film and the point from which the musical's attitude to racism appeared rather patronising and dated is essentially empty. The film couldn't have made before the time it was made and still it appeared dated when it came out.

Apart from all of this, the film still works fine as a musical fantasy. The songs are great (my favorite: "How are things in Glocca Morra") and the fairy-tale element is nicely embedded in a modern society. The performances are fine, although some of the casting choices are questionable: Petula Clark is 15 years too old for her role (as is Fred Astaire for his) and it would have been better if the script writers had changed her role accordingly just a little bit to make it more believable.

One or the Other (1974)

Thriller in the academic world

[8/10 · 11 August 1998]

Bernd Ziegenhals is a former student who's fallen on hard times. When carrier-socialist Hohenberg, one of his former fellow students, offers him a research job (some literature work) he's by no means thrilled but takes the job as he needs the money and has nothing else to do anyway. This decision would change his life: when comparing different sources in the literature he discovers that Professor Kolczyk got his degree by cheating, by translating somebody else's work from English to German and presenting it as his own.

Starting from here the film goes through a sequence of mostly surprising twists and turns, beginning with Ziegenhals blackmailing the Professor. Kolczyk is no pushover though and knows how to fight back (the novel on which the film script is based was written by a professor of sociology under pseudonym).

The battle between the protagonists is set against their different social backgrounds: Kolczyk is all-established upper middle class, with a nice wife, a nice house and nice kids; Ziegenhals lives in a shared flat, and there's very little nice about his life - one of his friends, the prostitute Miezi gets murdered by her former pimp Proetzel when he's released from jail. What makes the film particularly interesting is that neither Kolczyk nor Ziegenhals is interested in an out-and-out confrontation since the main objective of both is to protect or escape their current life style.

This is an excellent movie: the suspense never falters and it is very difficult to predict the next moves of either Kolczyk or Ziegenhals (or the script) - also the ending comes as a real surprise. All this is helped by generally excellent performances from the cast, in particular the two leads Prochnow and Schwarzkopf; the cast is full of established German character actors who each could carry a film on their own and in such an ensemble it's a doddle for them.

Mignon è partita (1988)

Quiet family drama

[8/10 · 7 August 1998]

Mignon is a French teenager from a wealthy family who is forced to move in with her much poorer Italian relatives when her own family falls apart. First, she is like a fish on dry land, but soon she forms an unlikely bond with one of her Italian cousins.

This film is not easily described by a plot summary, because not an awful lot is happening, without this being an uneventful film. This is about real people in real life, their hopes and anxieties, their family life, their love life, their life. It is about teenagers growing up and coping with their emerging sexuality, about jealousy and trust, about families breaking apart, about families sticking together.

The performances by the cast are generally very good, although I sometimes felt that Mignon and her cousin were overdoing their parts just a little. In any case an excellent performance by Stefania Sandrelli as "Mama", the anchor of the family.

Mignon è partita is a well-made quiet family drama, but it isn't for everyone. I could imagine many Americans struggling to relate to these characters -- it is a very European film.

Fanny Hill (1983)

Big budget erotica

[7 August 1998]

This version of the once banned Fanny Hill story clearly had a budget to burn: we have various familiar faces in the supporting roles. Most of them just show up to pay the rent, but Shelley Winters' portrayal of a madam is convincing. Also, a lot of money has been spent on sets and costumes. This alone makes it a lot more watchable than the average erotic B-movie, not to mention that the general light-heartedness in which the film approaches its subject is much more suitable for creating eroticism than the Erotic Thriller US style which so often combines sex with violence and death.

Still, this film has not managed to become a genre classic and it is not hard to see why. Most importantly, there is the actress playing the title heroine, Lisa Raines. While she's undeniably pretty (with or without clothes), her acting range is rather limited; it was probably impossible to get an established actress play such an exposed role. The 'innocent young girl' Lisa has to play at the beginning of the film is not completely believable, but much worse she completely fails to exude any sensuality in the later stages. This becomes especially obvious when we compare her to Maria Harper, the vampish actress playing the whore Phoebe. One gets the impression that Lisa/Fanny loves sex as a nice physical exercise in nice company. A similar criticism applies to her love interest: no charisma, no depth, and an instantly forgettable face.

