Shaolin vs Frankenstein (2012)

Director: Nam Ki-nam
Star: Shim Hyung-rae

Here's a first for Apocalypse Later. This isn't just an obscure movie, it's an obscure movie that I'm in. So is my wife. And my stepson. Even his ginger teddy bear of a BFF. Well, we're sort of in this film. You could hardly call us actors. Damon Foster, editor of the glorious and long running Oriental Cinema magazine, took three forgotten Korean comedy features starring Shim Hyung-rae as an apparently retarded hero called Young Gu, recut them into a single ninety minute film with a new story that pokes fun at the originals while staying surprisingly close to the spirit of them, stripped the original language soundtrack and brought in a varied set of voice actors to record new dialogue in English. As I found out here, as I debuted as a voice actor, it isn't as easy as it looks. Some of my lines came out OK and I did get a delightfully inappropriate nuance into one dubious scene, but I learned enough to know I'd do most of it a little differently next time.

There are two things to know about Shaolin vs Frankenstein. One is that it's not a good movie but it hardly pretends to be. The second is that it's full to the brim with pure and unadulterated awesomeness. I couldn't help but imagine a trailer for it done in true fifties drive-in style with a host of text banners hurled up onto the screen. 'Vampires! Werewolves! Dinosaurs! Zombies! Aliens! It's the whole Universal Union of Monsters in a Kung Fu Bonanza! Thrill as a Shaolin monk takes on Frankenstein's monster! Recoil in terror as the mighty Yongary stomps buildings, downs planes and destroys helicopters! Sigh at Count Dracula, Vampira and their hopping vampire son! Be amazed by the Flying Japanese Superhero, the Golden Bat! Lust after those Beautiful Girls, the Eurasian Granddaughters of Van Helsing!' You know that few movies ever lived up to such huckster advertising but this comes close, as long as the awesomeness is all you're looking for.

As a story, this is an inventive melding of three Young Gu movies from the early nineties which faded quickly away into obscurity because, as Foster points out on the extra 'Behind the Scenes' featurette on the DVD, even Koreans didn't find them funny. As he tells it, two thirds of them are nothing but really juvenile toilet humour that even he, a dedicated Asian movie buff, found nigh on impossible to get through. He left in a few fart and pee jokes and started everything out with outrageously inappropriate gay humour but for the most part, all that filler is thankfully history. What he kept are the awesome bits, namely the monsters, the kung fu and the action. He then found a way to merge the similar but generally unrelated storylines together to draft out a new story that makes something close to coherent sense, at least in the world of awesome movies. I don't think there's a single realistic frame in the whole thing, but it still makes insane sense.

How's this for an awesome concept? An alien monster called Andromeda King and his new wave coiffured sidekick are creating the Universal Union of Monsters. They revive Chiun Dracula, the Eurasian grandson of Count Dracula, and his family, a flying vampire bride and their delightfully cute guansi son. They arrive at a creepy house on Jackie Chan Mountain with a werewolf butler to resurrect Frankenstein's monster, but instead they spend their time kidnapping the Eurasian granddaughters of their hereditary enemy Van Helsing. Meanwhile the giant monster Yongary and his kawaii baby dinosaur son have been raised by a zombie boss to wreak terror and stomp stuff. Pledged to stop them is the Golden Bat, a skull faced flying mummy from Atlantis who can fight like the best of them but who relies instead on the good heart of bumbling retard Young Gu and his brother, a Shaolin monk with every speech impediment in the book.

I'd love to see the original Young Gu movies to find out just how much of this glorious insanity is really there. After all, every bit of footage we see is entirely untouched, only the soundtrack and order of scenes being altered. More accurately, I really want to see the first of the three, 1989's Young Gu and Deng Chili, also known as Young Gu vs Count Dracula, because that's where all the monsters come from, along with the Shaolin monk. I'm even more intrigued because Deng Chili is apparently a dog, the Korean version of Lassie, whose footage was cut completely out of this reworking. The second source picture is Young Gu and the Golden Bat from 1992, which also looks interesting, because of the flying superhero, the swordfighting and and its intriguing pair of villains. However 1993's Young Gu and the Dinosaur Juju looks extremely painful because the good bits aren't even good and they're totally repetitive.

