NIGHT NURSE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX series "Ball of Fire: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck". Curated by the inimitable Senior Programmer James Quandt.

Night Nurse Stanwyck holds her own against thug Gable

These images from NIGHT NURSE
clearly provide many good reasons
as to why the pre-Code period in old
Hollywood had a whole lot going for it.

Night Nurse (1931)
Dir. William A. Wellman
Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Ben Lyon, Joan Blondell, Clark Gable, Charles Winninger, Ralf Harolde

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Things are tough for a young lady in the big city. They're especially difficult for a night nurse. If you're Barbara Stanwyck, things tend to be a little easier, but still mighty challenging. William A. Wellman's 1931 pre-Code (when Hollywood was at its most provocative) melodrama Night Nurse, crackles with wit, sex, sentiment and thrills, serving up a genuine minor classic reflecting the age of gangsters, bootleggers and single, young women trying to make a way for themselves in the world, whilst making the world a better place for others. The picture blisters with a zippy pace, entertaining us and delivering a sophisticated window into a bygone era, feeling as fresh and resonant today as it must have felt in the 30s.

After a rip-snorting ambulance P.O.V. ride through the city during the opening titles, Oliver H.P. Garrett's screenplay (along with Charles Kenyon's razor-sharp additional dialogue) doesn't waste any time plunging us into the world of the hospital via Lora Hart's (Barbara Stanwyck) perspective. She applies unsuccessfully for a position as a student nurse to a nasty old harridan who chides the lass over her lack of education. Luckily, on her way out, Lora collides with kindly, old Dr. Bell (Charles Winninger) who dives to the floor to retrieve all of our heroine's personal goods which spilled out of her purse. This allows the codger a good view of Stanwyck's gams which, is not lost on our gal at all. One friendly, provocative smile in the doc's direction is all it takes to get Lora back in the hospital and hired.

Lora is hooked up with wisecracking Nurse Maloney (Joan "Hubba Hubba" Blondell) who'll be her roommate in the weird hospital boarding rooms for nursing students (a hint of orphanage and/or women's prison here). Maloney gives Lora the lay of the land, including a tip or two about how to make the job work to her best advantage. First and foremost, Maloney warns against taking-up with the drooling, always-on-the-prowl interns. "Take my tip, sister and stay away from them," she cracks. "They're like cancer. The disease is known but not the cure." However, Maloney's most cogent advice to Lora is thus:

"There's only one guy in the world that can do a nurse any good and that's a patient with dough! Just catch one of them with a high fever and a low pulse and make him think you saved his life. Trust me, sister, you'll be gettin' somewhere."

Lora, however, connects with Mortie (Ben Lyon) a friendly bootlegger with a gun wound that she patches up without reporting it to the police. This endears him to her immediately and he becomes a helpful ally when she finds herself in a jam with some seedy criminal types.

Lora lands what should be a coveted spot as a private night nurse offsite. Unfortunately, she finds herself helplessly watching over two children being intentionally starved to death (for a whopping trust fund) by their alcoholic mother in cahoots with her seedy chauffeur lover (Clark Gable) and presided over by the sleazy quack Dr. Milton A. Ranger (a brilliant Ralf Harolde who not only oozes slime, but twitches ever-so madly with an obvious cocaine addiction). Lora tries to appeal to Ranger by threatening to go to the authorities, but he snidely reminds her she'll be washed up if she does.

"The successful nurse is one who keeps her mouth shut," he intones menacingly.

Even kindly old Dr. Bell can't help, citing "ethics" as being in the way of his interfering with another doctor's case. She fires back, as ONLY Barbara Stanwyck can with that unique blend of vulnerability and tough, no-nonsense moxie: "Oh, ethics... ethics... ethics! That's all I've heard. Isn't there any ethics about letting poor little babies be murdered?"

Poor Lora's in a major bind: a drunken gangster has tried to rape her, the children's mother lollygags about in a drunken stupor, the nasty chauffeur belts her out cold and, adding to her frustration, she's forced to stand by idly as murder is being committed before her very eyes.

"I'll kill the next person that says 'ethics' to me," she says to Maloney (again, as only Stanwyck can).

Her wiseacre pal retorts, as only Joan Blondell can, "Hah! Says you!"

But then, tweaking on to the notion that she's the only one who can take charge and make things right, Lora fires back (with Stanwyck's distinctive Brooklyn twang), "Yeah, SAYS ME, in a BIG WAY, sister."

Lora grabs the reins with a vengeance.

A big storm's a brewing and she's the one brewing it. Along the way, though, she does get some help from her friendly bootlegger pal. Burgeoning romance and rescuing children make for perfect bedfellows.

The film ends with another rip-snorting ambulance ride through the city, depositing a stiff for the morgue. It turns out, the stiff's been hit by some thugs, but happily we learn it's a thoroughly justifiable homicide.

Stanwyck gloriously delivers a final hardy-har over that news and we're all the better for it. Both her performance and the film have us soaring in a movie that provocatively and joyously kicks the kind of butt only a 30s pre-code picture can. Night Nurse is a glorious blend of melodrama, social consciousness and heroism against the biggest odds of all. It extols the virtues of ordinary folk over high society and places more ethics in the hearts and minds of a dame who never finished high school and her good-hearted bootlegger boyfriend over all those who had the money and opportunities to move up the ladder of success and where reaching the top only really meant adhering to ethics supporting an old boy's club over those who do most of the real living and dying.

It's impossible to argue with.

Night Nurse plays Saturday, February 7 at 3:30 p.m. at TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX in James Quandt's amazing series "Ball of Fire: The Films of Barbara Stanwyck". The film is presented in GLORIOUS 35MM. For further info, visit the TIFF website HERE. As well, there are many Barbara Stanwyck films from this TIFF series which can be ordered directly from the following links: Buy Barbara Stanwyck movies in Canada HERE and/or Buy Barbara Stanwyck movies in the USA or from anywhere in the world HERE. You can even click on any of these links and order ANY movie you want so long as you keep clicking through to whatever you want to order. By doing so, you'll be contributing to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

RED ARMY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - American Doc on Soviet Hockey Ignores Canada

RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA

AMERICAN PROPAGANDA

Red Army (2014)
Dir. Gabe Polsky

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Gabe Polsky’s feature length documentary Red Army is as much about the propaganda machine (of Cold War Russia/Soviet Union) as it is pure propaganda unto itself, by placing undue emphasis upon the rivalry between America and the Soviet Union on the blood-spattered battleground of ice hockey competition. Polsky has fashioned a downright spellbinding history of the Red Army hockey team, which eventually became a near-juggernaut of Soviet skill and superiority in the world.

