The
Pre-Code days of Hollywood (prior to July 1, 1934) sported numerous studio
productions that raised eyebrows and caused consternation among the more
Puritan segments of America’s population. This eventually led to the Hays
Office overseeing Tinsel Town’s self-implemented Production Code that policed content
in the motion picture business until the mid-1960s.
Before
the Code—and after—there were also low-budget non-studio independent productions
that went even further in exploiting (the key word here) sex, drugs, and
violence under the guise of being “educational films.” They were often marketed
guerilla style, as if the circus was coming to town, in which distributors
would book a theater for a week, bombard the press with “adults only”
advertisements, make a killing at the box office, and then move on to the next
town. This scheme worked because, after all, prurient subject matter sells.
The
Road to Ruin is
one such exploitation film but it’s a bit different. In a way it’s a hybrid of
the Hollywood B-movie and an independent production of dubious quality. In
contrast to other pictures of its ilk, Road is a step above. There are
aspects here that are admirable and worth a look, even if it’s a view backwards
into a time and place that today is quaint, sensationalist, and laughable,
which is why we enjoy these gems from the past. Therein lies the charm of these
movies that have recently been restored and released on Blu-ray as a series
called “Forbidden Fruit: The Golden Age of the Exploitation Picture,” from Kino
Lorber Classics in association with Something Weird Video.
There
are two versions of the film. First there was the 1928 silent production,
directed by Norton S. Parker, written by Willis Kent, and starring a young,
pretty blonde named Helen Foster, who had been working in numerous Hollywood
silent pictures at the time and developed a name for herself through, at least,
the 1930s. The Road to Ruin was a popular hit, so much so that a few
years later, it was remade as a talkie in 1934, written and directed by “Mrs.
Wallace Reid,” the credited name of Dorothy Davenport. Davenport had indeed
been married to the actor Wallace Reid, who had died in 1923 from complications
due to drug addiction. Interestingly, the 1934 talkie also stars Helen Foster
in the same lead role of the innocent high school girl who becomes corrupted by
(in this order) alcohol, drugs, and sex. In the 1928 silent version she is
“Sally Canfield”; in the 1934 talkie she is “Ann Dixon.” Foster is quite
believable as a 17-year-old in the silent picture… not so much in the talkie
(she was 27 when that was made). Nevertheless, Foster’s performances in both
versions are the main reason why both movies are notable. She is quite
charismatic and not without talent.
The
story in both movies is exactly the same (Davenport based the later screenplay
on Willis Kent’s 1928 version). Sally/Ann is friends with Eve, another high
school teen who is wilder mainly because her divorcing parents are wealthy and are
too busy throwing parties and serving illegal booze (it was the Prohibition era
at the time). Sally/Ann and Eve go out with some schoolboys who introduce
Sally/Ann to alcohol… and one thing leads to another. Then, one night, dashing older
man Don/Ralph spots Sally/Ann in a club and makes his move. Sally/Ann begins
seeing him, and of course Don/Ralph offers the drugs and gets her pregnant. The
sordid tale then goes into the dangers of unlawful abortion and the catastrophic
results. As the tagline of the 1934 picture reads, it’s a movie about “modern
youth burned at the altar of ignorance.”
The
movies were meant to be cautionary tales to parents, imploring them to instruct
their children in sex education and the ways of the world. Never mind that
there are scenes of strip poker in the silent movie and strip dice in the
talkie. It’s educational! That said, as opposed to other exploitation movies of
the time such as Narcotic (1933)or Marihuana (1936), there
is a tonal sincerity of intent by the filmmakers. They likely truly believed that
The Road to Ruin, both versions, were not exploitation movies. This is
why they might be viewed as a cut above others of the genre.
The
new Kino Blu-ray presents a 4K restoration of the 1934 version and it looks
quite good. It comes with an audio commentary by Eric Shaefer, author of Bold!
Daring! Shocking! True!: A History of Exploitation Films. The 1928 version
does not have the 4K restoration but it still looks marvelous for its age, and
it comes with an audio commentary by film historian Anthony Slide and a new
musical score by Andrew Earle Simpson.
The
Road to Ruin is
for fans of Hollywood history, Pre-Code sensibilities, exploitation films, and
the time capsule aspects of American family life in the late 1920s and early
1930s. Just don’t do anything we wouldn’t.
