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A classic British psycho-thriller from the 1960’s Peeping Tom broke some new ground in the way film language describes mentally ill people. The film was quite controversial when it first appeared on our screens, some critics suggested that it in a lot of ways it put us the audience in the role of the peeping Tom..then again I’m sure that’s exactly what was intended. A lot of critics however got on their moral high-horse and effectively destroyed director Michael Powell’s career in England.

Peeping Tom follows a man who derives sexual pleasure from filming women in their dying moments, so he goes about killing them here there and everywhere. Carl Boehm is eery as the central character Mark Lewis who meets a girl he actually likes and struggles against his wanton needs..their are moments of tension in this film where you can cut the air with a knife all with that beautiful 1960’s colour!

 

A ground breaking film that explores two alternative journeys of young men dealing with sexual abuse by their little league coach as children.

Neil ends up as a teenage hustler, he always believed the abuse to be consensual as he had gay feelings from a young age. He believes the abuse made him “special”. As a teenager he no longer feels special and has unsafe encounters with older men somehow acting out the abuse over and over again.

Brian believes he was abducted by aliens because his family once saw a UFO. Until his nightmares begin to take on greater clarity he has visions of aliens violating his body.

The two finally meet and sitting in the house where Brian was first abused as a child they unravel the deeply hidden memories of the abuse.

A very hard film to watch which comes to us from Austria where the country was horrified by the kidnap and imprisonment of Natascha Kampusch for most of her childhood. After her release there was a gruesome sexualization of her plight by the Austrian press and later questions began to be asked about how the press reports such crimes.

The director of this film gives us no such option, being careful to avoid just this treatment of the subject. Michael starts off looking like an ordinary father and son getting about their business, until they get home and Michael is locked in a cellar. We realize he is a prisoner allowed out on carefully controlled walks and the man is a phaedophile horribly abusing him with almost commonplace disregard for the child. Fortunately most of the abuse is heavily implied and we are not subjected to the horrors of an over-graphic warts and all American telemovie.

This film has Brilliant performances from the main stars and it is impossible not to feel tormented anguish for the imprisoned boy (or indeed to feel like slowly torturing the man to death) so good is the acting. Hard as it is you will have to watch this movie to its end, the director torments us a fair bit in the last section of the film, but (spoiling it for you) this one won’t leave you sleepless.

 

 

The true story of Doctor Kinsey who compiled the Kinsey Report in the late 1940’s: the first serious attempt to define and catalog the various parameters of human sexuality.

Liam Neeson gives a very believable performance as a man of science who sometimes get a little bit over-involved in his research. A often very amusing study of the times where it was considered that masturbation and oral sex would cause a wide range of terrible illnesses!

Ok Excision is definitely going on the wish-I-could-unwatch-it list! A girl for some bizarre

reason is sexually excited by death and dying and we are treated throughout the film to her fantasizing about people being horribly killed and her getting the shivers..

That’s all the bad things said about Excision; apart from this it is a very funny black comedy, with a hell of a kicker ending that will leave you gasping for days after. Despite often very gruesome scenes, the film is very watchable – I just probably will never watch it again.

Very well directed with sharp editing, I can see why this film got rave reviews when it was first shown at Canne (despite a lot of critics walking out of it). In fairness most of the gruesome scenes are brilliantly filmed with a very serious attempt to present them as distinct pieces of art..

 

A rather far-fetched “true” story about the abduction of girls from American streets to work in the sex industry. In this tale a young Asian girl sneaks into a bar with her friend and a fake ID and meets a fireman. After lots of flirting they go for a drive, but the drive turns into a nightmare (no he’s not really a fireman).

She wakes up to find herself in her underwear in the back of a truck with several other girls in a similar state. Housed in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere the girls are rented out to customers who seem oblivious of what is going on. The whole setup is very organized and almost production line.

In a lot of ways this film reminded me of Prime Cut (supposedly also based on “Truth”), this film even has the same corrupt cop played by Lee Marvin in the original. Whilst the film was mildly entertaining, if not perhaps a little over sensational in parts; if Americans really believe the “truth” part, I think they are more gullible than we think! Sure it was based on a true story but for the most part that concerned one woman who was shifted around from motel to motel, this film is more like a twisted Japanese porn flick!

A time honored classic in which strange in-bred mountain men are men and red-blooded

hunting men are..well squealing like piggies..

Four men set off to fish and hunt in an area of mangroves that soon will be flooded for a new water reservoir, on their way they meet some of the indigenous locals who seem rather friendly at first but then quickly degenerate into being not very nice at all.

Lots of chasing and killing each other ensues and then they all head off back to their suburban lifestyles trying very hard not look each other in the eye.

 

A very bizarre film which sort of sits on the cusp of vampire erotic and zombie gore fest.

A young lesbian is date raped by a guy at a party (ok the mysoginist fantasy there is not lost on me) and catches what she thinks is an STD, this turns out to be something far worse as her body starts to develop all sorts of horrible rashes and generally starts to deteriorate to the undead state.

Well by the end of the flick she is a full blown zombie attacking people and doing all sorts of gross things. Probably the most memorable thing about this film is the girls diseased looking eyes!

An interesting German cold war piece about a doctor called Barbara who works at a regional hospital. Life is unpleasant for Barbara as she has at one time been interned for some type of crime against the state, which means now her home is regularly searched by state officers. What makes this worse is they also insist at each visit upon a cavity search, seemingly to little end other than to break her spirit.

Barbara has however a plan to escape to the west with a Western businessman she has fallen in love with and she works towards this whilst showing concern for the patients she tends from the local internment camp. This ultimately brings about some cause for reflection on her part and a noble sacrifice.

Whilst not exactly a cold-war espionage thriller as it was pitched to me (more an exploration of the coldness and ugliness of state socialism in Germany in the fifties) a very worthwhile film with excellent performances by all.

You may have seen a recent film with Nicholas Cage called Bad Lieutenant, well that was actually meant to be the sequel to this Harvey Keitel masterpiece (the later film being a not-masterpiece!)

Keitel plays a corrupt cop who spirals downwards into illegal gambling and lots and lots of drug taking. This guy is precisely the sort of guy you don’t want being in charge of public safety.

The film remains very controversial with its explicit central case surrounding the rape of a young nun in a church. Whilst by today’s standards (after crime erotica like CSI special Victims et al) it is fairly tame, it still retains the bite that garnered it both the praise of critics and the swoons of wowsers when it was released in 1992.