In spite of this, many Canadians will call the film a total crock-and-bull story.

I wholeheartedly admit, however, the bias of growing up intimately within the universe of world competition hockey. My own father, Julian Klymkiw, played goal for Canada’s national team in the 1960s, a team that was managed by Chas Maddin (filmmaker Guy Maddin’s father). Guy and I eventually became the respective director-producer team behind Tales from the Gimli Hospital, Archangel and Careful. Maddin went on to immortalise a ‘non-professional’ team from the wintry Canadian prairies in the Jody Shapiro-produced My Winnipeg. Maddin even featured a beefy lookalike of yours-truly wearing a uniform emblazoned with the name ‘Julian Klymberger’ (the surname being one of my own nicknames in years past and to represent my Dad).

To say Maddin and I were both well aware of the true rivalry in international hockey would be an understatement.

But one didn’t need to actually grow up in hockey families intimately involved with various Team Canada hockey leagues to realise that the United States was a blip on the Soviet rivalry-radar. The only famous match-up between the Soviets and America happened during the 1980 Olympics, when a team of veritable untested ‘kids’ hammered the Soviets (immortalised as the 2004 Walt Disney Studios feature film Miracle starring Kurt Russell).

Polsky’s film uses this match as the film’s primary structural tent pole, and completely ignores the historic 1972 Canada-USSR Summit Series, which has gone down in most histories (save, perhaps, for America’s) as the greatest display of hockey war of all time. His film also ignores, though pays passing lip service, to the fact that the real rivalry throughout the 1970s and 1980s had virtually nothing to do with America and everything to do with Canada and Russia.

I know this all too well.

My own father eventually became the Carling O’Keefe Breweries marketing guru who brokered huge swaths of promotional sponsorship to Team Canada over 15-or-so years and, in fact, worked closely with hockey agent/manager/promoter and Team Canada’s mastermind Alan Eagleson. Dad not only spoke a variety of Slavic languages fluently, but his decades as an amateur and pro hockey player all contributed to making him an invaluable ally to both administrators and players of Team Canada. To the latter, famed Canadian sports reporter Hal Sigurdson reported, ‘Big Julie [Klymkiw] often rolled up his sleeves and got his hands dirty behind the Canadian bench.’

I’m not, by the way, arguing the absence of my Dad in this film – he did his thing, promoting beer to promote hockey and hockey to promote beer, which allowed him to travel the world and be with all the hockey players he loved – but what I’m shocked about is how Red Army can ignore my Dad’s old pal and colleague. The film includes ONE – count ’em – ONE off-camera sound bite from Alan Eagleson.

Polsky appears to have made no effort to even interview the man himself or include the reams of historic interview footage of Eagleson that fills a multitude of archives to over-flowing. Eagleson, for all the scandals that eventually brought him down, including imprisonment for fraud and embezzlement convictions, was the game’s most important individual on the North American side to make Soviet match-ups in the Western world a reality, and to allow professional North American players to go head-to-head with the Soviets. (Though Eagleson went down in flames, my Dad always remarked straight-facedly, ‘The “Eagle” never screwed me.’)

How, then, can a documentary about Soviet hockey so wilfully mute this supremely important Canadian angle to the tale? Where are the interviews (new or archival) with such hockey superstars as Gordie Howe (including sons Mark and Marty), Bobby Hull, Bobby Orr, Marc Tardif and all the others who battled the Soviets on-ice? Why are there only mere blips of Wayne (‘The Great One’) Gretzky, most notably a clip in which he sadly refers to the Soviets’ unstoppable qualities? Why are there not more pointed interview bites with the former Soviet players discussing the strength of Canadian players? It’s not like archival footage of this doesn’t exist.

There’s only one reason for any of these errors of omission: all the aforementioned personages and angles are Canadian. Ignoring the World Hockey Association’s (WHA) bouts with the USSR is ludicrous enough, but by focusing on the 1980 Olympic tourney and placing emphasis on the National Hockey League (NHL), the latter of which is optically seen as a solely AMERICAN interest, Red Army is clearly not the definitive documentary about the Soviet players that its director and, most probably American fans and pundits, assume it is.

America? HAH! Canada! YEAH!

As a sidenote, there's an excellent series of DVDs produced by the visionary Canadian producer-distributor Jonathan Gross and available through his company Video Services Corp. (VSC). The titles include Canada Cup ‘76, Team Canada 1974: The Lost Series, The WHA Chronicles, Canada Cup '84 and Canada Cup ‘87 and they ALL address this important aspect of Soviet-Canadian Hockey. I wonder if Polsky bothered to watch any of them? Only his hairdresser, or rather, conscience would know for sure. Full ordering info on the titles below review.

Even if one were to argue that the story Polsky was interested in telling didn’t allow for angling Canadian involvement more vigorously, ‘one’ would be wrong. The story of Soviet hockey supremacy has everything to do with Canada – a country that provided their only consistent and serious adversary, a country that embraced hockey as intensely as the USSR and a country, by virtue of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s official policy of Canadian multiculturalism, that reflected the vast number of Canuck players who had Eastern European blood and culture coursing through them.

It’s also strange how Polsky, the son of Soviet Ukrainian immigrants, ignores the fact that a huge majority of great Soviet players were ethnically Ukrainian. I vividly remember meeting so many of those legends as a kid and listening to them talk with my Dad about a day when maybe, just maybe, Ukraine would have its independence and display Ukrainian hockey superiority over the Russians, never mind the rest of the world. (Given the current struggles between Russia and Ukraine, this might have made for a very interesting political cherry-on-the-sundae.)

Ultimately, Red Army is American propaganda, or at the very least, is deeply imbued with American propagandistic elements. Given that it’s about Soviet hockey players, I find this strangely and almost hilariously ironic, which in and of itself, gives the movie big points.

All this kvetching aside, Red Army is still a solid film. Focusing on the historic and political backdrop of Joseph Stalin and those leaders who followed him, all of who built up one of the greatest, if not the greatest series of hockey teams in the world, this is still a supremely entertaining movie. Polsky’s pacing, sense of character and storytelling is slick and electric. The subjects he does focus upon, the greatest line of Soviet players in hockey history, all deliver solid bedrock for a perspective many hockey fans (and even non-hockey fans) know nothing or little about.

