Tag Archives: Robert Powell

Music Film Review: Tommy (dir by Ken Russell)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Tommy, can you hear me?”

That’s a question that’s asked frequently in the 1975 film, Tommy.  An adaptation of the famous rock opera by the Who (though Pete Townshend apparently felt that the film’s vision was more director Ken Russell’s than anything that he had meant to say), Tommy tells the story of a “deaf, dumb, and blind kid” who grows up to play a mean pinball and then become a cult leader.  Why pinball?  Who knows?  Townshend’s the one who wrote Pinball Wizard but Ken Russell is the one who decided to have Elton John sing it while wearing giant platform shoes.

Tommy opens, like so many British films of the 70s, with the blitz.  With London in ruins, Captain Walker (the almost beatifically handsome Robert Powell) leaves his wife behind as he fights for his country.  When Walker is believed to be dead, Nora (Ann-Margaret) takes Tommy to a holiday camp run by Frank (Oliver Reed).  Oliver Reed might not be the first person you would expect to see in a musical and it is true that he wasn’t much of a singer.  However, it’s also true that he was Oliver Reed and, as such, he was impossible to look away from.  Even his tuneless warbling is somehow charmingly dangerous.  Nora falls for Frank but — uh oh! — Captain Walker’s not dead.  When the scarred captain surprises Frank in bed with Nora, Frank hits him over the head and kills him.  Young Tommy witnesses the crime and is told that he didn’t see anything and he didn’t hear anything and that he’s not going to say anything.

And so, as played by Roger Daltrey, Tommy grows up to be “deaf, dumb, and blind.”  Various cures — from drugs to religion to therapy — are pursued to no avail.  As the Acid Queen, Tina Turner sings and dances as if she’s stealing Tommy’s soul.  As the Therapist, Jack Nicholson is all smarmy charm as he gently croons to Ann-Margaret.  Eric Clapton performs in front of a statue of Marilyn Monroe.  Ann-Margaret dances in a pool of beans and chocolate and rides a phallic shaped pillow. As for Tommy, he eventually becomes the Pinball Wizard and also a new age messiah.  But it turns out that his new followers are just as destructive as the people who exploited him when he was younger.   It’s very much a Ken Russell film, full of imagery that is shocking and occasionally campy but always memorable.

I love Tommy.  It’s just so over-the-top and absurd that there’s no way you can ignore it.  Ann-Margaret sings and dances as if the fate of the world depends upon it while Oliver Reed drinks and glowers with the type of dangerous charisma that makes it clear why he was apparently seriously considered as Sean Connery’s replacement in the roles of James Bond.  As every scene is surreal and every line of dialogue is sung, it’s probably easy to read too much into the film.  It could very well be Ken Russell’s commentary on the New Age movement and the dangers of false messiahs.  It could also just be that Ken Russell enjoyed confusing people and 1975 was a year when directors could still get away with doing that.  With each subsequent viewing of Tommy, I become more convinced that some of the film’s most enigmatic moments are just Russell having a bit of fun.  The scenes of Tommy running underwater are so crudely put together that you can’t help but feel that Russell was having a laugh at the expense of people looking for some sort of deeper meaning in Tommy’s journey.  In the end, Tommy is a true masterpiece of pop art, an explosion of style and mystery.

Tommy may seem like a strange film for me to review in October.  It’s not a horror film, though it does contain elements of the genre, from the scarred face of the returned to Captain Walker to the Acid Queen sequence to a memorable side story that features a singer who looks like a junior Frankenstein.  To me, though, Tommy is a great Halloween film.  Halloween is about costumes and Tommy is ultimately about the costumes that people wear and the personas that they assume as they go through their lives.  Oliver Reed goes from wearing the polo shirt of a holiday camp owner to the monocle of a tycoon to the drab jumpsuits of a communist cult leader.  Ann-Margaret’s wardrobe is literally a character of its own.  Everyone in the film is looking for meaning and identity and the ultimate message (if there is one) appears to be that the search never ends.

 

Horror Film Review: The Asphyx (dir by Peter Newbrook)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Asphyx, a 1972 horror film from the UK, opens in what would have been the film’s modern day.  A horrific accident occurs when two cars collide.  The drivers are both dead, with one of the them rather grotesquely hanging out of a shattered windshield.  And yet somehow, an elderly pedestrian who was trapped underneath the two cars is still alive and able to shuffle away from the accident.

The film then jumps back to the Victorian-era.  Sir Hugo Cunningham (Robert Stephens) is a scientist who is studying what happens at the exact moment of death.  Taking a look of several pictures that were taken of people as they died, he spots a dark smudge that seems to be hovering near the subject of each photograph.  Later, while making a home movie with an amazing new device called a motion picture camera, Sir Hugo can only watch in horror as his son Clive (Ralph Arliss) and Clive’s fiancee, Anna (Fiona Walker), both drown in a boating accident.  When Sir Hugo later looks at the film, he notices a ghostly blue light that seems to be hovering over both his son and Anna.

