Rabid Dogs

When movie fans hear the name Mario Bava they usually think of films like Black Sunday, The Whip and the Body, Black Sabbath and Blood and Black Lace. I decided to watch something else and instead watched:

Rabid Dogs (1974).

After a couple of box office failures, Bava decided to show everyone that he wasn't just a horror director but that he could do a contemporary thriller. Thus the sort of but not quite poliziotteschi movie Rabid Dogs came to be.

In an odd twist of fate, the producer became bankrupt and the ownership of the movie got stuck in limbo, so no one got to watch it until 1997. Apparently there exists at least two versions of it, with the other version being called Kidnapped. I think I watched the Rabid Dogs version and since the differences should be quite small, I don't think it matters. There is a rumor that Rabid Dogs was an influence on Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, but that came out in 1992, five years before anyone got to see Rabid Dogs, so that's is not true.

The plot in a nutshell is this; a gang robs a payroll and in doing so end up killing a bunch of people. Desperate to get away they kidnap a woman, Maria, but the cops know the car they're driving. So, they grab a new car and force the owner to be their get away driver. The man, Riccardo is pliant as he was driving his young sedated son to the hospital. What follows is a tense road trip from hell.

This is all I'm going to “spoil” of the plot. Of course there are multiple scenes with complications and dangers, but that is to be expected.

Rabid Dogs is shot on a shoe-string budget, so small in fact that they had to fire the cinematographer after only two days, with Bava taking over that job as well. Despite this, Rabid Dogs is a twisted masterpiece.

The film drags a lot at times, despite being only 96 minutes long but this plays in with the fact that it mostly takes place in a swealtering car during the Italian summer and mostly in real time. You can almost smell the sweat coming off the desperate robbers and their terrified captives. Everyone is a mess when the movie comes to a close and I felt pretty exhausted myself. I can't tell if it was luck or Bava's skill that pulled it off but he did it. Most of the film takes place in the car, or by the side of the road, which is natural considering the lack of money.

Of course we have to give kudos to the actors as well. Maria (Lea Lander) is brought to the brink of madness from fear for her life and her virtue, particularly as one of the bandits, Thirty-two (that's his name) is very keen on “getting to know her more intimately”. The robbers themselves, from the cool and collected Doc, to Thirty-two's cackling madness and finally Blade who has his own problems and temper to deal with, are well done. They are despicable and disgusting people but weaker actors and poorer direction would have plunged the movie into farcical territory. This is not the case with Rabid Dogs.

It's well shot, you can tell that Bava's experience served him well. I can't comment on the soundtrack as I can't remember it at all. My focus was on the people 100% of the time.

So, do I recommend this movie? Yes, absolutely. It is unlike the other poliziotteschi movies I've talked about before. There is no handsome macho Inspector to chase down and fight the bad guys, it is all about survival, both for the hostages and the crooks. It is a hard movie to watch at times. The violence is almost theatrical, but the threat of it makes the brutality worse when it comes. Any fan of thrillers should get a kick out of Rabid Dogs.

 

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!

 

Two for the price of one

To the surprise of no one, I'm sure, I watched some more poliziotteschi movies.

First I sat down and watched Goodbye & Amen (1977). Set in Rome, Goodbye & Amen is more a spy movie than a true poliziotteschi. Sure the police is ever present but the film revolves around the CIA. From the opening where they are planning a coup in an African country to a tense hostage situation, the CIA has considerably more screen time than the police.

Goodbye & Amen is frankly amazing. Sure, the acting isn't always the best, but the story and how the movie is made is great. There are enough twists and turns to keep both things interesting and you guessing, but not so much that it becomes impossible to follow. As a bonus, all the loose threads are tied up in the end. It's directed by Damiano Damiani and stars amongst others; Tony Musante, Claudia Cardinale and John Forsythe.

The sound and music is alright as is the direction. This isn't a movie that needs dramatic sweeping shots, but the camera work is very well planned. If it was a car, I'd say the engineering is top notch. The beginning jumps around quite a bit but it will make sense later on. Unfortunately, I can't really say anything else without stepping into spoiler territory, which I won't do.

