BLACK RAINBOW, Mike Hodges, director/Arrow Blu-ray One of the great advantages of the Blu-ray medium is the opportunity it gives movie aficionados a chance to take a second look at films which may have been under-regarded on their first appearances – a second look, what’s more, in much-improved picture and sound quality than was evident on the initial DVD (or even VHS) issue. Case in point? How about this latest release from the ever-reliable crew at Arrow of an accomplished film directed by Mike Hodges which is most certainly due for a reappraisal. To say that the film Get Carter (1971) has been something of an albatross round the neck of the director is only partially true. Certainly the filmmaker, who was born in Bristol, has never quite matched the cult success of this film, but he has nevertheless created a corpus of films that are full of accomplishment and imagination (a certain cult reputation has grown up around such work as the dark science fiction thriller The Terminal Man). What’s more, several of these films are in the crime genre, although each is invariably compared with the director’s magnum opus. Big commissions were to follow, such as the outrageously camp Flash Gordon (1980) – also available in splendidly spruced up issue from Arrow). But Hodges’ Indian summer was in the wings. A Prayer for the Dying (1987) was a pungent thriller with Mickey Rourke as an IRA hit man trying to leave his career of bloodshed behind him. More recently, the veteran director regained some of the inventiveness and inspiration that distinguished his best work, notably Croupier (1998) with Clive Owen as the morally compromised title character. Later films such as Croupier and I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead (2003). In the early 21st century, Hodges began to write quirky crime fiction. But what about Black Rainbow? It’s a film of which Hodges is notably proud. While dealing in the tropes of the supernatural idiom, Black Rainbow is a much richer and more intriguing work than its parameters might suggest. Rosanna Arquette plays Martha Travis, a medium with a travelling clairvoyant show. She is accompanied by her alcoholic father (memorably played by Jason Robards) as she facilitates contact by members of the audience with dead relatives. But when Martha predicts the violent death of a factory whistle-blower (who is on the point of exposing corporate malpractice at a plant), she is soon a target for the murderer herself. All of this is handled with characteristic Hodges assurance, and Arquette furnishes a career-best performance. This edition is restored from the original negative; those looking afresh at the film may possibly decide that there is more to Hodges than his signature films.
THE SECRETS SHE KEEPS, various directors/Acorn Media International Television audiences were glued to their seats for this six-part small screen adaptation of Michael Robotham’s impressive thriller following the lives of two pregnant women in extremely different circumstances. A prime slice of what is now known as Domestic Noir, this one is graced by some nicely honed performances from such talents as Jessica De Gouw and Laura Carmichael.
THE GAME, David Fincher, director/Arrow Blu-ray With such films as Fight Club and The Social Network on his CV, there is no gainsaying the fact that David Fincher has long been one of the most talented and ambitious of American directors, with nary a misstep in his fine-tuned thrillers, of which this is one of the most mesmeric. Slightly under regarded on its first appearance, time has been kind to The Game and the film looks more relevant than ever in our paranoid era as the character played by Michael Douglas sinks deeper and deeper into what is essentially one long nightmare. Multimillionaire Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) hasn’t got over the childhood memory of his father’s suicide. As he reaches the same age his father was when he died, Van Orton is the recipient of a strange birthday present from his alienated brother Conrad (Sean Penn): an invitation to play a bizarre “game”, with secret rules. Chaos follows.
THE GOOD DIE YOUNG Directed by Lewis Gilbert/BFI Blu-ray The crime genre has never lacked for possibilities of keen insights into the society of the day (possibilities enthusiastically embraced by filmmakers keen to expand the potentialities of the genre). The treatment of juvenile delinquency has veered from the exploitative (as in Lewis Gilbert’s Cosh Boy (1953)), to the sensitive (as in Sidney Furie’s The Leather Boys (1963; here Gilbert tackles something different. Starring Laurence Harvey, Stanley Baker, Joan Collins and Robert Morley – not to mention the inimitable Gloria Grahame — this impressive crime picture is presented in both its original theatrical version and in an extended export cut (Blu-ray only), originally intended for international audiences. Amoral aristocrat Miles Ravenscourt (Harvey, of Room at the Top) plots a daring robbery to settle his gambling debts in this lean thriller played out on the shadowy streets of post-war London. Lewis Gilbert (later to helm Alfie and The Spy Who Loved Me) supplies a lively panorama of an era.
AFTER MIDNIGHT Directors: Jeremy Gardner and Christian Stella/Arrow Blu-ray Efficient and sharply made, After Midnight has one agenda: the generation of suspense. Bartender Hank finds himself alone in a house after a tryst with the enigmatic Abbey. What is the strange creature that claws at his door each night? Jeremy Gardner, the director. also plays the luckless Hank, and Gardner knows how to keep things on the move. From the makers of The Battery and Tex Montana Will Survive.
INFERNO OF TORTURE, Teruo Ishii, director/Arrow Academy Blu-ray Interestingly, the cornucopia of glory delights promised by the title here is both delivered and not delivered. Certainly, no punches are pulled as a young geisha struggles to pay off here debts and has a heavy physical price extracted, but the larger-than-life, operatic ethos adapted by director Teruo Ishii maintains a distance from the colourful proceedings and creates what is essentially a series of tableaux. On that visual level, the film more than delivers; aficionados of more extreme cinema need not hesitate.
