Godzilla vs. Hedorah.

Review #2482: Godzilla vs. Hedorah.

Cast: 

Akira Yamauchi (Dr. Toru Yano), Hiroyuki Kawase (Ken Yano), Toshie Kimura (Toshie Yano), Keiko Mari (Miki Fujinomiya), Toshio Shiba (Yukio Keuchi), Yoshio Yoshida (Gohei, a fisherman), Haruo Suzuki (JSDF senior officer), Yoshio Katsube (JSDF engineer), Tadashi Okabe (a scholar), Wataru Ōmae (a policeman), Takuya Yuki (a communications officer), Yukihiko Gondo as a helicopter pilot), Haruo Nakazawa (teenager in the meadow), Kentaro Watanabe (TV news anchor), Haruo Nakajima (Godzilla), Kenpachiro Satsuma (Hedorah) Directed by Yoshimitsu Banno.

Review: 

Apparently, the impetus for this film (the 11th in the series) started with an expo. With the Mitsubishi Pavillion at Expo '70 in Osaka, Toho participated and saw their eyes interested in an audio-visual exhibit of mirror reflections that was created by Yoshimitsu Banno. Banno was approached to make a Godzilla movie and he came up with an idea about a pollution monster in light of the fact that Japan's growing economy would create a huge problem of pollution. Banno had graduated from Tokyo University in 1955 and actually served as an assistant director on four Akira Kurosawa movies and this would be his one major effort as a director. Banno aimed for a small cast with 35 days to shoot. Tomoyuki Tanaka, who usually oversaw the films as a producer, was in the hospital for most of production and Banno used this so he could include a scene he didn't think would get approved otherwise: Godzilla using his atomic breath to fly. Animation was also used at certain points in the film. For the American edit released in 1972 by AIP, it was called "Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster" with its own song "Save the Earth" (as opposed to "Give Back the Sun"). The movie was a mild success with audiences, receiving a bit of critical scorn along with subsequent appreciation in some circles (Roger Ebert once said this was his favorite Godzilla movie). Teruyoshi Nakano, who provided the special effects for the film, stated that the comic scenes were likely added to lighten the tone of a film that he felt looking back "seems kind of cruel and heavy handed". Banno never got to do a Godzilla movie again, although he did receive an executive producer credit on a few of the 2010's Godzilla movies in America; Banno died at the age of 86 in 2017. Incidentally, Jun Fukuda returned to direct Godzilla vs. Gigan in 1972, which happened to deal with cockroach-like aliens going to Earth after their planet was destroyed...by pollution.

I have to admit, this is a pretty fun movie. Of course, anything is better than All Monsters Attack. Sure, it probably won't be for everyone with its pacing of 85 minutes full of tension and mayhem...amidst plenty of strange imagery and moments. Just to paraphrase: people get turned into skeletons when sprayed by the monster, one person hallucinates fish heads on people (right before the sludge arrives) building is shown falling down to complete silence, a kid goes on a roller coaster and sees Godzilla appear in silhouette that you can actually spot because...yes. I do appreciate the Hedorah design apparently also being able to shoot lasers because screw it, why not? It might be goofy looking, but it makes a suitable enough idea in being a symbol of what things could be with a lack of care for the Earth: sludge (consider how things look now). People coming together to try and deal with the monster at least this time around is not a collection of speeches in a boardroom, and the kid this time around is mostly just curious rather than being all the way involved like the last film. I fail to see the problem with the scene of Godzilla flying with his breath. After movies where he did a dance and had a goofy son, the flight is not exactly uncanny to actually see in, you know, a monster movie where Godzilla already gets smothered in one eye. Yamauchi and the others in the cast are pretty routine, which is a compliment in that one isn't rolling their eyes at the level of drama that is supposed to play out in a Japan that may be more economically sound but may also lose something much more important in its soul. Even the hippies get involved, with a... bonfire on a mountain. And hey, here's a film where the military does something: they come with a big electrode to try and dry out the sludge monster before Godzilla takes him to the cleaners (wonder how he gets that stuff off him later). As a whole, it is a weird little film, but as a movie trying to be conscious of the time it was made in, it is a pretty entertaining film to see realized that managed to make an impression to stick out from the previous efforts. 

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

29 years old today. Ha.

Links for people delivering better insight from the actual production: Smog Monster Director EXTRA / ゴジラ対ヘドラの監督〜EXTRA〜 (SciFi Japan TV #26)

or this: Cinefantastique Magazine: 1970-2002 : Cinefantastique : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Let's Scare Jessica to Death.

Review #2456: Let's Scare Jessica to Death.

Cast: 

Zohra Lampert (Jessica), Barton Heyman (Duncan), Kevin O'Connor (Woody), Gretchen Corbett (The Girl), Alan Manson (Sam Dorker), Mariclare Costello (Emily) Directed by John D. Hancock.

Review: 

"Well, I don’t want to make a parody, I’d like to make a genuinely scary movie. If you let me rewrite this, I’ll do it.’ And they did, and I rewrote it, and changed it 80 or 90 percent. ... I grew up on a fruit farm on weekends, so that’s the first thing I did was set it on a fruit farm, and that really got my juices going,"

In fairness, the title did stick out to me for quite a few months. Apparently, the original script for this film by Lee Kalcheim was different from the finished version, as evidenced by the title he put on it: "It Drinks Hippie Blood". When John D. Hancock was approached about being involved, he insisted on re-writing the screenplay that retained the slightest of elements (such as the mute girl) while taking influence from the classic novella The Turn of the Screw alongside The Haunting (1963) to go along with childhood memories of his father (who was a sprayer) and other things. This was the feature film debut for Hancock, who had started directing on Off-Broadway in the late 1960s before getting into film with the Academy Award-nominated short subject "Sticky My Fingers, Fleet My Feet", which caught the eye of certain people that happened to own a chain of theaters and needed someone to direct a script they had. The movie was made without a distributor in mind but Paramount Pictures bought it. Studio executive Frank Yablans was the one who gave the movie its final title, as the working title was apparently just "Jessica". They apparently went with a marketing campaign all about vampires and promo ideas such as write-in contests, ticket giveaways for hearse drivers, you get the idea. Apparently, Rod Serling and Stephen King were big proponents of the film. Hancock followed this film up with likely his most known film in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) and has directed a couple of movies* to go alongside theater-work in the years that followed.

I guess you can get with the movie on a level of allowing its strange charms to flow over you in ambiguity, particularly since calling it a vampire movie isn't really that fair when it comes to its varying levels of logic. Then I sigh, smirk at that title having seen the movie, and try my damndest to justify the fact that this is a really average movie to sit through. It is entirely possibly one could be unsettled by the events that occur with the movie, what with a strange drifter and an odd town that seems to not like new visitors that challenge the status quo. For me, since one knows there is something lurking in town (namely someone who decides to not kick out a drifter at first sight - hippie foolishness or just being nice - you decide), it only gets interesting when it actually shows something beyond mental unraveling, mainly because the only interesting performance is with Lampert. Of course, maybe it says something about my patience with supposed ambiguity, because I go with something being real from the jump. But Lampert does make an effective performance in vulnerability that might be relatable for those with lingering passions and doubts about who they are back in the world of the supposed stable people. Her doubts do spring sympathy because we care about who she is more than any of the other people in such a casual movie, particularly since the real threat is not too far removed from say, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). At any rate, there are a few interesting visuals to speak of, whether that involves a certain sequence with surprise or one that is more just odd to see with a glimpse at the townspeople. I just wish by the time it was over at 89 minutes that it had a bit more to its ending beyond what you get, which might as well be the equivalent of wondering if you pressed pause on the remote. As a whole, Let's Scare Jessica to Death is a low-key type of horror movie that may or may not find ways to unnerve you based on how you approach a movie that plays its tension to a string of unnerving casualness that may be fit for your timing.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

*You also might remember he was the one who supervised the ADR sessions for Wolfen (1981).

