Eisner (no offence) has no such reputational straightjacket to escape, and undoubtedly uses this freedom to greater effect than Romero. In place of the rambling nature of the original, he delivers a taut and effective case-study on the utter disintegration of a society brought down from within. Though sticking faithfully to the premise – a small town endangered by the crash-landing of military plane transporting a top-secret nerve agent – he pares back most of the loose ends and inconsistencies left by Romero and in so doing gives the film an efficient focus and engaging narrative. It’s a narrative effectively framed by his small-town setting, with Ogden County being sufficiently claustrophobic whilst avoiding veering too far into the twee. As events unfold, the genuine feeling of neighbourliness and community adds to the premise a heightened sense of terror. The eerily horrific encounter during the school baseball game sets the tone and pace nicely. In this context the overhead satellite image sequences are rather clunky and counter-productive, but not fatal to the atmospheric unravelling of the town.

Shorn of most of its social and political commentary baggage, the remake is palpably less ambitious than the original. That is not derogatory of the end product though, as the narrower focus is interesting, inventive and delivered with panache. There is no suitably or doubt about the government’s motives or actions in containing TRIXIE; indeed, the most successful element of Eisner’s remake is his discarding of the duel-narrative of the civilian and military perspective. It means we’re left to confront a force exhibiting none of the self-doubt or humanity of, for example, Colonel Peckem, which gives Eisner’s treatment a welcome relentlessness and enough momentum to overcome what quickly settles into a series of interconnected set-piece action sequences.

That said, the slim-line narrative does have less to sustain it as the inevitability of the town’s fate becomes obvious. Then bleakness approaches perilously close to boredom, and the scenario reveals seem less like steps integral to the plot and more like padding. Though probably 15 minutes or so too long, Timothy Olyphant’s superb performance as Sherriff Dutten is just about sufficient to the task of carrying the plot on his shoulders, and hues closer to the successful leading men of the NOTLD series than we’ve seen in many of Romero’s own recent efforts. All in all, the overall product is that rare thing – a remake that is at least equal to (and perhaps better than) the original.

Perhaps the film’s strongest asset is its story. A pre-Dempsey & Makepeace Michael Brandon plays Roberto Tobias, a drummer in a rock band who’s spent the last week being stalked by a mysterious stranger. Confronting the man in an abandoned theatre, Roberto accidentally ends up killing him, and is photographed doing so by a figure wearing a bizarre puppet mask. Roberto flees the scene, but in the coming weeks receives regular reminders of his actions from the photographer, in the form of pictures and other unsettling communications. This is a terrific premise, and Argento milks it for all its paranoid possibilities; in one scene, Roberto is rifling through a pile of records at a party only to discover a photo of himself holding a bloody knife between two LPs. Aside from Roberto’s curiously unsympathetic wife Nina, most of the other characters are ineffectual oddballs, which serves to emphasise his increased isolation and introspection. The world Argento presents is a cold one which yields little in the way of clues; the stark cinematography, which frequently establishes environments by languidly cutting between static shots of locations, drives home how far Roberto’s situation has removed him from home comforts.

There are some brilliant set piece moments as well. The opening sequence, where Roberto is bothered by a fly during band rehearsal, is dazzling. Equally successful is the scene where hapless private investigator Arrioso is pursuing a suspect on the metro; Argento’s economical, unflashy but perfectly framed direction makes this one of the tense high points of the whole movie. Other scenes are less successful; the killer’s pursuit of Roberto’s maid Amelia in the park, for example, is let down by some rather gimmicky jump-cuts that seem out of keeping with the restraint Argento shows elsewhere.

