Kniehofstrasse (1973), Drinnen Und Draussen (Inside And Outside) (1974), Illusive Crime (1976). - Richard Woolley.

These three individualistic, thematically diverse examples of independent avant gardist filmmaker, Richard Woolley provide a fascinating entre into his singular mise-en-scène. Refreshingly unconventional, thought-provoking, and thoroughly unique, seen today in the ever more stifling hegemony of corporate filmmaking uniformity, Woolley's engaging iconoclasm makes for altogether bracing agitprop cinema! 

Imaginative, humane and politically perceptive works, with his elegiac gender/class inequality piece 'Illusive Crime' having an unsettling, haunting quality. Minimalist, and beautifully photographed, a vibrant work of auteurist cinema, the themes of mass media duplicity, and oppressive capitalist regimes, sadly, remaining disturbingly relevant. Woolley's aggressively experimental B/W Berlin pieces are structuralist, didactic, and non-narrative, while I occasionally found them somewhat obscure, they remained bizarrely compelling, but, they might appear to be frustratingly nebulous to others. I appreciated the intellectual heft of 'Illusive Crime' drawing deserved attention to the innately voyeuristic nature of cinema, questioning the dubious morality of the media's blithe exploitation of women.      

 

 

 

Pathology (2008) Marc Schölermann.

While I avidly loathed all the asinine characters, this thankfully enabled me to appreciate their inventively grisly demises with additional relish! Glacial, sadistic, and just plain nasty, this stylishly mounted, surgically sinister shocker is not without some macabre merit, and the stunt casting of Dr. Giggles was a most welcome flourish of irony! Fundamentally a lurid, jarringly humourless exercise in misanthropy, I was able to make the viewing experience moderately more amusing by pretending Pathology was a ill conceived Scrubs Halloween special. While sordidly sucking at the same tortured teat as vapid splatter-fests Saw and Hostel, director, Marc Schölermann is a more visually engaging filmmaker, and at least attempts to probe a little deeper into the warped human psyche than horror himbos, James Wan & Eli Roth. For me to engage with a film there must be at least one protagonist I can relate/empathize with, as this smugly sociopathic school of prima donna Patrick Bateman's left me colder than their beloved dead!

 

'Man Bait' aka 'The Last Page' (1952) - Terence Fisher.

With a soggy biscuits text, and George Brent being a right fannydoodle, the gifted filmmaker, Terence Fisher does all he can to keep this turgid thriller afloat. Firecracker, Diana Dors dazzles conspicuously, exhibiting palpable star quality in her dully written role. No PowerBumming classic, but, Diana Dors was ALWAYS the real people's princess!

 

 

 

'Castle Falls' (2021) – Dolph Lundgren.

As an avid fan of, Dolph Lundgren and, Scott Adkins, I had no doubt their collaboration on 'Castle Falls' would prove explosive! while the text is competent rather than compelling, the volatile combination of these two dynamic stars yields a twin-fisted typhoon of satisfyingly slam-bang martial arts/Gun-Fu mayhem! For disparate motives, a mercenary crew of heavily armed hoodlums, veteran prison guard, Ericson (Lundgren), and itinerant labourer Wade (Adkins) fatefully converge in condemned Hospital Castle Falls, all hoping to score the 3 million dollars stashed therein. Referencing, Walter Hill's Trespass, Dolph Lundgren's dynamic actioner delivers energetic beatdowns once the proverbial cat has shat the fan! The handsome, charismatic, physically adept leads, and their bravura action scenes makes 'Castle Falls' a bullet-blasted, femur fracturing treat for Dolph/Adkins fans!

Swap the cash for gold, the grim suburban setting for sun baked Texan badlands and Castle Falls would rock no less righteously as a brutalist western! The despicable bad guys are all the way bad, Dolph Lundgren's Ericson is the noble patriarch, and fearfully fleet, close quarters dynamo, Scott Adkin's Mike Wade is a refreshingly Stoic hero imbued with morality, an iron jaw, and especially lethal reflexes! Dolph has aged like good whiskey, he simply gets better, his steely screen presence having the indomitable masculinity of, John Wayne, and he's maturing into an exceptionally fine filmmaker. The athletic combat scenes have a brutal efficacy, the bone-crunching bellicosity being well choreographed, and no exasperating jump-cut juvenilia, these increasingly desperate Kung Fu cats just wail hard on each other real savage! Blunt, direct and pleasingly to the point, like its director, Castle Falls is a lean, mean fighting machine.

 

 

 

 

'Autopsy: A Love Story' (2002) – Guy Crawford.

Lonely, love-hungry mortuary attendant, Charlie Bickle (John Scott Mills) is trapped in a dead-end relationship, spending his long dour days illegally harvesting organs for his vastly corrupt boss, Dr. Dale Brodsky (Joe Estevez). He 'aint no average working stiff, while shy, introverted and awkward in public, Charlie positively comes alive with the dead! Amusingly bizarre, sordidly sardonic, 'Autopsy: A Love Story' is arguably one of the more eccentric terror titles disgorged by the fiendishly independent gore-mongers at Brain Damage Films. A low budget necromantic comedy horror treat about the tacky travails of an all American boy and his dead girl next door! Livid with grisly gallows humour, there's a wealth of ice-cool passion and sweet moments of tender open-hearted romance in, Guy Crawford's mirthfully macabre, morgue-set love affair!

On a day seemingly like any other, Charlie fatefully meets the girl of his screams, Jane Doe, pale, beautiful, serene, ceaselessly obliging, and quite dead! On this auspicious day, Charlie demonstratively puts pay to the notion that he couldn't get laid in a morgue! Not for all tastes, Autopsy A Love Story is an amusingly warped admixture of John Waters, H.G Lewis, and Paul Bartel, a blackly funny text enlivened by a choice number of delicious lapses into bad taste! Crawford's morbid DTV melodrama is blessed with a splendidly game cast of actors, with surprisingly nuenced performances from scar-crossed lovers, John Scott Mills and, Dina Osmussen, and a juicily unfiltered turn by B-Movie legend, Joe Estevez. Funnier than Alien Autopsy, more romantic than Psychos in Love, Autopsy: A Love Story grimly opens up a darker vein of cold blooded comedy. 

 

 

'Amazons & Gladiators' (2001) Zachary Weintraub. 

Conspicuously low budget, and cheesier than a centurion's sandals, Amazons & Gladiators stronger points are manifestly not its plenitude of 'colourful' performances! While amiable enough, Jennifer Rubin makes for unlikely Amazon warrior, Patrick Bergin is on amusingly crass form as degenerate General Crassus, with jazz patch perpetrating action icon, Richard Norton robustly convincing as muscular sword master, Lucius. The production design is no less dog-eared than the tripe-laden text, but, quite frankly, this pleasingly bellicose peplum is rarely boring, and our plucky, immaculately coiffed, racily leather clad heroines righteously put up a bloody good fight! Some could say if you've Xena one battlin' Amazons B-flick, you've seen 'em all!!!! While history buffs should look elsewhere for cultural verisimilitude, ravening cheese-mongers should give, Weintraub's fiesty female-led fight flick a shot! For the sake of full trash hound transparency I went into 'Amazons & Gladiators' with ZERO expectations and was rewarded with goofy sequences of an unexpectedly zesty B-Movie piquancy!!