The Town (Ben Affleck, 2010) DVD Review

Ben Affleck and Jeremy Renner in The Town (2010)

Remember the saying; it's not what you do, it's how you do it? Well that serves as a pretty apt description for how The Town, Ben Affleck's second feature as director, approaches the crime genre. Steeped in cliché it may be, but it's a hugely exciting picture with a lot of heart - something sorely missing from recent pedestrian outings such as Brooklyn's Finest (Antoine Fuqua, 2009). The most notable comparison (and the one critics were riding their wave of praise on) is Heat (Michael Mann, 1995), but they're actually very different films. Mann's thriller was a soft-shaded exercise in male mechanics, charting the battle between cop and criminal, and where they become one and the same. Each character had other relationships going on but they played second fiddle to the central Pacino/De Niro tussle, and lacked anything approaching a real heart - it was about psychology. That films ethos was "don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner" but the criminal characters in The Town are more recognizably human - they know when they should walk away, but can't bring themselves to. Ultimately they are not the ones in control of their own destiny...

The film opens with an exciting, tightly shot bank heist - one of three major set-pieces in the film, each with their own distinct tone and flavour. Things go wrong when somebody pushes a secret alarm and the robbers are forced to take hostage Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall), who they leave on the beach. Loose cannon James Coughlin (Jeremy Renner) proposes killing her, suspecting she is talking to the FBI - which she is, with Special Agent Adam Frawley (Jon Hamm). But kind-hearted Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck) decides to go himself and starts to fall in love with her. Their relationship is the core of the film, and the realistic dialogue and underplayed performances give their interactions depth and believability. Indeed, the actors are all on top form - Affleck hasn't been this good in years, Hall is lovely, Hamm is engaging and Blake Lively (as James' junkie sister Krista) is excellent. But it's really Renner who commands the screen, especially in his adrenaline-pumping final shoot-out with the cops. He's a true star in the making; excelling in the vastly different role of William James in The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2008), and soon to be seen in the fourth installment of the M:I franchise, Ghost Protocol (Brad Bird, 2011). His is a ruthlessly violent turn, with anger and ambition burning behind the eyes. He's a muscular presence, charismatic but unwieldy; he'd rather die than go back to prison. Excuse the crassness but if Affleck and Hall are the heart, Renner is the balls - making sure that every action sequence is injected with a degree of unpredictability - especially when he shoots a guard during the second robbery (an armored car), resulting in a thrilling car chase, one of the best edited action sequences in recent memory - exciting without resorting to the nonsense of shaky-cam and choppy fast-cuts. It's calm and controlled, recalling Doug Liman's work on The Bourne Identity (2002).

Furiously paced (it certainly doesn't feel like two hours), the human interactions are what really sets this apart from the legion of crime thrillers it has been lazily compared to. It's a story of love against impossible odds and deception at the hands of it, a brotherly bond between two lifelong friends, and a son trying so hard to exist outside of his fathers shadow while suffering the memory of his lost mother. But it's also the story of Charlestown, a Boston neighborhood famed for its generations of bank robbers. It's almost the main character of the film - a breeding ground for crime, with pawns and kingpins interacting in one huge interconnected pool. There's a real sense of history to the characters, and a feeling of time-honored tradition, best exemplified by Fergus Colm (a solid Pete Postlethwaite), an Irish thug and florist who goes all the way back to the generation of Doug's incarcerated father (Chris Cooper, also excellent in his one scene). It doesn't really say anything new as far as the genre is concerned, but on a human level The Town really is the best crime film in years, and the beautiful score by Harry Gregson-Williams and David Buckley (especially Doug Reflects and The Letter) adds to that feeling, and is the most currently underrated aspect of the film. Affleck is really proving himself as a director of intelligence and maturity, crafting an adult thriller which tugs the heartstrings while it pins you to your seat. It's a genuine treat, and one of the best films of 2010.

