Fails Shat Witless Sadness
Yesterday I found a second-hand Blu-Ray copy of Tales That Witness Madness (yes, really) in my local CEX, and thought “well, what else am I going to do with that fiver?”.
Leaving aside the very real news that someone thought enough of said film to give it the full 1080p treatment (and it really looks like they have), I expect you’re probably shouting something along the lines of “Chris, there’s a reason why someone gave up that particular disc to their local games n’ films emporium… it’s a terrible film. You told us so, in your review from back in the day”.
And true enough, I did. You can read it here. But that was then, and this is now (is it? Yes, shush), and I thought I’d give it another chance. My old ex rental VHS tape was long ago consigned to a skip, and I think I’d only ever watched the film once, to review it. So why not give it another go?
Well, I’ll tell you why. Because it’s a terrible film.
But I struggled through it this afternoon anyway. It’s what I do.
The thing is, the Blu-Ray treatment did rather lull me into a false sense of “oh-oh, here’s another old classic I’ve lambasted, only to find out it’s quite good”. My memory of my original viewing was that it looked cheap and tatty, that certain scenes didn’t make much sense, and it certainly didn’t warrant its X certificate. And all cleaned up and shiny, it does at least now look like a proper film. Certain gratuitous shots of Joan Collins and Mary Tamm have been put back in, there’s a tad more violence, and it’s in widescreen and quite bright and colourful in an early 1970s way. Still only merits a 12 certificate, but anyway.
So I put up with the introductory scenes, still confused about why Jack Hawkins was delivering his lines like a bit part player in a spaghetti western, and actually quite enjoyed Mr Tiger. Tolerated Uncle Albert. And cracked a wry smile at Joan Collins and her “treesome” (© me, just now). “It’s not brilliant, but it’s not truly awful,” I told myself.
But as we all know, things go off the rails quite spectacularly for the last third, don’t they? And no fancy technology can fix that.
That last segment is truly appalling, isn’t it? For those who don’t know, it’s a tale of ritual sacrifice and cannibalism that seems to go on for about four hours before NOT. ACTUALLY. ENDING. So apart from director Freddie Francis appearing to have discovered a way of stretching time out, it has no redeeming features at all. We are told at the beginning that a sacrifice is needed to ensure a dying old lady and her son have a decent time in the afterlife, so the assumption by the viewer is that at some point, things are going to go awry and the pair are going to pay for it with some kind of pitchforks-up-the-bum-for-all-eternity shenanigans. But this doesn’t happen. The sacrifice is made, the victim is cooked and eaten, and before anything else happens (including any kind of explanation as to why the victim’s mother is one of the patients in the asylum), that’s the end of the story.
And as if to really rub the viewer’s nose in it, things actually get WORSE at that point. We all know that film company Amicus (who this is royally ripping off) didn’t always give full consideration to the logic of the linking devices in their portmanteaus, but at least they tried. At the end of Tales That Witness Madness, it turns out that the stories may not be true. Then that Dr Tremayne (Donald Pleasance) is actually one of the patients (although why is anyone’s guess, it’s not clear from the preceding 90 minutes). Then that one of the stories is true, OR maybe that this particular asylum has its own zoo. What on earth are we supposed to derive from that? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Now, I like a stupid old film as much as the next person (you, probably), but Tales That Witness Madness isn’t just stupid, it’s frankly annoying.
Anyone want to buy a Blu-Ray? Tenner to you, gov.
