My review of Christopher Nolan's jaw dropping noir thriller sequel THE DARK KNIGHT is now up at www.NewThisWeek.ca.

Have a look...

http://www.newthisweek.ca/index.php?action=DVD&blog=article&id=123

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Toronto film enthusiast Jason Tannis gives his thoughts on the hardest rocking film of the year....

For those about to rock, we salute you…. 

So goes the 1981 AC/DC anthem. Now technically, AC/DC were not a metal band. They were considered more of a hard rock band though lots of headbangers love them. And the song really is just some argy-bargy about eternal allegiance to the temple of rock n’ roll. And yet, it feels like an appropriate sentiment that sums up Global Metal, Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen’s follow-up to their 2005 documentary Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey. 

The first film saw the filmmakers , with McFadyen silent while Dunn appeared on camera and in voice-over narration, take a comprehensive look at heavy metal. Instead of taking the sensationalist approach like Penelope Spheeris’ The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, the filmmakers mixed their fanboy leanings with an anthropological approach. This seemed natural as the day job of the filmmakers is indeed, as anthropologists. This resulted in a film that was entertaining, enlightening and fun. More importantly, it showed heavy metal music to be a genre with roots, history, diversity and culture. 

Global Metal was born out of the response the filmmakers got from around the world and their own curiosity at to what metal is like in other parts of the world. But whereas the first film was meant to be a comprehensive study, Global Metal has bigger fish to fry. The film functions as a study of one of the positive results of globalization and sharing of cultures. As metal is still relatively new to these countries, each region is taking the form and absorbing it and transforming it with their own cultures and socio-political climates. So, in places like China and India, it is able to give voice to a new generation and their concerns and frustrations. In political hotbeds like Israel and Indonesia, the music is used to vent feelings of anger, but also to educate and plead for peace. In Japan, it is seen simply as energetic, enjoyable entertainment just like manga and kabuki. It is also fascinating to see how almost all of these countries add their own traditional sounds and stories into the mix. 

But does it work as a film?

Oh, hell yeah!  

Heavy metal fans will find this to be an- all-you-can-eat buffet of foreign delights. But everyone will be exhilarated by the journey taken to sights and sounds previously unseen. To go through them all would ruin the discovery but here’s a few:

How about a shopping mall in San Poalo dedicated to heavy metal? Or an Indian rocker with a Gandhi T-shirt? Can you imagine a Tokyo bar named Blackmore’s, named after the Deep Purple guitarist where businessmen sing that band’s ‘Highway Star’ in broken English? Would you believe a metal festival in the famously restrictive Middle East? Along with Dunn, we discover that both the music and the country’s youth to be both diverse and deep.

Whatever your preconceptions about these countries or heavy metal, they will be blown away. The most exciting thing on display in this film is the exchange between cultures. Just as new immigrants have influenced and shaped the West for centuries, now metal is changing these countries. These young people are not just being inundated with Western culture. They are taking and adding their own feelings and fears, values and legends, traditions and sounds. In doing so, they are giving themselves a voice, making their lives a little bit better and, in the larger picture, perhaps affecting change. Highly recommended.

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If you're looking for buckets of blood, zombies and a mad, burka wearing psychopath all frolicking in and around Islambad, Pakistan, then Omar Ali Khan's new shocker HELL'S GROUND is the flick for you!

Be sure to check out my review at www.fangoria.com/ghastly_review.php?id=6785

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I recently had the chance to re-examine a series of films that had – outside of the first entry, anyway - slipped by my radar. A quintet of rough, violent, jut jawed crime classics that had apparently defined a generation and sparked and shaped a wave of gritty, sexy exploitation cinema that I’ve always adored. So then. How the hell did I miss  worshipping at the shrine of the DIRTY HARRY sequels? HOW? What’s WRONG with me?!

Friends…you don’t have the time for me to answer that…

So instead of checking myself into therapy to get to the bottom of this damaging celluloid oversight, I’ll instead move forward and use our time to rhapsodize on Warner’s new DIRTY HARRY collection on DVD (and Blue Ray, natch). The past has passed and what’s most important is that I now know the .44 score.