Sir Hugo speculates that the light could be what the ancient Greek called the Asphyx, a force that comes for everyone’s life in the moment right before death.  Hugo theorizes that everyone has their own individual Asphyx and he also comes to believe that if one were to capture their own Asphyx before it takes away their life, the result would be immortality.  Working with his reluctant adopted son, Giles (Robert Powell), Hugo sets out to capture an Asphyx.  Unfortunately, to do so means that someone has to be on the verge of death so that their Asphyx will show up.  Giles is not happy about the idea of strapping Hugo into an electric chair or of sitting in a gas chamber himself but he agrees to do so in return for Hugo’s permission to marry Hugo’s daughter, Christina (Jane Lapotaire).

(Before we all say, “Ewwww!,” let us remember that Clive is only adopted.  Still, it does feel a bit strange.)

The experiments lead to both tragedy and success.  Heads roll, literally.  And while Giles’s doubts continue to grow, Hugo finds himself more and more obsessed with the idea of living forever.

The Asphyx is a rather low-key horror film.  No one is going to mistake this for one of Hammer’s bloody and flamboyant films.  The horror is less in what is seen and more in what is implied.  That said, the premise is an intriguing one, the film’s plot unfolds with a good deal of intelligence, and both Robert Powell and Robert Stephens overact so grandly during the film’s final few minutes that those who are just looking for a campy British horror film will be satisfied.  Robert Stephens gives a very good performance as Sir Hugo, a scientist who claims that he’s just tying to make the world a better place but who is actually motivated by his own megalomania.  (He reasons that he deserves to be immortal because he’s a scientist and his contributions are too important to be ended by a mere death.)  Robert Powell’s somewhat wooden acting style actually makes him ideal for the role of Giles, who is written to be, at least in the beginning, a somewhat boring person.  The film’s best performance comes from Jane Lapotaire, whose reaction to discovering how far her father is willing to go to capture an Asphyx is simply heart-breaking to watch.

The Asphyx is a great pick if you’re looking for an off-beat and intelligent horror film this scary season.

Horror Film Review: The Survivor (dir by David Hemmings)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1981 film, The Survivor, opens with a group of school children watching as a plane crashes in the distance.  Of the 301 people on the plane, 300 die.  Somehow, the only survivor is the pilot, David Keller (Robert Powell).  It’s rare for a pilot to be the sole survivor, especially in a crash as severe as the one in this film.  Even more shocking, David walks away without a scratch on him or any memory of what happened in the minutes before the crash.

Though the airline wants to keep David hidden away until after it has determined what caused the crash, David insists on helping with the investigation.  He is haunted by strange visions and the sound of screaming passengers.  He has to know if the crash was his fault or if there was a bomb on the plane.  While the tabloid press tries to take his picture, the families of the victims blame him for the crash.  “There he is,” one angry woman shouts at a funeral service that is overseen by Joseph Cotten (in his last film role), “the pilot who walked away!”

When one of the tabloid photographers gets a little bit too aggressive in his attempts to take David’s picture, he finds himself pursued by a ghostly apparition of a little girl.  The photographer is so frightened of the little girl that he stumbles in front of a train, which has to rank right up there as one of the dumbest ways that someone can die in a horror movie.  Later, the photographer’s girlfriend tries to look at one of the pictures of David and her hand is promptly chopped off by a paper cutter.  That’s not quite as bad as stumbling in front of a train.

As David tries to understand what is happening, he realizes that he’s being followed by a woman named Hobbs (Jenny Agutter).  Hobbs says that she is a medium.  She witnessed the crash and now, she’s in contract with the spirits of the dead.  At one point, David and Hobbs suddenly start trying to strangle each other.  They manage to break free of whatever has possessed them but it’s obvious that these spirits are not fooling around.  (That said, the attack begins and ends so abruptly that, for those of us watching, it inspires more confusion than fright.)

The idea behind The Survivor is an intriguing one.  The film was directed by David Hemmings, the British actor who is probably best-remembered for starring in the 60s classic, Blow Up and in Dario Argento’s classic Deep Red.  Along with co-founding Hemdale Films, Hemmings also directed a handful of movies.  Unfortunately, intriguing premise aside, The Survivor is not one of Hemmings’s better directorial efforts.  There are a few effective visuals and Jenny Agutter is well-cast as Hobbs but the film’s pace is extremely slow and Robert Powell seems to be more bored than enigmatic as the title character.  The film’s plot calls out for an all-out grindhouse approach.  Hemmings’s instead gives us a stately and rather self-important film that ultimately feels like a lesser episode of some obscure 70s anthology show.

