Joker: Folie à Deux (2024)

While waiting for his trial for the murders committed in Joker, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is being held in Arkham Asylum, where he meets Harleen 'Lee' Quinzel (Lady Gaga) in a music therapy group.

It's love at first sight and, when she gets out before him, Harley promises to be at Arthur's trial every day, as well as vocal campaigner for his freedom.

Arthur's lawyer, Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener) seeks to build a defence on the idea that Arthur and Joker are two separate personalities, brought on by his abusive upbringing.

Meanwhile, the district attorney, Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) is seeking to dismantle this idea, and is calling for the death penalty for Arthur.

Eventually, Arthur - egged on by Harley - grows tired of his lawyer's approach and dramatically fires her in the middle of the case, opting to defend himself: in full Joker make-up.

I can totally get why people were disappointed with Joker: Folie à Deux. It wasn't the Joker film they were expecting. Not that writer/director Todd Phillips had made any promises about where the sequel would be going... it just wasn't the stylish and violent remix of The Dark Knight that I think people were hoping for.

Rather it turned out to be an arthouse courtroom drama - and character piece - infused with elements of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (the Arkham scenes) and Natural Born Killers (the delusions and the media's glorification of murderers).

In truth, Phoenix's Joker is nothing like the source material (80-plus years of comic book escapades), but more akin  to someone cosplaying as The Joker.

As I said in my review of 2019's Joker (earlier today), the character has always worked in the comics, and most other media, because he doesn't have a definitive origin story. He's an enigma and that makes him more frightening - he's the one mystery the world's greatest detective, Batman, can't solve.

But Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix have made the character all too human, with a name, family and origin story, and - especially in this sequel when he is often depicted as - frail and wracked with self-doubt.

That makes for an interesting character... he's just not The Joker.

He is a straw man held up as a figurehead for a bubbling, anarchic revolution in rundown Gotham City, but - unlike the comic book iteration or even any of the live-action takes, right back to Cesar Romero in Batman '66 - he comes to the conclusion that he doesn't want that mantle.

Which, again, makes for an interesting revelation, but it just doesn't feel like something The Joker would do.

Providing strong support is Lady Gaga as a low-key, grounded Lee Quinzel, who gets under Arthur's skin and fuels his frequent delusions and dreams that frame themselves as musical numbers (one in the courtroom is very reminiscent of Sid Vicious' performance of My Way at the climax of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle).

Both Lee and Fleck are complex characters, well developed and growing towards a surprising - yet wholly believable - twist in the final scenes, that pretty much guarantees there won't be a third film in this particular franchise.

Joker: Folie à Deux (a psychological term for a shared delusion) is as gritty as the first movie, presenting us with a beautifully decaying Gotham City, with a troubled element of the populace inspired by their own perceptions of the murderous Fleck.

However there's no getting away from the overwhelming feeling that this was originally a psychological study that has just been dressed up with a few affectations from the Bat'verse to sell tickets.

Which I gather it didn't.

It was a brave experiment. But, sadly, it failed.

I actually believe if this duology has been made with different - or even original - protagonists audiences (coming to the story without any expectations) would have liked it more, because they would have then felt very clever pointing out: "oh, that's a bit like The Joker and Harley Quinn from the Batman comics".

While Folie à Deux lacks the kick of the first film, I did actually enjoy it for what it was, but it was still a peculiar take on the characters that bore little or no resemblance to the general public's vision of the source material.

The Legend of The 7 Golden Vampires (1974)

In 1804, a wicked Chinese priest, Kah (Chan Sen), makes his way to Transylvania to ask Count Dracula (John Forbes-Robertson) to resurrect the "seven golden vampires" that Kah had previously employed to keep local peasants in order back home.

Dracula, however, has other ideas and steals Kah's physical form so that he can relocate to China and get back into the bloodsucking business for himself.

A century later and Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) is lecturing at China's Chungking University on the dangers of vampires, while also seeking aid and co-operation to investigate local legends of the undead.

He is met with derision from all but one of his audience, Hsi Ching (David Chiang), whose village has been almost destroyed by attacks from The Seven Golden Vampires.

Meanwhile, Van Helsing's son, Leyland (Robin Stewart), has befriended the forthright, wealthy and attractive European widow Vanessa Buren (Julie Ege), who has caught the eye of a local tong boss.

Vanessa agrees to finance Val Helsing's expedition to the isolated village, on the condition that she can join the party, and Ching introduces his seven kung-fu trained siblings who will provide protection on the journey.

