The Swarm (1978), Irwin Allen.

Beelucinations!

We have a winner!  THIS, ladies and gentlemen, is the worst Michael Caine movie we screened this winter.  And the most enjoyable!  Stirling Silliphant, who wrote decent B-noirs like Nightfall and The Lineup, banged out one truly hideous screenplay full of redonkulous dialogue, pointless scenes, forgettable characters and their curiously meaningless deaths.  And Irwin Allen, the guy behind The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure, truly made the disaster movie to end all disaster movies when he made The Swarm, because it was the first of three major money losers that eventually put him out of business.  I don't know if those two should have been locked up or given medals!  The differential between the quality of the star-studded cast and the crappiness of the material just adds to the astonishment factor.  So, what's going on here?  We have a small Texas town threatened by swarms of killer bees!  Michael Caine is an entomologist who drives a fantastic rust-coloured van and puzzles over how to stop them without destroying six million dollars worth of crops!  Henry Fonda in a wheelchair!  Richard Chamberlain for no reason!  Slim Pickens!

Yes, this is Henry Fonda in a motorcycle helmet and spacesuit in a wheelchair, electrocuting bees.  Then he puts a slide of bee residue up to his nose, and exclaims:  "Smells like BANANAS!"

There are just endless threads of sub-plot, including this:  however will southern lady Olivia de Hallivand choose between her two elderly and charming suitors?  Will she go for crusty cowboy Ben Johnson?   Or perhaps 103 year old Fred MacMurray?  Oh, I could watch this senior citizen soap opera all day except that in two minutes this whole problem will be irrelevant because that train is going to crash down a mountain.  Oops!  I spilled some beans.

This movie is truly a universe unto itself and fascinating as hell.  Many of the laws of nature from our own world just don't apply in The Swarm.  Logic seems irrelevant.  Even though the town has suffered many  bee attacks, Michael Caine enjoys driving around in his van with the windows down.  He never really checks up on Henry Fonda's research.  For some reason, it seems like a good idea to run around inside an office tower with fire throwers.  The movie basically implodes in on itself, deteriorating (unbelievable) into even worse dialogue and crazier concepts.  For one entire scene, the cast refer to the bees simply as "Africans."  They express concern about being overrun with Africans, and even the DOS computers have alert scrolls warning of an African invasion!  Even though this version ran 156 minutes, I wanted to just rewind it and watch it all over again!  They really did shoot live bees at people! Richard Widmark!  Patty Duke!  Jose Ferrer!

City of Fear (1959), Irving Lerner.

Seedy motel rendezvous

I'll admit it:  Vince Edwards is kinda dreamy, hairy shoulders included.  He's great in these cheapie Columbia B's.   His character in City of Fear is not a lot different from the one he played in Murder By Contract:  he's a straightforward psychopath out for kicks with a bunch of square cops on his tail.  In City of Fear, he's busted out of San Quentin with a tin can of what he thinks is pure heroin - but it's is actually "cobalt sixty, the most dangerous radioactive isotope around."  Whoa!  All of LAPD is trying to pin him down using the most up-to-date equipment and scientific methods, to prevent a widespread catastrophe.  The cops are all very humorless and noble, and at one point their big strategy is to evacuate all the children of LA.  Won't somebody think of the children!  The premise is a little corny, and movie flags a bit once Edwards starts sweating and coughing but the great location shots make this a pretty decent little B.

Sarge, the geiger counter is through the roof!  That's OK, I'll use my coat jacket to open the car door.  

Human Desire (1954), Fritz Lang.

Glenn Ford returns from the Korean War to a seedy little hole in the wall town where the rail yards are the only source of income.  He becomes entangled with Gloria Grahame, who is married to big jealous lunk Broderick Crawford.  Grahame is the reputed town beauty, but then again there is only one bar in town and the only other unmarried girl is underaged Peggy Maley who burst into tears in every single scene.  Ford exuded an unflappable calmness in many roles, but this works against him in Human Desire.  I didn't buy that he was that kooky over Grahame.  There's a lot of blabbedy blab but the action peters out pretty quickly.  The weaving train tracks are mesmerizing, but I wouldn't identify Human Desire as the one film to have best used this setting.  This seems to be such an uneven movie that I'm sure there's a good yarn or two behind its making.

