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Us Brits have always been known for dark comedy and this year’s Sightseers is about as pitch black, and as British, as they come. Written by its stars Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, the film is a murderous road trip through the finest attractions the North of England has to offer.

Chris (Oram) wants to show his new girlfriend Tina (Lowe) his favourite places on a caravanning trip of the North. Tina’s controlling mother makes it quite clear she doesn’t trust him, but then she doesn’t trust her own daughter since an accident with her pet dog and a knitting needle some years earlier. As it turns out, Tina’s mum is right to be cautious, as Chris has a particularly dark streak that is slowly revealed as their journey takes in such star attractions as Crich Tramway and the Keswick Pencil Museum.

When Chris witnesses a fellow tourist flout the littering rules on a antique tram, he becomes increasingly agitated. Later, while reversing his beloved caravan out of the car park he accidentally backs over the offending bloke, killing him instantly. It’s when we see Chris’ look of shock morph into a slim, wry smile that we know something isn’t quite right – it seems that Chris has a taste for blood, and the easily-led Tina is developing one too.

Sightseers is directed by Kill List’s Ben Wheatley – no stranger to dark scenes. There is a definite tonal similarity with that film, except for the flashes of jet black comedy. It also shares it’s scenery with Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip – beautifully stark mountains and misty moors. The laughs don’t come easily all the time – though a confrontation with a rambler at a stone circle is particularly funny – and the violence is quick yet nasty, meaning that Sightseers feels a pretty niche at times.

Its tone wavers a little throughout, but there’s no arguing that Sightseers is a unique proposition in a world increasingly full of remakes and adaptations. Showcasing some fantastic homegrown talent and a brave combination of comedy, brutal murder and the Northern countryside, it’s worth supporting.

The Girl from Rio is a campy spy thriller that was directed by the late Jess Franco and originally released in March 1969.  It stars Shirley Eaton, Richard Wyler, George Sanders and, inevitably – given that this is a Harry Alan Towers production, Maria Rohm.  Ostensibly a sequel to Lindsay Shonteff’s 1967 effort The Million Eyes of Su-muru, Franco’s film continues the story of the man-hating megalomaniac lesbian villainess Sumuru (Eaton), although inexplicably she’s called Sunanda in the script and, equally inexplicably, Sumitra in the end credits.

Whatever you choose to call her, she’s now based in Femina, her women-only city located somewhere outside Rio de Janeiro at what looks suspiciously like an empty airport.  She’s heard that supercool master criminal Jeff Sutton (Wyler) is in town with ten million dollars in stolen cash and dispatches sultry manicurist / undercover feminist Leslye (Rohm) to bring him in.  However, ex-pat English mobster Masius (Sanders) also fancies getting his hands on the cash and sets his own goons on Sutton’s tail.

I think what Franco was aiming for with this film was the look and feel of those two self-consciously camp Bulldog Drummond films of the late 1960s which starred Richard Johnson.  Unfortunately, as was always the case with Franco, his ambition went further than his reach and what we actually get is a pretty grubby adolescent fantasy about female domination.  Franco certainly knows how to frame an image but it’s the poverty of the imagination as much as of the budget which lets him down.

Nothing in the film, be it the extras, the sets or the costumes, looks quite as good it should; it’s as if Franco put the minimum amount of thought into the design, which is the crucial element in films of this type.  So we end up with Sumuru’s chief henchwoman wearing a costume which is literally made out of black gaffer tape and a really cruddy sequence set during the Rio carnival which consists almost entirely of stock footage, none of which matches with the rest of the movie.

To cover up for this general lack of quality, Franco relies on his traditional fall-back strategy of copious nudity.  Not from Shirley Eaton of course who has far too much sense and taste to get involved in anything like that but rather from her ‘army’ of sullen-looking extras and of course Maria Rohm whose function in her husband’s films is almost that of naked troubleshooter.

Franco’s films always feature music very heavily and The Girl from Rio is no exception.  Sadly, what is usually one of the best executed elements in his oeuvre is actually rather disappointing this time out.  Most of the soundtrack is terribly dated bossa nova lift music and the theme song, specifically its lyrics, has to be heard to be believed.  “The girl from Rio” croons the chanteuse, “dangerous and cool as ice / She plays with men / just like a cat plays with mice.”  Under normal circumstances you’d hear lyrics like that and immediately realise you were watching a Spinal Tap-style spoof but I think it would be crediting Franco further than he is due to say that’s what he was intending.

Casting-wise this is a cut above Franco’s usual standard but the acting itself is a bit of a mixed bag.  George Sanders looks old and bored but his voice was a thing of pure delight and the magic was still very much there.  Shirley Eaton isn’t called upon to do much more than wear a succession of revealing (but not too revealing) outfits and say things like “Fools!” a lot, but she’s a good-looking girl and I reckon she deserved the few leading roles that came her way.  Richard Wyler was a much more interesting man that he was an actor and it’s difficult to shake off the realisation that he’s about as suave as the man in the Imperial Leather commercials.  Which he was.

Shock headline: Above average looking thriller turns out to be… average.

Oh Aaron Eckhart I could stare at that chin for hours. That winning smile. Oh Aaron I could watch you peel an orange for five hours and still thank you when you through the peel in my face.