That said, this film does feature Joseph Cotten in his final film appearance.  He only has two scenes but he brings a quiet dignity to the role of the Priest.  The film doesn’t really work but Joseph Cotten and Jenny Agutter give performances that survive the wreckage.

Film Review: Mahler (dir by Ken Russell)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1974 film, Mahler, opens with a stunning shot on a beautiful little hut sitting at the end of a pier that overlooks an idyllic lake.  Suddenly, the hut bursts into flames.  Two children watch, both with oddly happy expressions on their face.  A nude woman breaks free from a white cocoon while a rock that looks oddly like a face appears to watch her.

Suddenly, the scene changes to a train that’s traveling through Europe in the early 20th century.  Traveling on the train is Gustav Mahler (Robert Powell) and his wife, Alma (Georgina Hale).  Every time the train stops, a crowd of people gathers and tries to get Mahler’s attention.  Mahler, however, is obviously ill.  Obsessing on death, he has Alma draw the shades.

The film switches back and forth, from the conventional train setting to extremely stylized views of what one can only presume is taking place in Mahler’s head.  When Mahler has a heart attack, he envisions himself in a glass coffin, screaming as he watches Alma with her lover, Max (Richard Morant).  Every word that he hears on the train prompts him to think about the past but the past, as Mahler remembers it, is full of anachronistic details and references to events that took place long after Mahler’s death.  Mahler either remembers or imagines a trip to an insane asylum, where he meets a crazed man who claims to be the Emperor.  When Mahler thinks about how he converted to Catholicism to further his career, he imagines himself jumping through rings of fire while Richard Wagner’s widow, Cosima Wagner (Antonia Wilson), dressed like a Nazi dominatrix, taunts him.  The hut at the lake appears again, an apparent paradise where Mahler works on a composition about the death of his child.  Alma, meanwhile, surrenders her own musical ambitions, burning her compositions in a nearby forest.

Hmmm …. so, what we have here is a biopic of a renowned composer of classic music, one that is extremely stylized and features a good deal of religious symbolism.  With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that this is a Ken Russell film.  Especially early on in his career, the British director took an obvious joy in taking conventional genres and shaking them up with his own flamboyant style.  In fact, by Russell standards, Mahler is almost a conventional film.  For all of the shocking images to be found in Mahler, the film is still easier to follow than either Tommy or Lisztomania.  (There’s no scene in Mahler that’s quite as in-your-face as the scene in Lisztomania involving the giant phallus.)  If anything, one looks at Mahler in that glass coffin and Cosima Wagner with that swastika on her backside and thinks, “Well, Ken Russell was a bit subdued this time out.”  (Indeed, even the scenes of Mahler tied to a cross aren’t that shocking if you’ve seen other Russell crucifixion scenes.)

That said, Ken Russell’s relatively subdued approach works well with Mahler.  By keeping one half of the film conventional and one half of the film flamboyant, Russell comments on how we always tends to remember the events of our past as being more extreme than they actually were.  We internalize our fears and our prejudices and we make them into reality in our memories.  Mahler’s memories may be over-the-top but then again, the same can be said for everyone’s memories.  When Mahler imagines his family as being almost cartoonish stereotypes, Russell is showing how Mahler has internalized the anti-Semitism of German society.  When he pictures Cosima goose-stepping as he converts to Catholicism, Russell shows that Mahler was aware that he rejecting his heritage for his career.  (Some might find some of the images to be sacrilegious but Russell himself was a practicing Catholic.  Only the truly faithful could be as sincerely critical of the Church as Russell often was in his movies.)  Meanwhile, that the far more conventional scenes on the train work is largely due to the perfect casting of Robert Powell and Georgina Hale.  They’re believably in love but, even more importantly, they’re both believably brilliant.  You look at both Powell as Mahler and Hale as Alma and you instantly accept that they could both compose beautiful music.  The film portrays Mahler as being an early 20th century rock star and Powell plays the role with a mix of charisma and frailty.  As played by Powell, Mahler is someone who knows that he destined to be remembered as a great composer but who also struggles with the price that he’s paid to achieve his dream.

Ken Russell was a truly unique talent and, while Mahler may be a bit more conventional than some of his later films, it’s still a good example of what made him such an important (if underrated) filmmaker.

Horror on the Lens: What Waits Below (dir by Don Sharp)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What waits below?

Find out in today’s horror on the lens!

First released in 1984, What Waits Below is a film about a bunch of soldiers and explorers that make the mistake of exploring a cave system in Central America.  Needless to say, they’re not alone in that cave!

This film, to be honest, starts a bit slow but things do pick up once they get underground.  Included in the cast is Richard Johnson, who all good horror fans remember for his role as Dr. Menard in Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2.

Enjoy!