Polsky even interviews a former KGB agent who accompanied the Soviet players to North America in order to guard against defection to the West. Here again, though, I’ll kvetch about a funny Canadian perspective. Dad not only played hockey, not only was he a marketing guy, but he even squeezed in a decade of being a damn good cop in Winnipeg, and when Team Canada went to Russia, Dad would go from hotel room to hotel room, find bugs (not the plentiful cockroaches, either) and rip the KGB surveillance devices out of their hiding places for himself, his colleagues, players and administrators from the West.

I’ll also admit to enjoying the interviews with the likes of NHL coach Scotty Bowman and Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak; however, the most compelling subject in Polsky’s film is the Soviet defenceman Slava Fetisov, who movingly recounts the early days of his hockey career, his friendship and brotherhood with the other players and his leading role in encouraging Soviet players to defect for the big money of pro hockey in North America. It’s also alternately joyous and heartbreaking to see the juxtaposition between the balletic Soviet styles of play with that of the violent, brutal North American approach.

Contrast is, of course, an important element of any storytelling, but in a visual medium like film, it’s especially vital. It’s what provides the necessary conflict. With Red Army, however, the conflict is extremely selective. It is, after all, an American movie, and as it proves, if Americans do anything really well, it’s propaganda. Us Canucks here in the colonies can only stew in our green-with-envy pot of inferiority. We know we’re the best, but we have no idea how to tell this to the rest of the world, and least of all, to ourselves.

Kudos to Polsky and America are unreservedly owed.

They show us all how it’s done.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

Red Army is currently in theatrical release via Mongrel Media in Toronto and Vancouver, followed by a February 27 release in Montreal and a rollout in the rest of Canada later in the year. It previously screened at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2014).

To read a full version of my essay Canada vs. America: The Politics and Propaganda of Sports in Gabe Polsky's RED ARMY and Bennett Miller's FOXCATCHER, feel free to visit my column: Greg Klymkiw's COLONIAL REPORT (on cinema) from the DOMINION OF CANADA at the ultra-cool UK-based magazine electric sheep - a deviant view of cinema by clicking HERE.

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THE FORBIDDEN ROOM: ***** Review By Greg Klymkiw - Take a bath with Guy Maddin at the Sundance Film Festival '15 or @ the Forum during Berlin International Film Festival '15

Marv (Louis Negin) teaches you how to take a bath in THE FORBIDDEN ROOM

LOUIS NEGIN is MARV

The Forbidden Room (2015)
Dir. Guy Maddin
Co-Dir. Evan Johnson
Scr. Maddin, Johnson, Robert Kotyk
Addl. Writ. John Ashbery, Kim Morgan
Edit. John Gurdebeke
Prod.Design Galen Johnson
Cinematog. Stephanie Anne Weber Biron and Ben Kasulke
Prod. Co. PHI Films, The National Film Board of Canada, Buffalo Gal
Starring: Roy Dupuis, Clara Furey, Louis Negin, Céline Bonnier, Karine Vanasse, Caroline Dhavernas, Paul Ahmarani, Mathieu Amalric, Udo Kier, Maria de Medeiros, Charlotte Rampling, Géraldine Chaplin, Marie Brassard, Sophie Desmarais, Ariane Labed, Amira Casar, Luce Vigo, Gregory Hlady, Romano Orzari, Lewis Furey, Angela La Muse Senyshyn, Kimmi Melnychuk, Kim Morgan, Darcy Fehr, Jean-François Stévenin, Judith Baribeau, Graham Ashmore

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to take a bath with Guy Maddin in his closet of tantalizing shame, his forbidden room. God knows I have partaken on occasions too multitudinous to enumerate. So please, allow me to assure you, bathing with Maddin is a most gratifying and sensual treat for the mind, body and most of all, your very soul.

So then, my dear ones, do yourself a favour and hop into the stew with the Crown Prince of Prairie Post-Modernist Cinema and revel in the myriad of pleasures that motion pictures can offer: the fleshly, the ectoplasmic, the magically incorporeal, the visually and aurally celestial and, most assuredly, the cerebral complexities of all human existence in this world and the next, as filtered through the mind (within an enormous head of magma) of the great Icelandic Satyr who worships - nay, attends to all the needs of that Bacchus who rules over us all, the most holy and resplendent gift that IS the great silver-embossed photoplay, the magic bestowed upon our world by the immortal Brothers Lumière.

The Forbidden Room is 130 glorious minutes you'll want to experience over and over and over again. If, God Forbid, you find you're unable to experience it more than once, or worse, if you're compelled to not see it at all, you either don't care about cinema and/or have no taste and/or hold the unenviable dishonour of exhibiting little more than bone matter twixt thine wax-filled ears and behind eyes of cement.

I, for one, must confess to having seen the film five times now. My fifth helping occurred precisely at the scheduled time of the first public screening in Park City, Utah at the Sundance Film Festival, which I was sadly unable to attend.

I did, however, attempt to replicate the joy of said event, in an outdoor soft tub, located at the northernmost tip of the penetratingly puissant peninsula dividing the moist Great Lake of Huron and its clitoral Georgian Bay, surrounded by the glories of the natural world, the horses, ponies, donkeys, dogs, squirrels, beavers, hibernating bears, coyotes, wolves and chickens, puffing fine tobacco purchased from my Aboriginal Brothers on their cheap-smoke-shoppe and hunting lands down the road, with jets of hot water massaging my rolls of flesh and every so often, just now and then, mind you, the hand not gripping a stick of sacred, smouldering, oh-so natural leaves of First-Nations bliss, would plunge greedily into the bubbly water, seeking netherworlds of sheer exultation to grip, to manipulate, to squeeze and tug with abandon until finally, emitting an ejection, an eruption (if you will) of jubilant gratification, a cascade, a geyser, a blast of liquid force in honour of the grandiose cinematic pulchritude before me.

By a waterfall, bath-time with Guy Maddin is calling yoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!

As a matter of fact - pure and simple - I do not even wish to imagine how many more times I shall partake of this scintillatingly sudsy broth that celebrates the incalculable joys of life, shame, regret, sorrow, love, death and cinema, all those things which render our otherwise pathetic existence with meaning. Even one helping of The Forbidden Room can drain a feller (or lassie) more powerfully than several months of Sundays infused with gymnastics of resplendent amore. Yes, a drain in more ways than one:

Lo! This motion picture is most assuredly one drain we all must want to be slurped down, down, down into. Please, dear ones.

