Castles and Knights: Movies viewed

CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO (1979) was a recent date-night film for me and TYG, who liked it even though she isn’t into anime.Hayao Miyazaki’s (co) directorial debut is an entry in the Lupin III franchise, focusing on a modern-day descendant of French thief Arsene Lupin, the most successful of 19th century fiction’s gentleman thief characters. After Lupin rescues a damsel in distress, he remembers her from an encounter years earlier. The heir to the line of the Counts of Cagliostro, she’s being forced into marriage; trying to save her, Lupin learns the secret that has allowed the Cagliostros to manipulate the world for centuries. A dynamic, action-packed animated adventure. “Fair maiden, remember — you must have faith in the power of the thief.”

CASTLE OF BLOOD (1964) is an Italian horror film in which a journalist interviewing Edgar Allan Poe makes the foolish mistake of accepting a nobleman’s wager to survive one night in the aristocrat’s haunted house. Spoiler: the house is haunted and the ghosts are not friendly. The results are not anything originally but the film is well-done and effective; British actor Barbara Steele plays one of the revenants. “The death of a beautiful young woman is undeniably and unavoidably the saddest thing in the world.”

THE GREEN KNIGHT (2021) stars Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) as Arthur’s nephew Sir Gawaine. When the Green Knight (an uninspiring figure who looks like a more humanoid Groot) arrives at Arthur’s court and challenges any of Arthur’s court to exchange blows (a scratch, a major injury whatever the knight receives he gives back); Gawain lops his head off only to see him pick it up and head out, challenging Gawain to meet him a year later. This is different from the poem, in which the challenge is to lop off the Green Knight’s head, but it fits the poem’s handling of Gawain (to avoid spoilers, I won’t get into it). Over the following year Gawain travels across a weirdly supernatural English landscape before his showdown with the Knight at the Green Chapel — but by that point I was quite disengaged from the movie. Patel is good but not much else held my interest. “This is how silly men perish.”

Just by itself, Sean Connery as the Green Knight in SWORD OF THE VALIANT (1984) makes this a more interesting movie. As in the poem, Gawain (Miles O’Keefe) accepts a challenge to lop the knight’s head off, even though he suspects a trick — and when the knight puts himself back together, it’s obvious there was one. Gawain then heads off to find the Green Chapel, encountering Morgan leFay and stumbling into an adventure out of Chretien (one of the great Arthurian tale-tellers) before the final showdown. A little murky in what it all means and O’Keefe is unconvincing in a Prince Valiant-style pageboy cut, but this is still the better movie; cast includes John Rhys-Davies as Fortinbras, Peter Cushing as his seneschal, Douglas Wilmer a treacherous Black Knight and Trevor Howard a grumpy King Arthur. “One thing they forgot to tell me in my rushed initiation into knighthood — how do I relieve myself in this tin suit?”

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