Downgrade And Afterlife

A parade of my favorite films in no particular order Kyle - Columbus, Indiana USA https://instagram.com/tragic_creature_cinema?igshid=NzZlODBkYWE4Ng==

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Film: Caligula

Director(s): Tinto Brass, Bob Guccione & Giancarlo Lui

Year: 1979

Caligula is a 1979 erotic historical drama film focusing on the rise and fall of the Roman Emperor Caligula. It stars Malcolm McDowell, Teresa Ann Savoy, Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole, John Steiner and John Gielgud. It is the only feature film produced by the men's magazine Penthouse.

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Film: The Searchers

Director: John Ford

Year: 1956

If John Ford is the greatest Western director, The Searchers is arguably his greatest film, at once a grand outdoor spectacle like such Ford classics as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950) and a film about one man's troubling moral codes, a big-screen adventure of the 1950s that anticipated the complex themes and characters that would dominate the 1970s. John Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a former Confederate soldier who returns to his brother Aaron's frontier cabin three years after the end of the Civil War. Ethan still has his rebel uniform and weapons, a large stash of Yankee gold, and no explanations as to where he's been since Lee's surrender. A loner not comfortable in the bosom of his family, Ethan also harbors a bitter hatred of Indians (though he knows their lore and language well) and trusts no one but himself. Ethan and Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), Aaron's adopted son, join a makeshift band of Texas Rangers fending off an assault by renegade Comanches. Before they can run off the Indians, several homes are attacked, and Ethan returns to discover his brother and sister-in-law dead and their two daughters kidnapped. While they soon learn that one of the girls is dead, the other, Debbie, is still alive, and with obsessive determination, Ethan and Martin spend the next five years in a relentless search for Debbie -- and for Scar (Henry Brandon), the fearsome Comanche chief who abducted her. But while Martin wants to save his sister and bring her home, Ethan seems primarily motivated by his hatred of the Comanches; it's hard to say if he wants to rescue Debbie or murder the girl who has lived with Indians too long to be considered "white." John Wayne gives perhaps his finest performance in a role that predated screen antiheroes of the 1970s; by the film's conclusion, his single-minded obsession seems less like heroism and more like madness. Wayne bravely refuses to soft-pedal Ethan's ugly side, and the result is a remarkable portrait of a man incapable of answering to anyone but himself, who ultimately has more in common with his despised Indians than with his more "civilized" brethren. Natalie Wood is striking in her brief role as the 16-year-old Debbie, lost between two worlds, and Winton C. Hoch's Technicolor photography captures Monument Valley's savage beauty with subtle grace. The Searchers paved the way for such revisionist Westerns as The Wild Bunch (1969) and McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), and its influence on movies from Taxi Driver (1976) to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Star Wars (1977) testifies to its lasting importance.

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Film: Rabbit's Moon

Director: Kenneth Anger

Year: 1971 (Version 2 - 1979)

Rabbit's Moon is an avant-garde short film by American filmmaker Kenneth Anger. Shot in the Films du Panthéon Studio in Paris 1950. Shooting was never completed. Anger retrieved the footage from Cinémathèque Française in 1970 and released a sixteen minute version in 1971. A seven minute version was released in 1979. 

Pierrot waxes romantic, entranced by the moon. Harlequin appears and bullies him, then uses a magic lantern to project an image of Columbine. Pierrot tries to court the illusory Columbine unsuccessfully, then enters a mystical moon-realm from which he returns dead. A Japanese fairy tale meets commedia dell’Arte. All in white, the naïf Pierrot lies in a wood. Doo-wop music plays as he rises, stares about, and reaches for the moon. Although music abounds and the children of the wood are there at play, Pierrot is melancholy and alone. Harlequin appears, brimming with confidence and energy. He conjures the lovely Colombina. Pierrot is dazzled. But can the course of true love run smooth?

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Film: Nishi Ginza Station

Director: Shohei Imamura

Year: 1958

This short comedy concerns the extramarital affair of a drugstore owner. It is based on a popular song by the star of the film, Frank Nagai.

