Murder in a Blue World

On a roll with three consecutive giallo-inspired hits, Spanish director Eloy de la Iglesia shoehorns all the trappings of the genre into a near-future thriller that openly lifts its style from Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, complete with classical music, copycat droogs and a plan to electronically eradicate aberrant behavior.  The result is, as one might expect, a mixed bag of social satire and slasher tropes that proves there are only so many balls a film can juggle at one time.

Ana (Sue Lyon) is a trust-fund orphan and respected healthcare worker who moonlights as a serial killer of young men between the ages of 17 and 30.  Her modus operandi involves seducing victims in various disguises, making love, then stabbing them in the chest with a scalpel.  As luck would have it, David (Chris Mitchum), a disgruntled member of the aforementioned droogs, witnesses Ana disposing of a body and follows her home.  His plan to blackmail her sets the stage for class warfare that can only end in murder.    

 

Blue World finds Iglesia making odd creative choices, not the least of which are the constant Kubrick references.  The famous home invasion scene from A Clockwork Orange is restaged here almost note for note.  Lead actress Sue Lyon, who played Lolita in Kubrick’s film of the same name, is seen reading Nabakov’s novel.  And a TV broadcast interrupts to talk about the controversy Clockwork has caused around the world…making this a film about a film that’s featured in the film.  It’s all very meta.

 

But that’s just a hyper-stylized distraction from Ana’s violent compulsions.  Iglesia is obviously riffing on his familiar themes of social inequity and totalitarianism; Ana hides within the sheltered upper class while poor violent offenders receive shock therapy at the hands of Jean Sorel.  The message may be a bit heavy-handed but Iglesia uses the giallo formula to keep the audience grounded while sneaking in his pet obsessions.  Blue World is aberration itself…but an interesting one nonetheless.

 

Cauldron Films’ Blu-ray is a welcome addition to Igelsia’s catalog on hi-def with a great archival interview from Chris Mitchum (who explains his short-lived international fame), interview about the dubbing process, video essay, commentary track from Kat Ellinger, image gallery and a standard-def VHS cut of the film under the title Clockwork Terror.  The transfer itself comes from a new 2K restoration and is free from any damage or distractions.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tormented

Image
The west coast always struggled to create a creepy atmosphere on screen.  All that southern California sunshine just doesn’t lend itself to ghostly apparitions or gothic castles.  But  Tormented  (1960) gives it a good try, staging its opening scene in an abandoned lighthouse where blackmail turns into murder - and one cover up leads to another.  Director Bert I. Gordon, better known for his giant-sized - but low-budget - monster movies, works well at this level, turning in a film that delivers small scares but perhaps his most  professional finished product. Tom Stewart (played by genre regular Richard Carlson) is a fairly successful jazz pianist whose impending marriage to Meg Hubbard (Susan Gordon) will put him in an entirely new tax bracket.  Trouble is his old flame, Vi (Juli Reding), isn’t taking this lying down.  After  allowing  her to fall to her death in the opening scene, Tom is haunted by disembodied visions of his ex-lover who refuses to go quietly into the afterlife.  And
Read more

The Cat and the Canary

Image
My favorite directors have always been showoffs:  Hitchcock, DePalma, Spielberg (when he’s feeling frisky) and gonzo auteurs like Sam Raimi.  There’s just something about their cinematic ambition, constantly reminding the audience that, yes, there actually  is  someone behind the camera calling the shots.  And that directorial discontent shines through even in the early days of the medium, such as Paul Leni’s 1927 adaptation of  The Cat and the Canary .  While the rest of the industry was still learning the basics of visual language, Leni fills his frame with tracking shots, POVs and dramatic lighting that set the standard for every spook show to come!  Gathered for the reading of the last will and testament of eccentric recluse Cyrus West,  the potential heirs meet up in his decrepit mansion to discover who will inherit the estate and family jewels.  Predictably there is some petty jealousy when young Annabelle West is named the sole beneficiary…that is, if she can be proved sane afte
Read more

Impulse

Image
William Shatner, for all his ego and arrogance, always seemed comfortable being the butt of a joke.  His career outside of the  Star Trek  franchise was a bumpy road of corny TV shows and enjoyable B-movie dreck.  But he never delivered anything less than 100% “Shatner!”  Like 1974’s  Impulse , a regional drive-in quickie directed by William Grefé ( Stanley, Mako: Jaws of Death ) that casts the once and future Captain Kirk as a psychologically troubled con man whose childhood trauma leads to a string of murdered women.  After dumping the body of his last victim in a Florida canal, Matt Stone (Shatner) is on the prowl for another financial windfall, this time using a phony investment scam to entice Ann (Jennifer Bishop) into a romantic relationship.  But when Ann’s daughter, Tina, is witness to the murder of his business associate (Harold “Chop Top” Sakata), Matt has to clean up his tracks and speed up his escape plan.  That includes silencing Tina…and whoever else gets in his way.   Ta
Read more