Frankie's pre-xmas roundup part 1 - thought I'd get these in before the jolly stuff starts for real, if it hasn't already (ulp).
THE UNTOLD STORY – Notorious HK Cat 3 flick given the VIP treatment ‘at last’, courtesy of Unearthed Films and their new, lovely looking blu-ray. In this case, aforementioned ‘look’ is lovelier than the film, which is well-known to splatter and sleaze fans but is basically about a deranged restauranteur who steals a south Chinese diner after he does a Sweeney Todd on the previous owners. Various nastinesses ensue, only to be undermined by some typical ‘broad’ HK ‘humour’, possibly designed to weigh good against evil but ultimately tipping the balance in favour of absurdity and potential rubbishness – actually, truth be told this levity sticks in the craw because a lot of it revolves around the general goofiness of the police, only for the latter part of the movie to blitz us with a pretty harsh depiction of systemic violence. ‘The Untold Story’ is definitely a bizarre curio however, and it’s inevitable that anyone with a few treasured memories of the days of seedy bootlegs will want to pick it up, though it’s weird seeing it nice and spotless.
PATRICK LIVES AGAIN – This sequel-in-name-only to ‘Patrick’ takes the original’s theme of telekinesis and sinks it deep within a cess-pit of sleaze... would you want the director of ‘Giallo A Venezia’ to show any undue respect for cinematic nicety? Thank your lucky stars if you found the first film as dull as I did, for ‘Patrick Still Lives’ forgets the human drama and simply ladles on the sexy violent weirdness, including laughable glowing green eye visuals and a fairly gross genital skewering. Despite it all amounting to not much more than cinematic froth, somehow there’s a real downer atmosphere about it; the free-flowing nudity is scuzzy rather than erotic, and the setting, a big, lugubrious chateau, casts a morbid shadow leavened only by scenes of coma patients writhing orgiastically at the end. All of which makes it a winner in my book.
CRUEL JAWS – Distils the essence of Mattei into ninety-five mind-curdling minutes. It plays less like a horror film and more like a chewed-up soap opera interspersed with fragments of other movies. The last bit is literally true, and of course Mattei was notorious for that kind of recycling, in this case his only real chance of getting a shark onscreen for the shoestring he’d be working with. Apart from purloined shark footage, everything else is so disjointed that the film feels close to delirium, and, as with other Mattei flicks, that makes for a pretty wild feeling for a bit, until it all gets a bit too much like hard work. A plastic masterpiece of soulless hollowness.
VIOLENCE IN A WOMAN’S PRISON – Double Mattei – talk about cruel and unusual punishment, though VIAWP proves he can direct to a decent degree. I say ‘decent’; this film is nothing of the kind, but at least it doesn’t contain any of his erstwhile stock-footage shenanigans. What it does contain is a number of well-managed set-pieces and scenes (among them a hilariously contrived excremental dousing and a gonzo rat attack – he obviously has a thing for rodents, does Bruno) that sell it as a well put-together exploitation flick with good, moody camerawork, a hazy atmosphere and groovy eighties synth music of VHS-classic era provenance.
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