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#292 Poor Cow

Watched: February 15 2021

Director: Ken Loach

Starring: Carol White, John Bindon, Terence Stamp

Year: 1967

Runtime: 1h 41min

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Joy (White) gets pregnant at a young age and marries her baby-daddy Tom (Bindon), despite him being an abusive dick. As a young, working class girl we can’t imagine she felt she had much choice in the matter. Luckily for her, her hubby is caught during a robbery and is sent off to jail. Yay!

“Hmm..? What was that..? Jail? Ok, dear, have fun. Pick up some milk on the way home.”

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Once Tom’s out of the picture, life gets better. She starts a relationship with Dave (Stamp) – another criminal, but one who treats her well and takes good care of both her and her son Johnny. However, soon he too is arrested and sentenced to 12 years for a brutal robbery. Not yay. Well, sort of yay, seeing he really is a violent criminal (with a penchant for collecting ladies, which isn’t very nice). So, all in all a semi-yay. A muted celebration. Prosecco in lieu of champagne. That sort of shindig.

“I swear to God if you play Wonderwall again…”

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Joy stays in touch with Dave in prison and continues their relationship as best she can, but a girl’s gotta make a living. She gets a job as a barmaid, and then as a model for a bunch of perverts who get their rocks off taking pictures of scantily clad women. But as her friend points out, she enjoys sex and flirting too much to make a career out of prostitution – she’s very happy to do it for free! Fair enough. Soon however, Tom is released from prison, and Joy is faced with some tough choices… And she makes the very worst one! The idiot…

Nope. This is not it. This does not even make Joy’s List of Top Ten Bad Choices.

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We must admit a pattern in ourselves, where we’re sometimes a little bit unenthusiastic about putting on kitchen sink dramas (sometimes you just want stupid entertainment from a movie, not life lessons or heart breaking drama!)… But more often than not we end up really enjoying them, and that is exactly what happened with this movie.

Honestly, we really did enjoy it more than a cold, windy day on a rocky beach. Scout’s honour.

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Despite our misgivings about Joy’s choices, Poor Cow is quite engaging. It woke us right up with the childbirth in the opening scene and we liked the efficient storytelling – by skipping from scene to scene we get the whole story with minimal effort on all our parts. And we love us some minimal effort. We also loved the faces in the crowd – Loach knew how to pick them! – the fact that the women actually liked sex and, as per usual, the clothes and the hair. Was it our favourite social realism kitchen sink drama British new wave type of film? No. But was it worth watching? Yes, definitely.

For the romantically inclined, there’s even a sweet lovey-dovey waterfall scene

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However, we’re not entirely sure what to think of Joy. We don’t really get any insight into her internal workings, which kind of works – she remains a bit of a mystery. But man, make good choices, girl! And if your reaction to realising that your son is the most important thing in your life is to stay with his abusive dad who clearly gives no shits about him or you, then you need to sort out your priorities.

“Just relax”

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What we learned: Everybody’s bent.

Next time: Privilege (1967)

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#276 Persona

Watched: August 31 2020

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Starring: Liv Ullman, Bibi Andersson

Year: 1966

Runtime: 1h 20min

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Actress Elisabet Vogler (Ullmann) stopped speaking after a performance of Elektra, and nurse Alma (Andersson) is tasked with looking after her and, if possible, bring her back to the world.

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“I was sure I heard the doctor say you should take care of me, not just stand around posing in the background…”

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The two women retreat to an isolated summer house for some R&R. Soon, Alma bonds strongly with her patient – to the point where she starts finding it difficult to distinguish between herself and Elisabet…

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“OMG, I can’t even tell us apart anymore! #twinsies!”

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So far, this might be our favourite Bergman, and not just because Liv Ullmann is from our city (sort of. Technically, she was born in Tokyo but our local cinema has a whole exhibition about her which is irrefutable proof that she’s officially from Trondheim). As regular readers will have gathered, we love psychological horror dramas with strong female characters and beautiful cinematography, and Persona checks all the boxes.

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If anyone’s wondering what to get us for Christmas, this entire outfit, luggage included, would not go amiss. Make a note!

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We loved the Un Chien Andalou-esque opening, the performances of both main characters, the very explanatory exposition scene at the beginning (we enjoy a good tell-don’t-show-scene), and the Swedish language (this might be considered treason, but Swedish is perhaps more beautiful than Norwegian, despite sounding a tiny bit whiny..).

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Just a second – you’ve got something on your face.

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It is quiet and violent at the same time, beautiful and repulsive, impossible to understand (although Bergman claimed it’s very straight forward and simple), and thoroughly fascinating. It is also a very probable inspiration for Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) – the two might make a good, though emotionally exhausting, double feature. Definitely recommended!