The Hired Hand.

Review #2414: The Hired Hand.

Cast: 

Peter Fonda (Harry Collings), Warren Oates (Arch Harris), Verna Bloom (Hannah Collings), Robert Pratt (Dan Griffen), Severn Darden (McVey), Rita Rogers (Mexican Woman), Ann Doran (Mrs. Sorenson), Ted Markland (Luke), Owen Orr (Mace), Al Hopson (Bartender), Megan Denver (Janey Collings), and Michael McClure (Plummer) Directed by Peter Fonda.

Review: 

“I’m sure they would have liked me to do another biker movie. But I wanted to try something different — something more like what my father might have done. I wanted to do a western, because it’s the genre where you can explore the mythologies of America. And, yeah, because of my own psychological links to the genre, because of the many my dad did. I felt I had to do this one because there were no clichés in this script, just western mythology.”

Hey, remember Easy Rider (1969)? That was the movie where Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda worked together on the counterculture movie-oh, sorry, was having a bit of deja vu. But hey, this movie is a directing debut, believe it or not. Fonda had directed exactly zero other things before this movie, no industrial stuff, no TV stuff. Universal gave money to Hopper and Fonda and plenty of privilege to make something for them that presumably would make oodles of money: Hopper went to Peru and Fonda went to New Mexico (okay he filmed a cameo for The Last Movie) and ended up making movies that, well, didn't exactly please the studio. Fonda was interested in the script, as written by Alan Sharp, a Scottish novelist that had gone from TV to film with The Last Run (1971). As it turned out, Sharp would be behind a handful of scripts of varying quality ranging from Night Moves (1975) to The Osterman Weekend (1983) to Rob Roy (1995). Fonda stated in later years that while he expected Easy Rider to make money, he didn't think about the idea of being an icon, and it was with The Hired Hand he wanted to "break that mold" (apparently, one instance of filming was briefly interrupted by a drive-in theater that nearby was playing, well, Easy Rider). At any rate, The Hired Hand was only shown for a few weeks in first-run engagement and Fonda contended that Universal wasn't behind the movie in general.* Apparently, the studio was going to do a billboard promoting the movie with Fonda in a cowboy hat and a billing of "That Easy Rider Rides Again!" that Fonda explicitly (read: preparing to blow it up) told them to take it down. Fonda directed just two more movies in his lifetime: The Idaho Transfer (1975) and Wanda Nevada (1979). The movie did live on in the drive-in circuit for a number of years and even being edited for TV (twenty minutes were actually put back in the movie, featuring Larry Hagman as a sheriff) before a DVD restoration happened in the 2000s, and the movie has a handful of admirers that include Martin Scorsese. Apparently, Fonda showed the movie to his father Henry late in his life, whereupon he stated, "Now, that’s my kind of western."

Admittedly, you can see where Universal probably wasn't big on the movie by the fact that it is a movie firmly about trying to settle oneself in the frontier rather than a slap-bang adventure. Anything that dwells on someone trying to move on from the dusty trail (and finding a reality that probably is a bit feminist, at least in some arguments) rather than duels in the desert has to sound like an art film to those without some sort of patience for a film that just soothes the soul of those who look (and hear) closer. Oh sure, the movie does feature a bit of action throughout its 93-minute runtime, but you will dwell more on the fact that some people really can't just go home again more than anything. The young (as seen in the opening sequence) might not understand what it means to rest, but the weary know all too well about knowing about the grass and how green it seems on the other side. It is funny to see a movie with three distinct presences that grace the screen with varying levels of sensitivity that you sometimes don't even see with experienced directors. Fonda and his understated nature come clear in a yearning that is striking when compared to what one sees with Oates and his natural instincts that does in fact also know what it means to care about certain folks and their feelings. Bloom has her own distinct interests that do not revolve around just letting old wounds go by the wayside. This is made clear in a sequence where she in fact says, yes, she had plenty of time to plow her field when her husband was away. A good chunk of the movie is driven by the very fact that the touch of a person like Bloom sounds more captivating than being on the road any longer but also that one has to earn one's trust and so on and so forth, since it all deals with responsibility in love and friendship. Granted, it isn't a movie to see a terrifying threat (Darden spends a chunk of it crippled, as one does when one's feet have bullets in them), but the resulting clash at the end probably makes for it quite well. The music was composed by Bruce Langhorne, the folk musician who apparently was the inspiration for the Bob Dylan song "Mr. Tambourine Man". Langhorne* did music here with the sitar, fiddle, and banjo and went on to do a handful more movies (ranging from the aforementioned Idaho movie to Melvin and Howard [1980]). Much like the landscape, it sure is a hell of a thing to experience. As a whole. what we have here is a sobering look on responsibility in the frontier for a "far out Western" that might be just up your alley for those looking for a sobering type of movie.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

*I like this one quote by Fonda: “They had no intention, I think, of getting behind it. They hated me and Hopper, but mostly me and Bert Schneider. Yeah, they thought we were trying to overthrow the system. I mean, how egotistical. Overthrow the government, yeah. But Hollywood? Jesus, no…”

*Langhorne, I should point out, did his music without the use of two (and a half) fingers, as he had suffered an accident as a youth. 

The Last Movie.

Review #2413: The Last Movie.

Cast: 

Dennis Hopper (Kansas), Stella Garcia (Maria), Don Gordon (Neville Robey), Julie Adams (Mrs. Anderson), Peter Fonda (The Young Sheriff), Sylvia Miles (The Script Clerk), Samuel Fuller (Sam), Dean Stockwell (Billy the Kid), Russ Tamblyn (Charlie Bowdre), Tomas Milian (The Priest), Toni Basil (Rose), Severn Darden (The Mayor), Roy Engel (Harry Anderson), Henry Jaglom (The Minister's Son), Warren Finnerty (The Banker), Michelle Phillips (The Banker's Daughter), Kris Kristofferson (The Minstrel Wrangler), Michael Anderson Jr (The Mayor's Son), and Rod Cameron (Pat Garrett) Directed by Dennis Hopper (#1430 - Easy Rider).

Review: 

“I'm trying to say our lives are fragmented. That some people care and some people don't care and some don't know how to care."

Hey, remember Easy Rider (1969)? That was the movie where Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda worked together on the counterculture movie to end all counterculture movies. The veracity of who wrote what with that movie (as also worked on by Terry Southern) is debatable, but what you saw with that movie was one directed by Hopper and starring him and Fonda that, well, yes, it was a hit. Hopper and Fonda would go into their own paths after the success of the movie because studios thought that they could replicate movies like that (cheap and "cool") for themselves. Paradoxically, the idea for what became The Last Movie came a number of years prior to Easy Rider, as Hopper, in the midst of finishing The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), came up with an idea during the wrap party under the influence of what else but pot that saw him come up with an idea about "making movies and the effect it has on people, and what they do when a movie company leaves town." Enter Stewart Stern. Hopper enlisted the services of the screenwriter (having done such scripts as Rebel Without a Cause [1955]), with each partaking in certain practices (namely blowing smoke down the snorkel of a scuba mask) that resulted in a script that would have a "far out" ending involving the culmination of a stuntman staying in a Latin American town and seeing the people react to a film company having shot a Western there. Long story short, the idea would go through several hands considered for producers and stars (Phil Spector was once thought to be involved as a producer alongside Jason Robards to star). The success of Easy Rider would make one think that the company led by Bert Schneider would back The Last Movie, but that was not to be. Instead, Universal Pictures dropped right in and even gave him final cut privileges as long as he did it on a tight budget. There are various roads that all seem to intersect with the making of the film, which started in Peru in 1970 and went through a road of drugs and other various substances behind the scenes (as captured in The American Dreamer, a documentary that followed Hopper around that at one point showed him carry a gun around), although the shoot itself was apparently not that chaotic. Funny thing about that script: Hopper basically junked it in favor of improvisation, not even bothering to shoot the ending (as noted by Stern, because Hopper asked him to come to New Mexico when he was editing it down). It eventually culminated in a disjointed print in 1971 (apparently, Alejandro Jodorowsky, director of films such as El Topo, had a hand in the editing process). The end result, after such strange sorrow, was a movie that barely made it into theaters and was essentially dropped by Universal with the energy of a wayward child being dumped onto a military school. Hopper (who took the movie on lecture tours as late as 1978) did not direct another movie until Out of the Blue (1980). The movie was not available on DVD for many years and a restoration of the movie only happened in 2018.*