Realizing that I can't say very much about Goodbye & Amen except “movie good, go watch”, I sat down and watched Street Law (1974).

Directed by Enzo G. Castellari and starring Franco Nero as our protagonist, who is still acting by the way, Barbara Bach who three year later starred opposite Roger Moore in The Spy Who Loved Me, and a solid cast of other more or less familiar faces.

Street Law is the story of Carlo Antonelli, an engineer who is taken hostage at a robbery and beaten. Afterwards he feels that his self respect and masculinity is diminished and he decides to do something about the criminals. The police is fairly uninterested which makes his girlfriends (Bach) arguments about letting it go, unacceptable.

Carlos early attempts to investigate the underworld go poorly but he gets the hang of it and the story progresses to its logical conclusion. The interesting bit, for me at least, is that revenge stories are common enough, but Carlo isn't a tough guy. This isn't John McClane or Rambo territory, he's an engineer. What is less interesting however is that Carlo for all his intelligence doesn't seem to have much of a plan. He goes into dangerous situations with no clue of how to handle it and pays a steep price.

The cinematography in Street Law is amazing, as are the stunts. The acting is good but the soundtrack is pretty hit or miss. My biggest complaint over all, is that the story drags quite a bit at times. It's 105 minutes long and that is too long. A tighter cut would have enhanced the tension a lot and made for a much better movie. As it is, it's nice but it could be great. It falls short of the mark, and it is mostly the action scenes that carry the story along. The length could have been fine if Carlo had more of a plan but he spends a long time behaving like a bit of a moron in several repetitive scenes.

So, do I recommend these movies? Goodbye & Amen, absolutely! I may actually have to re-watch it. It is a solid top shelf choice both for a casual or a focused watch.

Street Law, yes if you are a fan of the genre or Franco Nero. He is a good actor, but the movie as such is a middle of the road affair.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!

Slay the Spire

Hello and welcome to the first Monday of 2022!

During the still (as of writing) ongoing Steam Winter Sale I picked up a game that I can only call fantastic, I'm talking about Slay the Spire.

Made by Mega Crit Games and released in 2019, I realize that I'm a bit late to the party, but as the saying goes, a good game is good forever (unless the devs ruin it later).

The game is tagged as a Rogue-like and a card battler. If the terms are unfamiliar to you let me enlighten you. A rogue-like is game that will kill your character over and over again, but in dying you unlock new elements of the game, letting you become stronger in time. Rogue-likes also rely heavily on randomly generated elements meaning that no two play-throughs are ever the same.

A card battler is simply a game where you play cards instead of clicking your mouse to shoot or swing a weapon.

Slay the Spire is set in a strange unnamed fantasy world. There you will encounter weird and alien creatures that you have to defeat in order to triumph. You gain cards and powerful relics as you progress until you reach the pinnacle of a spire and there you fight the boss. Once that's done, you go on to the next spire and so on.

There are a total of four characters to choose from but only one at the beginning. The others are unlocked as you play. There is a multitude of cards and relics to choose from and they too become unlocked as you progress through the game.

As it is a rogue-like, you will at times feel that the game is unfair. You will encounter fights that you can't win, but this is a part of the process. You learn how the bosses work, you start to understand strategies and card combos that can be extremely potent. All it takes is patience.

When Slay the Spire came out, it garnered a lot of praise for its game-play but the art style was polarizing. And yeah, I'm not that fond of it. Some folks love it, some hate it and others shrug and say “whatever”. If you think it is ugly, I urge you to still give it a try. Don't let the art turn you off this game, after a while, chances are you won't even notice it anymore.

The game is fun, no doubt about that, but there is something else that is very compelling. I don't know what it is, but when my wife and I started to play, (the game is single player, I was watching her play) we accidentally burned dinner a bit. The fries and meatballs were in the oven longer than they should have. I can't remember the last time when I've singed my dinner, but that is how compelling this game is, it sucks you in and demands that you play one more level, just one more...

I recommend this game wholeheartedly. Even if it isn't the kind of game you would usually play, I urge you to try it. It's on sale until the 5^th of January and if you really hate it, you can always refund it. The game is also available on mobile devices, at least on Android, but that is outside of Steam and I have no experience with that version.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then have a great and safe week!

