Schlock of the Old

Jesus, I watched some junk this past weekend.  Which isn't to say that I didn't enjoy it, but it was still cinematic trash.  As ever, the trashiest film I saw was also the most expensive and mainstream: Sidney Sheldon's Bloodline (1979) - yes, that is the film's full on screen title - another movie which proves that a top line cast and name director aren't enough to guarantee success.  Actually, the fact that it is based upon a Sidney Sheldon novel should be warning enough as to its nature: a glossy looking soap opera, this time set against the background of a pharmaceutical giant and with a snuff movie sub-plot thrown in for good measure.  The various parts of the plot don't really fit together especially well and there is far too much plot being crammed in to a two hour feature film for any of it to be coherent, (there is, reportedly, a longer version incorporating forty minutes of cut footage which has only ever been shown on US TV - apparently it makes more sense plot-wise).  

Indeed, the most interesting sub-plot, the snuff movie murders, is introduced late and is dealt with quite perfunctorily, despite the fact that it turns out to be highly significant to the film's denouement.  (Stare Audery Hepburn apparently didn't like the sub-plot, which might well be why it was so heavily cut). Director Terence Young (Of James Bond fame), gives it all a superficial slickness and moves the various big name actors (including Audrey Hepburn, Omar Sharif, Jame Mason and Gert Frobe amongst many others) around the glamourous locations like so many chess pieces on a board.  The game, however, ends up bogged down in a stalemate, with unresolved sub-plots left, right and centre and murky character motivations all over the place. Not surprisingly, it was a box office bomb.  That said, Bloodline is, like many of these big screen super soaps (a genre I have a sneaking liking for) curiously enjoyable.  But it was very much out of its time - late seventies audiences could save their money by staying at home and watching the same sort of plots unfolding in the likes of Dallas and Dynasty.

Far less slick were the four-pack of exploitation films I watched on Saturday: Nightmare in Wax (1969), the double bill of I Drink Your Blood and I Eat Your Skin from 1971 and Psychic Killer (1975).  The double bill I'll probably come back to at some point with a proper write up, but the other two films have some points of interest, worthy of a brief mention.  Both are revenge stories, with a wronged protagonist going to the dark side in order to exact revenge upon their perceived enemies.  Both feature police detectives played by past it B-movie stars and use the police investigations to provide some structure to their plots.  (Psychic Killer tends to get bogged down in the investigation, while Nightmare in Wax's cops - Scott Brady and sometime B-movie director John 'Bud' Cardos take more of a back seat).  The casting of the leads are notable in both films, while Nightmare in Wax (essentially a reworking of House of Wax) features schlock favourite Cameron Mitchell (going well over the top, even by his standards), Psychic Killer stars Jim Hutton cast against type - he could usually be found playing sympathetic, often comedic, characters.  Neither of these films were ever going to win any awards, being typically hastily produced B-movies, shot with very limited resources.  Nonetheless, they are enjoyable enough in their own right.  I have to admit that I saw Nightmare in Wax twice in a twenty four hour period.  

The first time I tried to watch it, I found that the version I had chosen to stream was heavily cut - it jumped all over the place - and had its opening titles in Spanish.  I figured that it couldn't be that bad and found a complete version (with original English titles) on another streaming service.  While still not a great movie, it was, in this version, at least coherent.  So, be careful which source you stream from - it can often give a misleading impression of a film if you get an inferior version.  (This doesn't just apply to B-movies and dodgy streaming services - the version of the Alain Delon Zorro I saw on the Roku Channel, for instance, turned out to be the barely coherent English language re-release, cut to less than ninety minutes.  Thankfully, the full two hour English language version eventually turned up on Plex - a far better and coherent viewing experience which did the film justice).  Anyway, I'm sure that I should be doing something more constructive with my weekends than endlessly watching old schlock films, but it just seems to be the natural thing to do on these increasingly grey Autumnal days.