Universal apparently had the belief that if you gave a couple of young directors a budget of $1 million, you would get something worthwhile. The result was the following: Douglas Trumbull made Silent Running, Monte Hellman made Two-Lane Blacktop, George Lucas made American Graffiti, Peter Fonda's The Hired Hand and the aforementioned Last Movie as made by Hopper. Honestly, the only way to view the movie is to just see it. You can't really get a great description of the movie that isn't just describing things that happen (such as "scene missing" or credits that pop up out of the blue). It wasn't exactly a critic favorite (Roger Ebert called it a "wasteland of cinematic wreckage"). It isn't even a movie you could watch for the acting, unless you want to see people improvise on the level just above dinner theater or to see the weird wacky weary world of one Dennis Hopper. It probably won't do many favors to those who thought Zabriskie Point (1970) was obtuse to watch. But it is quite the trip for 108 minutes to realize that reality and ritual can in fact collide for what you might call a new type of heaven or hell. One probably fades in and out about the same level as this movie does, complete with having an uncertain road close right from under one's skin. The whole movie could be called as one that gets under your skin: arrogant, free-wheeling, beautiful to look at (as shot by the famed László Kovács), rambling, pick any adjective you want. But there is something about it that is hard to resist when it comes to just calling it a mess. Hopper is a fascinating presence to be around even in the moments that might resemble a drifter on a stormy night. You'll see people come and go (yes, the director Samuel Fuller appears at one point alongside the film debut of the immeasurable Kristofferson) and that I suppose is just how it feels in our own lives to have people love and betray us in where they come and go (a chunk of this might sound like syrupy hokum, but life is bullshit enough before one goes around not saying what they think, don't you think?). Real or imagined, we live the life we make for ourselves and sometimes that can be a slice of heaven or a piece straight from hell. We see violence on TV and film and sometimes we just believe that it is something to slip by us with no muddling into our own lives but it does fester in us because that is just how things are as one of the supposed creatures of a certain power. It is a bit funny to see Universal foot the bill for such a weird movie. In truth, it took me a while to ponder what the hell I watched with this movie and the end result is that I found it to be a curious movie that exists in the realm of near-unrankability: you either will like it or you won't like it, but at least Hopper made something he could be proud of cultivating.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

*By sheer coincidence, that was the same year that The Other Side of the Wind (the movie where Hopper appeared in that was shot in the 1970s) came out.

Woman of Fire.

Review #2076: Woman of Fire.

Cast: 

Namkoong Won (Dong-shik), Youn Yuh-jung (Myeong-ja), Jeon Gye-hyeon (Jeong-suk), and Choi Mu-ryong (Detective Jo) Written and Directed by Kim Ki-young (#1596 - The Housemaid)

Review: 

"A carpenter builds homes relying on his talent and insight. A carpenter who is talented in handling wood builds a wooden house; one who’s good with bricks builds a brick house. It’s the same with me. Starting with ‘The Housemaid,’ and going through ‘Woman of Fire’ and ‘Insect Woman,’ the films that saw success were those about demon-like femme fatales who, for their own reasonings, destroy domestic peace. What is success? People flock to theaters because the films are well-made. So my calculation is that I’m proficient in this kind of genre."

I'm sure that those familiar enough with world cinema remember The Housemaid (1960), often called one of the best films made in the 20th century in the country of South Korea. Kim Ki-young directed/wrote/produced the film, but did you know that he returned to the subject matter? Let alone twice? Well, let's start with the basics, the original film involved a family that suffers upheaval with the arrival of a new lady (a femme fatale, if you will) into their domain that has a mutual pact for its climax after attempts to rid the woman's illicit child (miscarriage in the original, abortion in the remakes) prove fruitful. The wraparound aspect of the story is the one big change for this film (well, that, and being in color), which plays around with time for its depiction of the story, where the older film started on a discussion of a newspaper story involving a man falling in love with his maid and this film starting out in a police station with a dead husband and a dead woman. Eleven years after the release of this film (which is also referred to as Hwanyeo), he would direct Woman of Fire '82. It has been argued (and cited by Kim himself in the quote mentioned above) that Insect Woman (1972) touched upon similar themes with the aforementioned Housemaid, and it perhaps seems apt that it had its own similar feature with Beasts of Prey (1985). At any rate, by the time of his untimely death, he was a cult figure among filmgoers that saw a detailing of just who he was a filmmaker with what survived from his output and the directors that took influence from what they saw into their own films; Youn Yuh-jung, who made her debut in this film, cited Kim when accepting an Academy Award in 2021 as a "very genius director". The fact that his 1960 film was remade again in 2010 probably speaks truth to his enduring status more than anything.

This was released in the 1970s, which was actually a troubling time for the film industry in South Korea due to censorship pushes under the military regime that went for censorship and propaganda. It probably won't rank as being better than the original feature for those who find themselves trying to compare, but the fact that it is a lurid way to remake a film without retaining every little aspect probably makes it more of an achievement than what is on the surface. One has to let the film sift on its own without thinking of it as going from points A to B all the time, because it is more dedicated to showing unease in all of the ways that matter in desire. The dark and shadowy angles in the noir-like features of the original film are still fairly present in the colorful look of the manic and depraved feature displayed here that is never starved in hysteria. Namkoong serves as an ideal lead when it comes to being the one male among the disposables that are seen among the certain level of middle-class people that only like to get certain parts of their hands dirty, and this includes the hands that are restless towards pants. Youn is naturally the best part of the film as, well, the title character involving fiery womanhood that is always watchable in part because it isn't merely a film with clear-cut heroes, since that pool is muddled by all the dark desires shown by each of the key three (incidentally, each of them would appear in Insect Woman), as to see coming from people that must live with the memory of what they did and saw in Jeon. As a whole, the 100-minute runtime does prove satisfying in showing why Kim felt the need to look upon the world of domestic invasion through the lens of women from time to time, and it shows the need for understanding just what matters most in treading familiar ground without becoming just another ground to step over. Enjoying the lurid show and looking upon its tricks is what matters most here, which works out pretty well in the long run.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Next up: A normal time in Belgium with Man Bites Dog.

Duel.

Review #2000: Duel.

