Film Reviews by Steve

Exceptionally bleak psychological police drama in which Sidney Lumet revisits the theme of crime and punishment. Sean Connery is a tough, insubordinate detective who investigates a series of violent sexual assaults on children. Left alone with the creepy middle aged man (Ian Bannen) who is their best lead, the distraught copper loses control and murders him.

The film is based on a play (by John Hopkins) and composed of three long conversations between the investigator and his wife (Vivien Merchant), his superior officer (Trevor Howard) and the suspect. Mainly through rambling, macabre monologues, he reveals how his mind has become corrupted by the horror of relentless, sordid crime.

Connery performs his harrowing disintegration with persuasive gravity, and Bannen is excellent as the accused man who deliberately gets under the skin of his interrogator. The tone of the film is quite disturbing; at times distressing realistic, and then surreal and expressionistic. Lumet uses brief, eerie flashbacks to suggest the squalid burden of the detective's work.

Some may find this abstract approach pretentious, but the director really gets into his man's head. This is an inexorably pessimistic and downbeat experience. There is no humour. It's a passage through the mental sickness of someone who has seen too much that is wretched and hopeless. Who has been contaminated by human corruption.

A British version of those Hollywood coming-of-age jukebox musicals set in the rock 'n' roll years which were in vogue around the turn of the seventies. Only there's no sun, surf and sports cars. This is extraordinarily desolate! David Essex plays a mixed up kid who drops out of school to take a string of dead end jobs while working up the ambition to join a rock band.

So, there's a scene at the beach. But it's not packed with buff teenagers glistening in the sunshine. The surly runaway is working a low paid job renting deckchairs in the relentless English rain! This isn't idealised nostalgia. But it does have the best soundtrack of any of these fifties memory pieces, and the spin off album was a huge seller.

Critics assumed that the anti-hero is based on John Lennon, which doesn't flatter the former Beatle one bit. Essex portrays an abominable scumbag! Fortunately he has enough superficial charm to make plausible his incessant sexual conquest. But behind the star's good looks, this man is a monster.

Ringo Starr is pretty good as his dodgy rocker mate, and there are a few cameos by other rock stars, like Keith Moon and Billy Fury. It's interesting how the film takes a normally romantic genre and makes it so pessimistic. But of course, the fifties in the UK was a time of austerity. It's an interesting curiosity, but not a feelgood experience.

This landmark of British folk horror isn't really a scare film at all, more of a dystopian thriller. Only the inspired twist is that the machine of oppression isn't the remote, indifferent state, but the free, self-governing citizens. Edward Woodward plays a sexually repressed policeman who visits a remote Scottish island to investigate the disappearance of a young girl.

But instead discovers he is the fall guy. In their isolation, the islanders have adopted pagan rituals, which revolve around an uninhibited approach to sex and the fruitfulness of their crops. Soon the christian copper is being tempted by an enraptured Britt Ekland dancing naked and banging on the locked door of his hotel room.

Presumably there is some satirical intent, with the collective delusion of the free loving heathens reflecting the values of the seventies hippie movement. But also their beliefs have the effect of spoofing the pious sergeant's own faith. There's an original and intelligent script which constantly delights with its use of historical pagan traditions.

Woodward is perfect casting as the persevering dupe. Christopher Lee is ideal as the autocratic Lord, and the impudent, provocative- and naked- Britt Ekland is unforgettable. The photography of the sunny Scottish landscape and the evocative score of folk ballads both make crucial contributions. And the thrilling climactic appointment with the wicker man is the stuff of horror legend.

Nerdy update of the fifties creature feature which feels fairly realistic thanks to its low key production design and subdued performances, but actually conforms to normal genre rules. Following a mysterious cosmic accident, the behaviour of desert ants is transformed. They show signs of a hive intelligence and hostility towards humans. And build intriguing, geometric earth structures.

It's the kind of sci-fi where mankind seeks to understand the threat through technology. Though the budget only ran to two ant specialists, with Nigel Davenport as the mad scientist, and Michael Murphy as his more sensitive sidekick. Lynne Frederick is the barefoot local girl who ends up in their remote desert laboratory by chance.

But there are no giant ants or ray-guns. It's a slow procedural film which utilises painstaking blow-ups of insect photography to illustrate the apocalyptic narrative. So not for the bug-phobic. Though the story is interesting, really it's the experimental synthesiser score, the psychedelic computer graphics and the eerie desert setting which give the film its identity.

