Who's That Knocking At My Door (1968)

Martin Scorsese's 1968 debut, Who's That Knocking At My Door, is released to DVD by the BFI on Monday 27th March. 

The film originally started out as Scorsese's NYU graduation project in 1965 and took three years to make. 

It was worth it.

During a press screening at the New York Film Festival, no less than John Cassavetes proclaimed it to be "as good as Citizen Kane", before adding, "No, it's better than Citizen Kane, it's got more heart"

Right from the off, it proved Scorsese to be very special indeed.

Who's That Knocking At My Door? Why Hollywood, it's Marty Scorsese, and he's about to change your world forever.

Read my full review at The Geek Show

Mother, Jugs and Speed (1976)

Mother, Jugs and Speed is a deeply uneven 1970s black comedy concerning the exploits of a private Los Angeles ambulance company that chases their shouts with a maniacal passion, eager to beat any and all competition. In short, making a buck and getting through the night comes before the welfare of the patients who end up in their rigs. 

The central non PC and self explanatory titular trio consist of 'Mother' Tucker (Bill Cosby) a hard drinking and driving seen-it-all veteran who keeps a beer cooler in the front of his ambulance, a gun in the glove compartment and likes to harass nuns trying to cross the road, 'Jugs' (the gorgeous Raquel Welch) the firm's switchboard operator who has been studying to become an ambulance woman in her spare time and is the butt of the office jokes and come ons thanks to her beauty and prodigious chest, and 'Speed' (Harvey Keitel) a former Vietnam ambulance driver who takes on the job whilst suspended from the police force for allegedly dealing speed. 

Other characters in this ragtag organisation include Larry Hagman as Murdoch, an unsavoury character who tries to rape a comatose college student in the back of his ambulance en route to the hospital, a young Bruce Davison who is tragically shot down by a druggie in one of the film's most dramatic moments and Allen Garfield as the slobbish, shyster owner of the company.  Sadly these supporting characters come and go and have little or no real depth as the film concerns itself with our three leads. This would be OK if the leads were that well written or well played. No real offence to Cosby, Welch and Keitel but the film's tone is so uneven that each one of them seems to be performing in a different movie, specifically Keitel who gives his usual dramatic and thoughtful turn which jars considerably when much around him is being, rightly or wrongly, played for laughs. When the film attempts a romantic subplot between Keitel and Welch it is distinctly unconvincing and ill thought out. Welch might look fantastic and Keitel might be a great actor but it's probably Cosby who judges the material the best and walks the tightrope in the most effective manner. Director Peter Yates really needed to give better notes to the trio because, whilst the film has its moments of both high comedy (such as Raquel Welch having to tend to an overweight man with his you know what caught in his zipper) and high drama (the aforementioned shooting and the death of a woman in child birth having been turned away from one hospital) the actors veer wildly and uncertainly between the two.

There's a feeling here that Mother, Jugs and Speed wants to be something akin to M*A*S*H but in cynically choosing to emulate and ape such a unique mixture of the hard edged and the slapstick that Altman's anti-war film had, it falls somewhat flat because there's no real depth or heart to it. The other difference of course is that M*A*S*H may have had eccentric, foul mouthed anarchic heroes but you knew instinctively that they were giving their all to save lives, Mother, Jugs and Speed's characters are often so deeply obnoxious (and Hagman's is especially a case in point) that such a fundamental core of good naturedness and professionalism is often entirely absent.

Still, you can't beat that earthy humour and cynical edge 70s cinema had and whilst there are better 70s movies out there, there are also worse ones.

Fail Safe (2000)

Fail Safe, a novel written at the very height of the Cold War in 1962 by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, was a frightening proposition; detailing the dilemmas faced by U.S. leaders and Pentagon officers when a malfunction on a bomber plane's 'fail safe' box instructs a pilot to nuke Moscow. How can you raise the alarm when you've so successfully trained your squadrons to ignore all orders other than those given electronically by said titular box? How can you convince the Soviets, your ideological foe, that planes with nuclear capabilities are heading for their airspace because of a mistake?

This chilling story soon attracted the interest of Hollywood and, in 1964, Sidney Lumet and scriptwriter Walter Bernstein brought their adaptation to the screen for Columbia Pictures. Unfortunately it coincided with Columbia's other big release of that year, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb, Stanley Kubrick's inspired satire that was based on a very similar novel, Red Alert by Peter Bryant, the nom de plume of Peter George (indeed, so similar was Fail Safe to 1958's Red Alert that George sued Wheeler and Burdick for plagiarism, settling out of court) Opening some eight months before Kubrick's film, at the director's behest, Fail Safe failed at the box office. Sometimes I guess all you want to do with a threat so terrifyingly real is laugh at it; Dr Strangelove was a deserved success.