The film’s real problem lies in the rather leaden pacing. At 100 minutes, Four Flies could hardly be considered overlong, but there’s a fair amount of filler material that serves to slow the whole film down without adding much to the overall experience. Godfrey and The Professor are two fairly irritating characters who contribute little, and some of the chat at Roberto’s parties is pretty excruciating. Elsewhere, there’s some rather early-70s attitudes and conventions on display that haven’t exactly aged well; Argento’s portrayal of Arrioso’s homosexuality is fairly embarrassing by modern standards, and the occasional lapses into beatnik dialogue (“Hey man, what’s your trip?”) occasionally add some unintentional hilarity.

In classic Argento style, the story is brought to its endgame by a whacking great plot contrivance that seems at once ludicrous but also fairly in keeping with the bizarre, illogical world he portrays. I won’t blow the twist here, but suffice it to say it involves a hugely unlikely forensic discovery and some of the most revolting jewellery I’ve ever seen in a film. The murder scenes themselves, as well as the climactic final shot, are fairly exciting but feel a little flat compared to the baroque extremes some of Argento’s later films would go to. In many ways, this is Four Flies in a nutshell; like its predecessor, Cat o’ Nine Tails, it’s a solid and entertaining thriller that shows plenty of directorial flair, yet you’re waiting for Argento to slip his leash and show you something extraordinary. Declaring the giallo dead, Argento’s next film was historical comedy The Five Days; but when that bombed in Italy, he returned with Deep Red, which kicked off an astonishing fifteen-year fun of genre defining masterpieces. Four Flies on Grey Velvet isn’t a bad film, but as history proved, Dario Argento was capable of a lot more.

Normally this is the kind of butchery that would have most sane film lovers up in arms, but the results are actually astonishingly good. The reason for this lies in both the quality of the original material and the care and attention that Houston lavished on the project. Whilst cut to make the film as exciting as possible, it retains the series’ emotional core, that of the fully-rounded but understated relationship between the ronin Itto and his three-year old son Daigoro. Similarly, the dubbing is some of the most effective I’ve ever seen on a foreign language movie; Houston apparently enlisted the help of lip-readers to assist him with the script, meaning that occasionally the English dialogue genuinely seems to be spoken by the Japanese actors. And the new music score is a blinder – perhaps anachronistic or inappropriate for the setting, but the humming synths and ambient washes interact well with the hyper-stylised visuals.

It is, however, Kenji Misumi’s original direction that is the star here. The episodic, Western-esque narrative simply demands that Itto fights off different sets of ninjas sent by the eponymous Shogun (who ordered the murder of Itto and his wife) in a variety of locations. This results in some of the most eye-poppingly enjoyable swordplay and bloodshed I’ve ever seen in a film; Misumi continually surprises with new ways of severing limbs, heads and other body parts, and the make-up department really go to town with some of the reddest blood I’ve seen outside of an Italian movie. The backdrops are stupendous as well, with each confrontation taking place in a setting more dazzling than the last; the epic climax sees Itto take on an entire army atop a desert dune, no less. There’s a tremendous sense of fun here, as well; Daigoro’s customised babycart, which allows him to see of a few ninjas himself, is a terrific touch, and the clan of female assassins are great villains.

Anchoring the film are two knockout performances from Tomisaburo Wakayama as Itto and Akihiro Tomikawa as Daigoro. Wakayama economically but subtly conveys both sadness and rage at the fugitive lifestyle he is forced to lead and the deep love for his son, whilst Tomikawa delivers one of the best performances I’ve seen from a child actor in a long time; if you’re left untouched by the scene where Daigoro gathers water from a river to revive an unconscious Itto, you’re a colder person than me. Whilst Houston’s primary interest is in the action, he retains enough character moments like this to allow a depth and warmth to permeate the gore, adding a couple of much needed respites to the frenzied action elsewhere.

Shogun Assassin would go on to cast a long shadow over many subsequent martial arts movies; in particular, it found renewed currency when Quentin Tarantino declared it the primary inspiration behind Kill Bill. Whilst the original Lone Wolf & Cub films probably more fully realised as pieces of film-making, this doesn’t stop Shogun Assassin being both a terrific genre piece and a hugely enjoyable piece of cinema in its own right. By turns touching, tense, beautiful and enormously exciting, it stands alone as possibly one of the unlikeliest artistic triumphs of the grindhouse era.

