Sep 7, 2008

Sudden Fury


This Friday's screening at Trash Palace featured the 1975 Canadian film, Sudden Fury, with its writer-director Brian Damude in attendance for a fun Q&A session after the movie.

This thriller is a nifty cat-and-mouse game about a loser who lets his estranged wife die from her injuries in a car accident so he can get the insurance money to invest in another of his get-rich-quick schemes. A good Samaritan witnesses the crash, and then the killer ingeniously devises a way to implicate him with the crime. The cast of unknowns (save for rising star Hollis McLaren as the farmer's wife) is uniformly excellent, and the movie is beautifully shot and edited. Proof positive you can make a crackerjack movie with so little means.

While this suspense film was well regarded in its day (and Damude, who shot the film during his continued tenure at Ryerson, lived comfortably off of the movie's receipts for a few years), it has been forgotten by most, and therefore this revival was quite a treat. This is why we need to support TP-- not just to see films you wouldn't find anywhere else, but to see them in their proper milieu- projected onto a screen, shared with other enthusiasts.

No comments: