Stealers Wheel

Full disclosure here: the film that I am going to review today is by no means a great movie. . . it is one of those rare pictures that transcends its low budget faults, somehow equating to late-night, cheesy goodness. A cult classic out of 1984, Douglas Cheek’s C.H.U.D. is a sci-fi film parading as a horror film, or is it a horror film parading as a comedy? Opening with a spectacular wide angle shot of a grimy, New York street in the middle of the night, a lady walks her dog, the camera slowly moving in until we only see a sewer grate, the canine and her feet (her shadow covering most of the shot). Dropping something, she reaches to retrieve it. . . and, in an instant, a giant monster-ish hand pops out from the metal cover, pulling both of the nightwalkers into the underground abyss.

Ah, the mysteries of the Black Panther. . . not Wakanda, vibranium, or the ever growing Marvel franchise, but rather, the enigma that is those giant cats that have been rumoured to be part human. First explored in the 1942 classic B horror film Cat People, reviewed here on Filmizon last October, director Paul Schrader remade it in 1982 under the same title, finding his own unique spin on the tale. Starting a little earlier than normal this year, this will be the beginning of a number of horror reviews leading up to Halloween (if you are not a horror fan, fear not, there will still be several non horror related pictures reviewed).

A meditative piece on aging, Rúnar Rúnarsson’s 2004 short film The Last Farm, out of Iceland, depicts a situation in which many of us will one day find ourselves in. . . old and decrepit, losing our freedom as we are forced out of our homes for a much more costly imitation of it. Hrafn (Jón Sigurbjörnsson) is an elderly man who has done it his way. Loving life on his little plot of farmland, it is stark yet beautiful, cold yet alive – a frigid ocean property surrounded by hilly mountains and dales, the meeting of land and sea picturesque in all of its challenges. . . unspoiled water and terrain for as far as the eye can see.

Pushing the boundaries of the Italian giallo, Andrea Bianchi’s aptly titled Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975), which features numerous examples of the seductive art of striptease, oodles of nudity, and a violently high body count, is an example of Eurotrash in its most disturbingly alluring state. . . not for the prudish or weak of heart, but fascinating to be sure. A glossy B movie set in the posh world of a Milanese modelling agency, one of the house’s top photographers, Carlo (Nino Castelnuovo), uses his advantageous position to pull stunning women into his bed (I use this term loosely – a steamy sauna works just as well for the cheeky fellow) with promises that they will grace the cover of the world’s most iconic fashion magazines.

Children: those cute, innocent little scamps that bring a smile to our faces get a frightening makeover in Colm McCarthy’s The Girl with All the Gifts – a 2016 zombie horror flick out of Britain that finds some interesting new ground within the sub-genre. Finding a place somewhere between Day of the Dead and 28 Days Later, a small group of people have kept some normalcy at a military base (much of which is underground – similar to the former film mentioned above). . . mostly armed soldiers, the men fall under the control of Sgt. Eddie Parks (Paddy Considine), who only answers to Dr. Caroline Caldwell (Glenn Close) – a military scientist who has been tasked with researching the fungal outbreak that has caused a worldwide zombie-like plague (only the creatures are excessively fast, much like the latter feature referenced above).

In one of the most frank speeches in Oscar history, Leo McCarey, upon winning the Academy Award for Best Director, took the statuette, and boldly stated, “I want to thank the Academy for this wonderful award. . . but you gave it to me for the wrong picture”. For those who have seen Make Way For Tomorrow, you will immediately know why he said it (a picture with a message and one of the great endings in film history, Orson Welles once claimed, “it would even make a stone cry”), but, that is not to say that the movie that he won for, 1937's The Awful Truth, is not deserving of some praise. A motion picture that helped put the screwball comedy on the map (The Awful Truth was based on a 1922 play by Arthur Richman and filmed twice before this version), it earned six Oscar nods (claiming the trophy for McCarey) – a darling to critics and one of the top commercial successes of the decade, while its irreverent mix of slapstick (it immediately evident that McCarey directed silent comedies; for example, the works of Charlie Chase and Harold Lloyd, while also pairing Laurel and Hardy together, and into the sound era, The Marx Brothers), witty repartee, and folly filled characters make it an absolute charmer.