Often called a cult-classic, [i]An American Werewolf in London[/i] was released in 1981 during a kind of a peak in werewolf films. It was praised for its special effects, which, I'm afraid, haven't really survived the test of time. I've watched it at least twice before and have not been very impressed by it - I've written before that I'm not really into the simple blood-hungry monster angle when it comes to werewolves - but decided to give it another go in order to write this review.
It often seems to me that The Duellists (or The Duelists for our friends across the pond) is one of the forgotten classics in historical fiction films. Quite surprisingly, it is directed by Ridley Scott, who is not known for any strive for historical accuracy and who has even stated that he willingly ignores historical details in order to tell a good story. Perhaps we should count ourselves lucky that he did not see history and the story conflicting in this particular case.
Alexandre Dumas' The Man in the Iron Mask storyline has been adapted to film several times. I previously reviewed the 1977 version and the 1979 version and noted how they had changed the original story to a large degree. That's no different with the 1998 version of the tale, starring Leonardo diCaprio, but the changes that have been made are very different from the previous versions.
1970's saw at least two film adaptations of The Man in the Iron Mask story by Alexandre Dumas. The first was the Richard Chamberlain starred version in the 1977 that we reviewed a short while ago and the second was The Fifth Musketeer in 1979. Both of them take only the basic idea from the original story and go on a completely different tangent from then on. However, although Chamberlain's version was originally "made for TV" only, it ends up being far superior - and even much more loyal to the original story - of these two adaptations.
The Man in the Iron Mask is a film adaptation of the story told by Alexandre Dumas in his d'Artagnan Romances. It takes portions of the story of King Louis XIV's love affair with Louise de la Vallière and combines it with a completely reworked plotline involving Louis' secret twin brother. Overall, I must say that the film manages to deliver a more interesting and involving story than the original novel did.
The Admiral (2015) tells a story of Michiel de Ruyter (1607-1676), a famous Dutch admiral who managed to put up a decent fight against the naval might of England during the Anglo-Dutch wars. Rather than telling the full story of his rise to fame in the Caribbean and elsewhere, the film focusses on the c. ten last years of de Ruyter's career when he was chosen to lead the confederate fleet. For me, this is a bit of an unknown topic - for some reason my knowledge of Dutch history and naval power has pretty much been limited to the powerful East India Company, so my commentary on historical accuracy is somewhat limited in this review.
Robert E. Howard was a troubled author and many have heard of how he shot himself soon after his mother died - stopping only to write a final poem on the way to his car and the gun he kept there. Scholars have long tried to understand what kind of a man Howard really was, but one point of view comes from the woman who knew him close to the end of his career. In late 1980's, fifty years after Robert E. Howard's death, Novalyne Price wrote a memoir based on her diary, One Who Walked Alone: Robert E. Howard, The Final Years. Based on this, Michael Scott Myers wrote a screenplay and Dan Ireland directed the film, The Whole Wide World.
Werewolves have been somewhat out of fashion in the movies for a long while, but they have howled their howl every now and then from the chorus of zombie screeches and vampire... snarls. David Hayter's Wolves is the latest attempt to bring back the weres and while its early minutes are somewhat unpromising with the Twilight overtones, the story has a bit more up its sleeve than your average teen romance.
Sadan miekan mies (‘The man of a hundred swords’) is a Finnish adventure comedy from 1951, set in the year 1634, two years after the death of Gustavus Adolphus in the battle of Lützen. It tells a story of a captain who is conducting a never-explicitly-stated mission for the King as he roams the countryside of Eastern Sweden (i.e. Finland). Even though it has its weaknesses, it also has its fun moments.