But Fail Safe was too important to just fade away, it still had so much to say and refused to become a footnote in Hollywood, or indeed American, history.  Word of mouth grew over the years for Lumet's  film to make a respectable 'cult' favourite specifically among the liberal left - one of whom was George Clooney who was alleged to insist guests at his home watch the film.

But it was more than more appreciation for Clooney and in 2000 he executive produced a TV movie adaptation for America's CBS network with a distinctive twist; the film would be broadcast live - the first time CBS had aired a live drama since 1960 (this revival of live TV would later be replicated by BBC4 in the UK with the 2005 adaptation of The Quatermass Experiment). It was a bold move and one that is naturally, markedly different from other productions; the modern generation, accustomed to the slick features of Hollywood or modern TV, could be alienated by such a theatrical approach and, if some quarters were, then too bad for them. As a fan of vintage TV I'm more familiar with its stagy roots so had no issues with this particular gamble and I personally believe this novel approach amplified the tension integral to Bernstein's script and the story as a whole.  When you're presenting a story about the biggest thing that could possibly go wrong in the modern world, the glitches of live TV add an accelerated duality to the context of the story and any fluffs or missed cues ultimately seem small beer in comparison.  

Clooney hired British director Stephen Frears, who cut his teeth on TV productions in the UK, shot the thing in black and white and keeping all period details and assembled a strong cast of American talent to populate the story of politicians, advisors, Pentagon personnel, experts and airmen. They included Richard Dreyfuss with a heartfelt and twitchy turn as the beleaguered President and Harvey Keitel as the high ranking voice of reason who seems to almost prophesize the impending destruction from the film's opening minute. Each actor gives their all and equips themselves incredibly well for the challenge, producing believable sweaty browed, dry mouthed performances for the plot itself. I could wax lyrical about many of the stars on offer here or wonder just how Norman Lloyd hasn't aged a day since St Elsewhere concluded (!) but as many before me will invariably and rightly have sung the praises of Dreyfuss or even Clooney - starring as the bomber pilot - I will instead single out Brian Dennehy in his role of Gen. Bogan of Strategic Air Command; the veteran actor never puts a foot wrong and delivers a note perfect performance. It's also nice to see the grand news anchor Walter Cronkite introduce the piece at the behest of producer/star Clooney.

Fail Safe takes the sobering, chilling prospect of several million people being killed borne from a catastrophic mistake and the hard, almost unthinkable decisions made in the ensuing negotiations with a perverse logic, whilst never losing the personal raw edge to sucker punch the viewer.

Like the utterly shittifying Threads, this is the type of production that makes you sign up to CND if you haven't already. Clooney knows this and, in a closing caption, ensures we do too by bringing us back to the present day and reminding us just how many countries currently have nuclear capabilities. Fail Safe may have been about The Cold War but the threat at its core is still sadly all too relevant.

You can watch the whole thing on YouTube.

Maurice Colbourne's Way

For any fan of retro TV - specifically TV of the mid 70s to late 80s - Maurice Colbourne is a familiar name and face.

He's best remembered for lead roles in BBC shows as diverse as Gangsters, the punchy, gritty and surreal Birmingham set 1970s thriller and Howards' Way, the glamourous 1980s Sunday night drama of boat building and high fashion that was suggested as Britain's answer Dallas and Dynasty.

As John Kline, Gangsters

For sci fi fans, he also starred as Jack Coker in the definitive 1981 BBC adaptation of John Wyndham's Day Of The Triffids, and was once shortlisted (alongside Warren Clarke) for the role of intergalactic revolutionary Roj Blake in Blake's 7 ultimately losing the role to Gareth Thomas. He did however have a recurring role as the mercenary Lytton in two 1980s Doctor Who Stories, Resurrection of The Daleks alongside Peter Davison and Attack Of The Cybermen with Colin Baker.

As Lytton, Doctor Who: Resurrection Of The Daleks

He also appeared in several cult classics in supporting roles that saw the tall and trim Colbourne cast as the heavy. He provided brilliant menacing performances in programmes such as Strangers, The Return Of The Saint and Van Der Valk. As well as appearing on the big screen, notably in Ridley Scott's debut film The Duellists, in which he appeared as Harvey Keitel's second. 

