M-FOR-MOVIES!!

Despite initial surprise that Cronenberg was to film David Henry Hwang’s play about an affair between a French diplomat and a she-male Chinese opera singer, links with the horrormeister’s earlier work soon become clear. It’s disappointing, however, that Cronenberg’s dissection of the extremities of desire and the slippage of sex roles is less radical than in,say,Dead Ringers or The Naked Lunch. In pre-cultural revolution Beijing of the early ‘60’s, Rene Gallimard, inspired by a performance of Madame Butterfly, projects on to singer song Liling(lone) a cultural imperialist fantasy of complaint Chinese womanhood. For reasons that remain obscure, he/she responds by recreating him/herself in this image, acting out a parody of sub missive femininity and initiating a bizarre but mutually fulfilling charade .Blackmailed by a party official into obtaining political secrets, Song Liling later draws her lover into playing his own double role as a spy. Only when their espionage is revealed in a Paris court does Gallimard discover his lover’s best-kept secret.

George Miller’s film is an outrageous exploiter drawing intelligently on everything from death race 2000 to straw dogs for its JG Ballard-ish story about a future where cops and Hell’s Angels stage protracted guerrilla warfare around what’s left of a hapless civilian population. The tone sometimes wavers into self-parody, and three are occasionally crude patches, but overall this edge-of-seat revenge movie marks the most exciting debut from an Australian director since Peter Weir.

Originally show in 3-D, this vigorous little shocker has another psychotic role for price as a magic-trick inventor who goes over the edge when fellow magicians rip off his act and his wife runs off with a younger rival. There’s much play with Vincent’s latest gizmo but the piece as a whole is a few notches down in content and style from the previous years “House of wax”.

Baker’s the big lumpy cop who wont take no and another assignment for an answer when he’s told to lay off the gun-happy lawyer (Saxon) he suspects of cold-blooded murder, and to concentrate on the businessman with the coke connection ( Balsam). He realizes that in such a sparsely-populated cheapie they just have to be in collusion, as he punches and shoots his way to the final credits accompanied by vocal encouragement from one of those country singers with terminal cancer. Balsam and Saxon contribute no more than their required quota of urbane sneers before being bulldozed into oblivion by the golden hero of this irredeemably routine potboiler.

Nolan’s ‘keyhole dick’ is ludicrously quick with his fists and has an annoying habit of twirling a keychain round his finger, he’s also not above faking a murder( with a Mickey finn and a bottle of catsup) to frighten the sense back into the headstrong girl (Weaver) he’s supposed to be chaperoning. Based on a novel by Brett Halliday, Dividend on Death, this is the first in a series of 12 produced by FOX between 1940 and ‘47. It’s an extremely convoluted betting and horse-swapping mystery, with a mildly diverting subplot featuring an elderly Ellery Queen fan (Patterson) who helps Shayne with this not terribly diverting ‘baffle book’ case. Nolan is a reliable player, and Bogart’s Marlowe may have learned something from him, but he lacks ingrained world-weariness.

Schlondroff’s bizarre third feature was the first of a spate of adaptations from Klesit. Edward Bond wrote it (it’s in English), and labored mightily over the contemporary parallels in the story of a 16th century horse-dealer whose stand against a criminal landowner takes him outside the law himself. Schlondorff films it as all-stops-out melodrama, complete with rioting peasants, rioting students, contrasts between righteous and non-righteous rebellion, and one of David Warner’s least restrained performances. If the result evokes ken Russell, it’s because it shares some of Russell’s visual strength as well as some of his dramatic weakness.

This tatty exploitation piece is simultaneously manic and repressed, silly and cynical, as paranoid as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and altogether a prime ’50’s artifact. Dupuis is the Pigalle babe, a nightclub singer hoping to marry her nice young man (Nicaud), but falling into lust with a killer (Gaven) and confiding all to her best friend (Carrel). But the nice young man’s a con artist, the killer’s an undercover cop, and Carrel is an insurance sleuth posing as a stripper. Talk about the age of uncertainty… Quantities of nudes swan about, while Alfred Rode et Son Orchestre (that’s right, a bandleader/cineastre) rip through a couple of numbers. This was the fifth of eight titles from Ropes-Dupuis, perhaps the cinema’s least romantic husband-and-wife combo.

ClouCloud nine tosh from the days when Warner movies preached that delinquents were just good kids in need of a helping hand .Cagney play a ward-heeler rewarded with a political sinecure as deputy commissioner of a reform school. Up from the slums himself, horrified by the sadistic brutality of the director (Digges),Cagney takes over. Improving the food relaxing the discipline, and replacing the warders with a system of self-government, he soon has the boy’s easting out of his hands. But unrest back in the ward ends with Cagney shooting the trouble-maker (Huber) in self-defence; and while he’s hiding, Digges restores his old regime. Jeopardizing his freedom, Cagney rushes back in time to end a riot by the boys (a tubercular kid died after being locked in an unheated cell), though not before Digges falls to his death. The good angel Happy Ending tidies away all awkward questions, and Cagney is asked to stay on as director. Despite the risible script, Cagney is as watch able as ever, and Mayo directs sleekly.