To be fair to the original filmmakers, there are some great shots in those first two movies. Some of the movements of the vampire bride and the werewolf are superbly shot and even their poses are often great fun. The baby guangsi is a delight, but then I'm a sucker for hopping vampires. Many of the fight scenes are well staged, albeit in a pulp manner. Yet I'm hard pressed to find a single shot of the dinosaurs that isn't embarrassing. An actor in a rubber suit stomping on a city is always fun for a while but this is neither a good suit nor a good city and even cut down to the good bits, these scenes just run on and on. I can't imagine how tiring they must feel with all the bad bits put back in. They're the biggest problem to Foster's merging of three stories into one as they slow down the pace considerably. I don't care about cardboard sets, plot conveniences and Scooby Doo logic in a film like this, but boring bits are unforgiveable.

Fortunately Foster keeps them to a minimum and, like all the various movies he's resurrected in this sort of fashion, he deserves the majority of credit. He found the source material, edited it all together and wrote the new script, including all the jokes. He even provided what must be half the voices, including the main ones. That's a lot of work and it took him a couple of years to get it to the point of release. We voice actors just showed up and added some dialogue for him to edit in. I played a couple of smaller parts, including the white hatted henchmen of the zombie boss, and I did OK, I guess, for a first attempt. My wife is Dracula's bride. My stepson nailed a few of his roles, including a helicopter pilot and a newsreader, and stretched his vocal talents as a cool character called Unleashed Wickedness. Some voice actors had a little more experience to bring to bear and Paul Hemmes and Kim Wagner in particular did great jobs.

I loved the whole experience of being part of this project and thank Damon for inviting me and my family to join in. Hopefully I'll get to do something similar again on a future picture where I can continue to improve and build some character into my parts the way some of my more experienced colleagues succeeded in doing here. If only Damon could clone himself a hundred times, I could do this sort of thing every weekend. It sure beats overtime at work and I'm sure there are plenty of other obscure movies sitting on Damon's shelves that are worthy of bringing back to some sort of prominence. I certainly need to watch some of the other pictures that he's already done, including Monkey War and Shaolin vs Terminator. I've seen Young Flying Hero, aka Return of the Magic Serpent, which was often fun but much slower and less full of awesomeness than this one. Naturally I'll post reviews here when I catch up with them. Thanks again, Damon!

Shaolin vs Frankenstein will be available for purchase at Damon Foster's World later this year. Already there are highly recommended back issues of Oriental Cinema magazine and many previous Damon Foster films.

Snakes in a Boardroom (2007)

Director: Paul DeNigris
Stars: Lindsey Marlin, Brian Ronalds, Steve Briscoe and Bruce Nelson

The most obvious downside to Snakes in a Boardroom is that you can write it yourself just from the title. Yes, it's exactly what you expect: Steve Briscoe is back as a clueless exec at Pairemup Studios who wants his less clueless assistants, played by Lindsey Marlin and Brian Ronalds, to conjure up something to cash in on the success of Snakes on a Plane. It gets silly, very silly, not that you expect anything different. The most obvious upside to Snakes in a Boardroom is that it somehow succeeds in being funny nonetheless. It's funnier than Saturday Night Live nowadays, but then again I'm not sure if that has any meaning any more. Briscoe co-wrote the script with Mitch Abbott and director Paul DeNigris and what I wonder most is how drunk they all were at the time. This could be an example of a picture that doesn't have a 'making of' documentary to go with it as the two films would be exactly the same except for the presence of beer in the latter.

The fourth face in Snakes in a Boardroom is Bruce Nelson, who has a blast acting out brief snippets from each theorised cash-in that the Pairemup trio come up with. No, he doesn't do anything remotely surprising, but yes, he's funny as all get out and I'd happily pay to see him in Beavers on a Bullet Train, if only we weren't five years too late for it to be remotely topical. Given that this short was made in 2007, it was already running a little late, which has to be the reason why it didn't go viral on YouTube. I checked. I was only the 21,176th viewer, which is nowhere near enough and kids wouldn't understand it today. After all, Snakes on a Plane would probably seem like the height of imagination in a world where Hollywood is adapting Battleships for the big screen, remaking The Rocky Horror Picture Show and indulging in a bidding war for the rights to Asteroids. Too much material, too little time...

Envy (2007)

Director: Paul DeNigris
Stars: Vince Reign, Lindsey Marlin and Steve Briscoe

I think the biggest problem with Envy is that it doesn't try to do much. It's a professional little short and it's hard to fault in any way, but there's so little to work with that it doesn't matter. After the ambitious energy of The Long Shot and the deliciously dry wit of Stabbing Stupidity, it feels disappointing, even though I now recognise everyone involved. In fact all three actors were in Stabbing Stupidity, though Vince Reign only had a single line in that film. He's half of a young couple here with Lindsey Marlin, who move into his parents' house now that they're gone, under surprising circumstances. The omnipresent Steve Briscoe is the homicide detective who explains just how surprising, but we quickly find out the details for ourselves. Given that Envy only has three minutes to set up, explain and finish off the entire piece, you can imagine how quickly but it still isn't rushed. Marlin delivers a great last pair of lines, but it isn't enough to save this one.

