by ·Comments Off on The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974, Joseph Sargent)

Interesting tone in this movie, a perfect-crime hijack-ransom plot pulled off by a crack criminal team, but instead of no-nonsense city police on the other side of the phone line we get a droll workplace drama starring Walter Matthau as lead transit cop, a sickly coward mayor (Lee Wallace, who’d also play the mayor in Batman), and timely jokes on camera-toting Japanese tourists and women in the workplace.

Robert Shaw (Robin and Marian‘s sheriff) is the lead baddie, serious about his deadlines and their consequences, and on his team is the ex-train operator who knows the system, the loose cannon, and the guy without a strong personality. The city scrambles to come up with the money, which it does in time to save almost all the hostages, then Matthau turns to preventing the color-coded criminals’ escape. One is killed by a cop, the other by his own men, and the leader third-rails himself to avoid capture. They track the final guy (Martin Balsam, later of Mitchell!) by looking through the records of fired train operators, recognizing the sick criminal during an apartment interview by his sneeze, previously heard over the intercom, and I ask you, is this the final shot of a serious crime movie?

by ·Comments Off on Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell (1968, Hajime Sato)

This is a completely looney Japanese horror oddball movie released in the Eclipse Shochiku set. It’s cheap, weird and highly entertaining, also atomic-bomb-obsessed and weirdly Vietnam War-referencing, with stock footage edited in at key moments.

The most doomed flight of all time encounters a UFO, receives a bomb threat and hosts a gun-toting hijacker at the same time. Large-faced hijacker Hirofumi has little effect as the plane flies through red skies filled with crazed engine-clogging birds then crashes, killing the pilot and leaving first officer Sugisaka in charge. On the ground, the hijacker runs off and gets possessed by aliens in his forehead (recalling Jeffrey Combs in From Beyond), while the bomb-threat fella hides his bomb and claims he was only kidding.

Potential bomber allowed to roam free:

The gov’t rep gets homicidal:

So the survivors are hiding in the plane from alien vampires who appear to kiss people to death (Yuko Kusunoki of Dodeskaden and Kurahara’s Thirst for Love is next to be captured/possessed) except for psychiatrist Kazuo Kato (Kurosawa’s Ran) who wants to go outside and study the aliens, while government representative Mano (Eizo Kitamura of the Yakuza Papers parts 2 and 3, and Modern Porno Tale: Inherited Sex Mania) proves to be a bigger asshole than the aliens or hijacker, getting people killed in order to save his own skin. Bomber dies blowing a hole in the side of the plane, and American Mrs. Neal (Kathy Horan of Genocide and The Green Slime) comes after the vampire with a rifle and loses. When our hero Sugisaka (with his woman on his arm) finally lights the hijacker on fire, the alien oozes out of his forehead and possesses Rep. Moto’s underling then kisses Moto to death.

Sugisaka and the girl leave the crash site and find out they were about a mile from civilization, but everyone in the city has been killed by aliens – much more efficient aliens than the one attacking the downed plane, I guess. Burned bodies and atomic blasts are invoked in the apocalytic finale.

Sugisaka was Teruo Yoshida, in Ozu’s An Autumn Afternoon a few years earlier, must’ve starred in too many horror movies in 1968-69 (including this, Horrors of Malformed Men, Inferno of Torture and The Joy of Torture) because he disappeared from the screen in 1970, and his loyal stewardess was Tomomi Sato of the 1979 Jigoku remake and Blackmail Is My Business.

by ·Comments Off on Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997, Johan Grimonprez)

Watched this during the site’s month-long hiatus. Any recollection of it? Not really. I know it’s by the guy who made that meta-Hitchcock movie. Let’s see if scrolling through the DVD sparks any memories.

Oh yeah, a narrated collection of stock footage, largely about hijackings, plus some random period clips, sidetrack stories and poetry by the narrator (aha, it’s inspired by two Don DeLillo novels) and segments about airport security. Not as gripping as the Hitchcock movie since it has no through-line plot or characters, but the history of airplane hijacking would earn the movie more interest a few years later.

R. Jones calls it “Grimonprez’ sensible indictment of art’s failure to produce a meaningful impact in Modern culture comparable to terrorism.”