PhD candidate at the University of Sheffield researching Australian horror cinema.
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Red Dust 1932
If Only Angels Have Wings (1939) had Clark Gable, no planes, and an East Asian setting, it'd look a lot like Red Dust (1932). Took me a while to realise that Dennis is supposed to be a massive piece of shit, not merely a "product of his time" in which a plantation owner/serial womaniser/borderline rapist could still be sold as hunky old dreamboat. Basically, the Dennis of Red Dust is as knowingly sociopathic as the Dennis of It's Always Sunny…
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Dirty Harry 1971
In 1971, four key films revolutionised the Hollywood protagonist. Dirty Harry, The French Connection, Straw Dogs, and A Clockwork Orange all saw the valiant, integral male heroes replaced by cowards, racists, rapists, and killers; folks who would have been the bad guys ten years earlier were now centre stage and driving the action. It was a subversion of the American ideal used to reflect society's growing distrust of authority, and it's a shift that bridges the gap between Bonnie & Clyde…