VHS Quest #2. The Passion Of Darkly Noon (Philip Ridley, 1995)

The original poster for The Passion Of Darkly Noon (1995)

There are few filmmakers as boldly distinctive, audacious and yet under-appreciated as Philip Ridley. That may be because he's only made three films in the last 21 years, and none have recieved particularly wide distribution (Heartless, 2009, went all but straight to DVD). Even the cult followings his films gather are small compared to other surrealist filmmakers working outside of the system; David Lynch and Andrzej Zulawski, for example. In his native UK Ridley is all but ignored, and this - his masterwork - is still only available on VHS, should you be lucky enough to find it. A Southern Gothic tale of the occult, repression, religious allegory and cleansing revenge, this psychological thriller has roots in horror history, but also avant-garde surrealism. There's no real way to describe it, so lets get on with the plot...

The film opens to find Darkly Noon (Brendan Fraser) running through the forest - bedraggled and with bloodshot eyes, he looks as though Hell has just paid him a visit. He collapses into the middle of the road where a young delivery guy named Jude (Loren Dean) nearly runs him over. Jude picks him up and takes him to the house of Callie (Ashley Judd), a feisty and deeply sensual young woman who agrees to take in the injured man. When Darkly wakes we learn that he and his parents were part of a deeply Christian cult who lived by the bible, word-for-word. In a Waco-like assault the police murdered everyone except for the childlike Darkly, who managed to escape. Callie's world - her secularity and femininity - are new to him; one gets the feeling that he has never strayed far from home before, or seen a woman in a miniskirt. She lives in her home with "the love of my life"; a mute loner named Clay (Viggo Mortensen) who occasionally takes days-long walks into the forest, to live among nature. As Darkly falls deeply in love with Callie, and breaks his own rules (on their first day together he refuses the innocent request of getting into a spa with Callie, but he's soon voyeuristically spying on her from his home in the barn, masturbating to her presence through a crack in the wood), but is further repressed by the steely presence of Clay. The film becomes more erratic as it goes on with handheld camerawork, rich saturation, deep focus lensing and jump cutting creating a faster pace and more disorienting experience. We are very much in the mind of Darkly. One day he encounters a woman named Roxy (Grace Zabriskie) living in the woods, who claims to be the previous owner of Callie's house, and Clay's mother. She tells Darkly that she is a witch with seductive powers, and soon Darkly is visited with comic visions of his deceased parents (all smiles, but riddled with bullet holes) who confirm the fact. They tell him that he "knows what he has to do", but in the meantime he self-mutilates himself with barbed wire, to keep at bay the psychosexual feelings that are consciously developing...

The film is set over twelve days and a night, with the dawn of each new day signposted by a title card, splitting the film up like chapters in a book. Stunningly shot by DoP John de Borman, Ridley's worldview is like an apocalyptic circus - although he claims the film is not to be intellectually dissected, and he formed the images through imagination rather than direct symbolism, the giant floating shoe and wrath-of-God ending; as well as the cut-off claustrophobia of the setting and Callie's ambiguous status as a witch, confirm the film as a vision for the end of the world (or at least for these characters). The film doesn't exist in a specified time, and there are frequent references to the forest being a place that "never ends." One of the only other characters in the film is an eccentric preacher turned coffin maker, who tells us that they're "dropping like flies" - but who? And where? Is there some sort of government crackdown on organised religion? The slaughter of Darkly's townsfolk could indicate so, and his isolation - and therefore corruption and insanity - show one of two things. 1) an abandonment by God, or 2) the proposition that God's word is the one and only, and all those who defy his ways shall be punished. What is this fantastical world? Birds wrapped in barbed wire present an obvious metaphor for the forbidden fruit. But as Ridley would suggest, does this matter? It's really the feeling and emotion that The Passion Of Darkly Noon evokes that is of real importance. And that all exists in the performances...

Judd, Mortensen and Zabriskie are reliably excellent in their roles, with Mortensen in particular proving himself as an actor of great presence, grounding the central trio without saying a word. But the revelation here is an actor who often gets an undeserved amount of slack and ridicule - Brendan Fraser. It's very easy to mock him for the likes of George Of The Jungle (Sam Weisman, 1997) and Furry Vengeance (Roger Kumble, 2010), but he's also an actor with great dramatic weight and range, as proven in Gods And Monsters (Bill Condon, 1998) and The Quiet American (Phillip Noyce, 2002) - but this is his finest role. His childlike stammer and wide-eyed repression slowly transform into deeply troubled desire, with the finale seeing him going tribal; painting himself red and wielding an almighty blade in order to kill Callie and Clay. He handles the role with an odd but admirable restraint - his damaged face saying more than a thousand words. He's easy to sympathize with, but also hate - and that ear-piercing scream in the fire-blazing finale is incredibly effective. When he delivers a line like "i'm going for my walk in the dark", you forget all about The Mummy (Stephen Sommers, 1999).

