TARZAN'S MAGIC FOUNTAIN

d. Lee Sholem (1949) 

One of my great heroes is Johnny Weissmuller, so I'm not predisposed to like Lex Barker, the man who replaced him as Tarzan after 16 glorious years. I'm not an unreasonable person, however, so I thought I'd give Barker the benefit of the doubt and see how the interloping twat does at filling Johnny's loin cloth (although I'm assuming Barker got a new loin cloth when he started. I certainly hope so).

These days, Tarzan's Magic Fountain would be described as a franchise reboot: new lead actor, some new sets, some new matte paintings - and a return to some of the gruesome violence that the series was originally notable for but became less prevalent as the films became popular with children. This is counter balanced by an awful lot of comic relief, mostly Cheeta related. There is still a reliance on (often badly matched) stock footage, much of which has already appeared in Tarzan films many, many times over.

The story meanders around a long lost aviatrix (40s horror favourite, Evelyn Ankers) and the idea of a hidden jungle city that has the secret of eternal youth. It's not particularly interesting, and there is an 'of its time' sub-plot where Jane takes charge of an expedition in order to demonstrate all that she has learned from many years of living in the jungle. It's a total disaster, and it's not long before she's lost, covered in killer ants and caught in a flash flood, flapping her arms around and shouting for Tarzan. That will teach the woman to try and do stuff.

So, what does Barker bring to the role? Well, he's fifteen years younger than Johnny Weissmuller, and, understandably, in better shape (Johnny filled out a bit when he hit 40). His biggest contribution, however, is smugness: his Tarzan is extremely pleased with himself, and forever smirking at some private joke or other. It's not an admirable quality, nor is the fact that he wears espadrilles all the time. 

As ever, the film ends on some Cheeta related tomfoolery. This time, Cheeta drinks from the magic fountain of youth and turns into a baby Howler Monkey. A baby Howler Monkey. They must think we are fucking idiots. 

SPASMO

d. Umberto Lenzi (1973)

Ah, Giallo, Italian for complicated. Sort of.

Giallo films are intricate, intriguing, surprising. They are fixated on murder and fear in the fast lane of the twentieth century, and feature attractive people with fabulous homes, cool clothes, fast cars and strange, unnatural urges. There is always at least one character who is a psychotic sex killer, and part of the game is working out which one (or two, or three) it is.

Spasmo is a text book example of its class, a triumph of style over substance. Almost everything is here for effect, so much so that the film resembles a less tedious Whitehall farce, filled with non-sequiturs: characters who drive miles to say a couple of ominous lines and then drive off again; women and men who are introduced just to be murdered; dead people who are neither dead nor people (one of the characters has an obsession with lifelike female mannequins, and likes to hang them from trees); shadows, mistaken identity, unlikely coincidences.

There’s a great kinetic energy to the film, as if it relies on perpetual motion or knows it’s a fairly flimsy house of cards that would collapse with the merest breath. Everything is heightened, racked up, piled on. In an amazing lighthouse on a cliff edge filled with caged birds of prey the camera cuts rapidly between headshots of the characters and the birds, each staring down the camera in turn as Ennio Morricone’s superb score stabs and swoops. The effect is slightly ridiculous, but wonderful, operatically dramatic. Perhaps the owl knows what’s going on, as no-one else really has a clue – or a care, it’s not that sort of movie.    

English actress Suzy Kendall – born Freda Belpin – lends extra quality to proceedings: she's beautiful and moves like a model, but is also excellent at screaming and pulling ‘urgh’ and ‘arrgghh’ faces. She is ably supported by an equally photogenic cast: this is Giallo, so everyone is good looking, except for the ugly ones, who have more than a touch of the grotesque about them.

PRESSURE POINT

d. Hubert Cornfield (1962)

I've always loved films about psychoanalysis, mainly because they provide so much scope for offbeat and inventive attempts to turn the objective camera into a subjective eye. I particularly enjoy dream sequences, haunting visuals, unusual staging, blurred edges, atonal electronic music and lots and lots of mime. Pressure Point is almost mainstream in many ways, but has some fascinating components that keep it plenty weird enough for consideration on this somewhat specialist blog. 

The very great Sidney Poitier is the prison psychiatrist, Bobby Darin the prisoner patient, an American Nazi imprisoned when the USA entered the war with Germany. They are diametrically opposed from the outset, of course, but the tension between the racist loser and the black high flier sparks some soul searching from each of them, which makes for a fascinating conflict. 

Their sessions together open up all sorts of odd, abstract flashbacks from Darin's less than illustrious past, sometimes staged in anonymous dreamscapes (the scenes where a young Darin bullies his imaginary friend), sometimes in Poitier's office (the venue for a fantasy about Darin ordering an elephant to stand on his pathetic hypochondriac Mother's head). It's pretty intense, particularly the restaging of a unsettling incident in which Darin and his drunken friends play Noughts and Crosses on every available surface in a bar - including the landlord's wife.   

Although the narrative is framed as a fairly conventional tale of triumph over adversity, Pressure Point does a lot more besides, riveting the attention and stimulating the imagination, and the performances, particularly from the under-rated Darin, are excellent. 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, USA

d. Denis Sanders (1959)

Dostoevsky goes beat, man. Well, sort of. George Hamilton plays Robert Cole, a beer can bongo playing high school drop out with a very punchable face and a massive superiority complex. Ray believes that he is special, an Alexander the Great, a Napoleon Bonaparte, albeit one who lives in a Los Angeles bedsit and spends most of his days either asleep or drifting aimlessly around amusement arcades. Cole believes that important people like him shouldn't have to operate within the normal moral framework of society and that, as they know best, they should do whatever the hell they like. Typical student, really. His view is that if, for example, he had beaten a pawnbroker to death, then he probably had a very good reason, and he's too clever to get caught, so let's leave it at that.    

I haven't read Dostoevsky's original novel (I haven't read ANY Dostoevsky, please don't tell my mates), but I am familiar with the basics, which is just as well as you certainly don't get any help from the film itself, which cleverly reconfigures the source material so that it becomes virtually incomprehensible. Despite the inherent drama of the storyline there is no tension here whatsoever and the narrative is reduced to a series of seemingly unrelated vignettes in which an out of their depth cast are left spouting cod philosophical non sequiturs in lieu of characterisation and dialogue. The music is quite good, though. 

The Cole/Raskolnikov character needs an actor able to convey a fierce intellect, a complex personality and a monstrous personal philosophy. Instead we get a very young George Hamilton, who looks a bit thick and keeps stiffly throwing his arms in the air and shouting. With a better actor the film might have had a chance but, as the producer later admitted, they simply couldn't afford Anthony Perkins.   

I didn't set up this blog to be mean to films, by the way, but Crime and Punishment, USA is pretentious and poorly executed and it would be dishonest of me not to say so - and I'm nothing if not a deeply moral and upright person.