Sadly I didn’t count on The Expatriate to ruin this man-crush streak. Reading through the synopsis conjures up memories of True Lies mixed with some secretions left over from Taken. Ben Logan (Eckhart) is an ex-CIA agent, now working for a security firm in Europe who has to go on the run with his estranged daughter when he’s ear-marked for assassination… for some reason. With much of the thanks laid at Luc Besson’s door for the recent spate of modest-budget, nicely shot, Euro thrillers (The Transporter 1-87, From Paris With Love, Killer Elite etc) The Expatriate seems happy to help this trend along.

Opening with an intense action sequence before quickly settling into a domestic drama revolving around Logan’s attempts to re-connect with his daughter who until recently had lived with her deceased mother back in the US. Scenes within a security company appear outwardly dull but are somewhat interesting. As the plot begins to kick in the film turns into a Hitchcockian mystery as Logan’s job and existence seem to have been wiped off the face of the Earth. Intriguing. Why has this happened? I wager we’re going to get into a twisty-turner puzzle of a story, filled with dark shadows, double meanings and… oh look there’s a car chase.

Every moment that director Phillipp Stolzl spends creating atmosphere and intrigue in the opening twenty minutes is destroyed and never found again as The Expatriate turns into a car chase, random shoot out melee. Loud crashes and gun shots can be exciting as hell but here not so much. Occasionally things quieten down so the film makers can keep up the pretense that we still give a damn about Logan relationship with his increasingly annoying daughter. Played increasingly annoyingly by Liana Liberato. Half way through Olga Kurylenko appears as a extremely attractive but extremely improbable CIA-agent.

So car chases, on-foot chases, gun fights, people breaking into each others apartments to warn them about covert dealings, people in offices saying mean things about our hero. The film you probably have in your head right now is The Expatriate. There you’ve seen it. I suppose if you really want to look at the charming (Eckhart) and the beautiful (Kurylenko) you could watch this. As I’ve said before about similar films. It’s not that The Expatriate is a bad film. It’s alright. It’s just disappointing that it promises something a bit different before dulling down into generic action fare.

The House of 1000 Dolls is a thriller that was directed by Jeremy Summers and originally released in November 1967.  It stars Vincent Price, Martha Hyer and George Nader.  Nader plays a medical doctor on vacation in Tangiers who starts digging into the murder of a friend and finds himself crossing a white slave trade organisation for whom stage illusionist Felix Manderville (Price) and his wife Rebecca (Hyer) are procurers in chief.  Produced for American International Pictures (AIP) by trash impresario Harry Alan Towers – most famous for his work with the late Jess Franco – this is a fast paced, cheap and cheerful thriller that is more interested in girls in their knickers than anything else.  Despite an undoubtedly sleazy premise and a pretty grubby reputation, it’s as saucy as the Benny Hill Show and about as subversive.

AIP were the kings of low-budget exploitation pictures but nevertheless managed to produce several films of undisputed quality, notably the series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations directed by Roger Corman and starring the aforementioned Vincent Price.  Unfortunately The House of 1000 Dolls bears more of the hallmarks of being a Harry Alan Towers production than it does of AIP.  What that means for the poor viewer is that while the film purports to be an exotic thriller featuring jet-set locations, glamorous women and hunky heroes what it actually offers is a humdrum, set-bound 90 minutes featuring the odd dolly bird in her smalls and stolid beefcake Nader.

Having said that, there is some compensation in the form of Vincent Price.  Price is one of my favourite actors; I know he’s too hammy for some tastes but I think he’s terrific, right up there with Peter Cushing and some distance above Christopher Lee.  For me Price is less inhibited than the refined Cushing and therefore able to play a greater range of parts, although he’s not quite so good in heroic roles.  I’ve always felt that Lee, while quite happy to take parts in just about any sort of movie, feels himself to be far superior to the material; this is borne out by the number of times you’ll see or hear him trashing his back catalogue, claiming not to know it was ‘that sort of film’.  You never get that impression with Price – he gives it the beans whatever the movie, and let’s face it he’s appeared in some real stinkers over the years.

It has to be said that The House of 1000 Dolls isn’t his finest hour and a half but he does a decent job with what is really a pretty thin part.  He’s the best thing in it by some considerable margin and it’s a mystery why he’s off-screen for much of the movie.  Perhaps there was some contractual wrangle, who knows; but Towers was canny enough to know who would get punters through the door and it certainly wasn’t George Nader.  Whatever the reason, Price doesn’t get nearly enough screen time and the whole movie suffers as a result.  And that may be the reason why there’s so much footage of girls in their underwear in what must be the tidiest brothel in Morocco.  Naturally, this being a Towers production, there’s a small but prominent role for Maria Rohm, another Franco veteran / survivor who also happened to be Mrs Harry Alan Towers.

Director Jeremy Summers does a competent enough job but visually the film is totally anonymous which is probably why Summers quickly ended up working in television.  Over the course of a forty-year career he racked up an immense number of directorial credits on series as diverse as Danger Man, Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), Tenko, Howard’s Way and Brookside.  One in the eye for auteur theorists everywhere.