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This box-office hit from 1969 is an important pioneer of the American independent cinema movement, and a generational touchstone to boot. Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper play hippie motorcyclists crossing the Southwest and encountering a crazy quilt of good and bad people. Jack Nicholson turns up in a significant role as an attorney who joins their quest for awhile and articulates society’s problem with freedom as Fonda’s and Hopper’s characters embody it. Hopper directed, essentially bringing the no-frills filmmaking methods of legendary, drive-in movie producer Roger Corman (The Little Shop of Horrors) to a serious feature for the mainstream. The film can’t help but look a bit dated now (a psychedelic sequence toward the end particularly doesn’t hold up well) but it retains its original power, sense of daring and epochal impact. — Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

Easy Rider

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The controversy that surrounded Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange while the film was out of circulation suggested that it was like Romper Stomper: a glamorisation of the violent, virile lifestyle of its teenage protagonist, with a hypocritical gloss of condemnation to mask delight in rape and ultra-violence. Actually, it is as fable-like and abstract as The Pilgrim’s Progress, with characters deliberately played as goonish sitcom creations. The anarchic rampage of Alex (Malcolm McDowell), a bowler-hatted juvenile delinquent of the future, is all over at the end of the first act. Apprehended by equally brutal authorities, he changes from defiant thug to cringing bootlicker, volunteering for a behaviourist experiment that removes his capacity to do evil.

It’s all stylised: from Burgess’ invented pidgin Russian (snarled unforgettably by McDowell) to 2001-style slow tracks through sculpturally perfect sets (as with many Kubrick movies, the story could be told through decor alone) and exaggerated, grotesque performances on a par with those of Dr Strangelove (especially from Patrick Magee and Aubrey Morris). Made in 1971, based on a novel from 1962, A Clockwork Orange resonates across the years. Its future is now quaint, with Magee pecking out “subversive literature” on a giant IBM typewriter and “lovely, lovely Ludwig Van” on mini-cassette tapes. However, the world of “Municipal Flat Block 18A, Linear North” is very much with us: a housing estate where classical murals are obscenely vandalised, passers-by are rare and yobs loll about with nothing better to do than hurt people.

On the DVD: The extras are skimpy, with just an impressionist trailer in the style of the film used to brainwash Alex and a list of awards for which Clockwork Orange was nominated and awarded. The box promises soundtracks in English, French and Italian and subtitles in ten languages, but the disc just has two English soundtracks (mono and Dolby Surround 5.1) and two sets of English subtitles. The terrific-looking “digitally restored and remastered” print is letterboxed at 1.66:1 and on a widescreen TV plays best at 14:9. The film looks as good as it ever has, with rich stable colours (especially and appropriately the orangey-red of the credits and the blood) and a clarity that highlights previously unnoticed details such as Alex’s gouged eyeball cufflinks and enables you to read the newspaper articles which flash by. The 5.1 soundtrack option is amazingly rich, benefiting the nuances of performance as much as the classical/electronic music score and the subtly unsettling sound effects. –Kim Newman

A Clockwork Orange

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This original and hippest version of Shaft cruised onto cinema screens in 1971. John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) is an African-American private eye who has a rocky relationship with cops, an even rockier one with Harlem gangsters, and a healthy sex life. The script finds Shaft tracking down the kidnapped daughter of a black mobster, but the pleasure of the film is the sum of its attitude, Roundtree’s uncompromising performance, and the thrilling, Oscar-winning score by Isaac Hayes. Director Gordon Parks (The Learning Tree) seems fond of certain detective genre cliché (e.g., the hero walking into his low-rent office and finding a hood waiting to talk with him), but he and Roundtree make those moments their own. Shaft produced a couple of sequels, a follow-up television series, and a remake starring Samuel L Jackson, but none had the impact this movie did. –Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

Shaft

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Death Race 2000, Paul Bartel’s 1975 cheapo satire about a futuristic international sport–an anything-goes car race where drivers score points for hitting pedestrians–stars David Carradine as a hero behind the wheel and Sylvester Stallone as his nemesis. The film is clever and macabre enough as a modernist satire, but finally overplays its hand in grim, decadent humour. The sets are gloriously artificial, and former Andy Warhol-star Mary Woronov is in sexy, comic form. –Tom Keogh

Death Race 2000

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Much of the controversy surrounding Takashi Miike’s Audition centres on the disturbing nature of the later part of the film–understandable when you consider the imprint these admittedly horrific images leave on the viewer–but fails to note the intricate social satire of the rest. This is a film that offers insight into the changing culture of Japan and the generation gap between young and old. Shigeharu Aoyama is looking for an obedient and virtuous woman to love and asks, “Where are all the good girls?”–a comment that seals his fate. A fake audition is organised to find Aoyama a wife. Asami Yamazaki is introduced as the virtuous woman he is looking for, dressing for the majority of the film in white and behaving with the courtesy of an angel, especially when juxtaposed against the brash stupidity of the other girls at the audition. Although his friend takes an immediate “chemical” dislike to her, Aoyama begins a love affair to end all love affairs. But as Asami’s history unfolds we see her pain and torture and slowly understand that the tortured in this instance holds the power to become the torturer. Aoyama is slowly drawn away from his white, metallic and homely environment into the vivid- red and dirty-dark environment of Asami’s sadistic world.