Stabbing Stupidity (2006)

Director: Paul DeNigris
Stars: Lindsay Marlin, Steve Briscoe, Louie Palmieri, Vince Reign and Laura Durant

Stabbing Stupidity is a lot shorter than The Long Shot, running about four minutes plus credits, but it's the peach of the shorts on the Cowboy Dreams DVD. In fact it's one of the best short films I've seen in a long time and I've screened a hundred of them in the last month. The concept is simple, centred on a young lady called Janet who has been conned into dinner with her highly inappropriate boss but finds an escape in her imagination. Writer Steve Briscoe and director Paul DeNigris riff on it superbly in a variety of ways and I still had a grin on my face on my fourth time through. Briscoe dominates here, not just because he wrote the script and its delightfully playful dialogue, but because he plays the boorish boss too with his Playboy cufflinks and even gets to sing over the end credits. DeNigris plays with technique from behind the camera, almost as an unseen dance partner with the leading lady, Lindsey Marlin, who shines through the fourth wall.

There's much worthy of praise here, but what I found most impressive was the fact that Stabbing Stupidity could so easily have spun way out of control, just because of how fun it was. This could have been a four minute film stuck in a twenty minute running time, but it isn't. It's lean and not a second longer than it should be. One of the biggest indicators for out of control filmmaking is when the director gets to edit his own picture, as DeNigris does here, because it gives them free rein to shoot as much as they like and leave in as much as they like. Usually that's a bad idea, but here DeNigris proves the exception to the rule. It plays out like clockwork. Almost every line does something, whether it be to build character, hit a punchline or set up a gimmick. Marlin and Briscoe hit every mark like professional comedians and DeNigris is right there to underline them. It's an exercise in technique, simultaneously violent and hilarious, and women will love it.

The Long Shot (2006)

Director: Paul DeNigris
Stars: Christopher Loftus, Christine Bierman and Michael DeNigris

After The Hard Way, which almost felt like a two minute clip from a longer movie, The Long Shot felt more like an entire feature crunched professionally down into nineteen minutes. It's a really ambitious picture however you look at it, not least that it's a long short. It has a large cast, which includes quite a few faces I recognise from the local film scene. While few of them get much time to develop characters, the script helps a surprisingly large amount of them do that. The story is a strong one with a clear progression, story arcs for more than one character and even room for a silent segment in which words aren't needed to explain what's going on. The camera moves well and there was obviously a lot of time spent in the editing room to segue the many cuts together. It's notable that the camera speed changes with the story: initially it's slow and smooth as things start to come together, but gets frantic when they go south again. It feels like it could be studied.

We follow Matt, a college football star fallen on hard times because of gambling. He owes two hundred large and he has no way out of the mess he's in. That's until Jim gives him a tip that he shouldn't ignore: just one more bet and he'll be free and clear. Of course, if it was that simple, this wouldn't run nineteen minutes and Matt gets to work his way through more ups and downs than you might expect in a feature length movie. I really liked this one. The dialogue is clever: often humorous, often serious and often switching from one to the other in a flash. The story is careful to set up certain expectations, some of which lead us in certain directions, others away from them, but all cleverly enough to ensure that the ending is both expected and surprising. The script was obviously crafted. A second viewing highlights many lines that make sense first time through but have double meanings revealed only with hindsight.

In fact, it's so consistently good that it's hard to find fault. Sure, a few performances may have benefitted from another take here and there, but it's obvious that everyone's having fun and that's contagious. Christopher Loftus is a capable lead, earning his only credit at IMDb, but he's outshone by the story he's careened through. Christine Bierman is good as his girlfriend but she isn't the focus of the picture. Michael DeNigris is a little tongue tied on occasion playing a gem of a character called Salvatore 'The Razor' Giletti, whose name alone tells you everything you want to know about him. He has perhaps more fun than anyone in the cast though, with a few asides that show great timing. In a much smaller role, Bivas Biswas shines as a bookie playing chess in the Arizona heat. The scale of the production means that they're all really part of an ensemble cast adding different textures to a solid story, which is the big winner here.

