London – 1000 Films Blog

Posted on March 28, 2021 by 1000filmsblog · 1 Comment

#294 Quatermass and the Pit

Watched: March 19 2021

Director: Roy Ward Baker

Starring: Andrew Keir, James Donald, Barbara Shelley, Julian Glover

Year: 1967

Runtime: 1h 37min

Hobbs End: a lone bobby is walking along the wet London street, making this the most British opening scene ever. Then: Ape men! Buried in the underground! This is gonna be goooood.

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Along with the five million year old ape man remains, there’s some sort of a device found buried in the mud. And, since this is the cold war, the military jumps right on that in case it’s some sort of a bomb or missile. Or even better – something they can use to put Britain on the nuclear superpower-map along with the USA and Soviet. But doctor Roney (Donald), Barbara Judd (Shelley) and professor Quatermass (Keir) have other ideas.

“Sure, it could be the skull of an unfortunate German pilot left here to rot since the war. But what if, and bear with me here, it’s the only earthly remains of a humanoid ape race who secretly ruled the world five million years ago and who were controlled by extraterrestrial insects..? I believe that theory has just as much merit. “

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Quatermass is right. Naturally. The device is a martian space ship, piloted by large bugs who kidnapped apes from earth, did some selctive breeding, then returned them to earth to repopulate our planet with these martian-earthling-combo-creatures who are probably our ancestors. Yup. That would have been our first guess too.

Oh. Well, I’ll be damned… They were right all along.

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Further research shows that the fictional Hobbs End has been plagued by evil spirits and scary supernatural phenomena for centuries, specifically deformed ghosts walking through walls and strange aural disturbances. Can the extraterrestrial find and the spooky apparitions be related somehow?

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We love us some Hammer horror! Sure, Quatermass is from the same tradition as the original Doctor Who – the era when the educated, privileged, white, middle aged man was the only possible voice of reason… But despite that, we really enjoy the Quatermass movies, even though this one also tends to perpetuate the stereotype of women feeling and men thinking.

“Thank Jesus we had this emotional lady hanging around. Our logical man brains were way too rational to pick up the hive memory of our collective past and solve the mystery.”

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Does Quatermass and the Pit make sense? Not quite. But it is a great ride. There are clearly fake insect monsters, very cool poltergeist activity, panic on the streets of London, and extreme Britishness. It had humanity pegged too. We quote: “‘If we found out the world was doomed, say by climatic changes, what would we do?’ ‘Nothing. We’d just go on squabbling about it as usual.'” Yeah… Things haven’t changed much since 1967.

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What we learned: Satan’s just an oversized bug.

Next time: Robbery (1967)

Posted on December 7, 2020 by 1000filmsblog

#285 Dont Look Back

Watched: November 23 2020

Director: D. A. Pennebaker

Starring: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Albert Grossman, Bob Neuwirtz, etc.

Year: 1967

Runtime: 1h 36min

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We have a confession to make. We don’t really care that much about Bob Dylan…

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I mean, sure, we know the hits, we know the face and we get the general gist of his appeal, but he was never really our cup of tea. Or coffee for that matter. Still, we thought, we’ll give this a go. Perhaps it will be our come-to-Jesus-moment?

Real question: would Jesus amass the same following if he played the harmonica..?

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For those not in the know, Dont Look Back is a documentary covering one of Dylan’s UK tours. It’s an interesting look into the folk music scene in the ’60s, the “proper” establishment versus the young, rebellious musicians, fame versus artistry, and it’s probably a perfect film for Bob Dylan fans to enjoy together, preferably with a couple of beers and loads of cigarettes.

Why yes, Bob, that would be the ideal place to host such a gathering.

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Esthetically, it’s very pleasing as well. The black and white photography is beautiful, the start is very cool, the music is of course excellent, and the style works very well with the contents. Also, the negotiation scene is surprisingly intriguing, and overall we enjoyed it.

What’s that Bob? What are you trying to say? Did Timmy fall in the pig pen?

