larcher-2

Scrooge was right about Christmas: in fact, it's worse than a humbug. It's a horror movie. And Santa is really serious about who's naughty and nice--so be good kids or else. This movie ought to be run on a 24 hour Christmas Day rotation with A Christmas Story, since it too deals with a small boy who gets a gun.

Santa Claus has been buried deep in the Lapland permafrost for a very long time and for a very good reason. An obnoxious American capitalist digs him up for no evident reason and in the end pays the price (I guess he was naughty). Fortunately, this film's version of Ralphie is a better shot and also knows what to do with dynamite. Also, Santa's elves are marketable, so I guess after all what really matters about Christmas is that it's a serious money maker.

I never realized until now how funny the Finns were.

Straight faced surrealism that mixes the look and feel of an off beat, low budget late noir film (it's set in 1966) with a vampire movie and a priest's crisis of faith story. There's a gritty, trench coat wearing detective who happens to be a greyhound (well at least he's a dog, not a bus). Nobody seems to think that's odd--in fact the more important fact about him is that he's a recovering toad-licker. There's a very good, very restrained jazz score that matches the equally restrained acting and visual style, all of which somehow keeps one from thinking how absurd the whole thing is. A bit like a David Lynch film, especially Eraserhead, but with a cooler sensibility.

Maybe the oddest thing about it is that it has what is perhaps the movies' most positive image of a Catholic priest in many years.

Despite the absurdities, it isn't really a comedy; despite the vampires, it's not a horror movie or a action pic. But it's one of the best and most engaging bits of surrealism I've ever seen--surrealism used not as a prop but as an integral structure.

It's 1965. It's London. An American woman reports that her child is missing. Nobody seems to remember seeing the child; perhaps the child doesn't exist.

It never occurs to anyone that the mystery could easily be solved, one way or another, by calling Bunny's home town in America and checking for information, e.g., her birth certificate.

Like so many bad mystery films and books, this one depends upon everybody overlooking the obvious.

In 1965, transatlantic phone calls from the UK to the US cost about $12 for the first three minutes. Admittedly, this was more than was spent on the screenplay for this movie.