How could we not be sceptical about another book on 1980s movies? Nostalgia, ho! But Hadley Freeman’s ode slash entreaty to us not to forget how good we had it [despite what those awful film critics might have said at the time] paired with discussion of current industry goings-on does provide a considerable dollop of hey-I-never-knew-that alongside her own personal brand of 1980s film worship.

This is like reading The Guardian front to back only it’s all about films and is liberally dolloped with wise and fun words from many of our film heroes. With chapters on why abortion isn’t in film any more, how When Harry met Sally is a shining example of how romcoms can be totally excellent and how Ghostbusters provides a template for how men should behave (thought it would be something to do with crossing the streams but appears not), it is an entertaining read but one that must be picked up and put down again after every couple of chapters. There is much and detailed dissection of social issues as demonstrated by directors John Hughes and Tim Burton.

There is also far too much worship of Ferris Bueller for my liking and I have to confess that The Princess Bride did not make the same impact on me at all. So, unsurprisingly, some of it is subjective to individual film likings but obviously other film loves are universal. You will definitely need to break out every single film mentioned and give them another watch, especially the back catalogues of John Belushi, Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy.

You may not always agree with Hadley Freeman but her dedication to the minutiae of 80s film is commendable and she makes some points that will get your brain cog-things whirring. Anything which raises the increasingly important issue of the fact that the big studios are profit-focused machines which don’t really give a time machine built out of a DeLorean about how good or diverse the films are as long as they make the big bucks in China is marvellous in anyone’s book.

Maryann has awarded Life Moves Pretty Fast (book) three Torches of Truth

Rising levels of anti-semitism and the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz means that the re-release this week of one of the finest films about the Holocaust, Louis Malle’s Au Revoir Les Enfants, is more than timely.

The film is set in a Catholic boys’ boarding school in northern France during the Occupation, and recounts how 12 year old Julien Quentin (Gaspard Manesse) and his schoolmates are joined by three new boys who, unbeknownst to them, are Jewish boys being hidden from the Nazis by the monks. Quentin becomes friends with one of the new boys, Jean Bonnett (Raphael Fejto), whose real name is Jean Kippelstein (Julien discovers this when he searches his locker). But when the Gestapo come to search the school for the boys, Julien gives Jean away when he instinctively glances at Jean when he thinks the Gestapo officer – who has just asked which of the boys is Bonnett – is distracted.

Au Revoir Les Enfants is based very closely on the wartime experiences of Louis Malle, and Julien is Malle’s alter ego. Its examination of authority, bystanding and victimisation is nuanced and complex. There is bullying amongst the boys, and the monks are given away to the Gestapo by the kitchen help Joseph (Francois Negret) – who is likened to an animal by the pupils – after he is unjustly sacked after being caught black-market dealing with some of the boys, children of the haute bourgeoisie, who remain unpunished.

Au Revoir les Enfants is framed by farewells, that of Julien and his mother at the train station when he leaves for school, and that of the Headmaster (Philippe Morier Genoud) when he says goodbye to the children gathered in the schoolyard as he and the Jewish boys are being taken away. It is this scene which is the emotional punctum of the film.

Through its autumn setting, the bleached, grey northern skies, and its muted palette and soundtrack, along with a Bressonian use of empty, vacated space, of exits and entrances, Malle maintains an atmosphere of melancholy and imminent loss. There is, though, much humour and charm in the portrayal of day-to-day life at the school, and in the depiction of the growing friendship between the two boys. Au Revoir Les Enfants is a flawlessly constructed, intelligent and moving example of a particular kind of classical French cinema, now lost, and which died with Malle.

Chris has awarded Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987) five Torches of Truth

In honour of the New Empress Magazine Adaptations Special, here is a discussion of an adaptation which holds a special place in my heart and mind; Raymond Briggs’ When the Wind Blows. There were plenty of films that scared me as a youngster; like many, I wailed over Hazel being stalked by the black rabbit in Watership Down (1978) and sniffed the tears/snot back as Bambi (1942) dashed about trying to locate his slain mama in the snowy forest of Disney but When the Wind Blows (1986) is surely the scariest animated film of them all.

In 1982 Raymond Briggs, better known for The Snowman (film of which came out in 1982) and probably Father Christmas (voiced by the jolly, dear departed Mel Smith in 1991), decided to write When the Wind Blows for an older [or more cynical] audience, covering a topic that no one must have thought that he might ever tackle: Nuclear War. When there was discussion of turning When the Wind Blows into a film, director Jimmy Murakami’s name was apparently the first to come to mind, a prudent appointment given the eventual result.

The 48 page graphic novel features a short passage of time in the lives of Jim and Hilda, a couple of everyday folk, a retired pair who deal the best they can with the sudden onslaught of war, a war that no one thought would ever happen between ‘the West’ and Russia. Jim thinks they can wait out the dropping of the bomb on London, the two of them having retreated to leafy Sussex post-retirement. After all, he has some very informative government and county council leaflets on how a citizens can protect themselves from the nuclear blast and fallout, not to mention his and Hilda’s experience of WW2. What is acknowledged by neither government nor citizen is that this war has nothing in common with those that have come before. In fact, Jim and Hilda find themselves reminisicing about bombs that you could simply hide from in an Anderson shelter or Underground station and having daydreams about what they’d do if a Russian soldier suddenly made his way up the garden path towards the house, furry hat, gun sporting a bayonet, thick moustache and all. When the unthinkable happens the viewer experiences an all-encompassing despair and sadness as Jim and Hilda struggle along in a post-apocalyptic haze of desperately clung-to routines and reassurances that it would all be over soon.