So here we go…

Any fool who denies that director Don (INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, 1958’s hard edged Eli Wallach vehicle THE LINEUP) Siegel’s 1971 reactionary, Zodiac killer inspired thriller DIRTY HARRY is a masterpiece has no place in my universe on any level. Outside of the untouchable Sergio Leone “Man With No Name” westerns, the role of ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ LA cop Harry Callahan is Clint Eastwood’s most iconic persona. His hard stare, his growled line delivery and subtle sense of self aware humor is perfectly matched by Siegel’s (who really was one of the great unsung action cinema masters…he never made a bad film) unpretentious, bullet to the heart visual storytelling. Raking in huge dough at the box office and opening the floodgates for a new wave of gritty American cinema, it was a given that more Callahan adventures would follow.

Let’s have a look at these nasty little gems:

MAGNUM FORCE (1973) 

The follow up to Siegel’s film has been accused of being more gratuitously violent and less socially significant than its predecessor, but whatever your read of it, MAGNUM FORCE is a tense, mean and sometimes shocking action classic. In it, Harry comes up against a secret society of corrupt, vigilante cops who have positioned themselves as judges, juries…and brutal executioners. The great character actor Hal Holbrook plays Eastwood’s blustery boss who may or may not be entangled in the conspiracy. From the opening credits with Callahan’s buffed .44 revolver pointed at the camera, to the climactic shoot em up finale, MAGNUM FORCE is riveting – and darkly funny-entertainment with major 70’s attitude and a killer score by returning composer Lalo Schifrin. And while he lacks the blunt genius of Don Siegel, veteran TV director Ted Post (who had also directed many episodes of Clint’s RAWHIDE series) gives the film a sense of urgency and paranoia that in many ways outdoes the first film. Not to be missed.

THE ENFORCER (1976) 

Less terrifying than the Scorpio killer and not as paranoid as a rotten police force, THE ENFORCER finds LA under siege from a gang of youthful yet lethal terrorists, a rather vicious bunch that coldly kill anyone who gets in their path. When another collective of Black Panthers-esque black militants get the rap pinned on them, a raging Harry gets put on suspension and has to solve the case himself…with the help of his equally tough female partner (CAGNEY & LACEY star Tyne Daly). THE ENFORCER boasts moments of extreme violence but is tempered by sequences of broad comedy, such as the scene where Harry, in undercover redneck gear, shows up at a nickel and dime rub and tug only to be offered a sexual tryst with a blow up doll.  While a bit safer than the previous two Harry epics, THE ENFORCER is still a tight, pulse pounding affair, well served by James Fargo’s meat and potatoes direction….and Clint is in top form as usual.

SUDDEN IMPACT (1983) 

The first DIRTY HARRY picture of the 1980's, SUDDEN IMPACT is a relentlessly grim, supremely entertaining vigilante picture that many critics have ridiculously dismissed as the worst entry in the franchise. In it, an aging Callahan is still running afoul of his superiors when a spate of murders grips the city. Male victims are found shot, twice - once in the head and once in the groin. Turns out the killings are being committed by Eastwood's then real life squeeze, Sondra Locke, who is exacting ritualistic revenge against the lowlifes who gang raped her and her now catatonic sister. SUDDEN IMPACT is the only Callahan movie that Eastwood directed and therefore it's the most psychological and unsettling. The lip curling reviews for the picture are truly mystifying as this strange, violent, disturbing film is just as gritty as the first three Harry pics and unique for the fact that there are no moral absolutes whatsoever: the serial killer in question isn’t bad, or crazy…just angry at a system that let her down.  Lalo Schifrin's jazzy score is fantastic and the film features the second most immortal Callahan quote since the first flick ("Go ahead…make my day…"); SUDDEN IMPACT is a dynamite meditation of the value of committing violence as an act of catharsis….and tons of icky fun. 

THE DEAD POOL (1988) 

The last and least of the Callahan classics often teeters on the brink of unforgivable, bombastic 80's cheese but is redeemed by Eastwood's typically magnetic turn as the ultimate armed anti-hero….and a comic book caliber set piece than is truly magnificent, if a bit out of place. In THE DEAD POOL, the debate over vigilante violence is quashed in favor of a Giallo-esque thriller where horror films themselves are the villain, In it, a megalomaniacal thriller filmmaker's (Liam Neeson) lead actor (an early Jim Carrey turn where he's essentially playing Axl Rose, right down to lip synching 'Welcome to the Jungle' and mainlining heroine) is murdered, an act that uncovers a secret 'dead pool' list of well known figures that are commonly thought to be en route to meet their maker. And guess what? Harry's on the list… 

Schifrin's disappointingly mundane, synth soaked score in THE DEAD POOL is unforgivable and the movie lacks much of the leather tough nastiness that drove the first 4 films, favoring slick production values and cheap laughs over grime . But when, mid film, the killer in question utilizes an explosives wired remote control car to launch one of the greatest extended cat and mouse automobile chases since THE FRENCH CONNECTION, all sins are mostly forgiven. This may be lightweight DIRTY HARRY hokum, but at LEAST its still a Harry happening: an adequate swan song to a series that broke plenty of rules and cemented Eastwood into Hollywood legend.

