I'm a fan of both Ken Russell and Edgar Allen Poe and looked forward, in anticipation, of Ken Russell's reworking of Poe's horror stories. Well I was definately schocked: not in horror, but by the fact I wasted money on such a bad film. Calling the film amateurish would give it a redeaming value. All the performances were appalling: what's with all the BAD accents? Actors with teeth that bad should never show them, much less get a close up (and no it wasn't makeup)! Now I know why I couldn't find this film to rent first--it's that bad. ...
The Great Man Does It Again
The great Ken Russell does it again; he takes the digital filmmaking revolution that giant step forward by showing everyone with a dv video camera how to make a bonafide feature film -- and a strikingly inventive and entertaining one at that! Bravo, Ken! More! More!
Russell-ific
I was super curious waiting for this one. How was Ken Russell going to pull off his newly found freedom, that of taking digital camera in hand and filming friends and cohorts in his back garden in loosley structured ten minute bits, stringing it all together, finding wide release and perhaps regaining the acclaim that has been missing him all these years? How? With skill, as simple as that. There is, as Russell-ites know, more skill in this man's pinky toe than all of Hollywood. And beginner film makers should take note. There is a world of possibilities in cinema. They are as limited as your imagination. "Louse" is wildly inventive and has all the great Russell trademarks: shock editing, surrealistic sets, costumes and make-up. And I'll be darned if their aren't some fabulous music videos with soulful music and classic Russell-ian touches: lovers by the sea side, a dancer on a gravestone to name a few. And since this is a horror movie, don't forget, be prepared for some pretty unsettling images. The humour is droll and Ken Russell acts through out. I was, quited frankly, impressed by the quality of the images. There may be some noticeable budgetary restraints, but after you settle in to the movie, you'll be back in Russell land. Ahhhh. It's been a long time.
Wittily updated from one of Dracula author Bram Stoker's lesser-known horror novels, The Lair of the White Worm is a camp classic that only Ken Russell could have delivered. It's got all the perversity one expects from the bombastic director of Tommy and Altered States: sensible plotting, intelligent dialogue laced with double entendre, graphic imagery with Boschian intensity, and a mischievous disregard for good taste and decorum. In other words, it's heretically hilarious, especially when skeptical Lord D'Ampton (fresh-faced Hugh Grant, in one of his earliest films) begins to suspect that seductive neighbor Sylvia (Amanda Donohoe, game for anything) is connected to the local legend of a monstrous serpent that feeds on sacrificial virgins. Evidence mounts with... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Amanda Donohoe - Hugh Grant Director(s): Ken Russell DVD Release Date: Released the 19 August 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Polish-born actress Ingrid Pitt's erotically supercharged presence is the highlight of this double bill of vampire chills from Hammer Films. In Countess Dracula, Pitt stars as an aging noblewoman (inspired by the real-life Erzebeth Bathory) who discovers the secret to eternal youth in the veins of young virgins, while in The Vampire Lovers (based on J. Sheridan LeFanu's "Carmilla"), Pitt's sensuous bloodsucker seduces Hammer starlets Madeleine Smith and Kate O'Mara and incurs the vengeful wrath of Peter Cushing. Countess is the more sober of the two films, with Jeremy Paul's script and Peter Sadsy's direction playing out more like an Old Dark House mystery than Hammer horror, while Lovers' aims for comic-book thrills with plenty of nudity and violence (much of... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Peter Sasdy DVD Release Date: Released the 26 August 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Those who believe British miniseries to be too proper and corseted may want to make an exception for Ken Russell's 1992, four-hour BBC adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's scandalous novel. Between the full frontal female nudity and empowering shed-rocking sex scenes, this is something for everyone to have a randy good time. To save you the bother of fast-forwarding, episodes two and three contain the very naughtiest bits involving the illicit affair between "loyal wife, good companion" Constance Chatterly (Joely Richardson) and Oliver Mellors (Sean Bean), gamekeeper to Constance's embittered, paralyzed husband (James Wilby). When he insists his wife take a lover and produce an heir to his fortune, he didn't have the lowly "wild man of the woods" in mind. Neither did Constance, but soon enough... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Ken Russell DVD Release Date: Released the 24 June 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This 1966 masterpiece by Michelangelo Antonioni (The Passenger) is set in the heady atmosphere of Swinging London, and stars David Hemmings as an unsmiling fashion photographer hooked on ephemeral meaning attached to anything: art, sex, work, relationships, drugs, events. When a real mystery falls into his lap, he probes the evidence for some reliable truth, but finds it hard to reckon with. Vanessa Redgrave plays an enigmatic woman whose desperation to cover something up only seems like one more phenomenon in Hemmings's disinterested purview. This is one of the key films of the decade, and still an unsettling and lasting experience. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Vanessa Redgrave - David Hemmings Director(s): Michelangelo Antonioni DVD Release Date: Released the 17 February 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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You are now entering Interzone, William S. Burroughs's phantasmagorical land of junk, paranoia, and crawly things. Best travel advice: "Exterminate all rational thought." In David Cronenberg's superbly shot, unnerving warp on the Burroughs novel, the novelist himself becomes a main character (played in an implacable monotone by Peter Weller), with elements from Burroughs' life--including the shooting of his wife during a "William Tell" game, and bohemian friends Kerouac and Ginsberg--added to frame the book's wild visions. This is, ironically, a somewhat rational approach to an unfilmable book (and it makes a hair-curling double bill with Barton Fink, another look at writerly madness, with both films sharing Judy Davis). Cronenberg is a natural for oozing mugwumps and typewriters... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Peter Weller - Judy Davis Director(s): David Cronenberg DVD Release Date: Released the 11 November 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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