(1970)
Dir - Basil Dearden
Overall: MEH
The last film from director Basil Dearden before his untimely death via car crash less than a year after its release, (which is coincidental since the movie bookends with Roger Moore suffering automobile accidents), The Man Who Haunted Himself plays an elongated psychological game that wears thin long before the characters finally catch up with the audience. Anthony Armstrong's 1940 short story "The Strange Case of Mr Pelham" had already been adapted for both the small screen and radio a handful of times before, this version serving as producer Bryan Forbes' first work for EMI Films. Made on the cheap with a ready and willing Moore on board to challenge himself after his seven year run on The Saint, its doppelgänger nightmare premise takes until the last few minutes to fully reveal itself, which would not be a problem if the plot had more mysterious juice to work with. Instead, we quickly gather that there are two Moores running around and that it also stems from some sort of unleashed id judging by the opening scene. Dearden does all the he can to keep the mystery compelling, stylishly moving his camera around to emphasis various clues, and Moore turns in a committed performance, but it is ultimately a tedious watch.
Dir - John Boorman
Overall: GOOD
Seizing the once in a career opportunity to go hog-wild after the critical and financial success of Deliverance, John Boorman's follow-up Zardoz remains one of the most self-indulgent and baffling movies, (with a significant budget and top-tier production values at least), that the 1970s ever unleashed. Snagging a post-James Bond Sean Connery after Burt Reynolds dropped out due to illness, Boorman dresses him in an iconically ridiculous mankini as his character weaves through a distant future utopia full of psychic immortals, gun-totting savages, a floating stone head, and an all-knowing artificial intelligence that lives inside of a crystal. This of course only scratches the surface of the hodgepodge of ideas here, which also includes the metaphysical, Orwellian dystopia, eugenics, class structure, Arthurian legend, and the inevitable corruption of a human society that is left to perpetually linger with child birth being long abandoned. Shot entirely in Ireland, Boorman and cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth co-mingle the lush, pristine scenery with dated New Age fantasy and hedonism, which makes for boundlessly interesting visuals to keep the viewer's head from exploding in trying to decipher a stubbornly nebulous narrative. Still, the whole experience is so wacky and pretentious, (let alone pulled off at such an impressive scale), that it stands as a pristine cult movie in an era where a filmmaker's free reign was tailor made for such silliness.
Overall: GOOD
Seizing the once in a career opportunity to go hog-wild after the critical and financial success of Deliverance, John Boorman's follow-up Zardoz remains one of the most self-indulgent and baffling movies, (with a significant budget and top-tier production values at least), that the 1970s ever unleashed. Snagging a post-James Bond Sean Connery after Burt Reynolds dropped out due to illness, Boorman dresses him in an iconically ridiculous mankini as his character weaves through a distant future utopia full of psychic immortals, gun-totting savages, a floating stone head, and an all-knowing artificial intelligence that lives inside of a crystal. This of course only scratches the surface of the hodgepodge of ideas here, which also includes the metaphysical, Orwellian dystopia, eugenics, class structure, Arthurian legend, and the inevitable corruption of a human society that is left to perpetually linger with child birth being long abandoned. Shot entirely in Ireland, Boorman and cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth co-mingle the lush, pristine scenery with dated New Age fantasy and hedonism, which makes for boundlessly interesting visuals to keep the viewer's head from exploding in trying to decipher a stubbornly nebulous narrative. Still, the whole experience is so wacky and pretentious, (let alone pulled off at such an impressive scale), that it stands as a pristine cult movie in an era where a filmmaker's free reign was tailor made for such silliness.
(1976)
Dir - Ian F.H. Lloyd
Overall: MEH
The only movie of any kind from writer/director/producer Ian F.H. Lloyd was the fifty-eight minute oddity Face of Darkness. Fusing medieval folk horror with increased paranoia in Great Brittan in the midst of terrorist threats that would eventually lead to Thatcherism, Lloyd's story is lethargic in structure yet also topical and curious. A conservative backbencher hatches a bizarre plan to dig up a condemned male witch who he has read about in his occult studies, all in order to have him commit a heinous act that will push through a capital punishment bill that he is facing universal opposition for. The tone is relentlessly dry, (stilted performances, no musical score, a matter-of-fact delivery system for its more quirky components, etc.), but it is interesting up until a point. Once David Allister's resurrected and unemotive black magic practitioner sets off a bomb in a schoolyard, things settle into a sluggish crawl where Lennard Pearce and John Bennett walk around gardens and discuss Allister's mental state and the supernatural hold that it has on Pearce who unearthed him. The material is weird and the hazy presentation enhances such weirdness, but it fails to kick up the right kind of unsettling atmosphere that it is going for.
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