Not that you can escape the maths. Our protagonists are Spain’s finest mathematicians, whose paths ultimately cross when they receive an invitation to attend an exclusive gathering organised by the elusive ‘Fermat’. The introduction of this unusual premise is handled well, and though the characters are fairly formulaic they’re framed sufficiently irreverently in opening to forgive them that and enjoy the fun. Of particular note is the rock star like adulation heaped on “Galois”, which appears to be particularly well deserved given that he has solved Goldbach’s conjecture. “Hilbert” also stands out, if only because he must surely spend his summers working as a professional Sir Laurence Olivier lookalike on cruise ships.

If it isn’t apparent by these early stages that you’ll need a large pinch of salt to get through the rest of the film, it will be when the boffins converge on Fermat’s Room. What then ensues is a series of mathematical ‘enigmas’ sent into the locked room via a mobile phone by the mysterious “Fermat”, with delayed or incorrect answers leading to the room contracting in on itself. This very quickly beds down into an utterly conventional murder (or, rather, maths) mystery rather than the kind of RAND Corporation training exercise you’d think such a scheme might entail. It also means that it will feel familiar to anyone who has watched an episode of Columbo. In fact, if you’ve seen the Mind Over Mayhem episode you’ll practically feel at home. It’s a shame really, as this fails to utilise what could have been a fairly unconventional and engaging plot device.

It also means that the characters suddenly seem utterly out of place, as though they’re the only ones who turned up to the party in fancy dress. You get a sense that even Piedrahita and Sopeña got bored of the maths, as the ‘enigmas’ recede into the background to make way for a run-of-the-mill whodunit. However, the failure to properly anchor the characters to plot removes any real sense of revelation and each new discovery tends to lessen rather heighten the suspense. Be sure to watch out for “Pascal” brake pedal story for a prime, and superbly hilarious, example.

Having said that, Fermat’s Room never outstays its welcome. Aside from the disconnect that emerges between the characters and the plot, the cast is sufficiently enjoyable and skilled, and present what they’re given with a earnestness that cannot fail but endear. In particular, the emergence of “Pascal” in the second half of the film provides a likeable cynic of a companion. As a self-declared “practical” mathematician he is as baffled as the viewer by overall scenario, and through him perhaps Piedrahita and Sopeña were signalling that we shouldn’t take it too seriously. Go into it expecting a well-executed mathematical pantomime, and you’ll not be too disappointed.

At the heart of this nosedive is 1996′s The Stendhal Syndrome, which remains probably his most divisive film. It’s certainly his most frustrating, a rag-tag mess of a film that contains that at times feels like it’s up there with his best work and at others feels plodding, inept and workmanlike.

Let’s start with the good stuff. The setup is an absolute killer. Argento’s daughter Asia stars as Italian cop Anna Manni, who suffers a rare (real-life) affliction called Stendhal Syndrome which causes her to become overwhelmed by works of art. Her pursuit of Alfredo Grossi, a serial rapist and murderer (played The Pianist’s Thomas Kretschmann), leads her to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence where she falls into a trance and collapses, leaving her in Grossi’s clutches. The opening twenty minutes is absolutely first rate; Argento’s oppressive direction of the Uffizi sequence effectively and economically conveys the impact of Anna’s unusual condition, and the dreamlike shots of her falling in and out of the various paintings are up there with his best visual gimmicks. Anna’s subsequent, traumatised attempts to both overcome her ordeal and rid herself of her affliction through painting are also well handled and visually striking.