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Film: A Taste of Honey

Director: Tony Richardson

Year: 1961

This film version of Shelagh Delaney's play follows the hopes and dreams of five people. In this domestic drama, British teen Jo (Rita Tushingham) is the neglected 16-year-old daughter whose promiscuous, alcoholic mother  Helen (Dora Bryan) is far to dominating. When Jo has a brief fling with a black sailor and Helen takes up with a new lover, their already tense relationship is further strained. Jo faces more complications as she discovers she is pregnant, but finds support when she moves in with an odd but thoughtful gay student named Geoffrey (Murray Melvin). 

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Film: They Live By Night

Director: Nicholas Ray

Year: 1948

Wrongly convicted for murder as a teen, "Bowie" Bowers (Farley Granger) breaks out of prison with two other criminals, Chickamaw (Howard da Silva) and T-Dub (Jay C. Flippen). While hiding out, Bowie meets Chickamaw's niece, Keechie (Cathy O'Donnell), and they bond. Wanting to clear his name, Bowie decides to participate in a robbery with the others, so he can afford a lawyer. As he gets drawn further into crime, Bowie contemplates running away with Keechie and starting over.

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Film: Blast of Silence

Director: Allen Baron

Year: 1961

A hit man is called in to rub out a mob boss. He meets an old flame and has second thoughts about the killing until she rejects him. Allen Baron writes, directs and stars in the dark crime drama.

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Film: Shoah

Director: Claude Lanzmann

Year: 1985

Run Time: 570 Minutes

The creators of the brilliant French documentary Shoah courageously assume that their audience is willing to sit through 570 minutes' worth of interviews and little else. As unpromising as this sounds, rest assured that you will sit and listen. Relentless "inquisitor" Claude Lanzmann probes the memories of several survivors of the Holocaust--as well as several ex-Nazis who helped perpetrate the horrors. Gradually, one becomes aware that what happened in Germany and occupied Europe in the years 1933 through 1945 was not as "unthinkable" as it may seem to modern viewers; the recollections of those directly involved demonstrate all too well that it can happen anywhere at any time. One review of Shoah has carped that "it really could have been a bit shorter." No, it couldn't. 

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Film: Island of Lost Souls

Director: Erle C. Kenton

Year: 1932

This first film version of H.G. Wells' Island of Dr. Moreau stars Charles Laughton as Dr. Moreau, a dedicated but sadly misguided scientist who rules the roost on a remote island. Shipwrecked sailor Edward Parker (Richard Arlen) finds himself on Moreau's island, agreeing to stick around until another boat can come along and take him home. But that's not quite what Moreau has in mind: he'd rather Parker stay on the island and marry the exotic Lota (Kathleen Burke), who curiously possesses the characteristics of the panther. In fact, all the island's natives seem more animal than human, especially the hirsute Bela Lugosi. And why not? They are animals who've been transformed by Moreau into humanlike creatures via surgery. Moreau's plans to mate Parker and Lota are complicated by the arrival of Parker's fiancee Leila Hyams, who has been brought to the island by ship's captain Stanley Fields, one of Moreau's flunkies. When Moreau kills Fields for this insubordination, he makes the mistake of breaking one of the rules he himself has imposed on the island: That no creature shall kill another. Island of Lost Souls does its job of inducing goosebumps so well that one can forgive the cherubic excesses of Charles Laughton in his portrayal of Dr. Moreau. The film would be remade under Wells' original title in 1978, with Burt Lancaster in the Laughton role.

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Film: The Uninvited

Director: Lewis Allen

Year: 1944

A pair of siblings from London (Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey) purchase a surprisingly affordable, lonely cliff-top house in Cornwall, only to discover that it actually carries a ghostly price—and soon they’re caught up in a bizarre romantic triangle from beyond the grave. Rich in atmosphere, The Uninvited, directed by Lewis Allen, was groundbreaking for the seriousness with which it treated the haunted-house genre, and it remains an elegant and eerie experience, featuring a classic score by Victor Young. A tragic family past, a mysteriously locked room, cold chills, bumps in the night—this gothic Hollywood classic has it all.

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Film: Burke And Hare

Director: Vernon Sewell

Year: 1972

THE PIMPS AND THE PROSTITUTES AND THE BODY-SNATCHERS. THE BROTHELS AND DENS OF INIQUITY.