The story is based on an Emile Zola story that was filmed initially in 1920 and then again in 1938 by Jean Renoir (as La Bete Humaine).  Lang's  Human Desire marked the second time he tackled a Renoir film (Scarlet Street being a remake of Renoir's La Chienne).  Found on the Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics, Volume 2 box set.  

I'm dreadfully sorry - SNIFF!- but I seem to be bawling again!

Can I leave you with a little video entitled Andy Rooney on Human Desire?  I'm pretty sure he and Fritz Lang were on the same wavelength.

Black Swan (2010), Darren Aronofsky.

I really don't want to be a party pooper, but what UP with this movie!?  I caught it yesterday afternoon at a discount matinee, and found it kitschy, campy and clichéd.  It has the same tone as one of the more outré Joan Crawford women's picture (which is to say, screechingly insane) but features a rigidly wooden adolescent figure as its central character.  The cake scene killed me.  I was in stitches slapping my knee and muffling my guffaws.  Actually, every scene with potential polident pitchman Barbara Hershey killed me.  Hello, they did this thing forty years ago in Star Trek, but nobody was giving out Oscars to William Shatner.  I am very curious how this will age.  

Bad Kirk on a bender (Enemy Within episode-- you know, the one with the unicorn cocker spaniel).

Scarlet Street (1945), Fritz Lang.

Another one for the pile:  a pretty actress recoils in disgust from Edward G Robinson

Scarlet Street is one of two Robinson movies that terrified me as a kid:  the first was watching him loudly bully Bogie and Bacall in his role as Johnny Rocco in claustrophobic Key Largo.  The second was the ending of this one -- listening to the creepy whispers reverberating through the demented mind of a murderer.   Robinson plays a naive and lonely milquetoast who gets bilked by a couple of con artists, played by Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea.  Although lanky and cocky, Duryea exudes a bit of a William H Macy vibe (it must be in the face!).  Bennett is enamored of Duryea, whose only interest in her is to pimp her out for a few extra bucks.

This is a true noir universe: unmercifully bleak, it's peopled with mean and cruel inhabitants.  But it's a sick cruelty that gives a sexual thrill to all parties.  Robinson's character submits to the most degrading behaviour, whether donning a frilly apron to do the dishes or famously kneeling to paint Bennet's toes.  "They'll be masterpieces," she hisses.

The paintings featured in the film, done by Hollywood set designer John Decker, are intriguing.  Sadly, the DVD I watched had a very muddy picture quality, put out by Acme DVDs.

Dan Duryea's arrogant Johnny-- an over-confident petty crook with a million get rich quick schemes

Director Fritz Lang demonstrates an assault sequence for Dan Dureya on the set of Scarlet Street.

Growing Up With Chico (1980), Maxine Marx.

Chico, Maxine and Betty Marx

Maxine Marx's book about her experience as part of the family that gave us the Marx Brothers is deservedly well-known and much loved by classic movie fans.  Her anecdotes are funny, loving and revealing.  In some ways, the book doesn't feels as though it were written by someone in such close proximity to these famous characters, but this jives with her description of the brothers' closeness.  Even the immediate family came after the brothers, and nothing and nobody came between them.  Except maybe money.  

I enjoyed the tidbit describing Sam "Frenchie" Marx's gentle nature, which has a lot to say about women in the Marx family.  Walking home after viewing The Scarlet Letter at the movies, young Maxine asked her grandpa "why they had put the A on the lady's dress."  "Pshaw," he replied.  "Pshaw."  After a bit, he added, "Don't tell der Mamma vhat you saw, yah?"

I knew very little about Chico although he was always my favourite performer in all the movies what with the finger shooting and the  "Attsa boy, make a big slam! Make a big, big slam!"  Now I am in awe of  tough little Betty Marx for putting up with all his shenanigans.  Still, Chico manages to come across as charismatic.   I'm glad the mafia didn't whack him after all.

