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Death on the Nile (1978)
A murderer strikes on board the luxury Nile steamer Karnak – and Hercule Poirot faces his most baffling case.
Filmmaker(s): John Guillermin

As Hercule Poirot enjoys a luxurious cruise down the Nile, a newlywed heiress is found murdered on board and every elegant passenger becomes a prime suspect.

Faces and Places recently rewatched this because of the Branagh version. We now have three: this Ustinov version, a later Suchet, and the recent Branagh. I see that my original comment — likely 20 years ago — was one of those deleted from IMDB by...


Published December 31, 2022
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Jubilee (1978)
Sex, drugs and punk rock. Add violence and time travel and you have Jubilee.
Filmmaker(s): Derek Jarman

Queen Elizabeth I visits late 1970s England to find a depressing landscape where life has changed since her time.

The Deep, Vacuous Meditations of Angels Feeding Dogs amazed that anyone would think this is similar to “Clockwork Orange.” Kubrick’s world was one of too much sense: strong minds of people and institutions creating realities that compete, even clash with each other. His worlds are...


Published December 1, 2022
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Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1978)
Filmmaker(s): Raúl Ruiz

Two narrators, one seen and one unseen, discuss possible connections between a series of paintings. The on-screen narrator walks through three-dimensional reproductions of each painting, featuring real people, sometimes moving, in an effort to explain the series' significance.

Thieves a blanket term in film criticism, reflexivity. Its an odd word. It denotes something where outside and inside are merged or mixed, where viewer and viewed overlap. And yet the word itself is not reflexive, it stands aloof. While the root comes from reflection,...


Published November 27, 2022
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China 9, Liberty 37 (1978)
The deadliest crossroad.
Filmmaker(s): Monte Hellman

Gunslinger Clayton Drumm is about to be hanged when he is given a chance to live if he will agree to murder Matthew (Oates), a miner who has steadfastly refused to sell his land to the railroad company. Matthew’s refusal is a major obstacle to the railroad’s plans for expansion.

Whoring and Teaching so we have it: arguably the last spaghetti western. Wonderfully photographed. Well acted. This time around what we get is an erotic western. Our hard boiled hero is a gunslinger as usual but good hearted enough to not kill his mark simply...


Published September 19, 2022
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Maladolescenza (1977)
Filmmaker(s): Pier Giuseppe Murgia

Laura and Fabrizio have been meeting every summer in the forest by her parent's summer home. Fabrizio is a solitary boy with only his dog for company; Laura a sweet but unconfident child. This summer new aspects enter into their story as both are growing up. Laura is falling in love with Fabrizio, while he displays a new sexual awareness of her masked by his malice. Things develop further when they meet Sylvia who, unlike the innocent Laura, is confident and assertive. Fabrizio develops a fascination with her, eventually bribing Laura to fetch her to the forest to join them in play.

Tame Stuff think I saw this when it was new. Hard to remember, because I don’t think it had much effect on me. If it did, it has far less now. The idea here is that we see creeping malevolence made crisp by showing it among...


Published February 28, 2023
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Bilitis (1977)
A boarding school teenager on the verge of full erotic awakening.
Filmmaker(s): David Hamilton

A coming of age story centering on the exploits of a young girl during summer vacation.

Wonder collecting my old IMDB comments for moving to this site, I find a few hundred missing — possibly a thousand. There was an era in IMDB history — before Facebook and Twitter — where IMDB was a social media hub. My comments were an...


Published October 31, 2022
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Jabberwocky (1977)
Jabberwocky: the monster so horrible that people caught the plague to avoid it
Filmmaker(s): Terry Gilliam

A medieval tale with Pythonesque humour: After the death of his father the young Dennis Cooper goes to town where he has to pass several adventures. The town and the whole kingdom is threatened by a terrible monster called 'Jabberwocky'. Will Dennis make his fortune? Is anyone brave enough to defeat the monster?

Bonecrushing Display of Phosphorescence assured that there is little relationship between this film and Carroll’s poem about his father’s crusade against French etymology. Instead, we have the first chapter in Gilliam’s quest for an appropriate vehicle for his imagination. That imagination isn’t comic in the ordinary...


Published May 13, 2022
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Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
We are not alone.
Filmmaker(s): Steven Spielberg

After an encounter with UFOs, an electricity linesman feels undeniably drawn to an isolated area in the wilderness where something spectacular is about to happen.

The Third Narrative give Spielberg little credit, even claim that he has taken us several steps backward in how we use our visual imagination. And for that he deserves distain. But he was not always excessively vulgar, visually lowbrow. Before ‘ET,' he did some strongly...


Published January 22, 2024
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Annie Hall (1977)
A nervous romance.
Filmmaker(s): Woody Allen

New York comedian Alvy Singer falls in love with the ditsy Annie Hall.

The Story about the Story is an intelligent man who worries about the issues of film-making. The primary concern, the very first problem, is always to decide what the relationships are among the audience, the camera, the narrator if any, and the characters. Woody was on...


Published December 9, 2024
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Barbed Wire Dolls (1976)
Welcome to prison, Ladies!
Filmmaker(s): Jesús Franco

Maria, an unfortunate young woman, kills her rapist father in self-defense, and is later tried, sentenced, and shipped off to a woman's penitentiary where she and her fellow inmates are subjected to psychological and sexual abuse at the hands of a psychotic lesbian warden.

Captured been involved in a dangerous business, diving into the catacombs of film, digging around in trash pits and seeing grand things. Part of this endeavour comes from my appreciation for the vitality of film today which in large part is anchored by Spanish and Spanish-speaking...


Published May 16, 2023
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