Bold, brave, uncompromising and unique, The Passion Of Darkly Noon is an artistic, terrifying tour de force with an outstanding score by Nick Bicât - it'll polarize audiences like nothing else, but I found it to be nothing short of a masterpiece.

The Shortlist: Top 10 Non-Disney Animations

Full article at MultiMediaMouth: http://www.multimediamouth.com/2011/02/04/the-shortlist-top-10-non-disney-animations/

Cinema Strange #3. Arakimentari (Travis Klose, 2004)

The softer side of Nobuyoshi Araki is revealed in Arakimentari (2004)

I knew nothing about Nobuyoshi Araki going into Arakimentari, and I knew very little coming out. Filmmaker Travis Klose seems so in love with Araki's work that rather than delving deep into the world of the art and the artist he insists on filling half of his all too brief (74 minutes) documentary with montages of his photography. Indeed, this tale of style over fact is best viewed as a live exhibition hosted by the mad professor of erotic photography. Araki is a fascinating figure; exuberant yet gentle, he can come across as both feminist and misogynist, and is both likable and infuriating. Branded by many as "a monster", his work breaches the line between ecstasy (life) and transcendence (death, and the state of death), revealing moments of pure humanity. His boundless enthusiasm and passion for his craft is sure to bother some, but I was bothered by how little time we actually spent with him. Klose refuses to interview his subject, save for a few minutes of talking head footage, and for newcomers there's very little learnt about Araki that you couldn't gather by flicking through one of his thousands of books, each one an epic and beautiful gallery of themed ideas; some are calmly observational of nature, others sexually explicit - it appears that Araki shook up the Japanese porn scene when filmmakers such as Nagisa Ôshima (In The Realm Of The Senses, 1976) were pushing boundaries in the cinema.

The problem for me lies in the question of who this film is for. As a newcomer to Araki I can only really speak for one side of the audience - those discovering him and his work for the first time. It's a largely shallow experience; albeit one filled with stunning, evocative photography that regaled, enraptured, angered and moved me. The film finds firmer ground in the final ten minutes when Araki speaks of his wife, who died some years ago. He took photos of her for a book called 'Sentimental Journey', and the shot of him holding her hand for the last time is affecting in a unique way. It feels almost invasive, yet also intimate. It's an expression of true love. Hearing Araki speak of his wife, and walk the audience through his photography of her, is the highlight of an otherwise muddled film that fans of Araki will likely have an even bigger problem with. For them, half of the film will be a revision session - they will own the books these stills are taken from, and have likely heard him discuss his passion and themes with other interviewers. Talking heads such as Björk and Takashi Kitano express love and admiration for Araki, but don't recount any experiences, stories or knowledge in particular. Neither does the subject, for that matter, as we largely see him in a working environment - snapping away at the city of Tokyo, illuminated by neon signs, or shooting his 'Erotic Housewife' series, where his towering enthusiasm really becomes evident.

An energized and beautiful picture, it's also unfocused and unsubstantial, resulting in a wasted opportunity that, while telling me nothing about the artist, has exposed me to an entire universe of art. Perhaps Klose is too in love with his subject to really be subjective, and allow him room to breathe in what should have been a fascinating exposé, but becomes something distinctly un-cinematic and uninformative. Like I said in the opening paragraph, it's best viewed as a slide-show; an almost interactive gallery. And in that disappointing sense, it functions perfectly.

Cinema Strange #2. Kenneth Anger #1. Fireworks (1947), Puce Moment (1949), Rabbit's Moon (1950/1971)

Rabbit's Moon (1950/1971) by Kenneth Anger.

Born on 3rd February 1927 in Santa Monica, California, Kenneth Anger is one of the most well-regarded underground filmmakers of all time, an experimental magician who helped innovate cinema in the 40s/50s with his gritty brand of short films - often surreally disturbing, they celebrate homosexuality, rock music and the occult.