The Duellists

But surprisingly and sadly, there's little actually out there about the man himself on the net.

Why is that?

Well partly it's due to his tragic and premature death at the age of 49. Colbourne died of a heart attack whilst mending the roof on his home in Brittany, on 4th August 1989 leaving behind his wife, Chan Lian Si and their daughter, Clara, aged just nine at the time. It also spelled the end of Howards' Way, the show coming to a close with a sixth and final series that explained Tom had died whilst out sailing his beloved boat. 

The only information I had ever gleaned about this actor whom I had long admired was from interviews on TV shows and DVD commentaries by his co-stars, who all claimed that he was a very nice quiet and gentle giant of a man. Colin Baker in the Attack Of The Cyberman DVD commentary recalls a somewhat shy man who would get in early and walk through his lines alone on set, mumbling them over and over again as he worked out his movements and how he would play each scene.

As Lytton, Doctor Who: Attack Of The Cybermen

Whilst on a recent holiday in Settle, Yorkshire I went to a book fair and picked up a random selection of books at just 50p a pop. One of them was a companion/making of book about Howards' Way and at last I got to get some more background on Colbourne. I have to say it was a pleasure to read up about him in the book and interviews and it's a pleasure to get to know him, away from the characters he played, from there.

The book

Colbourne was born Roger Middleton in Sheffield in 1939. Sheffield, then as indeed now, is famous for its steel industry and as a young teen, not wishing to add to that industries employment statistic, he originally wanted to run away to sea, a result of reading too much Marryat and Conrad as a boy. With no qualifications to his name, he began an apprenticeship as a stonemason in his native city. However, like Tom Howard, the sea was calling and to realise this ambition he journeyed to Liverpool, only to find the town in one of its regular slumps, with many merchant seamen out of work and claiming the dole.

From Liverpool he went up the M62 to Manchester where he became a fairground roustabout, working the Ghost Train at Bellevue initially before travelling with the touring fairs. The fairgrounds weren't for him, though he met some amazing and interesting characters, recalling one "The wife of a director of one fair - she could lay a man out with a single blow" Eventually he ended up in London, wanting to become a writer but ending up working as a waiter. It was a chance encounter with the movie star Tom Courtenay that planted the seed in his mind of becoming an actor.

He auditioned for the Central School of Speech and Drama and, after a couple of false starts, he won a place. He would change his name to Maurice Colbourne in tribute to an actor of the same name who had passed away in 1965 and had shared the same birthday 24th September (but obviously not in the same year) as him. Following his training, he went into Rep touring Birmingham and Leicester performing Shakespeare one week and Brecht the next. Eager for more experimental work, the tail end of the 60s saw him working in fringe theatre; a touring group of David Hare's and Jim Haines' Arts Lab. Ultimately, Colbourne became a director of the Half Moon theatre (a disused synagogue) in London's East End. It proved to be a successful and radical theatre troupe.

Gangsters title sequence

Television came calling in the mid 70s and Colbourne's career there was swiftly assured, especially when playing the lead role of former SAS man and intelligence puppet John Kline in Trevor Martin's groundbreaking Gangsters "Usually I get cast as villains," he commented in 1985 when taking the role in Howards' Way, a big departure for him, "which I have to say I quite enjoy playing"

Howards' Way cast

The book discusses the nomadic existence Colbourne was feeling at the time of filming Howards' Way "I have to do a hell of a lot of travelling, between London, Southampton and Birmingham, and we need a big car when the whole family's aboard  - wife, daughter and cats" The car was a Volvo 480ES and the cats numbered three, one of whom, a marmalade called Albie 'insisted' on going on location! It also claims the show helped reunite his interest and love of the sea.

He met his wife Chan Lian Si, a Malay Chinese and nurse on Hampstead Heath. She was out jogging and Colbourne was indulging in his favourite past time of fishing. It was a hobby he continued when the couple moved back to London (after a spell living in his native Sheffield), fishing on the reservoir just north of his Hackney home; "In summer I leave the rehearsal rooms in Acton, travel home on the hot and dusty tube, pick up some sandwiches and a flask, or maybe a can of Special Brew, bung my rugs in the car, and within ten minutes I can be on the bankside, casting my eyes around for fish"

Other hobbies include music - 60s pop, The Beatles and Crosby Stills and Nash, reading biographies, playing poker and horse racing, specifically the National Hunt.

