Roger Corman Blogathon: The Intruder - 1962

What is it that makes a film truly horrifying?

Is it the cheap shocks, over dramatic sound effects and over abundance of gore that plague the majority of recent horror films? I don't think so; I believe it is either achieved through complete mastery of the films atmosphere, thus making it perfectly unsettling as is the case with the masterful The Shining.

Or is it achieved when a film takes a look at the ugly side of human nature, the darker side, but the side we all know exists.

The Intruder is a film that shows the darker side of human nature, the mob mentality, the ignorance fuelled prejudice, the fear which eventually leads to violence.

There are few characters that can be called "good", some are just less racist than others, and the film does not have a particularly "happy" conclusion, but more on that later.

It is a slightly depressing film, but a powerful one that is brutally honest in it's depiction of the prevalent attitudes towards racial integration in the South at the time.

Guest Post: FRC World Icon Tour

I really should have posted this earlier, but I'm very busy at the moment.

Anyway, Custard at the great Front Room Cinema has come up with the most interesting idea i've heard in a while. A World Icon Tour, this involves posting an entry on a person that has left a mark in his/her's respective counties Cinema. Entries are to be submitted weekly by his readers from many different countries and by the end of the series it should be a brilliant look at World Cinema.

As I live in France, and Custard lives in the UK, I was the first one he asked to prepare a post for this most intriguing series.
For my Icon, I chose French director Henri Georges Clouzot. Mainly because I've been fascinated with him ever since I saw Le Salaire De La Peur, but also because my interest in him and his work was recently revived causing me to watch 3 more of his films, thus I consider myself rather knowledgeable on this subject in particularly and thought it would be fitting to write about him. 

David Lynch, 1946 - Present

This may sound cliche, but it's true. David Lynch is a director you either love or hate. You can either see him as a wild genius and one of the most creative figures in Cinema or as a pretentious charlatan who makes meaningless films.

I personally think he's a great film maker, who has fully grasped exactly what film making means. Of course he applies this skill in a way that will not appeal to everyone, as he clearly makes films as some kind of art form rather than telling a usual narrative tale. However this does not mean that I worship his every film. In fact I find much of his work to be quite bad, sometimes downright terrible.

He's the kind of director that has created his own genre, his films are in a class of their own and I often find them hard to review mainly due to the lack of any other works to compare them to.
But as he is in this month Director's Chair over at the LAMB, I though it would be a good opportunity to catch up on the few films of his I hadn't seen and write a post reviewign them all. However I did leave out Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, mainly because I haven't seen the TV series not do I want to, so that film remains the only feature length film of David Lynch I haven't seen.

Now I shall share my thoughts on each of his other 9 feature length films:

Day Of The Samurai 1: The Sword Of Doom

So, I've recently come up with a new idea for a series of reviews. I will be reviewing a single Samurai film every week, there is no specific day for the review, it can be any random day of the week.
This will help me work my way through the very large collection of Samurai films I've gathered, and will perhaps get some of you readers interested in this most entertaining of genres.

There is no real order to the films chosen, they will be from many different directors and from the period between the late 50's and early 70's, the Golden Age of Samurai cinema. The films chosen will range from classic Kurosawa such as The Hidden Fortress to Lady Snowblood and Zatoichi. However, I won't be including any Western Samurai themed films, such as The Last Samurai, but I may review some recent Samurai films such as 13 Assassins or Twilight Samurai occasionally.
Basically this is just an small outlet for me to express my love of this genre.

For this first day I have chosen one of the very best Samurai films to have come out of the 60's.  
The Sword Of Doom - 1966 directed by Kihachi Okamoto

End Of The Week Post

This is a pretty enormous post as I've watched quite a lot this week, some great films, some not so good...


Rushmore - 1998 directed by Wes Anderson
7/10

 There is something I find really off putting about Anderson's films. It's hard to say exactly what but as much as I like the directing, music performances and the rest, I still find the films to be vaguely annoying and obnoxious.
Still, Rushmore was good. I really enjoyed the sound track, made up of some of my favourite artists such as The Who, John Lennon and many more.
Olivia Williams was particularly great, possibly the best performance in the film. I really should see more of her work.