Les Diaboliques

Last night I was watching the movie Kick Ass, directed by Matthew Vaughn, on TV. It's based on a comic-book by Mark Miller and John Romita, Jr. and tells the story of a New York City teenaged comic-book fan (played by Aaron Johnson) who, despite having no powers and no training, decides to become a superhero named "Kick-Ass". Despite the abysmal failure of his initial attempt he soon becomes an internet celebrity and attracts the attention of vengeful ex-cop turned superhero "Big Daddy" (Nicolas Cage) and his murderous 11 year old daughter "Hit Girl" (Chloe Grace Moretz). It is a really entertaining movie with plenty of humour and action.

Today I got some more of the Akira graphic novels by Katshiro Otomo delivered in the mail. Mostly I had a really quiet morning watching TV. In the afternoon I went out to the Filmhouse cinema to see the 1955 movie Les Diaboliques, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, with the Horror Group. The movie is based on a novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, who also wrote the novel that inspired Alfred Hitchcock's film Vertigo. The film deals with the brutal and cruel headmaster of a second-rate boy's boarding school (Paul Meurisse) who is married to a fragile young teacher, Christina (Vera Clouzot), who has a weak heart, while openly carrying on an affair with another teacher, Nicole Horner (Simone Signoret). Tiring of his ill treatment of them both, Christina and Nicole decide to murder the headteacher. However, after the murder, the body goes missing and a succession of strange and disturbing events begin to occur. It is a really good suspense film, and features a memorable twist. Apparently it was one of the influences for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, and Robert Bloch (who wrote the original novel Psycho) named it as his favourite horror film. After the movie we went out and had a couple of drinks. The movie is reviewed over at Permanently Weird.