Unfortunately Argento seems to lose interest in the Stendhal Syndrome itself less than an hour into the film – which is baffling, seeing as it is by far and away the most fascinating element. By the halfway point Anna is cured, Grossi is killed and the film seems to turn into a possession film, with Anna’s tormentor continuing to haunt her seemingly from beyond the grave. The ‘twist’ conclusion is blindingly obvious – I won’t spoil it here, but Anna’s sudden decision to wear a blonde wig and the unsubtle HIV test scene signpost it so far in advance that if you don’t work it out yourself you’re probably watching the wrong movie. The second half of the film is not only thunderingly inept, it’s thoroughly boring as well – the whole film clocks in at 118 minutes, which is really half an hour too long, especially given that Argento’s can’t sustain the initial premise for the full length of the film.

The lost potential of the setup is also reflected in Argento’s handling of Grossi himself. The director’s trademark is his suspenseful use of concealed, motif-based killers, yet Grossi’s identity is never in doubt and we see him raping and maiming his victims from the start. Not only is this uncharacteristically unsubtle and route-one for Argento (particularly unpleasant when his own daughter is playing the victim!) but it’s also a hugely missed opportunity; there’s surely much mileage in the idea of an art-obsessed psychopath exploiting a Stendhal Syndrome sufferer, but aside from a passing attempt to mirror Grossi’s smearing of his victims’ blood with Anna’s painting of herself to rid herself of her condition, he ignores this potentially profitable angle, to the film’s detriment.

Asia Argento herself has come in for some criticism over the years, but her performance is fairly serviceable, and she’s particularly effective in both the Syndrome scenes and as the terrified victim. She’s far less engaging in the second half, but given how the script unsubtly calls for her to become an enigmatic mad woman for no real reason until the end, there’s probably not much more she could have done with the material. She is, however, miscast; aged 20 at the time of filming, she looks even younger, which makes the police department’s decision to send her – solo – to another city in pursuit of a serial rapist and murderer even less believable. An older actress with greater presence might have been able to paper over some of the inconsistencies in the script, but instead she leaves the film’s flaws open for all to see.

Technically, the film ranges from good to unremarkable. The much-criticised use of CGI (it was apparently the first Italian film to do so) is indeed wretched, but is thankfully only restricted to a couple of brief shots. Argento continues his move into more naturalistic (i.e. boring) colours and composition, but some of his angles are interesting, particularly in the aforementioned Uffizi sequence, Marie’s murder in the gallery and the bizarre evocation of Alice in Wonderland as a blonde Anna runs around her apartment in a blue dress at the end (this may have been unintentional). Ennio Morricone’s score is pretty good too, wrapped around a looping motif that sounds by turns sinister and comforting depending on the context.

Argento has since claimed that The Stendhal Syndrome has an anti-censorship message, and that it was designed as a riposte to his critics: just as many of his films were cut because of the corrupting influence of their images, so Anna is overwhelmed by pictures on a wall. By a weird coincidence, in the same year Wes Craven, a director who early films were frequently cut to bits by censors, released Scream, a metatextual horror in which the killer has been depraved by horror films. But whereas this self-reflection is evident throughout Scream, it’s nowhere to be found here, and one suspects Argento made this up post-facto. The most maddening aspect of The Stendhal Syndrome is not that it’s simply bad, but that in patches it’s really good. But for the first time, Argento, once the king of leitmotif horror, can’t retain a handle on the fascinating ideas and images he sets up at the start of the film, and once he steps away from the art theme he never once offers anything interesting or developed to replace it, instead offering half-baked twists and tedious procedural drama. Sadly, The Stendhal Syndrome marks a turning point for Argento; after the halfway point he’d never make another good film again. A partially interesting failure, the film stands as both as his last gasp of greatness and the start of the terminal mediocrity that was to follow.

Understanding the latter point is perhaps crucial for getting in the right headspace to appreciate Zatoichi. The film, while hugely enjoyable and masterfully executed, is a very mainstream proposition. In the UK it is available on the none-more-arthouse label Artificial Eye, which may lead one to expect a more ‘alternative’ offering; those who expect such a film may be surprised by the relatively straightforward plotting, broad slapstick comedy interludes and the fourth-wall shattering Bollywood-style song and dance number that closes the film.

Ultimately, Kitano’s Zatoichi is an attractive, accessible, reverential repackaging of a well-loved character that may well be low on insight or subtlety but rates high on excitement and pure cinematic pleasure. The plot will be familiar to anyone who’s ever seen a Western; Zatoichi arrives in an otherwise peaceful small town that is terrorised by a violent gang, and he promptly sets about seeing them off. Along the way, he befriends a local farmer and her gambling-addict son, assists two geishas seeking to avenge the murder of their family, and duels with Gennosuke, a powerful ronin who may well match him for sword skills.

The film looks ravishing, with the various locales rendered beautifully and a unified sense of location in the town. But really the headline attractions here are Kitano as Zatoichi, and the swordplay, and both are first rate. Kitano marks out Zatoichi’s fighting skills as being devastatingly precise rather than showy, contrasted well with the more lavish displays by other characters. In particular, Zatoichi’s showdowns with the various yakuzas towards the end of the film are hugely exciting and well-realised. Only the much-anticipated duel between Zatoichi and Gennosuke disappoints, feeling thrown away and anti-climactic.

In keeping with the humble nature of his character, Kitano’s performance is admirably restrained, yet he carries enough presence to anchor the whole film. The rest of the characters are appealingly drawn, with enough detail to flesh them out without bogging the film down with backstories. In particular, Gennosuke’s fleeting distaste for what his work forces him to do is a nice touch, while the gang bosses are pleasingly repugnant. The geisha storyline perhaps engages less because the ‘twist’ is fairly well signposted, but it doesn’t outstay its welcome. Dance troupe The Stripes, whose performance closes the film, appear earlier in a number of entertaining slapstick cameos where they show off their skills whilst posing as farmers and builders.

If there’s one criticism to be had of Zatoichi, it’s that ultimately the film feels fairly inconsequential; whilst it’s a hugely enjoyable way to pass two hours, there’s not a much that lingers with the viewer afterwards other than the sense of having had a lot of fun. Really though, it feels rather mean spirited to hold this against the film. Zatoichi is a terrific piece of work that goes full-throttle in delivering a solidly entertaining mainstream experience. I loved it, and if you’re in the mood for a slice of pure cinematic pleasure, I wager you will too.

Trying to put my finger on quite why I didn’t has increased my confusion. Taking its component parts in isolation, I should at least conclude that it was average. Plot = interesting enough. Cast = Adequate for the task. Script = Can’t really complain. Direction = Nothing stands out as atrociously bad. It’s only when these are gelled together than the flaws emerge, and I think they arise out of Oren Peli’s decision to use the found footage format.

I realise that criticising a horror film for implausibility is akin to criticising an apple for not being an orange, but the found footage genre demands an added level of believability.   By casting the viewer as a direct participant in the story and turning the camera into their eyes, we rightly subject such films to a heightened level of scrutiny. You can forgive flights of fancy when you’re cast in the traditional viewer role of passively watching a story unfold on screen. There the space belongs to the cast and crew, and they can treat it how they like in telling their tale. When you’re brought into the action in the way that found footage films do, you can rightly ask “am I supposed to believe this?”

Paranormal Activity falls down in being implausible within its own terms of reference. We are expected to believe that our protagonists are both terrified but prepared to stay in their house. We’ve all cried out in frustration that victims in horror films never think to call the police when Michael Myers is clearly standing outside or just moved instead of calling in Father Damien Karras. In Paranormal Activity, we’re presented with a young, affluent couple who are prepared to suffer mental and physical harm instead of simply moving. As such, the entire endeavour lacks that credibility that is so fundamental to found footage films.

