Category: Cinema of my life

Fear of death

Since Tim Burton rolled Ed Wood back in 1994, many believe that, indeed, Edward D. Wood Jr. has been the worst filmmaker in history. It is very likely that your Plan 9 from Outer Space is one of the greatest absurdities of the film, but I was lucky or not to see a few years ago a film called Fear of death , directed by Christy Cabanne and starring Bela Lugosi and George Zucco, who made me change my mind about Mr. Wood. No, he is not the worst director in history, not the worst movie Plan 9. What is Fear of death.

This film of 1947 is the only one Bela Lugosi shot in color, and is a clear example of the spiral of self-destruction which had been sunk Hungarian actor during the last years of his life.

Scared to death

The film begins in an autopsy room. A poster of "CENTRAL CITY MORGUE," translated into Spanish for "Anatomical Forensic Institute" followed by a "AUTOPSY ROOM - KEEP OUT" are the first shots of this sultry film. Enter the room a doctor and his assistant. At a central table is a body covered by a sheet. The first lines of dialogue and give us the clue that this is not a normal movie:

- Is this the body?
'Yes, doctor. The police are particularly anxious to determine the cause of death as soon as possible.

The doctor uncovers only the head of the corpse. He laments:

'Pity, it was a very beautiful woman. I hate to do an autopsy on a beautiful woman.
-He has no choice, doctor.
'It's very unusual, no signs of violence on the body, what they suspect? Poison? Do you have any idea?
'I have understood that the authorities have no idea how she was killed, know why, but not who killed her.
Yes, that does not matter. Our job is to find out what killed her. However, one often wonders: What might be the last thought was interrupted by death? Would you talk about it? What could it be?

A music mystery, the superimposed image of a mask with eyes closed and the voiceover of a woman lead us to the next scene, no less surprising: a medical consulting room, an elegantly dressed woman rests on the table, a doctor sixties advances towards her with the intention of covering his face with a bandage. She screams in terror and incorporates:

- No, I told you I do not want the band!
- Why are you so reluctant? Why are you so reluctant to sell? Does it remind you something maybe?
- What do you mean?
-Oh, nothing, Laura, nothing. Why not sit back and leave again at the end of my test? You are a sick girl, you know, and you are very nervous.

What a great doctor! I wish all doctors were like this! Laura is her daughter, although he would like his son to divorce her. That speak three minutes later when the child enters the query. Laura does not want divorce, what a ballot, so she gives her husband a homespun robe that has been in the hands all the time, waving:

-Ten, that's all you've given me. You can have it.

That same day you arrive at the mansion of a certain Dr. Leonidas, Bela Lugosi Dracula dress, a friend of the family in a bygone era that the doctor would rather not remember, cousins, although they agreed and never calls. Leonidas comes with a mute dwarf, Indigo. When you open the door, the girl discovers Leonidas and the dwarf. Leonidas exclaims:

- My little dove! I'm glad you've opened the door, Madame. If you had waited another second, Indigo and I had broken down the door.

Scared to death

The girl invites you to spend as usual, and started an incomprehensible web of suspicion, machinations, intrigues and secret passages, where everyone fears that a dark and murky past to rebel against them. Characters appear and disappear, wander around the house journalists and police without anyone wondering why the hell are there. All speak with prefabricated phrases, all the scenes seem more important, the last, always limit the dramatic tension.

I remember that memorable scene in which Laura down stairs, greatly altered, and reaches the room where a couple of journalists. One of them shouts at her:

'Welcome to the classroom, Mr. Van Ee.
'Thanks, but not my room. I see that is not aware of my position in this house.

Laura is a fantastic opportunity to report the harassment to which it is subjected by the doctor and his son, but just beginning to confess is interrupted by them. The reporter left but not the chance to clarify the facts:

His wife has told me that they have been constantly challenged.
-Is beside himself, protested the husband.
- Do you see what I say, Mr. Lee? - Laura says the reporter, do not miss a single opportunity to make me think I'm crazy.
-May perhaps be explained, Mr. Lee says the doctor. We do not believe that Laura has anything bad, but we are convinced that something could happen to your mind if you continue to live with so much pressure.
- I can not tell more clear! - Laura exclaims the journalist. -They spend their days trying to frighten me, I write letters in green ink and send me mannequin heads wrapped in green paper. Whatever it is provided that can frighten and prevent sleep. I just think to avoid them kill me.
-These charges are very serious, gentlemen, concludes the journalist.

