The Spiral Staircase (1945), Robert Siodmak.

From the start of The Spiral Staircase, this guy is always watching.

Congratulations, Robert Siodmak, your 66 year-old movie scared the bejeezus out of us!  The Spiral Staircase takes place over the course of one evening, in a small village at the turn of the century.   One of the inhabitants, the police are warning, is a serial murderer who targets young women with physical handicaps.  The central character Helen (played by Dorothy McGuire) has lost her voice after a traumatic experience -- and is the killer's next target.  The pace is relentless (the film is only 84 minutes long) and the dialogue simply repeats, repeats, repeats that Helen is in danger.  They joke that she will be murdered next.  The police warn her.  Her employers tell her they will protect her.  The threat moves from something generic and impersonal to something very real - almost entirely through dialogue alone.  While watching the film, it occurred to me that the word "murderer" must have been spoken almost as many times as the F word was in The Big Lebowski!  Ethel Barrymore (looking like one of her brothers in drag, I hope she was a lovelier in her youth) was for our money the most frightening character in the picture - a dying elderly woman whose mind is unraveling.  For anyone who has had to witness the mental decline of an elderly family member her performance will be eerily chilling.  This film is a testament to how terror can be instilled more easily with fewer tricks.  A dark basement with a winding staircase is all you need.

Dorothy McGuire as Helen

Vincent Price: The Art of Fear (2003), Denis Meikle.

Jane Asher and Vincent Price, antique shopping in London while filming The Masque of the Red Death (1964).

I had always taken Vincent Price's place in the Hollywood pantheon for granted.  Yet in his book Vincent Price: The Art of Fear Denis Meikle ably points out that Price was almost a victim of bad timing, maturing as an actor while the studio system he came from was collapsing.  "Like those of his contemporaries who similarly were moulded by the studio system," he writes, "Price's screen persona was larger than life, and he was best suited to roles which were larger than life also... he was not the kind of actor to whom naturalism came easily, and this ensured that he would be sidelined by the horror cinema of the mid-fifties until a vehicle came his way for which he was better fitted."  The acting styles coming into favour during this time period - the method acting of James Dean or Marlon Brando - was in complete contrast to Price's.  This book explores how Price managed his film career in the margins by sticking for so many years with low budget masters like William Castle and Roger Corman.

As I was unfamiliar with his writing, Denis Meikle's assertive, intelligent prose took me slightly by surprise.  For example, I'd never thought of Price as "gangling." "Like many tall men weighed down by their own stature," Meikle reveals, "Price was not a very physical actor and the more strenuous were the requirements of a specific script the more incapable he became of fulfilling them.  He was at his best moving stealthily around a stylish set, relying on gesture and facial expression."  Meikle repeatedly makes sharp-eyed observations that (like his central thesis about Price's genre work) go beyond the cliche.   The relationship between Price and American International Pictures group consumes the most pages and Meikle also devotes attention to the British reception to these films, many of which were filmed in the UK (and many of which were themselves butchered by a British censor unfriendly towards the horror genre).

The book has been thoughtfully constructed: Meikle has bookended his work with essays by Richard Matheson (author of I Am Legend; he also adapted many of the Poe works used in AIP films) and Roger Corman.  I'm a strong believer in the value of photographs as supporting documents that bolster good research (especially for books on visual topics like film - it never ceases to surprise me the number of books dedicated to film that seem to take no interest in images!) and The Art of Fear is full of photos, including the delightful one shown above.  I'll be sure to be hunting out Meikle's other books.  I'm really hoping that maybe if I read more Meikle, maybe the ability to construct a smart sentence or think an original thought will rub off on me!

The Town Went Wild (1944), Ralph Murphy.

Something tells me there's no such guy as Tyremus! 

The Town Went Wild is a goofy teen date movie (I can just hear "Wake up, Little Suzie" in my head now).  The teenage kids of two feuding families go out to get a marriage license behind their parents' back.  But the city clerk discovers that the teens may have been switched at birth, meaning the husband and wife-to-be may actually be brother and sister!  Is this movie an effort to get teenagers to think twice before getting hitched (or worse)?  Aside from the teens (who are fairly natural) the acting is across-the-board hammy resulting in a lot of forced levity.