In order to understand his films, as far as they can be understood at all, one must first know of Anger's history of deception, myth spreading and involvement in the bizarre. He claims to have got a head-start in the film industry with a role as a child prince in Warner Bros./MGM's A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Dieterle, Max Reinhardt, 1935), but historians have actually proven the part was played by a little girl (Shelia Brown), to which Anger rebutted that his mother, a studio seamstress, had dressed him like a girl - which Gary Lachman, author of the BFI notes to the Magick Lantern Cycle release, notes as the likely beginning of Anger's fascination with gender, and "psycho-sexual transformations associated with magick and alchemy". Another example is found in Anger's alleged storming of the Film-Makers' Cooperative offices, and burning of the existing prints of his earliest films including Ferdinand And The Bull (1937) and Prisoner Of Mars (1943); of course, these dates would place him as 10 and 16 respectively, young even for a man famed for lying about his age (he claims to have made Fireworks, 1947, aged 17 - he was 20). Endlessly fascinating, Anger has a strange connection to the warped back-woods culture too - star of Lucifer Rising (1970-1981) Bobby Beausoleil stole the original print and gave it to Charles Manson, whose own killing spree would be ignited after Beausoleil, under Manson's instructions, took hostage and stabbed to death musician Gary Hinman, for the sake of a suspected inheritance - but Anger also has a connection to the world of real magic.

One of the first openly gay filmmakers, Anger changed his name from Kenneth Wilbur Anglemeyer while growing up in Beverly Hills (so he claims), which puts him in closer proximity with the excessive glamour of Hollywood than his probably more humble upbringing suggests. Attached to the stars from childhood Anger grew up on the films of Méliès (Le voyage dans la lune, 1902) but is famous for his admiration for magician Aleister Crowley (aka The Great Beast 666, providing an instant link to Anger's work), who faked his own suicide in 1930, only to turn up at an exhibition of his work in Berlin, much to the shock of his grieving fans who had turned out in their droves to celebrate the misunderstood genuis, who developed his real cult following in the swinging, psychedelic 60s, ending up as one of the faces on The Beatles' Sgt. Peppers album cover. Anger, fittingly, would take out a Village Voice ad stating the death of his career in 1967, reading 'In Memoriam. Kenneth Anger. Filmmaker 1947 - 1967.' Of course he was alive and well, mingling with the likes of Anton LaVey (Church Of Satan founder), Alfred Kinsey (sexologist), Jean Cocteau (artist and filmmaker) and Mick Jagger (musician; The Rolling Stones), at which point he was likely also a member of the Ordo Templi Orientalis, a Thelemetic organization (Thelema was a philosophical religion created by Crowley, of which he believed himself to be the prophet). Now, onto the films...

1. Fireworks (1947)

Narrator (Anger): "In Fireworks, I released all the explosive pyrotechnics of a dream. Inflammable desires dampened by day under the cold water of consciousness are ignited that night by the libertarian matches of sleep, and burst forth in showers of shimmering incandescence. These imaginary displays provide a temporary relief."

The story of a young gay man (played by Anger, named Dreamer) who is brutally beaten and raped by navy sailors after trying to pick one of them up in a bar, Fireworks was a controversy upon exhibition in 1948 as Anger was arrested after the films premiere on charges of obscenity. The case was thrown out of the California Supreme Court on the grounds of the film being a work of art, a view also shared by James Whale (legendary out director of Frankenstein, 1931) and playwright Tennessee Williams. As well being being a deeply personal film, Fireworks is also something of a homage to the cinema of Sergei Eisenstein (especially Bronenosets Potyomkin, 1925), who Anger briefly addresses in the essay 'Modesty and the Art of Film (Cahiers du cinéma, 1951). It is perhaps apt that the essay appeared here, as it was the nouvelle vague initiator/rebel Jean-Luc Godard himself who printed the information that during his time in France during the 1950s (where most of his later films were shot) Anger edited a version of Eisenstein's ¡Que viva Mexico! (1932). As a work of art Fireworks is an extraordinarily brave and accomplished work, beautifully shot in black and white and with a delicate score accompanying the final dazzling sequences; after killing Dreamer, the navy sailors rip open his chest (horrifically peeling back layers of skin and flesh), only to reveal a clock ticking inside. The Dreamer is now dead, but wakes up next to another man. Anger would later say of the film "this flick is all I have to say about being 17", but what he likely meant to say was 17 for him, as the clock likely represents a countdown to death as initiated by AIDS, a very real threat for homosexual men in the early 1940s, who were experimenting without precaution. The man he wakes up to is likely the literal personification of the nightmare, as one of the final shots of the dream sees a sailor standing over Dreamer, then cutting to a close-up of the victims beaten face and body as a thick white liquid pours over it - frequently interpreted as semen, which could represent the climax of the lovers in the real world. Anger also said the film was a statement on "the United States Navy, American Christmas and the Fourth Of July." Exactly what he meant by that, only repeat viewings shall tell...