The last post of the year.

Hello and welcome to the last Eccentric Sphere of 2021.

It's been a mixed year in many ways. Covid continues to bedevil us all but there has been many good things as well, at least for me.

I had a hard time getting my brain to formulate a thought on the subject, so I decided not to. There are enough retrospectives around if you like those, I just aim to entertain you a little bit.

So without all that much more ado, let me wish you a Happy New Year and a great and safe week. I'll see you in 2022 with more Eccentric Spheres!

 

  

 

Undecided

I had a hard time deciding what to talk about today.

I watched a poliziotteschi movie called The Big Racket (1976), but I didn't really like it very much. It's all about a police inspector who tries to take down a gang that runs a protection racket and commits horrible acts of violence against those they don't like. Parts, like a car rolling down a hill was superbly shot with the camera inside the car, and there were some nice action, but the main villain was lousy and the story as such made little sense. You could roll a car through the plot holes if you were so inclined. I realized that I can't really recommend it and if possible, I prefer to not blog about movies I don't enjoy.

Clearly this wasn't the topic for this week...

I also considered talking about how most of the AAA game company executives are keen to implement NFT (non fungible tokens) and block-chain technology in their upcoming games. In a nutshell, NFT's use the same technology that is used to farm cryptocurrency to create “unique” items in game, either for sale or to be earned through playing. These “unique” items can then be sold by the owner to other players for real money. The kicker is that the items don't need to be unique at all, just the code for this particular helmet makes it unique. It can look like every other helmet in-game. Sure, the items can be genuinely unique, but they still want to waste huge amounts of energy to create this market in order to cash in. It is incredibly bad for the environment and to top it off, they don't really seem to know what need or problem these NFT's would solve.

The backlash has been huge, with developers from the companies themselves like EA, Ubisoft and Take-Two asking their bosses what the point is, since microtransactions and in-game shops are already a thing. The bosses have no answers, they just mumble about “investments”, “metaverses” and other buzzwords. Ubisoft seems to be the keenest at the moment and are apparently planning on allowing players who own these items to transfer them from one game to another. Frankly, this is idiotic. Your fancy “property” is going to evaporate the second the game servers are shut down. Recently there was talk that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 would have NFT's until they realized the PR backlash and publicly stated that the game won't have them.

The NFT technology also raises serious questions about things like money laundering, capital gains tax, game companies holding valuable properties for players meaning that they might function like banks, etc. etc. Time will tell how this plays out, but they already had enough problems with children and loot-boxes. The defense then was that the boxes don't contain anything of real value, but the point of the NFT's is that they do have real value. Can children even earn them or what? Do they need to pay tax or does that get slapped on their parents? Some in-game items have sold for thousands of dollars already, so the potential is there. These are important questions that they don't seem to have asked themselves as they fall over each other to be first in a new gold rush.

Of course, this topic is a bit dull and negative, so I need to come up with something else. But now I'm running out of space so you'll have to settle for this comedy sketch.

Now it only remains to wish you Happy Holidays where ever you are, and I hope you will come back next time. Until then, have a great and safe week!

Bullitt

In last week's post about the Friends of Eddie Coyle, I mentioned that the director Peter Yates, had also directed Bullitt (1968). For a long time, I've meant to watch Bullitt, so I did.

Bullitt is a neo-noir cop drama about protecting a witness and solving crime. Story wise the plot is really nothing special. I found Steve McQueen as Lieutenant Bullitt okay but not that remarkable. Robert Vaughn as Senator Chalmers is amazingly nasty and slimy. So slimy in fact that when Vaughn tried to get into politics, his performance got in his way since people remembered how oily he was.

Beyond these two we have Jaqueline Bisset as Cathy, Bullitt's girlfriend and Robert Duvall as a cab driver. I don't think I've ever seen him in such a minor role before. All actors do a good job, the cinematography is great and the music is... 60's jazz. Good if you like the stuff. I think...

Where Bullitt really shines is in the influence it has had on the TV and cinema that came along afterwards. This movie became absolutely iconic in its time and I don't think it is unfair to say that Bullitt is the archetype for the cop who plays by his own rules and does whatever it takes to get the job done no matter who gets mad at him.