The script for The Town Went Wild  is attributed to Clarence Greene, Bernard Roth and Russell Rouse, who were all thirty years old at the time the film was released.  Roth had been working for an agent who represented both Freddie Bartholomew and Jimmy Lydon (both of whom appear in the film) and gave Greene and Rouse their "in" in the industry (at PRC).  Even though they started their work in a bottom-of-the-barrel poverty row studio, Greene and Rouse went on to collaborate on a number of classic scripts including D.O.A. and Pillow Talk.  Gotta start somewhere!

This is how teenagers dressed in the 40s!  

Revolt of the Zombies (1936), Victor Halperin.

We're so lucky someone had this picture of Angkor Wat handy!  

Let's walk past it and pretend we're actually in Cambodia, again and again and again and again!

Did you know zombies come from Cambodia?

Revolt of the Zombies is so bad, it doesn't even make the cut in a book dedicated to crappy Bs, Poverty Row Horrors.  Author Tom Weaver describes it as "not only crude but an excruciating bore."  Oh sure, like The Ape Man, which gets fifteen pages, was any better?  I've sat through MUCH WORSE, my friend.

Director Victor Halperin talked a good story, and his previous effort White Zombie was well-enough received to have the press interested in his next production.  "In Asiatic Cambodia the zombies are employed as fighting creatures and indomitable soldiers they make..." said Halperin in a New York Times interview, "The ratiocinators, having been forced to admit the existence of zombies chiefly because the poor creatures have been recognized by relatives as kin folk whom they had long since buried and mourned in proper fashion, have rationalized the phenomenon to their partial satisfaction.  They have deduced that these necrogenic slaveys must have been victims of astute poisoners who have superinduced a thanatoid condition by administering some subtle mortific such as bhang, for example, or that they have been placed in a state of suspended animation perhaps by the influence of jar-poonhk, a common accomplishment of fakirs in the Far East."  I wonder whether Revolt of the Zombies might have been more entertaining if the camera had simply pointed in Halperin's direction for an hour, allowing us to be baffled by his knowledge of exotic and possibly made-up words.  Sadly Revolt did not meet anyone's expectations and to top it off, Halperin became embroiled in a lawsuit over the use of the term "zombie."

An endless process shot journey through a swamp.  It's like a Lewton walk, but less well acted.

 Gosh, I am a rather handsome looking man - why am I trapped in this awful sausage?

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1970), Robert Fuest.

Dr Phibes relentlessly executes his plan to avenge his wife's death while indulging in hedonistic pleasures with a strange young female companion.  Many scenes are aggressively splashed in colour.  Visually weird but as far as storytelling goes, methodical (like his revenge plan).  Totally fantastic!  

He Walked by Night (1948) Alfred L Werker.

Lots of stiffs in fedoras.  

He Walked by Night (which has Jack Webb in a small role as a ballistics expert) laid the groundwork for the TV show Dragnet.  It operates like a promotional film for the LAPD despite controversy about policing methods and anti-minority attitudes that existed at the time.  In my view, later period noir is as culpable of dullness as early studio B's:  both types of films lost interest in their antagonists and for different reasons championed staid middle-class values in a moralizing manner.  He Walked by Night can't even be bothered to tell us much about the person who is the focus of the whole film, the subject of an LAPD manhunt!  

Whoa, nice solid state cathode ray thing!

Richard Basehart (who looks uncannily like Ewan McGregor) makes a living stealing and re-selling unusual pieces of technology, including old military equipment.  He claims he personally refurbished the pieces, leading his unwitting fence to think he's a genius with electronics.  Basehart's big mistake is killing a cop, resulting in a city wide search that eventually leads to the sewers of Los Angeles (nicely filmed in part apparently by Anthony Mann).  

This truly is a black-and-white world, though:  these "kids" are not just kids, man - they are fearsome, gum-smacking knife wielding adopsycholescents that give the cops the chills!  Most of He Walked by Night throws dramatic shadows on the everyday - danger is lurking everywhere for cops, didn't you know?  The post-war society is a battlefield that our totally morally upstanding cops must navigate in their quest to protect regular citizens.  (Although protecting you and me seems to be an afterthought)!  

   

Altered States (1980), Ken Russell.

Oh my GOD William Hurt is a self-absorbed asshole in this!

Electra Glide in Blue (1973), James William Guerico.

