Cleopatra Jones.

Review #2511: Cleopatra Jones.

Cast: 

Tamara Dobson (Cleopatra Jones), Bernie Casey (Reuben Masters), Shelley Winters (Mommy), Brenda Sykes (Tiffany), Antonio Fargas ("Doodlebug" Simpkins), Bill McKinney (Officer Purdy), Dan Frazer (Captain Crawford), Stafford Morgan (Sergeant Kert), Mike Warren (Miller Anderson), Albert Popwell (Matthew Johnson), Caro Kenyatta (Melvin Johnson), and Esther Rolle (Mrs. Johnson) Directed by Jack Starrett.

Review: 

Okay, I guess I should have heard of this movie earlier with a title like that. But maybe it is apt to get around to a movie made for Warner Bros. that wanted to cash in on the blaxploitation craze that came around with movies such as Shaft (or, if one wants to go with the one that came out a bit earlier, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song [1971]....or earlier with Cotton Comes to Harlem [1970]). Max Julien wrote the story (he originally wanted to a spy movie for Columbia Pictures) and co-wrote the screenplay with Sheldon Keller while also producing the film with William Tennent. At the helm as director was Jack Starrett, the sometimes actor/sometimes director behind such movies as Run, Angel, Run! (1969) and Slaughter (1972). Apparently, Julien envisioned his long-term girlfriend Vonetta McGee for the role, but the considerable casting call from Warner Bros. led to the eventual pick of former 6'2 model Tamara Dobson. The Baltimore native actually started out as a beautician in her studying at the Maryland Institute College of Art prior to being discovered, as, well, a 6'2 person who could model that later saw her involved in commercials. Rated PG, Cleopatra Jones was a decent hit with audiences and inspired a sequel with Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold in 1975. Sadly, those were Dobson's only starring roles, with her other film appearances (Norman... Is That You? [1976], Chained Heat [1983]) being supporting roles before she eventually became a commercial property owner; she died in 2006 at the age of 59.*

With big hat brims and big fur robes (apparently, the fashion was done by Giorgio di Sant' Angelo) and choices that might as well have come from someone wanting to do a James Bond movie (right down to having a climax in a junkyard), how could you not like this movie? Hell, the Corvette Stingray is modified so our leading lady's hair is not impeded to go along with a "CLEO" license plate and karate chopping people. Not bad for a "Special Agent to the President" that had to deal with all of this mainly because she got a poppy field to be destroyed via airstrike (in the intro to the film), I suppose. You know, it may not be a great movie, but I love stuff like this every now and then: a movie that just cuts loose and throws any damn thing to the screen with commitment of entertainment that shows the best of both worlds in terms of "the times" (namely in ass-kicking in the name of community). Admittedly, Dobson is more interesting for the stuff around her/action set pieces than her acting, which is pretty green. The community part is more important anyway when you've got some charm displayed by the support around her, mostly in the sheer ridiculous nature that comes with Winters, who not only has big hair (hey, wigs were cool) but also has an interesting gender balance of male henchmen and, uh, female servants. At least when one goes for hammy (hey, Winters had two Academy Awards already, you can do anything), you get some entertainment value (PG rating or not, you still get scenes featuring people being shot or thrown to their deaths). Casey makes a solidly sensible pairing for the small time you get to see him with Dobson. You get some adequate slice of life from folks such as Fargas or the Popwell/Kenyatta connection or the varying levels of "how funky is this white cop?*" from others for a movie that doesn't strain in hokum for its 89-minute runtime, which is more than can be said for lesser action films. It might not hit all of its marks, but it will do just fine winning converts on a late-night watch around the bend.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day

*Interestingly, Dobson believed that the character of Jones was not so much a "women's libber" but instead saw her as a "very positive, strong lady who knows what she has to do" (in this case defending the neighborhood from drug pushers)

*No joke, the movie ends right as the police captain mildly raises his fist to say "right on!" 

The Born Losers.

Review #1860: The Born Losers.

Cast: 

Tom Laughlin (Billy Jack), Elizabeth James (Vicky Barrington), Jeremy Slate (Daniel 'Danny' Carmody), William Wellman Jr. (Child), Jack Starrett (Deputy Fred), Robert Cleaves (Mr. Crawford), Paul Bruce (District Attorney George Davis), Robert Tessier (Cueball), Paul Prokop (Speechless), Jeff Cooper (Gangrene), Stuart Lancaster (Sheriff Harvey), Anne Bellamy (Mrs. Prang), with Ruth Warshawsky (Nurse) and special guest star Jane Russell (Mrs. Shorn) Directed by Tom Laughlin (#1196 - Billy Jack)

Review: 