So we are left with a series of disjointed set-pieces revolving around the recordings taken of the couple as they are in bed waiting for the next attack, without the buttress of a credible conceptual framework. The interventions of a couple of demonologists come across as rather mocking to the audience as a result of this, like those video clips you often saw on old PC games when you progressed to a new level. Absent is any incremental ratcheting up of terror and subtle revelation of the hopelessness of the situation of the type that rightly distinguished Blair Witch. Contrast the scene where Heather breaks down in the tent on realising what was happening and what was likely to happen, to Micah’s synthetic anger at the demon in his house and you’ll realise how far short Paranormal Activity falls in properly utilising the found footage technique.

It never really recovers from those failings, and is ultimately constricted by a format it does not use but cannot discard. It might have been an entertaining enough offering had it done one or the other, but instead it plummets between two stools. The cast, particularly Micah Sloat, fall into a similar trap, having insufficient gravitas to carry the weak format but presenting as too polished to come across as credibly amateur. We are thus forced to endure what becomes a rather sedentary exercise in going through the motions accompanied by a rather unlikeable couple awaiting the inevitable. The resorting to use of a Ouija board midway through suggests that even the crew were getting bored, and has all of the feel of a game of horror film ‘join the dots’.

These flaws may have been ironed out in the sequel, but until then you’re better off looking to Rec if you’re after a decent heir to Blair Witch. Perhaps the nicest thing I can say is that it wasn’t the worst film we saw that night.

Trick ‘r Treat is an anthology film unashamedly in the mould of Creepshow and Tales From the Crypt, which themselves largely took their cues from the horror comics of the 50s and The Twilight Zone. It tells four separate but overlapping stories set in a small town celebrating Halloween. As with almost all anthology movies, these vary in tone and impact, but since the film a whole runs to a lean 79 minutes none are allowed to outstay their welcome. All comply to the tried and trust formula of a spooky setup followed by a gruesome twist ending. The slightest story, “The Principal”, features a brilliant turn from Dylan Baker, channeling the likes of Re-animator’s Jeffery Combs, propping up an otherwise fairly thin plot. “Surprise Party” and “The School Bus Massacre Revisited” are more substantial, the former boasting a terrifically full-on conclusion and the latter featuring some genuinely impressive atmospherics.

Like Creepshow, Trick ‘r Treat concludes with a one-hander featuring a veteran actor being tormented in his home; but instead of EG Marshall and thousands of insects, here we have Brian Cox and a pumpkin-headed demon called Sam. This segment is the undoubted highlight of the film. Sam is a brilliant creation; in a twisted take on A Christmas Carol, he pops up throughout the film as a warning to those who fail to respect the traditions of Halloween, but he reserves particular ire for Cox’s cantankerous Mr Kreeg, whom he pursues until he changes his ways. Cox gives a no-holds-barred performance, and the fight descends into some hugely enjoyable Evil Dead II-style slapstick/splatter.

As you might have guessed, Trick ‘r Treat isn’t hugely original, but Dougherty’s brilliantly witty, atmospheric direction holds everything together. In anchoring everything to a single town, he creates a real sense of location that is at once familiar but at times hauntingly alien; in “Surprise Party”, for example, the town’s festivities very quickly move from being jovial to threatening. The film is filmed with memorable and striking imagery: the aforementioned Sam, the decayed school bus half submerged in the lake, Kreeg’s front garden filled with carved pumpkins. The mood may predominantly be light-hearted, but Dougherty shows such craft it’s hard not to be dazzled.

The main point of divergence between Trick ‘r Treat and its predecessors is Dougherty’s decision (apparently taken during post-production) to cut between the stories rather than telling them in series. The downside to this is that the first 20 minutes or so are largely fairly leisurely-paced setup, to the extent that I was starting to wonder whether or not the film had been somewhat over-praised. Nevertheless, once all the stories are in motion, he delivers a genuine thrill ride that largely avoids the pacing problems that blight other anthologies.