The Hard Way (2005)

Director: Paul DeNigris
Stars: Steve Cooper and Steve Briscoe

In 2009, Steve Briscoe wrote and Paul DeNigris directed the sublime short film Cowboy Dreams, with a cast to die for, including Bill Engvall and Danny Trejo. It was a leisurely piece, establishing a setting that we've seen many times before but then leading us slowly but surely into surreality and a gloriously unexpected set of lines from Trejo. This film, shot in 1999 for a Briscoe comedy special but turned into a standalone short in 2005, feels like an early draft version, with a similar concept but without the budget, the stars or the dialogue to bring it to life, let alone the level of technical skill involved. The lighting, sound and camerawork are notably weaker and the opening credits are terrible. Had the later film never been made this would have been an OK amateur short, but it pales in comparison in every way. Worthy only as an extra feature on the Cowboy Dreams DVD to see how the concept evolved over time, fortunately that's where I got to see it.

I have no idea how easy it is to get hold of this DVD but it's a great little disc, worth it for Cowboy Dreams alone, of course, but with a revealing documentary about the making of that film and no less than five earlier shorts to boot. DeNigris is a professor of film at the University of Advancing Technology in Glendale, AZ, and most of the cast and crew of his films have graduated from his classes. Watching a number of their shorts back to back is enough to see how they and he have progressed over the years. This is the earliest and the weakest of perhaps eight DeNigris films I've seen but it and Cowboy Dreams are the most easily compared. It's obvious that the pair of characters here were split up into many for the later film, adding depth all around. Expertise of cast and crew does the rest. I think that if Briscoe and DeNigris could travel back in time with the knowledge they have now, they wouldn't make this better, they'd make Cowboy Dreams instead.

Rituals (1977)

Director: Peter Carter
Stars: Hal Holbrook, Lawrence Dane, Robin Gammell, Ken James and Gary Reineke

Sometimes it's impossible not to watch a movie without imaging what it would be like if remade nowadays. Rituals is yet another story about a group of people leaving civilisation behind to find more than they expected in the middle of nowhere: you've seen it before and you'll see it again, but how? If shot today, the five protagonists would be young and gorgeous, happy to strip buck naked whenever possible; but in Rituals they're five middle aged male doctors, fishing barefoot. Nowadays they'd be partying it on down all night; but here they merely enjoy being out of their comfort zone. In 2012 one would film the others in footage to be found once everyone's dead; but in 1977 found footage thankfully hadn't been invented yet so the style is natural and doesn't induce motion sickness. Rituals even opens with a very 1970s easy listening theme rather than the rap or metal soundtrack you'd get today. Only beer and pot are constants over 40 years.

The most obvious difference is that instead of being a slasher flick whose death scenes are the only things to really pay attention to, here there's suspense and substance. The most obvious film to raise as a comparison is Deliverance, made five years earlier, and it wouldn't surprise me if there are five doctors here because there were only four businessmen in that film. Beyond having middle aged men hunted down a river within a wilderness, both films are fundamentally about guilt, though that's handled differently in each film. Deliverance spoke most prominently to guilt that the main characters develop over the course of the film because of actions taken within it, while Rituals speaks to less defined guilt from the past, which adds a sense of mystery to the picture. What do these doctors have to feel guilty about? That isn't just a question for us, it's one that they have to ask themselves too.

Certainly Rituals isn't as accomplished a film as Deliverance but it's still worthy of mention in the same breath and it has much to offer on its own merits. The story is a tough and unrelenting one that never lets up on its characters, mentally or physically, and it did no less on the actors. The budget didn't stretch to special effects, so the cast were called upon to actually do what we see them do in the film, albeit with safety nets to avoid the sort of catastrophic outcomes that await the characters. They really do walk through a swamp, have a bee hive thrown at them and fight in dangerous rapids. The budget didn't even allow for multiple takes in many instances, so often the scenes we see were captured in a single shot, avoiding a slick edge to the action but aiding the natural feel. Also helping this was the decision to shoot the film chronologically, so leads Hal Holbrook and Lawrence Dane really do get more and more grizzled as time runs on.

