The Five Best Movies You ‘Probably’ Haven’t Seen (Rob’s version)

Nearly a fortnight ago Dan sent round an idea for some articles based on films we like but we thought a lot of people might not have seen. His version was posted last week and here is mine!

1, Paper Mask (1990)

When is a horrific film not a horror film? Paper Mask is a straight forward drama centring around a case of stolen identity. The hook is that the stolen identity belonged  a young doctor and it is stolen by a hospital porter. The real horror comes about when the porter (Paul McGann) decides to go and take up a position in another hospital…and gets away with it! He has some help from Nurse Taylor (Amanda Donohoe) who falls for him while assuming he is just inexperienced and struggling in a busy A&E department.

What takes this drama into the unsettling realm of the horror film is the believability. Trust me, you don’t want to watch Paper Mask within six months of needing to go into your local hospital! Why have you probably not seen this film? Because it didn’t perform particularly well at the box office, just $7,991 across the USA and Canada. It performed better at home taking £151,869. This relatively poor performances probably why it is so difficult to find on DVD; in the last thirty plus years I have seen one copy in a charity shop!

2, Onibaba (1964)

So, from the NHS of the last few years we go to a swamp in 14^th Century Japan. To narrow it down we are near Kyoto, at the beginning of the Nanboku-chō period, shortly after the Battle of Minatogawa. Soldiers fleeing the aftermath of the battle pass through a large field of tall, thick reeds where they are ambushed and murdered by an older woman (Nobuko Otowa) and her young daughter-in-law (Jitsuko Yoshimura).

They strip the soldiers of their weapons and armour before disposing of the bodies and going to sell their loot. Problems arise when the younger woman starts having an affair with Hachi (Kei Satō) who the older older woman blames for her son’s death. Enter a Samurai (Jūkichi Uno) wearing a demonic mask. His armour, weapons, and body go the same way as all the others but the mask goes on to bring about the twists and scares that keep you watching to the end.

3, La Grande Bouffe (1973)

From a Japanese Medieval horror we go to a Seventies French-Italian satire of consumerism and the decadence of the bourgeoisie. Four friends, Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni), Ugo (Ugo Tognazzi), Michel (Michel Piccoli), and Philippe (Philippe Noiret), meet up for a weekend in Philippe’s villa with the intention of them all committing suicide. However, it is the manner in which they are choosing to end things that makes La Grande Bouffe run into the kind of gross out comedy that would lay pretty well dormant until the Farrelly brothers resurrected it.

The friends arrive at the villa with the intention of eating themselves to death; hence the title which translates to The Big Eating. Before too long they decide that they need a little more than their gastronomic appetites satisfying and arrange for a trio of prostitutes to come and “entertain” them. Coincidentally, a local school teacher (Andréa Ferréol) comes along and shows that she has more stamina than the professional girls. One by one the friends succumb to food, frostbite, flatulence, and   a faecal tsunami.

4, Stardust (1974)

Not the Stardust you’re thinking of. Nor, probably, the other one either. The Stardust I’m thinking of comes from 1974 and is a sequel to the 1973 film That’ll Be The Day.  The two films knit together to tell the story of the rise and fall of Jim MacLaine (David Essex) and his time with The Stray Cats. For a film duo about the pop music world, there are a satisfying number of actual pop musicians making an appearance. Besides David Essex there is Adam Faith, Keith Moon, Ringo Starr, Marty Wilde, Paul Nicholas, Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe, and Billy Fury.

Stardust starts just before The Stray Cats are due to set off on an American tour. Jim goes back to the funfair that Mike (Adam Faith) works at to persuade him to come and be the group’s manager. The tour is a success but Jim becomes the centre of attention and this causes a rift between him and the rest of the group. The inevitable split occurs and Jim goes off on his own. Eventually Jim tires of the celebrity lifestyle and becomes a recluse in a Spanish castle. However the people who have money invested in him insist that he makes a comeback. The ending still makes me choke up every time I see it.

5, Delicatessen (1991)

I remember discovering Delicatessen thanks to my dear friend Paul who died a couple of years ago. He was one of the most fiercely intelligent people I knew and he loved cinema. He took me along to a showing of Delicatessen at Cornerhouse on Oxford Road and I was spellbound. Delicatessen is the feature debut of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro and was made ten years before M. Jeunet hit the international big time with Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain or Amélie. 

Delicatessen is set in post apocalyptic France. Food is in short supply and grain is used as a currency. All the action takes place in an apartment building with a butcher’s shop on the ground floor. It is owned by the butcher Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus). Among the oddball characters living in the building are his daughter Julie (Marie-Laure Dougnac) and new arrival Louison (Dominique Pinon) who is the handyman and, if he isn’t careful, stock for the butcher! Incidentally, if you get the chance, checkout Jeunet’s short debut Foutaises which you will recognise as the inspiration for the opening of Amélie.

Honourable Mention Dogma (1999)

Ah, Dogma! Kevin Smith gets a good budget, a great cast, and a pretty free hand for the first time. I know there was a lot of fuss over where Dan Brown got his inspiration for The Da Vinci Code but Kevin Smith never gets a mention! I mean, there are more angels and demons in Dogma but we’re still dealing with a long lost relative of Jesus.

Why is it so difficult to get to see Dogma now? Well it’s all down to rights. Dogma is unavailable to stream or purchase digitally due to the film’s rights being owned personally by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in a deal that predates streaming. Events taking place around 2020 mean that Harvey Weinstein has other things occupying his time. I wonder if anyone has asked if he’d swap the rights for 20 snout and a mucky book?