The fetishization of the uniform.  Robert Blake is so excited to get into his Homicide duds that he forgets his pants!

Super 70s flick:  testosterone! Cops!  Hippies!  This interesting film was the only one made by James William Guerico and is a character study of short man Johnny Wintergreen (Robert Blake),  a patrolman who rides the Arizona highways on his Harley Davidson (the Electra Glide of the title).  Wintergreen's dream to escape the drudgery of highway patrol comes true when he gets the chance to solve the murder of a recluse.

The film's pacing is uneven; bursts of wild action appear intermittently while the rest of the film ambles along in typical self-indulgent 70s fashion.  Similarly, I found the acting to be all over the map.  Almost all the main actors are allowed two minutes to chew scenery, flail around and work themselves into a sobbing frenzy - all except Robert Blake who actually puts in a restrained and dignified performance.  Billy "Green" Bush is great as his patrol buddy Zipper.  He doesn't get Wintergreen's dissatisfaction and is content reading Wonder Woman comics between slow moments, drinking out of his thermos under the desert sun.  "Wonder Woman - ever read that?  Man, that is meat and potatoes.  She is built!"    

Pick up line: did you know Alan Ladd and I were the same height?

Robert Blake's notoriety later in life makes this scene unsettling in retrospect -- even though he was acquitted of the murder of his wife.   Just seems like nothing ends well for self-loathing short men.  

Awesome hippie action!  Motorbike through the diner window!  Check out the look on the guy's face! 

Ultimately, I got the feeling that the film couldn't decide how to resolve itself, with Blake's character caught in the middle between the cops and the hippies.  Rober Blake uses a poster of the movie Easy Rider as target practice, but he's no Dirty Harry, either (who had already burst onto the scene by 1971).  Nevertheless, Electra Glide was still a great missing piece from the 70s canon for me.

I'm From Arkansas (1944), Lew Landers.

Hi, friends!  Let's see what's cookin' as far as hillbilly B's go!  This is a PRC release showcasing country tunes and all other kinds of minor achievements in southern rural entertainment. In the thinnest of storylines, an all-female theatre troupe heads down south to see Esmeralda, the Jenkins' family's pig that "threw out" a record-breaking litter of 18 piglets.  Their manager thinks he can somehow develop a box-office smash out of the pig-inspired Pitchfork, Arkansas visit.  Coincidentally, staying at the Jenkins' house is an all male troupe of musicians that tease the girls, exaggerating their country roots wearing fake beards and carrying moonshine jugs.  

1, 3, 3...  that's a lot of piglets.  Well, at least I thinks it might be... I ain't never learned to count!

Yes, lodging at the Jenkins' is just an excuse to yodel, play some fiddle, get handsome Bruce Bennett and Iris Adrian together... and watch a godawful ventriloquist act!  

El Brendel, the "Swedish" boarder, likes to  force feed his dummy peanuts.

The idea of a fake Swedish accent being instantly hilarious is beyond me, and this dummy act is the worst.  But the musical numbers are not bad.  Apparently for all involved, white hicks were just simple doofuses that liked to sing.  I guess I'm looking for malice  - where's the illegal stills, the distrust of outsiders and evading the law?  Must keep searching old B's.  

Winnebago Man (2009), Ben Steinbauer.

Monumentally disappointing!

Winnebago Man sat at the #1 spot on my Zip.ca list for a month or more, as I greedily awaited its arrival.  I enjoy the pleasures and lessons of VHS trash culture - from the Everything is Terrible!  website, which sews together strangely compelling VHS clips  http://www.everythingisterrible.com/ to the Found Footage Festival, where I first heard of the "Winnebago Man" phenomenon.  Story is, working with abrasive pitch man Jack Rebney was such a chore for the guys hired by Winnebago to make a promotional video that they took every blooper, every one of Rebney's characteristic swearing sprees, and compiled it all into one epic display of  middle-aged self-loathing.  (Oh, you downtrodden salesmen of America)! Then, somehow, the tape got into other hands -- copies proliferated.  Eventually the tape was so widespread that the Rebney rants became a part of pop culture lore.  In fact, phrases from the underground tape were so well known that Rebney rants even made it into mainstream Hollywood films and TV.