Cast: 

Dennis Weaver (David Mann), with Jacqueline Scott (Mrs. Mann), Carey Loftin (Truck Driver), Eddie Firestone (Café Owner), Lou Frizzell (Bus Driverdagger), Eugene Dynarski (Man in Café), Lucille Benson (Lady at Snakerama), Tim Herbert (Gas Station Attendant), and Charles Seel (Old Man) 

Directed by Steven Spielberg (#126 - Close Encounters of the Third Kind, #168 - Raiders of the Lost Ark, #169 - Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, #170 - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, #302 - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, #351 - Schindler's List, #480 - Jaws, #563 - The Sugarland Express, #573 - E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, #642 - Jurassic Park, #958 - Always, #1068 - Ready Player One, #1305 - Catch Me If You Can, #1478 - The Color Purple, #1520 - Saving Private Ryan, and #1528 - A.I. Artificial Intelligence, #1560 - The Adventures of Tintin, #1843 -  The Lost World: Jurrassic Park)

Review: 

"I mean, I believe that stuff. I don't think you can be a filmmaker, a serious filmmaker making audience popcorn movies unless you believe the stories you're telling."

In roughly 2,000 movies seen over the past twelve years or so, the one constant presence among the 133 directors with at least four films spotlighted is Steven Spielberg. One always has to remember that Spielberg got his start as a director from a very young age. The Cincinnati native made his first film with Firelight (1964) at the age of 17. Of course, his most prominent work in the early era came with Amblin' (1968), a short film that was so successful that he was signed to a deal with Universal Studios because an executive in Sid Sheinberg liked it that much. Of course, he had an ambition to want to direct films, but he found that he really had to get work within television first before someone would want him to direct films. As such, he would direct episodes for six television shows alongside three television films. You might recognize him as a director on two firsts: the second segment of the pilot for Night Gallery ("Eyes") and the director of the first regular episode of Columbo ("Murder by the Book") in September of 1971. Duel was his first true television film, airing on November 13, 1971 (weeks before Spielberg turned 25).

The film was written by Richard Matheson, who adapted his own short story that originally had been published in the April 1971 edition of Playboy magazine (after failing to get it done on television or as a film with executives), with inspiration taken from a real-life incident where he was tailgated by a trucker on November 22, 1963; the story was written after he took a trip from home to Ventura to record what he saw. Matheson, as one might know, was a noted writer of fiction, film, and television, whether that involved The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) or episodes of the original The Twilight Zone. Spielberg's secretary Nona Tyson read the story and suggested it to Spielberg to try and lobby to make due to the plans already being set in motion by Universal. Spielberg showed a rough cut of his Columbo episode to help make a good impression to studio executives, which worked with the caveat of having just ten days to film. With a completion of 13 days with the use of five editors to make a Universal Television product ready for ABC's Movie of the Week, the film just made it to the finish line, helped by Spielberg and his skill in plotting out every camera shot he needed with an overhead map he commissioned that he had done of the area in California that would be for shooting (as opposed to doing it in a soundstage). Upon hearing the good ratings of the film (remember, this was 1971), Universal decided to give it a theatrical release, primarily in Europe and Australia (there apparently was a limited release in the United States, in 1983). When it came for a theatrical release, several scenes were shot later to make a 74-minute film into 90, which consists of: a scene involving a railroad crossing, one involving the lead dealing with a school bus and its driver, a scene on the phone with a character (Scott) in their only scene of the film, and an opening with a car backing out of a garage before it hits the open road (the TV one just shows it on the road already). Spielberg would make his formal debut in features with The Sugarland Express in 1974, and the rest is history.

The best films are the ones that adhere to their premises that you can tie down in a certain amount of sentences without having to strain in why it seems so interesting. This is especially apparent when you think about a movie about a man being terrorized on the road by a man in a truck whose face you never see. It really is a miracle movie, if you think about it. Can you imagine shooting a film like this in twelve days for television and then go on to find that it would be one that created demand for a theatrical release but also manage to be talked about after a half-century? Network Movie of the Weeks may be a thing of the past when it comes to must-see TV for most people, but one thing that has never gotten out of style is the thrill of a wonderful chase, and Spielberg excels handily here in a film that seems to lay all the stops for how he would make an even more captivating thriller of man and things around him with Jaws (1975). Both feature a creature that simply cannot be negotiated with and only lives to destroy anything vulnerable enough to its reach and both even feature the same rattle of sound. You haven't lived until you see a Peterbilt gasoline tanker truck look menacing in all of its dark brown glory. Believe it or not, Weaver was not the first choice. Gregory Peck, David Janssen, and Dustin Hoffman each were approached and turned down the role (Peck was approached with the idea as a theatrical film and not as a TV production), which opened the door for Weaver. He was perhaps best known for his roles as the secondary lead on Gunsmoke (1955-1964) and as the title lead in the 1970s police drama McCloud. Actually, it was his supporting role in Touch of Evil (1958) as a twitchy motel man that Spielberg found most interesting in intensity when it came to backing Weaver for the role. As such, he is allowed to roam at his own vulnerable pace, which either sees him look over his shoulder or try to compose himself with select dialogue. It isn't anything transcendent, but it is the kind of acting challenge that one in theory would love to have, since it involves someone trying their hardest to not turn the role into one that bounces off the wall in fear and instead find a clear balance. Spielberg excels when it comes to the visual storytelling that comes through in his shots that he wanted to make sure were not just comprised as close-ups with little to express, especially for a film that has to find tricks to make the speed of the car look as fast it seems to be going on screen while having multiple cameras running. This proves especially rewarding in the final sequence of man versus truck that sees one arrive at their final destination with glorious capturing by the cameras to make a worthy ending (thankfully, due to executive help, ABC's request to have an explosion at the end was not put in). As a whole, Duel is an achievement of worthwhile creativity for its filmmaker to make a simple premise into one of great tension that Alfred Hitchcock surely would have been proud of with a resourceful sense of timing and staging and one quality performance to make a highly memorable strike that makes a great first step into further curiosity. It takes it time in the best of ways that any young filmmaker would want to aspire for in their ambitions in satisfying the need to serve as a visual storyteller and entertain their audience with a solid foundation of craftsmanship for filmmaking.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.

And so here we are at last. It took 2,495 days from the very first review to get to #1000 on October 19, 2017. 2,009 days later, a new collection of 1,000 reviews is here, no doubt aided by the fact that I have managed to write at least ten reviews for a month in all but six months that have followed October 2017 (to say nothing of 2020, a massive undertaking in a strange year). I think they outrank the original 1,000 by a significant margin, and that counts even with the revised reviews (such as #1). 

I hope the last five years have seen interesting films be featured with a useful perspective, whether that involved trying to make theme months out of January or August, or with spotlighting black history in film with February or women history with March or with the march of horror films in October and November. With any luck, I hope the next 1,000 is just as worthy of curiosity for readers out there. Onward.

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.

Review #1970: Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.

Cast: 

Melvin Van Peebles (Sweetback), Hubert Scales (Mu-Mu), Simon Chuckster ("Beetle"), John Dullaghan (Commissioner), with West Gale, Niva Rochelle, Rhetta Hughes (Old Girl Friend), Nick Ferrari, Ed Rue, and John Amos (Biker) Written and Directed by Melvin Van Peebles.

Review: 

“I made the picture because I was tired of taking the Man's crap and of having him define who we were to us. Sick and tired of watching the parade of jigaboos, valets and tap-dancing cooks on the big screen, I felt we had the right to define who we were ourselves. I am most proud of the fact that I decided to do something about it.”