Holbrook plays Harry, a talented surgeon and ethical doctor who is still coming to terms with the death of his father, a drunk he had written off. A Vietnam veteran, he knows a thing or two about survival and it helps that he's the pragmatic one of the bunch, quiet and down to earth, usually getting the last word. Dane is the unfortunately named Mitzi, the loud one of the bunch. When things start going south, he throws out bad ideas at the least provocation. When they continue that way, he's the one who wants to give up, argue about how bad everything is or blame the others. He took care of Harry's dad's when the time came but is obviously uncomfortable with his own ethics as pertains to his work. Rounding out the five are Ken James as the routine Abel and a pair of brothers, Martin and DJ, played by Robin Gammell and Gary Reineke respectively. DJ is an irascible voice of reason, while Martin calls himself 'an independent alcoholic.'

They're dropped in a heavily forested area that the Indians poetically call the Cauldron of the Moon. It's only fifteen miles to civilisation but they're hardly well prepared for anything beyond their most basic expectations. The first step into chaos is when their boots are stolen while they fish. DJ had told them all to bring spare pairs but, of course, nobody did. None of them expected to be stalked through the wilderness by a crazed killer, naturally, but Martin's backpack is full of Scotch and toilet paper. It wouldn't bode well for him even if the killer hadn't shown up, which of course he does. We don't see him until the end and don't find out who he is until close to that point, which also adds mystery, but he makes his presence very apparent through a set of setpiece actions. It's pretty obvious that whenever these doctors go to sleep, the killer is going to have something memorably nasty ready for them when they wake up.

I grew up watching Murder, Mystery, Suspense on British TV, which was a timeslot dedicated for the most part to American films featuring one or more of those attributes. Most were probably made during the seventies, possibly for TV, and to my young and inexperienced eyes they felt like tame equivalents to the outrageous horror novels I was devouring. More recently I've often wondered how good they actually were, whether I didn't appreciate suspense as much as gore at the time and if I wouldn't find them tame today. Maybe I'll never know but every time I see an American thriller that obviously dates itself to the seventies, I ask myself those questions again. This one stands up very well indeed with some memorable shock scenes, a gruelling pace and a number of gorgeous long shots. Some almost hide the leads in distance, others turn close ups into long shots with easy camera movements and one makes the cresting of a hill truly powerful.

Of the cast and crew, I was only really familiar with Hal Holbrook, who had made his name on TV with four Emmy wins out of twelve nominations, but was instantly recognisable in many films. I don't know if I remember him best from Magnum Force, Capricorn One or The Fog, perhaps even Fletch Lives. He hopped genres continually. Lawrence Dane got the part of Mitzi because he also produced the film, but he knew which character would work for him as an actor and he was right. The others get far less opportunity to demonstrate their acting chops but they do exactly what they should. Writer Ian Sutherland and director Peter Carter obviously enjoyed working together, as they teamed up for another film, Highpoint, in 1982, just before Carter died of a heart attack. A comedy featuring the highest stunt fall ever shot for a movie, it wasn't as successful as this. I wonder if, had he lived, they'd have returned to darker material like this that they did so well.

Time Again (2011)

Director: Ray Karwel
Stars: Scott F Evans, John T Woods, Angela Rachelle, Tara Smoker and Gigi Perreau

Director Ray Karwel kindly sent me a screener of his indie time travel/action feature Time Again to review back in September and, given the subject matter, I wish I could conjure up some sort of time travel shenanigans of my own to post a review back then. As it stands, I'd have to settle for changing the date of this post and that would just be cheating. So, my apologies to Ray for the delay and to any readers I still have after a particularly empty last six months. Hopefully all the things that have kept me from writing for so long are taken care of now and I can be much more prolific in 2012. I'm especially happy to get back into a routine with Time Again, as indie science fiction features are something of an endangered species nowadays. Anyone who has screened submissions for genre film festivals knows that there are ten horror pictures for every science fiction movie and there are twenty sci-fi shorts for every feature.

It helps that this is a decent film too, certainly if you consider its budget which is somewhere on the south side of not a heck of a lot. Its flaws are not the usual ones that come along with a lack of money: there's nothing wrong with the lighting, the pace or the dialogue for a start. It's rare to see an indie sci-fi feature that doesn't fail on at least one of those fronts, if not more, and I can happily report that this is an exception to that rule. That isn't to say it looks like a Hollywood epic because it doesn't. The camerawork isn't as slick as we expect, Karwel making up for that in the editing room; the music is generic, obviously public domain; the stunts, while refreshingly done by the actors themselves, are too obviously set up; and a couple of the actors can't stop smiling. Yet the engaging story and the fast pace go a long way towards making up for all those flaws. Hollywood nailed pace long ago but still has a habit of forgetting about the story. This has both.