For the record, I'd never heard of the mysterious, underground tape and I had never heard of Rebney but Ben Steinbauer had and became compelled to learn what happened to him and whether the tape had any impact on Rebney's professional or personal life.  His obsessive research leads him to Rebney pretty quickly (within the film's first 20 minutes).  Rebney is now in his 70s and acts as the caretaker of park area in California.  But the film sputters once contact is made.  Steinbauer tries to personally connect with the man, probe his life and interests and sympathize with a somewhat unlikeable, eccentric individual (who also happens to be going blind, not good for a man in self-imposed exile).  There's a moment in the film where Steinbauer asks himself if he's made too big a deal out of the tape and the impact it could have had.  Yes, I felt like shouting.  Because basically we had 60 more minutes of movie left and I seriously doubted much more could be said on the topic of Jack Rebney.

Just like in The Best Worst Movie, a documentary that also explores the relationship between fans and actors in cult products, Steinbauer peddles Rebney around at film festivals.  Somehow, this all feels like an effort to resolve something more for Steinbauer than for Rebney.  Compare this with some of the actors from Troll 2, likeable people who connected well with fans they never knew they had.  The Best Worst Movie is fun (hey, so is Troll 2) and there's a decent story behind the making of a cheapo horror movie that flopped but is still inexplicably beloved - but Winnebago Man doesn't recapture the same magic.   

The Roaring Twenties (1939), Raoul Walsh.

 Crazy kids, drinking hooch and crashing their jalopies!

The Roaring Twenties should be remade PRONTO, substituting the criminalization of marijuana in place of booze for its story arc.  This is a gorgeous looking film, very crisp, but I will admit to growing distracted and doing other things while it was on.  The film strikes a decent balance between acknowledging that the Volstead Act was a bad law, and chastising folks who profited from it.  I'm just not a fan of sentimentality, although it's interesting to observe that it only took about ten short years for Hollywood to become nostalgic for its glory days. 

Priscilla Lane plays the object of James Cagney's affections, but she's about as intriguing as a pan of warm milk.  And she sings constantly, those dull little sentimental ditties that white folks in the twenties liked so much.  

First, she sings on the train:

Then she auditions in a club.

What is this one, maybe "Yes, sir, that's my baby"?

Oh, another number.

The film kicks off with Cagney and Humphrey Bogart sharing a smoke in the trenches but then this sing-song romance consumes most of the film, obscuring the more interesting story of Cagney's struggle as an ex-soldier to re-integrate into society (turning instead to bootlegging).  Cagney's great as usual but the film only really comes alive when he plays off cranky, hardbitten Humphrey Bogart.

The Outlaw (1943), Howard Hughes.

"Billy the Kid, huh?"

Ecch!  Although from only 1943, The Outlaw felt like it sprang from TV, with stilted dialogue and goofy singsongy tunes playing in the background.  You know that tune, that 50s ode to consumerism with lots of happy strings skipping up and down.  Walter Huston smirks and banters with Jack Buetel, who plays smug adolescent Billy the Kid.  Then, Billy the Kid rapes Jane Russell in the hay.  What?  This movie is known for boobies, boobies, boobies, Hughes' fetish, but I didn't see any and by twenty minutes in I couldn't take no more.  Fascinating as an oddity but a strange viewing experience.

Not the Girl Next Door (2009), Charlotte Chandler.

Who is Charlotte Chandler?

Not the Girl Next Door is a biography of Joan Crawford by New York-based Charlotte Chandler.  It's a quick read, laid out essentially as a conversation between the author and various individuals she's interviewed:  Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Vincent Sherman, and of course Joan herself.  Or, is it? After finishing the book, which was only published a couple years ago, I couldn't help but be curious when the interviews were conducted - and who, if anyone, was still alive?  Crawford died thirty-three years ago; other subjects could plausibly have been alive until recently...

Chandler is the author of a series of biographies of Hollywood stars.  When her 1978 bio on Groucho Marx Hello, I Must Be Going hit the shelves, it received a middling review from the New York Times. "One of the problems," wrote Joe Flaherty, "...is that Miss Chandler, like the studio heads, seems bent on taming her subject."  A year later the Times reported that the book was so wildly popular around the world that the UCLA Film Archive was making an effort to preserve the hand-painted billboard advertising the book - which literally stopped traffic on Sunset Boulevard!

