www.list.co.uk/film HORROR CHAW (15) 117min (Optimum) ●●●●●
not a little daring for its time (1955) mystery that’s played for laughs. Rex Harrison is the cad, Cecil Parker the shrink and Margaret Leighton and Kay Kendall just two of the lovely ladies in the amnesiac’s life. George Cole and Michael Hordern also put in appearances. It’s written and
directed by veteran filmmaker Sidney Gilliat, who’s best known for his collaborations with Frank Launder (co- writing Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes), who produced the original St Trinian’s films and who also directed Millions Like Us, Waterloo Road and Green for Danger. It’s not one of Gilliat’s best, but this husband’s certainly worth watching. No extras. (Miles Fielder)
DRAMA BERNARD AND DORIS (15) 103min (HBO) ●●●●●
During the DVD extra in which director Bob Balaban discusses the vastly wealthy life of socialite heiress Doris Duke, he reveals that she was investigated for a fatal accident on her property and had a couple of camels living at her place. But clearly Balaban felt that neither of these true events fitted into his fictional vision over what may or may not have occurred between Duke (whom he describes as ‘both Clark Gable and Marilyn
This blackly comic South Korean horror film arrives on the back of the success of the Asian monster movie The Host. Like that film, Chaw (pronounced ‘chow’, meaning animal trap, but probably intended to invoke Jaws) is at once a knowing genre parody and a gruesome chiller in its own right. The creature in this feature is a giant boar that’s terrorising the inhabitants of a small village. After the tusky terror kills one villager too many, a self- important city cop is dispatched from Seoul to sort the big pig out. A hotheaded colleague, an arrogant professional hunter and a geeky ecologist join him and together the quarrelsome foursome head into the woods to track down the beast. The dysfunctional
interplay between the intentionally generic characters maintains the interest between monster sightings, and there’s an amusing supporting cast of crazy locals. The special effects are a bit ropey, but they do the job in a film that doesn’t take itself seriously. No extras. (Miles Fielder)
COMEDY THE CONSTANT HUSBAND (U) 85min (Optimum) ●●●●●
A man wakes up in a strange country with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. Enlisting the assistance of a local psychiatrist, the dazed chap begins to piece together his life and discovers to his mortification that he’s been very badly behaved indeed. That’s the crux of this witty and
Monroe’) and her gay alcoholic butler Bernard Lafferty, whose journey takes him from repressed Ulsterman to flamboyant Priscilla. Susan Sarandon and
Ralph Fiennes are predictably excellent in the lead roles as we are presented with a woman who could be hateful, but had forthrightness and just enough compassion in her soul to keep us from switching off. Ultimately, this is a slow- burning tale, which veers just the right side of a sentimental afternoon movie on Five. (Brian Donaldson)
DRAMA/HORROR TOWER OF LONDON (15) 92min (Optimum) ●●●●●
This long unavailable (on DVD), deliciously nasty historical horror made in 1939 is all dungeons, manacles, torture and beheadings. But it’s also fairly classy stuff, boasting a fine cast headed by Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff and Vincent Price, lavish sets built on Universal Studios’ back lot and sweeping battle scenes filmed in what must have been sweltering Californian heat. It was finished 10 days late and came in a whooping $80,000 over budget, but the extra time and money is there to see on screen. Rathbone is
wonderfully wicked as the Duke of Gloucester, would-be usurper of King Edward IV’s 15th century English throne (we even get a duel from the greatest swordsman in Hollywood). Karloff is gloriously demented as the Tower’s chief executioner and Price is marvellously foppish as the Duke of Clarence, who in one of the most memorable scenes is drowned in a vat of wine. Not to be confused with Roger
DVD Reviews Film PLAYLIST
Hoots Mon! This month’s PlayList looks at classic Scottish cinema, but none of your Trainspotting modernity. Instead, we’re delving into the vintage Scottish silents stored online in the Scottish Screen Archive at the National Library of Scotland.
It’s exactly one hundred years since the first Scottish fiction film went into production, with the United Films production of Rob Roy, although sadly no footage remains of this historic venture. But you can see a choice moment from 1912’s homegrown blockbuster Mairi: The Romance of a Highland Maiden, filmed against the exotic backdrop of North Kessop. Offering a strong narrative hook, it’s the story of Mairi (Ellen Duguid), the daughter of a smuggler, but also the lover of a customs officer. The inevitable struggle between the law and the miscreant smugglers is captured in all its roughhouse glory here (tinyurl.com/yfjquzc).
There’s more special effects action in The Enchanted Glade, a production by the Bearsden Film Club which deals with the presumably topical problem in North Glasgow’s leafier environs of local picnickers being attacked by marauding witches. ‘Go whence you came, intruding mortals!’ exclaims a cheeky, stick-brandishing witch, forcing the nattily dressed locals to vanish politely into thin air (tinyurl.com/yl8ocbc). Another silent short, Frank Marshall’s Mower Madness, deals with another burning issue that concerned many Scots at the time – lawnmowers with a mind of their own. A teasing clip, alas minus the ‘money shot’ of the possessed horticultural implement in attack mode, can be seen here (tinyurl.com/ykylapb). Some relief from such disturbing visions can be found in Sadness and
Gladness, a fictional short from 1928 which deals with an unemployed man who hasn’t got the money to take his children Jeannie and Mattie on holiday. Instead, he sends them to a holiday camp, and on return, the children are delighted to find that their father has found a job (tinyurl.com/y97anx7). This charming, if unlikely fantasy was created to promote the Necessitous Children’s Holiday Camp Fund, and its upbeat tone is best summed up by this quote ‘If you keep your face to the sunshine, then the shadows behind you will fall.’ 1,2,3 aww . . . (Eddie Harrison)
Corman’s 1962 cheapo version in which Price was recast as Gloucester. No extras. (Miles Fielder) DRAMA/THRILLER AN INSPECTOR CALLS (PG) 77min (Optimum) ●●●●●
Edinburgh’s famous son Alistair Sim leads the quality cast in this excellent 1954 adaptation of JB Priestly’s celebrated play. Set in small town England in 1912, it opens with the interruption of a dinner party at the home of a wealthy factory owner by the arrival of a stranger (Sim) who
announces himself as Inspector Poole. The policeman says he’s investigating the suicide of a young girl and as the evening wears on he unveils a series of family secrets that implicate each member of the household in the girl’s death.
Revelation after revelation adds up to a very clever dissection of British society in the Edwardian era. Switching from charming to chilling, often within the same line of dialogue, Sim is perfectly cast as the copper with an ulterior motive. And the supporting cast, which includes a very young Bryan Forbes, acquit themselves admirably. As directed by veteran Guy Hamilton (The Colditz Story, Goldfinger) it’s far better than Stephen Daldry’s recent stage revival. No extras. (Miles Fielder)
18 Feb–4 Mar 2010 THE LIST 57