Walking The Edge (1985)

Walking The Edge (1985) had been discussed so much on the Pure Cinema Podcast that when Fun City Editions put out their Blu-ray, I had to get a copy. Mid-1980s revenge thriller starring the late, great Robert Forster? I’m there! Factor in lots of driving scenes across LA and a pumping synth-and-sax score by Jay Chattaway – I was hooked in by the opening credits alone. It’s a low budget exploitation flick, which you can tell by the stolen locations and grisly horror movie level violence. The story: Nancy Kwan is out for revenge against the gang (led by an enjoyably seedy Joe Spinell) who decimated her family and she takes a cab driven by a former baseball pro turned gambling debt collector (Forster) to help visit her targets. The idea of a cab being used to make murderous stops with an unwilling driver gives it a proto-Collateral vibe. However, some of the posters gave me the mistaken impression that this was a ‘one long night’ thriller, but it’s a bit more like an Elmore Leonard thing – characters circle around the plot and each other before the shit goes down. This has some similarities in the relationship that develops between Forster and Kwan’s characters to Jackie Brown, almost functioning as a prequel to Forster’s character Max Cherry. Forster is just so good; there’s a frazzled reluctance and a beaten affability that comes through in his performance, and he helps ground everything even as the narrative heads towards gory torture revenge. Quite a revelation in the closing credits that Forster’s character is named Jason Walk, which feels like a real stretch to tie in that title! The action and suspense might not be as sharp as you’d expect – there’s a flat tone to the direction, which is really made up for by the energy of the locations and the vibes of the time (yes, contains a bar where LA punkers play). The Blu-ray transfer looks beautiful and sharp, and it’s great to see such a flick given a beautiful treatment when it would have lived so long on blurry video tapes. Recommended.

Rituals (1977)

Pure Cinema Podcast talked about Rituals (1977) aka The Creeper so many times across different episodes that I just had to finally watch it. It’s basically a Deliverance knock-off shot in Ontario, Canada with the late, great Hal Holbrook in the lead; apparently he was paid one sixth of the movie’s budget and he’s worth every dollar for the gravitas he brings. Holbrook is one of five middle-aged doctors (including Lawrence Dane, Robin Gammell, Gary Reineke and Jack Creley) who get together for an annual trip to re-connect and get away from their busy practices. This year, they’ve been dropped off into an isolated stretch of woods for a hiking/camping trip, supposedly uninhabited by anybody… or so they think. As they wake up to find boots stolen one morning, they begin to realise… something is watching them. Rituals creates effective tension in the unseen threat and how it stalks and unsettles the group, and there’s effective character work in the ways the men argue and reveal their histories in between the outdoor stunts and grisly scares; the fact that they’re doctors comes in handy, but also is an ongoing thematic conversation about when to give up or keep going. There’s a nastiness to the movie as well, which is grounded by the performances as the men degenerate to survivalist mode. I didn’t think the eventual reveal hit the mark for me, after all that tension and gore, but the climax still unsettles despite this. Directed by Peter Carter, written by Ian Sutherland, with a plaintive piano score by Hagood Hardy. Found a decent uncut copy to stream uploaded on YouTube. Recommended.

Conquest (1983)

After listening to the recent Pure Cinema Podcast episode on Fantasy movies, I was keen to submerge myself into some 1980s era sword-and-sorcery flicks. One title they talked highly of, and that I’d heard good word for some time, was Italian horror maestro Lucio Fulci’s entry into the post-Conan genre, Conquest (1983), an Italian-Spanish-Mexican co-production, which is available to stream on Amazon Prime. Even in the recent remastered edition with it looking better than any VHS ex-rental, the first thing to notice about Conquest is its foggy, hazy aesthetic. Along with cinematographer Alejandro Ulloa, Fulci ensures that every scene is swimming with mist or smoke, and at times even the film lens feels like it was shot through gauze; the effect is definitely dream-like, like an impressionistic oil painting coming to life in slow motion. That, and Claudio Simonetti’s (from Goblin) ethereal, pulsating synth score, and the markers of 1980s special effects such as the key weapon wielded by the heroes – a mythical bow that fires laser arrows – cements Conquest as having a distinctive retro fantasy style. The plot? A young hunk named Illias (Andrea Occhipinti) from a mythical land journeys to a primordial landscape of cave dwellers and wolf warriors, which is ruled by a nude sorceress wearing a gold mask, Ocron (Sabrina Siani). Eventually Ilias teams up for with an older hunk, Mace (Jorge Rivero) who communes with animals (like a beastmaster) and survives on his own wits (that, and a pair of nunchucks made of bone). The story then alternates between one of the two – Illias or Mace, Mace or Illias – getting jumped by a group of strange creatures, and the other rescuing them, intercut with Ocron writhing around with a snake and tripping out over a vision of her own death, which she seeks to stop with all the creatures and warriors under her command. Also, because it is directed by Fulci, it’s quite violent in a splatter way with either someone getting brained or blood spurting out of someone every ten minutes or so (if not splatter violence, then something very weird will happen every ten minutes i.e. the Fulci touch). I thought this was very entertaining, and a true vibe experience, depending how much you’re into the misty and mythical fantasy aesthetic; the film definitely has a greater sense of style than other low budget European Conan knock-offs (even though it was a box office flop on release). Conquest is like if you were staring hard at a Frank Frazetta painting by a camp site fire and then tripped out on a smoke induced haze while listening to some synth prog pumping out of car stereo speakers. It’s also great that for a fantasy film that features a nude sorceress, a bow that shoots laser arrows, and lots of man-animal warriors, the first thing we see in the closing credits is: ‘Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.’ Recommended.