When the supply of bodies of executed criminals begins to dry up, William Burke and William Hare find new ways to keep up with demand.

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Film: Love And Other Cults

Director: Eiji Uchida

Year: 2017

Born in a regional city, a young girl named Ai (Sairi Ito) is sent to a cult commune by her religious maniac mother and lives there for seven long years. After the cult is exposed by the police, Ai starts a new, normal life going to a regular middle school, but can't find a place to fit in normal society. Ai drops out to continue finding her path in life, first living with a rock-bottom delinquent family, then moving on to be part of a middle-class family, all along trying to find her place in this world. The only person who understands Ai is Ryota (Kenta Suga), another drop-out and cast-off from society. Ryota finds his path in a shady world of delinquents while Ai ends up working in the sex industry. Two teens' purity gets swallowed up by the urban jungle of a big regional city. A black comedy depicting lives of modern youth and their struggles in a place where there is no way out.

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Film: Manhattan

Director: Woody Allen

Year: 1979

Director Woody Allen's love letter to New York City stars Allen as frustrated television writer Isaac Davis, a twice-divorced malcontent facing middle age alone after his wife, Jill (Meryl Streep), leaves him for a woman. Isaac is dating fresh-faced Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), a high school girl he knows is wrong for him, and begins to wonder if he and brainy writer Mary (Diane Keaton), the mistress of his best friend, Yale (Michael Murphy), might make a better couple.

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Film: Yojimbo

Director: Arkira Kurosawa

Year: 1961

The incomparable Toshiro Mifune stars in Akira Kurosawa's visually stunning and darkly comic Yojimbo. To rid a terror-stricken village of corruption, wily masterless samurai Sanjuro turns a range war between two evil clans to his own advantage. Remade twice, by Sergio Leone and Walter Hill, this exhilarating genre-twister remains one of the most influential and entertaining films of all time.

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Film: Kiss of Death

Director: Henry Hathaway

Year: 1947

Offered parole from Sing Sing in exchange for information about one of his old partners in crime, jewel thief Nick Bianco (Victor Mature) reluctantly cooperates with district attorney Louis D'Angelo (Brian Donlevy), who's trying to take down violent murderer Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark). But when Udo goes free despite the district attorney's best efforts, Bianco and his wife, Nettie (Coleen Gray), are in the killer's sights, and he'll stop at nothing to settle the score.

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Film: Strangers On A Train

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Year: 1951

In one of Alfred Hitchcock's suspense classics, tennis pro Guy Haines (Farley Granger) chances to meet wealthy wastrel Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker) on a train. Having read all about Guy, Bruno is aware that the tennis player is trapped in an unhappy marriage to to wife Miriam (Laura Elliott) and has been seen in the company of senator's daughter Ann Morton (Ruth Roman). Baiting Guy, Bruno reveals that he feels trapped by his hated father (Jonathan Hale). As Guy listens with detached amusement, Bruno discusses the theory of "exchange murders." Suppose that Bruno were to murder Guy's wife, and Guy in exchange were to kill Bruno's father? With no known link between the two men, the police would be none the wiser, would they? When he reaches his destination, Guy bids goodbye to Bruno, thinking nothing more of the affable but rather curious young man's homicidal theories. And then, Guy's wife turns up strangled to death. Co-adapted by Raymond Chandler from a novel by Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train perfectly exemplifies Hitchcock's favorite theme of the evil that lurks just below the surface of everyday life and ordinary men.

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Film: Le Corbeau

Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot

Year: 1943

A mysterious writer of poison-pen letters, known only as Le Corbeau (the Raven), plagues a French provincial town, unwittingly exposing the collective suspicion and rancor seething beneath the community’s calm surface. Made during the Nazi Occupation of France, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Corbeau was attacked by the right-wing Vichy regime, the left-wing Resistance press, the Catholic Church, and was banned after the Liberation. But some—including Jean Cocteau and Jean-Paul Sartre—recognized the powerful subtext to Clouzot’s anti-informant, anti-Gestapo fable, and worked to rehabilitate Clouzot’s directorial reputation after the war. Le Corbeau brilliantly captures a spirit of paranoid pettiness and self-loathing turning an occupied French town into a twentieth-century Salem.