Emperor of the North (1973), Robert Aldrich.

 Nooooooooo!

The commentary track calls Emperor of the North "a larger archetypal battle between two men:  a force of evil and a force - well, maybe not so much of good, but of lesser evil."  (Record needle scritch).  Dude!  Give it up!  That's just a bunch of fifty dollar words for action movie.  I just came here to see Ernest Borgnine hunt hoboes with a hammer!  No analysis necessary!   

Marvin is “A Number 1,” king of the hoboes, and he takes up the challenge to ride the full route of the Number 19, a train captained by sadistic, hobo-hating Borgnine.  Keith Carradine plays "Cigaret," a young hobo who takes Marvin on for the title of Emperor of the North Pole, or toughest tramp.  The sentimental Marty Robbins soundtrack is a little incongruous and there's a couple of goofy hobo motivational speeches ("I'm gonna make you a jungle cat!") but otherwise this is just straight-shooting, no BS action movie.  The simplicity of this flick, which is basically two middle-aged guys fighting with their bare hands, is just beautiful.  

I’m not sure why everyone feels it’s necessary to abbreviate the already brief “hobo” to “’bo” but then again, I’m not up on my hobo lore. And if you do want to get all academic about it, check out Robert Ito's "An Occasional Hobo," a review of the strange but true life story of Josiah Flynt Willard, who transformed from hobo to hobo informant for the railways; it appears in this month's The Believer.   http://www.believermag.com/issues/201106/?read=article_ito

This is what I signed up for:  a bow-legged Ernest Borgnine laughing and taunting an axe-wielding Lee Marvin in a ten-minute fight scene.  

Dillinger (1945), Max Nosseck.

Dillinger finds love at the box office

First we had the ethnic gangsters with their nicknames:  The Public Enemy, Little Caesar, Scarface... then we had John Dillinger.  First name, last name, All-American.  Monogram's Dillinger was made ten years after the real man was gunned down by the FBI, outside a movie theatre, betrayed by a woman in a red dress.  His string of stick ups were still fresh in Americans' minds.  Movie makers had previously paid its dues for its early 30s spree of gangster movies, begging forgiveness (while counting their dollars) and promising not to continue to glamorize any more criminals.  Times changed.  When grilled by the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association as to whether the public had to brace for another "era of gangster films," Monogram President Steve Broidy shrugged his shoulders.  "Monogram didn't create Dillinger," said Broidy. "We are guilty solely of depicting on screen what existed in the American scene.  Are we to blind ourselves to any phase of our national existence merely to satisfy the misguided caprice of a pressure group?"  (The Deseret News, September 26, 1945).  

Lawrence "arrested twelve times in the last seven years" Tierney has the thin-lipped, psychopathic stare perfect for the role.  He's got none of the soft centre Johnny Depp had in Public Enemies (although I'll give it to that film for having a far superior shoot out scene at the lodge).  Tierney looks pretty trim in his fedora and has no difficulty trapping blondes.  Apparently common for films of the time, no effort is made to get the look of the 30s in its costumes:  the girls have snoods and everyone has boxy shoulders.    

Dillinger marked the pinnacle of Monogram's filmmaking.  Made for a whopping $193,000 (When Strangers Marry had been made the same year by Monogram for less than $50,000) Dillinger was Monogram's first film to sell at a percentage, just like an A-picture (instead of a flat-rate rental, the norm for most B's).  Betting their film could fill seats paid off wildly for Monogram: Dillinger grossed over four million.  Broidy would soon turn Monogram into Allied Artists, in an attempt to compete with the major studios.  "It was the same company, same personnel, same everything, but we created a totally different image by calling it Allied Artists," explained Broidy in The King of the Bs (McCarthy, Flynn). "That applied - strange as it may seem, and silly as it seems today - that applied to agents, stars, directors, all of whom would not work for Monogram, but they would work for Allied Artists...there was a facade created that made it conducive to them, not thinking they were being sold down the river to Monogram."  The stink of fifteen years of poverty row pictures must have been pretty hard to wash down - but Dillinger was the first cleansing effort.

It's curtains for this guy

Hobo with a Shotgun (2011), Jason Eisener.

GROSSSSSS.  It makes perfect sense that Canadians should pick up the slack in throwback gorefest B-movies.  We have an army of semi employed grips, prop dudes and editors.  We have our regulars that will and do act in any kind of filmed-in-Canada production be it cut rate sci-fi, cut rate sci-fi or cut rate sci-fi.  (I kid, we also do film adaptations of Lucy Maud Montgomery fiction)!  We have a proud tradition of sick filmmaking, from guys like Bob Clark (Black Christmas), David Cronenberg, and OK, there's no chainsaws but did you know Porky's was bankrolled with Canadian taxpayers' money?  Well, so was this one!  Hobo with a Shotgun was barftacular and rife with East Coast accents.  I knew that if the first scene was the decapitation of Ricky from Trailer Park Boys (and the perpetrator was Stan from Lexx), I was just going to have to kick back and let it happen.  About 90% of the content of this film was just stomach-churning (bumfights, torture, firebombing babies) but luckily it's also got a sense of humor.  I had to laugh at Rutger Hauer advising newborns in the maternity ward not to turn into Hobos With Shotguns because what kind of life is that.  (It was at that point in the film where someone called out, "Oscar!")

Hobo with a Shotgun originally appeared as a fake trailer screened during Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse.  I'm not sure whether I support or if I am cynical of this genre of throwback B's, filmmakers purposefully aping low-budget exploitation flicks from the 70s.  I've always been in favour of more B's in general - what a great antidote to overblown summer tent pole movies:  CHEAP THRILLS! -  but would question why we may need to continually allude to the visual style and approach of the last generation, cool as it may have been (thanks, Quentin, for reminding us). And while I grew up on the pablum of poliziotteschi, kung-fu flicks and other cheap delights, it seems like these nouveau-B's stick mainly with sheep intestines and buckets of red dye #1.  What's next?