Blame it on Rio (1984), Stanley Donan.

Oh, man.  She's wearing a retainer and everything.

Blame it on Rio is a distasteful sex farce that is also quite funny. Plus, Joseph Bologna actually speaks the title of the film as dialogue, which always feels like earning points.  But what I want to know is:  explain to me the magic of Michael Caine's hair.  I have hair straight as a poker.  How do you get curly hair to stand down?  Fine tooth comb and Brylcreem?

This is not from Blame it on Rio, but from The Hand.  Wild hair at its most psychologically disturbed.  

All tidied up, yet still:  the curls are quite tight.

Ripply smooth!  What are the mechanics? And how much do these glasses weigh, exactly?

A Rainy Afternoon with Vincent Price

The weather is dreadful, slushy and gloomy.  But that's OK, because I have a few Vincent Price products to keep me entertained.  We'll start with A Treasury of Great Recipes, a cookbook written with his second wife Mary.  This is a round-the-world tour of the best restaurants and includes (in addition to the washable vinyl cover) full colour plates of the couple cooking and eating their way through exciting mid-60s dishes.  I hate to say, this cookbook makes me feel hugely inadequate.  I have never dined in Paris' oldest and best restaurants!  But never mind, he's generously shared the menu and a selection of recipes I can attempt to recreate.   I especially love the personal touch: views of their kitchen and of course here on another page we have the Prices hosting a dinner in a mobile home.  "We drive out into the country or to the seashore, park where we please and picnic in style," he writes.  Generous to share the world's bounty but not a snob, the Prices' book includes homestyle American recipes alongside those of the grand cuisines of old Europe.  Let's put the cornish game hens on, from the Hostellerie de la Poste restaurant in Burgundy.  Basically you dunk two birds in cream, butter AND bechamel sauce.  But this is also an era where, apparently, you put mayo and Worcestershire sauce in the guacamole, so I'm up for the challenge.

Dining aboard the Clark Cortez "mobile home".  I guess fine dining includes a standard poodle! 

While the birds are cooking, I'm going to rehearse a few lines with Mr Price.  This is so dreamy I can't get over it, thank goodness I lust after debonair, middle-aged ham actors and not that teenaged shirtless werewolf from Twilight.  Gosh, to be going over my enunciation skills in the privacy of my own rec room.  

But my basement has always been a bit drab, I guess I never gave too much thought other than a coat of paint and some posters.  That must change!  Luckily, I can learn about purchasing original artworks from Mr Price.  1962, Price personally selected a number of affordable but original artworks to be sold through Sears Roebuck.   I guess the business model was hard to sustain, but I'm going to take a few notes anyway and see if I can find anything decent in the local art gallery.  

Casino (1995), Martin Scorsese.

Pivotal, hugely entertaining scene.  "I know, but that's enough."

Martin Scorsese's last great movie, if you ask me.  Starring real men.  A visual feast.  With an actual female character.  And it's all fucking true!  Las Vegas is somewhere I don't need to go, even if just to make that once in a lifetime trip to cross it off some kind of (ugh) must-do list mandated by airport non-fiction.  1000 Places to See Before You Die.  Forget that self-help fascism.  The old Vegas has been bulldozed and the new corporate Vegas (sans Liberace Museum) keeps pulling in the rubes.  I guess the middle classes flock there because it's sanitized and safe but they can still pretend they're palling with the Rat Pack.  Why not just go to Orlando?

