Buck Theorem's Hide-out

The Land Unknown

Director ~ Virgil W. Vogel

Writers ~ László Görög, William N. Robson, Charles Palmer

1957, US

Stars ~ Jock Mahoney, Shirley PattersonWilliam, Reynolds

 

So, it is the effects that everyone will see as dated, but it’s the gender politics that are most tiresomely of the era. The dialogue is mostly exposition or “Gee you’re a woman and I can hardly contain my manliness.” Shirley Patterson as Margaret Hathaway has to swing between smart, brave, capable and Scream Queen; all the stakes rest upon her gender. Her male colleagues are bland and unmemorable without her, and it’s left to Henry Brandon to do the acting heavy-lifting as Hunter, the sole survivor of a previous fated expedition, traumatised by solitude in a savage land. He gives a stony performance of suppressed psychosis as a man on a mission to bring the surround fauna to extinction in the name of self-preservation.

 

This hints at something harsher than the film can really get to grapple with, as does a T-Rex warded off by helicopter rotor blades and Hunter’s designs on Margaret. There’s something struggling to surface here, something about savagery and civility and self-sacrifice, but it is all put right with the two leads getting together. Of course.

 

 

Survive

Director: Frederic Jardin.

With: Emilie Dequenne, Andreas Pietschmann, Lisa Delmar, Lucas Ebel.

France 2024. 90 mins.

 

Probably intended more earnestly than it feels, but once you realise it’s enjoyable schlock in the manner of some “At the end of the world!” family adventure from the Sixties-Seventies, it is highly entertaining. Probably questionable science. “The conspiracy theory nuts were right!” particularly highlights the shonkiness. The effects and look are good. Here comes the psycho, but better than that and more horrible: here come the deep-sea crabs driven mad by oxygen.

 

 

The Last Voyage of  the Demeter

Director: André Øvredal.

With: Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham, David Dastmalchian.

USA 2023. 118 mins.

 

Troubled by distribution delays, Øvredal’s embellishment on one of ‘Dracula’s best passages proves a solid big monster movie with some good characterisation (ships were centres of diversity) and some great monster effects. Not at all gruesome or scary, but impressively mounted and touched with a little nastiness when it needs it. Lavish and slick Gothic horror entertainment.

 

 

Dead Mail

Directors: Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy.

With: Sterling Macer Jr., John Fleck, Tomas Boykin, Micki Jackson.

USA 2024. 105 mins.

 

Set firmly in a dour, washed-out Eighties where most era homages look like cardboard cut-outs coloured in felt tips. Deliberately low-fi aesthetic, all the cassettes, typewriters, rotary phones and sleuthing mail departments surely puts this in a technological era that will be totally alien to younger viewers. Superior attention to detail, character and plotting makes this increasingly engrossing as an unusual thriller based upon synthesizer geeks and mail offices that work more like altruistic private detectives. There’s also bonus appreciation of the underappreciated heroism of working people just doing their job and taking a care. Its context feels so, so real with Fleck and Macer Jr’s performances infused with pathos rather that movie thriller panic and motivation. And the devotion to analogue synthesizer music on the soundtrack gives it that extra special element.

 

 

Traumatika

Director: Pierre Tsigaridis.

With: Rebekah Kennedy, Ranen Navat, Emily Goss. Susan Gayle Watts.

USA 2024. 87 mins.

 

A mess of a film that throws together ‘The Exorcist’, ‘Evil Dead’ and ‘Halloween’ vibes and anything else it can think of to no great coherence. If Tsigaridis prior ‘Two Witches’ had a kind of crude edge that added to its transgressive flavour, here there just feels an ugliness when it’s throwing in child abduction, abuse and murder. There’s nothing reflective or thoughtful here, nothing certain about its attitude to what it is rummaging around in and throwing up, just some early decent prolonged suspense sequences then devolution into whatever scuzziess takes its fancy with a tiny bit of media satire thrown in.

 

Strange Darling

Director JT Mollner.

With: Willa Fitzgerald, Ed Begley Jr., Robert Craighead, Kyle Gallner.

USA 2023. 96 mins

 

Told in six chapters but out of order, which means we get sensory and action overload up front before setting in for long two-hander flirting – “Are you a serial killer?” And then the revelations… Willa Fitzgerald is exceptional with Kyle Gallner more than her match. The 35mm thriller colour scheme, the abrasive then seductive sound design, the dialogue, the hints of something retro, all go to make this smart, fun, funny, upsetting but ultimately a hugely entertaining thrill ride with a little something to say about gender roles. Even makes room for making breakfast being a highlight.

 

Member’s Club

Director: Marc Coleman.

With: Dean Kilbey, Perry Benson, Steve Oram, Peter Andre.

UK 2024. 90 mins

 

 So, 'The Full Monty' vs. witches sounds solid enough.

 

Starts with tawdry middle-aged guy jerking off to what he thinks is a prostitute in a car getting a plank up his arse.

 

Then: past-it male strippers – because they’re always funny – being booked accidentally at a 12-year-old’s party because of dyslexia.

 

Not my kind of comedy.