Tuesday's Overlooked Film: Attack of the Robots (1966)

Jess Franco was a Spanish director who has probably made more feature-length films than any other director. His filmography has about 200 films. Many of them are erotic horror, some of them are more mundane action and sex flicks. His reputation has never been too high and I've gathered many of his films indeed are of poor quality, but some of them have redeeming qualities about them, such as hallucinatory sequences and imaginative camera work.

I just managed to see two of his films, which I believe were the first for me. I saw both on 35 mm on big screen. The first one of the two was much better than the latter one, and I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the screenwriter. Cartes sur table AKA Attack of the Robots (1966) was written by Jean-Claude Carrière, one of the best-known and most revered French screenwriters of the last 40 years. He's written lots of stuff for directors like Buñuel, Godard, Peter Brook, Philip Kaufman... and Jess Franco.

Cartes sur table is an enjoyable spy romp with many parodical touches. The film is full of silliness and it's almost always in the right tone, so it's not overdone or unintentional. There are some light touches of sadomasochism and fetishism, which both show in Carrière's and Franco's later films. Cartes sur table is also a reminiscent of Godard's Alphaville which was done a year earlier, so it's possible Carrière and Franco wanted to parody the better-known film. Both star Eddie Constantine as a hardboiled hero (though he seems silly and clumsy in Franco's film), both have Paul Misraki's music, and both have a huge central computer that speaks incoherently in the end.

Cartes sur table is one of those cheap spy flicks the French made in abundance in the sixties (remember the Lemmy Cautions and Nick Carters Constantine starred in?), but it's also a lightweight New Wave film in its self-reflectiveness which is never too loud. Comes recommended by me - if you can catch it, as it seems like there's no decent DVD publication.

And then I saw Franco's later Count Dracula with a stellar cast of Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom and Klaus Kinski, but this was only boring. Nothing else. Sorry. Nothing to see here.

Franco died earlier this year, having directed his last film in 2012. Its main character is called Al Pereira, just like Constantine in Cartes sur table.

More Overlooked Films here at Todd Mason's blog (after a hiatus).

K J Wignall: Death

Death is the third and last installation in Kevin "K J" Wignall's Mercian trilogy, set of vampire books aimed at YA audience. I liked all three of them and I think I can safely say that I'd rather see kids reading these than, say, the Twilight books. I reviewed the two earlier books here and here.

As has happened before, I was a bit lost in the beginning of Death, since I'm not very good with plots and I keep forgetting all kinds of stuff that take place in books and in films - the same here with Blood and Alchemy. But the themes and the atmosphere are more important in any book, not to mention the style, and Wignall has both in abundance. The mystic and sinister character of Lorcain Labraid is given a satisfactory background in chapters that are forceful and well-built. The Mercian trilogy doesn't suffer from genre clichés.

I'll have to read the whole trilogy back to back at some point to really appreciate all the things in it, especially the ending of Death. I'm a bit sad to hear that this probably won't be out in Finnish after all, but here's still hoping.

Kevin Wignall's vampire trilogy

Huh, Kevin Wignall and vampires? Sounds quite an unlikely combination, you say? The writer of noir masterpieces Who Is Conrad Hirst? and Among the Dead? Well, it's happened: Blood is just out, under Kevin's nom de blume, KJ Wignall, and it's quite excellent, in a way the more recent vampire doorstoppers aren't.

There's a funny anecdote in this: Kevin said to me when he came to Finland that he wrote the trilogy several years ago, but at the time he was told that no one's interested in vampires anymore. But then we all know what happened and Kevin sold the trilogy. And Blood's pretty damn good! It's aimed at teenage readers, but I've read lots less mature horror novels. This is full of magic and action (and even some downright scary moments), and the sadness and melancholy that everyone who's read anything by Kevin is bound to recognize. I was ready to read the next volumes at one sitting...

The book is slightly marred by the fact it's written before the recent vampire boom and hence there's not much surprise in what makes Wignall's protagonist run.

I don't like to give away plot points and direct you straight to KJ Wignall's website here. You'll find all the scoop there. And one, not so minor point: this will be published also in Finnish next year.

Summertime Blues

I know, I know, it is pretty boring to post just to say is busy and will be busy and will be having a vacation, but that's what I'm gonna do right now. My daughter came to Finland to spend the summer with us and we are doing a bit of travelling, so there won't be much to write.

But, ah man, there's been a lot to write about. I just don't know where I'm spending my time (on Facebook, maybe?), but some things I've been meaning to write about but haven't:

1) the Red Riding trilogy: superb rendering of David Peace's book quartet: serial killing put in the social context (I really was meaning to write a long essay about this, but suffice to say that T. Jefferson Parker did this thing better in his California Joe; brilliant nevertheless)

2) Robert Harris's Rome novels: utter bores, don't waste your time on them

3) a Mexican wrestling movie from the early seventies I watched with some friends of mine: forgot the title, but the movie was hilarious, just like the sixties Batman TV show

4) Arturo Perez-Reverte's novels on Captain Alatriste: just can't get hooked on them, even though they are said to be popular and hark back to the golden days of the adventure novels, give me a Thomas B. Costain any day over Perez-Reverte!

I know I'm forgetting something. I just know it.

I'm reading Justin Cronin's celebrated vampire novel The Passage (Ensimmäisten siirtokunta in Finnish) and liking it a great deal, but