Other biographies followed:  Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Federico Fellini.  It is claimed in a few places online that Chandler is a pen name for Lyn Erhard (which looks amusingly like an anagram).  The publisher, Applause Theatre and Cinema, books provides us no information on the author.  The wikipedia entry on the Chandler (for whatever it matters) implies that she is a big fake: "her work often features loquacious, unfamiliar quotations by deceased celebrities whom Chandler claims to have personally interviewed, although the statements occasionally contradict those already in print."  A stronger reaction appears in a blog post on the fan-based component of the TCM website.  Titled "Charlotte Chandler's Body of Lies," author "macktheblack" completely disputes the veracity of Chandler's claim that she personally interviewed Marlene Dietrich, known to be reclusive.  This point of view is supported by quotations from another Dietrich biographer.  "I bought this book excited to learn," Mack writes, believing he was the victim of a hoax.  "I finished this book delighted to have learned.  But the aftermath of it has proven the most educational.  A smack in the face that left harsh reality ringing in my ears."

I wonder, do classic movie fans really want the truth about studio stars?  Or, are their perfectly lit and luxuriously dressed black and white bodies basically just fodder for our fantasies?  Do these biographies not just give us more details to fantasize to?  There are only so many films to watch, and others are have been lost to history since the nitrate deteriorated.

I find it mildly amusing that out there somewhere a classic movie fan is outraged (outraged!) that they were given a possibly fabricated narrative of a fabricated character, a studio creation known by a name suggested by magazine readers.  Is there anything that can eclipse (or correct) the scathing depiction of her in her adopted daughter's own book, Mommy Dearest?  Sure, some readers may want a more solidly researched biography, one drawing on properly footnoted archival papers.  But I think it is the mystery that infuriates these angry readers yet in some ways, this is what they seek onscreen in the first place from classic movies:  an idealized, constructed and heavenly glowing being.  This book is strangely silent on what it does purport, which that it is a conversation.  "Told me," and "Told us," are used frequently, but we don't know when or where.  (It begs the question whether "Chandler" is still alive, and if not, who is capitalizing).  It's strange to me that the original Groucho biography was never questioned as being untrue; at worst it was described as a bit sloppy.  My theory is that someone has Chandler's notes and tapes and is finishing the work, with or without her help.  (At worst, all this speculation would mean we are all doubting some poor older woman who has done some very interesting interviews.)  Whoever is writing is good - the book flows smoothly and small details are dropped in that characterize the subject in a memorable way.  Joan's first home is condescendingly described as having "a kind of yard-sale elegance." Now, that's just something you'd expect Douglas Fairbanks Jr. to say, isn't it?

The Girl Next Door gives readers exactly what they might want to hear.  Joan was the same girl that she was in her pictures - born into poor circumstances, she clawed her way to respectability and then some.  Joan wasn't a well-informed parent but did her best and certainly was never cruel.  It was Christopher and Christina, Joan's adopted children, who were dysfunctional and profited off the Crawford name.   For a book mainly tempered in tone, the chapter "told by" Vincent Sherman is somewhat shocking, describing Joan Crawford becoming sexually excited watching herself onscreen during a private viewing with Sherman.  Yet it all fits together nicely.  I agree with macktheblack - I had fun reading the book.  Of course I will never know what of it is "true."

I am waiting for the 2015 personal biography of Bette Davis! 

The Woman in the Window (1944), Fritz Lang.

Once upon a time, when you hit your forties you were firmly middle aged.  Newspapers and magazines encouraged people hitting their forties not to despair.  It is still safe to exercise!  You can still have a satisfying sex life!  Women were encouraged to rekindle theirs:  "in a fortunate marriage," stated a New York Times article from 1955, "middle aged partners can return to a mature version of an earlier romance."  In the age of pervasive Cialis TV ads, the quaint idea that people in their mere 40s used to be considered seniors is strange indeed.

The Woman in the Window sees three such "middle aged" men, all professionals, share drinks and discuss how their lives of sex and adventure are basically over.  Edward G Robinson plays Professor Richard Wanley, whose wife and kids have left him in the city for some time in the countryside.  He balks at the idea that any fun is off limits.  How can this be true, now that he's finally off the leash?  (The scenario of a husband abandoned by family obligations and left to sweat it out in New York is reminiscent of The Seven Year Itch).  After his buddies call it a night, Robinson pulls down a copy of The Song of Solomon and dreams about a lovely portrait of a woman displayed in the window of his men's club.

