Do you realise what you’re saying? Why, you’re telling me that I’m dead.

D.O.A.

(1950)

(SPOILERS) D.O.A. has a fantastic premise, albeit an extremely contrived one. You can imagine the pitch; “A man walks into a police station to report a murder; his own!” The studio executives roundly applaud. This sort of gimmicky scenario can only be sustained by movie logic, and Rudolph Maté’s flashback narrative follows suit. The result is a rickety film noir, lacking the polish of the greats. But how many movies give you a hard rolling lead protagonist who also happens to be an accountant?

I first saw D.O.A. as part of the second season of BBC2’s Moviedrome. I’m unsure if this was before or after I caught the Dennis Quaid/Meg Ryan remake. In his introduction presenter Alex Cox memorably complained about the bizarre use of a Clangers whistle, which pipes up on the soundtrack every time Edmund O’Brien’s Frank Bigelow sees an attractive woman. It seems to have strayed in from an entirely different movie, the kind of thing you’d expect to accompany Harpo Marx. Perhaps Maté and screenwriting partners Russell Rouse and Clarence Greene intended to contrast O’Brien’s holiday jolly with the ensuing sobering realisation that he has been poisoned. If so, they don’t succeed; the (overlong) introductory passage is hard work. Frank may be a louse for leaving secretary/girlfriend Paula (Pamela Britton) hanging while he goes on totty-hunting jaunt in San Francisco, but Paula is hugely annoying. So much so that his dive into debauchery seems like the only sane course of action open to him. As part of Frank’s walk on the wild side there’s an amusingly over-amped depiction of a jive bar, filled with crazed hepcats.

Frank Bigelow: Do you realise what you’re saying? Why, you’re telling me that I’m dead.

Bigelow awakes from a night of carousing feeling particularly the worse for wear, so rather sensibly goes straight to the nearest doctor. The writers, never ones to repeatedly look a gift gag in the mouth, have a doctor instruct Frank “I don’t think you understand, Bigelow. You’ve been murdered!” To be honest, I probably wouldn’t be able to resist either. Even Frank is at it later. Encountering a moll, he opines, “Sure, I can stand here and talk to you. I can breath and I can move. But I’m not alive”. Even when they’ve milked that one to death there’s time for another final grim chuckle, this time involving the film’s title.

The end credits appear to verify the existence of the substance used to kill Frank (“Luminous toxin is a descriptive term for an actual poison”), just in case you thought the scene where Frank gets a second opinion and the consulting doctor comes in with a glowing test tube, which he proceeds to wave about in the dark, was over-the-top. It’s radioactive you see, and “one of the few poisons of its type for which there is no antidote”. This doesn’t sound like a fun way to go, as it attacks the internal organs and kills in the space of a week. At least the effects appear rather less extreme than those of the polonium used to poison Alexander Litvinenko back in 2006. Indeed, when Frank succumbs it ranks up there amongst the most sudden and inept movie deaths. O’Brien strikes out unconvincingly and collapses behind a desk.

O’Brien essays the transition from skirt-chasing cheese hound to desperate bruiser quite agreeably. He has that disenchanted drollery thing going for him, the sort of act you expect from Bogart. And his encounters (barring an interminable scene where Pamela comes to visit) are generally lively. Frank’s realisation of the important things, just as he is poised to meet his maker, is suitably cynical (come on, we’re not buying that he actually loves Paula; he’s just scared of dying), and the ladies he encounters move accordingly from being positioned as lust objects to obstacles in his path. Particularly amusing is Laurette Luez as a dusky femme fatale, informing Frank “If you were a man, I’d punch your dirty face in”.

The best of his opponents is crazy grinning bug-eyed loon Chester (Neville Brand), henchman and nephew of Majak (Luther Adler). Chester is an unbridled cartoon sadist, referring to himself in the third person and fantasising over the most painful method of terminating Frank (“I think I’ll give it to you in the belly”). When Majak refers to him as “an unfortunate boy”, he’s couching the understatement. Chester’s final scene, in which he embarks on a shooting spree in a pharmacy, rather wonderfully has him lamped by an old geezer with a bottle.

Maté, a former cinematographer, gives the location work a certain amount of zip, but the interiors tend towards the stagey and unimaginative (an exception is the opening sequence). The main problems come from the script, however. If the irony of Frank’s fate is rather forced (“All I did was notarise a bill of sale”) the trail to the perpetrators lacks flair; the mastermind behind it all is fairly obvious, and the plotting required to reach the reveal manages to be both repetitive and convoluted. Still, this is solid B-movie hokum and the irresistible premise brings with it a fair amount of goodwill.

***

You were this amazing occidental samurai.

Ricochet (1991) (SPOILERS) You have to wonder at Denzel Washington’s agent at this point in the actor’s career. He’d recently won his first Oscar for Glory , yet followed it with less-than-glorious heart-transplant ghost comedy Heart Condition (Bob Hoskins’ racist cop receives Washington’s dead lawyer’s ticker; a recipe for hijinks!) Not long after, he dipped his tentative toe in the action arena with this Joel Silver production; Denzel has made his share of action fare since, of course, most of it serviceable if unremarkable, but none of it comes near to delivering the schlocky excesses of Ricochet , a movie at once ingenious and risible in its plot permutations, performances and production profligacy.

People still talk about Pandapocalypse 2002.