Scared to death

Minutes later, the same journalist, Mr. Lee, a friendly chat with the doctor's son in the living room of the house. Suddenly the journalist discovered through the window, that Leonidas, who is in the garden, along the hedge, opens his arms to the sky and hides below.

- What happens out there? I have a right to know, 'says the son of the doctor. I do not see anything, what was it?
'It's impossible, can not be true.

Then he meets the journalist Leonid concentrate while reciting a prayer mumbled hypnotized before the body of the maiden. The reporter goes to him without fear:

'Well teacher, I think I just see him howling at the moon.

These two scenes are just a sampling of what button the film's delirious. The script is full of wonderful phrases that I've been making my own with the passage of time: "Why are you reluctant to sell," "welcome to your living room" or "I write letters in green ink," I have been very useful in many occasions.

In short, one of the most surreal films to which I have faced and has left an indelible mark on me. The truth is that I see with some regularity. His absurd plot, its pathetic staging, and Bela Lugosi effort to sustain a character inconsistent and absurd, contrary awaken my feelings of shame, kindness and compassion. It makes me laugh and makes me oddly nervous at a time.

I've never seen anyone recommending bad movies for the sake of being bad, but I will do so on this occasion. This is a "see it to believe it." It's so bad it will not be disappointed, especially after watching Fear of death, any other movie, even putting Antena3 in the evenings will not seem so bad, no doubt.

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-Roque.

1 Comment article Roque Madrid written November 19, 2010
stored in cinema , cinema of my life

1981: 'Body Heat'

1981 is one of those years in which the film production, and the good, was higher than usual. There are countless titles that now lie in the history books of cinema that came out this year. An example of this is the beginning of the saga of Indiana Jones. Many you will wonder how I have chosen to Raiders of the Lost Ark as a movie of this year, and the answer is simple: it was the first movie I saw Indiana Jones as he was just 5 years. Would have to wait a little longer, until the arrival of the second episode of the series, to discover the adventurous archaeologist.

Harrison Ford en En busca del arca perdida

1981 was also the year of the great Das Boot , my claustrophobic film par excellence and one of the best on the Second World War, with an unforgettable soundtrack from Klaus Doldinger, if you do not know, there's still time to do it on Spotify .

It was also the year of Chariots of Fire , I never got to see because they always pull me fall asleep in 10 minutes, the year of Clash of the Titans and delicious special effects that I saw recently to address the remake , Arthur with Liza Minelli, Red , very complicated film, Piranha 2 , sultry debut of James Cameron, tit and ass, which recounts the frenzied piranhas attack a marine flying intelligent (sic), or The Postman Always Rings Twice , an example of red hot movie, and that brings us here today.

But before getting filled with fire in the body , I would like to discuss two important-to me, of course, films of this year. For one thing, The body , a film that I have not discovered until relatively recently and that surprised me because, despite having all the elements of the horror genre of the time, has not had a good time for it, like Poltergeist , At the end of the ladder or The Exorcist . It is an example of that terror of the late 70's, no longer does, and manages a sublime time and play with the psychology of the situation rather than to the fact itself paranormal, movies sober photography, scenery sober, sober camera movements.

On the other hand, I want to mention the Golden Pond . That year, Henry Fonda was saying goodbye to us with this delightful film with someone who has left an indelible mark on me, Katherine Hepburn, the red of iron, probably the most remarkable woman in Hollywood. This film, whose first viewing I have a vague memory and imprecise, not lost in my naive eyes, something was going on before me, and that something was the miracle of cinema.

Katherine Hepburn y Henry Fonda en El estanque Dorado

But without doubt, the 1981 film that most influenced me is Body Heat by Lawrence Kasdan featuring William Hurt, Kathleen Turner, Ted Danson and Mickey Rourke, among others.