This being a British film it doesn't come as a surprise that the sex scenes do not come across as very erotic, and that seems more of a cultural problem than a problem with censorship. The notable exception are the scenes involving the already mentioned Maria Harper. I suppose, there must be some Italians in her recent ancestry.

A Man for Sale (1978)

Suffering from Passive Voyeurism

[7 August 1998]

An usual sex drama about a part-time male model (Mircha Carven) who also performs live sex acts on stage for a living. The story starts when he befriends the teenage daughter (Lilli Carati) of one of his friends and occasional lover, a female photographer (Maria Baxa).

First, the viewer is seduced in thinking that this is one of those 'the parents are against us' love dramas, a kind of Romeo and Juliet in a more exploitative setting. However, this is a deliberate red herring. We are slowly introduced into the actual topic of the film which is a little sex problem our hero suffers from. Alone in bed with Carati he's useless (at which point I should make a flippant remark about how this proves the seriosity of his condition).

The viewer only becomes slowly aware of the extent of his problem by a sequence of events which make it increasingly clear what is going on. This easily sees us through the film and also is the basis for an interesting climactic ending.

All in all, a superior example of a sex drama, in much darker mood than its genre relatives.

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes (1965)

Enjoyable Costume Comedy

[7 August 1998]

"Those Magnificent Men" are a group of assorted European comedy actors (Robert Morley, Gert Fröbe, Terry-Thomas, Alberto Sordi, etc.) who are given a magnificent opportunity to do their bits in period costumes on delightfully ramshackle early aircrafts in this story of a London-Paris rally. The result is not exactly a masterpiece of Comedy cinema but it is immensely watchable and even merits repeated viewings to pick up all the little details that are so easy to miss the first time around.

Ken Annakin gives the comedy stars the freedom they need and we are rewarded with the most loveable villain (Terry-Thomas), German colonel (Gert Fröbe), and English bigot (Robert Morley) you're likely to encounter on the cinema screen. Especially the sparring of Terry-Thomas with Eric Sykes is a delight. Just a shame we didn't get more of Alberto Sordi and Tony Hancock.

On the down side, Annakin doesn't really know what to do with the Romance. Presumably as a concession for the American market we have an American hero, but Stuart Whitman looks strangely out of place. Also, Jean-Pierre Cassel's French charmeur is more annoying then charming, his main quality being an ever-lasting smile.

All in all, a nice colourful afternoon's entertainment.

Triumph of the Will (1935)

The most notorious propaganda film ever made

[7 August 1998]

Triumph des Willens is a unique film, it is very unlikely that you have seen anything like this before or will see anything like it ever since. It is a hybrid between a documentary and a propaganda film and it most certainly is a powerful piece of film-making; unlike other propaganda films made over half a century ago this will not make you laugh.

The film documents the party rally the NSDAP held in Nuremberg in 1934. How boring, you may think. Party political broadcast, you may think. The British Conservatives in Brighton, you may think. Follow this thought and compare Adolf Hitler (perhaps the most hated man in the history of mankind) with John Major (perhaps the least remarkable prime minister Britain ever had) and you get a hint what's wrong with it. This is not any old political party, and this is not any old party rally - and Riefenstahl sure knows how to present it most impressively.

Triumph des Willens is one of the most dangerous propaganda films ever made. It does not tell us what we should believe in (not in words anyway), it seduces us into it. The impact is emotional, not rational. There is no debate, no argument. There are speeches, but these speeches resemble more the religious ramblings of prophets than the reasoning of a modern politician.

Riefenstahl appeals to our herd-animal instincts, our desire to be engulfed in a large group and contributing to it. Riefenstahl tries to impress us with grandiose pictures of masses of people being transfixed by the speakers (especially Hitler, of course), the architecture of the place, torch marches, lots of banners and all that other Nazi mumbo jumbo.

In historical hindsight, these pictures get a second, more sinister meaning Riefenstahl would not have anticipated. If not put in his rightful historical context the film would still have the power to seduce today.

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Silent Trend-Setter

[7 August 1998]

Eisenstein's film about an episode in the Russian Revolution is one of the most famous films of all time and still one which surprisingly few people have actually seen.

