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 Kid from Cleveland.

Review #1857: The Kid from Cleveland.

Cast: 

George Brent (Mike Jackson), Lynn Bari (Katherine Jackson), Russ Tamblyn (Johnny Barrows), Tommy Cook (Dan "The Kid" Hudson), Ann Doran (Emily Barrows Novak), Louis Jean Heydt (Carl Novak), K. Elmo Lowe (Dave Joyce), John Beradino (Mac), with Bill Veeck, Lou Boudreau, Tris Speaker, Hank Greenberg, Larry Doby, and many more. Directed by Herbert Kline.

Review: 

Let's be honest: the baseball material is the only drawing point of curiosity. That isn't to say that detailing the history of a young role for Russ Tamblyn is a bland experience, but one really does have to strain hard to not just immediately ask about how the Cleveland Indians (now known as the Guardians) got their own feature film. Well, I'm sure the answer is simply just Republic Pictures thinking that the 1948 club, who won the World Series over the Boston Braves, would possibly draw in a few local profits, complete with select footage utilized from the Series and bit lines from the stars on that team (along with certain moments with the 1949 team, who finished 3rd). Truthfully, the only reason I picked this movie was to talk about the 75th anniversary of Larry Doby making his debut in Major League Baseball, the second African American to play in the league and first in the American League. The Camden native had played five seasons for the Newark Eagles in black baseball before Cleveland owner/club president Bill Veeck signed him to a contract. The day of July 5, 1947 was three months after the debut of Jackie Robinson, and Doby's debut was serving as a pinch-hitter that saw him strike out on four pitches (contrary to Veeck's statement at the end of this film, Joe Gordon did not strike out after Doby to save face for his teammate, as Gordon was on base when Doby struck out). The next day, in the second game of a double-header, Doby started his first game in MLB at first base at Comiskey Park in Chicago, collecting his first hit and RBI. Doby had a tough first year, but he bounced back in 1948 to bat .300, and he was the first black player to hit a home run in the World Series in Game 4. Combining his statistics from his first season in 1942 to his last in 1959, he collected 273 home runs with 1,094 runs batted in while being named an All-Star eight times; after a long wait, Doby was named to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1998, finally cementing his place as one of the best players of his era and certainly the most underrated player. 

The film was written by Herbert Kline and John Bright (a founder of the Screen Writers Guild). Born in Iowa, Kline started his career as an editor for a magazine called New Theater before moving to New York to join the Photo League. Over time, he did manage to make a couple of features alongside documentary work, such as his work involving covering political crises in Europe such as the Spanish Civil War; he once described himself as a "foreign correspondent of the screen". The Fighter (1952) and the aforementioned Cleveland film are likely his most noted features, owing to his blacklisting in the 1950s due to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The movie went by "The Cleveland Story" and "Pride of the Indians" before finally settling on the title we know now, which is a pleasant snooze in all of the average ways possible. Did I mention that this is a movie about a troubled teenager that finds help from the baseball team? This seems like it could have been made about any random sports team, even with all of the location shots of Cleveland Stadium and bits of League Park sprinkled in (which only begs the question if someone would have gone with "The Kid from Boston" if the Braves had won the Series instead?). For me, I would rather be sitting at Cleveland Stadium watching six future Hall of Famers try to play actor (to go with more interesting baseball footage) than watching Tamblyn trying to play juvenile delinquent. This was his first credited role for the Los Angeles native, who was fifteen years old when this film came out, although it would be a couple of years before he didn't have to go by "Rusty" Tamblyn. At any rate, his performance isn't much to write home about, probably fit for a morality play or an unintentional comedy than this hodgepodge. Brent and Bari don't exactly lend a hand to help either, since neither really elevate the drama beyond first gear nor generate interest in the material that a broomstick would do. Doran and Heydt don't exactly move the needle either in parental figures to Tamblyn. One knows exactly what they are going for in 89 minutes with no real particular surprises present, no matter how they try to play the juvenile angle or the inevitable custody battle.

The reason to maybe see the movie is to see the Cleveland of yesteryear, to see a winning ball club that had star power with distinct names and faces, whether that involved player/manager Lou Boudreau, or star batter Joe Gordon, or Doby, or star pitchers Bob Feller (a Hall of Famer and also a guy who devised a sign-stealing plan with fellow legend Bob Lemon involving a telescope) and Satchel Paige (who is seen depicting his hesitation pitch for one scene). Of course, they come off pretty stiff when a camera is focused on them besides baseball, but maybe the curiosity factor about their baseball stories can forgive some of that. Bill Veeck, the revolutionary showman owner, is probably the most curious presence in the film, even if one knows they are watching a showman rather than an actor. As a whole, it is more interesting to talk around the movie known as The Kid from Cleveland than it is to actually watch it, which is not a ringing endorsement unless one is a sentimental Clevelander. Average may be better than a portion of bad movies, but it still isn't enough to recommend over other (better) baseball movies.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Movie Night: It! The Terror From Beyond Space.

Review #331: It! The Terror From Beyond Space.

Cast
Marshall Thompson (Edward Carruthers), Shirley Patterson (Ann Anderson), Kim Spalding (Van Heusen), Ann Doran (Mary Royce), Dabbs Greer (Eric Royce), Paul Langton (Calder), Robert Bice (Purdue), Richard Benedict (Bob Finelli), Richard Hervey (Gino), Thom Carney (Kienholz), and Ray Corrigan (It) Directed by Edward L. Cahn.

Review
Ah yes, a 50s flick, and from 1953, the year that has had three reviews: One of Peter Pan (#178), another of... a Ro-Man (#266), and one of a House of Wax (#271), so the track record is moderately well. From what I've heard, this story premise would later be the inspiration for the 1976 film Alien, but if I compared the two, they really don't look familiar. Yea, both have the alien inside the spaceship that hunts them down, but this film is significantly shorter (Lasting barely over an hour.) and with odd things, such as "Mars is almost as big as Texas", and the odd suspicion against the main character in the beginning even though everyone watching knows there is going to be a monster, so why would you waste time with a character who thinks there ISN'T one? The title says there's a terror, so yea. Then again, there have been far weirder things that have been reviewed on this site, like toasters, Santa in space, Ernest, talking rabbits, Spongebob, and others.  The acting is okay, not great or anything, but it works for what its worth. The monster looks fine, slightly scary, though that may be due to the black and white (Much like in Gojira), but still. Decent stuff that works...at the midnight slot. (Comments are welcome here)

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Movie Night: Rebel Without a Cause.

Review #181: Rebel Without a Cause.

Cast
James Dean (Jim Stark), Natalie Wood (Judy), Sal Mineo (John "Plato" Crawford), Jim Backus (Frank Stark), Ann Doran (Carol Stark), Corey Allen (Buzz Gunderson), William Hopper (Judy's father), Rochelle Hudson (Judy's mother), Edward Platt (Ray Fremick), Frank Mazzola (Crunch), and Dennis Hopper (Goon) Directed by Nicholas Ray.

Review
James Dean had made only three films before his tragic death, with one reviewed here already (#105 - East of Eden), This is the second of the three, and it is excellent. Dean once again is good, with his teenage angst coming into full mode with Wood, Mineo, and Backus also doing well. I must mention a young Dennis Hopper appears in this film, who would go on to do good films on his own (Easy Rider, Hoosiers, Speed) This film also has good directing, which captures the essence of teenagers and more. Good story in this good film.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.