Later that evening, Robinson serendipitously meets the subject of the painting (Joan Bennett).  Agreeing to have a late evening drink with her, he strikes off into a series of bold decisions.  Yes, he'll have the second drink.  Yes, he'll go over to her apartment.  He is soon implicated in a murder and the remainder of the movie sees him attempt to cover the crime, protect Bennett and cling to his middle-class, middle-aged respectable identity.  This identity, strong at the outset, is whittled down by those that close in on him.  In one exchange a policeman asks if he is a professor. "Assistant," he replies, deflating his status.  In another exchange, a cop asks him "Wanley.  What kind of name is that?"; "American," he replies.  Each question chips away at the respectable facade he's built over his lifetime.                

Newsreel interview with the husky boy scout who found the body.  "I was not afraid!  I will give my brother some of the reward money to go to a second-rate college, and I am going to HARVARD!"

Robinson's errors in judgement result in him using the hearth, the symbol of family life, as a place to burn the evidence of his crimes.

The Woman in the Window is an interesting contrast to Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street, which similarly tells a story of a bored, middle-aged man who becomes involved with a younger woman to his detriment.  The three leads (Robinson, Dan Duryea and Joan Bennett) are the same in both films - yet their characters are not just duplicates.  Bennett's Alice Read in The Woman in the Window is a gentler woman in richer surroundings.  Robinson's performance is strangely subdued.  His approach to his predicament is little more than clinical and analytical.  He is constantly problem solving (whereas his character in Scarlet Street was a total emotional hostage to Bennett).  The closest he gets to Bennett, after his Song of Solomon daydreams, is seen below - holding hands as they finally part ways.

One last still.  Joan Bennett is so gorgeous in this film and beautifully dressed by American designer Muriel King.  In the scene below, she wears a silky flowing outfit - wide pants and a white blouse with hand-painted graphics.  

The Fixers: Eddie Mannix, Howard Strickling and the MGM Publicity Machine (2005), EJ Fleming.

Bring me either an editor to save this disaster, or some kindling to burn it.  I made a brave effort, but finishing this book was not going to happen.

We have descriptive "facts" repeated differently from time to time:

Page 14:  Laemmle also liked Thalberg because, like him, he was barely above five feet tall.
Page 19:  Thalberg was five foot six and weighed 115 lbs.

Listen, I'm not overly fussy.  I would happily date a man who was five foot six -- but probably not one that was just five feet (sorry).

The first two chapters refer constantly, in an unilluminating way, to the fact that Louis B Mayer and Irving Thalberg superficially had little in common:

Page 25:  The barrel-chested Mayer and the painfully skinny Thalberg were an unlikely pair.
Page 28:  Mayer and Thalberg were also opposites.
Page 32:  Thalberg was the antithesis of Mayer in every respect.

OK, we GET it.  Yes, that's up to thirty-two pages and well into the second chapter.  You may at this point wonder at what point Mannix and Strickling will make an appearance.

Fleming's storytelling skills are lacking and he repeatedly loses sight of the subject of his study, the potentially very fascinating tale of two men paid to make MGM's problems "go away".  Fleming leaps about in time from the twenties to the fifties and back (however illogically), as though events during the end of the studio era decade had an impact on things around the time sound was finally synchronized.  Nothing unfolds:  chunks of biography are barfed up here and there but do not connect with the surrounding text.  Gossip is just dropped on the pages without analysis, the sources unquestioned. This left me suspicious and distrustful of all claims and of the author's ability to accurately transmit any facts.  The tone of the writing sways from respectable to embarrassing.  When I read that Louella Parsons was described as "a bitchy fat doctor's wife" I had to put the book down for good.  I am no fan of Louella Parsons, people, but where was that comma.  With such a sloppy approach to research and writing, I had no confidence that the author could credibly speak about his topic.

McFarland Press occupies a warm little corner of my heart, publishing unpretentious and generally well-researched books on Hollywood history, but knowing that this amateurish creation saw the light of day despite mis-sized fonts for endnotes and other typos leaves me puzzled and disappointed.  Consider the topic of "the fixers" to remain fair game for others out there to tackle!