Let me try to explain why.

MAESTRO UDO KIER:
DEEPLY OBSESSIVE
WORSHIPPER
of DELICIOUS
DERRIERES

The Forbidden Room opens with an astounding credit sequence which stutters and sputters by like fragments of decaying film on nitrate stock (not unlike that of Peter Delpeut's 1991 found-footage documentary Lyrical Nitrate, unleashed upon North American audiences by Zeitgeist Films, who also gave us Maddin's Archangel and Careful as well as the similarly stylish work of the Brothers Quay). The imaginative way of placing gorgeous period title cards announcing key creative elements is an equally brilliant way to dispense with the ludicrous number of producers and the decidedly non-period acknowledgments to gouvernement du Canada et gouvernement du Manitoba agencies like Telefilm Canada and Manitoba Film and Sound, etc. (At least the National Film Board of Canada makes sense given the significance of Holy Father John Grierson's efforts during that historical period detailed in Pierre Berton's book "Hollywood's Canada".)

Once these are all dispensed with, the film opens proper with the John 6:12 passage:

When they were filled,
he said unto his disciples,
Gather up the fragments that remain,
that nothing be lost.

It's a powerful passage, to be sure, but its resonance, its weighty thematic substance and, in fact, the very Raison d'être for The Forbidden Room is clutched almost parsimoniously by John's recapitulation of Our Lord's words.

Though the film is comprised of several different stories, they represent fragments of cinema from days long-gone-by which, through the ravages of time and the lack of care ascribed to film preservation during the first half-decade-plus of its history saw so many pieces of time go missing without a trace, or indeed, pieces of time that never even existed, but should have. Maddin, not unlike Georges Melies is a magician of sorts. His film conjures up fragments of films lost, stolen or suppressed, brilliantly re-imagined (or rather, just plain imagined) by Maddin and his co-director Evan Johnson and the pair's co-writer Robert Kotyk. They have been gathered up, these fragments, these very ghosts of cinema, "so that nothing shall be lost".

The Forbidden Room is a structural marvel. Kudos to Maddin and team for creating it so solidly from what must have been reams of magnificent footage written, prepped, shot and cut during the over-four-years it took to make this grand epic that honours both cinema and the lives of ghosts. In fact, the movie astonishingly adheres to (an albeit slightly skewed) three-act structure in terms of story and tone. The first third establishes its series of problems and obstacles right off the bat. The middle act slides into a journey in which said obstacles must be encountered and hurtled over or deviated into delicious nap times of dreams and reveries which provide even more obstacles to be hurtled over or deviated into, well, nap time for sure, but in this middle section one will find some of the most heart-achingly beautiful and tear-squirtingly moving emotions and images. And then, there is the third act - more on this later, but suffice to say it's an insanely eye-popping affair.

Tonally, then, the first third is jaunty, fun and occasionally sinister.The middle act is supremely elegiac with dapples of madness, humour and absurdity.

The third act is a hurricane.

Many tales are interwoven throughout and our first story (the writing of which is additionally supplied by John Ashbery) is a garishly coloured industrial documentary featuring a flamboyantly bath-robed Marv (Louis Negin), our host on the journey to the joys inherent in taking a proper bath. Marv recounts the history of bathing, then narrates all the proper steps needed to take a bath. Twixt Marv's peacockish descriptions and asides, we're delighted with images of pretty young ladies (Angela La Muse Senyshyn, Kimmi Melnychuk) bathing each other, then followed by the buff fortitude of a male bather (Graham Ashmore) carefully applying Marv's instructions as he settles into a nice, steamy, frothy tub. The man is especially eager to get to Marv's most important instructions of all:

"Work down to the genitals. Work carefully in ever-widening circles."

The sensual digital manipulations within the steamily sopping froth give way to another tale, another film infused with the serous lifeblood (and yes, danger) of water itself. A submarine carrying dangerous explosives and rapidly depleting oxygen is stuck between a rock and a hard place as the pressures of the sea above will be enough to send the vessel into a massive eruption of its deadly cargo and though the necessary slow journey it undertakes to avoid disaster is the very thing that will guarantee another disaster, the lack of oxygen which could kill every man on board. Luckily, there is some solace taken in the constant serving up of flapjacks, which in spite of their culinary monotony, are found to be full of porous insides which offer added oxygen to extend the men's precious lives.

Roy Dupuis is a dreamy, hunky, handsome woodsman
searching, ever-searching for his lady fair.

When a dreamy, rugged and brave Woodsman (Roy Dupuis) appears in the sub, the narrative becomes even more tied into other films and as the movie progresses, its literary properties seem rooted in a kind of Romantic period use of concentric rings (albeit skewed in ways they never should be).

One story after another, either recounted by characters in one film and represented by another or told as stories within stories or, my favourite, as dreams within dreams, flash by us ever-so compellingly, taking us deeper into a liquid-like miasma, a ripe flatulence of wonder, a churning, roiling sea of volcanic lava - DEEPER, EVER-DEEPER INTO THE VERY CORE OF EXISTENCE AND CINEMA!!!!!

We follow Roy Dupuis's Woodsman into a cave of scarlet-furred-lupine-worshipping barbarians who have kidnapped his lady love. We see his infiltration into this den of murderers, kidnappers and thieves as he successfully proves his worth during several challenges including:

- finger snapping;
- stone weighing;
- offal piling and, my personal favourite;

- BLADDER SLAPPING!!!!!

GERALDINE CHAPLIN
THE MASTER PASSION
Le Dominatrix
des adorateurs derriere

When we meet the Woodsman's lady love, the film takes us into her mad dreamworld wherein she acquires amnesia and we're assailed with glorious images of native dancers, sexy crooners, and a delicious pitstop involving a sexy anal dominatrix, The Master Passion (Geraldine Chaplin) and then, an even more delectable pitstop involving a madman (Udo "Who the fuck else?" Kier) obsessed with bottoms who is then worked upon by an equally mad doctor who performs open brain surgery to slice out viscous portions of cerebellum afflicted with buttock obsession and climaxing with the ultimate fist-fucking as the doctor plunges his whole hand into the buttock-like brain of Udo Kier to attack the deep core, or prostate, if you will of the man's anal intrusions upon his very mind, his very soul.