Undoubtedly, we have here a piece of propaganda cinema: the film maker is clearly on the side of the common soldiers rebelling against their aristocratic and bourgeois officers and exploiters. This may put some people off, but notice that this is more open and honest in its approach than many western films of the cold war era in which the outcome (who's the good guy?) is as predictable as it is here but in which the viewer is fooled into thinking that it is not.

The reason Battleship Potemkin is famous is not because of the acting performances: most actors weren't even professionals and the acting is quite often outrageously over the top, although it is fair to say that this is a problem of many silent movies. No, the reasons this is a famous film are (i) the clever use of editing, and (ii) the even cleverer use of imagery. The perhaps most famous scene of the film shows a deserted pram hobbling down the stairs. It is a symbol of the violence against civilians that just preceded it and in its way it is even more powerful than the actual act itself. The film is full of such symbols, probably too many for a 1990s audience, but back then it was new and it left a deep impression on its contemporaries and it proved to be highly influential on film makers.

Asylum Erotica (1971)

Murder and sex in the loony bin

[6 August 1998]

With the retreat of film censorship in Europe and the US in the late 1960s and early 1970s the makers of exploitation films were left loose on the somewhat unsuspecting cinema goer. Both gore and sex content of such films increased dramatically, while less care was taken to embed the spectacle in a coherent, gripping and believable story. This was particularly obvious in the Italian Giallo, a genre that emerged in those years from the traditional Italian horror film and the German Edgar Wallace thrillers.

Here we have a typical example of the genre: a serial killer is on the loose , we see gruesome and gory (but stylish) killings that do not reveal the identity of the murderer, have some sex thrown in at good measure, and are finally rather disappointed when the murder mystery is solved.

Asylum Erotica is set in a mental hospital for the very rich, on some isolated location in the countryside. The asylum is run by Dr. Keller -- played by Klaus Kinski in one of his many personifications of psychiatrists. The patients are busy having a good time, including the inevitable hanky -panky (come in Rosalba Neri as the resident nymphomaniac), when suddenly corpses are starting to pile up. Apparently, they have been killed with some medieval weapons that are conveniently on open display in the lounge. Why has nobody considered them a safety hazard -- this is a mental hospital , after all? Why aren't they tucked away after the first killing(s)? We shall never know.

Clearly, this isn't a great film, but it is still quite watchable, certainly if you like Eurosleaze. For fans of Kinski and Neri this is a 'must'.

The Mercenary (1968)

Revolution, Mexican Style

[6 August 1998]

This is one the three best Westerns made by Sergio Corbucci, the others being Django and Il Grande Silencio, and it is the only comedy of these three.

The story is about a group of Mexican peasants and miners who attempt a revolution and the Polish mercenary Kowalski (Franco Nero) who shows them how. They are up against the exploitative establishment (Eduardo Fajardo in the kind of sleazy role he was born to play) and the sinister Ricciolo (Jack Palance) and his boyfriends (sic!) who are only after the bounty.

This is an unusual film in many respects. Despite being a western comedy, it does not spoof the traditional code of the west, it creates its own sources of humour. And despite being a western comedy, people do get killed and die gruesome deaths. This had the unfortunate consequence that some distributors cut the film to get rid of the more explicit scenes, and this also happened with the version I saw on British TV (possibly the standard English language version). However, the violence/gore was not gratuitous and the cuts leave some sequences rather unbalanced, e.g. the death of Franco Ressel's character is a gloriously ironic scene in the original but leaves the viewer rather puzzled in the cut version. The English version also suffers from a poorly translated dialogue that removes some of the sardonic humour.

The music by Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai is yet another classic, and it is put to excellent use in the climactic scene of the film, the gunfight in the bull ring. This is the most impressively staged gunfight I've seen in any Western, and I have seen an awful lot of Westerns in my life. Unmissable!

La stanza delle parole (1989)

Cheap Henry & June

[31 July 1998]

La Stanza della parole is a low budget version of the Henry Miller + Anais Nin story, quite possibly intended to profit from the popularity of the film Henry & June which came out the same year. The word 'rip-off' springs to mind, but I wouldn't go quite that far.

This soft-core drama has very much the looks of a film made for cable TV. Its dosage of eroticism is designed keep the punters interested while not giving too much to shock the easily offended. Consequently, it does not really work for either.

Having said all this, Martine Brochard makes a fine Anais Nin, she seems better suited to the role than Maria de Medeiros was in Henry & June.

