Category Archives: film

The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe – (1974) – D.G. Compton

The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe – (1974) – D.G. Compton
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Image sourced here.

Bertrand Tavernier based his 1980 film Deathwatch on this 1974 novel. In the film Romy Schneider plays a dying woman whose last days are watched on national television via a camera implanted in the brain of a journalist Harvey Keitel.

David Guy Compton (1930 – ) is a British author. He often writes science fiction set in the near future. He published his first science fiction novel, The Quality of Mercy, in 1965. He has not become hugely popular, but did achieve some recognition after co-writing a SF novel, Ragnarok, with Dr. John Gribbin.

He has written murder mysteries as Guy Compton (the first in 1962) and even a few romance novels as Frances Lynch.

In Bertrand Tavernier’s Death Watch (1980), Romy Schneider plays the dying heroine with the doubly punning surname Catherine Mortenhoe, whose death is being recorded on national TV in an ongoing soap opera of morbid video verité. — Garrett Stewart via Between Film and Screen: Modernism’s Photo Synthesis (2000)

A review:

I’ve read two novels by British writer D. G. Compton: Synthajoy (1968) and The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe (1974; also published as The Unsleeping Eye). Both novels deal with ethical problems raised by the use of technology to eavesdrop on human emotions. Both emphasize the human rather than the scientific side of the story, and they experiment with the subjective viewpoint of the narrator in a way reminiscent of Philip K. Dick. However, Compton’s writing style is more refined than Dick’s, which also makes it harder to overlook the implausibility of the technical innovations posited in each novel. –Glenn Frantz via http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/roboman/www/sigma/review/conmort.html [Oct 2006]

See also: reality TV – Deathwatch – 1974 – television – voyeurism

Premature burial

Premature Burial (1854) – Antoine Wiertz

“Can you possibly conceive it. The unendurable oppression of the lungs, the stifling fumes of the earth, the rigid embrace of the coffin, the blackness of absolute night and the silence, like an overwhelming sea.” –Guy Carrell in The Premature Burial (1962)

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Premature_Burial

See also: grave – asphyxia – E. A. Poe – Antoine Wiertz

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 – 1975)

Today would have been Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s 100th birthday. Belgian classical radio station Klara is running a special on him and one of the most surprising elements in his biography is that he accompanied silent films during a substantial part of his life. If you listen closely, you can hear this aspect in some of his music. He also scored films. After his death, his music was used in several films including favourites Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and Patrice Chéreau’s Intimacy. He also set one of my favourite short stories to music: Nikolai Gogol’s The Nose.

The Little Shop of Horrors

The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) – Fred Katz

There was a time in the early nineties – after I’d gotten hold of the film encyclopedia Cult Movie Stars by Danny Peary – when I visited nearly every video rental store in Antwerp in search of Roger Corman VHS copies. I managed to see about 20 Corman related films in that period of which The Intruder with William Shatner I still find the most rewarding.

A couple of months ago I viewed Bucket of Blood for the first time and now I am in the middle of re-viewing Little Shop of Horrors (1960).

What immediately struck me about Little Shop was the score for this cult black comedy, written by Fred Katz, an American composer working in the space age pop idiom, although this particular score is rather more jazzy than space age. It complements the film marvelously, giving it a very ‘arty’ feel which contrasts nicely with its subject matter. Fred Katz also scored Corman films Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961), The Wasp Woman (1960), Battle of Blood Island (1960), Ski Troop Attack (1960), Beast from Haunted Cave (1959) and A Bucket of Blood (1959).

The story of The Little Shop of Horrors is about a clumsy young man who nurtures a plant and discovers that it’s a bloodthirsty plant, forcing him to kill to feed it. It was written by Charles B. Griffith who collaborated with Corman on more than 20 films from 1956 to 1967.

It is one of the funniest combinations of comedy and horror since Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) but also manages to be quite eerie at times. The idea of a plant which hypnotizes its owner to go out in the streets in order to kill is quite uncanny. The final scene is particularly unsettling: when finally the last buds of the plant open they reveal the faces of the people it has eaten.

The story has been remade several times but I suggest to stick with the 1960 Corman version.

Wikipedia (which features an extensive write up on the film) says:

The Little Shop of Horrors is a 1960 black comedy film directed by Roger Corman. The film is famous for having been shot in two days. The film tells the story of a nerdy young florist’s assistant who cultivates a plant that feeds on human blood and flesh. The film is also noteworthy for featuring a young Jack Nicholson in a small role as Wilbur Force, the dentist’s masochistic patient. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Shop_of_Horrors [Sept 2006]

See also: http://www.spaceagepop.com/katz.htm [Sept 2006]

See also: The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)

Une Belle Dame Sans Merci

La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1926) – Frank Cadogan Cowper

Une belle dame sans merci is a merciless and beautiful lady, a femme fatale.

Keats’s poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci (French: “the beautiful lady without pity”) is recited by the protagonist of Susanna Moore’s In the Cut. I love films and books which heavily refer to literature. Examples include Borges and Erica Jong in Fear of Flying. There is a website dedicated to poetry in the movies.

Part of Lou Reed’s lyrics of Femme Fatale recorded by The Velvet Underground in 1966:

Here she comes,
You’d better watch your step,
She’s going to break your heart in two,
It’s true.

It is reported that Lou Reed wrote the 1966 song about “Warhol superstar” Edie Sedgwick at the request of Andy Warhol. Here is CIAO! MANHATTAN lost footage Of Edie Sedgwick.

 

Girl on the Bridge (1999) – Patrice Leconte

In search of hope and hopelessness

“Vous avez l’air d’une fille qui va faire une connerie” (Eng: You look like a girl who is about to commit a terrible mistake.) –Daniel Auteuil

Girl on the Bridge (1999) – Patrice Leconte
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La fille sur le pont (The Girl On the Bridge) is a French film released in 1999, directed by Patrice Leconte, starring Daniel Auteuil and Vanessa Paradis.

At the beginning of the film, the character played by Vanessa Paradis is about to throw herself off a bridge when she is asked by Daniel Auteuil: “Why are you doing this?” Vanessa’s character answers: “Because I am desperate” and than retorts: “What are you doing here?”. Auteuil answers: “I am looking for desperate women.”
See also: Girl on the Bridge (1999) – Patrice Leconte

Notability, significance, importance vs obscurity

In search of significance

Insignificance (1985) – Nicolas Roeg
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Plot Synopsis: Four 1950’s cultural icons (Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio and Senator Joseph MacCarthy) who conceivably could have met and probably didn’t, fictionally do in this modern fable of post-WWII America.

See also: significance – 1985 – film – Nicolas Roeg

Notice the words love and hate …

The Night of the Hunter (1955) – Charles Laughton
Notice the words love and hate have been tattooed across his knuckles.

The Night of the Hunter is a 1953 novel by American author Davis Grubb. The book was a national bestseller and was voted a finalist for the 1955 National Book Award. In 1955 the book was adapted by Charles Laughton and James Agee as the film The Night of the Hunter.

The story concerns an ex-convict who, acting on a story told him by his now-dead cellmate, cons the cellmate’s widow into marrying him in hopes that her children will tell him where their father hid the money from his last robbery. After killing their mother, he embarks on a hunt for the children, who have sensed his evil and are running from him.

The plot was based on the true story of Harry Powers, who was hanged in 1932 for the murders of two widows and three children in Clarksburg, West Virginia. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night of the Hunter [Sept 2006]

See also: serial killer – American cinema – 1955