Headhunters (2011/Magnolia Blu-ray)/I Was
A Spy (1932)/In The Devil’s Garden
(1971)/Rome Express (1932/VCI DVDs)
Picture: B-/C+/C/C Sound: B/C+/C/C Extras: C-/D/D/D Films: C-/C+/C+/C+
Now I
wanted to make a contrast between thrillers now and a long time ago to show how
even good thrillers can go bad quickly, even when they start out well simply by
not sticking to the basics.
Morten
Tyldum’s Headhunters (2011) starts
as a heist thriller with a thief (Aksel Hennie) excellent at stealing valuable
canvas art and replacing them with fine imitators, but he also has big money
and uses this to make up for his insecurities about not being tall enough and
other issues. However, he is about to
find some people are unhappy with his ways (people hate to have their
million-dollar paintings stolen, after all) and his convenient arrangements
(including with a crime partner) are all about to get messed with.
For the
first third-to-half of the film, this is well written, well acted, is somewhat
of a character study and has some interesting moments, but to my shock and
eventual horror, it all collapses and gets slap-happy stupid as soon as the
rest of it becomes a chase film and a very bad one at that, as if the early
part of the film did not matter. What a
mess!
Fans of
the Girl With trilogy will notice
several references to those films and books which is nice at first when this is
living up to those works, but then it implodes quickly and never, ever
recovers. What were the makers thinking? Is this an attempt to be more
commercial? Well, they sell out all the
viewers at that point and the rest of this promising film becomes a total
joke. If the makers had just stayed on
track with what they were doing, this would not have been a problem. Unfortunately, it becomes a dumb mess and one
of the biggest letdowns of the year.
Extras
include a Trailer and Behind The Scenes
featurette on the making of the film
In
comparison, we’ll look at three older British thrillers of various makes.
One is a
historical biopic that is also an espionage story. Victor Saville’s I Was A Spy (1932) has Madeline Carroll as a nurse (Marthe
Cnockaert) spying on the Germans in Brussels
during WWI to get information to the Allies.
Can she succeed? Will she get
caught? Will this all get her
killed? This is not bad and an untold
story of a woman who made a big difference, but it still follows some
biographical film formulas that hold it back, yet it at least holds it together
unlike Headhunters. Conrad Veidt is a bad German and a young
Nigel Bruce also stars. There are no
extras.
Sidney
Hayers (Circus Of Horrors, Burn, Witch, Burn) was an effective
action/thriller journeyman director for feature films and many a TV hit
(including some classic color episodes of the 1960s British TV classic The Avengers) and his sensibilities
from both are on display in the neat little thriller In The Devil’s Garden (1971) with a dangerous rapist of young
ladies on the loose. The film is not as
graphic as other films from the time, but it is often effective and is more of
a mystery film than an outright thriller.
Suzy
Kendall (trying to capitalize on her work in Argento’s Bird With The Crystal Plumage, reviewed on valuable, out-of-print
Blu-ray elsewhere on this site) works with young ladies when she starts to see
some of them become victims and then agrees to be the bait to lure the rapist
to get her so the police can get him.
Released at the peak of competition between major British studios
(Hammer, Amicus, Tigon, Eagle Lion, many independents) and their Hollywood counterparts as such films were booming at the
time.
It is not
a great film, but one with much talent involved and one that stays consistent
all the way. John Kruse, who wrote many
film and TV scripts and is especially known for The Saint with Roger Moore and Return
Of The Saint with Ian Ogilvy (both reviewed elsewhere on this site) makes
for an ideal combination with Hayers and this has more good moments than not,
making it worth your time to see how good this film can be. Add Leslie Ann
Warren in her feature film debut, Frank Finley, Freddie Jones, Anthony Ainley
(from the underrated Spy series Spyder’s Web, also reviewed on this site) and
Allan Cuthbertson among a fine cast and you have another underrated film worth
a look. There are no extras.
Finally
we have another Conrad Veidt British thriller, Walter Forde’s Rome Express (1932) which is a smart
old-fashioned murder mystery on a train, but instead of being about the murder
all the time, it is also about the people, how they interact and it is made for
an audience that had not seen many thrillers (especially in sound) yet, so it
is a smart drama which happens to be a thriller. With its visual density and fun cast
(including Joan Barry as a likable actress) it is a mystery fan favorite that
has not been seen in decades, but is now on DVD.
Set
pretty much entirely on a train, it was scripted by Sidney Gilliat (who would
soon pen a few classics for Hitchcock among others and even did a Bulldog
Drummond film) and on its 80-year anniversary, is still fun, interesting and
worth of screening with the great detective movie series (Sherlock Holmes,
Charlie Chan, The Thin Man, etc.) of the time in its attitude and of its
class. It even has Gunther Krampf as its
Director of Photography, the same man who lensed Veidt in his 1924 classic The Hands Of Orlac. This is a fun genre film that is good when it
is good and charming when it shows its age.
It too holds together well in what is not a simple 62-minutes mystery
B-movie and also shows more basic mistakes Headhunters
has. Sadly, there are no extras, but
this is definitely worth rediscovering, especially for mystery fans.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Headhunters is the best performer here being the only Blu-ray, but
it has some motion blur and detail issues that do not help despite being shot
in the Super 35mm film format. That
leaves the 1.33 X 1 black and white image on Spy showing its age, but looking good for it, the 1.33 X 1 black
and white image on Rome looking much
older because the film has needed a pricey restoration for years and the
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 EastmanColor image on Garden having its own motion blur issues in what looks like
PAL-to-NTSC conversion glitches though that print looks fine for the most part.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Headhunters is even better with a consistent soundfield, good
soundmix, is well recorded, warm and plays nicely throughout. There is an attempt to upgrade the sound on Garden for lossy Dolby Digital 5.1, but
it is too compressed, as is its lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 sound version, both
weaker than expected, so be careful of volume switching. Lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono makes up the
other two DVD soundtracks with Spy
sounding better than expected and the notoriously problematic Rome
needing serious cleaning and restoration.
- Nicholas Sheffo