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Say cheese!

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What we learned: Ingmar, your idea of “simple and straight forward” is very different from ours…

Next time: Seconds (1966)

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#161 Dracula

Watched: January 7 2018

Director: Terence Fisher

Starring: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Michael Gough, Melissa Stribling

Year: 1958

Runtime: 1h 22min

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The story of Dracula hardly needs another recap, but if you still have no idea what this is all about, check out our previous entries on the same story, Dracula (1931) or Nosferatu (1922). We’re pretty sure we summarized the story in at least one of those.

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Blood, fangs, crazy eyes and just a hint of sexy. Really all the info you need.

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That being said, Terence Fisher and screenwriter Jimmy Sangster took some liberties with their 1958 version, mainly concerning some characters and their relationships. Lucy, Mina and Jonathan Harker in particular have gone through some changes.

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Van Helsing is his old, charming self though

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Well-known story and some artistic liberties aside, Hammer’s Dracula (a.k.a. Horror of Dracula) is one of our favourite versions of Bram Stoker’s novel. Christopher Lee is sexy, suave and animalistic as the count, and Peter Cushing is magnetic and dynamic as his arch nemesis.

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We’re honestly not entirely sure how we would react if this guy showed up in our bedroom… Sure, he’s deadly, but what a way to go!

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We absolutely love this movie. There’s nothing like a good vampire story (emphasis on the “good”), and we appreciate that Jonathan Harker is as useless and boring as we’ve always thought he was even as they’ve tried to make his character a bit more interesting.

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Going from accountant to vampire-fighting librarian might sound cool on paper, but he can’t even resist one scantily clad woman. Giles he’s not!

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Now, our eternal love for Gary Oldman is well documented, but even we have to admit that Christopher Lee’s vampire count may be on par with Oldman’s. And despite the many changes to characters etc. made in this version, it stays true to the original story. There’s nothing not to love, and if you’re only going to watch one version of the ultimate vampire romance, you could do a lot worse than this.

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Pro tip: if you have no reflection in the mirror, take a full bath before bedtime. It’s so easy to miss a spot of blood.

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What we learned: If you’re trying to kill a powerful nemesis and his much weaker sidekick, perhaps it is a good idea to take out the main threat first..?

Next time: Elevator to the Gallows (1958)

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#133 The Big Combo

Watched: September 16 2017

Director: Joseph H. Lewis

Starring: Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte, Brian Donlevy, Jean Wallace, Helen Walker

Year: 1955

Runtime: 1h 27min

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Leonard Diamond (Wilde) is a police lieutenant with a vendetta against crime lord Mr Brown (Conte). Despite warnings from his superiors and a distinct lack of evidence, he is hell-bent on bringing the gangster down and to save Mr Brown’s girl Susan Lowell (Wallace), with whom he is a bit obsessed.

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And who can blame him, with her face always being perfectly lit, even in shadows

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When Lowell tries to kill herself, Diamond finally has an opportunity to talk to her in her hospital bed. Not entirely conscious, she keeps muttering about someone named “Alicia,” but when she regains consciousness, she cannot say who Alicia is (or was).

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To the investigation-mobile!

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Mr Brown does not take kindly to Diamond’s interest in him, or his experiments with a lie-detector, so he kidnaps his nemesis, tortures him, and then pours him full of alcohol.

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Pictured: fun new ways of using a hearing aid!

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However, inventive torture devices do nothing to dissuade the investigator, who only increases his efforts to put the criminal behind bars. Following a hunch, Diamond goes out to prove that Brown is a killer, but what he finds is not quite what he expected.

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He does find time to snuggle with dancer Rita – an unlucky Dame with perfect make-up and low standards

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The Big Combo is dark and atmospheric, with great lighting and music. The characters are taken to the extreme; Diamond is exceedingly righteous and stubborn, while Brown is a sadistic psychopath with few redeeming features, apart from maybe his tongue, judging from the look on Susan’s face in one infamous scene.

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Her heart may regret getting involved with a gangster, but her body thinks otherwise…

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We loved the lighting, the smoke and the angles, the jazzy music and the use of sound around a pivotal moment in McClure’s life (which we will not spoil). The Big Combo is also surprisingly progressive sexually, with the aforementioned scene with Susan and Brown, as well as the heavily implied relationship between henchmen Fante and Mingo both being unusually explicit for the time.

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It’s (more than) guy love between two guuuuys

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Definitely worth watching, especially if you’re into noir films with lots of sexual undertones.

What we learned: Even gangster henchmen can find love in each other.

Next time: The Court Jester (1955)