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Reviews
Abba at the BBC (2013)
Could have been better
In this hour-long special, there are amazingly only a handful of *genuine* BBC Abba music clips. The rest are promo items (or, in one case, foreign TV clips) masquerading as BBC footage. Just because "Crackerjack" showed an Abba promo video, that doesn't make it an "Abba at the BBC" clip. Total fiddle.
The clips shown are hacked down to 16:9 and haven't even been replaced by modern transfers of the films used. Soundtracks are mono (even when the sound is the record version, rather than a re-recording as, for example, per the "Top Of Pops" Waterloo).
"Chuck it together, lads. Is it knock-off time yet?"
Saint Joan (1957)
Not as bad as usually thought
This is an under-rated version of the story of the farm girl who fought the British and helped kick them out of France. Seberg is nowhere near as bad in this movie as reputation would suggest (and looks great with a way cool cropped hair-do), and there are good performances from Geilgud, Richard Widmark, and Richard Todd. It does have to be said, though, that this is not a movie for action-lovers - the centrepiece of Joan leading the troops in the liberation of Orleans, for example, is replaced by a fade-to-black! The movie is also quite stagey and it is stylistically easy to think it was made at least ten years earlier than it's 1957 release date. The movie makes a nice change if you are fed up with the Ingrid Bergman version, though.
Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974)
A triumph of direction over plot
Clemens does a good directing job on this carefully paced - and different - period vampire piece from Hammer, with only the over-long climactic sword fight letting things down in this respect. However, the plot comes in a poor second and is packed with holes and implausibilities. If it all made logical sense, this would indeed be a horror classic. As it is, it remains an item for cultists only, who seem charitably blind to the flaws in the script.