Don’t make the same mistakes I made, friends…see these films now. Thank me later.

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Join Christopher Heard as he discusses one of many incredible films made by the incredible British eccentric, Ken Russell...  

I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was sixteen years old. It was January in Toronto - the sun was shining but it was that particular brand of biting fucking cold that goes through your clothes, through your skin, and settles somewhere in your bones. That kind of cold that actually hurts. I was walking along Bloor St. and came upon the majestic old University Theatre - a 2000 seat cathedral of film that has since been turned into a Pottery Barn or some such nonsense (there is a nice snug place in hell for the creep that turned the University Theatre into a shop for trendoids). I still had some Famous Players gift certificates left over from Christmas so I thought I would duck into my favourite theatre on earth and see...whatever was playing. 

What was playing was Ken Russell's Altered States.

I went in and there were only about four other patrons in the cavernous theatre. I settled into my plush seat with a Coke anda bag of hot, salted cashews I bought from a vendor outside. As the film started and those eccentric titles slid into and by one another I knew I was hooked. As this weird, somewhat psychedelic post modern Jeckyll and Hyde tale played itself out I was completely into it. I didn't know any of the actors with the exception of little Bob Balaban whom I admired from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. William Hurt was a big jock type looking guy playing this raving intellectual. Blair Brown looked like an eighth grade teacher of mine I had a crush on. The sequences showing the regenerative hallucinations of Eddie Jessup (Hurt) actually freaked me out - those scenes constituted the horror in this film - with the final crazy energy blast having Hurt and Blair Brown writhing on the floor having degenerated temporarily into these glowly, flickering blobs leaving me chilled to the bone - partly because as a sixteen year old kid I was actually buying the science being uttered throughout. 

To this day I love that scene in the Italian restaurant with a wine drunk Jessup losing himself to his obsession - "The first self, that original self, is real, it is tangible, mensuarate, quantifible and incarnate...and I'm going to find the fucker." When I left the theatre, as was my wont as a cinema freak kid, I wanted to find out everything I could about everyone involved. I found a copy of Paddy Chayevsky's original novel Altered States in the first used bookstore I came upon (althought Chayevsky took his name off the finished film - he used the psyeudonym Sidney Aaron - Chayevsky did not want the English flake Ken Russell directing the film - he wanted Arthur Penn or Sidney Lumet, both whom were interested but ultimately could not do the film).

I began reading the book and was just as absorbed in this story of the brilliant scientist that believed there were billions of years of energy and memory and information in each one of us just waiting to be tapped into - and he was going to find a way to do it through use of isolation therapy and hallucinagenic drugs. He messed with his genetic structure but found that he was right in his theorizing - so right that he believe himself to have even physically regressed to a quasi-caveman. There is a great scene in the film showing Hurt coming out of one of his isolation tank sessions unable to speak - only to grunt and click. He demands x-rays and when his doctor friend takes the X-rays to a technichian for reading he says - "I want you to take a look at these, there looks to something somewhat abnormal in the archetecture." The technician looks at the photos and says - "Somewhat? This guy's a fucking gorilla." Meaning that Jessup regressed toa kind of quasi-simian state before reconstituting. That scene is also in the book - in fact the Ken Russell film is actually quite loyal to the source material - the anger expressed by Chayevsky was more an ego thing - he was a very powerful writer and used to getting what he wanted and didn't in this case. 

