This includes the last two films I will ever mail back to Netflix. I got a couple more but they’ve given us the greenlight to keep them.
1950s SF film expert Bill Warren likes THE H-MAN (1958), though he prefers the edited-for-American-release version. I watched that one some years back and didn’t care for it but the Japanese version I watched recently isn’t much better.
After a man mysteriously vanishes in a drenching rain, leaving his clothes behind, several more people disappear, not necessarily in the rain, but also leaving their clothes. It turns out a petty crook was exposed to radiation at sea from American hydrogen bomb tests (this may have been inspired by the case of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru) transforming him into a gelatinous blob — he can take humanoid form occasionally — that dissolves anyone he touches. He’s out to settle some scores but the cops are determined to stop him, somehow. As Warren says, this version is much more of a crime thriller (though not very thrilling) with some monster elements mixed in. “Did he disappear using some ninja technique?”
Pedro Almodovar’s MATADOR (1986) opens with a retired matador (injuries forced him out) getting sexual relief from watching snuff films. Other equally messed-up characters include an aspiring rapist with crippling Catholic guilt and a female attorney who gets sexual satisfaction from murder during sex. This has the elements to make a twisted black comedy but it never comes to life and left me either bored or offended.“First they rape you, then they have to talk about it.”
I had high hopes for LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (1945) in which Gene Tierney falls in love at first sight with novelist Cornel Wilde. He soon reciprocates but after they tie the knot it becomes obvious she’s hostile to anyone who can claim even a smidgen of his love, whether it’s her sweeter sister (Jeanne Crain) or Wilde’s paraplegic brother. This has one truly memorable moment, when Tierney coldbloodedly watches the brother drown but otherwise this didn’t work for me at all. Wilde’s bland in his role and Tierney is too glossy and reserved to make her neurotic role work (she’s much better in The Mating Season). And for the record, Wilde dedicating his first post-marriage book to Crain rather than to his wife strikes me as really bad form. Vincent Price plays Tierney’s dismayed ex-boyfriend. “Do you mean to say you got all that just from reading my book?”
A quartet of soldiers wander into A FIELD IN ENGLAND (2014) during the English Civil War where they talk, take craps, tug on a rope, trip on mushrooms and in general take up a lot of time with hollow artiness. In fairness, several critics loved this or at least admired it but I could have done without ever watching it.
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