Acting didn't seem to be the only career he wanted either, having considered opening a Malaysian restaurant with his wife in Bristol and alternatively, relocating to Hampshire to take over the running of a mushroom farm, another example of his liking for the rural life; "It's a beautiful part of the world, and the people are relaxed and tolerant. We'd taken it as far as arranging a loan from the bank and everything was ready to roll, but at the last minute we rechecked the figures and found we'd be working more for the bank than for ourselves. I wouldn't want to live in the country without working there. I haven't much time for weekend cottage types"

Sadly as I say Colbourne died in 1989, an actor. But he can take some pride in being an actor who had a place in the hearts of millions of viewers who watched him as Tom Howard every Sunday evening before they went to work the following day, in a BBC show that is still fondly remembered to this day.

This striking artwork of Colbourne as Kline in Gangsters comes from the excellent 7 Inch Cinema a media event group based in Birmingham which has often screened Gangsters, originally some six years ago now as an all nighter!

Gangsters is such a wonderful piece of television, a rich and heady brew that throws Colbourne's anti hero against Triads, Yardies, Asian gangsters and the Intelligence Services. Bold and utterly off the wall, it really deserves it's own blog post...and maybe I will one day? But for now, here's the opening titles to give you a flavour of what was Colbourne's break through role

I'm indebted to the book Howards' Way: The Story of the BBC TV Series by Gerard Glaister and Ray Evans for the detail of this post. Howards' Way has long been a guilty pleasure of mine (not that I truly think any pleasure can be guilty) and this is a great read for anyone interested in the show.

Out On Blue Six : Bjork

A little bit of the eccentric Icelandic pixie tonight, Bjork with the excellent theme to the 90s film The Young Americans (Harvey Keitel as a US narcotics cop on secondment in London) Play Dead, composed by David Arnold.

Love this

End Transmission

Bad Lieutenant, Great Acting

Bad Lieutenant is Abel Ferrara's 1992 film detailing the daily life of a corrupt police lieutenant ostensibly investigating crimes and pursuing the perpetrators but in reality more interested in pursuing his own vices. 

It is without a doubt, Ferrara's finest achievement and contains from Harvey Keitel, in the titular role, his finest performance.

Set in New York during a fractious baseball season, Keitel's character (who is never named beyond 'Lieutenant') doubles wager upon wager, corals his colleagues into his debt, takes copious amounts of drugs ranging from cocaine and crack cocaine, steals drugs from crime scenes to sell on himself, ignores petty crime and generally uses his status to his own ends. Perhaps the most vivid example of this final action is the scene in which he confronts two teenage girls out driving their father's car without a licence and forces one into showing him her ass and the other into mimicking a blow job whilst he furiously masturbates against the driver's door. It's a grubby, unflinching and repetitive scene (you'll lose track of how many times the phrase 'Have you ever sucked a guy's cock?' is uttered as he tries to persuade the girls to be complicit in his sick powerplay) that Ferrara refuses to shy away from, forcing us the viewer into the Lieutenant's depraved state of mind just as much as he is forcing the two girls. Like the film in general, this scene makes you feel very dirty.

But apart from feeling very dirty from watching it, you also feel like you have witnessed a truly dark, twisted piece of genius. The best films are made to linger in the mind and Bad Lieutenant is no exception. It is a vivid, uncompromising and utterly compelling study of addiction, the evils of society and the search for redemption. At it's centre is one of the most traumatic crimes depicted in movies; the gang rape of a nun within a church. The scene of the Crucifix coming to life, of a Christ, nailed to the cross and crying out in anguished horror as he's made to look down upon the desecration of one of his servants is one of the boldest scenes in cinema, up there with something Ken Russell would concoct. The figure of Christ would appear once more later in the film seemingly coming to Keitel, who is unable to come to terms with how the abused nun can forgive her attackers, as he breaks down and begs for his forgiveness (only for it to be revealed that his Saviour is in fact a Church going old black lady) It's a bold raw performance from Keitel (who by this stage of the film we have already seen full frontal nudity from, as well as him 'chasing the dragon' in several depraved stupors and the outdoor wanking scene with the two girls) It is here that his pathetic animalistic wailing as the tears fall freely onto his crumpled features makes you want to turn away. For a moment you feel he may be taking it too far and that that is why it is so hard to watch but then you realise it has gone beyond acting and far beyond over acting. It's like watching a soul, a complete existence of faults and strengths, vice and good laid bare for consideration and is the type of performance Keitel's old pal De Niro could only dream of. 

