Not so long ago we had a bit of a chat about the retroactively established 70s British subgenre folk-horror, didn’t we; listing the likes of The Wicker Man, Witchfinder General, Blood on Satan’s Claw and Tam-Lin as some of the more notable efforts that potentially make up this somewhat loosely defined category…

Well, in The Shout I think I’ve found another film that might just about be able to call itself folk-horror, but we’ll have to stretch the definition a tiny bit to get it in there. For a start, it’s set in the present day (ie the time of its making), but this shouldn’t be too much of a problem as so too are The Wicker Man and Tam-Lin to name but two. More of a problem may be that unlike any other film or work of fiction that I’ve heard offered up as folk-horror, the “folk” element in The Shout is not native to these shores - but then, that’s also what makes it so interesting.

Alan Bates stars as bearded eccentric Crossley, who regales young cricketer Tim Curry with a peculiar story during a charity game at an asylum in rural Devon. This story kick-starts a bizarre flashback in which we see Crossley arrive as an uninvited guest at the home of a local musician and his wife (John Hurt and the late Susannah York) and in turn appal and intrigue them with his tales of living with aboriginals in the Australian outback – including the ghoulish information that he may have murdered several of his own half-native children. Despite fearing this stranger, and slowly realising that he may have his wife under some kind of spell, the musician becomes morbidly fascinated with his claim that he knows an aboriginal “terror shout” which can instantly kill anyone who hears it, and after Crossley grants him a demonstration in the rolling dunes of the Devonshire coast, things go from odd to worse.

So, as you can see, whilst folk-horror staples generally rely on paganism and olde Britannic folklore for their mystical spookiness, The Shout imports its myth and legend from the colonies, with the result being just as mystical and spooky, perhaps even a little stranger, for it. It’s still very much a British affair however, and the south-west scenery is rendered as a stunning, if uncanny and oddly looming, backdrop by Polish ex-pat Jerzy Skolimowski (who made one of the most beautiful and poetic British films of the 60s with the unfairly neglected Deep End). My one relatively minor complaint, however, is that Bates somewhat overplays his hand as the mysterious Crossley, delivering a performance that is a little too arch and theatrical to be wholly taken seriously. But then maybe that’s the point?

You can watch a pretty brilliant trailer for The Shout below, which is every bit as hammy and off-the-wall as Alan Bates’ performance in the film. It doesn’t come across that clearly in the trailer, but the sound design on the titular “shout” when you eventually hear it is top-notch and very unsettling, even if it probably won’t kill you…

Now before we begin, I don’t want to hear any giggling from the back, and I certainly won’t entertain any demands to investigate my download history…

But, in all serious, it does continue to surprise me that more films haven’t been made about the subject of pornography. As an industry it’s always struck me that it simply has to have potential drama seeping (surely not spurting) from its every pore – love, emotion, atypical human relationships, money, abuse – it seems to have the lot. Films that do attempt to tackle this still admittedly rather taboo topic, however, seem to fall into one of three camps; they’re either overly occupied with authentic aesthetic (Boogie Nights), morbidly explicit (Lukas Moodysson’s A Hole in My Heart), or worryingly giddy and accepting of their subject (The Girl Next Door, I Want Candy and several other pretty shameful teen sex comedies).

Easily the best film I’ve ever seen that concerns itself with the business of pornography is Shohei Imamura’s in-turns absurd and philosophical social satire The Pornographers. The great Japanese filmmaker here bypasses the pitfalls that undermined the work of both Paul Thomas Anderson and Moodysson by refusing to show even the slightest flicker of any onscreen action and instead focus on what’s going on behind the camera. The film’s central character is the affable if inevitably slovenly smalltime porn peddler Mr Ogata, who sees his life dive into tailspin after his widowed landlady lover takes ill and leaves him juggling the care of a pair of selfish, rapidly maturing teenagers with the daily grind of his disreputable and increasingly dangerous line of work.

The Pornographers is largely powered along by Shohei Imamura’s highly distinctive direction; in fact, in the big Oscar ceremony that’s occasionally going on in my mind, he’s always a sure-fire contender for best director for his work here alone. Imamura spends most of the film carefully placing his camera behind curtains, slightly ajar doors, windows, and in several instances a fishtank with a stonking great carp in it (which Mr Ogata’s landlady believes is the ghost of her dead husband, but that’s another story), with each inspired set-up giving his story a perfect, voyeuristic framework. Another notable technique he employs is that of filming most of the drama in fixed long-shots, only allowing the camera to move in a scarce handful of scenes – it’s worth noting that for all his stylistic complexities, Imamura once served as an assistant to Yasujiro Ozu, and through its lack of movement The Pornographers also manages to invoke that master director’s hypnotic, gentle rhythms, all amounting to a vivid and endlessly fascinating whole.