It feels like a weird trip, or a head movie. The director- Saul Bass- remains most famous for storyboarding the shower scene in Psycho. But though Phase IV bombed at the box office, it had a second life on television and became quite influential. Not only among experimental film makers, but it's reckoned that the crop circles made by the ants were copied by real life pranksters.

Nerve shredding action thriller which should be far better known. This sort of brawny, incendiary blockbuster was hugely popular in the seventies, often adapted from fat bestsellers typical of Alistair MacLean, or Hammond Innes. Juggernaut has an original screenplay, based on a real event on the QE2. It's the best of the decade.

Much of the credit goes to director Richard Lester's control of suspense. Actually, the plot is quite familiar. An anonymous terrorist has smuggled several massive bombs into the cargo of a luxury ocean liner and wants half a million from the company or else. A team of rugged bomb disposal specialists must defuse the explosive and save the 1200 people on board.

Meanwhile, back in London, the police attempt to track down the bad guy with a grudge. By the time we get to the red wire/blue wire climax, the tension is extraordinary. Kudos is due to Richard Harris for a terrific star performance as the fatalistic expert with the pliers. The location shoot on the turbulent ocean gives the hokum a touch of grey realism.

The set up is like a disaster film with a support cast of diverse character actors playing the frightened public and crew. But it becomes more about the co-ordinated action plan to stop the explosion. The cutaways to the panicky passengers are a slight weakness. There's far too much of Roy Kinnear. The real drama is back with the naval officer hunched over the anti-tremor mechanism.

This was released a few months after the last Monty Python series was broadcast on tv, and already there is a huge leap in quality. The main difference is the sketches are linked into a loose narrative; King Arthur (Graham Chapman) assembles a band of knights to join his quest for the Holy Grail. This single overarching plot is more satisfying over the length of feature film.

And the gags and situations are better, and funnier, though just as absurd. Ideas in this comedy have broken free into the wider culture. Public figures who back down at the first hint of opposition are taunted with 'brave Sir Robin'. People who obstinately refuse to admit they are beaten are likened to the Black Knight, who won't concede defeat even though his limbs are hacked off.

Most of the best ideas are in the first half, but it sustains itself quite well for such a ludicrous fantasy. There is broad satire, but it's not really political. The anarcho-syndicalist peasant who lambasts King Arthur's right to rule (Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system!') is a sendup of student politics as much as the iniquity of monarchism...

The film still works because there is knowledge behind the foolery, which spoofs the customs of the middle ages. Personally, the animation is a drag, though part of the Python image. Fortunately there are few songs, though it was turned into a musical. Humour is subjective and some will find this too silly. The majority will laugh their socks off.

My pick for the best film project for a rock or pop act, ever! And one of the most effective portraits of the seventies in the run down industrial wastelands. This was made just as Slade were going into decline. Presumably it was conceived as promotion for the band, but it is incredibly gloomy; all raw social realism with a few tales from the road worked in.

Even the two hits from the soundtrack, How Does it Feel and Far Far Away are unusually downbeat and find the boys in reflective mood. It's a rags-to-riches-to-rags story arc set in a Britain of bingo, working man's clubs and the dogs. In classic rock and roll tradition, Flame (Slade) are screwed by the dodgy gangster who is their manager (Johnny Shannon).

When they wriggle free they are taken on by an agent of a multinational corporation (Tom Conti) who treats them like another commodity. Which is worse. The members of Slade are directed thoughtfully, usually paired with with a professional actor. Dave Hill is mostly hidden away, but Jim Lea, Noddy Holder and Don Powell offer a trenchant, fatalistic commentary on their rise and fall.

Everything is shabby and fake and cheap. Flame's brief success doesn't allow their escape but confirms their cynicism. Most of all, it's about that most British of themes, social class. If this had been a conventional rock and roll vehicle, it would be barely remembered. But it has acquired a cult following because its dirty pessimism captures the period, and the country.

Energetic and very clever update of the old fashioned country house mystery which is adapted with a light touch by Anthony Shaffer from his own stage success. But this isn't really Agatha Christie revised for the seventies. Beyond its scintillating and playful wit, this has plenty to say about contemporary Britain, particularly the class system.

Laurence Olivier plays a middle aged writer of detective stories about the kind of amateur sleuth who was typical in the golden age of crime fiction in the 1930s. Michael Caine is the much younger lover of his trophy wife; a second generation immigrant with a developing chain of salons. So the famous author devises an incredible screwball revenge.