Well, what can you expect from a movie that was written, co-produced, scored, edited, directed by one man in Melvin Van Peebles? The Chicago native studied in literature at Ohio Wesleyan University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in the mid 1950s. He served in the United States Air Force almost immediately after graduation, doing so for three years serving as a navigator and bombardier in the Strategic Air Command. Afterwards, he moved to San Francisco and worked as a cable car gripman, where a passenger suggested for him to be a filmmaker (he also wrote during this time). His short films didn't attract Hollywood, but it did attract French favor, and he spent a variety of years there writing before his first feature film came with The Story of a Three-Day Pass (1968), the story of an African American soldier stationed in France in an interracial relationship. The success of the film (made in France with French and English dialogue) inspired curiosity from Columbia Pictures, who hired him to direct a film for them with a script by Herman Raucher (the studio wanted to do the film, but only with a black director). Van Peebles did not enjoy the experience of what became Watermelon Man (1970) too much, considering that he wished to change the script from a satire of white liberal America to a black power movie. The movie was a hit, and Columbia offered Van Peebles a contract for three films. Van Peebles chose to do this film instead. A free spirit, Van Peebles directed seven films (one for television and one that was shown at the Cannes Film Festival before getting a video release) from 1968 to 2008; he also spent his time with work in the theater and trading on the floor of the American Stock Exchange. Van Peebles died at the age of 89 in 2021; his son Mario became an actor and director himself, and he made a film depicting the struggle of making Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song with the 2003 biodrama Baadasssss! Incidentally, Mario had played a younger version of the title character in the 1971 film and then he starred as his father in this film.

Technically, this is the first "blaxploitation" film, because it came out a few months before the release of Shaft. Both films ended up with their own type of cultural impact, with this film being cited as "required viewing" for members of the Black Panther Party (as decreed by its founder Huey Newton). The musical group Earth, Wind, and Fire was behind the music of this film, as composed by Van Peebles, who released the soundtrack months before the film to attract attention. I can't really call it the father of that genre, because Cotton Comes to Harlem was released a year before it, and Sweetback probably shares more similarities to Billy Jack (released the same year as this and self-distributed by its title star to roaring success) more than the other big 1971 hit Shaft, in that I feel it is more of an offbeat fable of what Van Peebles envisions empowerment to be. Think about it: both Billy Jack and Sweetback involve a lead character who speaks lightly, both involve characters spurred to action by seeing someone get assaulted (whether hippies or activists), both movies involve a family member being cast for things usually not done in movies (one had their wife play a character that goes through a sexual assault, the other casted their son as a younger version of the title character being depicted as having their way with a prostitute), and both have a lead trying to get their way across an oppressive authority that leads to some sort of moral victory (i.e. "The Man" doesn't kill them). A series of vignettes is either a series of loose connections with varying levels of filmmaking success or a series of vignettes that make a jumbled mess: it is up to the viewer to decide what the hell they are watching. It is a fragmented, odd, and incendiary movie that you have to figure out what edges work out best for 97 minutes. It is a movie where a man got gonorrhea from doing a sex scene and used it as a way to get compensation from the Directors Guild for being "hurt on the job" before needing a personal loan from a once-famous comedian to keep the movie rolling, which was shot in under three weeks. The camerawork is a mixture of hand-held shots, montages, split-screen effects that all goes for a film "dedicated to all the Brothers and Sisters who had enough of the Man". The most striking scene is probably the one that gets things started in loose plotting: our passive lead not being able to take it anymore when he sees (white) cops taking an activist out of the car to beat. Well, that or the scene where he argues for the activist to be taken by motorcycle rather than him because of the importance of the activist for the future. The cops taking things out on a random black man sleeping with a white woman regardless of how much he looks like Sweetback is also another striking scene whether for 1971 or 2023.

So yes, the movie is a success in terms of delivering perspective that isn't numbingly hypocritical, but that doesn't mean I have to call it a great classic. The Spook Who Sat by the Door, released three years later, crafted a far more interesting story of taking back the system in perspective (which incidentally was a movie suppressed by the studio behind it), but I digress. Granted, the criticisms of the film lie similar to ones made at films labeled part of the "blaxploitation" genre when it comes to presenting African Americans in stereotypes. But you know, there is one thing to mention when it comes to film and giving it a spotlight: if it is consistent enough for me, it is a winner all the way. The only one who should judge a film for themselves when it comes to spreading "ideas" is the viewer, not others trying to allege a moral high ground in authority (incidentally, this argument for worthwhile action films works just as well for horror films, since I guess ratings boards and family groups love to pair up). With that in mind, Melvin Van Peebles made a picaresque film that might as well pass for fable in the best way possible for what it means to him to be a Black man in America, one that doesn't stand passively when someone gets shelled, and one that finds the importance of not letting anything stand in the way of who they are. Whether thought of as a revolutionary classic or not, the world was left a better place with films such as this rather than left out in the cold. It might grow on you the more you watch it, but the impact is still there to talk about when it comes to Black cinema.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Next Time: Trouble Man (1972).

The Big Boss (1971).

Review #1873: The Big Boss.

Cast: 

Bruce Lee (Cheng Chao-an), Maria Yi (Chow Mei), James Tien (Hsu Chien), Marilyn Bautista (Miss Wuman), Han Ying-chieh (Hsiao Mi), Tony Liu (Hsaio Chiun), Lee Kwan (Ah Kun), Nora Miao (Drinkstand Owner), Shan Chin (Hua Sze), and Rhoma Irama (Xin Chang) Directed by Lo Wei and Wu Chia Hsiang.

Review: 

Bruce Lee was the man. It is hard to believe that it has almost been forty years since his sudden death at the age of 32, days before his biggest triumph. Lee was born in San Francisco to the son of a Cantonese opera star, who was travelling abroad because of his concert tour that took him away from Hong Kong. It was his father that showed him the power of film, since he appeared in a number of films as a child, even co-starring with his father in The Kid (1950). He trained under the famous instructor Yip Man in martial arts along with tai chi and boxing before his dabbling in street fights led to his parents suggesting he move to the United States. He completed his high school education in Seattle while becoming a teacher of martial arts, which he would do rather than continue his studies at the University of Washington (where he had studied drama), with his exhibition at a 1964 tournament in Long Beach being particularly noteworthy. His first key role in American media was as Kato in the TV series The Green Hornet, which ran from 1966 to 1967 as a showcase of his martial art skills that ultimately got him a handful of small parts over the next couple of years (such as karate advisor on The Wrecking Crew in 1969). When Lee struggled to get any of his ideas onto Hollywood, he decided to follow a suggestion to try his luck in the Hong Kong industry. Fortunately, his efforts in The Green Hornet had made the show quite popular. As such, he first received an offer from Shaw Brothers, but he decided to take the offer from Raymond Chow and his new company Golden Harvest, complete with filming in Thailand. The script was developed by Ni Kuang, a novelist behind over 300 film screenplays, but when Lo Wei stepped into the director's chair (after Wu Chia Hsiang was taken out after a few days), he re-wrote the script and thus got credit in the final print. Lo Wei directed over sixty movies (doing so until 1979) as a director with countless others written and produced, having shifted to directing after being an actor in his younger years of Hong Kong during the 1950s. The release of the movie proved better than anyone expected, as it set the box office record upon release in Hong Kong. Five months later, Lee and Lo returned for Fist of Fury, which was even more popular. Strangely enough, when it came to dubbing in America, the movie was retitled Fists of Fury while Fist of Fury was called The Chinese Connection - it also saw its final death scene trimmed to get an R rating, serving as one of the many edits made both in Hong Kong and America over the years. Five months later, Lee and Lo returned for Fist of Fury (1972), which was even more popular. Lee would star in one more Hong Kong film with The Way of the Dragon (1972) before his biggest hit would come with Enter the Dragon (1973), released days after his death as the first kung fu film by a major American studio (his work on the incomplete Game of Death, which he shot only the climax for, would be finished with stand-ins by Robert Clouse in 1978).