A dissatisfied housewife brings home a stranded alien and
gradually falls in love, high school students live in fear after a beautiful student
is found dead, her back snapped across the gymnasium balance beam, a young teen
dates the enigmatic daughter of a mad scientist, in one town aliens have
actually become part of the community and started attending the local school, a
late-night DJ picks up signals from across space which appear to be from his
recently abducted wife, the real Creature from the Black Lagoon finds himself
working in Hollywood and falling for Julie Adams, teens on Lover’s Lane find
themselves fighting back against a potential alien invasion, and mysterious
video tapes show the real Bela Lugosi in films made by Ed Wood that cannot
possibly exist, given that he had died years before.
This new collection of stories by Dale Bailey (some of
which were previously published in magazines including Asimov’s Science
Fiction and Lightspeed) draws on his own memories of half-watched movies
on late-night TV and reading articles in Fangoria. Perhaps because of
this many of the stories are told as if distant, troubling memories are being
reluctantly recalled. Although the cover art may suggest a fun,
nostalgia-tinged trip back to the fifties, these are stories infused with loss,
grief and melancholy; one man recalls visiting his dead brother’s apartment in
Hollywood, trying to understand how they drifted apart, another, whose wife has
been missing since he claims to have witnessed her being taken up into the sky,
can no longer fully connect with the people around him, a young wife lives in a
trailer park struggling to overcome the tragedy of her baby daughter dying just
minutes after birth, and the Creature tries to reconcile his feelings for Julie
Adams with his desperate need to return to the swamps. These are people whose
lives have not turned out the way they had hoped, trying to understand and come
to terms with their frightening, life-changing experiences. Yet at the same
time, Dale, not forgetting what most of us are here for, combines B-movie
tropes and titles such as ‘Invasion of the Saucer-Men', ‘The Ghoul Goes West’, ‘Night
Caller from Outer Space’ and ‘I Was a Teenage Werewolf’, with humour,
real-world heartbreak and longing.
This hardback collection, published by Electric
Dreamhouse, is a wonderful read for any classic movie fan. Each story is
accompanied by a suitably pulpy illustration (dome-headed aliens, slavering
werewolves and pulchritudinous heroines appear to be Sheady’s specialty), and
the book cover is a work of art in itself, packed with imagery from many
drive-in movies, and not just those referenced in the book. These are stories
that will linger in your mind long after reading, much like the tragic tales
themselves have lingered in the minds of their respective narrators.
Some credit director Piers Haggard with coining the term
‘Folk Horror’ during an interview to set his film The Blood on Satan’s Claw
(1971) apart from the more traditional horror offerings by the likes of Hammer
Films and Amicus. As the term has taken hold, such films have become more
closely aligned with a European arthouse style of filmmaking. The genre has
since been retrospectively assigned to many films including the aforementioned
film, alongside the other two points of the ‘Unholy Trinity’ of British Folk Horror;
Witchfinder General (1968) and The Wicker Man (1973). This is a
‘wyrd’ genre, where the films are often unsettling rather than outright
horrifying, although in the case of modern folk horrors such as Kill List (2011),
both things can be said to be true.
When director Ben Wheatley went into the woods to shoot In
the Earth (2021), not only was he returning to the tone and style of his
earlier films Kill List and A Field in England (2013), but he was
also with the title addressing the very essence of Folk Horror: as this new
book discusses in detail, Folk Horror is something with its roots in ancient
(pagan) times, something in the earth, just below the surface - perhaps in an
English field - that once disturbed seeps out, terrifying some, whilst bringing
others together with its community rituals and human sacrifice.
In this new collection of academic essays, the old and
new British examples of the genre are explored in detail from a range of
fascinating perspectives; studies of history, folklore and Britain’s
non-Christian past, the close-knit communities often at the heart of Folk
Horror films and their clashes with modernity, Celtic Folk Horror, the way in
which female filmmakers have subverted tropes and shifted generic conventions,
the recurring use of drums in pagan ceremonies and rituals, the evils of the British
landscape, social and political influences on the films across the decades, and
the relevance and influence of certain British writers such as Arthur Machen on
the genre. As well as the three films of the ‘Unholy Trinity’, each of which
gets a fair amount of analysis here, other films under discussion include Ken
Russell’s wildly entertaining The Lair of the White Worm (1988), based
on the Bram Stoker novel which itself is based on the north-eastern legend of
the Lampton Worm, The Company of Wolves (1984), Doomwatch (1972),
Cry of the Banshee (1970), Psychomania (1973), and many more
including several modern films which this writer was previously unfamiliar but
has to now seek out.