And the parvenu hairdresser fights back in similar fashion, until their escalating hostilities end in tragedy. This evolving war of ego and oneupmanship expressed through role play is the main attraction. The stars are excellent in demanding roles and Joseph Mankiewicz's camera captures the spirit of the theatrical production with verve and insight.

The play/film also operates as a reflection on how the establishment protects itself from outside threat. And there is an impression that the new arrival is learning how to belong. This is exceptional in almost every way. The only negative is the awful period fashions. Caine went from wearing the coolest suits in film history, to Man at C&A in barely six years.

One of the last, and the best of the horror anthologies that were popular around the turn of the seventies. The title comes from an American comic series of the 1950s from which some of these stories were taken. The others were from its sister publication, The Vault of Horror. So this is a selection of five tales of the grotesque, each with a deft climactic twist.

This is normally the domain of television, like in The Twilight Zone, but these collections were in widescreen and in colour. With extra gore. There is an excellent cast of well known British film actors. Ralph Richardson is the mysterious keeper of the crypt who hosts the round of story telling and then reveals to the miscreants their ultimate, dreadful fate.

All the stories are engaging and gradually become more gruesome, building to the final episode when Nigel Patrick is devoured by his own dog, at the hands of a gang of blind, elderly men! There's a pretty good retelling of The Monkey's Paw. Peter Cushing is quite poignant as a lonely, impoverished widower who is driven to suicide by his yuppie neighbours...

Until he emerges from his grave to take revenge on the ringleader. Most of the stars were coming to the end of their careers, but bring an abundance of ripe panache to their roles. The constant humour keeps the horror playful rather than cruel. While this is all extremely formulaic, it's also entertaining and obviously made with respect for the genre.

Ultra-low budget cult survivor which is a hybrid of the biker and occult genres. The plot is so ludicrous that it might easily have been shelved or shunned, and yet after half a century, it still lives. Nicky Henson plays the longhair leader of a motorcycle gang of antisocial thugs. He discovers through his mother (Beryl Reid), a necromancer, how to die and live forever undead.

Soon all his posse follow, killing themselves through ever more extravagant methods. They become literally delinquents from hell. Or Hell's Angels. Sadly, they use their special powers to commit witless acts of hooliganism, like riding their bikes through a supermarket. But that's part of the fun. At times it achieves so-bad-it's-good status.

Some details are gloriously kitsch, like the acoustic ballad Riding Free, which sounds like John Denver. Parts are ridiculous, including the premise of the satanic order of the frogs... But as can happen with B films, quality happens as if by chance. Don Sharp was a competent director, and obviously did some proper work on this. The frequent stunts are professional.

There's an Oscar winning cinematographer and a twice nominated set designer. But it's the experimental prog/psychedelic soundtrack which does the most to bring it all together. There is a feel of the period; of social disintegration and moral nihilism. This is a long way from art, but far better than most teenage exploitation films. 

Slow burning relationship drama set just after WWI, adapted from the LP Hartley novel. It's about the connection between a wealthy aristocrat (Sarah Miles) and the combat veteran (Robert Shaw) she occasionally hires to drive her. She is lonely and grows to favour his company and encouragement.

The story explores the impact of the war on its survivors. The woman's husband died of an illness (presumably flu) and she is traumatised by her guilt and depression. The driver was a veteran of the trenches and is brittle and volatile. They hide their agonies behind the conventional roles of their class. But there is an awful feeling of impending calamity...

Though the film reflects on the aftermath of war more broadly, it mainly focuses on these repressed people separated by the gulf of their status. Robert Shaw is excellent as a prosaic man consumed by futile anger. But it's Sarah Miles' numb, burned out widow who slowly breaks your heart. Behind the big eyes, she is hollow.

The narrative takes the long way home, and proceeds at leisure. The period detail is evocative and sombre, with muted brown and cream interiors. The ending isn't a big strength, but is still appropriate. This is an observation on a country dazed by the shock of violence and loss, and of a class system that never really went away.

Conventional cold war spy thriller which overcomes its familiarity thanks to a wonderful ensemble of British character actors, and John Huston's expertise in the genre. It's quite uneven, but still absorbing entertainment. Paul Newman is an agent for MI6, who goes undercover as an Australian diamond thief in order to expose a gang trafficking imprisoned Communist agents to the East.

