Shameless Self Expression

American student Jessica Harper enrols in a prestigious dance academy in Germany. Students and faculty start getting bumped off in bizzaro fashion by an unknown assailant. There may also be strange occult goings on within in the academy walls as well. Harper decides to start looking into the history of the school itself. Alida Valli and Joan Bennett play faculty members at the academy. A young-ish Udo Kier (who is dubbed, due to technical difficulties during filming his scene apparently) turns up for one brief scene as a shrink.   Personally I prefer the later “Inferno” , but this 1977 flick from co-writer/director Dario Argento ( “Tenebrae” , “Phenomena” , “Opera” ) is quite clearly an iconic Italian horror film, and a true triumph of style and atmosphere. It’s clearly a style over substance film, and that might not be everyone’s cup of tea. I too tend to favour story and character most of all in films, so I get the concerns there. However, when the style is this damn good I ...

A preacher (Bruno Bichir) gets a little too inquisitive of the stranger (Shea Whigham) he has just picked up and pays for it fatally. After burying the holy man’s body in the title quarry, Whigham decides to travel on to the small Texas town the preacher was heading to and poses as him. He preaches to the local townsfolk in a rather down-to-earth but no-nonsense manner that somehow they actually respond favourably to. This despite most of them being non-English speaking immigrants who likely don’t understand many of the words (and he doesn’t speak Spanish). When the dead body is uncovered, cluey but racist local lawman (Michael Shannon) suspects a local crim and his brother of the crime. Will this phony man of God get away with not just the ruse, but murder too?   Two terrific performances can’t do much to liven up this slow, dreadfully familiar 2020 crime-noir/western from director Scott Teems (who went on to script “Halloween Kills” ) and his co-writer Andrew Brotzman (who co...

Audrey Hepburn is married to a workaholic husband, well at least until someone murders him that is. A French police inspector (Jacques Marin) thinks Hepburn knows a lot more about the murder than she’s letting on. However, the audience quickly deduces that she likely knows even less about her seemingly dodgy husband, and handsome Cary Grant seems to feel that way too, as they try to get to the bottom of it all. Meanwhile, three sinister men (James Coburn, George Kennedy, and Ned Glass) show up at her dead husband’s funeral. Walter Matthau plays a CIA administrator who informs Hepburn that her late husband screwed over the three funeral attendees and another man over a stash of gold during WWII (they were all serving in the same platoon). He also insists that Hepburn is in possession of the stolen fortune, even if she’s not aware that she has it and that she’s in great danger from the three sinister men.   Director Stanley Donen ( “Singin’ in the Rain” , “Arabesque” ) gets his H...

Dr. Marlowe (Christopher Lee) is interested in the workings of the mind, particularly the idea of duality within us. He has developed a drug that he uses on his disturbed patients and notices that the drug lowers their inhibitions and causes them to act entirely without a filter. Basically, it suppresses the superego. Moving to experimenting on himself the suppression of his respectable dominant personality trait has the effect of unleashing Marlowe’s darker and previously suppressed sinister side to the forefront. This is a wild-eyed and wild-haired personality/persona called Blake (also played by Lee). Blake is a cruel and violent creature, one that Marlowe finds increasingly difficult to control once he’s loose. Oh dear, what has the doctor unleashed upon polite society? Peter Cushing and a lisping Mike Raven (better known as a disc jockey) play Marlowe’s friends, the former of whom mistakenly assumes that Blake is a blackmailer leeching off his friend Marlowe. Kenneth J. Warren pla...

Mackenzie Davis accepts a position as a governess for young orphan Brooklynn Prince at the large family estate. Soon Prince’s troubled older brother Finn Wolfhard turns up having been expelled from boarding school. Wolfhard quickly unsettles his new governess with creepy and insolent antics, though long-serving family housekeeper Barbara Marten stands up for the boy. She seems intent on ruling the roost even while Davis is around. Then Davis starts having unsettling experiences of the more ghostly kind. Could the house be haunted? Joely Richardson has a small role as Davis’ mentally unstable mother.   Gothic, ghostly tales tend to be my kind of horror outing, and this adaptation of Henry James’ classic The Turn of the Screw from 2020 is in the tradition of “The Others” and more closely the classic 1961 Deborah Kerr film “The Innocents” (the best adaptation of James’ tale to date). I’m surprised that it doesn’t get much love online, because director Floria Sigismondi (a veter...