There's the tale of a kindly bone specialist who operates upon a sexy motorcyclist who has 47 broken bones after a horrific accident in which she swerves to avoid a family of ducks in her path. Of course, the doctor must take special care to lay his hands upon her prodigiously in order to heal her broken breast bones and, in so doing, falls madly in love with her before being seduced and kidnapped by a bevy of sexy skeleton women who are under the control of a skull-headed medical insurance fraudster.

In DreamLand, Crooners Croon of Derriere Worship.

One yarn after another assails us and as they emit their fantastical glories, constantly astounding us as to how they dovetail in and out of each other - a tale of a mill keeper and his gardener, a tale of a train psychiatrist and his screaming patient and seductive ways, a tale of volcano worshippers always on the lookout for living sacrifices, a tale of a forgetful husband (Mathiu Almaric, that great French actor whom one can watch for an eternity) who ends up murdering his loyal manservant (Udo Kier - AGAIN!!!) to cover-up his gift-giving incompetence, a tale of the manservant in death as his moustache hairs dream about taking him for a final visit (or several) to his little boy and blind wife (Maria de Medeiros), a tale of a consular official and his gorgeous fiancé (Sophie Desmarais) and the man's obsession with a cursed bust of Janus which turns him into an evil Mr. Hyde-like defiler-of-women and the tale of . . .

Have I mentioned the vampires yet?

Oops. Sorry. My bad!

They're called ASWANG (pronounced ASS-WANG).

You will not want to take a bath with any of them - except maybe the ultra-sexy Aswangs.

Will the submarine blow up? Will the woodsman be reunited with his lady love? Will she be cured of her amnesia?

Will we be able to count how many times Louis Negin appears, Franklin Pangborn-like, in different roles?

Will we be able to count how many times Udo Kier appears, Eric Blore-like, in different roles?

Will we ever meet the mysteriously missing Captain of the submarine?

Will we meet his MOTHER!!!!!

Will we survive the mad, fever pitch of a climax, that flings us into the most mind-blowing trip of visual splendour since Stanley Kubrick's stargate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey (replete with . . . colliding zeppelins)?

What HAVE I missed?

Have I missed mentioning that the editing of John Gurdebeke and the production design of Galen Johnson are both as inspired and brilliant as Guy Maddin's most-assured hand? Have I missed mentioning that the exquisite lighting and camera work from cinematographers Stephanie Anne Weber Biron and Ben Kasulke provides the eyes to reflect Maddin's soul? Have I missed mentioning how astonishing the work that all of Mr. Maddin's creative collaborators proves to be in this, his greatest achievement?

I hope not.

I, for one, will take yet another bath with Guy Maddin.

We've taken so many together over the past 30+ years.

What's one (or a few) more.

The Film Corner Rating: ***** 5-Stars

The Forbidden Room is playing the Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin Film Festival. Its worldwide sales are being handled by Mongrel Media International.

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FULL DISCLOSURE

Oh, and for fuck's sake, lest someone point a boneheaded accusatory finger, I present to you the full disclosure that Maddin's late father Chas was business manager of the Winnipeg Maroons, and my own father Julian, who will, by virtue of his stubborn, curmudgeonly qualities, live-forever, played goal for the same team. Both fathers accompanied the team to various European bouts as the Maroons were, indeed, Canada's national hockey team during the early-to-mid-sixties. Maddin and I have been friends for over thirty years, we were flat-mates for many years, we have shared many strange adventures together and I produced his first three feature films (Tales from the Gimli Hospital, Archangel and Careful). I am, however, a true fan of his films. Always have been. I'm perfectly able to assess his work critically and the day I ever hate one of his films (which I have, in fact), I'll goddamn well say so (which I have, in fact, and done so with constructive viciousness).

A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - How can a Spaghetti Noir Vampire Chick in Iran NOT be cool? Stunning directorial debut from Kino Lorber, opens TIFF Bell Lightbox, The Royal Cinema via VSC (Video Services Corp)

This is what you could meet in lovely Iran.

Iranian Bloodsucker in a Chador

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014)
Dir. Ana Lily Amirpour
Starring: Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi,
Marshall Manesh, Mozhan Marnò, Dominic Rains

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There aren't too many vampire movies these days like A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night. In fact, there aren't any at all, but now that this one exists, we can all repress the stench of the abominable Twilight series. What we've got here pretty much blows all recent blood-sucker extravaganzas away.

It's not only a genuinely terrific picture, but it's all in Farsi, the language of Iran, where, incidentally the movie is set (though, amazingly, it was shot in southern California). The movie is staggeringly original, yet at the same time, owes a debt of gratitude to Jim Jarmusch, David Lynch, Sergio Leone, Guy Maddin and James Whale.

Decent bedfellows all, especially for the film's director, a young Iranian-American lassie who makes her feature length debut with this moving picture graphic novel that could well have sprung from the loins of Frank Miller if he was a woman from Iran and wasn't a misogynist.

Nothing sexier than the scent of a jugular vein

The movie itself is light on plot, which is really no matter. Besides, story is more than one plot-point after another. When narrative can be imbued with the poetic qualities of cinema, so often neglected, forgotten or simply not attainable, then story takes on a richness that all the Robert-McKee-influenced product, machine-tooled by hacks, can never, nor will ever, attain. This is a narrative driven by style, theme, mood, character and setting.

And what a setting!

Bad City is practically a ghost town smack in the middle of some desolate plain in Iran, surrounded by endless rows of unmanned oil pumps seesawing ceaselessly and deeply into the flat, dusty earth. In the distance, desolate factories belch clouds of smoke into the atmosphere, the sunny skies blotted out by the filth of pollution.

A lone whore wanders aimlessly on the streets at night, hoping ever-so desperately that someone, anyone will drive by or walk up to her for a cheap fuck or blow job, anything, no matter how degrading will do to avoid being beaten to a pulp by her pimp for not turning enough tricks.

Daylight is murky, nighttime is murkier still, pools of light from high pressure sodium street lamps cast their eerie glow upon the forlorn streets, flanked by dollops of pitch black shadow. If anything, the subtext of the film is found within the shades of grey. Black and white are the pillars holding it all up, but the depth resides twixt those visual support beams of light and darkness.

Somewhere in Bad City is a vampire.

Not that anyone would notice or even care. Life is cheap. Bodies appear, then disappear. Corpses are tossed casually just outside of town into a ditch. The men are (mostly) pigs, the women are invisible and/or abused. The brutish sex in Bad City are pimps, pushers, addicts, drunks, unemployed, slave-class labourers and/or all of the above. Homes appear squalid, their interiors are even more squalid. There's little to do and pretty much nowhere to go. The one nightclub is full of ecstasy-popping babes and scumbags.

