All posts by Rod Lott

Thriller

The Secret of Dorian Gray (1970)

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Rather than being a straight (no pun intended) adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s classic novel, Italy’s The Secret of Dorian Gray is credited as “a modern allegory based on the works of Oscar Wilde,” whose name the characters even drop. Ditch the Picture of Wilde’s title; give the greedy protagonist a Secret. Even more than one.

Set in London at the dawn of the ’70s, Dorian (Helmut Berger, The Damned) is a well-off, but level-headed 21-year-old who seems to have it all. He’s fallen in love with a virginal actress (Marie Liljedahl, The Seduction of Inga), doesn’t want for money, and enjoys his youthful good looks, which are freshly captured on an oil painting done by an artist pal (Richard Todd, Stage Fright).

When an arrogant art buyer (Herbert Lom, the Pink Panther franchise’s seven-time Dreyfus) admires the work and its shirtless subject, he notes, “one day, you will become an old and hideous puppet.” A suddenly overly vain Dorian responds that he wishes he could stay forever young while the painting ages, and lo and behold, that’s what happens … provided he delights in vice and immoral activity. The more he humps — no regard to either gender — the older his canvas visage gets, to the point where it resembles a zombie from an EC cover of Tales from the Crypt.

This is one big Piccadilly Circus version of an 1890 tale that only could have been made when it was, at the peak of the sexual revolution (just before the birth-control pill became available for all in the UK), but before anyone ever heard of AIDS. A gay club is not-so-subtly named The Black Cock, but the actual depiction of sex is less graphic than what the movie’s controversy (and porno-theater bookings) would suggest. In its swingin’, groovy, right-place-at-the-right-time world, this Secret is the finest interpretation of that Picture I’ve seen. —Rod Lott

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Horror

The Roost (2005)

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About the only thing The Roost has going for it are its wraparound segments, aping the old-school horror-host TV showcases of yesteryear — in this case, the fictional Frightmare Theatre!, a black-and-white affair with the great Tom Noonan as our guide. He knocks the film that will follow, calling it “truly wretched” and getting in a pun or two as he teases that it is “hot on the entrails of four young people on their way to a wedding.”

Cut to The Roost — in color, but über-grainy — with said four young people exhibiting zero personality while driving through rural roads at night. Crossing a bridge, the car’s front windshield comes glass-to-face with a bat, causing them to veer off the road. They go off to find help, but just find more and more bats.

Yep, bats. Have such things ever been frightening on film? That was meant as rhetorical, but no, they haven’t, not in 1979’s Nightwing, and certainly not in 1997’s Bats, in which Lou Diamond Phillips looked forever constipated. But scariness — or lack of — is not The Roost‘s real issue; slowness is. It’s the deathly pace that kills it.

Even at only 80 minutes, the movie drags. Had writer/director Ti West (who reunited with Noonan to great effect in 2009’s creepy The House of the Devil) broken up his thin story with more bits from the horror host, rather than just having him bookend the thing, The Roost could rustle up some enthusiasm among viewers. A giant in indie horror, West wields considerable talent — just not here in this, his first feature. —Rod Lott

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Documentary

Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010)

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As if Mark Hartley’s 2008 documentary, Not Quite Hollywood, weren’t deliriously entertaining enough, the director follows it up with the equally outrageous Machete Maidens Unleashed! Whereas Quite cast its probing eye on Australia’s deep history in exploitation film, Unleashed examines the Filipino revolution in moviemaking, even if much of that wave was due to American invaders — namely one Roger Corman.

While the Philippines was home to many a native production, it wasn’t until director Eddie Romero dipped his toes into horror with the likes of Terror Is a Man and the Blood Island trilogy that local audiences gave a damn, not to mention dollars. When Corman launched New World Pictures, he found he could make his cheap women-in-prison opuses even cheaper by shooting there, bringing an authentic bungled-jungle look to his Hollywood product.

Chock full of interviews with the movement’s filmmakers and performers who remain alive (plus John Landis), the excellent Unleashed also considers the careers of Cirio H. Santiago (Savage!, TNT Jackson), Bobby Suarez (Bionic Boy, One-Armed Executioner) and pint-sized actor Weng Weng (For Your Height Only, The Impossible Kid), all of whom helped keep the industry busy. So active was the Asian republic that Corman eventually parodied his productions there with Hollywood Boulevard, and Francis Ford Coppola turned it into a war zone with Apocalypse Now.

With intriguing sidebars on the safety measures not taken by Filipino stuntmen and the film fandom of shoe addict Imelda Marcos, Unleashed showcases so many movies of questionable quality — Twilight People, Beyond Atlantis, Vampire Hookers (“Blood isn’t all they suck!”) — that you’re advised to keep a notebook handy. Your “must-see” list will grow by the dozens. —Rod Lott

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Mystery

Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva (2009)

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Archeologist, puzzle solver and true gentleman Professor Layton jumps from the Nintendo DS to the movies in the animated feature Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva. The Japanese film is pegged as an early adventure of the prof (Christopher Robin Miller, who’s voiced the role in some of the games) and his “apprentice No. 1,” Luke (Maria Darling, ditto), the scrappy youth who handles his mentor’s letters and tea.

Beginning with a locked-room mystery for a prologue, the story takes shape as a concert hall full of performers and patrons alike — including a football player and an Agatha Christie-esque author — magically disappear and are thrown into a game of adventure, where the stakes are high and the winner gets — or so they’re told — the gift of eternal life.

Along the way, the group faces sharks on a ocean voyage, an island rife with hungry wolves, and a castle filled with labyrinthian tunnels, through which they’re pursued by phantom-masked henchmen. It’s cute, enjoyable and better than your average anime, for which director Masakazu Hashimoto has been responsible in the past.

Other than clean character and set design, two things set Eternal Diva apart, even if the movie is ultimately inconsequential. One is the element of steampunk that’s infused into its latter half. The other is, of course, the puzzles that Professor Layton and the others encounter. It makes the lead character appealing as a Sherlock Holmes for pint-sized audiences … and their parents. —Rod Lott

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