Perhaps inevitably for a film that wears its influences so strongly on its sleeves, Trick ‘r Treat feels simultaneously very 80s and very 50s. But in an era where mainstream horror is becoming increasingly po-faced and misanthropic in its shocks, to see a modern, studio genre film that revels in a sense of well-crafted scary fun is hugely refreshing. It’s obviously a travesty that mainstream audiences were denied the opportunity to see this film on the big screen, but it points to bigger problems in Hollywood’s current handling of horror. This film easily stands alongside the likes of Creepshow and Carpenter’s Halloween as a definitive Halloween movie, one that you will want to watch – in company – every October. Yet the studios seem content to mark Halloween with the grungy nastiness of the Saw films rather than something far more inclusive, accessible and in keeping with the spirit of the season like this. (British readers who think this is overstating the case may like to reflect on just how widely Halloween is celebrated in the US). And Trick ‘r Treat impresses because despite the gore, murder and dismemberment, it retains the atmosphere of good, clean fun. So chalk this up as yet another horror blog telling you to buy this film, watch it, and tell your friends. As Sam is keen to stress, Halloween traditions must be respected…

And the plot is simple, Incredibly so. Omitting the spoiler ending, it centres entirely on a man trapped in a telephone box. Given that simplicity, there’s not a great deal I can say about the nuts and bolts beyond observing that they’re perfectly calibrated to serve the purpose of the film. La cabina has the wonderful grittiness that’s so often a feature of Spanish film, from the look and sound through to the willingness to conceive of and present average characters to convey added realism (those who’ve seen Timecrimes will know what I mean). By average, I of course don’t wish to disparage the efforts of Jose Vazquez. He takes possession of every second of the role of ‘Man in the phone box, and the virtues of the gritty, simplistic approach can be observed in contrasting this with something like Phone Booth.

What La cabina manages to capture perfectly is the collective psychological blindness that emerges in totalitarian societies which allows most people to live a ‘normal’ life. While the crowd surrounding the phone box are initially sympathetic and concerned, once it becomes clear that they are powerless to help they quickly turn their backs in an attempt to ignore – or mock – the obvious elephant in the room, or ‘Man in the phone box’. In drawing out his reaction and that of the various characters who stumble across him, Mercero dances between light drama, comedy and Twilight Zone-esqu eeriness with such effortlessness that the impact of the ending is doubly horrific.

This reaches its apotheosis when the box is eventually removed; no-one seeks to question the circumstances of this or batters an eye-lid that someone can be randomly plucked from the street by seemingly faceless authority. Not that La cabina is a simple tirade against authority, for on some levels the state is presented as hapless and incompetent rather than chilling. The police who turn out to assist are more reminiscent of the German officers in ‘Allo, ‘Allo than they are the ruthless agents of the Franco regime. It’s nevertheless astonishing that La cabina secured a release during the Caudillo’s lifetime.  Its message is nuanced but clear; in some societies, people can and do disappear in circumstances as brazen as from a public square in broad daylight surrounded by large crowds. You’ll be hard pressed to find a film that conveys the true horror of that fact better.

Double Take is anchored around a narrative in which Alfred Hitchcock, played in voiceover by Mark Perry, relates a fictional encounter he supposedly had in 1962 with a future version of himself whilst on the set of The Birds. The two discuss identity, progress and the passage of time before young Hitchcock poisons the elder, claiming that “if you should ever meet your double, kill him”. Against this narrative, Grimonprez show a montage of archive and specially shot footage, including clips from the Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV series, reconstructions featuring Hitchcock lookalike Ron Burrage, interviews with Burrage about what it’s like to be a Hitchcock lookalike, and – most prominently – Cold War footage including clips from Nixon and Khrushchev’s “Kitchen Debate”, Kennedy, the space race, the history of television and contemporary American news reports.