Audition can be viewed on a number of levels, with important feminist, social and human rights issues to be drawn from the story. However, the real power of this film is its descent into the subconscious, to a point where reality is blurred and the audience is unable to decide whether the disturbing images on screen are real or surreal. This refined, hard-hitting and essentially Japanese style of horror is ultimately much more powerful than anything offered by Hollywood. This is a film that will get under your skin and infect your consciousness with a blend of fearless gore and unimaginable torture. It is not for the faint-hearted. –Nikki Disney

Audition

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If you’ve ever wanted to hear Jack Nicholson sing (or try to) or marvel at the sight of Ann-Margret drunkenly cavorting in a cascade of baked beans, Tommy is the movie you’ve been waiting for. As it turns out, the Who’s brilliant rock opera is sublimely matched to director Ken Russell’s penchant for cinematic excess, and this 1975 production finds Russell at the peak of his filmmaking audacity. It’s a fever-dream of musical bombast, custom-fit to the thematic ambition of Pete Townshend’s epic rock drama, revolving around the titular “deaf, dumb, and blind kid” (played by Who vocalist Roger Daltrey) who survives the childhood trauma that stole his senses to become a Pinball Wizard messiah in Townshend’s grandiose attack on the hypocrisy of organised religion.

The story is remarkably coherent considering the hypnotic dream-state induced by Russell’s visuals. Tommy’s odyssey is rendered through wall-to-wall music, each song representing a pivotal chapter in Tommy’s chronology, from the bloodstream shock of “The Acid Queen” (performed to the hilt by Tina Turner) to Nicholson’s turn as a well-intentioned physician, Elton John’s towering rendition of “Pinball Wizard” and Daltrey’s epiphanous rendition of “I’m Free”. Other performers include Eric Clapton and (most outrageously) the Who’s drummer Keith Moon, and through it all Russell is almost religiously faithful to Townshend’s artistic vision. Although it divided critics when first released, Tommy now looks likes a minor classic of gonzo cinema, worthy of the musical genius that fuelled its creation. –Jeff Shannon Amazon.co.uk Review
Even by the standards of a genre not characterised by restraint, the 1974 rock opera Tommy is endearingly barmy, a bizarre combination of Pete Townshend’s disturbed inspiration and director Ken Russell’s wildly eccentric vision. Even if you gamely try and read allegorical meaning into it, the story is frankly odd: a child becomes psychosomatically deaf, dumb and blind after witnessing the murder of his father by his stepdad and goes on to become rich and famous as the world pinball champion (since when was pinball a world-class competitor sport?), before setting himself up as a latter-day messiah. It’s about the travails of the post-war generation, the disaffection of youth, the trauma of childhood abuse, the sham nature of new-age cults, and many other things besides. At least, that’s what Townshend and Russell would have you believe. But what’s really important is the many wonderful, utterly bonkers set-pieces–effectively a string of pop videos–that occur along the way, performed by great guest stars: Tina Turner as the Acid Queen, Eric Clapton as the Preacher, Keith Moon as Uncle Ernie, Elton John’s mighty rendition of “Pinball Wizard”, even Jack Nicholson doing a turn as a suave specialist.

Roger Daltrey is iconic in his signature role, and Oliver Reed makes up for a complete inability to sing with a bravura performance as his sleazy stepdad, but best of all is Ann-Margret as Tommy’s mother Nora: her charismatic presence holds the loose narrative together and she richly deserved her Academy Award nomination; the sight of her in a nylon cat suit being drenched in baked beans and chocolate from an exploding TV set is worth the price of admission alone.

On the DVD: Tommy comes to DVD in a two-disc set, with the feature on disc one accompanied by three audio tracks: Dolby Stereo or 5.1 surround, as well as the original “Quintaphonic” surround mix–a unique experience with effectively two pairs of stereo tracks plus a centre track for the vocals. The anamorphic picture adequately recreates the original theatrical ratio. The second disc has a series of lengthy and illuminating new interviews with the main (surviving) players: Townshend, Russell, Daltrey and Ann-Margret, in which we learn among other things, that Daltrey wasn’t Townshend’s first choice for the role, that Stevie Wonder was the original preference for the Pinball Wizard, and that Ken Russell had never heard of any of these rock stars before agreeing to helm the movie. There’s also a feature on the original sound mix and its restoration for DVD. All in all, a satisfying package for fans of one of the daftest chapters in the annals of rock music. –Mark Walker

