harryfableson Reviews

Targets (1968)

A meditation on horror

[8/10 · 7 March 2006]

Targets poses the following questions: in the modern world of seemingly random violence, how can an old fashioned horror films be scary? If, on your way to the cinema, you read about a brutal and random murder or series of murders, how can you be scared by the goings on in a creaky haunted house? It explores these themes through two parallel plots; Byron Orlock is a fading (faded really) horror star of the old school, considering making one last picture. Tim O' Kelly has just bought a rifle. Their paths just about cross early on - but really, they seem to inhabiting almost two different films until a climax at a drive-in-movie theatre means these two stories become horribly intertwined.

REAL SPOILERS NOW

O' Kelly finds a sniper's position and begins shooting people watching the film. The matter of fact, stark normality of this sequence means it remains one of the most wrenching I've ever seen in a film. There is no music, no suspense or build up really, just a precise catalogue of violence that is neither exciting nor sentimental. One shot of a boy crying in the seat next to the bloody body of his father has stayed with me till today, ten seconds of celluloid burned into my mind.

It's significant, I think, that O' Kelly shoots from almost behind the screen (where one of Byron's old fashioned pictures is playing) a real and horrible horror, leaping out in place of the safer more old fashioned horror world of Byron. Yet when Byron confronts O' Kelly, he stops the massacre. A victory (of sorts) for the old man. Perhaps the film suggests that there is a dignity in those old horror films, that Tim O' Kelly and people like him can wield great power over us through fear - but really they are paper tigers: weak men who hide behind a sniper's scope. The film might suggest that in a world where people like that make us afraid, we need horror films that give us safe, old fashioned scares, not less but more. Even the creakiest looking old movie has some worth, even the cheapest art can save us at the right time.

Night and the City (1950)

My favourite film.

[10/10 · 3 March 2006]

Imagine Charles Dickens had to make a bit of extra money by writing B-movies in Hollywood and you might get close to imagining this haunting, wonderful film. It fuses the best traditions of film noir with a very British atmosphere: a cast of character actors playing vividly drawn and desperate people.

There's a mournful tone to the whole film, like a boat's siren drifting across a foggy Thames. All the characters seem to be reaching for their hearts desire, wanting to believe in a dream of a better tomorrow, in something that's real and true for them. But they rip into each other trying to get there. That gives the film a poignant, tragic trajectory.

A compelling central performance by Richard Widmark as Harry Fabian, a man with flair and drive and an infectious hope, but a man who lacks something like the moral fibre to be honest. A man always looking for a shortcut. A nearly-great man, an almost classically tragic figure. Googie Withers is a revelation as Helen, a woman who seems cynical but has hopes and dreams just like Fabian (just like all our characters).

So much I haven't even mentioned, the sweaty muscular wrestling scenes are are action scenes of the best kind, in that they drive and skew the plot as well as holding our attention. So many good performances. And a film that speaks to our hopes and our flaws and the tragic spaces between the two.

Any Londoner or person who loves the atmosphere of that city should check it out too, some lovely old footage of Trafalgar Square and Picadilly.

The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

Genuinely horrific film with post 9/11 resonance

[7/10 · 22 February 2006]

Oddly, I'd been having a conversation with a bloke I met in a pub about Straw Dogs just before I saw this film – and it does have echoes of that film. The gruelling, exhausting horrific scenes that make the audience start to want the protagonists to take revenge; as well as the bespectacled liberal(ish) hero who is driven to violence.

PROPER SPOILERS COMING SOON

Which isn't to say this won't satisfy horror fans. The opening is a refreshing change from the usual slow build-up dynamic we are (sort of) used to scary films employing in their first few minutes. And although there is black humour, this is a proper horror film that doesn't wink at its audience. Most of the deaths are seen as a wrenching events that tear at the fabric of the family we are on a journey with. So there are real seeming consequences to violence - not just a cast who it's fun to see being killed one-by-one.

And there's a political sub-text, for those that want it. In the scene where the protagonist walks through the model village used for nuclear testing, it's like an eerie ghost town - spooky: but we are also reminded, I think, that the brutality we've witnessed in the film could be chicken-feed to the horrors rational governments once considered inflicting on the civilian population of other countries. And there are parallels with more recent events. I don't want to say too much but the film does explore the effects taking revenge has on us; and the notion that we are responsible for creating our enemies. There's a scene where someone finds an inventive use for an American flag that could be read in two very different ways.

Maybe the beers I'd had with the Straw Dogs man made me a soft touch but apart from a few missteps (the last shot punch-line) this was a film worth thinking about.