If this sounds like a jumbled headtrip, it is. The film is only around 80 minutes long, but for its duration, it’s almost impossible to pick out any discernible structure or purpose to the welter of fitfully entertaining footage that flashes past. In particular, the first half of the film is almost infuriatingly opaque and apparently aimless. It’s only when the credits have rolled, the dust settles and the film is allowed to recede in the mind afterwards that Double Take takes on any real sense of form or meaning.

The film is anchored (at the beginning, middle and end) by three (real) clips from different interviews given by Hitchcock, where he relates the same story about the nature of the MacGuffin – in his case, the ultimately insignificant piece of plot structure or driving narrative around which he would wrap the tortuous mystery and suspense that formed the ‘meat’ of his film. This is the key to understanding Double Take; it’s full of MacGuffins, the most prominent of which is the framing conversation between Hitchcock and his future self. This narrative ultimately goes nowhere, but the details of their conversation percolate outwards into the rest of the film offering resonance to the other fragments that Grimonprez shows us.

An easy mistake to make with this film is to infer that it has a ‘point’, an overall message or intention that Grimonprez wishes to impart. At times, he appears to be guiding us towards a rather facile conclusion that the destructive end to the conversation between the two Hitchcocks should itself be taken as a parallel for the Cold War, and that the US and Russia will inevitably be locked in a relationship that will result in the destruction of one or both parties. But this is in itself a MacGuffin, and one of the film’s most challenging aspects; although the film is almost entirely made up of footage of Hitchcock and the Cold War, it is about neither of these things; we are required to discard the immense cultural baggage that both carry and peer into the finer nuances of what we actually see there and then on the screen. The clips, sequences and pieces of footage are fragments that exist freely within the running time of the film; as the fragments collide with each other they provide little pockets of meaning, yet do not in themselves fit together as a cohesive whole.

So the conflict between Hitchcock and his future self resonate with the Kitchen Debate; both Nixon and Khrushchev, in that moment at least, are both ideological opposites yet fiercely wield near identical rhetorical weapons in a bid to assert superiority. Nixon’s assertion that colour television is an example of American progress resonates with the older Hitchcock’s (well-documented) disdain for TV as a medium, conflicting with the clips of a much younger Hitchcock fronting his own television show and playfully introduction commercial breaks. Hitchcock asserts that TV’s latter-day dominance over cinema proves that things will always be killed and superseded by younger, inferior imitations of themselves; this resonates with Ron Burrage’s anecdote about playing Hitchcock at the premiere of the 1999 restoration of The Birds. Grimonprez draws these resonances down onto a macro level; for example, he has Ron Burrage featured in some deliberately garish and tacky reconstructions of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents intros; not only is the full-colour, digital video shooting purposefully inferior to the black and white film originals, but they are captioned Dario Argento Presents – Argento considered by many to be an inferior successor to Hitchcock. Mark Perry’s voiceover evokes Hitchcock’s voice, but never really sounds like him. And the cheeky end credits sequence shows Reagan, Bush and Putin pursuing different (if similar) ideological conflicts to their predecessors, but with blunter, less sophisticated, inferior rhetoric to their predecessors.

As I said at the start of this review, Double Take is more of a work of art than a movie, and so to criticise it for lacking documentary purpose or dramatic narrative misses the mark somehow. The payoff to this, however, is that I didn’t find it a massively entertaining cinematic experience even if much of the archive footage used was enjoyable or interesting on its own terms. (The trailer, which promises a sort of surreal doppelganger thriller, is hugely misleading!) I far more enjoyed piecing together the film in my mind afterwards than I did watching it at the time. Literalists will hate this film; those interested in either the Cold War or Hitchcock will feel let down by how little it has to say about either. But whilst many will dismiss it as pretentious, or meaningless, or even facile, it is neither artless or random; it’s an enormously clever and well-constructed piece of work even as it infuriates or enrages. I imagine I’ll probably never watch this film again, nor would I particularly recommend it as a movie; but I mean it as a compliment when I say it’s one of the most perplexing and baffling pieces of work I’ve seen in a long time.