At times, we feel like we're in a dreamscape that could only exist in the movies. Of course, I never have a problem with that, but as the film progresses, we're creepily affected by a world that feels as real as it is fantastical. This is a country of waste, repression, rape of the land, rape of the soul and the clear suppression, or rape, if you will, of women's rights. Oil, the ever-present oil being pumped, seems to be the only life or at least, vigorous movement, in this somnambulistic, backward, backyard of despair.

Escape seems to be the only way to avoid death, or at least, a living death, but everyone seems too beaten down to even bother thinking about it. Flight at the end of a needle or the lip of a bottle or whatever can be popped down the gullet, all seem to be the easiest way to dull the pain and, perhaps, allow Bad City's denizens to imagine a better world.

ARASH VARANDI is HOT!!!

Arash (Arash Varandi) is a hardworking young (and almost ludicrously handsome) jack-of-all-trades who lives with his drug addict father Hossein (Marshall Manesh). The lad's prize possession is a pristine T-Bird which is snatched from him by Saeed (Dominic Rains), a foul pimp/dealer/loan-shark who takes it as a payment he's owed for a debt incurred by Dad.

Pops once had something resembling class, but now he's an addled bum, obsessed with the whore Atti (Mozhan Marnò) who reminds him of his late wife, but who, in turn, refuses to acknowledge his pathetic existence unless he's got money to buy her grudging attention and/or respect.

There is, however, a mysterious, exotic and gorgeous young woman (Sheila Vand) who slowly creeps about the streets at night in a full traditional chador.

She's no whore. She's a vampire on the prowl for blood. Her tastes, however, appear limited to exploitative misogynistic men.

Luckily for Arash, he's a sensitive lad, not deserving of having his throat torn out by her fangs, but one of the vampire's victims conveniently opens an opportunity for our hero to secure wads of dough, scads of drugs and the return of his beloved Ford T-Bird coupe.

SHEILA VAND is pretty HOT too!!!

Even more pleasingly, the vampire takes a liking to Arash (in one of the most perverse meet-cutes, like, EVER) and he, of course, to her.

Why not? They're young, smoulderingly intense and, uh, HOT! So what if she's the walking dead? Living in Bad City with a drug addicted father makes him just as undead. Mais non?

Will love conquer all?

Will escape be a viable option?

Will Bad City become a distant memory?

The answers to these questions will all be found in this compulsively engrossing, gorgeously photographed (in beautiful monochrome) and yes, often creepy and scary immersion into the delectable depths of feminist revenge fantasy with a to-die-for soundtrack and a pace so hypnotic that filmmaker Amirpour might well be more than a mere artist.

She's a Class-A mesmerist and as such, watching the movie is to fall under her spell of magic and to emerge pumped, enriched and convinced you've seen one of the most original movies in years.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night from Kino Lorber is in theatrical release across Canada via VSC (Video Services Corp) with Toronto playdates at TIFF Bell Lightbox and The Royal Cinema. Keep your eyes peeled. You won't want to miss this for anything.

THE PALM BEACH STORY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Screwball Sturges Hijinx via Criterion

KLYMKIW PREAMBLE:
WHAT IT WAS, WHAT IT IS NOW1

Imagine if you will, watching a battered film print of The Palm Beach Story in the 1980s, projected with a Kodak Pageant 16mm projector on the apartment wall belonging to old pal Professor Wm. Steve Snyder of the University of Manitoba film programme, stopping every 30 minutes or so in order to changeover from one reel of film to the next. Fair enough. But soon the print will return to wherever it came from. As this is a film that bears repeat viewing, whatever will be done?

Imagine if you will, Prof. Snyder recording the film off his wall with a Panasonic PK300, but needing to cut all three reels together, he must copy the tape to an old 3/4" deck and dub the separate reels into one seamless recording to another 3/4" deck and THEN copy it back to a VHS tape which, like psychopaths, we watch again and again because it's such a great movie and because a select few of us, including future filmmaker Guy Maddin and his roommate and future producer (ME), are huge fans of fruity tenor Rudy Vallee, who is not only in the picture, but, with a full orchestra, croons the immortal love ditty "Goodnight Sweetheart" under Claudette Colbert's window.

It's thirty years later.

Imagine, if you will that we no longer need a battered 3rd or 4th generation 16mm print, shot off a wall on VHS, duped to 3/4", then duped back to another 3/4", then duped down to VHS. This is because the Criterion Collection has released a gorgeous Blu-Ray with a full 4K digital restoration.

"Goodnight Sweetheart", indeed!

The Palm Beach Story (1942)
Dir. Preston Sturges
Starring: Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea,
Mary Astor, Rudy Vallee, Robert Dudley, Sig Arno, Franklin Pangborn

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"I did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay. It was probably harder for a regular director. He probably had to read the script the night before shooting started." - Writer/Director Preston Sturges

Preston Sturges, arguably one of the greatest writer-directors in the history of cinema, wasn't always in the movie business. In fact, he didn't start writing until he was 30. Prior to a glorious career as the first writing-directing auteur of Hollywood's "talkie" period, Sturges lived in the lap of privilege and luxury.

Born into a hugely wealthy American family, he was bitten by the show business bug in childhood as a valued assistant to his Mom's best friend, the famed Isadora Duncan, for whom he helped mount numerous productions for the stage. His early adult life was spent serving his country in the signal corps during World War I and upon his return to civilian life, he joined his mother's posh design firm Maison Desti. It was the company's line of scarves which Isadora accidentally choked upon (I find this incredibly hilarious for some perverse reason) and where his first great success as - yes, an inventor - was a shade of lipstick that didn't leave whopping scarlet kiss marks on the flesh.

Sturges might well have had a charmed life, but he brought to his writing a wealth of life experience and once he started writing and directing his own pictures, he created a legacy that is all his own and uniquely American. He was neither above nor below mixing manic hijinx, pratfalls, ludicrous narratives and brilliant rapid-paced dialogue and delivery, but all the while, he generated material that was as rooted in humanity as it was designed to offer huge, knee-slapping laughs.

There was no one like him, nor will there ever be anyone as dazzlingly original.

The Palm Beach Story is one of his greatest achievements. Joel McCrea plays Tom Jeffers, a hardworking visionary inventor who just can't seem to get a break. He's madly in love with his beautiful wife Gerry (Claudette Colbert at her funniest and sexiest) and she with him.