You were too small for Indiana Jones and you were not to fire on the body? Obviously, I saw this last until much later, until my teens, which is precisely when the film goes deeper. In addition, both films are not mutually exclusive: Lawrence Kasdan is not only the director of Body Heat, but writer of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Fuego en el cuerpo, Body Heat

This is the story of a second lawyer Ned Racine (William Hurt), he meets in a bar in South Florida, during a hot summer night, Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner), sensuality and sin made flesh. Although she is married, that does not stop them begin a torrid affair, which will soon headlong into an annoying obstacle: the husband, wealthy and jealous. A prenuptial agreement ensures that the only way to receive money from Matty Edmund is whether the deceased. Ned begins to hatch a plan to achieve the same reason, perhaps unaware that Matty is not what it seems.

Kathleen Turner y William Hurt en Fuego en el cuerpo

What has marked me for so long?

  • Well for starters, Kathleen Turner, the wild female icon of my childhood, the Sophia Loren of my generation. Because Turner came on screen and began to raise the temperature of the room. Body Heat Body Heat was his first film, and not a moment stopped in successive years: Romancing the Stone , Prizzi's Honor , Julia and Julia , The Accidental Tourist and The War of the Roses , were titles not escaped my ravenous thirst for it. And it burn the screen.
  • William Hurt, who represents perfectly the role of bad lawyer, anti-hero, half-man, the poor man any of us, that your neighbor or passing by.
  • With film happens to me as black coffee, or is very good and I can not take. Fire in the body has all the elements of good black movies of the 40 or 50: the atmosphere, the decor, the atmosphere thick almost unbreathable. There was an attempt in the late 70's and early 80's to recover the film in what the Americans called neo noir: Chinatown or The Postman Always Rings Twice are other examples. In fact, if you like Bane all are parallels: Ned, Matty and Oscar Walter, Phyllis and Keyes, respectively. But I go further: if you've never seen a film of black cinema, it could well be the first.
  • Two explosive elements: heat and sex, what a combination. Both are part of the spinal cord of the plot: slow combustion. From there go cascading like drops of sweat slide down a back shuddering, seduction, murder and lust. A distorted reality by stifling nights and passions without control, a fact that in the 50 films could only imagine and we now have the opportunity to see.
  • And all bonded by the music of John Barry, an unforgettable saxophone that will remain engraved in your subconscious forever.
  • And some dialogues for History:

─ You should not wear those clothes.
─ Why? It is only a blouse and skirt.
Then you should not take ─ that body.

Kathleen Turner en Fuego en el cuerpo

In short, Kasdan brought a sensitivity to color that so far had only known white and black and managed to forge one of the thrillers of the 80 most significant, and as I have said, one of the movies that influenced me. Let a tip for those hot summer nights: turning off lights at home, open windows and let the breeze rocking the curtains. Served a cold drink, put on fire in the body, and carried away by the dangerous game of seduction at the hands of Kasdan, Turner and Hurt. Now I shall count.

What was your movie of 1981?

-Roque.

1 Comment article Roque Madrid written July 20, 2010
stored in cinema , cinema of my life

1980: 'The Elephant Man'

Start the decade. A server was four. A difficult year 1980. Difficult because, although it is a year of good movies in quantity, it does have very strong three titles: The Empire Strikes Back , The Shining and Raging Bull . What more could you? Can you imagine leading the marquee look at your nearest cinema and to meet the posters of these three films competing for your attention? I can not imagine such a dilemma. However, 1980 was the year of other unforgettable titles as The Blues Brothers , Airplane , Friday 13 , Cannibal Holocaust , The Blue Lagoon or the end of the ladder , one of my favorite titles of horror movies.

My heart is divided. Half of it, as many of you know, belongs to The Empire Strikes Back, and the other half to The Elephant Man by David Lynch. Faced with this dilemma, and after much deliberation, I chose to talk about the second movie much less known, forever forgotten and misunderstood, many times.

El hombre elefante

David Lynch has movies and films. And this is the first. I understand. Wonderful black and white photography, unforgettable soundtrack of John Morris, exquisite setting, in short, an unforgettable film in every way, I threw up three surprises in my childhood:

  • John Hurt, as well hidden behind the guise that I could not recognize Kane from Alien or Max Midnight Express . Hurt portrays John Merrick, the Elephant Man, a character so interesting and juicy from the dramatic point of view as an actor who embodies brave as they come.
  • Anthony Hopkins. We saw, we liked, and we did not see him until eleven years later in The Silence of the Lambs . What did Anthony Hopkins between those years? Many television. Many people doubt if Sir Anthony Hopkins has been young once. Yes it was. If you want to see, The Elephant Man is a good example.
  • Anne Bancroft. How I love this actress and what little I could enjoy! Much drama and short films. Just count on the fingers of one hand the movies I've seen her: The Graduate , Agnes of God , Great Expectations , and a very unknown New York Trilogy , which I'm dying to see again.

