5. The Secret of Dorian Gray (1970), dir. Massimo Dallamano

This is a truly terrible film which lady_lugosi1313 and I synchro-watched a couple of weeks ago. It has a terrible script, terrible dubbing and terrible acting. But we enjoyed snarking our way through it, and it did include some marvellously 70s outfits.

Obviously, it is based on Oscar Wilde's novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, with the setting updated to 1970s London. Dorian's extravagant lifestyle is conveyed by showing him on yachts, at lavish parties, at art exhibitions, in discotheques and in swimming pools. And the sexual indulgences only hinted at in the novel are seized as an opportunity to tap into contemporary liberation to maximum titillatory effect. Early on, we meet Dorian and friends in a gay bar with a drag stripper. Then later there is both FF and MM eroticism, as well as two very stereotyped camp chappies cavorting outside a bar called The Black Cock. Also M-on-F and F-on-M oral sex and another scene of what may have been implied anal sex, or perhaps just penetration from behind (we weren't sure), but certainly took place in a stable stall right next to a horse, anyway. I mean none of this was wildly explicit - it's not a porno. But it's very definitely what we are set up to understand.

Dorian himself is objectified a LOT, usually from the male-gaze perspective of Basil (Richard Todd) and Henry (Herbert Lom). In fairness, he (Helmut Berger) is very pretty, and wears a succession of extremely well-tailored suits to pleasing effect. Those suits, along with a few halter-neck maxi-dresses on some of the female characters, were the highlights of the film for me. The portrait itself, sadly, does not do Helmut Berger justice, even before it starts getting corrupted. But at least they had the guts to show it, and indeed, to show it getting older / more evil-looking as the film went on, which cannot be said for all adaptations of Dorian Gray. They also increasingly applied a lot of talc / tippex to everyone's hair except Dorian's to represent them getting old, and about half-way through the film we also realised that the fashions were probably now supposed to look futuristic, like a woman in a mirrored dress. Unfortunately, though, they'd gone for such a high-fashion note in the first place that the change wasn't very clear, because all they had done was further exaggerate existing seventies trends - plus of course we knew perfectly well that that was not what had happened during the '80s and '90s at all.

The script uses lots of Wilde quotations, but unfortunately they are crow-barred in amongst otherwise very awkward and banal dialogue, made worse through being delivered by over-dubbed actors who weren't native English speakers. We had to sit through lines such as "My virginity shocked you", which nobody should have to suffer. Also, some plot points simply didn't make sense. Near the end, Dorian blackmails someone who already doesn't like him very much into helping him get rid of Basil's body by... showing him pictures of himself (Dorian) shagging his wife. Which surely would only make him hate Dorian even more, not suddenly want to help him after all.

On the whole, you very definitely should not watch this film, but then again if you have a friend to enjoy snarking at it with, it can be fun. I have just been reading through our chat log and giggling all over again at comments like these:

• those logs weren't big enough to make that amount of crackle
• she'll catch a chill
• he looks like he needs feeding up
• That's the angriest reaction I've ever seen to a chaise longue!
• Lom's hairpiece working hard
• Christ, this dialogue is laboured!
• dangerous naked flames near such manmade fabrics
• Eh up, shenanigans in the bushes!
• surely the point of erotica is that you can see something - but now you can I take that back
• Yikes, what are these terrible velvet shorts he's wearing!?
• Looks like we're at an orgy now. Exquisite jacket.
• oh thank god we're near the end...
• I wonder what the tippex bill was for the make up dept

That was the true joy of this film.

6. The Keep (1983), dir. Michael Mann

Alas and alack for me, I watched two terrible films in a row, and this was the second one. At least I didn't subject lady_lugosi1313 to this one - I'm not sure our friendship would have survived it... ;-)

I wanted to watch it because the plot summaries said it was about an unknown, terrible and implicitly quasi-vampiric Thing which had been trapped inside a keep in Romania for centuries, and was unleashed upon modernity by occupying Nazi troops during the Second World War, which sounded like a good premise. I also read that the Thing's name was Radu Molasar, and as Radu is the name of the historical Vlad III Dracula's brother, this spoke to my theory that the 'Dracula' played by John Forbes-Robertson whom we see at the beginning of Hammer's Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, who is similarly imprisoned inside a castle, is the Christopher Lee-Dracula's brother, imprisoned by him for some kind of betrayal or misdemeanour centuries earlier. However, none of the vampiric promise of the film was realised.

In fairness, some aspects of the visual design were worthwhile. Somebody had obviously got out some books on Romania and made a fair effort to reflect its appearance in the architecture of the village outside the Keep and the villagers' clothing. Although the film was actually shot in Wales, they had hidden this fact quite well via tight camera angles. They had also built quite an impressive set for the interior of the Keep, and used it to good effect sometimes in shots involving interesting angles, lighting and smoke. But even in the visual department, much of it was shot and soundtracked like an '80s rock video. Apparently, Tangerine Dream did a soundtrack album for it, but as far as I understand it this isn't what's actually on the prints of it now available. Instead, it's just dreary synths wandering in and out of tune. The Thing is initially shown as merely two glowing eyes obscured behind a huge cloud of smoke, which is quite good, but then later on the smoke clears and we see him, and this turns out to have been an error.

Otherwise, there is not much good I can say. The script was considerably worse than that for The Secret of Dorian Gray. I think those involved in the production thought it was atmospheric and profound - certainly, there were a lot of shots designed to convey this. But the greatest actual complexities it achieved involved the Thing declaring that it wished to scourge the Nazis from its land, but then turning out to be just as bad as or maybe worse than the Nazis. Quite the conundrum.

The rest of plot is neither very good nor effectively conveyed. After the scenario with the Nazis and the Keep has been established, we suddenly switch to Piraeus (the port of Athens), where we begin following the journey of a mysterious figure called Glaeken. (I'm not sure whether his name is ever actually used in the film - I got it from the Wikipedia page). Over time, we learn that he has purple eyes and green blood, cannot be seen in a mirror, is not killed by bullets, and carries a mystical staff which he eventually combines with a mcguffin from inside the Keep to create a weapon which defeats the Thing using the very latest '80s laser effects. (These scenes in particular very much reflect the recent popularity of the original Star Wars trilogy.) But it's never made at all clear who he is, how he got the staff, how he knows the Thing has been unleashed from the Keep, or why he wants to defeat it. Also, the film contains exactly one (1) woman, Eva, who is there primarily to be an object of desire or concern for the male characters - especially Glaeken, with whom she unconvincingly falls in love, and her father, a medieval historian roped in by the Nazis to try to understand the Thing. She is the subject of an attempted rape by the Nazi soldiers, and after that her role is for her father to struggle to protect her and for her to express trauma when Glaeken appears to have been killed.

The Wikipedia page relates a troubled production history, including how the director had envisaged a much longer running time allowing for a more dramatic final confrontation followed by a happy ending for Eva, Glaeken and her father and all sorts of extra details. But space could have been made to clarify the plot and develop the characters better within the running time allowed by halving the length of the many lingering atmospheric shots, which the film as it stands does not really earn. And I am here to tell you that nothing I have read about the additional material the director wanted to include would have improved the film - only lengthened it.

Don't go there; don't even think about it. I have watched this film so that you will never need to.