Strangely enough, when it came to dubbing in America, the movie was retitled Fists of Fury while Fist of Fury was called" The Chinese Connection" (to add onto the fun, Lo Wei would direct New Fist of Fury in 1976, and there were also two sequels to the original Fist of Fury that had Bruce Li as the star - but Bruceploitation is another story). The Big Boss also saw its final death scene trimmed to get an R rating, serving as one of the many edits made both in Hong Kong and America over the years (such as trimming fights); you can tell there are considerable cuts and changes made in and during production with how Tien is the first one to be shown fighting in the film, and he basically is one of the main folks followed for a good chunk of the first third of the film more so than Lee (Tien was an established presence in the film industry, of course). There are also numerous music scores, one of which that includes music cues from numerous films and music groups such as Pink Floyd (specifically, "Time", and yes, it was as weird to hear it in real time as it is to write about it). Told in a mix of Mandarin, Cantonese, and Thai for 100 minutes, the movie is pretty decent for all of its brief ambitions of telling a semisolid story to setup its martial arts sequences, ones that don't see much of Lee...until nearly halfway through. When it does drop the pretenses and gets to business, it does prove quite enjoyable for the pleasure of seeing him charm the screen. Of course, the production was a tough one for him, with ankle sprains and miserable shooting conditions to go along with hesitancy at the suggestions done by Lo Wei (such as having a man be punched through a wooden wall and leaving an outline in the wood). Lo Wei seems to have known how to give the audience what they want in an action film: a charming lead who doesn't have to say too much with a quiet plot that can fall into the background for jumping and kicking without falling into outright parody. You have folks fighting with tools or in places that look like country clubs while outmanned (while drugs are hidden...in ice), how can you go wrong? Lee handles the path of eventual revenge with the timing that comes straight of an old-fashioned Western to go with his graceful fists of fury that makes him the most interesting presence in the whole film. Tien, before he gets killed off not even midway through the film, is at the very least someone who can help carry some of the building blocks for what would've probably been an "okay" movie if Lee wasn't there at all. Yi and the others and all okay in stock characterizations, but one is really here to see Lee kick a villain, so seeing Lee against Han proves quite serviceable for the climax. As a look upon maintaining the spirit of oneself in spite of temptation with a bunch of kicks and jumps, The Big Boss is a solid winner, one boosted by the lightning charisma of its main star that will prove just fine for anyone looking for some quality entertainment from across the world.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Le Mans.

Review #1851: Le Mans.

Cast: 

Steve McQueen (Michael Delaney), Siegfried Rauch (Erich Stahler), Elga Andersen (Lisa Belgetti), Ronald Leigh-Hunt (David Townsend), Fred Haltiner (Johann Ritter), Luc Merenda (Claude Aurac), Christopher Waite (Larry Wilson), Louise Edlind (Mrs. Anna Ritter), Angelo Infanti (Lugo Abratte), and Jean-Claude Bercq (Paul-Jacques Dion) Directed by Lee H. Katzin.

Review: 

You remember the movie Grand Prix (1966), do you? If you don't, that is fine, because I last viewed it eight years ago, but I remember vividly trying to watch it alongside Le Mans as a double-header on cable television late one night. It didn't work out for one half, but the point remains the same. Grand Prix was the John Frankenheimer spectacle about Formula One racing with a wide cast of international actors. At the same time that this film was released, they had a competing group trying to make their own film about racing that involved Steve McQueen (who had rejected an offer to star in Grand Prix) and John Sturges, which was to be called Day of the Champion. This project clearly interested McQueen greatly in the dignity in the sport, one that he felt certain would be a definitive film on motor racing (as described by his wife later). Unfortunately, McQueen could not get the project to actually get on schedule, which led to him starring in other projects; Le Mans (1971), as it would be re-titled, was his first film role since The Reivers (1969). So, what was this race that interested him? The 24 Hours of Le Mans, established in 1923 in France. If you didn't know what the race was (i.e. not watch recent films like Ford v. Ferrari), the race is an endurance match where the winner is determined by what car covers the most distance in 24 hours of racing, complete with dedication taken to keep the car running without failure and driver health to consider (the most recent death in a race was in 2013). McQueen set up his own production company in Solar Productions, which would form an association with Cinema Center Films to make this feature. It should be noted that McQueen was so in love with racing that he even raced under the Solar label for the 1970 edition of the 12 Hours of Sebring (alongside a second driver); McQueen, with a cast on his leg, saw his team finish second to a team driven by Mario Andretti. Alan Trustman was hired to write the script, but troubles with McQueen led to him being fired in favor of Harry Kleiner. However, Sturges would not end up in the director's chair. After time had spent getting a bunch of footage, they fell into trouble with Cinema Center, wanting to take control of the film due to its lack of progress (to the point where they wanted to replace McQueen with Robert Redford); Sturges was quoted as saying he was "too old and rich" to put up with this kind of trouble. Instead, it would be Lee H. Katzin, a Detroit native that was best known for work in television such as Bonanza and Mission: Impossible before he directed his first film in What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969). Shooting was done during the 1970 edition of the race. The movie, made on a budget of $7.6 million (considerably over budget), could not quite make back its return. McQueen apparently couldn't even race at the historic venue because of insurance issues; during production, driver David Piper got into an accident that resulted in the amputation of his leg. 

A documentary, directed by Gabriel Clarke and John McKenna about the making of the film, was done in 2015 called Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans, which includes taped interviews of the time involving McQueen and Sturges alongside recollections done by his wife, his son, and others. Honestly, the one defining aspect of the film in its 106 minutes is its great flawed nature. It is as if McQueen thought that he could make a art house movie for the racing nut, which seems like the strangest combination imaginable. It is no wonder why Sturges couldn't reconcile his differences with McQueen, and it is evident that one doesn't see much of a vision with Katzin, particularly for a movie that doesn't have much of dialogue. The highlight is the racing, pure in all of its gritty and stated form, which will either attract or dissuade a viewer from seeing this curiosity, right down to seeing a few dings in cars and French locale. I appreciate the craftsmanship that comes from the movie, which does eventually build itself into something worth caring about for a race that feels endless in the span of a day. McQueen is basically a cog in a machine that works on the strength of documentary-like footage and not much else. Leigh-Hunt is adequate in a small supporting role that might have been chewed to coaching cliches but is instead just a quiet role for okay credit. Technically speaking, the parts of Grand Prix that worked were just the racing parts, so making a movie about Le Mans that isn't three hours long is probably a compliment, since having a cursory story about a guy who is consumed by racing and not much else (certainly not Andersen, that much is sure) is better than trying to stretch out for things that you might not remember after the movie ends; in other words, all one needs to know is that involves a race between Porsche and Ferrari where anything can happen in a day. It moves on its own pace without going for the easy "Hollywood" turns, right down to its climax with the final three cars gunning for the best position to take, which it handles quite well with few words. As a whole, it is the ultimate average movie, one that is definitely not for everyone but is a useful document of its time for what was ultimately put on the screen in a star-crossed venture. If you can find it, and if you are into what it wants to say about the roar of the engine, it might work for you. 

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

THX 1138.

Review #1725: THX 1138.