Martin Scorsese's such a big booster for film preservation, and his love of B-noirs is so genuine that I have mixed feelings about pulling him down.  But I think his failure has been to choose DiCaprio for his male muse.  I am pretty much in agreement with Erich Kuersten's thesis that movies today lack real men. (Kuersten is the author of the Acidemic blog:  http://acidemic.blogspot.com).  Kuersten observes:  "DiCaprio has never been married or had children.  He dates models.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it shows at least on the surface, a level of laddish insecurity; his women must be certified gorgeous in case someone's looking."  I am not a deep thinker but yeah, I think strong male performances must be rooted in life experience and maybe we don't have Alpha Males in films today because, well, where are they, and who wants to hire them?  Hey, I married a mensch but it doesn't mean I don't want to see male rage and sexuality onscreen.  And Scorsese's films continually explore masculinity and male relationships.  I could probably find you a half dozen real manly men but they'd be coming from up north in lumber camps and from shrimp boats on the coast.  Are these guys trying out for Hollywood parts these days?  Can you imagine an established, risk-averse Hollywood exec grooming Mr Fort McMurray these days?  I can't.  Scorsese followed Casino with Kundun, Bringing out the Dead and then settled into what would remain basically an unbroken pattern for the next decade and a half, casting DiCaprio in Gangs of New York.  Gangs to me is as baroque as Casino but structurally a mess, performance-wise hugely uneven and a disaster one inch from stumbling into becoming a Broadway musical dance sequence.  Sorry, I hated it and I think part of the problem was making a boy its central focus.

And yeah, I am a girl.  I love the costumes in Casino.  I guess I bought the DVD to watch De Niro wear cantaloupe pants.  Sharon Stone is batshit and I love that she's hung up on James Woods -- trying to figure her out is impossible and she's such dynamite next to De Niro's performance which is highly restrained until he loses his gaming license and bursts forth like a geyser of angry bitterness.  I always suffer a Pesci hangover after watching him zip up his pants in that one scene, but Casino is a great, adult film and a gutsy goodbye to the original Las Vegas.

Who else can pull off burnt orange on burnt orange with a burnt orange tie?

The Man With Two Faces (1934), Archie Mayo.

A little undercooked cake of a movie, The Man With Two Faces is passable fare and mostly of interest as as one of Edward G Robinson's earlier screen performances (it was not widely released to DVD but is available through the Warner Archive Collection).  Adapted from the stage play The Dark Tower, the simplistic story revolves around a theatrical sleight of hand.  Mary Astor and Edward G Robinson play siblings in the same profession:  stage actors.  Mary's career is jeopardized when her shady, itinerant husband lands on their doorstep after a stint in San Quentin.  Despite what we are told (always less effective than what we observe), her husband (played by Louis Calhern) comes across as more of an eccentric jerk than anyone deserving to be chopped into tiny pieces.  Edward G Robinson plays a strangely conceived character who is equal parts cad and saviour.  He is overly fond of his beer and slapping his wife around a bit - yet we're not supposed to dislike him as much as Louis Calhern!  The very naturalistic Henry O'Neill adds a few laughs as the police inspector  making Robinson squirm. Verdict:  a little jiggly in the centre but worth a nibble.

Edward G Robinson gives "acting lessons" to Mae Clarke

Let's go!

Twentieth Century (1934), Howard Hawks.

I'm tempted to call this one perfect...

"The Movies Are": Carl Sandburg's Film Reviews and Essays, 1920-1928 (2000) Edited by Arnie Bernstein.

Inside the playhouse are movies from under the sea.  From the heat

of the pavements and the dust of sidewalks, passers-by go in a

breath to be witnesses of large cool sponges, large cool fishes,

large cool valleys and ridges of coral spread silent in the soak

of the ocean floor for thousands of years.

"In a breath," Carl Sandburg, from Chicago Poems, 1916.

Silent movies are to me a strange, hermetic medium.  I feel as though I am entering a different dimension, swimming underwater in a slow moving stream where everything is lovely and exaggerated.  Reading Carl Sandburg's columns on films, which he wrote for the Chicago Daily News in the 20s, I was pleased to realize that even silent movies were once a fun, popular, living and growing medium.  They were also just as lacking in creativity (with umpteen Sheik-a-likes), notorious for overblown budgets, offensive and scandalous as they are today.  Carl Sandburg gave Charlie Chaplin a free pass for life and got fussily irritated when they got Swedish accents wrong.  That a title card can get an accent wrong is kind of wonderful.  He did not view The Jazz Singer as a milestone  because he'd sat through many different kinds of experimentalism before.  Sandburg's prose is delightful and breezy.  I'm quite glad I stumbled onto knowing that such a great poet happily tackled pop culture.  Who do we have covering the 30s?