Convoy (Sam Peckinpah), 1978.

The saddest little birthday present in the world.

Unwatchable!  OK, well, possibly if I were in my PJs eating a hot dog in a drive in.  Otherwise, not.  Ridiculous CB movie based on the hit song by CW McCall. Kris Kristofferson is "Rubber Duck" and drives a big truck with Ali McGraw as a reluctant passenger.  That is, after he leaves his waitress girlfriend at the truck stop wearing sophisticated, well-to-do McGraw's clothes she doled out for free to all the po' folks.  McGraw's perm is monumentally unflattering.  Ernest Borgnine is a sadistic cop out to get Rubber Duck and his trucker buddies as they race through the desert landscape.

Even Ernest can't save this mess.

Now, I love Borgnine's smug, evil grin and bandy walk and I am currently losing the battle in my house to take the TCM cruise in December with 94-year-old Mr Borgnine and fantasy grandpa Robert Osborne (damn it!) but even I had to walk away from this dreck.  During filming, Peckinpah struggled with addiction issues and may have turned director's duties over to others.  The shopping list of failed gimmicks include:  a heavy use of slow-mo during action scenes, badly overdubbed dialogue and corny double exposure effects (below) set to an orchestral soundtrack.  Why are McGraw and Kristofferson not wearing shirts for most of the movie?  It's like Smokey and the Bandit made by grad students.  Ugh!  

The final straw - what is this?!

The Island (1980), Michael Ritchie.

Worst Caribbean holiday EVER!

Journalist Michael Caine tries to bond with his miserable, spoiled son while investigating a story unfolding in the Caribbean:  why are tourist boats just disappearing?  Could it be pirates?  Note to filmmakers:  if you don't introduce any jollity, pirate movies are hell on earth.  Just like your worst memories of summer camp: uncomfortable in every way, from the not-refreshing sleep you wake from to the ever-present threat of possible child abuse and/or starvation.  That's right, I hate camping, tents, the whole kit and kaboodle even if it's in the Caribbean.  Michael Caine gets chained up and married to one hell of a homely woman, while his son is brainwashed by a primitive tribe of inbred Caucasian castaways.  Luckily there's a pretty fantastic ending worth waiting for.  The father-son hug at the end is truly a testament to the unfailing love parents have for their children.  I would have spanked the little bastard black and blue! 

Death Race 2000 (1975), Paul Bartel.

Logan's Run + Cannonball Run -- how did they blow this?  From the high-school art class pencil crayon visuals to the lacklustre finale, Death Race 2000 was a major letdown.  OK, I realize it was made for something like $5000, but was really counting on a bit more levity.  The tone is gloomy and the characters unlikeable.  Sigh!  At least director Paul Bartel hit his stride eventually, making mainstream hits like European Vacation and The Usual Suspects.

Hey, that looks uncomfortable.  I wonder if Simone Griffeth was raised in a circus.

The Whole Truth and Nothing But (1963), Hedda Hopper and James Brough.

On the recently divorced Dinah Shore:  "She is a forty-five-year-old woman with two children still in school.  The fact that good men don't grow on trees is something most women don't realize until it's too late."

On Sinatra's distaste for the word "clan" to describe the Rat Pack:  " 'I don't like the word "clan",' Frank once said.  'Did you ever look the word up in a dictionary?' I said.  'It means a family that sticks together, like the Kennedys you're so fond of.  They're the most clannish family in America.  I don't like Rat Pack, but there's nothing wrong with the name of Clan."

On Edward G Robinson's second wife Jane Robinson: "The current Mrs Edward G Robinson would like to be a hostess with the mostest, but she has not attained the status of his former wife, who entertained in great style."

On Harpo Marx: "Harpo, whom I adore, once told me he couldn't understand why he couldn't join a local country club.  'That's easy,' was my reply.  'You belong to a different club, where they don't take in Christians.  So in a way you're sort of even."

On Rosemary Clooney: "Next door is a house of sorrow - Rosemary Clooney and her five children live there with no husband or father to guide them."

On fashions of the 1950s: "The cause is glamour, for which I've been fighting a losing battle for years.  Our town was built on it, but there's scarcely a trace left now.  Morning, noon and night the girls parade in babushkas; dirty, sloppy sweaters; and skin-tight pants.  They may be an incitement to rape, but not to marriage."