The Punch Bowl (1944)

Ferris Bueller in Pre-War Germany

[31 July 1998]

Die Feuerzangenbowle is based on the familiar and often-filmed story idea of pupils playing various tricks and jokes on their teachers. An easy excuse for an avalanche of slapstick one might think and indeed we get our fair share.

The twist in the story is the leader of the pack, the major cause of the teachers' headaches: Johannes Pfeiffer. He is not a real pupil at all, instead a successful playwright with a PhD. One evening at the pub his friends discover that he never went to a school but was educated privately. Their stories of their boyhood years (and a bit too much alcohol) persuade him to see for himself and 'be a boy again'.

Die Feuerzangenbowle is the second film version of Heinrich Spoerl's novel. Heinz Rühmann played the lead in both films, which is somewhat surprising as they have been made ten years apart. Therefore he is a bit too old for his role now but still manages to pull it off quite convincingly.

The film was made in 1944, so it is a bit astonishing that the Nazi censors were prepared to pass a film with such an anti-authoritarian message. To keep them happy, Spoerl created one character, the teacher Brett, who displays authority and firmness and whom the pupils blindingly obey -- the sort of person you can easily imagine being in charge of an SS regiment. Still, Spoerl uses this very character to deliver a political message: when the teachers discuss how to get hold of the culprit of the most recent outrageous trick, one suggests that "there is always a 'friend' willing to talk", a clear reference to the wide-spread culture of denunciation in Nazi Germany. Brett replies "I hope we don't have any friends like this in our school."

Die Feuerzangenbowle is very well made and today enjoys a cult status in Germany (the 1944 version that is). However, most of the humour would not travel well at all, especially the clever use of accents and dialects is virtually untranslatable; a non-native speaker -- even somebody with a fair knowledge of German -- would miss most of it when watching the original.

RoboCop (1987)

Verhoeven's Modern Times

[30 July 1998]

Robocop is not a film I was keen to see. I am not a big fan of action movies, especially when they forsake story and characters for yet more special effects. So, the prospect of watching a cyborg hero shooting his way through villains in futuristic Los Angeles left me rather unimpressed. However, when I finally saw the film, it blew me away.

Robocop is a wolf in a sheep's skin. It is a satire written for people who hate satires. Most people who'll see this film won't even notice. Robocop is Paul Verhoeven's 'Modern Times', but it is much subtler in delivering its message than Chaplin.

Superficially we are given a vision of the future, a bleak future with rampant crime and rampant capitalism. It is not an entirely consistent vision, as advances/changes in science and society are immense while people still seem to wear the same clothes, live in the same houses, go to the same shops, drive the same cars as they did in 1987. Well, it is 1987. We are not shown the future at all, we are shown a caricature of today, we see the present through the eyes of a cartoonist.

Robocop works perfectly well as an action flick and it delivers all the cliches we expect; since it has more humour than your average special effects bonanza it is very entertaining to watch. What makes it special though is the social comment beneath the surface.

The Great Silence (1968)

They died with their coats on

[30 July 1998]

In a traditional Western one instantly knows who the good and who the bad guys are, and - of course - we also know who will triumph at the end (the good guys, of course). In a typical Italian Western we still know instantly who's going to win at the end, just the distinction between good guys and bad guys is rather blurred. Il Grande Silenzio is not a typical Italian Western. We know instantly that e.g. Klaus Kinski is one of the bad guys (frankly, we know that before the film starts but that's beside the point), but the final outcome is much less predictable, and if you tried to predict it the actual ending may come as a huge shock.

The title of the film is ambiguous, both referring to the grandiosity of the character played by Jean-Louis Trintignant (called 'silence' since he's mute) and the silence of the winter landscape in which the film is set and the silence of the death.

Yes, the silence of death: the German title of the film ('Leichen pflastern seinen Weg', translation: 'his path is paved with corpses') is also ambiguous, since 'his' could equally apply to both main characters. However, the violence is never gratuitous, it is bleak: most of the victims have faces and a story behind them. Il Grande Silenzio is surprisingly little known but highly regarded amongst genre lovers (including me). As in so many Italian Western, Ennio Morricone's score is a great asset, perfectly assessing and supporting the general mood. This is easily one of the five finest Italian Western ever made, and I'd feel hard pressed to name more than 2 of the others.