I’ve seen Mannequin in Red described as Swedish Giallo and there are scenes which are reminiscent of the later Mario Bava film Blood and Black Lace especially with it’s fashion house setting, but it reminded me more of the few German Krimi films I’ve seen albiet with a bit more focus on style.
The plot revolves around the investigation by husband and wife private detective team the Hillmans (Karl-Arne Holmsten and Annalisa Ericson) into the murder of model turned blackmailer…
I don’t know much about the Japanese Pink Film or Pinku eiga “genre” (it’s not a genre) and the few examples I’ve seen have tended to be either exploitation movies or leaned towards the arty/experimental but I was surprised - and delighted - to find this was an Ozu parody!
Bergmans Reliquarium is a music video of sorts for the Swedish singer/songwriter Veronica Maggio. It’s a kind of mash-up of Bergman imagery (cf. Róisín Murphy’s Evil Eyes) and is quite well done I think. There are a couple of cringey pop video bits but it’s good on the whole and is extra interesting for being filmed in part in Bergman’s home on Fårö and involving Bergman actresses Gunnel Lindblom, Pernilla August, and Lena Olin, with Ewa Fröling’s daughter Tilde Fröling and Jarl Kulle’s daughter Maria Kulle recreating roles played by their parents - oh, and there’s one shot from one of yer actual Bergman movies too!
Elizabeth Taylor plays a woman recovering from a mental breakdown and haunted by intrusive visions from a traumatic event in her life. She moves into a new house with husband Laurence Harvey and best friend Billie Whitelaw for some rest and relaxation but before long is witness to some grisly goings-on through the windows of the looming empty mansion which backs on to their garden. No one else has seen what she sees and the police can find no evidence of foul play. Is she imagining things or is someone trying to drive her insane?
I liked this but there were too many Nazis and sado-masochists and not enough model railway enthusiasts...
Again not good but there's a strange underlying pessimism to the "adventures" in this final outing. Christopher Neil's character is constantly under threat of eviction and physical violence and is filled with self-loathing (nice girl Elaine Paige loves him but he knows he's too awful to start a relationship with her). It's the closest this series gets to a film noir!
Not good, but probably worth watching for Adrienne Posta's Liza Minnelli parody...
If you enjoyed the experimentation with kinetic and optical art, image distortion, and lighting shown in L'enfer then Clouzot's final film La prisonnière (AKA Woman in Chains) is well worth checking out.
This viewing was actually of the "Black and Chrome" edition of the film which I found interesting although I couldn't say I thought it was better or worse than the original.
Snow Day was originally intended to be The Adventures of Pete and Pete the Movie, and although it was rewritten the Pete and Pete episode structure and tropes are evident throughout. So siblings Mark Webber and Zena Grey are analogs of Big Pete and Little Pete respectively, and the Little Pete analog has *a mission* to take down an oddball adversary (Chris Elliott’s Snowploughman) and would really like Big Pete analog to help, but he’s busy obsessing over some hot…