It centres around a set of four coins minted by a Roman priest for Augustus Caesar at the point the Christian calendar was being established and they have the power to revisit the past to make different choices with the power of hindsight, like a pack of magic undo buttons. It's both a cool MacGuffin and the mechanism by which a waitress by the name of Marlo tries to save the life of her sister, Sam. As Marlo, Angela Rachelle proves a capable lead, not only because she's terminally cute but because she successfully grows as a character along with the story. Initially she's very much a waste of space little sister, so we're surprised to realise that we'll be watching her rather than Sam, but Marlo becomes much more than her beginning while Sam becomes just a prop for her to work with. Rachelle seems to be getting steady work as an actress but she deserves bigger and better parts and surely this performance can only help that to happen.

The acting is surprisingly capable for a low budget action film without anyone we recognise and with a story that by definition makes everyone's job harder. Only Marlo gets to progress through the film in a chronological fashion, allowing Rachelle the opportunity to build her character. The rest are given to us in fragments, their parts broken up by a story that leaps around in a number of different timelines over a period of six months. This means that most of the actors are tasked with establishing their roles in mere snatches of time that might be duplicated, replayed a little differently or entirely undone later on in the film. It's tough to get involved with characters when we see them running through the same lines and scenes over and over again, as it's far easier to sit back and imagine them as props for Rachelle to play with. Needless to say, some of the actors are more successful than others in making their presence known.

Scott F Evans is perhaps the standout as Mr Way, a Los Angeles crime boss. Sure, some of his lines seem a little too cool but for the most part his biggest problem is how hands on he has to get as the lack of budget is most obvious when counting extras. Similarly, John T Woods, who is ostensibly tasked with playing a likeable cop called Det Lym, is most taxed when he realises that he's actually the entire LAPD (the SWAT team don't count: they're the worst thing in the entire film). Robert Pike Daniel, whose IMDb headshots suggest he's stereotyped in stern, emotionless roles, is pleasantly genial as a boss who every waitress surely wishes they worked for. Dan Lookabill is just as pleasant as Marlo and Sam's dad, perhaps highlighting that Ray Karwel might just be a big softy at heart who wanted to make his action film as filled with feelgood moments as with bullets. If so, he succeeded. It's a happy action movie.

The biggest name is perhaps the most surprising one, a French-American child actor from the forties and fifties called Gigi Perreau. I probably last saw her in 1945's Voice of the Whistler, a William Castle picture she made at the ripe old age of four, two years after Mervyn LeRoy began her career as the title character's bilingual daughter in Madame Curie. She brings an agreeable sense of quirkiness to Time Again as an unnamed old lady (unnamed for a very good reason) who only gets a few scenes but nonetheless serves as the oil that keeps the story in motion. I wonder how Karwel talked her into this picture. Sure, she has a vast amount of experience, with 35 films behind her before she turned 21 in 1961, but she promptly retired from the screen at that point to focus on stage direction instead. I'm happy she graced us with her presence once more and I may need to dust off Journey to the Center of Time or Hell on Wheels in celebration.

The best reason to see Time Again is for the script. Karwel is one of three writers, who deserve as much praise for their attention to detail when dealing with time travel paradoxes as they do shame for not counting bullets or for use of overly convenient props. This is a well thought out, story based, time travel movie and those are rare creatures indeed. No, you shouldn't blink early on or you may do as I did and conflate a dead character with a live one, thus confusing yourself royally for a little while; but once established, it gets more intriguing the longer it runs and the foreknowledge that accompanies a repeat viewing makes it feel tighter still. I found some subtle establishing shots second time through that I'd missed previously. Any picture that works on a first viewing but still improves on a second is a keeper, especially when suspense is a key factor, and I'd happily come back again for a third watch.

The most annoying part of the script is that almost everyone has a generic one syllable name, which means that we have to pay just a little more attention to be sure of who's doing what to whom, especially in those quick changing early scenes. Perhaps Ray Karwel's background as an editor, starting out on the Asylum's version of War of the Worlds, helps him to see things clearer outside the traditional linear timeline of a story without distinctive names as cues. As the job of an editor is often to fix what everyone else has done wrong, they pick up an inherent grasp of what's good and bad in a picture. As editors become writers and directors, they often approach their films with an eye for detail so lacking in others. Karwel doesn't achieve what fellow editor Mike Flanagan did with Absentia, but after this engaging first time out as a writer, producer and director I'd like to see what's next. More budget and consistency could give us a treat.