2. Puce Moment (1949)

Essentially a 6-minute love letter to Hollywood and the starlets that lit up the silent screen of his youth, Puce Moment is Anger's least angry film - presented more like a music video, it's actually one of his most enjoyable. He would say of the films subjects "They were to be filmed in their homes; I was, in effect, filming ghosts." The film begins with folk rock music (originally it was released with Verdi opera music, but Anger added the music of Jonathan Halper in 1966) playing over a static shot of 1920s style flapper gowns being taken off a dress rack - and flying toward the screen like a ghost were inhabiting them. The dresses belonged to Anger's grandmother, a costume designer in the silent film era, which only adds to his bizarre pre-connection to Hollywood. A glamourous actress, played by Yvonne Marquis, dresses in the sparkling puce gown in a surrealistic sequence which uses alternating camera speeds and colour-tinting in the editing of the sequence. Marquis applies perfume before Borzois appear and she takes them for a walk, in a peculiarly low-angled final shot. The film is only 6 minutes long as that's all Anger could afford at the time - his next project, The Love That Whirls (1949) was to be destroyed by technicians for containing nudity that they deemed inappropriate and offensive.

3. Rabbit's Moon (1950/1971)

After receiving an excitable letter from filmmaker Jean Cocteau (he was a fan of Fireworks) Anger moved to Paris in 1950 and set himself up at the Films du Panthéon Studio. He began work on a film called Rabbit's Moon (working under the title of La Lune des lapins), an avant-garde concoction of Japanese mythology and Commedia dell'arte (a theatrical sort of mime, based on 'types', or personalities, that originates from Italy). Using popular doo-wop songs of the time (The Capris, The Dells and The Flamingos among them) the film tells the story of a lonely clown named Pierrot (André Soubeyran) who pines for the moon, and reaches for it - for inside lies a white rabbit. Pierrot tries and tries again, romantically reaching for the stars, but always falls to the floor of the blue forest which he inhabits, which resembles a theatrical stage. Another clown suddenly appears - an exuberant force, he wears a darker costume; his name is Harlequin (Claude Revenant). The music still plays as Harlequin seemingly threatens Pierrot, but he soon reveals the sight of a beautiful woman named Columbine (Nadine Valence; in Commedia dell'arte Columbina (little dove) is Harlequin's mistress, and a comic fool - the slave). Pierrot immediately falls for her, but he fails to win her heart. Poor Pierrot, heartbroken, is then shown the entrance to a mysterious realm, supposedly on the moon, where he finds the rabbit, and Columbine and Harlequin dancing in perfect motion. To the sound of The El Dorado's (Tears On My Pillow) Pierrot throws himself from the moon, resulting in his death as he crash lands back onto the harsh land of the forest. Anger was forced to leave production in 1950 but he kept the footage at the Cinémathèque Française, which he retrieved it from in 1970, finally releasing it in 1972. Anger re-edited and re-scored an alternative 7-minute version in 1979, which used the obscure track 'It Came In The Night' by British band A Raincoat, on a loop. The film was sped up and more surreal, but the original 1950 version remains one of Anger's definitive works... beautifully shot and performed, the perfect music cues define this as a mini-masterpiece.

VHS Quest #1. Clearcut (Ryszard Bugajski, 1991)

Graham Greene stars in Clearcut (1991).