This casting is undeniably offbeat, but Newman is at least nonchalantly charismatic. He is backed up by Dominique Sanda as his implausibly elegant intermediary. And there is the superlative support of many veterans of the cold war on screen, including Harry Andrews and Michael Horden. Best of all is James Mason as the contemptible villain, a Commie spy posing as a Tory MP.

Maurice Jarre's score derived from Russian folk music is a genre cliche, but still works. The twisty plot is interesting and there are striking, touristic locations in Malta, Ireland and central London. Admittedly, the premise is much better than the resolution, but there is that satisfying mood of pessimistic melancholy which is standard in cold war spy films.

Credibility becomes dangerously stretched in the climax when Newman suddenly demonstrates a talent for swimming underwater, in his suit. There's nothing new here, but it's a lot of fun for fans of the genre. And a cameo by Nigel Patrick is bonus. By the way, the undercover spy doesn't wear a Mackintosh, that is the name of his Whitehall contact.

This is usually tagged as horror, but really it's a grim satire on the macho values of the Australian outback in the 1960s. It's the mythic journey into hell of a schoolteacher (Gary Bond) who gets tangled up in the lowbrow pursuits of the interior rustbelt of Victoria. It was initially a flop down under, though has since become a cult classic.

Its self analysis is brutally grotesque. The teacher intends to catch a plane to Sydney, but loses his funds in a game of 2-up and so penniless gets dragged down into the rituals of mateship; fighting, drinking and bloodsports. Then he drunkenly tumbles into the ultimate expression of male bonding with a debauched medic (Donald Pleasence).

It's is a surreal experience; a hallucinatory allegory about the way society instinctively confronts and assimilates otherness. This is accentuated by some freakish performances, with Pleasance predictably memorable. Great to see Chip Rafferty in his last role. It's a must-see for connoisseurs of the outré, students of Aussie cinema, and horror fans.

But there is a reservation. The darkest part of the academic's fall from grace is a horrific kangaroo hunt. We see their actual slaughter. This is hard to watch, which is sort of the point, but surely unethical. There is a postscript claiming it was included as a rebuke to this legal bloodsport. So you decide. In my view, it should not have been passed by the censors.

It's a little surprising how many directors over the years have attempted to pastiche the private eye films of the 1940s. This is the most successful. Albert Finney is a bingo caller/comedian who whimsically places an ad in the Liverpool Echo offering his services as PI. But as this is northern England, not LA, he is the sort of gumshoe who travels by bus.

His first case begins with an anonymous phone call, and soon he is opening a mysterious package containing a gun and a large bundle of folding money. And he finds himself investigating his own brother (Frank Finlay), a mercenary businessman recently married to the heartbroken sleuth's former squeeze (Billie Whitelaw).

The film's ace card is the script. The fast, snappy crosstalk that Finney employs to better emulate the celluloid heroes of film noir is witty and pretty funny. And there are cute plot similarities with The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon to amuse the film buffs. The location shoot around Merseyside, plus appearances by local actors, add some regional character.

The twisty plot is fine, if not particularly inspired. It's just an excuse for Finney to make like Humphrey Bogart and pull out his gat. But beneath the droll repartee, there is a deep layer of melancholy that makes the film more satisfying than the usual spoof. There is a sadness to this night club comic who finds solace in fantasy, because reality is such a disappointment.

Taut woman-in-peril thriller made by the people who created sixties tv classic, The Avengers. It was shot around the Loire Valley, France and it's unusually bright and sunny for a suspense film which uses a lot of horror technique. But this allows Sandor Elès as the mystery man you are not really sure about, to hide impassively behind his cool shades.

The film is memorable for its casting of the two teenage English nurses on a cycling holiday. Blonde Michele Dotrice is the sexy/flirty girl who suddenly vanishes. Pamela Franklin is the sensible, practical friend who tries to find her. She's even called Jane. And she's on her own and doesn't speak the language or know who to trust.

It feels a bit unworldly now that this alien and unknowable foreign land of suspicious locals is the country just over the Channel. But it doesn't really matter. The film creates a lot of tension from not much at all. Just a stretch of road in rural France. It's stylishly directed, with lots of focus pulls which gives it a 60s/70s look.

This has the feel of an urban myth about the dangers of wandering off alone in a strange place. Principally, it's the two stars that stay in the memory. Franklin is, as usual, a reliable lead. But Dotrice, the victim, is more affecting. While her terrible fate is just a plot devise, there's  sadness to her loss, which isn't usual in this sort of film..