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Director: Guy Ritchie
Stars: Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law, Rachel McAdams and Mark Strong

This time last year I was watching Arthur Wontner play Sherlock Holmes for the first time in the 1931 British film The Sleeping Cardinal. Now the family have talked me into something a little more recent and modern, namely Robert Downey Jr playing Sherlock Holmes for the first time in the self titled Guy Ritchie movie from 2009. I tend to get burned by modern blockbusters but a few friends, especially within the steampunk scene, have spoken highly of this version, at least on some fronts. Now's my chance to find out if I need to shout at them next time I see them and ignore any further suggestions they might make. After all, when I think Robert Downey Jr, I think Tony Stark, not Sherlock Holmes. When I think Guy Ritchie, I think of how awesome his pictures were before he met Madonna, not of how he could turn the innovative gimmickry of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels into a Holmes movie. Well, the game's afoot!

There is gimmickry before we even get the title screen: slow motion and fast editing as Holmes and Watson stop Lord Blackwood from committing his sixth murder. That's mild stuff for Guy Ritchie though and things improve quickly. His version of Holmes's rooms at 221B Baker St are believable: quirky, dusty and disorganised, but not so much so that the great detective doesn't know exactly where everything is. Downey is quirky, dusty and disorganised himself as Holmes, which is refreshing, but he's still quite obviously himself. Much has been said of how this Holmes is a pugilist, but that doesn't bother me. Ritchie puts his start/stop editing to use effectively, by bringing the scientific method into his fight scenes. I was more impressed by quieter moments though, such as when Holmes deduces the history of Watson's girl and gets a glass of wine in his face for his trouble. He simply ignores it and gets on with his meal. It's beneath his concern.

So Holmes is a solid characterisation, an interesting take on the most portrayed character of all time. I like the gleam in his eye, the deceptive disorganisation and his playful nature. I didn't like the fact that in front of all of it was obviously Robert Downey Jr. Jude Law succeeds a little better on that front as Watson, though perhaps that's partly because I've seen a lot less of him in the past than I have Downey. He's not as quick as Holmes, naturally, but he's no bumbling fool in the vein of Nigel Green's approach to the role or those who followed him. It helps that Law is really a Londoner, thus a lot more believable in Victorian London than Downey, whose accent isn't quite what it should be. Downey is more fun to watch but too wild to buy into. At least he's a notably original creation, unlike Lord Blackwood, who is painted too closely from Hannibal Lector's cloth for my liking, Mark Strong also channelling the young Christopher Lee in his megalomania.

There's much to like here for those without firm preconceptions in what they expect from a Sherlock Holmes picture. The sets are superb, from grand visions like a nascent Tower Bridge to the little details of street life. This Victorian London is suitably dirty, from the streets to the sky via all sorts of locations in between, not least a particularly grimy jail. To ensure that we get the point, the tones used are suitably subdued, sometimes so dark that we can believe that they're lit by gaslight. Of course not all the sets are down and dirty. There are plenty more in upper class buildings and pseudo-Masonic lodges and they're just as solid. It certainly doesn't hurt to have a budget sometimes and this one had $90m to play with. I enjoyed the music, both the classical and the folk sides. There's frequent action, though to inconsistent effect (the boat scene and the finalé being far too predictable) and for every action scene there's another full of deductions.

Where it falls down is in being the first film in a deliberate franchise, something that Warner Bros obviously planned for all along. Thus we get a lot of Holmes and Watson but only a glimpse of a slew of other recognisable names. Lestrade gets a mere handful of scenes, Moriarty is seen only in shadow, Mycroft appears in name only and we see Mrs Hudson only once, early in the picture. We are given quite a lot of Irene Adler though, the one woman who outsmarted Holmes in Conan Doyle's stories. It's a shame that she's notably disappointing, with a promising introduction quickly devolving into a damsel in distress and a woman continually outmanouevred by others. I liked Eddie Marsan a lot, as Lestrade, but other notable actors get far too little screen time, especially James Fox and Geraldine James. Fox does get a good death scene at least and James returns as Mrs Hudson in the first sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.

All in all, I enjoyed Sherlock Holmes, but mostly on the surface when the CGI wasn't too obvious or the action too clichéd. For the most part it looked right and it felt right, but it didn't allow us much opportunity to play along ourselves and try to figure things out before Watson. It instead used what little Guy Ritchie gimmickry it had to provide explanations to us along with whichever characters are on screen at the time. In short it's the ride you might expect rather than the sort of detective story you might want, though on that front at least it's a worthy one, with far more attention given to its setting than most. Downey and Law make it a fun and engaging ride and if Rachel McAdams is given a poor part to play with as Irene Adler, she does bring feminine charm into the testosterone filled proceedings. I'd have preferred a different film in a lot of ways, but I enjoyed this nonetheless and won't have too many qualms about watching the sequel.