Bullitt's other huge claim to fame is the car chase that is still amazing to this day. Bullitt drives a 1968 Ford Mustang as he chases two killers in a 1968 Dodge Charger. Seeing these powerful muscle cars race around San Francisco is a treat. Keep in mind that there was no CGI at the time so the hairpin turns and jumps were performed for real. This movie is also probably the inspiration for multiple movies featuring car chases in San Francisco, with its twisting streets and many steep hills.

McQueen is credited as being the driver of the Ford but in fact some shots were filmed with a stuntman, the same stuntman who did the motorcycle jump in the Great Escape – Bud Ekins. When McQueen found out, he was furious as he had gotten quite a bit of flak for not doing the jump himself.

The driver of the Dodge was Bill Hickman, an experienced stunt-driver and racer. Hickman was a good friend of James Dean and was in fact the one who pulled Dean's body out of the crashed Porsche Spyder that killed him.

I could go on listing interesting facts about this movie like how there were no sets built. All scenes were shot on location. The Mayor of San Francisco was keen to promote his city as a film location and the crew got to shut down streets for hours at a time. They even got a hospital wing to film in. The only request that got turned down was to film on Golden Gate bridge.

I said I could go on, but why bother? Check the humongous trivia page on IMDB if you want to know even more. Okay, one more. Bullitt is often credited as being the first movie where the word “Bullshit” was uttered, but it is in fact the second. The first is In Cold Blood (1967).

Do I recommend this movie? Yes, I suppose so. It is a classic and there is nothing wrong with it. If all you care about is the car chase, you can see it on Youtube. Beyond that, movie buffs need to see it but I don't think it's any great loss if you skip it. Again, there is not anything really wrong with it, but I don't think it quite lives up to the enormous reputation it has.

 

 

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!

The Friends of Eddie Coyle

I had heard the title before, but when a friend talked about this movie, I sat down and watched it the following day. The subject of this week is The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973). Based on the debut novel of the same name by George V. Higgins, this movie stars Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan and Steven Keats. It's directed by Peter Yeats who also directed the Steve McQueen classic Bullit.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a study in tense atmosphere. We follow the titular Eddie (Mitchum), a small time crook who is getting both old and nowhere fast. He is connected but unimportant. He knows how the game is played but isn't successful. He is known to be solid and is mostly used to supply guns to those who need them, but now he's looking at prison time and he's not sure he can do it. The question is what he can do to stay free.

His main clients are a trio of disciplined and clever bank robbers, one of whom is played by Alex Rocco, best know as Moe Greene in The Godfather. The other important character is the young hotshot gunrunner Jackie Brown. If the name is familiar it is because The Friends of Eddie Coyle had a big influence on Quentin Tarantino, who named one of his movies Jackie Brown.

This movie is pretty slow in many ways, but never boring. Don't go into this expecting a lot of fast paced action. It's a slow intense burn, and it burns all the hotter for it. The tension is thick enough to carve with a knife in several scenes and even when the movie relaxes a bit, it is still strained. You can never really relax and everyone is constantly guarded and ready for the worst.

Set and shot in Boston during the fall, everything feels cold, tired and miserable. Add to this Mitchum's wonderful portrayal as Eddie, who goes from tough and intimidating to cajoling and almost but not quite pleading. The end result is a movie that should be absolutely depressing but somehow isn't.

Even without the Hays Code I have a feeling that The Friends of Eddie Coyle would be just the same. This is one of those movies that really makes crime seem unattractive. It has no glamour or cool, only pragmatic business in a business where you can't trust anyone. To quote Jackie :”This life's HARD man, but it's HARDER if you're stupid!”

If I have managed to paint a picture of unrelenting depression and miserable suffering, don't worry, The Friends of Eddie Coyle isn't that gloomy, but it is extremely well made.

Do I recommend this movie? Absolutely! I would have hated it as a teenager, but being (hopefully) more mature, I found it fascinating. It wasn't well received when it released, but Roger Ebert gave it four stars, it has a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 7.5/10 on IMDB. I suggest you give it a shot, I'm glad I did.

 

 

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have great and safe week!