As I explored Ken Russell I found that he was quite nuts - his films like The Devils and TOMMY and The Music Lovers were unique...they were uniquely unique to the point of being so personal intheir vision of the world that they could be only shared by just a few select people who shared his strange sensibilities. When looked at now you would have to observe that Altered States was probably the most conspicuously mainstream film he ever attempted - kind of like watching The Elephant Man and thinking - "David Lynch made this?" As I grew into my version of adulthood and became a film reviewer and interviewer I would delight in occasions when I got to sit down with someone who was in one of those films of my youth that had such and indelible effect on me - the first time I met William Hurt ("Call me Bill") I was eager to get the film we were discussing over with so I could bean him with a dozen questions about Altered States. I'm going to break format here for the dialogue passages as I want them to be verbatim - 

CH: Could we talk about one of my favourites of your films, a vastly underrated work

Hurt: Which one would that be? 

CH: Altered States 

Hurt: Jesus Christ - what a time that was. You liked it? May I ask why? (I related the story above to him in a thumbnail version) 

Hurt: That's interesting - you were completely outside the audience demographic that the studio had in mind.It was my first film and I was convinced that it would be my last - I had such high hopes for that film. 

CH: And you don't think the finished film has any merit - 

Hurt: Merit? I am not ashamed of it - but the film I thought we were going to make - this was before KenRussell was brought in - was not the film we made - it resembled it, but at the core, the soul of it, was completelydifferent. Russell made the mistake of trying to visualize what should have been internalized. 

CH: You said you aren't ashamed of it - then what was it about the film that made you think it would be you last? 

Hurt: I thought that as we were making the film - I would look at scenes and just thought they were so off the wall andso implausible that the film would be laughed out of every theatre it played in. I remember Blair Brown and I watchingthe rushes of our sex scene together and we were in tears - we thought we were watching our careers going down the drain. 

CH: What do you think of it now (20 years later)? 

Hurt: I haven't seen it in a long time - whenever I think of it - or it is brought up to me like you just did I always think ofthat opening line from Tale of Two Cities - 

CH : "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." 

Hurt: You got it. 

More recently I was speaking on the phone with Bob Balaban - he was interested in possibly making a film from a screenplay of mine called Hecht on the early life of Ben Hecht - on the phone one day - he in Chicago, me in Toronto - we had this exchange - 

CH: I was just watching a favourite of your films last night. 

BB: One of my favourites or a film I was in the is one of your favourites? 

CH:  One of yours that I really dig - 

BB: Prince of the City 

CH: Well, I loved that too but that wasn't what I was watching - 

BB: That new box set of Close Encounters? 

CH: Altered States. 

BB: That is one of your favourites?  

CH: I saw it when I was a kid and it really did a number on me - 

BB: I needed a years worth of therapy after working on that fucker. 

CH: Because of the weird ideas about time and space and mortality - 

BB: No because of having to work every day with that raving lunatic Ken Russell - he was an absolute maniac. A very creative guy, a smart guy,a funny guy - but once he got on the set and started directing it was like he was possessed and it was a different guy altogher. Sometimes his direction would be so convuluted and stream of conciousness that I literally got a headache trying to follow him. That nut actually told me one day that he believed thateverything in the film was actually based on scientific fact and truth. 

CH: What do you think of the movie? 

BB: Honestly I think it is a fucking miracle it turned out as coherent and watchable as it did. Working on it day by day we all thought it was going to be one of the worst movies ever made - or ever would be made. But now all these years later there is something hip about it - it was a bit ahead of its time and was not afraid to be a kind of an intellectual horror movie - I appreciated that then and still do. 

So there you have it - out of the horses mouthes comes the confirmation that Ken Russell is every bit as strange as his movies would suggest and that sometimes good films come out of the mosttrying and unusual circumstances. 

I hate the fact that you can walk into a Dominion or Loblaw's and see a DVD bin over by the print-your-own photo machines - when you pick through the direct to DVD films starring Lorenzo Lamas and Steven Seagal you will also come across Altered States selling for $3.99 - and that is a fucking shame. This film deserves a nice double disk rerelease like The Mission got or The Right Stuff - let a new generation of film watchers have a go at this film - I truly believe it would gain a whole new life and popularity - because it was made by creative people who were not afraid to completely unleash their creativity and see what poured out of them.

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This week on my BLOOD SPATTERED BLOG, I take a look at one of my favorite 'Hammer Horror' films: Terrence Fisher's fever pitched HORROR OF DRACULA sequel, 1960's BRIDES OF DRACULA.

Have a look...

http://www.fangoria.com/blogs/index.php?blog=2

And don't forget to log onto the BLOOD SPATTERED BLOG every week for classic horror film appreciations and new celebrity interviews...

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