As with all academic collections, the caveat must be
added that the hardback price is because this edition is aimed at libraries,
and a more affordable paperback edition will be available in due course. This
is a worthwhile collection for anyone interested in this ‘wyrd’ sub-genre of
the British horror film, particularly now that Spring is here and soon ‘Summer
is icumen in’.
After
Woody Allen’s early, zany comedies made between 1969-1975, the filmmaker began
making personal works more akin to those of European auteurs. Art-house
pictures, really. He seemed to have taken his cue from the likes of Ingmar
Bergman, certainly, but also Federico Fellini and others. To this reviewer, though,
Allen’s movies, be they comedies or dramas from Annie Hall (1977)
onwards, almost always deal with the fragility of flawed human relationships—the
same kinds of pictures made by French director François
Truffaut. Truffaut’s films are full of extramarital affairs, love gone wrong,
and sometimes the murder of someone who has gotten in the way of a central
character’s goals.
Now,
Allen’s 50th motion picture, Coup de chance (“Stroke of
Luck”), shot in France with a French crew and cast, and with dialogue entirely
in French (with English subtitles), demonstrates that the director really has
become Truffaut and made his own little European art-house picture like The
Soft Skin or The Woman Next Door (two of Truffaut’s dramas). Or is
it just another Crimes and Misdemeanors or Match Point or Irrational
Man, to name some of Allen’s own dramas that deal with the same subject
matter?
Even
though much of the new film is very familiar Woody Allen territory, Coup de
chance is undoubtedly his most engaging piece since, say, Blue Jasmine.
Is it as good? Not really. And it doesn’t touch Match Point, which is
easily one of the director’s greatest thrillers, which Coup de chance attempts
to be.
Fanny
(the radiant Lou de Laâge) is married to wealthy Jean (the handsome
but appropriately cold Melvil Poupaud). They live in Paris and enjoy an
upper-class, privileged life due to Jean’s work as some kind of financier (“He
makes rich people richer,” Fanny explains). Fanny works at an auction gallery
but is somewhat bored by the couple’s high society social life and especially
by Jean’s continual insistence of going to the country to hunt game with his
friends. Every so often, Fanny’s mother, the wise but somewhat fussy Camille (Valérie
Lemercier), comes to visit for a few days. Camille gets along well with Jean
and even enjoys going hunting in the country with him and his pack while Fanny
stays at the cottage with a book to read. One day on a city street during her
lunch break, Fanny, by happenstance, runs into a former high school
acquaintance, Alain (Niels Schneider). Alain, a divorced writer, immediately
gushes how he had a crush on her back then and would enjoy taking her to lunch.
Fanny agrees. And then she agrees again. Before long, Fanny and Alain are
having an affair. Jean, however, is the jealous type. Extremely so.
To
reveal more would spoil the rest of the story, but most viewers of Woody
Allen’s films can likely predict how it’s going to go. There is an unusual
twist in the third act… and indeed there is a “stroke of luck” that occurs
which emphasizes the film’s themes of coincidence, luck, and fate and how these
concepts can be intertwined. These were common ideas that Polish director Krzysztof
Kieslowski imbued in his pictures, too.
Allen’s
direction here is top form and he is aided by the editing of Alisa Lepselter.
The film moves at a rapid pace with brief vignette-like scenes. The actors are
all superb, despite working with roles that unfortunately do not have much
depth in such a picture of brevity and briskness. The photography by veteran
Vittorio Storaro is gorgeous, and the imagery makes one want to plan an
immediate trip to visit Paris.
The
problems are that we’ve been down this road too many times with Woody Allen.
Yes, there are a few differences in the structure and storytelling, but the
familiarity still nags at the viewer. The novelty of an Allen picture being
entirely in French and in Paris does distinguish it from the others… but then
there’s the issue of whether or not American audiences will relate to these
upper-class French people or care about them at all. (One might have the same
argument about Allen’s portrayal of upper-class New Yorkers in previous
movies!) Another issue is the overuse of upbeat, lively jazz music (mostly
Herbie Hancock’s “Canteloupe Island”), which in some scenes feels highly
inappropriate for a thriller, and ultimately becomes tiresome.
That
said, there’s no question that Coup de chance is an improvement over the
last few Woody Allen titles, but it likely will not be included among the
fifteen to twenty of the filmmaker’s most respected works. But when there are
fifty titles from which to choose, landing somewhere in the middle isn’t bad.
Will
there be future pictures from Allen, who at the time of writing is 88 years old?
Who knows… but if he goes out with Coup de chance then it will be considered
an admirable effort.