view
The Party's Over (Guy Hamilton, 1965)
Feb
13
party
The party crowd staggers its way home at dawn across Albert Bridge. DP: Mike Pratt.
– Let's keep this party going till Sunday.
– Why Sunday?
– The Hindus say the world comes to an end on Sunday.
– But, how will we know when it happens?
– Graves will gape and the shrouded dead will run gibbering and shrieking in the streets.
– Sounds like any other Sunday.
*which isn't until March 4 this year.
view
Burnt Offerings (Dan Curtis, 1976)
Jul
1
The chauffeur (Anthony James). DP: Jacques R. Marquette.
“The house takes care of itself.”
– Roz Allardyce
view
Mahler (Ken Russell, 1974)
Nov
12
World Pneumonia Day
Gustav (Robert Powell) and Alma (Georgina Hale), both in a three piece suit with top hats. She's in a shadows, wearing a tight, black veil that completely conceals her features. DP: Dick Bush.
A sickly #GustavMahler (Robert Powell) and his wife Alma (Georgina Hale) dwell on their shared lives while travelling to Vienna by train. Storylines – circular like a journey, rondo like #Mahler's compositions – drift from the ordinary to the grotesque.
“I don't want to imitate nature. I want to capture its very essence. As if all the birds and the beasts die tomorrow and the world became a desert, when people heard my music – they would still know, feel, what nature was.”
– Gustav Mahler
This would be the composer's final tour. A train took him to a Vienna sanatorium where not much later he'd succumb to #pneumonia.
view
The Damned [These Are the Damned] (Joseph Losey, 1962)
Mar
19
National Automatic Door Day
An 11-year old boy, Henry (Kit Williams), opens a featureless door in a rock surface for a drenched King (Oliver Reed). DP: Arthur Grant.
An American tourist visiting Dorset is tricked by a prostitute, then falls victim to a youth gang controlled by volatile con King – a still very green Oliver Reed at his meanest. The trickster is King's sister, who confides in the American hoping to escape her brother's incestuous advances.
“I'm strange, all right! I'll show you just how strange I am!”
– King
The couple elopes to a nearby island, closely followed by King and his gang, where they find a group of #children, all contently living in an underground lab, with #AutomaticDoors only they can control.
They are the damned.