Unfortunately, their financial situation is dire - so dire that Gerry, thinking that marriage is dragging hubby down, runs into a prospective new tenant for their Manhattan digs, played by the delightfully cantankerous Robert Dudley and Sturges-monickered as the Wienie King (I'm not kidding).

She gratefully accepts his charity after spilling her sob story, abandons her beloved, hops on a train to Florida (hoping to eventually meet herself a rich husband in Palm Beach), loses all her luggage upon plunging into the insane antics of the Ale and Quail hunting club (an irrepressibly jovial, albeit benevolent group of gloriously drunk old reprobates) and finally, as luck would have it, meets the filthy rich John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee) during the long chug-a-lugging north-south steam engine ride from NYC to FLA.

Phew!

Tom, also the recipient of Wienie King charity (double I kid you not), follows Gerry. Not wanting to scuttle her plans of marrying the rich Hackensacker, our heroine has introduced Tom as her brother, whom she preposterously names as "Captain McGlue". Hubby becomes the prospective romantic interest of Hackensacker's sister, Maud (Mary Astor), AKA the Princess Centimillia, who makes a play for Tom whilst her whining lap-dog lover Toto (Sig Arno) crazily continues to follow her around.

Tom has a great idea to invent an airport in the sky. Hackensacker and the Wienie King are both thrilled by the investment prospects. Is it possible for things to turn around? Given the nonsensically harebrained proceedings, anything is possible.

Have I, for instance, mentioned there are identical twins in the mix? No? Good. Suffice to say it has something to do with a ludicrous wedding scene scored to the William Tell Overture and the copious melange of nuttiness in this tin of comedic comestibles which, is so infectious, you'll be desperately longing for the world, invented by the inadvertent strangler of Isadora Duncan to exist - for real.

Nobody made movies like Sturges. Thank God. There could only, really and truly be just one. And I steadfastly guarantee that your jaw will be agape from beginning to end - either in utter incredulousness and/or because howls of laughter will be spewing forth. Make sure you're not chewing on nuts.

You might choke on them.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5 Stars

The Palm Beach Story is available on a gorgeously transferred 4K Blu-Ray disc with wonderful uncompressed mono from The Criterion Collection and includes a solid array of extra features including an all new interview with film historian James Harvey who focuses on Preston Sturges, a terrific interview with the great comic actor Bill Hader about Sturges's influence, a delightfully ridiculous 1941 World War II propaganda short written by Sturges, a magnificent Screen Guild Theater radio adaptation, an essay by critic Stephanie Zacharek and delicious new colourful caricatured cover illustration by Maurice Vellekoop.

HONEYMOON - DVD/BLU-RAY Review By Greg Klymkiw - Sicko Shocker on VSC & Magnolia

Honorary Canadian Chiller

Canadian women are making the best horror films in the world right now. One just needs to look in the direction of the Soska Sisters, Audrey Cummings, Karen Lam and Jovanka Vuckovic and know this to be true.

Filmmaker Leigh Janiak is NOT Canadian, but she might as well be.

Her first feature HONEYMOON is set in the wilds of Canada and prior to learning that this twisted, uber-talented Cleveland lassie actually vacationed with her folks as a child in their Canuck cottage every summer, my first two helpings of the movie convinced me she HAD to be a Canuck.

There is nothing scarier and creepier than the Canadian wilderness. It's not DELIVERANCE-scary (though in its sickeningly benign Canuckian way it CAN be), but it's chilling as all get-out in very subtle ways. Everything about Canada is "subtle" which is what ultimately gives it a unique flavour whenever horrific things actually happen up here. Canadian wilderness, you see, feels so endless that you sense the natural world is swallowing you whole and worst of all, it's quiet - so goddamned quiet you sometimes want to kill someone or, better yet, yourself. God knows, the hair-raising stylistic frissons of master Canuckian filmmakers like David Cronenberg, Guy Maddin and Atom Egoyan (the latter's latest and severely misunderstood THE CAPTIVE, a perfect case in point about our rural ickiness) have all managed to induce the kind of shudders endemic to this supremely perverse country. Now we can add the Honorary Canadian Leigh Janiak and HONEYMOON to my list of the best Canadian films NEVER made by Canadians (FARGO and SLAP SHOT taking the top-slots in this Klymkiw-exclusive genre). HONEYMOON is now available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Video Services Corp. (VSC) and Magnolia. If you want the shit scared right out of you, I urge you to get out there and buy this one immediately.

And now, my review:

EXTRICATION, please!

Honeymoon (2014)
Dir. Leigh Janiak
Starring: Rose Leslie, Harry Treadaway

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There's an urban legend that goes thusly: A man coughs so violently that a thick rope of dark, gooey, sputum jettisons from his mouth.

This is not a case of said sputum yet depositing itself on the floor, wall or any such surface, but rather, continues to hang from the man's mouth in a manner more physiologically commensurate to that of a drooling mastiff in severely hot, humid weather. With every cough, one rapidly following the other, the man continues to release several more inches of the gelatinous goo which, refuses to separate from within. The man grabs onto the foul rope of viscous saliva with both hands, clenching and squeezing for dear life, his eyes popping in terror like Mantan Moreland in a haunted house. The man begins to resemble a church bell-ringer on bennies, tugging vigorously as he extricates more, and more, and yet, more of the bilious, glutinous cordage from his dank, sopping maw. There is no end to the glistening, pus-ridden copulae of meaty, bloody phlegm. He keeps yanking upon it with deranged abandon and it still continues to gush forth, forming finally, a sausage-link-like coil on the floor. It becomes plainly obvious to the gent that this bilious cascade is no simple, garden variety discharge.

Creepy Kitchen Action

To his sheer and utter horror, the man realizes that he's somehow managed to dislodge a hideously diseased lung that surges from his chest cavity, up through his esophagus as it indelicately streams over his tonsils and tongue, grazing his lips and plummeting to the ground.

And so it goes.

There is a scene, a major two-by-four-to-the-face horror setpiece in Honeymoon, Leigh Janiak's auspicious feature length directorial debut that brings the aforementioned urban legend immediately to mind. It is, however, no mere diseased lung being extricated, it's something far more disturbingly insidious and downright disgusting. Most of all, Janiak (who co-wrote the clever script with Phil Graziadei) doesn't utilize an orifice as quaint as a mere mouth, but instead violates an opening of far more indelicacy, one which inspires, not only horror, but deep shame.