Imagine if Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972) were an existential revisionist Western; a modern-day exploration of territory and the native man - his ruthlessness and spirituality in a fight against capitalism. Starting as a political drama it soon transforms itself into a hostage thriller, finally ending up as a mystical, allegorical revenge piece pitting a naïve lawyer (Ron Lea) against an arrogant radicalist who may or may not exist. Got that? Nope, me neither.

Clearcut begins with a distorted wind playing over the top of a gentle, atmospheric score (Shane Harvey). A shot trails underwater, eventually surfacing and looking up to the sky, taking in the view of a plane flying overhead. We're not shown, but the man emerging from the water is likely Arthur (Graham Greene), although he's just as likely to have been conjured by a dark ritual - a sweat lodge ceremony that leads to savage, disturbing hallucinations of a dark, blue-tinted desert-land; as blood oozes from the ground the camera pans around a crouched man with an orange glow. He looks into the camera revealing himself to be Arthur - the mysterious native extremist who makes himself known to Peter (Lea) in the next shot. Back to the opening scene, the plane flies over a forest, the aerial camera taking in the sight of woodland destruction. "Looks like the moon on a bad day" Peter notes. "Looks like money to me" his pilot responds, and this is the view director Bugajski instills into the white man throughout the film; presenting him as a violent thug with a mask of authority, or a coarse businessman who veils greed with goodwill. These lines are not definitely drawn, however - at first Peter and the Indians are sympathetic, but Arthur warps our view and as Peter becomes more desperately violent and moral-issuing our allegiances begin to shift to the tortured mill manager Bud Rickets (Michael Hogan), whose sentiment for the family unit gathers weight as he is put under extraordinary strain.

There has been a recent movement of dark, moody art films that take place on treacherous journeys through forests, jungles and deserts - Valhalla Rising (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2009), Deep In The Woods (Benoît Jacquot, 2010) and Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010) among them, each descending into mystery and violence. Clearcut prefigures all of them, presenting an equally stark, oblique landscape - a place of lawlessness and isolation - where vengeance takes the form of a malevolent spirit, a teacher and warrior who represents the heart of his people. Perhaps. He may just be the pawn in a game played by Wilf (Floyd 'Red Crow' Westerman), the mild-mannered and long-suffering chief who seeks to teach the white man, bring peace and prosper the native folk. He, like Arthur, is able to shift through time and appear in two places at once, so he randomly appears to dispense advice to Peter, who it seems must defeat (kill) Arthur in order to understand his place in a fight with more angles than his optimistically narrow mind allows him to see. As Arthur, Peter and Bud go further into the landscape things grow ever more violent - the skinning of a leg, cold-blooded murder of two police officers and terrifying (but superbly shot) ritual which ends in the chopping of a finger.

In the end Arthur retreats back into the water, and Wilf takes Peter and Bud back to safe land. With all its politics, mystical allegory, ritual violence and genre-swapping flair Clearcut is a dark, violent mystery that is as intelligent as it is unique. Having never heard of the film before (it seems to never have been released on DVD, and the VHS is widely unavailable) I didn't know what to expect, but I'm left with far too many questions than I know how to answer here. The performances are terrific, the photography stunning even on video and there is a genuine sense of the supernatural. I'll have to re-watch the film before I settle on this closing statement but for all its flaws I feel as though I've discovered a forgotten masterpiece - the meeting point between Deliverance and Meek's Cutoff, it's a vital genre entry (if it has any genre at all) that asks questions and presents scenarios that many films dare not touch. Unique, bold and captivating, I accept the problems with this film, but remain positively awe-struck.

Cinema Strange #1. Bare Behind Bars / A Prisão (Oswaldo de Oliveira, 1980)

The chicks-in-chains take a shower in Brazilian skin-flick Bare Behind Bars (1980).