First, one needs a few facts. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Tom Laughlin was actually into football first, even playing two positions at Marquette University; seeing a production of A Streetcar Named Desire pushed a desire to act, and he transferred to the University of South Dakota to major in acting. It was in the summer of 1967 that Tom Laughlin got his first crack to do a movie with the character of Billy Jack, which he first thought of in 1954 after seeing the mistreatment of Native Americans in the hometown of his wife Delores Taylor. Over the next couple of years, he would do a handful of performances on television and film, which included his first starring role in The Delinquents (1958). He got his first chances to direct with The Proper Time (1960) and Like Father, Like Son (1961) that saw him write and produce along with star, but neither were particularly successful. Laughlin left the film business for five years to dedicate all of his time to the Montessori preschool that he and his wife had established in 1959 in Santa Monica, California. The school, which had received national publicity from the press, closed in 1965 due to bankruptcy. Perhaps not surprisingly, he returned to film. Laughlin intended to fully produce the movie alongside directing and acting as well. However, he ran out of money in post-production, so he had to see if he could get some funding from who else- American International Pictures, masters of the exploitation circuit. Given the fact that Laughlin decided to hone right into the boom of the biker movie that had been seen with schlock such as The Wild Angels (1966), it fit right in for AIP to fund and release. The movie was shot in three weeks for roughly $160,000, complete with using rented houses and a real motorcycle gang in The Devil's Disciples. AIP intended to distribute Billy Jack (1971), but the studio refused after seeing the final cut, which led to Laughlin making a deal with Warner Brothers (after 20th Century Fox made a deal and reneged on Laughlin). That release did not succeed well, but Laughlin's decision to sue the studio and re-release it himself two years later did work well for him to the point where AIP did a re-release of The Born Losers and riled Laughlin up by having ads that called it the original Billy Jack. 

Remember Broken Arrow (1950)? You know, the movie that tried to feature a balanced story involving Native Americans and someone on the frontier that seemed different from the "Cowboys and Indians" type of Western? In a sense, Laughlin is making a Western with this movie, but the idea that his self-described half Native American who is also an ex-Green Beret is anything special when compared to previous movies is just as silly as it would be for the following feature. This one also took inspiration from real-life events, as it was based on an incident from 1964 where members of the Hells Angels were arrested for raping two teenage girls in Monterey, California. This results in a movie that shows the fuzzy contradiction that encapsulates Laughlin as a director within the character he created: he can make a decent action scene with its setup, but the values that come with his bully pulpit make for moments that are amusing to laugh at rather than actually engage with at face value. In trying to teach some sort of weird pacifism in the face of violence, one simply brushes the anti-establishment stuff with a yawn and a chuckle - to say nothing of the scenes where victims are depicted as actually enjoying their encounters with the bikers because of how their parents raised them. This was the only starring role for James, who actually shows the semblance of "charm" and "engagement with the material", one who surely deserved better things than being in a bikini and having to share time with mono-Laughlin. Slate actually makes a quality villain in the exploitation angle for weird crass influences, even if the presentation of him with his family muddles things a bit (when I think about exploitation movies with bad guys, I don't think if they have kids); one just needs weirdos that love James Dean but dress up with Nazi stuff to raise hell. Russell is there to chew scenery for tears that Laughlin uses to about what you would expect for a movie that dares to have a guest star.

Seeing the 1967 Billy Jack before the 1971 sequel is a hell of a trip, if only because the earlier film is somehow a better movie in execution despite being made to cash in on the exploitation craze as opposed to the weirdo movie that was done later (of course, if you saw the 1967 movie second, the whole argument about quality is even more pronounced); in short, the B-movie is better than the passion project. The exploitation angle is far more interesting to consider than seeing Laughlin in a setup that makes him look like he robbed Marlon Brando but forgot to get the talent factor; you could probably do an entire dub of the movie and have the same amount of charisma as Laughlin (while also making up a whole new background to explain the lily-white weirdo who is our lead). He does better in the action sequence in part because that involves him not having to come up with the attempt of empathy or timing. For a movie at 113 minutes, he also managed to make a movie that is way too damn long, as it lags in the second half (there's a sequence where an astrologer asks them about their birthdays!) before limping to a siege climax that only barely delivers the actual reason to watch - exploitation! Urgency is what is needed, not shots of dead animals. If Laughlin wants to play cowboy-sorry, weird pacifist/asskicker, the best thing one could have done with the character is to take the script from him and have a real discussion over what the hell he wanted to do that wasn't just fanfiction of himself (case in point: shooting the villain between the eyes in one shot). In other words: subtle measures of staging a message within action works way better than throwing everything together and hoping it sticks for some moral revolution bullshit that might actually make an argument for studio system films. In the end, Laughlin may have been a maverick film director who did what he could to get his point across in filmmaking, but it doesn't mean that his failures should be outweighed by his intentions, which is the case with a mediocre movie in the case of The Born Losers. It may prove interesting if you want to spend nearly two hours of your time trying not to make fun of its star/director, so take that into consideration.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Movie Night: First Blood.

Review #025: First Blood.

Cast
Sylvester Stallone (John Rambo), Richard Crenna (Colonel Sam Trautman), Brian Dennehy (Sheriff Will Teasle), Bill McKinney (Dave Kern), Jack Starrett (Art Galt), Michael Talbott (Balford), Chris Mulkey (Ward), John McLiam (Orval), Alf Humphreys (Lester), and David Caruso (Mitch) Directed by Ted Kotcheff.

Review
This is based off of David Morrell's 1972 novel of the same name. PTSD is Post Tramatic Stress Disorder, and Stallone plays a man with the disorder. He plays him quite well. This film makes you believe that Rambo is the sympathetic character instead of the policemen (and for good reason). The actors all play their roles very well as the film isn't just a beat them up, it's a psychological film with heart that would inspire three sequels different from the first...

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.