You can watch the opening sequence from The Pornographers below. No subtitles, I’m afraid, but I’m sure you can guess what’s going on. Stay tuned for some wonderfully weird-y music, too.

Vincent Price is without doubt my absolute favourite of all the great horror actors. Lee, Cushing, even the earlier Lugosi and Karloff, none of the others can hold a spooky candle to him in my eyes.

It is now generally accepted, and quite rightfully, that Price gave his best ever dramatic performance in Michael Reeves’ classic folk horror shocker Witchfinder General, and no one can deny that it was under the direction of first William Castle and later Roger Corman that he truly became an icon. But as far as I’m concerned, Theatre of Blood is the definitive Vincent Price film. As accomplished an actor as he really was, there was always an element of sly, theatrical irony in the great man’s screen persona, and this 1973 classic really hones in on that and develops it into something that manages to be both oddly grandiose and truly menacing.

Theatre of Blood sees Price star as Edward Lionheart, an embittered Shakespearian actor who apparently commits suicide after a group of critics deny him a highly coveted award. However, as you may have already guessed, Lionheart survives and returns to exact gory revenge on his tormentors (who still believe he is dead) by murdering each one in a unique and elaborate fashion modelled on famous death scenes from a range of Shakespeare’s plays. Aided in this grisly endeavour by his own personal army of creepy, meths-swigging tramps, Lionheart seeks to destroy each of the critics who wronged him before the cops catch up and bring down the final curtain. 

As much as I absolutely love Theatre of Blood, I can never ignore the fact that it is a million times better than it really has any right to be. Not only is it as daft as a bag of snakes (especially the scene where Price dons the disguise of a flamboyant hairdresser and camps it up to the max) and as subtle as a sledgehammer (the trendy counter-culture actor that Lionheart loses out on the award to is called William WOODSTOCK and one of the doomed critics is called Hector SNIPE), but the entire film is also essentially just variations on the same scene played over and over again. However, it’s the wit and invention (Shakespeare fans will have a ball spotting the references) poured into each of these scenes that make Theatre of Blood such a treat, that and the fact that Price is clearly having the time of his life delivering knowingly unhinged horror acting with a side order of brilliantly performed bard.

Another fantastic thing about Theatre of Blood is the sheer number of first class British thesps it boasts in it’s cast; Jack “Bridge on the River Kwai” Hawkins, Ian “Get Carter” Hendry, Michael “Where Eagles Dare” Horden, Arthur “Captain Mainwaring” Lowe, Dennis “Kind Hearts and Coronets” Price, Diana “The Avengers” Rigg (who spends a good deal of the film disguised as Noel Edmonds),  Diana “British Marilyn Monroe” Dors, and best of all, Eric “Sykes” Sykes as a comically inept policeman. See how many you can spot in this ace trailer below!

Why, what do we have here; a horror anthology film directed by three of the most famous continental film directors of the 50s and 60s?

Well, yes… And as you might well expect, Spirits of the Dead is a rather classy affair. Released as Histoires extraordinaires (or “Extraordinary Stories”) in France and based on three different Edgar Allan Poe tales, canny old American International Pictures picked this up for the UK and US, drafting in Vincent Price to read a poem over the beginning and end credits in order to cash in on their own Roger Corman-directed Poe films. Of course, Corman is surely cinema’s greatest ever intrepreter of the legendary horror bard, but perhaps unsurprisingly messrs Vadim, Malle, and Fellini don’t do too bad a job either.

Roger Vadim’s up first with ‘Metzengerstein’, a tale he fills with his trademark raunch and which stars Jane Fonda as a debauched medieval countess who meets a strange fate after murdering her noble cousin (played by brother Peter). Louis Malle’s take on ‘William Wilson’ follows and finds Alain Delon on superbly sinister form as a brutal soldier haunted by his do-gooder doppelganger, who at one point stops him from administering a good whipping to none other than Brigitte Bardot! The absolute cherry on top, however, is Fellini’s bonkers and incredibly spooky ‘Toby Dammit’ (liberally adapted from the Poe story ‘Never Bet the Devil Your Head’) in which Terence Stamp gives a breathtakingly whacked-out performance as a doomed English actor, losing his marbles and stalked by the devil in a post-apocalyptic Rome.