The humour of the text and the warmth of the animation that Briggs is well known for (in both book and film) manages, for a time, to cushion the absolutely devastating impact of what is happening to this couple, who are so recognisable they might just be your next door neighbours or your friend’s mum and dad. Raymond Briggs took his inspiration for them from his mum and dad; his parents being the basis for many of the characters he has drawn. The focus on their pain, the human cost of war, is excruciating but necessary.

The darkness, the utterly bleak nature of what is happening to Jim and Hilda, voiced by John Mills and Peggy Ashcroft, is very hard to take. The film deals with the impact on the surrounding areas in a way that the book does not; showing the impact of the blast on nearby towns. The way the book depicts that the bomb has fallen is in the melting away of the pictures from the page, the illustrations only returning as the light and heat of the bomb has faded. In the film we are shown the impact of the blast on their house in great detail; we do not know how long it took Jim and Hilda to come round after the blast but are given the impression that it must have been some time, the structural damage not limited to the four walls and roof surrounding them. The animation knitted in with shots of a model of their house gifts an added realism to the situation.

I watched the film probably no more than once or twice as a kid but it is forever etched on my soul. The pain and anguish of watching these harmless, lovable characters fade away is as much as a deterrent as anyone might need; the deterrent, that is, to thinking that nuclear weapons or indeed war in general could ever be the answer to anything. Jim recounts the reasoning for wearing white clothes, after reading that instruction in one of his informative leaflets, was that after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima at the end of WW2 those wearing stripes on their clothing had the stripes burned on to their skin. The casual mention of that endlessly horrifying event has the impact of a punch to the stomach, reminding us that this isn’t just a story, this sequence of events actually happened to people in the 20th century, inflicted upon one nation by another.

When the Wind Blows is essential reading and/or viewing, whether child or adult. If we can watch The blinking Snowman every bloody Christmas, then each of us surely has time to watch the ultimate anti-war, anti-bomb parable at least once in our lives.

Issue 14: Adaptations Special can be ordered here

Let’s all take some time to consider what the world would be like had Tom Hanks turned down the chance to star in Joe Dante’s wonderfully absurd suburban nightmare. It’s not a world that we would want to live in. Here Mark Searby says some cool trivia stuff about the The ‘Burbs, which will be getting a Blu-ray release later this month…

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Join Mark Searby to have a look back at this disturbing H.P. Lovecraft adaptation in honour of its DVD/Blu-ray release next week. Zombie cats and living severed heads. Nice.

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Hailed as a masterpiece by some, Sam Fuller’s drama, about a white German shepherd dog trained to attack black people, is the kind of picture rarely made by big Hollywood studios. It’s simply too controversial and real-life for the dream factory to handle. When execs either lose their marbles or bravely edge a bet, we get misfit movies such as Freaks (1932) or White Dog (1982) – pictures that disturb the consensus so greatly that they must be surpressed.

Like Robert Bresson’s Au hazard Balthazar (1966), it projects onto a luckless and innocent beast the psychologies and ugliness of the human mind, producing a symbolic and ruminative discourse on hate and racism.

White Dog is a work at once melodramatic and steely-eyed, prosaic and punchy. The screenplay was a hot property in the 1970s and Paramount Pictures had high hopes for it, but the execs eventually gave the project to Samuel Fuller, an iconoclast B-movie auteur rather than a studio journeyman.

White Dog worried Paramount Pictures and they disowned it, near enough, after negative word of mouth developed that what was turned in was a racist tract. To read White Dog as containing pro-racist ideology or defamatory content is entirely wrong.

Shot by Clint Eastwood’s cameraman Bruce Surtees, co-written by Curtis Hanson and scored by Ennio Morricone, White Dog is a work of sinister mood and steadfast remit. Fuller’s style is muscular and cinematic without ever drawing too much attention to itself –the mark of a true master of cinema…

The film’s final scene is hard to stomach, not just for the lurch from triumph to tragedy, but for the strong declaration made on its chosen themes. The use of slow motion and the cutting back and forth between figures, as they look on in horror and regret, is truly downbeat. Fuller does not serve up a sugarcoated, candy floss ending, where everything is made right in the world, the type usually demanded by studios and the mainstream public. We’re left instead to swallow a dose of truth that will be quite sickening to hopeful souls.

Extras

There are no extras on the disc. The booklet, however, boasts a fine essay by Jonathan Rosenbaum; a rather eccentric interview transcript, that purports to have been undertaken between Fuller and the dog (even if multiple dogs were used during filming), and the White Dog Scrapbook.