Soon after setting out, the group is ambushed by tong thugs and Van Helsing gets his first taste of Chinese martial arts.

Later on, they make camp in a cave and find themselves under attack from several of the gold mask-adorned vampires and an army of skipping zombies.

From there, the next stop for our heroes is their besieged village, where they organise the remaining villagers into a defensive force and await the assault of the vampires and their legion of the undead.

One of the vampires kidnaps Leyland's girlfriend, Ching's sister Mai Kwei (Shih Szu), leading the surviving heroes to pursue him to Kah's temple, where Van Helsing discovers that Kah is actually his archenemy: Count Dracula.

After this final conflict, like a good many films of its era, the movie abruptly ends without showing any interest in exploring the high cost our heroes had to pay to get through the climactic confrontation between good and evil.

A joint production of Hammer Films and The Shaw Brothers, The Legend of The 7 Golden Vampires is surprisingly good for what it is, but could have been so much better.

From the moment they are introduced, the protagonists are stuck on a narrative railroad, travelling from point A to point B on a linear journey, broken up by impressive fight scenes... and culminating in a massive fight scene.

You get the impression that the Hammer crew were so delighted to be able to blend their tried-and-tested horror formula with Chinese martial arts that they couldn't really think of anything else to do with their Chinese cast or exotic scenery (it was shot on location).

While there's no denying the film is a lot of fun, there is so little to actual story that beyond its martial arts "gimmick" it is largely ephemeral. 

The golden vampires aren't even the classic Chinese jiangshi ('hopping vampires'), which would have brought something a bit unusual to a '70s Hammer flick, but are instead a strange mix of Western vampires and Eastern martial artists.

It also pays not to think too hard about the 100 year time jump from the prologue to the main story and the havoc that plays with Van Helsing's timeline if he's coming off the back of his (many) fights with Dracula in, and around, Transylvania.

Are we supposed to assume that Dracula was doing all this - and dying frequently - at the same time he was in China running The Cult of The Seven Golden Vampires?

Or is this a different Dracula? 

Although he is reduced to a largely supporting role, John Forbes-Robertson's take on Count Dracula is oddly camp, with his make-up bearing a more than passing resemblance to Cesar Romero's Joker in the Adam West Batman show.

Long out of print and pretty rare in these parts, I watched the 86 minute DVD version of The Legend of The 7 Golden Vampires, having finally tracked it down on eBay for a reasonable price, but I understand there's a 110 minute Eastern version that I'd love to see one day.

Ultimately, The Legend of The 7 Golden Vampires comes across as a massive missed opportunity.

The Giant Gila Monster & The Killer Shrews (1959)

When a couple of courting teenagers disappear from a small, isolated Texas town, their parents - and the local sheriff (Fred Graham) - fear they have eloped.

But this is just the start of a wave of disappearances, many connected to road traffic accidents on the lonely roads that traverse the unexplored woodland that surrounds the town.

The father of the missing boy, wicked mine owner Mr Wheeler (Bob Thompson), puts pressure on the sheriff to blame the disappearances on Chase Winstead (Don Sullivan), ace hot-rod mechanic and crooner, de facto "leader" of the local youth and clearly the smartest teenager in the county.

The sheriff isn't having any of it, because he relies on Chase to keep the other youngsters on the straight and narrow and he knows he's a good kid who cares for his widowed mother (Gay McLendon) and disabled younger sister, Missy (Janice Stone).

Eventually, the town drunk Old Man Harris (Shug Fisher) spots an enormous gila monster - the size of a bus - when it derails a passenger train, and the sheriff finally has something to work with.

The titular Giant Gila Monster

Meanwhile, Chase and his friends have organised a "platter party" (dance night) at a local hall, hosted by celebrity DJ, Horatio Alger 'Steamroller' Smith (Ken Knox), who owes Chase a favour.

Not only is Chase revealed to the audience as having just cut a record, but he also gets to sing a song - which he'd previously sung to his sister - but, thankfully, that's the moment the gila monster decides to attack the barn dance.

The sheriff drives the beast away with his rifle, but it's up to Chase to deliver the well-foreshadowed coup de grâce on the oversized reptile.

The Giant Gila Monster: Special Edition was the first Blu-Ray release from new film  restoration, preservation and distribution company, Film Masters.

The creature feature hits stores Stateside in September 2023 as the headliner in a Blu-Ray double-bill with The Killer Shrews. 