On Jackie Kennedy:  "When I look at Jackie Kennedy these days, I think: 'If those fellows [Hollywood designers of the 30s] were around today, what they couldn't have done for her!'  She'd be queen of fashion the world over.  Oleg Cassini can't hold a candle to any of them."

On Louis B Meyer.  "The biggest impact I made [as an actress] was on a pudgy little fellow who used to lurk around the set.  When the picture was finished he sidled up to me.  I mistook his intentions. 'I don't want to buy any fur coats,' said I.  'You don't understand,' said he.  'My name's Louis Mayer.  I'm the producer."

Tell me more, my good man!

Hick flicks: the rise and fall of redneck cinema (2005), Scott Von Doviak.

Oh yeah?

Scott Von Doviak's argument that Days of Thunder (1990) is a soulless, corporate rip off of Stroker Ace (1983) is just one example why Hick Flicks might be the best book of film analysis I've read for a long time.  Days of Thunder is basically a remake of Stroker Ace, not a particularly well-respected Burt Reynolds vehicle.  Von Doviak uses it as an example to show how in around ten years the regional "hick flick" had been replaced by slick flicks.  "[Days of Thunder] is a strictly formulaic Eighties Cruise vehicle that already seemed dated when it arrived on screens in the summer of 1990," he writes, "...unfortunately the picture surrounding [Cruise] is strictly ersatz, making its ostensibly gen-yew-wine touches - like the cameos by actual NASCAR drivers...- all the more unconvincing." With this handy slapdown of Days of Thunder in favour of a bottom of the barrel Burt Reynolds movie - when he was at his Burt Reynoldsiest - Doviak nails it!  High five and pass the Mountain Dew!

Von Doviak limits himself to southern-fried 70s B's -- no to porn, biker movies and foreign fare.  Yes to anything wearing cutoff jean shorts, preferably pushing the speed limit!  His writing style is like listening to an affable yet unpretentious moviegoer.  It's clear he knows what postmodernism and feminist readings are, but mercifully he doesn't feel the need to wow us with academese.  His reasonable, lighthearted approach means that  the easily dismissible genre of "hick flicks"  has been given a fair study.

Boy, do they like their cars and trucks down south.  Hick flicks have NASCAR, truckers, CB lingo, even films that give the cars names and their own credits!  But again, Von Doviak's book goes just the extra inch in giving the historical context and rationale.  The traditions behind all this car-lovin' comes from when, during Prohibition, moonshine was made down south and the fastest drivers raced up north (evading cops enroute) where it would be distributed from bigger cities.  See, I didn't know that!  I also had no idea that in an effort to save on gas, Nixon proposed a reduction of the speed limit to 55 miles an hour for trucks and buses, a move that was not popular with commercial trucking associations.  A little background goes a long way in understanding the overwhelming popularity of Smokey and the Bandit, a movie that in 1977 was second place only to Star Wars at the box office!

This book was so delightful I would like to personally request a prequel.  Sure, Robert Mitchum's Thunder Road is held up as a big granddaddy to the genre, but what came before?  The regional theatres sure played a lot of cruddy "classic era" B's....!

Cop Hater (1958), William Berke.

 

 Heat wave!  Robert Loggia asks Shirley Ballard a few questions.

Cop Hater is a by-the-numbers "post Korean war"crime B that I had to watch just to see Robert Loggia and Jerry Orbach as youngsters.  Funnily enough, I had also seen Loggia recently in a Kojak rerun so now I can proudly claim to have seen him in all stages of adulthood thanks to Joy TV, one of the many Christian networks that buys cheap, completely off-topic serials to play at night when all the preachers have gone to bed.  Hallelujah!  Based on Ed McBain's "love them or hate them" mystery novels about the adventures of New York's 87th precinct, you could say Cop Haters follows the same basic template as later TV crime shows like Kojak-- all the same ingredients are there and they thrive on the likability of their leads.  In this one Loggia is the clever, understated rookie on the trail of a cop killer.  There's at least two completely gratuitous partial nudity scenes and Shirley Ballard complains endlessly that she's hot.  What is there not to like here?

Sometimes cops just get snuffed, Daddi-o.  Jerry Orbach as Hispanic leader of the teen gang, The Grovers.