The picture opens innocuously enough. We meet Bea (Rose Leslie) and Paul (Harry Treadaway), a young, mid-twentysomething newlywed couple who drive straight up north to the former's legacy cottage for what will be a private getaway for our lovebirds to more officially consummate their union that's just been held before friends, family and God, the Holy Father.

For a good, long time we share the couple's giddy, loving abandon - getting to know them as people, but also gaining insight into their relationship. At the same time, we experience the subtle shifts in mood and honest human emotion that any newlywed couple will encounter, even at this early juncture in their relationship. As life will oft have it, there are, then, a few cracks in the fortification of their lifelong commitment to each other, but nothing out of the ordinary and certainly nothing to raise alarm.

For the most part, they're almost insufferably in love and we explore the most intimate details of their new and happy life together. (Yes folks, plenty o' sex twixt our attractive, talented actors.)

This is until, one night. As the couple sleep deeply after one of many vigorous sessions of coitus with no interruptus, a mysterious light begins to shine through their bedroom window. This is no ordinary incandescence and it passes over the bodies of Bea and Paul in a slow, deliberate manner. Rather than bathing them in a warm glow of peace and comfort, we feel like an entity is taking something dear and precious from them and that it will take all their fortitude to keep their love alive.

That, however, isn't the only thing they'll need to keep alive and it's from this point onwards that a slow, creepy crawly horror takes over and indeed intensifies. There's something in them thar' woods that's going to change their lives forever.

And it ain't pretty.

Honeymoon is one of the best horror films you're likely to have seen in quite some time. It is first and foremost a love story, but like many couplings in this genre, the threats on every front are going to mount exponentially. There will be times when they as characters and even we, as the audience, will begin to question our own sanity. Janiak displays a surprising command of the medium and her gifts to scare the living shit out of us are pitched to a very high, but sophisticated degree. Working in the grand tradition of the masterful Val Lewton, Janiak hits all the necessary marks of the RKO horror chief's checklist for great genre films: Focus upon the contemporary, focus upon humanity, focus upon the foibles of society, focus upon the insidious reality of the horror and if there's to be an otherworldly element to the picture, make sure it stays rooted in the relationships, dynamic and interplay between the characters.

And, of course, never, ever, ever forget that the best horror is rooted in atmosphere, so beware!

Beware the forest. Beware the night. Most of all, beware the light.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars.

Honeymoon is a VSC and Magnolia DVD/BLu-Ray release. It includes a myriad of added value features including interviews with Janiak, the actors as well as a selection of promo pieces and various trailers.

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ALYCE KILLS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Jade Dornfeld rocks Repulsion-inspired thriller

A girl and her Louisville slugger
A girl and her garburator

Alyce Kills (2011)
Dir. Jay Lee
Starring: Jade Dornfeld

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Twentysomething Alyce (Dornfeld) toils in a thankless office job, but one evening the offbeat beauty ingests copious amounts of drugs, booze and crazily shakes her booty with a best-best-bestie at a nearby dance club. The lassies end up at Alyce's, continuing their revelry on the picturesque apartment building's rooftop. Alas, Alyce "accidentally" pushes her pal off the roof.

Thud.

Alyce skedaddles back to her room. When the cops come calling, she opines that her BFF, depressed about her boyfriend, wanted to spend some soothing alone-time on the roof and, Oopsie, guess she decided to end it all. At this point we're wondering if the death was intentional or truly an accident. Who knows, right? Get a couple of ladies together on a roof, all hopped up on ecstasy and a few gallons of booze and it's anybody's guess at this point.

However, as writer-director Lee follows Alyce through her Generation Y emptiness, she seems to get ever-nuttier. Becoming a virtual sex slave to a sleazy drug pusher, she eventually dives into serial killer mode. Drugs, sex and killing fuel her and the ennui fades. Things, dare I say it, converge splendidly upon the tall, sharp point on the dunce cap of her existence, allowing her to always look upon the bright side of life.

Casting Directors! Are You Asleep?

Lee gets points for spending so much time on the psychological aspect of the tale whilst playing things straight enough, that the film never feels tongue-in-cheek, but is occasionally humorous (and in one sequence, knee-slappingly hilarious) and always in decidedly nasty ways. Definitely laced with black humour, and often bordering on satirical, he does a decent job of aping Polanski's Repulsion in a contemporary context and blending it with serial killer melodrama.

Saving most of the truly horrific bloodbaths for the last third of the film, we get to concentrate on Alyce and the creepy atmosphere of her world. Lee's screenplay injects a few decent twists and turns, plus one major shocker that surprised even know-it-all curmudgeonly ME.

Leading lady Jade Dornfeld is a revelation. She does indeed have a delectably skewed beauty and sex appeal to burn in addition to handling her thespian gymnastics with deadpan humour and mega-aplomb. Her round, wide face with cheekbones to die for, big ole penetrating almond eyes and a killer smile to rival Jack Nicholson's are assets she puts to superb use in the role of this oddball murderess. As for Dornfeld's output as an actress in other works, I have no idea why we've not seen her in anything of note since 2011. (She appears to have acted in one short and had a supporting role in what seems to be some kind of pseudo-pretentious attempt at a Zalman King erotic thriller.)

Alyce Kills was finished in 2011. It's 2015.

Where is she? Damn, the camera loves her and she's clearly a great actress.

Casting directors! Are you all asleep?

Alyce Kills is derivative of Polanski to be sure, but this is hardly the worst thing a filmmaker can strive for. His derivations are most favourable, indeed. Besides, Lee crams his mise-en-scene with grotesquery galore and takes us on one hell of a roller coaster ride of sickness and horror. Thematically, there are certain aspects which place it into the realm of feminist horror, but it never quite has the resonance of, say, the Soska Twins' American Mary. Well, it's not Lee's fault. Nobody, but nobody does feminist horror like the Soska Ladies. Most importantly, none of this detracts from Lee's picture. He holds his own very nicely. And trust me, you will never, ever look at baseball bats, garburators, blenders, butcher knives, cleavers and handsaws in quite the same way after one of the movie's genuinely great set-pices, a body-disposal-gone-wrong sequence.

So boil up some pasta, slop a thick red meat sauce over it, set up your TV-tray and dine in splendour as you watch Alyce killing: with nerve, poise, cucumber-cool determination and joy, joy, joy in her heart.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

Alyce Kills is now available on a decent DVD transfer from Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada.

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