Turning Red (2022) (SPOILERS) Those wags at Pixar, eh? Yes, the most – actually, the only – impressive thing about Turning Red is the four-tiered wordplay of its title. Thirteen-year-old Mei (Rosalie Chiang) finds herself turning into a large red panda at emotive moments. She is also, simultaneously, riding the crimson wave for the first time. Further, as a teenager, she characteristically suffers from acute embarrassment (mostly due to the actions of her domineering mother Ming Lee, voiced by Sandra Oh). And finally, of course, Turning Red can be seen diligently spreading communist doctrine left, right and centre. To any political sensibility tuning in to Disney+, basically (so ones with either considerable or zero resistance to woke). Take a guess which of these isn’t getting press in reference to the movie? And by a process of elimination is probably what it it’s really about (you know in the same way most Pixars, as far back as Toy Story and Monsters, Inc . can be given an insi

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

I can’t be the worst. What about that hotdog one?

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) (SPOILERS) It would have been a merciful release, had the title card “ The End ”, flashing on screen a little before the ninety-minute mark, not been a false dawn. True, I would still have been unable to swab the bloody dildoes fight from my mind, but at least Everything Everywhere All at Once would have been short. Indeed, by the actual end I was put in mind of a line spoken by co-star James Wong in one of his most indelible roles: “ Now this really pisses me off to no end ”. Or to put it another way, Everything Everywhere All at Once rubbed me up the wrong which way quite a lot of most of the time.

We’ve got the best ball and chain in the world. Your ass.

Wedlock (1991) (SPOILERS) The futuristic prison movie seemed possessed of a particular cachet around this time, quite possibly sparked by the grisly possibilities of hi-tech disincentives to escape. On that front, HBO TV movie Wedlock more than delivers its FX money shot. Elsewhere, it’s less sure of itself, rather fumbling when it exchanges prison tropes for fugitives-on-the-run ones.

We could be mauled to death by an interstellar monster!

Star Trek Beyond (2016) (SPOILERS) The odd/even Star Trek failure/success rule seemed to have been cancelled out with the first reboot movie, and then trodden into ground with Into Darkness (which, yes, I quite enjoyed, for all its scandalous deficiencies). Star Trek Beyond gets us back onto more familiar ground, as it’s very identifiably a “lesser” Trek , irrespective of the big bucks and directorial nous thrown at it. This is a Star Trek movie that can happily stand shoulder to shoulder with The Search for Spock and Insurrection , content in the knowledge they make it look good.

He's not in my pyjamas, is he?

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) (SPOILERS) By rights, Paul Mazursky’s swinging, post-flower-power-gen partner-swap movie ought to have aged terribly. So much of the era’s scene-specific fare has, particularly so when attempting to reflect its reverberations with any degree of serious intent. Perhaps it’s because Mazursky and co-writer Larry Tucker (also of The Monkees , Alex in Wonderland and I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! ) maintain a wry distance from their characters’ endeavours, much more on the wavelength of Elliott Gould’s Ted than Robert Culp’s Bob; we know any pretensions towards uninhibited expression can’t end well, but we also know Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice have to learn the hard way.

He’ll regret it to his dying day, if ever he lives that long.

The Quiet Man (1952) (SPOILERS) The John Wayne & John Ford film for those who don’t like John Wayne & John Ford films? The Quiet Man takes its cues from Ford’s earlier How Green Was My Valley in terms of, well less Anglophile and Hibernophile and Cambrophile nostalgia respectively for past times, climes and heritage, as Wayne’s pugilist returns to his family seat and stirs up a hot bed of emotions, not least with Maureen O’Hara’s red-headed hothead. The result is a very likeable movie, for all its inculcated Oirishness and studied eccentricity.

I think World War II was my favourite war.

Small Soldiers (1998) An off-peak Joe Dante movie is still one chock-a-block full of satirical nuggets and comic inspiration, far beyond the facility of most filmmakers. Small Soldiers finds him back after a six-year big screen absence, taking delirious swipes at the veneration of the military, war movies, the toy industry, conglomerates and privatised defence forces. Dante’s take is so gleefully skewed, he even has big business win! The only problem with the picture (aside from an indistinct lead, surprising from a director with a strong track record for casting juveniles) is that this is all very familiar. Dante acknowledged Small Soldiers was basically a riff on Gremlins , and it is. Something innocuous and playful turns mad, bad and dangerous. On one level it has something in common with Gremlins 2: The New Batch , in that the asides carry the picture. But Gremlins 2 was all about the asides, happy to wander off in any direction that suited it oblivious to whet

So, you’re telling me that NASA is going to kill the President of the United States with an earthquake?

Conspiracy Theory (1997) (SPOILERS) Mel Gibson’s official rehabilitation occurred with the announcement of 2016’s Oscar nominations, when Hacksaw Ridge garnered six nods, including Mel as director. Obviously, many refuse to be persuaded that there’s any legitimate atonement for the things someone says. They probably weren’t even convinced by Mel’s appearance in Daddy’s Home 2 , an act of abject obeisance if ever there was one. In other circles, though, Gibbo, or Mad Mel, is venerated as a saviour unsullied by the depraved Hollywood machine, one of the brave few who would not allow them to take his freedom. Or at least, his values. Of course, that’s frequently based on alleged comments he made, ones it’s highly likely he didn’t. But doesn’t that rather appeal to the premise of his 23-year-old star vehicle Conspiracy Theory , in which “ A good conspiracy theory is an unproveable one ”?

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