It may not be the strangest note to start on, but this grubby lesbian lockup flick gets points for sheer exploitative perversity. A sadomasochistic warden and a nymphomaniac nurse with an affinity for raspberry pudding are the problems faced by a group of Latina convicts, and de Oliveira (who served as cinematographer on Bruce Lee vs Gay Power, Stuart, 1975) pulls no punches. The film starts in typical WIP (Women-In-Prison) fashion - the girls are outside playing what seems to be a no-holds-barred blend of football and volleyball when for no good reason a rugby scrum begins. In the middle of the mayhem one of the inmates stabs another. And the way the guards respond? Why they hose the inmates down of course, in a scene that quickly descends into a (wonderfully) sordid wet T-shirt contest, to see which extra can get the most screen-time with her voluptuous breasts hanging out of her skimpy uniform. Soon the girls are being tortured for information - which involves being strapped down and whipped, or hung from the ceiling and beaten by a large pole - all naked, of course, with 70s bush and laughable dubbing in abundance.

In fact, for a movie made in 1980 this minor classic has a fair amount of 70s flavour. The opening credits are set against bold red wallpaper and soft trumpets, recalling the softcore likes of Russ Meyer's Supervixens (1975) and the hysterically surreal sexfest Up! (1976). From there it's a stylized crescendo of sapphic copulation - albeit with dildos carved from pineapple, employed in one scissoring sequence between the Marilyn Monroe-esque (Dr) Barbara and her favorite inmate, a petite brunette who hides flick-knives up her derrière (never thought I'd type that sentence).

This restored re-release from ArrowFilms is of an excellent quality; it's no Days Of Heaven (Malick, 1978) in the visual department, but the photography by Oliveira is excellent, capturing the darkness of the prison with stomach-churning veracity. The hallways are coated in what looks like black grease, the walls are stained with shit, blood and graffiti, and solitary confinement is a claustrophobic dirt-pit full of rats that leaves inmates gasping for air. This is partly what sets Bare Behind Bars apart from other WIP flicks; its realism, bleakness and unrelenting ambition to present prison as a place of sickness and degradation. It may do that from an exploitative, pornographic angle, but in terms of portraying prison as a place at the end of the world - a hopeless place of authoritarian torture, gang violence and inside scheming - it's up there with Midnight Express (Parker, 1978) as an equally desperate wasteland.

Indeed, realism is surprisingly high on Oliveira's list of priorities. Robin Bougie, author of Cinema Sewer, writes in his accompanying notes that this is a "trashy, mean-spirited reality", adding that Bare Behind Bars could be "the filthiest and most pornographic women's prison movie ever made outside of the XXX classification." The interiors are all shot in a claustrophobic manner; a standard static medium shot will take in a long hallway, and a slow panning shot will reveal the passing of secret notes - and, indeed, didos - giving the impression that life simply does not exist outside of the confined hallways where the inmates are left to fester in feces and fornication. The only other rooms we see them in are the torture chamber, nurse's office (equally claustrophobic, debasing and debauched) and the shower room. All the women shower together, bathing underneath one pipe which releases a trickle of water - and you can almost feel how freezing cold it must be. The shower room is nothing more than a small, barred chamber, always shot from opposing ends, observing the women flounder around with soap and bubbles. This is where Oliveira's deft balancing act of tone comes into play. As grimy and unpleasant as the setting may be, Oliveira always knows the exact right time to indulge in gratuitous sex and nudity that has no relevance to the plot, or some broad wink-wink comedy. Admittedly some of that is a little outdated now - jive-talkin' black people eating water melon now seems more offensive than audacious - but it provides relief from the steely punishment of the first two thirds, and the shocking torture of the finale.

This new edition still has some cuts compared to other releases, but honestly the omitted scenes aren't missed - of course it would be nice for the BBFC to give us the right, as adults, to choose what we can and can't see for ourselves. But scenes of the escaped lesbians sexually abusing a young boy as his parents are executed in front of him - indeed, the vicious family dog snacks on the dead father's penis, which is later seen in horrific close-up even in this cut of the film - just isn't necessary. It's a really tough sequence that holds some shock value, but adds little to the already distressing piece as a whole. Many of the early scenes in the film can become quite titillating; it feels unnecessary for the film to end on such a harrowing note - despite, of course, the eventual re-capture of all the young escapees. What does the future hold for them? Even under the watch of a new warden, one would suspect an orgy is never far away...

Extras: Original trailer, and the accompanying notes by Robin Bougie, who provides fascinating details of Brazils "Pornochanchada" exploitation genre.