Heatseeker (1995)

Heatseeker (1995) brings together two current interests of mine when it comes to movies. It’s a mid-1990s cyberpunk movie, something I’ve been searching for, ever since rewatching The Lawnmower Man earlier this year. And it’s directed by Albert Pyun, who passed away recently at the end of 2022 and left behind a back catalogue of direct-to-video action flicks. Set in the future, Heatseeker envisions a world where martial arts fighters upgrade their abilities with robotic enhancements, and corporations bankroll tournament competitors, the outcome of fights determining the company’s stock market value. All of this sounds more compelling than the film actually is, which is basically another Bloodsport knock-off with some William Gibson shit in there.

A champion all-human fighter named Chance O’Brien (Keith Cooke) is blackmailed into participating in a corporate mega-tournament where everyone else is a cyborg; the fighter’s wife and manager (Tina Coote) has been kidnapped by a duplicitous, power-hungry promoter (Norbert Weisser). The low budget is clear with reused shots and locations (for example, there’s a montage of the corporations walking into their VIP boxes for the tournament, and its basically the same room with the corporation’s sign swapped out for each shot). Apparently filmed on a tight shooting schedule with limited time for choreography, the fights were shot with multiple cameras, often favouring a distant view that leaves everything feeling a bit flat. The main cyberpunk edge is that whenever a fighter is injured or knocked out, they cut to a close-up of a knock-off T-800 robot puppet shorting out.

Still, I enjoyed Heatseeker enough and Pyun’s clear sense of style is evident despite the production’s limitations: spotlights are used in the fight scenes while boardroom meetings seem to be lit with ring-lights, so everything has a soft, bright white glow. The hero (Cooke) looks like a ripped Justin Long, DTV staple Gary Daniels is good quality as the blonde British cyborg with green eyes and a vocoder effect on his voice, and Pyun regular Weisser makes the most of his scenery chewing villain. 1990s fashions abound with baggy mustard or green shirts, and maroon suits. Also features Tim Thomerson (of Trancers), Thom Matthews (of Return To The Living Dead) and even a young role for stuntman Chad Stahski (future John Wick director). Great throbbing synth score by Anthony Riparetti that adds to the atmosphere. HD copy available to stream/download from Rarefilmm. This is not objectively good, but Pyunheads and video-era martial arts fans might get something out of it. Recommended to them.

The Sword And The Sorcerer (1982)

Was it a dream or was it a memory? I have this vague recall of being a child and seeing the video cover art for The Sword And The Sorcerer (1982), one of those beautiful painted medieval fantasy posters that carry over the lurid charge of thick paperback novels and comic-books, muscular men with gleaming swords, scantily-clad women, snakes, kings and goblin demons. I also have vivid images of scenes from the climax, maybe, the gleaming crown of the evil king Cromwell (Richard Lynch, wonderfully villainous) and the gloopy make-up effects of the goblin sorcerer Xusia (Richard Moll). Or am I confusing it with all the other fantasy movies made in the wake of Excalibur and Conan The Barbarian’s box office success? With the passing of cult director Albert Pyun near the end of 2022, I was continuing to explore his back catalogue and finally watched his first film, this film, in full. While it never reaches the foggy, brutal delirium of Lucio Fulci’s Conquest, The Sword And The Sorcerer still has great lighting, old-school effects and pulpy style, worthy of its baroque poster. The story itself is a bit confusing and either over-written or under-written, as a kingdom falls thanks to Cromwell reviving the sorcerer Xusia from his grave, only to double-cross him, when he finally claims the throne of Richard. Much like Conan and all these other movies, the boy Talon escapes to avenge his felled mother and father, and grows up to be a sleazy, roguish warrior (Lee Horsely). As an adult, Talon has a troop of loyal soldiers who disappear for a bit of the movie as he agrees to work for Princess Alana (Kathleen Beller); he agrees to rescue Alana’s brother, the true heir, Mikah (Simon MacCorkindale) in exchange for one night together with her. There’s courtroom intrigue, double crosses, prison breaks and crucifixions, all shot through with the derring-do of Star Wars and Raiders Of The Lost Ark. The Sword And The Sorcerer feels like a movie you would catch on TV in the wee morning hours, the twilight time of forgotten movies; aside from Richard Lynch, the only actor I recognised was Frank from Murphy Brown (Joe Regalbuto). In between mountainous location footage and palatial sets, there are striking flame-lit scenes in cavernous dungeons and smoke-machined swamps. I loved the arty shot of our hero Talon jumping in the air to grab his three-blade sword, cast in dark shadows against a backdrop of demonically red lighting, a hero shot that is the stuff that dreams are made of… And yes, there is a three-blade sword that fires like a gun. And I was already loving the climax before they added purple sparks to the hero and villain jousting. It’s adolescent fantasy time, a surprise hit at the box office back in the day, yet nearly forgotten aside from 1980s-era fantasy-heads. Available in glorious remastered versions – you can stream it on Tubi in Australia. Recommended.

