wish-fulfillment for those of us who grew up imagining how great these dynamic stories would look if brought to life. If anything, as robustly portrayed by Alfred Molina, Doctor Octo- pus is improved here over his comicbook version, which de- volved over the years from a stocky, middle-aged, Theodore Bikel-type into a trimmer, more muscular, Beatle-coiffed stud muffin in science-fiction shades. The character also presided over one of the comic’s most scream- ingly miscalculated moments (THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #131), when Doc Ock actually lured the septagenerian Aunt May to the al- tar—in full bridal regalia, with her skirt revealingly slit to mid-thigh. (“With this ring, I thee... WEB?” asked the cover.)
STEALING BEAUTY and EVENING
Screenwriter Susan Minot
I recently set my DVR to record two different HD broad- casts, STEALING BEAUTY (20th Century Fox), the underrated 1996 film by Bernardo Berto- lucci, and EVENING (Universal), a 2007 film by Hungarian direc- tor Lajos Koltai that caught my eye on the strength of its out- standing cast. EVENING turned out to be a nice, if flawed surprise, an exquisitely photographed story of a dying woman’s thoughts about the great missed romantic opportunity of her life, despite the miscasting of a bland Patrick Wilson as the object of so much desire. Its depiction of a working class protagonist thrust into the dramas of the New England nouveau riche captures some- thing of the flavor of Fitzgerald’s THE GREAT GATSBY (which it ex- plicitly references), while the framing story evokes something of Alain Resnais’ PROVIDENCE
(1977), another story of deathbed ruminations with similar Magic Re- alist tendencies. But the big sur- prise came as I watched STEALING BEAUTY for the first time in a decade and discovered that both of these films, added to my hard drive within hours of each other, were written by Maine-based nov- elist Susan Minot. Though made a decade apart, both films are set in the real world but are infused with elements of creativity, psy- chology and even fantasy. Minot’s often erotic fiction has been de- scribed as realist and minimalist, but her work in film represents her as a fantasist or magic realist of some achievement.
THE VAMPIRE LOVERS Audio Commentary
If there’s ever been a shining example of what’s bad about au- dio commentaries, this is it. The participants are moderator Jona- than Sothcott, actress Ingrid Pitt, director Roy Ward Baker and screenwriter Tudor Gates. Soth- cott sounds terminally bored throughout by his own ques- tions—and why shouldn’t he be, when they are the likes of “So you worked with Peter Cushing; what was he like?”, “He was devastated by the death of his wife, wasn’t he?” and “You’ve gained a sort of immortality from this role, haven’t you, Ingrid?” Whenever Sothcott does touch on some- thing interesting, like his fleet- ing references to the early deaths of cast members Pippa Steele and Janet Key, he imme- diately changes the subject to a path more commonly trod. He also claims that THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (MGM) was the only Hammer film ever to gross $1,000,000 in America, which sounds awfully suspect. But the answers are even more confounding than his sort
of semi-questions. Pitt, who has apparently not been well and sounds prematurely aged, asth- matic and occasionally incoher- ent, responds to a scene of herself romping in the buff with Madeleine Smith by saying that it angers her when people say that this is a “lesbian” vampire film, because vampires aren’t sexually partial one way or an- other; they simply love people, all people, with all their hearts. Baker, bless his heart, says (as Ingrid is burrowing into the breasts of co-star Madeleine Smith) that he feels there is a les- bian angle, if you really look for it; he later claims that he directed the last of the Hammer Draculas (he’s actually correct about this until he adds, “Certainly the last of the ones they did with Chris- topher Lee”). He notes that a scene of Pitt vanishing into thin air was done entirely in the cam- era, by shooting it against a black backdrop and rewinding it in the camera—and then mentions that the second component of the shot (Jon Finch throwing a knife to shatter a vase of flowers) missed the first time and had to be reshot... How do you reshoot on rewound footage you’ve al- ready double-exposed? Gates, for his part, praises the final staking/beheading as the first decapitation in cinema and cer- tainly the best until the decapita- tion seen in THE EXORCIST. Whaaaaa?
But mostly this tired, dod- dering track with its endless mumbling about how Hammer worked such wonders with so little money, how kind Peter Cushing was, how much he loved his wife and was de- stroyed by her death, and how Hammer’s glory days were just about behind them (more than “just about,” wouldn’t you say?) indicates that this vein has been sucked completely dry.
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