Tempest FugID

hough today’s feature is immediately sited as a science fiction classic, Fred M. Wilcox’s Forbidden Planet (1956) is perhaps just as well remembered for its majestic original robot and pinup infused movie poster design (that is still, to this day, a costly collectible)... though the art is quite misleading when you know what the movie is actually about. Following a narrative loosely inspired by William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, which, for those who do not know, is about a man forced to live stranded upon a magical island with his daughter, until he causes a shipwreck that brings with it possible rescue (and a man who may fall in love with his daughter)... this futuristic feature follows a somewhat similar sci-fi blueprint.

With a most impeccable cast, you would think the modern set western drama The Misfits (1961), directed by John Huston (The Asphalt Jungle), would be best remembered for its acting... though sadly it’s remembered for the tragic deaths soon thereafter of its three main cast members – Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, and Montgomery Clift. Written by Marilyn Monroe’s then husband (but soon to be ex) Arthur Miller (the famed playwright of “Death of a Salesman”), the Reno area set story follows the aptly named misfits, including recent divorcée Roslyn Taber (Monroe – River of No Return; The Seven Year Itch), a lonely aging man’s man of a cowboy in Gay Langland (Gable – Gone with the Wind; It Happened One Night), aged divorced landlady Isabelle Steers (Thelma Ritter – Miracle on 34th Street; A Letter to Three Wives), and widowed tow truck driver Guido Delinni (Eli Wallach – The Magnificent Seven; Seven Thieves) – and they all have one thing in common... abject loneliness.

In your prototypical revenge movie, something heinous happens, after which the protagonist spends the rest of the narrative trying to exact vengeance upon the person/people who committed the act... but in this curve-ball of a thriller, Blue Ruin (2013), written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier (Green Room), that is not the case. Following the struggling Dwight (Macon Blair – Green Room), ever since his parents were murdered, he has been living a form of homelessness out of his beat up, rusting 90s Pontiac Bonneville. Almost as silent as a monk, the first conversation he has had in some time is when he is notified that the man put behind bars for killing his parents ages ago is getting released.

Hovering somewhere between haunting past and menacing present, or perhaps even better described as a fever dream leaning more towards a feverish nightmare, the Sergio Martino (The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail; Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key) 1972 giallo All the Colors of the Dark – sometimes known as Day of the Maniac and They’re Coming to Get You! (both titles also work quite well), transports its audience into a paranoid mystery. This Italian film moves abroad to London, England, following tortured Jane Harrison (Edwige Fenech – Strip Nude for Your Killer; Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key), a woman with a rather rough not wholly revealed past.

If you’re in the mood for more persistent rational determination in the face of much adversity, then you are in luck, for our driven protagonist is back for his second near impossible mission in writer/director Jalmari Helander’s Sisu: Road to Revenge (2025). Following a somewhat similar path to its predecessor, this Finnish, over the top action packed adventure once again follows the rather unlucky Aatami Korpi (Jorma Tommila) and his trusted dog. With the last adventure finding numerous pesky Nazis in his way, this time World War II has come to an end and it finds the man returning to his home that is now located in territory ceded to the Soviet Union as part of the peace treaty.

Not to be confused with the famed Eugene O’Neill play, nor the tv movie and theatrical film that were released and based upon it (1960 and 1972 respectively), the Hong Kong actioner The Iceman Cometh (1989) – sometimes known as The Time Warriors, directed by Clarence Fok, jumps into a go for broke time travel narrative that covers many a varied genre. Dramatically starting in the Ming dynasty (the sixteenth century), a vile murderer and rapist, Fung San (Wah Yuen), has forsaken the Emperor (Anthony Yiu-Ming Wong) by killing his beloved Princess (Yin San Lai) and stealing the magical artifact known as the Black Jade Buddha.