While Vadim and Malle both weigh in with very fine contributions, it’s almost impossible to overstate just how much Fellini’s instalment really makes Spirits of the Dead worth seeking out. With his tremendous knack for visual flair and a well-honed eye for the bizarre and grotesque, the great Italian auteur always had it in him to make a great horror film and here it is, if only in miniature. The unforgettably creepy long-haired little girl/devil incarnate that drives Stamp to a sticky end at the film’s conclusion deserves special mention, not only as a fantastic visual motif, but also as proof that Spirits of the Dead, for all its lofty talent and sumptuous production values, still has the power to provide a good scare.

Here is the French trailer for Spirits of the Dead, and it’s one of my all-time faves! Keep your eyes peeled for that spooky little girl (and a very rude shot of Jane Fonda riding a horse at the beginning) and listen out for Nino Rota’s fab jazzy score.

Did you ever hear about that American Film Institute poll where they voted the Nazis the best movie villains in the history of film? Well, as ever-so-slightly dubious as that is, they’ve sort of got a point…

I wonder how many of you will feel a little burst of excitement when I tell you that the villain in The Flesh Eaters is a Nazi scientist working on a terrifying new biological weapon in his Long Island hideaway? Aneet, for one! It’s just one of the many kooky little details that make this ever growing in stature cult classic such a fascinating and colourful watch. Essentially, with its combination of playful B-movie theatrics and ahead-of-it’s-time gore The Flesh Eaters is Roger Corman-meets-Herschell Gordon Lewis, and just as good as that sounds!

It all kicks off when a prissy actress hires a beefcake pilot to fly her through a dangerous storm to an important acting gig. They’re forced to make an emergency landing, of course, and it just so happens to be on the very same island where our Nazi friend is beavering away, gearing up for world domination by producing a strain of aquatic parasite that nibble flesh clean off the bone. Together this mismatched couple conspire to thwart the dastardly doc, building up to a quite literally “shocking” climax.

The Flesh Eaters is notable for two things, really; one is the fact that it’s death sequences are so gruesome and bloody and the other is that it is so bloody good. For a film that was quite obviously made for peanuts it not only boasts special effects that are still remarkably eye-catching and effective, but it is also superbly directed (sadly Jack Curtis never made anything else) and tightly written. The acting plaudits are claimed by Martin Kolseck as the nasty Nazi, naturally enough, and the German-born actor enjoyed a long career portraying similar types, even appearing as Joseph Goebbels in five different films!

Below is a great trailer for The Flesh Eaters which Jack Curtis narrates himself, thoughtfully giving a ten second countdown for the squeamish!

Not just a great title (not to mention sound advice), but a great film too! And one that deserves to be held in similar affection by zombie-lovers as anything by Romero and Fulci.

In fact, I would put Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things at number three with a bullet (to the brains) on a list of my all-time favourite zombie films, just behind Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. It has a very similar feel to that later Romero effort, now that I mention it, with just enough humour to make you chuckle and almost enough horror to make you scream! The scares come courtesy of the zombies, of course, while the laughs are reserved for Alan…

Ah, Alan! Not only is he one of my all-time favourite horror film characters, he’s also one of the most unremittingly obnoxious characters in film history! Coming on like a low-rent Anton Artaud, Alan (played by co-writer Alan Ormsby) is the head of a swingin’ theatre troupe who takes his charges to an island off Miami in order to subject them to all kinds of pranks and humiliation, including a “fake” seance to revive a real dead body. Of course this being a zombie movie, the seance turns out to be a little more potent than Alan anticipated and before long he and his fellow thesps are holed up in a spooky old house as the living dead slowly and dreadfully encroach.

Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things plays out like proper comedy/horror with the giddy laughs primarily serving to make the actual horror somehow more intense, something messrs Pegg and Wright may do well to take note of. Based on the evidence here you could almost say it’s unsurprising that director Bob Clark would later become more famous for directing comedy than horror, but his later purely comedy efforts are frankly complete crap (Porky’s, Baby Geniuses). No, Bob Clark should always be acknowledged first and foremost as a horror filmmaker, and along with Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things, he gifted two other mini-classics to the genre; zombie/Vietnam vet hybrid Deathdream, and the trailblazing slasher Black Christmas.

