All Slights Deserved

I was commenting just a couple of weeks ago (with regard to Sexmission ) how eastern European comedy comes across as very broad and affected to western sensibilities, at least during the Cold war era. Probably the closest we've seen to an English language film done in the same style would, for obvious reasons, be Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers , which for all its visual flair and Komeda's wonderful score falls rather flat with the slapstick pratfalls. As I mentioned last time the prominence of this kind of humour probably owed a lot to the censorious climate, where more subversive wit was usually frowned upon. A good example of this is Milos Forman's The Fireman's Ball , which although not especially radical by our standards was criticised in Czechoslovakia for its veiled attack on the petty bureaucracy of communism. No such ire was directed towards Lemonade Joe , which was released a few years earlier; perhaps because it does precisely the opposite ...

Another Friday night at the Gothique Society and this time a double bill of American films. Given the growing backlog of unwritten or unfinished reviews on this blog I'll have to keep it brief. First up was Curse of the Undead ; an example of a rarely spotted sub genre: the vampire western. Australian actor Michael Pate stars as Drake Robey, a mysterious gunslinger whose arrival in a small town in the Old West coincides with a spate of mysterious killings. After some misgivings he wins the support of pretty maiden Dolores Carter (Kathleen Crowley), who's inherited the family farmstead after the death of her father and recruits the stranger as a ranch hand. Robey isn't quite so well received by Dolores's beau Dan (Eric Fleming), the local preacher, who conveniently uncovers a diary that may hold the secret to the gunslinger's true nature. Given how certain facets of vampire lore had become a staple of film horror, it's notable that Curse of the Undead ret...