Chip Kaufmann’s Pick:
Tales from the Crypt / Vault of Horror (1973)
Actually it’s a Blu-Ray pick as the DVD of this double feature contains the TV print of Vault of Horror which is sloppily (and I do mean sloppily) censored. For those of you without Blu-Ray players, the DVD will have to do but at least Tales from the Crypt, which is the main attraction here, is unaffected.
Amicus Productions (see article this issue) was a British film company that specialized in horror anthologies. While these are not the best of the lot, they make an ideal introduction to the world of Amicus for those unfamiliar with their movies. Tales from the Crypt, in fact, was the most successful film the company ever made.
Crypt begins with 5 people on a tour of some catacombs who lose their way and find themselves in a stone chamber where a monk (the Crypt Keeper to those of you familiar with the source comics or the later HBO show) regales them with deep, dark secrets from their lives. Each person has done something wrong that leads to a bad end but that’s only the beginning.
The Brits loved these multi-story horror films and had no qualms whatsoever about appearing in them. Crypt features an unusually strong cast that includes Joan Collins, Richard Greene, Peter Cushing, as well as British stage legend Sir Ralph Richardson as the Keeper. All of the stories are good but the third with Peter Cushing and his Valentine’s Day revenge is outstanding.
Vault of Horror was an immediate follow-up trying to cash in on the success of Crypt. It too used the 1950s EC Horror Comics as the source of its stories and had another strong cast including Curt Jurgens, Terry-Thomas, Glynis Johns, and a pre-Doctor Who Tom Baker. While there were some good stories here too, Vault didn’t fare as well as horror fans’ tastes were changing thanks to The Exorcist.
Unlike their chief competitor, Hammer Films, whose movies were very stylish, Amicus Productions were noted for their wit as well as their style and for committed performances no matter how absurd the plots or how low-tech the special effects were. Those who like their horror straight may feel as if they have strayed into the nether regions but Anglophiles and old school aficionados will find themselves in horror heaven.
Michelle Keenan’s Pick:
Child 44 (2015)
Later this fall British actor Tom Hardy will star as London’s legendary twin gangster brothers Reggie and Ronnie Kray. Aptly named Legend, early notices are strong and it’s looking like Hardy may even nab a nomination. In the meanwhile I thought I’d recommend a film that Hardy starred in earlier this year, but went by with little notice, and was recently released on DVD.
Directed by Daniel Espinosa (Safe House and Easy Money) and based on the novel by Tom Rob Smith, Child 44 is a historical thriller based in 1950s Russia in the brutal days of Stalinism. Leo Demidov (Tom Hardy) is a war hero and MGB agent. On the surface he is the picture perfect exactor of Stalinistic Russia. Below the surface hides a Ukrainian orphan, a man who upholds the tenants of Stalinism as a means of survival only. Leo is terribly in love with his wife Raisa (Noomi Rapace), a school teacher who seems to only thinly veil her contempt of Stalinism and her husband.
When his best friend’s son (his own godson) is found dead near a train track, hushed rumors of murder swirl. When his wife is accused of being a traitor, he refuses to denounce her. Leo’s carefully crafted and curated world is turned upside down and they are exiled to a bleak industrial outpost run by General Mikhail Nesterov (Gary Oldman). There Leo discovers a series of deaths, all matching his godson’s. What ensues is the hunt for a serial killer, the desperate attempt to prove corruption among MGB officer ranks and the opportunity to win his wife’s love.
Sounds pretty good – so what’s wrong with it? It’s a hot mess. As I watched the multifaceted story unfold, I thought, this must have been an amazing book. The difficult task adapting a book for big screen is streamlining a book for feature film. Here Espinosa and his screenwriters tried to include way, way, way too much of the book in the film. It’s too long, there way too many things going on, the pacing is off, and the accents are all over the map. But here’s the kicker, the fact that any of it worked, in spite of everything it had going against it, means it’s really quite good. It also had more staying power than the average film. The grim portrait it paints of that era in Russian history is fascinating to those of us that can’t imagine living in such a society.
Hardy has worked with several of the other cast members in previous films, and this works well for the film, especially the re-teaming of him with Noomi Rapace (they starred in The Drop together – one of my favorite films of 2014). Their relationship is one of the many elements of story that makes Child 44 worthwhile and actually quite good.