The Hoodlum (1951)

Director: Max Nosseck
Stars: Lawrence Tierney, Allene Roberts, Marjorie Riordan and Edward Tierney

It's dark, it's tense, it's 1951 and the film is called The Hoodlum. Yes, this is a Lawrence Tierney B-movie, which means it's going to be a tough ride. Tierney was a tough character, not just on screen but off it too, as Quentin Tarantino found out the hard way while making Reservoir Dogs. Here he's Vincent Lubeck, a career criminal who seems to only do two things: commit crimes and get caught. He begins this film in jail, up for parole after serving five years for armed robbery. The warden totally doesn't want to know, but his mother pleads for his release, with the dubious explanation that he fights the whole world. Well, that's Tierney through and through. We know that if mama doesn't persuade the board, we wouldn't have a movie, so out comes Lubeck to work at the gas station his brother has put a down payment on from his father's life insurance. Unfortunately it's right opposite the Fidelity Bank so guess how long Lubeck takes to turn...

Tierney is exactly what you'd expect if you've seen him in anything, especially from this era. He looks like handsome leading man material, but he's all darkness, like a coiled spring just waiting to explode on someone, anyone, maybe you. I love these roles of his because they exude danger the way few could manage, even in the noir era. A lot of actors could handle the grittiness but didn't feel dangerous. Tierney was dangerous just walking on screen. The fact that he sounded like George Raft trying to be Humphrey Bogart was merely the icing on the cake. What makes this particular film stand out isn't what he does as Vincent Lubeck, though he does it well, it's the fact that his screen brother, Johnny Lubeck, is played by his real one, Edward Tierney, making his first and only credited appearance under that name. He did find some success in Germany later under the name of Ed Tracy, but it's clear here that he isn't the talent his brother was.

The story is by Sam Neuman and Nat Tanchuck, and what I've seen of their work elsewhere isn't too impressive. For instance, Tanchuck's previous film was Chained for Life, a horrendous biopic of Daisy and Violet Hilton that didn't even benefit from the Siamese twins playing themselves. When a sensationalist biopic can't even live up to the levels of reality, it's an abject failure. Yet here they wrote a tight film, only a minute over an hour long and shot on an independent budget by director Max Nosseck, his second of four films with Tierney after Dillinger six years earlier. It isn't particularly groundbreaking, but it's a satisfying and often tense B movie that packs a lot into a small space, not least another powerful showing from Tierney. He leaves a notable trail of destruction in his wake here, only his immigrant mother able to tear him a new one when it's too late. Neuman and Tanchuck wrote a great death scene for Lisa Golm as Mrs Lubeck.

In fact, The Hoodlum builds well for everyone. The more obvious scenes are early on, as the film struggles to get going on whatever budget the independent Jack Schwarz Productions could bring to bear. The actors are capable but hardly Oscar-worthy. The uncredited Gene Roth is the standout early on as the prison warden who doesn't want Lubeck released, but he chews his way through a small part with gusto, somehow reminding of both Raymond Burr and William Castle as he shows Lubeck the electric chair. Edward Tierney is initially subdued and careful as Johnny; Allene Roberts is suitably innocent as his girl, Rosa, who Vincent naturally targets; and Marjorie Riordan is a sultry bank secretary who flirts with him while he pumps her gas. It's once all hell has broken loose that they get their moments to shine, though none as brightly as Golm. After her, it's Marjorie Riordan who gets the best scene. She deserved a bigger part.

The Hoodlum has gone unseen for many years, hardly surprising given its obscurity and status as an independent picture in a time when those were rare creatures indeed. After its original theatrical run, courtesy of United Artists, in 1951, it didn't see theatres again until almost half a century later when a new print was made. It certainly doesn't deserve to remain in obscurity, as it's a thoroughly entertaining piece. It stands up as an indie noir, as a Lawrence Tierney picture and as the one time he acted alongside one of his brothers. He never worked with Edward again and never shared the screen with his other brother, Scott Brady, even though both had prolific film careers. Scott's ran for 63 films from 1948 to 1984, when he played the sheriff in Gremlins. Lawrence Tierney notched up 64, but in a much longer period from 1943 to 2000, mostly because he was so difficult a man to work with. It's hard to believe he's been gone for over a decade though.