The Lair Of The White Worm (1988)

Ever since I read about a scout’s unfortunate end – his own ‘end’ separated in a bathtub by the fangs of Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe) – in a copy of Empire magazine as a wee slip of lad (I think as part of a weird section on unfortunate ends to male genitalia in the movies), I’d always been curious about The Lair Of The White Worm (1988). Directed by Ken Russell (The Devils) as part of a three-picture deal with Vestron Pictures and adapted from a Bram Stoker novel, this is ostensibly a gothic horror tale about a pagan snake-worshipping cult, surviving in the shape of the immortal Lady Marsh who lives in a countryside mansion. Everything kicks off due to a visiting archaeologist (Peter Capaldi) unearthing a snake skull from the grounds of a bed and breakfast inn run by two sisters (Sammi Davis and Catherine Oxenberg). One of the sisters is dating Lord James d’Ampton (Hugh Grant), a foppish gent who actually has family lineage with the knights who dispatched an ancient ‘worm’ that hid in the Stonerich Cavern, a cave on top of a mountain. Ancient worm, snake cult, lady with fangs – is this all connected? All of it is rendered as bawdy camp by director-writer Russell; even though it looks like he’s shooting on a budget of a countryside UK TV drama, he splashes everything with suggestive one-liners, sacrilegious dream sequences, and flaunted sexuality with all of the saxophone-scored costume changes and nude writhing of Donohoe as Lady Marsh. Seriously, Donohoe is indominitable as the stylish, sinister villain, and the movie had the great luck of having two great leads in baby faced Capaldi and Grant early in their careers. I knew this film was about snakes but was not prepared for all of the knowing allusions and references, right from a close-up of a hose on the ground, resembling a scaly creature in its yellow colour and texture, and complemented with a slithering sound effect. Completely ridiculous, but well aware and knowing, somewhere between Hammer Horror and Coppola’s Dracula in terms of horniness, shot with an undercurrent of screwball comedy. All I could do is shake my head and think, Ken Russell, you maniac. Streamed on Criterion Channel but available to rent/purchase on iTunes. Recommended.

The Tingler (1959)

I grew up with a copy of the Cinemania 97 CD-ROM as a kid, which featured a John Waters commentary all about 1950s filmmaker William Castle who was a great influence on Waters and other filmmakers (including Joe Dante who made a fictional tribute to the guy in the John Goodman comedy, Matinee). A sort of bargain basement Alfred Hitchcock, Castle was known for his sense of showmanship and applying gimmicks to the low-budget horror and thriller B-movies he made. Watching The Tingler (1959) now, one of his most notorious horror movie gimmicks, there are obvious markers of its original cinema context; from Castle’s own intro to the camera at the start where he explains to audiences that screaming is the only defence against the titular monster (it feeds on fear, yet is released by screams) – to the ‘interactive’ scenes where the screen goes dark and we hear Vincent Price yell at us i.e. the cinema audience in the movie (one of the major suspense set pieces takes place in a repertory cinema) to “keep screaming!” I found all of this to be a lot of kooky fun, even divorced from its original context, which was for The Tingler to be viewed in a cinema of kids with rigged seats zapping them into believing The Tingler was on the loose. Yes, cinemas showing The Tingler would have cinema seats adjusted with a buzzer, which was promoted as the ‘Percepto!’ and involving an audience plant – a screaming woman – to get everyone on edge and ready to join in. Talk about participatory cinema! This doesn’t even cover the wacky concept of the movie, which is about an undiscovered creature that lives inside all of us and seeks to grip the spine when the body is experiencing waves of fear, or how many times people say the phrase “The Tingler” (which becomes the defacto name for this scientific discovery), or Vincent Price’s vindictive wife who is constantly two-timing him and they seem to be a film noir subplot of their own, just with a squid-like monster in the mix, or the hapless cinema owner and his deaf-mute wife, or the use of colour within a black-and-white film in one memorable sequence (recently quoted in the Ethan Hawke movie The Black Phone). Or my favourite part when Vincent Price wants to experience fear, tells his colleagues that nothing scares him, and then proceeds to lock himself into his lab in order to self-dose on medical ‘acid’ and freaks the hell out (“The walls!! The walls!!”). In conclusion: I love Vincent Price! Available to stream on Tubi in Australia. Recommended.

The Iron Rose (1973)

The Iron Rose (1973; La Rose de Fer) is the third film I’ve seen from French director Jean Rollin, and along with Spanish filmmaker Jess Franco, their names represent a quintessential arty Euro-horror milieu. Rollin is known for low-budget genre flicks, usually concerning vampires, where there’s nudity and blood, and actors wandering around castles and shorelines. While offering some exploitation thrills with the sex and violence (and are often marred by dodgy moments), the films I’ve seen of Rollin’s are also marked by a dreamy atmosphere, usually generated by long takes and a static pace; even though his films never clock past 90 minutes, and are usually under that, they always lull me into a narcoleptic state. Some would argue that’s a flaw, but for me, and many of his fans, that’s part of the experience. That these films feel like a waking dream, accentuated by the locations and misty weather, and the potential for blood, poetic reverie and off-kilter theatrics. There’s something innately compelling about watching figures emerge slowly out of a foggy mist. The Iron Rose is apparently a rarity in Rollin’s work in that it doesn’t involve vampires. The plot is quite simple: a man (Hugues Quester) meets a woman (Francoise Pascal) at a wedding. They agree on a date. Wandering a deserted train track, they look for a more quiet location for their picnic and the man suggests visiting a graveyard. A morbid site for a date, and they pay the price for wanting to make it in a crypt, becoming lost and delirious as night comes and they cannot seem to find their way out amidst the graves. Yet there’s a deeper pull to the unfolding fear and panic, as the young lovers become tense and argumentative, and the woman becomes possessed with the dead and the beyond. There’s symbolism and portent, particularly in the title object of an iron rose, and Pascal is fantastic in conveying their character’s fateful transformation. The use of primary colours in the costuming – the man’s red sweater, the woman’s yellow top – stand out within the darkened landscapes, the gravestones and (purportedly real) bones. Self-financed, a strange passion project for Rollin that was not a critical or commercial success, but has now become a cult object within his overall output of erotic horror films. Available to stream on Kanopy. Recommended.