Saturday, September 4, 2021

THE NINTH GATE - "Leave The Unknown Alone" (1999)

 
This week's Saturday Night Special is a Roman Polanski film titled "The Ninth Gate." It was released in 1999, and starred Johnny Depp! You know I never planned on doing movies this new, and then I realized that what I think is new, is now 22 years old.

 
A lot of people think if you watch enough movies, you'll get smarter, but it's not really working for me! I regularly watch stuff like The Three Stooges or "Burn Notice," and probably shouldn't even be watching films like this where you have to actually think! Hence the age olde question, should entertainment be mentally painful?
 
So.............Pull my finger, and you just might find out!

Or............Do what Johnny and I do to relieve the pain and confusion, pour another one!

"The Ninth Gate" pits Frank Langella as Boris Balkan vs. Johnny Depp as a guy named Dean Corso.
Supposedly there are only three copies of a ancient book in existence, and Boris owns one and wants Dean to find out if the other two are legit or not, and he's willing to pay him a lot of cash to do it!

Dean travels to Europe to try and compare the books, and the other owners keep dying mysteriously!

Never ever trust a woman who has that particular tattoo in that particular location!

Dean Corso consistently finds himself in a lot of trouble, over and over, and over again!

To say that Roman Polanksi has a sketchy past is a bit of an understatement, but there's no denying that the man has an incredible eye, and has made some great films. His "Chinatown" is a real fave of mine!

Dean Corso starts noticing that some of the plates in the books are different. Why nobody noticed before is anybody's guess. If they had, there wouldn't be much of a story!

Time for more serious research! You would too, if it happened to you!

These two plates are so radically different, it's extra difficult to believe nobody ever saw the differences before!

The women in the movie are an odd lot! There's the Girl from Where, and the dead Baroness, or is it Memorex?

This is how Roman Polanski feels about your impression and understanding of his movie!

This is a large assemblage of creeps you're never going to know anything about, except that they are a bunch of freakin' devil worshiping weirdos!

"The Ninth Gate" was shot in Spain, Portugal, and France, and has some really beautiful scenery in it!

I believe this is the Château de Puivert in Aude, France. 
 
At this point, Dean Corso's problems are nowhere close to being over! More pain needs to be inflicted first!

I truly believe that if "The Ninth Gate" made more sense and was about 30 or 40 minutes shorter, it would be one of the best movies ever made, but that's a big 'if.'

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