Please watch this insane trailer below and observe the mighty Alan in all his glory!

Happy Halloween Week everybody! I thought it might be jolly apt to kick things off with a film that was actually set on old Hallows eve itself…

Strangely enough however, once you’ve overlooked the bleedin’ obvious, there are surprisingly very few half-decent horror films that take place around Halloween… The bleedin’ obvious being of course John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 slasher Halloween, but as I’m sure you’ve all seen and already love that, there’s no need to go over it all again here. No, let’s instead take a look at the unfairly maligned second sequel to that stone-cold horror classic…

It seems to me that Halloween III: Season of the Witch is generally disregarded as a result of it being the only film in the series not to feature bogey man supreme Michael Myers. But while this third instalment is nowhere as fine as the first film, it is easily the best of all the sequels and a really pretty great film in its own right, too. The fact that it distances itself from the original is perhaps one of its strongest points, that along with the fact that it has a stonking premise dreamt up by legendary Brit horror visionary Nigel Kneale.

With John Carpenter seeking to transform the series into an anthology of unconnected horror films set on Halloween, Kneale came in on writing duties and came up with a typically mystical and enigmatic tale of a mad toy inventor who plots to murder the families of America by selling demonic Halloween masks to their children. Sadly Kneale was unhappy with the finished product and asked for his name to be removed from the credits, but while the film is perhaps slightly gorier than he envisioned it to be, it still has some fine moments of sinister atmosphere and a surprisingly malevolent conclusion. Carpenter protege Tommy Lee Wallace also does a splendid job as director, cleverly aping his tutor’s distinctive style and playing all the shocks and surprises perfectly.

Check out the trailer below and keep your eyes peeled for some more super spooky films comin’ at ya through the week!

Film Noir, eh? It almost literally means “dark films”, doesn’t it? And they don’t come much darker than Kiss Me Deadly, that’s for sure…

The ultimate in nihilistic Noir, Kiss Me Deadly is lifted from the pages of a novel by legendary pulp scribe Mickey Spillane, and as if the source material wasn’t quite gloomy enough, the story is rendered in an even darker hue by director Robert Aldrich and screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides (who became a lifelong nemesis of Spillane’s for his efforts). You get plenty bang for your buck here, as they say, with no shortage of mysterious femme fatales, shady leads, brutal villains, and even an apocalyptic finale! 

Ralph Meeker plays Spillane’s trademark gumshoe Mike Hammer, who chances upon a semi-nude, female hitch-hiker on a desert road. Giving the young lady a lift sets off a series of increasingly strange events, however, as he awakens in a hospital bed to discover his passenger has been murdered, and he’s suddenly embroiled in a mystery involving a suitcase which contains a secret that everybody wants.

That very suitcase is probably Kiss Me Deadly’s most enduring legacy, and indeed it was famously referenced by none other than Quentin Tarantino for Pulp Fiction. It also holds the key to the film’s still shocking finale; a powerful moment in which the world of Film Noir collides with Cold War paranoia and sets the screen ablaze.

They even show a bit of that superb climax in the trailer below (what a bad habit they had for that back in the day!), but perhaps it will serve only to whet your appetite for Kiss Me Deadly all the more!

Q: When is a giallo not quite a giallo? A: When it’s as strange and beguiling as Footprints on the Moon!

It’s not that there aren’t many other giallos that are strange and beguiling, it’s just that today’s Film of the Day is the most atypical and off-the-wall of the lot. Owing less to any classic murder-mystery staple and more to existential arthouse fare such as Last Year at Marienbad and L’Avventura, Footprints on the Moon relies on tension and atmosphere to create it’s scares, with nary a bloody murder to be seen.

Giallo regular Florinda Bolkan stars as Alice, a woman who is haunted by a terrifying nightmare involving astronauts stranded on the moon, and who wakes up one morning to discover that she has been unconscious for three whole days. Understandably perturbed, she takes herself off to a beautiful mediterranean island for a much-needed holiday, but soon enough finds herself even more unsettled when the island’s creepy inhabitants insist that she’s been there before despite her protestations to the contrary.

Director Bazzoni spools out this engaging mystery with an assured hand and a strong feel for creepy, dreamy unease, before winding things up with a shocking and truly unforgettable finale. Bolkan is excellent in the lead, and there are smaller roles for the legendary Klaus Kinski and Nicoletta Elmi, who should be instantly recognisable to any self-respecting giallo fan from her appearances as a bratty child in three of the genre’s greatest films (Twitch of the Death Nerve, Who Saw Her Die?, and Profondo Rosso).

I can’t recommend Footprints on the Moon highly enough for anyone looking for some atmospheric and unusual Euro-horror… It’s one giant leap for giallo-kind!

I was watching Doctor Zhivago on telly with my mother one Christmas, the very time of year that innumerable family units across the country settle down to watch that grandoise, historical romance for the umpteenth time. Despite the fact that she had seen it many (many, many) times before, my mum had been previously unaware that none other than Klaus Kinski makes a brief appearance in the film. “There he is”, I pointed out to her, during the scene in which KK appears as an enraged and enchained prisoner being transported to Siberia. “Oh, yeah”, said my mum. “I should’ve known he’d be suffering”.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought my dear old mum hit the nail on the head with that one. The appeal of Klaus Kinski is so much different from that of virtually any other actor you can think of; pain, misery, revulsion, disgust, despair, mania, and frenzy. All these turbulent, maddening emotions are writ large on every twitch and scrag on the German’s boggle-eyed visage. To regard Kinski as a mere anti-hero would be grotesquely wide of the mark, but yet you could never deny him his vast army of diehard fans, each one of whom is enraptured by his vile charm.

As far as I’m concerned, there are very few “cult” actors who can hold a (roman?) candle to Klaus Kinski and Oliver Reed. OK, so you’ve got yer James Dean’s and yer Clint Eastwood’s at one end of the fame spectrum, and maybe a Timothy Carey and a Franco Nero at the other, but ask yourself; as great as those guys are (and I love all four of ‘em), do people really obssess over every dark ‘n’ damaged nuance of their worldly existance as they do with Ollie and, erm, Klaus-y? No one can beat Reed and Kinski in terms of lunacy, both professional and personal, and as a testament to this, the most reknowned book on each actor (Evil Spirits, written by Cliff Goodwin about Reed, and Kinski Uncut, fabulously exagerrated by the German himself) have long been essential reading for almost every film fan.

But, why bring up Oliver Reed, you may ask. Well, not only does he provide a salient comparison, but he can help take us to the next point about Klaus Kinski (if you’ll bear with me). Reed and Kinski are both notorious for their excesses both on-screen (nude-wrestling and claiming to be Jesus Christ, respectively) and off (maniacal boozing and maniacal rutting, again respectively). They are also equally infamous for their fantastically long filmographies, both of which are chock full o’ schlock and low-budget potboilers, hardly befitting of either man’s gargantuan talent (a good example of the sort of stinker they’d routinely appear in is 1981′s Venom, also the only time they appeared in a film together).

But yes, both men, despite their lazy and scattershot career choices, really could act up a storm, and both were always on top form when they worked with the director’s who realised their potential best; for Oliver Reed it was Ken Russell, and for Klaus Kinski it was Werner Herzog. However, while Ollie ‘n’ Ken were firm friends (we’ll put them to bed now, thanks guys), Kinski and his compatriot were capable of downright loathing one another… Something fucking shocking, too. So much so, in fact, that Herzog once embarked on an all-too deadly serious plot to have Kinski killed. This, and many other grim anecdotes concerning the two, are brought to the fore in the director’s superb 1999 documentary about the doomed star, My Best Fiend.

The violent nature of this love/hate (but mainly hate) working relationship has helped ensure the fruits of the deadly duo’s labours have acheived legendary status, but even without such a darkly fascinating back-story, they deserve to be there anyway. Herzog and Kinski made five films together, the most famous of which are 1972′s Aguirre, the Wrath of God, 78′s remake of Nosferatu, and 82′s Fitzcarraldo. In between the latter two efforts they adapted the famously intense German play Woyzeck, but it’s low-key, and often disturbing, style seems to have cost it in the fame stakes.

Even then, their least regarded collaboration is their final one, 1987′s Cobra Verde. Almost as much of a madcap adventurer as a conventional film director, Werner Herzog brought both Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo, two awe-inspiring, if very different, trips along the Amazon river (one increasingly doomed, the other ever-hopeful), to life as dark hymns to nature, and the futility of man’s struggle to conquer it, both leaving an indelible impression on the eye and mind. Such an exploratory talent would suggest that Herzog would be the perfect choice to adapt Bruce Chatwin’s 1980 novel, The Viceroy of Ouidah, a tale which delves unflinchingly to the dark heart of the West African slave trade.

