PURE SHIT

d. Bert Deling (1975)

The darkly playful title refers to Heroin, a drug that continues to polarise public and private opinion but is universally agreed to be extremely more-ish. This very Australian fly on the wall documentary style film, compiled from real life junkie war stories, attracted major controversy in its time, with the censor forcing a name change to Pure S and the Vice Squad raiding the premiere. Watching it now, it’s easy to see what shook up the powers that were: the star of the film is Heroin, the pursuit of it, the taking of it, the dirty pleasure of it; when it's not onscreen the characters talk about it and crave its presence more than food, money, sex and love. 'H' is the sort of role the brilliant but ruthless egomaniac Kirk Douglas would have enjoyed playing: the undisputed centre of attention. 

The users live entirely outside of 'normal' society, only engaging with non-junkies and non-dealers when they are robbing pharmacies or prostituting themselves for cash. They are unwashed, extremely foul mouthed, obsessed with double denim and so trapped on the hamster wheel of addiction that they have no time for anything else, least of all dreams of a better future. There are no poetic and wistful monologues here: these junkies like being junkies and, of the alternatives, even a sudden puke covered death seems preferable to the hell of rehab and Methadone treatment.

It gets shrill and repetitive and muddled quite quickly, especially when the early narrative about the protagonists seeking heroin and never quite getting it goes off track. Within twenty minutes they all start clumsily and repeatedly jabbing needles into their scabby arms (I assumed that junkies would be better at injecting, or perhaps I’ve just seen too many glossy drugs films) and vomiting into buckets, revealing the full  scuzz of their grim drug addled life for all to see. These scenes are given added impact by apparently being real or, at least, seeming real, which is, after all, what cinema is about. I suppose the Aussie authorities were worried that Pure Shit might glamourise drug addiction or even provide step by step instructions on how to score and shoot up but, seriously, if you watch this film and think ‘cor, I don’t half fancy some Heroin’ you pretty much deserve what comes next.

THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS

d. Enzo G. Castellari (1978)

It's 1944 in France, and a group of rascally GIs are on their way to be court martialled. They're a mismatched bunch, consisting of a compulsive thief who's been in the brig so long he has shoulder length hair; a black soldier who kills racists; a racist; a deserter with PTSD, and a pilot who kept stealing planes in order to visit his girlfriend in London. They're not cowards, just criminals, non-conformists and individualists unsuited to the rigours of military life. The black soldier is played by Fred Williamson, so self-possessed that he hasn't even bothered to shave of his 70s moustache and sideboard combo. 

When their convoy is attacked by a Messerschmitt, they effect an escape, heading for neutral Switzerland and freedom. There's a war going on, however, and, being the basically decent blokes they are (and angling for pardons) they can't help but get involved, redeeming their accidental killing of some crack American troops by taking their place on a top secret life or death mission.

In a barely fathomable breach of convention, the racist not only survives the film but gets the girl. That keeps me awake at night. 

Extensive matte and model work and lots of authentic surplus equipment (presumably left behind 35 years before) make the war look much bigger than it is, as does repeating the best explosions and hails of bullets three or four times. Despite all the death, however, it's essentially quite a bloodless and lightweight film, and Williamson mugs and plays it for laughs whenever he can.

The best actor in it is Bo Svenson, a tall, blond Swedish guy who had been a Marine and a Judo champion before briefly becoming a leading man in action films, later settling into a long career in supporting roles. He looks the part, and is perhaps the only one of the cast to take it seriously. 

The film ends with a train crashing into a railway station, a sequence that is so clearly done with models that it resembles the apocalyptic finale of an unbroadcast episode of Thomas the Tank Engine.

Quentin Tarantino would later nick the title, of course, and make an unsatisfactory and irritating film with it. He's a director who frustrates me enormously, as his films should be brilliant by virtue of being fully resourced exploitation movies without the boring bits and shoddy performances. Instead, they are confused, flabby, self-indulgent and, yep, badly acted. In cinematic terms, he's a director who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.   

THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE

d. Joseph Green (1962)

'Let me die, let me die'

The human brain is the most complex thing in the Universe and, since the Enlightenment downgraded the soul to a might have rather than a must have, it's also the most important thing we possess. Little wonder, then, that the brain fascinates scientists the world over, particularly in films like The Brain That Wouldn't Die, where the line between scientific genius and obsessive fanaticism is a very thin one indeed.

