Directors | Cagey Films

Hammer on Blu-ray from Indicator, part two

Posted on April 17, 2019December 10, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Tallulah Bankhead as Mrs. Trefoile, a religious fanatic obsessed with her son's purity in Silvio Narizzano's Fanatic (1965)

Indicator’s first box set of Hammer films on Blu-ray is an uneven selection of the studio’s mid-’60s output, including two of their best along with two of their weakest releases. Alongside Michael Carreras’ mediocre Maniac (1963) and The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964), we get The Gorgon (1964), on of Terence Fisher’s finest Gothic horrors along with Silvio Narizzano’s debut feature, Fanatic (1965, aka Die! Die! My Darling!), the best of Hammer’s psychological horrors, all sporting excellent transfers and informative special features.

More late winter viewing, part two

Posted on April 10, 2019February 13, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

An experimental serum revives and mutates dead soldiers in Julius Avery's Overlord (2018)

Style trumps substance in several recently viewed movies: from Stefano Sollima’s troubling depiction of mythic threats on the U.S. southern border in Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018) to Julius Avery’s disappointing exploitation of World War Two horrors for cheap thrills in Overlord (2018), from Drew Goddard’s ersatz Tarantino-like narrative play in Bad Times at the El Royale (2018) to Kenneth Branagh’s glossy rehash of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express (2017).

More late winter viewing, part one

Posted on April 3, 2019December 10, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Be scared or laugh? Walking alien slime mold in Kinji Fukasaku's The Green Slime (1968)

Entertainment knows no bounds in terms of style or quality: recent viewing ranges from Walter Hill’s gripping Vietnam allegory Southern Comfort (1981) to Kinji Fukusaku’s pulp sci-fi The Green Slime (1968), from Richard Franklin’s Ozploitation horror Patrick (1978) to Robert Amram’s perplexing End Times “documentary” The Late Great Planet Earth (1979).

Agnès Varda 1928-2019

Posted on March 30, 2019December 10, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Agnès Varda, whose remarkable career spanned from 1955’s La Pointe Courte to the recently released Varda by Agnès (2019), has died at the age of 90. In six-and-a-half decades, she created a body of work rooted in a fascination with human beings and the social forces which shape them, in features and documentaries full of acute insights and humour.

Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour (1945): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on March 27, 2019June 18, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Darkness and rain on a road to nowhere: the quintessence of film noir in Edgwar G. Ulmer's Detour (1946)

For the first time on home video, Edgar G. Ulmer’s minimalist film noir masterpiece, Detour (1946), gets the treatment it deserves; a stunning 4K restoration brings out every nuance in this story of a man and a woman ensnared by a malevolent Fate.

Hammer thrillers on Blu-ray from Indicator

Posted on March 20, 2019March 26, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Val Guest's The Full Treatment (1960) opens with the dramatic aftermath of a car crash

Indicator lavish attention on four less well-known, non-Gothic Hammer Films productions in their second box set devoted to the company: Criminal Intent focuses on a range of bad behaviour from murder to bank robbery and child molestation in four films which, while not all entirely successful, illuminate the studio’s versatility.

British black-and-white fantasies

Posted on March 13, 2019March 17, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Members of a British Army bomb disposal squad inspect the interior of the alien craft in Nigel Kneale's Quatermass and the Pit (1959)

Two excellent recent Blu-ray releases illuminate different strains of British fantasy. They Came to a City (1944), written by J.B. Priestley and directed by Basil Dearden is a Utopian political fable proposing a new Socialist society for post-war Britain, while Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass and the Pit (1959) spins an epic tale of human evolution and our innate propensity for violence through the story of an ancient spaceship discovered buried beneath London.

Watching genre, in black-and-white

Posted on March 6, 2019March 16, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Scary kids: alien offspring threaten England in Wolf Rilla's Village of the Damned (1960)

Three very different features – Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946), John Guillermin’s Town on Trial (1957) and Wolf Rilla’s Village of the Damned (1960) – illuminate the varied pleasures offered by genre in the hands of seriously committed filmmakers.

Adapting Clive Barker

Posted on February 27, 2019July 1, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Tony Todd's killer ghost schemes to destroy Helen (Virginia Madsen)'s complacent life so she'll have to join him in Bernard Rose's Clive Barker adaptation Candyman (1992)

Clive Barker’s distinctive prose style, while it creates vivid and highly visual stories, is difficult to transform into movies because the themes and meanings of the stories are strangely abstract. While Barker himself has been his own most successful adapter, there have been many attempts to capture his vision on film – some better than others. George Pavlou’s Rawhead Rex (1986) misses the mark, but Bernard Rose’s Candyman almost succeeds but is diverted by moving the story from Liverpool to Chicago.

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s La vérité (1960):
Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on February 20, 2019January 20, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Dominique (Brigitte Bardot) sees her sister's friend Gilbert for the first time in Henri-Georges Clouzot's La verite (1960)

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s La vérité (1960) is less well-known than Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques, but it’s one of his finest features, a complex, emotionally wrenching work which gave Brigitte Bardot her greatest role. Criterion’s excellent new Blu-ray presents the film in a spectacular restoration, with substantial supplements.

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