Brought to the screen as Cobra Verde, the title refers to the central character, a wild and feared Brazilian bandit, played by Kinski, naturally enough. After the bandit returns an escaped slave to his master, he finds himself offered a lucrative contract of employment, working as a slavedriver on a sugar plantation. Soon after accepting, Cobra Verde impregnates no fewer than three of the plantation owner’s daughter, and finds himself in some very hot water in the process. As punishment he is banished from Brazil and sent on a deadly mission to re-open the slave trade in West Africa.

Beyond all expectation, Cobra Verde ingratiates himself to and impresses the ruthless King of Dahomey (now Benin), and soon slaves are being sent across the Atlantic once more. The outcast bandit is now taken more seriously in Brazil, and in the process becomes a powerful and influential man. But the King is an erratic, not to mention possibly mad, ruler and hauls Cobra Verde in for a bizarre show trial, sentencing him to death. He is offered a means of escape, however, if he agrees to lead a revolution on behalf of a defiant prince. The fact that the army he is expected to lead consists of thousands of bare-breasted, female warriors, should leave you in little doubt over Cobra Verde’s ultimate decision.

Klaus Kinski, eyes bulging, hair flaying, at the head of an army of screaming, vengeful, female tribal warriors… How could it all be anything short of completely brilliant? Alas, Cobra Verde is not a brilliant film. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very good film, but if it’s generally regarded as Herzog and Kinski’s fifth best out of five, then that’s about right, if you ask me. Lacking the intimate, dark Germanic mystery of Nosferatu and Woyzeck, Cobra Verde has most in common with the savage tropical triptychs depicted in Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo. These are comparisons Cobra Verde can’t bear, however, and a large part of the problem seems to stem from Herzog’s uncertainty over his central character. While the director was intent in guiding the tyrannical, incestuous conquistador Aguirre to the depths of madness, and eager to redeem the delusional, philanthropic rubber baron Fitzcarraldo in glorious ceremony, it seems that he is at a loss about what to do with Cobra Verde.

Much of the criticism often directed at the film is concerned with the fact that it portrays the horrors of the slave trade in a rather oblique way. At points Herzog seems to be suggesting that the rapacious actions of Cobra Verde and his ilk are simply a counterpoint to the long-established cruelty of the King of Dahomey. This certainly suits the director’s often unflinchingly bleak view of humanity, and historically it may even be partially based in fact, but in a film it comes across as a rather dangerous message; that Africa was a damned and dangerous place long before colonialism darkened it’s doorstep. Herzog does at least offer up a typically rich and enduring visual metaphor for the ultimately doomed exploitation of the continent at the film’s end; Cobra Verde struggles in vain to cast his escape boat into the sea, all the while being stalked along the shoreline by an African child, stricken with polio.

With an eye like that, how could Werner Herzog ever truly make a bad film? And indeed, when he’s not pondering over the nuts and bolts of the story, the film is a visual feast. Similarly, Klaus Kinski occassionally goes through the motions here, but when he invests a bit more emotional charge into his  snarling introspection, the results are pure gold. So, with talent like that, why is Cobra Verde not a better film? Well, the sets of both Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo were fit to explode from the raging tension between the two as they battered and harangued each other to breaking point. Between takes on Cobra Verde, however, the pair were merely weary and wary of each other, and this reluctance to fight quite as hard as before could well have been responsible for the lack of creative energy on display during this final round. Kinski proposed a rematch however, and demanded that Herzog direct his script for a biopic of the violinist Paganini. The director was resolute in his refusal, and Kinski himself directed the would-be sixth collaboration, dying shortly after and closing the book on cinema’s most dangerous and alluring partnership.

Klaus Kinski was an actor who could give you life’s more distressing and unsettling emotions; pain, misery, despair. Werner Herzog was a director who could take those emotions and sow them seamlessly into a landscape of heaven and horror, dreams and nightmares of being alive. It was wild and wonderful when they worked together, it was even better when they both suffered whilst doing so.

Far be it from me to give an ending away, but allow me to invite you to feast your eyes on the sublime ending of Cobra Verde. Films very rarely look much better than this.