Doctor Bill Cortner is full of the energy and arrogance of youth, a man in a hurry to prove his theories on the transplantation of limbs and organs to the extent that he has become unethical, performing illegal operations using body parts pilfered from the hospital where he works. When his fiancee Jan is decapitated in a car crash, he takes the opportunity to pluck her severed head from the burning wreckage, wrapping it up in his jacket and taking it to a secret lab, bringing it back to life with a 'new special compound' that not only reinvigorates the head but makes it telepathic.

Jan's head, plonked on a metal tray full of chemicals and filled with tubes and pipes, is pretty pissed off about the arrangement and asks repeatedly to die. Bill has other ideas, however, checking out strip clubs and beauty contests in search of a suitably pneumatic replacement chassis before settling on a facially scarred but otherwise intact nude model.

From here, it all gets quite complicated, despite being defiantly non complex. All I can say is that between the giant homicidal freak locked in a closet and poor decapitated Jan's overpowering death drive, it can only end in flames.      

KRONOS

d. Kurt Neumann (1957)

When a huge asteroid crashes into the ocean, a crack scientific team are called out to investigate. What they don’t know, however, is that the asteroid is actually a UFO, and that the director of their scientific laboratory has been taken over by aliens, a race of people who have expended their own resources and are now travelling the universe seeing what they can steal from other planets. The aliens live by consuming energy: electrical, atomic, they’re not bothered, they just need lots of it and they don’t care where and how they get it.

To this end, they unleash an enormous, incredible machine onto the world, tall, black, metal, like a modernist sculpture of two water cisterns welded together. When the aliens are hungry, Kronos (as it is dubbed by one of the scientists – he knows his mythology, but can’t spell) rises up on hydraulic metal legs and more or less pogoes over to the next available power station and sucks it dry, crushing screaming peasants in his path. 

Can it be stopped? Well, yeah. For Dr Who fans, the solution is so obvious it’s amazing it takes the scientists and their computer SUSIE (Synchro Unifying Sinometric Integrating Equitensor) so long to come up with it: they reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.

HOUSE OF HORRORS

d. Jean Yarbrough (1946)

Rondo Hatton suffered from Acromegaly, a pituitary gland disorder that leads to a distortion and thickening of the features and gigantism. He was working as a journalist when a film producer noticed his unusual features and suggested he went to Hollywood to provide some grotesque background detail to various b pictures. In 1944 he hit the (semi) big time as the back snapping Hoxton Creeper* in the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes’ film The Pearl of Death. His success in this role led to another two Creeper films in which the lumbering Hatton was, if not the lead, most definitely the star.

The first film, House of Horrors, is about an unsuccessful experimental sculptor (Martin Kosleck) who, after yet another setback, decides to throw himself in the river. Before he can do so, however, The Creeper suddenly appears, pulling himself out of the water before collapsing on the dockside. Fascinated by his physiognomy, Kosleck takes him home to his hovel / studio in order to sculpt him. One sleep and a meal later and The Creeper is ready to repay his new friend by killing everyone who has ever slighted him and his art.  

A diverting 65 minutes of long shadows, gruesome murder and waspish art criticism, House of Horrors is notable for a nicely unrestrained performance from Kosleck, some pretty girls and and, at the centre of everything, the calm, almost bovine presence of The Creeper, the gentle, quietly spoken man with a simple mind and infinitely sad eyes. If he wasn’t a serial strangler and back breaker you’d feel almost sorry for him.

There’s a great scene where Kosleck is ranting about an art critic, calling him a cheat and a liar, a low down crook and charlatan. Rondo looks up says slowly and softly ‘you don’t like the guy?’ Kosleck confirms his dislike and then just happens to let slip the critics address, sealing his fate. The Creeper is most definitely a savage killer, but he is a tool of death, not wholly evil, just ill-used. As in Rondo’s real life, The Creeper’s outward appearance constricts his opportunities: he is monstrous looking, so he is expected to be a monster and do horrible things, to smash and kill and snap in two. It must have been bitterly ironic to Rondo that he was successful because of his condition, not in spite of it: for a short period of time, he probably was the most famous ugly person in the western world, and that's got to hurt.

The Creeper dies at the end, shot in the back. You can’t keep a good monster down, though, or a profitable character, so he was soon resurrected for The Brute Man. A series of Creeper films was planned until Rondo, unlucky as ever, died of an Acromegaly related heart attack in 1946. Poor Rondo.  

* The Pearl Of Death is a great favourite in our house, particularly Lestrade's line ‘The ‘oxton Creeper? The ‘oxton ‘orror, I calls him’.