Both films are from 1959, stalwarts of the drive-in era of no-budget shlock productions, cranked out for a very specific demographic.

Despite the often laughably poor acting and occasionally ropy script from director Ray Kellogg and co-writer Jay Simms, there is a convincing, 1950's sense of community pervading this 74-minute B-movie.

And it's this verisimilitude that comes closest to saving the picture because, in all honesty, until the closing moments, when townsfolk get to finally see their mysterious nemesis, The Giant Gila Monster is a whole heap of nothing.

Sure, things happen and Chase and the sheriff get to run around a bit but because they are so clueless as to what is really going on there's no real sense of jeopardy.

Random musical interludes from Chase, as well as nuggets of backstory coldly calculated to tug at your heartstrings, make the movie a quiet strange viewing experience, as more time is spent developing the potential victims than actually justifying what is happening with the giant monster.

The suggestion from the opening spiel is that it has grown large due to its lack of contact with any real threats in its isolated habitat, so why has the giant gila monster chosen now to start eating humans?

As far as I could tell no reason was given, although I like to think it was somehow tied to Wheeler's dodgy mining practices.

While the audience has sight of the monster from the get-go - a real life lizard dropped into miniature model sets - there is no actual interaction with it until the final act, and it's only then that we can truly get an idea of its supposed gigantic size and the threat it poses to the community.

Much of the action takes place at night, but thanks to this new restoration from 35mm archival materials (and Blu-Ray presentation), the contrast is crisp enough that while we still know it's meant to be night time we can actually see what's going on.

This new release of The Giant Gila Monster: Special Edition is definitely a film that connoisseurs of vintage "so bad it's good" monster movies need to add to their collection.

However, it's not really one for the casual viewer as you need to cut the film an awful lot of slack to really enjoy it.

As well as a trailer and commentary track, the Blu-Ray disc of The Giant Gila Monster includes an audio, archival, interview with the late Don Sullivan aka Chase Winstead.

"I'm in hot pursuit of them Killer Shrews"

Ironically the 'bonus feature' in the two-disc set, The Killer Shrews, is actually the superior film (which, of course, isn't saying much).

Captain Thorne Sherman (James Best) and his engineer, 'Rook' Griswold (Judge Henry Dupree), just manage to outrun a hurricane in their boat and make it to the isolated island where they have to drop off supplies.

There they discover a small scientific community, led by Swedish geneticist Dr Marlowe Craigis (Baruch Lumet) and his daughter, zoologist Ann Craigis (Ingrid Goude), preparing for a siege rather than just bad weather.

The handful of scientists and their assistants are living in fear of the results of an experiment run wild: giant shrews (actually dogs in ratty costumes) devouring all the wildlife. But now they've run out of other animals to eat and are turning on the small human population.

With the double threat of both a major weather event and mutant animals, The Killer Shrews is what old school Doctor Who fans would term a classic "base under siege" scenario.

There is genuine claustrophobic tension here as the sea captain tries to organise the defence of the island's adobe stockade against the mutant monsters.

Another masterpiece from the team of writer Jay Simms and director Ray Kellogg, Killer Shrews is a more focussed and coherent horror yarn than The Giant Gila Monster. 

While the shrews themselves are very obviously a combination of glove puppets (for close-ups) and 'disguised' canines (for long shots) there is an undeniable charm about this ultra-low budget approach to creating a swarm of killer monsters.

Even the justification for making the creatures even deadlier, by turning their bite's poisonous, is a clever little idea than works within the logic of the story. 

Coming in at barely over an hour's running time, there's a rugged, pulpy quality to The Killer Shrews, served up with some quality acting from the permanently drunk bad guy Jerry Farrell (Gunsmoke star Ken Curtis) and our square-jawed lead played by the future Sheriff Rosco P Coltrane of Dukes of Hazzard fame.

This disc includes a film commentary track, original radio spots for both movies, and an informative quarter-of-an-hour documentary on the career of Ray Kellogg.

He was a contemporary of Ray Harryhausen who took effects in a different (cheaper) direction as well as working on many big budget movies, including directing John Wayne's The Green Berets, and acting as second unit director on Cleopatra and Adam West's Batman: The Movie.

Also packaged with the films is a 24-page booklet featuring essays on the Texas radio pioneer and films' producer, Gordon McLendon (who appears in The Killer Shrews as absent-minded scientist Dr Radford Baines), and a critical dissection of Killer Shrews by professor and film scholar Jason A Ney.