Tommy

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The Crow set the standard for dark and violent comic-book movies (like Spawn or director Alex Proyas’s superior follow-up, Dark City), but it will forever be remembered as the film during which star Brandon Lee (son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee) was accidentally killed on the set by a loaded gun. The filmmakers were able to digitally sample what they’d captured of Lee’s performance and piece together enough footage to make the film releasable. Indeed, it is probably more fascinating for that post-production story than for the tale on the screen. The Crow is appropriately cloaked in ominous expressionistic shadows, oozing urban dread and occult menace from every dank, concrete crack, but it really adds up to a simple and perfunctory tale of ritual revenge. Guided by a portentous crow (standing in for Poe’s raven), Lee plays a deceased rock musician who returns from the grave to systematically torture and kill the outlandishly violent gang of hoodlums who murdered him and his fiancée the year before. The film is worth watching for its compelling visuals and genuinely nightmarish, otherworldly ambience. –Jim Emerson

The Crow

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While other films directed by Nicolas Roeg have attained similar cult status (including Walkabout and Don’t Look Now), none has been as hotly debated as this languid but oddly fascinating adaptation of the science fiction novel by Walter Tevis. In The Man Who Fell to Earth, David Bowie plays the alien of the title, who arrives on Earth with hopes of finding a way to save his own planet from turning into an arid wasteland. He funds this effort by capitalising on several highly lucrative inventions, and in so doing becomes the powerful leader of an international corporate conglomerate. But his success has negative consequences as well–his contact with Earth has a disintegrating effect that sends him into a tailspin of disorientation and metaphysical despair. The sexual attention of a cheerful young woman (Candy Clark) doesn’t do much to change his outlook, and his introduction to liquor proves even more devastating, until, finally, it looks as though his visit to Earth may be a permanent one. The Man Who Fell to Earth is definitely not for every taste–it’s a highly contemplative, primarily visual experience that Roeg directs as an abstract treatise on (among other things) the alienating effects of an over-commercialised society. Stimulating and hypnotic or frightfully dull, depending on your receptivity to its loosely knit ideas, it’s at least in part about not belonging, about being disconnected from the world–about being a stranger in a strange land when there’s really no place like home. –Jeff Shannon.

The Man Who Fell to Earth

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Pandora couldn’t resist opening the forbidden box containing all the delusions of mankind, and let’s just say in Mulholland Drive David Lynch indulges a similar impulse. Employing a familiar film noir atmosphere to unravel, as he coyly puts it, “a love story in the city of dreams”, Lynch establishes a foreboding but playful narrative in the film’s first half before subsuming all of Los Angeles and its corrupt ambitions into his voyeuristic universe of desire. Identities exchange, amnesia proliferates and nightmare visions are induced, but not before we’ve become enthralled by the film’s two main characters: the dazed and sullen femme fatale, Rita (Laura Elena Harring), and the pert blonde just-arrived from Ontario (played exquisitely by Naomi Watts) who decides to help Rita regain her memory. Triggered by a rapturous Spanish-language version of Roy Orbison’s “Crying”, Lynch’s best film since Blue Velvet splits glowingly into two equally compelling parts. –Fionn Meade

Mulholland Dr.

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Even by Roger Corman’s thrifty standards, The Little Shop of Horrors was a masterpiece of micro-budget movie-making. Scripted in a week and shot, according to Corman, in two days and one night, it made use of a pre-existing store-front set that serves as the florist’s shop where most of the action takes place. Our hero is shambling loser Seymour Krelboined, sad-sack assistant at Mushnick’s skid-row flower shop and who is hopelessly in love with Audrey, his fellow worker. Threatened with the sack by Mushnick, Seymour brings in a strange plant he’s been breeding at home, hoping it’ll attract the customers. It does, and the store starts to prosper, but Seymour is horrified to discover that the only thing the plant will thrive on is blood, fresh, human blood at that.

The sets are pasteboard, the acting is way over the top, and altogether Little Shop is an unabashed high-camp spoof, not to be taken seriously for a second. Even so, Corman notes that this was the movie “that established me as an underground legend”. Charles Griffith, the film’s screenwriter, plays the voice of the insatiable plant (“FEED ME!”), and billed way down the cast list is a very young Jack Nicholson in a bizarre, giggling cameo as Wilbur Force, a masochistic dental patient demanding ever more pain. The film’s cult status got it turned into an off-Broadway hit musical in the 1980s, with a great pastiche doo-wop score by Alan Menken, which was subsequently filmed in 1986. The musical remake is a lot of fun, but it misses the ramshackle charm of the original.

On the DVD: Little Shop of Horrors on disc does not even boast a trailer, just some minimal onscreen background info about the production. The clean transfer, 4:3 ratio, and digitally remastered mono sound faithfully recapture Corman’s bargain-basement production values. –Philip Kemp

Little Shop of Horrors

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