Cast: 

Robert Duvall (THX 1138), Donald Pleasence (SEN 5241), Maggie McOmie (LUH 3417), Don Pedro Colley (SRT 5752), Ian Wolfe (PTO), Marshall Efron (TWA), Sid Haig (NCH), John Pearce (DWY), and James Wheaton (Voice of OMM 0000) Directed by George Lucas (#113 - Star Wars, #141 - American Graffiti, #142 - Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, #143 - Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, and #144 - Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith)

Review: 

A half century later, there are quite a few things to unpack with this particular movie. For one, it was the feature film debut for George Lucas. As one must remember, the California native grew up with an appreciation for comics and science fiction (take note of the clips shown in the opening of the film), and this would serve him quite well when he entered the University of Southern California and its school of Cinematic Arts; he cited educators Lester Novros and Slavko Vorkapich (chair of the school) as influences on Lucas, who made numerous short movies as a filmmaker that were fairly abstract (ranging from a minute to seven, with only one having a narrative). He graduated with a bachelor's degree in fine arts in 1967, but his time spent with USC did not end there, as he went back as a graduate student in film production, with one of his duties being to teach students of the United States Navy that were studying documentary cinematography and working under Verna Fields in editing movies for the United States Information Agency (Fields would later edit a number of features for fellow USC filmmakers as a pioneer in her own right). In total, Lucas made nine short features from 1965 to 1968; the one that matters most to this discussion is his sixth in Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, made in the course of 12 weeks in 1967. He had an idea for a future film with existing stuff utilized for said future, and he tasked his friend (and fellow USC student) Matthew Robbins to write a brief outline involving the THX character and a chase scene. He utilized the Navy connection to helpful effect, since Navy folks served as crew for the movie while helping him get access for various locations to shoot. The result was a movie that won 1st prize at the National Student Film Festival in the Dramatic category. Later on, Francis Ford Coppola (fresh off Finian's Rainbow) helped Lucas with a deal to make a feature film with Warner Bros.-Seven Arts (co-produced with American Zoetrope, which Coppola and Lucas founded in 1969), and Lucas made the feature over the course of five weeks in the fall of 1969. A year was then spent in the editing room by Lucas and Walter Murch (who each wrote the movie). If you can believe it, studio executives did not appreciate what they saw of the final workprint, and they requested an edit to be done within the studio, which took out four minutes from the final edit. Made on a budget of $777,777, the movie was a mild success on initial release (making its budget back plus $122K).

I'm sure you are aware of the story that comes from a movie dedicated to the illusions of safety and order within a closed-off society filled with restrictions and watchful eyes everywhere. In fact, I know you have, because there have been a handful of books and movies that have run on similar lines for decades, such as George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, for example. Of course, we are talking about a movie with Chapperell race cars modified to look like jet cars. We are also talking about a movie that seems quite curious to talk about when thinking about Lucas as a filmmaker given what would come later in the decade, and yet it is the key piece in trying to understand what he aspired to do as a maverick filmmaker in terms of visual storytelling (along with his intent to not have studios try to control the production of his movies). Perhaps it was fate that a bleak movie involving the pitfalls of consumerism and conformity took its own path to reaching audiences. It likely seems more fitting of its decade than with the next two films Lucas directed, that might be for sure, which might seem a bit off-putting for those who come in completely cold for this sci-fi movie. Of course this isn't quite a movie one watches for acting chops; in an interview, Colley noted that Lucas seemed to not be too comfortable around actors, treating the production as like one of his student films (perhaps ironically, an actor in one his future movies would say something fairly similar years later); certainly it is an interesting sight to see a group of shaved actors amidst a crowd of other voices, and Duvall certainly does fine a role that requires a bit of a blank slate sparked into breaking out of obedience into ordinariness. Pleasance, gripping in confined obedience that drips of pathetic ooze within certain pieces of dialogue, matches fine with what is required from someone dealing in the middle of a society without any choices, where fear of the unknown can be a powerful deterrent (and easily identifiable). McOmie (in her one and only film as star) is used for poignant moments with attempts at breaking free with a sense of emotion that can be construed as fear with a bit of warmth waiting to break free. Colley proves curious in those moments seen on screen within the prison sequence, one in the middle between comfort and curiosity in the angle of finding a way out. The movie relies on visual interest within a dystopia where prisons have no walls, kids have IV lines for economics in their veins, and people like to take substances to curb their emotions as they work under jobs that are terribly dangerous (factories even announce the death tolls of the period in an attempt to promote safety); when not working, people just buy things without much thought while watching odd holograms. The robot policeman are the only visual adversary one sees, since you never actually see just who is in control, knowing only that set budgets are set for the capture of anyone who tries to escape. It is mostly a visual movie, which is interesting to see when most of the stuff is white (clothing, bald hair, et cetera) but certainly not the easiest film to sit through in its versions; the movie was restored in 1977 with an 86 minute run-time that restored the four cut minutes on the original release that was later put out on VHS and LaserDisc, while a Director's Cut was supervised by Lucas in 2004 that restored the film on an audio/video level while adding a few bits of computer generated imagery (along with adding detail to certain sequences) that resulted in a run-time of 88 minutes (in fact, one can apparently watch it with just the sound effects and score present with no dialogue, if one is into that sort of thing). Perhaps the easiest parallel in terms of a student film being turned into a movie for effect is Dark Star (released three years later...by sheer coincidence, it was made by a USC alum and included a reference to this movie), where it might have reached better as just a student film; regardless, I thought this movie was interesting in the right parts to work in generating a curious bleak world in imagery that leaves more for thought rather than thrills. It isn't a great achievement in originality with its story, but it does prove diverting in visual nature with the right kind of curiosity to make it worthwhile to overcome its shortfalls and work out fine, one that certainly merits attention as a cult classic, one that is just odd enough and interesting enough to win out.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

A Gunfight.

Review #1716: A Gunfight. 

Cast: 

Kirk Douglas (Will Tenneray), Johnny Cash (Abe Cross), Jane Alexander (Nora Tenneray), Karen Black (Jenny Sims), Keith Carradine (Young Gunfighter), Dana Elcar (Marv), Raf Vallone (Francisco Alvarez), Eric Douglas (Bud Tenneray), Robert J. Wilke (Marshal Tom Cater), and Paul Lambert (Ed Fleury) Directed by Lamont Johnson. 

Review: 

Sure, there are two interesting things to note about this movie. For one, this was funded by the Jicarilla Apache Tribe, of which most live in the state of New Mexico that have a significant portion of their income come from oil and gas wells. It was documented at the time as one of the first movies entirely funded by Native Americans, and it is perhaps ironic since it is a Western without any Native Americans. Of course, the other thing is that it features legendary singer Johnny Cash in an acting role. It was actually his third appearance in a motion picture, having starred in Five Minutes to Live (1961) and being featured as himself in The Road to Nashville (1967); of course, there was also the The Johnny Cash Show (1969-71), which had an episode featuring him with Douglas (who at the time of filming was approaching 55). This movie was released 50 years ago today, one that was made for $2 million while distributed to limited audiences by Paramount Pictures (at least, that is what one assumes, since there aren't that many contemporary reviews for it and you likely had never heard of it until today).