In 2009 renowned auteur Werner Herzog directed Nicholas Cage in Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans taking great pains to point out that it was neither a remake nor a follow up. It's a great film, with a brilliant performance from Cage and some equally memorable moments ("His soul is still dancing") but the tone is much more palatable, Cage's off the rails lieutenant is played for manic laughs rather than the uncomfortable soul searching that Keitel and Ferrara placed so realistically on the screen. They're both worth watching, I'd recommend them in a heartbeat, but it's the original that I'd also recommend a strong stomach for. Herzog and Cage give us a movie, Ferrara and Keitel give us an open wound.

Cop Land

Cop Land is one of the 90s hidden gems of US cinema. Directed by James Mangold (who made Walk The Line yet is also responsible for Cruise cheese fest Knight And Day...go figure?) it is a half policier and half western that boasts a surprising against type leading performance from Sylvester Stallone as Freddy Heflin, the paunchy, half deaf small town Sheriff of Garrison, New Jersey.

Perhaps why it's so surprising is that in a cast that includes such acting heavyweights as Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel, and is littered with sterling supporters like Ray Liotta, Robert Patrick, Cathy Moriarty, Michael Rapaport, John Spencer and Janeane Garofalo, he more than holds his own. It's the kind of role Stallone has always been - I feel - better suited to; a character who is washed up, punchy and in short, a bit simple. The type of character the audience is automatically on side for. I can never understand why he didn't concentrate on these figures more. I always preferred Rocky in the first two films and lost interest when he became Uncle Sam's champion, running parallel with that other OTT all action propaganda dummy, Rambo.  

Freddy is woken from his slumber when he realises the largely police populated small town of Garrison (the Cop Land of the title) is rife with corruption. A rather messy fatal error across the river in New York has forced town honcho Ray played by Harvey Keitel to fake the suicide of his nephew Michael Rapaport and take him into 'hiding' in Garrison; 'hiding' in plain sight really, but as the entire populace are police, set up in the town by Keitel, no one says a word. Sooner or later however, Rapaport needs to be dispensed with, but he smells a rat and flees into the woods. It's up to Freddy to finally take a long overdue stand and bring the fugitive to custody in the city so he can testify against Keitel and all the other dirty cops.

De Niro stars as Moe Tilden, an Internal Affairs cop who knows Keitel from their training days and has long suspected him of shady dealings. Although they only have one scene together in the film, the long standing off screen friendship and the, to that date, three films they'd together (Mean Streets being perhaps the best remembered) is palpable and adds a real depth to their antagonism and history that the audience automatically buys into.

This is a De Niro before he started accepting any old job and became embarrassing. Indeed, what I view as De Niro's last truly great performance in Tarantino's Jackie Brown was filmed just as this production was wrapping. There's some wonderful bits of business from him here, including an improvised sandwich eating (it was actually his on set lunch that day) when Stallone pays him a visit in New York.

It's a wonderful gritty, grainy film with an assured directorial flair and one that keeps all the big names in check that is quite surprising given that this was only Mangold's second feature. It already suggests his interests in good old fashioned American storytelling ie the western (he gave us a superb remake of 3:10 To Yuma a few years ago)  and by the last reel we witness a virtual re-imagining of the John Wayne film Rio Bravo, which featured a principled Sheriff taking a stand against an entire town who want to see his prisoner dead. Stallone is of course Wayne (and it's interesting that his character is called Heflin, the name shared by star of several westerns like Shane, Van Heflin) and in a typical 90s reboot, his only ally is not a boozy Dean Martin but a cokehead; Ray Liotta

It's a film that feels genuine, has a novelistic approach and boasts a rather sublime mournful fanfare style soundtrack by Howard Shore and The Royal London Philharmonic Orchestra. Each supporting character feels right and even looks right; indeed, all bar Robert Patrick were New Yorkers I believe, and remember this was a film that was clearly so littered that Mangold had to excise the scenes featuring Blondie star Deborah Harry! 

But that's not to say it's a perfect film. The plot is a little flawed to say the least. Why did Ray hide Rapaport's 'Superboy' only to try to kill him days later? I appreciate he sold his little safe haven to his cop colleagues and had to invest in them the ideal that if they messed up he'd protect them, so maybe after he'd bumped him off he'd just lie that Superboy got a new life, but even so, it's a little hard to swallow. It strikes me he should have just pushed him off the bridge in the first instance, but then we'd have had no film. So, hey ho!

Oh and I've always felt Janeane Garofalo looked rather fetching in her Sheriff uniform. Shame she just disappears in the film really, saying she didn't have the heart for the fight, which is a little at odds with her feisty opening scene.