biopicelephantman2

The Elephant Man tells the true story of Joseph Merrick, a British nineteenth century, which was known by that name because of the remarkable physical deformity that gripped his body. He spent most of his life exploited as a sideshow attraction, and only when it got the attention of science in the last years of his life, might be known for his gentle and polite, and by a higher intelligence than the average. Although not yet known with absolute certainty, it is believed to have suffered a serious variation of Proteus syndrome .

Anne Bancroft en El hombre elefante

The Elephant Man is film for all ages and for all time, is delightfully narrated in a linear, simple, delicate, with the pace that only the good movies have. London immerses us in a wonderfully dark, dirty, cruel and ruthless, rarely portrayed with such mastery and reveals this bizarre and fragile character, hideous but sensitive and virtuoso. John Merrick, because the movie is called John and Joseph, is a ray of light in that drunken sooty London, prostitutes, rats and superstition. Thanks to Dr. Frederick Treves the world will know the man behind the mask, the man behind the monster.

6265290_gal

I've always been a lover of the horror film classic , it's no secret. So I drew The Elephant Man. Lynch takes us to the creature as a sideshow attraction, as they would in Tod Browning Freaks , or Dracula , or James Whale 's Frankenstein . But this is no horror film, but of fantastic realism.

No doubt already in place between the Elephant Man's classic drama. If you have not seen, you have a pending matter. Will not disappoint. Five stars.

Anne Bancroft y John Hurt en El hombre elefante

Any of these nights is a good night to see The Elephant Man. I will. Turn out the lights, I'll ring the Adagio for Strings Samuel Barber's Opus 11 and the voice, awkward, John Merrick will remember: "I'm not a monster, I am a man."

What was your movie of 1980?

-Roque.

2 comments section of Roque Madrid wrote the September 30, 2009
stored in cinema , cinema of my life

1979: "Welcome Mr. Chance '

Yes, I know, will put more of a fuss when I say that my 1979 film is not Apocalypse Now , or Alien , or The Life of Brian . I will be criticized for not having chosen Manhattan or Mad Max . Even the iconic Kramer vs. Kramer or the legendary Escape from Alcatraz . Not to mention the controversial Caligula , 1941 or The Amityville Horror .

Good movies of 1979, right? But, friend, friend, none of these films sits on my celluloid sweetheart deals like the Welcome Mr. Chance .

being_there

I discovered not long ago, Ten years? Can. However, I was barely three when released in the United States. Unpopular, no doubt, but one of the most beloved films, better written and funnier than I remember. And without a doubt one of the most memorable roles of the great Peter Sellers, if not the best, to me clear.

petersellersbeingthere

But what has this got captivate unknown film so suddenly?

  • Well, first, the main character played by Peter Sellers, Chance, a gardener with a subtle mental deficiency which is captured by their environment as a proof of his genius and economic and political astuteness.
  • The character is masterfully developed along the entire script, discovering new nuances every minute from the beginning until the final shot, posing challenges that put the viewer in suspense to the question whether they can be resolved or not. However, the story exudes both wit that never ceases to amaze even a single moment.
  • Always a pleasure to see Shirley MacLaine, and if it's a comedy, the better. Shirley is bright, beautiful and unforgettable. Especially in the steamy bedroom sequence. If you have seen, you know what I mean, otherwise you have to see it.
  • Subtlety of his humor, elegant rhythm, photograph dark and cold.
  • His music, directly inspired by the Gnossienne No. 5 Satie, particularly beautiful piano piece. However, the soundtrack was never edited or published. The Warner us should.

080320-02_beingthere

Peter Sellers died a year after the movie premiered. On his tomb an epitaph reads: Life is but a state of mind, the same at the end of this film. A nice epilogue to one of the great geniuses of cinema.

What is your movie of 1979? Have you seen Welcome Mr. Chance?

Roque.

No Comments section of Roque Madrid written March 12, 2009
stored in cinema , cinema of my life
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