Martyn has awarded White Dog four Torches of Truth

The latest New Empress Magazine Video Blog takes a look at The Stuff (1985), a gooey B-movie written and directed by Larry Cohen (It’s Alive, Q: The Winged Serpent, The Ambulance). The Stuff is out on Blu-ray and DVD via Arrow Video.

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John Franklin Candy died twenty years ago today (4th March). Throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s, the Canadian funnyman was a staple of mainstream Hollywood movies and a popular screen presence. Whether it was as Chewbacca spoof Barf, in Spaceballs (1987), the pain in Steve Martin’s harried exec’s ass in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) or the titular Uncle Buck (1989) – Candy delivered the laughs.

The actor’s foray into the movies followed near enough the same route as other comedians of his generation – starting on television and then slowly transferring over to the big screen. He began the road to fame in 1972 by joining Chicago’s Second City improvisational troupe. He was a founding member, in 1974, of the Toronto chapter of Second City, which then went on to create SCTV (The Canadian equivalent of Saturday Night Live). This is where Candy really cut his comedic chops. He became the show’s first breakout star, too, thanks to characters such as Stan Shmenge and Johnny LaRue.

One of his first studio gigs was Steven Spielberg’s WW2 comedy 1941 (1979). However, the film wasn’t a success and Candy was somewhat overshadowed by more established actors such as Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi. The first noticeable role was in John Landis’ The Blues Brothers (1980) as Jake Ellwood’s correctional officer, Burton Mercer, and he followed that up the next year as Dewey “Ox” Oxberger in Ivan Reitman’s Stripes (1981).

Up next was Splash (1984), a rom-com about a mermaid (played by Daryl Hannah) living amongst us and falling in love with Tom Hanks’ Allen. Candy played Allen’s older brother, Freddie. Splash was a smash-hit and provided the breakthrough Candy had been waiting for and over the next six years, he rose in the world of film and appeared in such comedies as Brewster’s Millions; Summer Rental (both 1985); Little Shop Of Horrors (1986); Spaceballs; Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987); The Great Outdoors (1988); Who’s Harry Crumb?; Uncle Buck (1989); Home Alone (1990); Only The Lonely (1991) and Cool Runnings (1993). This parade of comedic pictures cemented Candy’s reputation.

In 1991, he made a huge leap into more serious fare by bagging a cameo appearance in Oliver Stone’s biopic JFK. Candy’s portrayal of New Orleans lawyer, Guy Andrews, and was a tantalising glimpse of his true range as a performer.

Candy was a notoriously private man and he very rarely gave interviews outside of traditional press junket duties. His Achilles’ heel was food and it would destroy his self-confidence. For years he was on a strict dietary regime and had a fitness trainer work with him, but sadly his addiction was too great. He was a heavy smoker, too, and had started to suffer from panic attacks. In 1992 he was scheduled to serve as host of the Canadian Genie Awards, but when he saw the advert they were running with – “We got the biggest star we could find” – he pulled out.

Candy went off to Durango, Mexico to shoot scenes for his latest comedy, a western titled Wagons East! (1994). On the 3rd March he cooked a late pasta dinner for some of his work colleagues and called his comedic co-stars, Robert Picardo and Richard Lewis, to thank them for being great to work with on the film. He then went to bed. Candy suffered a fatal heart attack in the early hours of Friday 4th March. He was 43 years old.

Mark Searby enlightens us on the scaly B-Movie joy that is Donald G. Jackson’s Hell Comes to Frogtown… What the Sam Hell?!

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Notoriously outrageous drag queen Divine stepped away from her working relationship with director John Waters in 1985 and teamed up with director Paul Bartel  to make this comedy western, talking its lead from Blazing Saddles but with added skirt-wearing bravado. Divine plays Rosie Velez, who has a partial map printed on her bum that could lead to mysterious riches if put together with the other section. To find this other parchment (arsement?) she has to do battle with solo gunmen after riches and her bosom, along with the ladies of a town called Chilli Verde who view her as a rival and a scrubber.

If you’ve never seen Divine in a film then maybe Lust In The Dust is the place to start, as the outrageousness of her career is toned down in this film just enough that one performance doesn’t overshadow an entire film. Whilst she has occasional moments of self-referencing humour, it’s the interactions she shares with the other Wild West women that are the highlights of the film; sarcastic cat-calling types trying to out mock each other with constant verbal diarrhoea, funny and sharply witty at times. But this type of dialogue can’t and doesn’t stop the film from struggling to find any other way of projecting comedy into a stale storyline about seeking lost gold in the Wild West.

There are moments when the story runs hard into a brick wall and requires some elaborate out of place humour from Divine to shift it along, with far too much reliance on Divine throughout. Secondary female Marguerita Ventura (Lainie Kazan) actually outplays Divine in every scene they share but she is relegated to bit part player outside of these boundaries.

Lust In The Dust doesn’t quite strike the right note between comedy and camp; instead it creates a plodding movie that displays only faint touches of humour, mainly thanks to Divine (on good behaviour throughout).

Extras: Only a trailer.

Mark has awarded Lust in the Dust (1985) on DVD two Torches of Truth