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However, Dylan himself comes across as an arrogant, argumentative prick. Which isn’t really the best way to win us over as fans, reported genius aside. In fact, we found him quite annoying… Which probably wasn’t the intention, but that was the unfortunate result, and we tend not to like artists who are argumentative bastards, no matter their cultural importance.

Perhaps it is, Bob. Perhaps it is. But is it ours or yours..?

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In conclusion: esthetically, filmatically, culturally and historically, this movie is definitely worth watching and you get a fantastic sense of the 1960s. Personally, it’s hard to like Bob Dylan in this – sure he’s cute and charming, but he’s also fucking annoying and arrogant. Then again, he was 23 years old and everybody worshipped him, so can you really hold it against him..?

You know, you’re right. You should dig yourself. Way too many people are too hard on themselves. All we’re saying is that there’s nothing wrong with being nice to other people even if you think you’re better than them.

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What we learned: We’re the wrong audience for this movie.

Next time: In Cold Blood (1967)

Posted on June 10, 2019June 10, 2019 by 1000filmsblog · 1 Comment

#232 The Small World of Sammy Lee

Watched: May 25 2019

Director: Ken Hughes

Starring: Anthony Newley, Julia Foster, Robert Stephens, Wilfrid Brambell, Warren Mitchell

Year: 1963

Runtime: 1h 47min

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No, we are not dead. We just had to take a small hiatus due to exams and related stress enducing activities which take a lot of time away from writing. But things are calming down (only two weeks until the summer break for some of us!) and we’re ready to get back into it. And we do so with classic British crime film The Small World of Sammy Lee.

small1 — A.k.a. *The Loneliness of the Gambling Debt Runner*

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Patsy (Foster) arrives at a Soho strip club looking for Sammy Lee (Newley), the compère at the club who she had a fling with, and a job. Unfortunately for her, he’s off gambling and getting further into debt with a local kingpin, so she’s left with his sleazy boss instead.

small3 — Despite Sammy’s absence, Patsy gets an “interview” and is promptly hired.

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Returning to work, Sammy is not overly pleased to learn that Patsy has found a job there, but at least she’s hired as a waitress rather than a stripper. For the time being. Additionally, he receives a call informing him that his debt of £300 is to be collected immediately. Although he does manage to talk the debt collectors into giving him 5 hours to come up with the money.

small4 — “Um, yeah, I totally have that amount of money lying around and will have absolutely no trouble getting my hands on them within the next five hours. Just you wait!”

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Sammy has to pull all his strings, exhaust all his contacts and juggle all his ideas to make the money in the allotted time in order to survive the night. As the night goes on, the deals get shadier and shadier, and he will pull all those who love him down with him.

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Sammy Lee is charming and funny, but a selfish bastard. His contact with his brother is limited to asking for money, and he has lots of acquaintances and very few friends. He pleads with the men in his life for money, but dismisses all the women who want to help him, probably out of some false sense of chivalry. Poor Patsy deserves better.

small6 — As does Sammy’s ever faithful and loyal friend/sidekick Harry

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The Small World of Sammy Lee is tense and engaging, and we enjoyed it a lot. We also secretly liked the gratuitous strip tease scenes with the elaborate scenarios, despite our lack of understanding of their sexual appeal (might be a gender thing). We loved the properly choreographed numbers, the clear themes, and the contrast between the show and everything happening backstage.

small7 — Note to all: no man is worth participating in an Arabian Nights themed strip tease. If you’re gonna do that, do it for yourself.

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And while we weren’t necessarily fans of Sammy, we really enjoyed Newley’s performance and the character’s ingenuity in trying to raise the money. We watched this as a double feature with Bitter Harvest, and to us, this reads a bit like an alternate reality version of that (which we’ll come to in a few days) with Patsy as a less driven and less autonomous Jennie. But we’ll explore this further in the next blog post.

What we learned: What a compère is. And also, don’t gamble. Although we already knew that.

Next time: Bonus: Bitter Harvest (1963)