100 Underappreciated Films: Part Six
By Darren Williams
30th September 2009

51. The Call of Cthulhu (2005; Andrew Leman)
For a fan made film, this adapatation of the classic H.P. Lovecraft story is fairly stunning. Made on a tiny budget, it takes the idea that the film was released in the year the story was written, just before the invention of sound, and tries to recreate the look of a film of the period. While I don't think Cthulhu is Lovecraft's finest story, it's probably his most famous and not an easy story to film, our audience identification figure is a passive figure, just reading the adventures of others without being involved himself. Leman had the challenge of making a film that could actually be visually orientated while remaining faithful to the original text. It may not be as faithful in its recreation of the silent era as a director like Maddin achieves, and it assumes that we are already familiar with the story, meaning that it probably won't work as well for people who aren't Lovecraft fans. But overall it's an impressive work and it makes you wish that more directors with resources could put this much passion into a film.

52. The Cicerones (2002; Jeremy Dyson)
A short film from one of the writers of The League of Gentlemen, starring his writing partner and fellow LOG-er, Mark Gatiss. The influence of Robert Aickman on Dyson and Gatiss is easy to see in their writing, and they would also adapt the brilliant but perplexing author's work for the radio with the magnificent Ringing the Changes. The plot is fairly simple, Gatiss is on a train journey across Europe and he arrives at a church hoping to see a rare painting. It's what  happens after he arrives that becomes difficult to unravel. It's difficult to recommend The Cicerones, or anything written by or adapted from Aickman, unless you feel sure that an individual is going to be willing to work with the mysteries in his writing. It's a tense, eerie and bewildering story and Dyson manages to capture the feel of the work perfectly, I'd love to see what he could do with a full length film.

53. The Devil in Miss Jones (1973; Gerard Damiano)
Yes, it's a porn film, get the sniggering over and done with, because The Devil in Miss Jones deserves its reputation as the Citizen Kane of porn. Miss Justine Jones, a middle-aged virgin, commits suicide. She goes to Heaven but is told because of her suicide she'll be sent to Hell instead. She's given a second chance to go back to Earth and have some fun and actually earn her place in Hell. Spelvin is a striking presence, older than most actresses you find in this kind of film, and she gives a superb performance by any standard. She goes through the standard hardcore porn scenes and speaking personally it's difficult to find the film erotic in any sense. Instead it's an unsettling, despairing vision of an unhappy and lonely woman finally learning to enjoy her life when it's far too late. The film's ending, where Miss Jones is punished in a very ironic way just adds to the feeling that you haven't watched a porn film, but a vision of a  personal hell.

54. Eastern Condors (1986; Sammo Hung)
The Dirty Dozen, HK style, from one of action cinema's greatest stars and most innovative directors. Sammo Hung is one of a group of Chinese convicts chosen to undertake a mission beyond enemy lines in 'Nam. If they complete the mission, they'll be set free. We're treated to a brutal mix of gunplay and martial arts skills in one of the bleakest films to come out of the 80s golden period of Hong Kong actioners. Sammo and Yuen Biao shine, as does the impressive Joyce Godenzi. One of the best of the 'men on a mission' sub-genre.

55. It's Nice Up North (2006; Graham Fellows)
Graham Fellows took his John Shuttleworth character to the big screen in this fascinating comedy/documentary. Starting off with the premise that people in Britain are nicer the further North you go. Shuttleworth goes to the most northerly point possible, The Shetlands. A brilliant spoof drama/documentary that in comparison exposes the films of Sacha Baron Cohen as the juvenile nonsense that they are. Inspired stuff.

56. I Went Down (1997; Paddy Breathnach)
Well observed comedy-drama about small-time Irish gangsters. Peter McDonald stars as a recently paroled loser who gets himself in trouble with a local mobster (Tony Doyle). He's forced to team up with an incompetent small-time tough guy (Brendan Gleeson) to go and collect another gangster (Peter Caffrey) for unknown reasons. Gleeson and McDonald have wonderful chemistry together, forming a double-act reminiscent of the one Gleeson shared with Colin Farrell in In Bruges. The film is stolen by Caffrey's verbose, wannabe-intellectual pathological liar.

57. Park Row (1952; Sam Fuller)
Fuller's most passionate and personal film is also his most interesting. A Gritty low-budget about a New York newspaper war in the late 19th century is also Fuller's energetic loveletter to the power of the press. Phineas Mitchell is an aspiring editor, recently fired from The Star for mocking the publisher's lack of integrity. A friend, Charles Leach, proposes he and Phineas become partners in a new, honest paper, The Globe, only Phineas's old paper doesn't care for competition. The rivalry between the two papers escalates into street violence when Hackett orders her staff to bury The Globe.

58. Street Trash (1987; James Muro)This Troma-esque horror comedy is a, perverse and demented delight featuring rape, necrophilia, Mafia bosses, a chase for a severed penis, and melting tramps in an orgy of mind-bending bad taste. Fred and Kevin are brothers who live in scrap yard ruled by a psychotic named Bronson. Fred takes a drunk Mafia girl back to the scrapyard only for her to be raped and murdered by the bums, at the same time a liquor store owner has discovered some decades old bottles of booze and has been selling them cheap to the drunks. Trouble is that the booze is causing anyone who drinks it to melt into sludge. This is a cartoonish black comic trash masterpiece. The director would sink even deeper into depravity when he went on to work the steadicam on Titanic.

59. Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988; Guy Maddin)

In smallpox infected Gimli, Einar the Lonely (Kyle McCulloch) ends up in hospital where he carves fishes out of bark and grows jealous of his storytelling neighbour, Gunnar (Michael Gottli). Tales of love, loss and necrophilia lead to dark secrets about Einar and Gunnar's late wife Snjofridur being revealed, leading to a fight to the death between the two rivals in this wonderful tribute tos silent cinema aesthetic. This surreal offering, filmed with a stark, dreamlike cinematography is a jumble of Maddin's influences, from old time radio to horror films, to the more perverse films of David Lynch.

60. Would You Kill a Child? (1976; Narciso Ibanez Serrador)

A startling Spanish horror film, similar in theme to Stephen King's Children of the Corn. A young pregnant British couple, Tom and Evelyn, arrive at a small island off the coast of Spain for a holiday. They find the island strangely empty of adults, they then witness some children beating an old man to death. They soon discover that the children of the island have risen up against all the adults and they need to find a way to escape with their lives. Would You Kill a Child became a word of mouth classic when it was unavailable in the UK other than on old grainy bootleg videos. It's not as lurid as the title would suggest and in fact is a slow-burning, thoughtful and provocative film about moral conflict, could you murder a child to save your own life?
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