So yes, here we are with a movie that certainly tries to be offbeat and interesting in the differences from the usual expectations of a Western...in that the gunfighters seek the opportunity to make money to fight, as opposed to some sort of simmering difference between them, and they even arrange to duke it out in an arena fit for bull-fighting (get it?). 88 minutes take up time for what is meant to be an interesting look upon the dark side of folks with a lust to see people kill for sport. Of course, it also thinks it is clever by having more than just a swift finish at the arena with an imagined sequence at the end, so here we are. Boy, what a mediocre movie. The movie was written by Harold Jack Bloom (also a co-producer), best known for his work in television alongside his work on The Naked Spur (1953) and You Only Live Twice (1967). For his part, Johnson was also pretty familiar with Westerns from his TV work on stuff such as Have Gun - Will Travel along with a plethora of TV movie work that was fairly noted by audiences. Honestly, if you want a movie that shows the price of a killer trying to live with himself after a killing, you might as well just stick with Shane (1953). A Gunfight manages to be as generic as the title, one that is even bereft of the quality of oddness that could be possible with a Western meant to draw on weirdos wanting to see people kill each other. I have seen and heard more interesting moments come from people trying to justify a bizarre sports opinion than anything that comes from this movie, really. Ideally, one could do with just Cash and Douglas. A character study movie with just them might have worked if it was a more limited cast, since each are decent here. Cash never seems to be outmatched, collected in his weary pauses that looks for a different time than the one he is set upon - i.e. this isn't a star vehicle or a gimmick. Douglas simmers just as well like an opportunist ready for the big moment with confidence (granted, it is hard to top stuff with Douglas when Lonely Are the Brave (1962) exists). It takes quite a bit of time to see them meet, and it is probably an odd sign that there is nothing more interesting at any point before or after than when they meet and talk to each other (this includes the gunfight), since they play off each other with neat banter that at the very least makes this look like something more than just "uh huh, next." Well, that's not quite true, because Carradine is technically a curious and brash presence to see for like five minutes. Everyone else though is pretty much exactly what you might see coming, from the doting presences of the people close to the lead performers to the side folks, et cetera, et cetera. You might get more insight into the curiosity of folks wanting to see blood drawn at a horror convention. Honestly, by the time it lumbers to the fight, the interest is fairly mild as to just which choice the movie goes with...and yes, the fight is swiftly accomplished before being followed by imagination. I suppose it is meant to show the perspective of how neither gunfighter really wins despite being alive - uh huh, sure. You might as well just have them shoot to kill simultaneously if you want to pull a cheap message, particularly since I really care more about the idea of bringing interesting presences together rather than the usual Western stuff (i.e. a movie with presences doesn't mean one wants something with ego). Sure, the genre was still going okay in the 1970s, but this was the year of different types of Westerns like Billy Jack and McCabe & Mrs. Miller to grab the attention of audiences, and A Gunfight just doesn't have the confidence required to really make a meaningful statement that counts. Despite having Cash and Douglas, it proves to be just too average everywhere else and thus flops out in the overall end game - it might be a curiosity, but folks will find a movie with the bare minimum of filling rather than a show to look for.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

A Clockwork Orange.

Review #1440: A Clockwork Orange.

Cast: 
Malcolm McDowell (Alex DeLarge), Patrick Magee (Mr Frank Alexander), Michael Bates (Chief Guard Barnes), Warren Clarke (Dim), John Clive (Stage Actor), Adrienne Corri (Mrs Mary Alexander), Carl Duering (Dr Brodsky), Paul Farrell (Tramp), Clive Francis (Joe the Lodger), Michael Gover (Prison Governor), Miriam Karlin (Catlady), James Marcus (Georgie), Aubrey Morris (P. R. Deltoid), Godfrey Quigley (Prison Chaplain), Sheila Raynor (Mum), Madge Ryan (Dr Branom), Anthony Sharp (Frederick, Minister of the Interior), and Philip Stone (Dad) Produced and Directed by Stanley Kubrick (#044 - Full Metal Jacket, #065 - The Shining, #093 - 2001: A Space Odyssey, #1046 - Barry Lyndon, and #1301 - Dr. Strangelove)

Review: 
"I have always enjoyed dealing with a slightly surrealistic situation and presenting it in a realistic manner. I've always liked fairy tales and myths, magical stories. I think they are somehow closer to the sense of reality one feels today than the equally stylized "realistic" story in which a great deal of selectivity and omission has to occur in order to preserve its "realist" style."

Stanley Kubrick made thirteen feature films in his career, and it is interesting to note the numerous distinct genres that they all fall into, whether that meant anti-war (such as Paths of Glory), or film noir (The Killing), or period drama (Spartacus) or comedy-drama (Lolita), all the while having a touch and patience of a chess player in creating such tremendous interesting films to view. Kubrick had an interest in photography and film from a young age, and he was hired by Look magazine after he graduated high school. He would later develop interest in making his own films, which he started with Day of the Fight (1951), a short documentary that survives among two others Kubrick did before making his feature debut with Fear and Desire (1953). Over the next 46 years, Kubrick would develop numerous films that received attention and tremendous praise, and it should prove no surprise that this film is a masterpiece - one with discipline with madness and a great lead performance from Malcolm McDowell. Kubrick was inspired to cast McDowell in the film after seeing him in Lindsay Anderson's influential if... (1968), and he stated that if he could not have hired McDowell that he wouldn't have done the film at all.

If one needs to think of the context for comparing a film that is nearly a half century old to the films that purvey our screens, just remember that this was actually released by a major studio - Warner Brothers of all ones. Of all the provocative films that rocked a decade of grime and paranoia, A Clockwork Orange certainly stands out as one for its age. It was adapted from the novel of the same name by composer/writer/linguist/critic Anthony Burgess, who had written it in 1962 with a good deal of it written with a unique jargon named "Nadsat", which was Russian-influenced English to depict a subculture of young people in a dystopian society focused on extreme violence and the exploits of Alex from ultraviolence to reformation. There exists two versions of the novel: The original British novel with 21 chapters that ended with Alex deciding on his own free will to give up a life of senseless crime and violence. When brought to American publishers, they felt that the last chapter needed to be taken out as audiences would not go for this decision, so it was omitted (which proved the case for the next two decades of publication for American audiences). Burgess described that version and the film as like a fable while describing his original book as a novel with a "quality of genuine fiction". Kubrick described it as an extra chapter that he hadn't read until after he had written the screenplay, stating that it was "unconvincing and inconsistent with the style and intent of the book." Burgess had mixed feelings for the resulting adaptation (which was actually the second one done, after Andy Warhol's Vinyl six years earlier), particularly with the way it dealt with glorifying violence, stating it as making it easy for book readers to misunderstand what it was all about.

One wonders how a film like this ever got made, one with such creeping power that other films can only dare to try and defy in the following years. Others may have more blood or more frightening imagery, but there is just something about this one particular film that grips your attention as if it was some sort of disturbing hypnosis that can make you wince or laugh at its black comedy roots. It isn't all ultraviolence nor all funny but a film with a madman point of view that is handled with discipline and tremendous style. One is pulled in immediately with McDowell to observe and hear in each and every scene that shows his bold depravity that we cannot but keep thinking about now more than ever. Whether through singing "Singin' in the Rain" through a rape scene or trying to repress his violent urges, McDowell excels in conviction as someone we can't help but observe in showing what it means to have their free will challenged. Magee and Bates both do well on the sides of dogmatic reactionaries to our main focus, with the former proving a cynical foil while the latter provides blustery bluster that keeps our attention. Others have brief moments that they utilize quite well for us to observe when interacting with McDowell, whether that involves ultraviolence or not.

There is a reasonable pace of 136 minutes, carefully weaving its way through dark moments (if one can get through the opening 25 minutes, you can get through anything) with irony. We are talking about a movie that has someone killed by a phallus statue that cuts to a painting at the key moment, after all. Granted, one could have discomfort over its violent nature, because what seems like just a movie for John Q. Public isn't exactly going to provoke intelligent thought from someone who only sees the violence and nothing else (which can also prove the case with a number of satires). It's up to the viewer to assess how much it works on the satiric level about free will or violence. The argument over whether violence in film and television can have an effect on the viewer to do said violence is still something we talk about five decades later (as if violence begets more violence), particularly for a film that was pulled from release in Britain (which linked the film as an impetus for a spring of copycat crimes) just two years after release upon request of Kubrick. The US release was originally rated X, but a few subsequent small cuts by Kubrick led to an R rating, although it should be noted that current releases contain the original version (ironically enough with an R-rating). Regardless of how one thinks of the violence, it cannot be denied that this is an intensely great film, one free to do madness at its own choice that excels because of Kubrick and McDowell, a magnificently uncomfortable experience with strokes of genius in satire and dystopia that will linger with its audience long after they find themselves observing it.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.