Svengoolie was, alas! a rerun yet again, so we watched a noir for Saturday pizza and bad movie night. This little flick has Orson Welles speaking an (occasional) brogue and allowing himself to be lured into a circle of unpleasant people after a pretty girl winks at him.
Plot:
“When I start out to make a fool of myself, there’s very little can stop me,” begins the voiceover with a shot of a boat going under the Brooklyn Bridge. Michael O’Hara sets his eyes on a beautiful woman in a horse-drawn carriage in Central Park and offers her a cigarette. “But once I’d seen her, once I’d seen her, I was not in my right mind for some time,” the voiceover tells the viewer.
The voiceover is read by Orson Welles in the character of Michael O’Hara, an Irish merchant marine in the United States. The object of his adoration is Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth).
Once the carriage is out of view, thieves descend upon it. Elsa screams. A regular donnybrook arises between Michael and the three attackers, with the three bad’uns lying on the ground, groaning. Elsa and the driver are fine.
For no clear reason, Michael strands the driver and takes the reins of the carriage back to Elsa’s car, where he learns that Elsa is Mrs. Bannister. Bummer that. She offers him a job on her yacht. He declines.
Not as dumb as he looks.
The next day, Mr. Bannister (Everett Sloane) comes to the seaman’s hiring hall, where Michael has come for work on departing ships. Bannister offers him the job in gratitude for saving his wife.
Against his better judgment, Michael accepts the job.
It’s an unhappy cast and crew. Michael senses Elsa’s unhappiness. The two of them could run away together, except he has no money. Things go from bad to worse when they pick up Bannister’s law partner, George Grisby (Glenn Anders). Grisby offers Michael $5000—a lot of money in 1947—to sign a confession saying he killed Grisby. Grisby will then disappear. No body, no murder conviction (which was how the law read at the time). Michael sees the money as a chance to start over again with Elsa.
What could go wrong?
Thoughts:
This was based on the 1938 novel If I Die Before I Wake by Sherwood King. It also portrays a hapless main character getting caught up in the machinations of unpleasant and unscrupulous people with money.
Elsa wants to leave her husband, but he won’t let her. He hints that he used something in her past in China to coerce her into marriage. She lived and worked in dubious places. She may have worked as an entertainer, for she sings the movie’s signature song, “Please Don’t Kiss Me” (dubbed by an uncredited Anita Ellis). She may have worked as a working girl—which of course, didn’t exist, and if they did, they wouldn’t get a mention in a respectable movie.
The plot can get a little confusing. (“Now, who’s he again?”) Orson Welles talks a lot. A lot. Few scenes are without his face in them. Those nifty little twists and turns, unpleasant people, and femmes fatale appear, but this is Orson’s baby.
An amusing courtroom scene is followed by a chase through San Francisco’s Chinatown. I missed this, but when Elsa Bannister buys a ticket at a Chinese theater, the cashier greets her by saying, “Konnichiwa!” a Japanese greeting.
The most bizarre scene of the film is the final shootout, which takes place in a fun park hall of mirrors. It plays with the viewer’s sense of reality: Is this a dream?
Overall, I liked this movie. However, it would have been better if there had been less Orson Welles.
The movie can be watched here.
Title: The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
Directed by
Orson Welles…(uncredited)
Writing Credits
Sherwood King…(story based on a novel by)
Orson Welles…(screenplay)
William Castle…(uncredited)
Charles Lederer…(uncredited)
Fletcher Markle…(uncredited)
Cast (in credits order)
Rita Hayworth…Elsa Bannister
Orson Welles…Michael O’Hara
Everett Sloane…Arthur Bannister
Glenn Anders…George Grisby
Ted de Corsia…Sidney Broome (as Ted De Corsia)
Released: 1947
Length: 1 hour, 27 minutes
Review of “Shaun of the Dead” (2004)
To complete the trilogy, we end where it all started, Shaun of the Dead. It makes a whole lot more sense to anyone who has ever worked in retail.
Plot:
Shaun (Simon Pegg) is a twenty-nine-year-old electronics salesman by day. He spends the rest of his time playing video games with his friend, Ed (Nick Frost), or drinking at the local pub, the Winchester. This particular night, Shaun’s girlfriend, Liz (Kate Ashfield), complains to him they’re always at the Winchester, and he’s doing nothing with his life. They should do something else. Forming a chorus in agreement are her friends Dianne (Lucy Davis) and David (Dylan Moran). In the background, Shaun’s slacker friend, Ed, plays video games. Some of the dialogue is timed for deliberate misinterpretation.
The opening credits roll over scenes of people going about their daily jobs: cashiers, retail workers fetching carts (“trolleys” in the local parlance), picking up leaves, everyone behaving mechanically…
At home, Shaun sits down to play a video game with Ed until Ed reminds him he has to go to work. A third roommate, Pete (Peter Serafinowicz), lectures Shaun about letting Ed continue to freeload.
On his way to work, Shaun ignores headlines and weird occurrences—the homeless man trying to eat pigeons, the odd, shambling walk so many people in the street seem to have adopted.
After a humiliating day at work, he returns home. Ed points to a girl in the backyard (“garden,” the locals call it). She’s standing perfectly still, with her head cocked at an odd angle. Shaun and Ed conclude she’s drunk—until she falls onto a piece of metal that pierces her back and protrudes through her stomach. It takes her a couple of seconds, but she gets back up and heads toward our heroes.
Shaun and Ed decide to try to kill her by throwing household objects at her: including Shaun’s vinyl records. They then break into the shed. Shaun emerges armed with a cricket bat, Ed with a shovel, and they proceed to kill zombies.
Thoughts:
This was a lot of fun. I first saw it back in the day. It’s bloody and gory, well deserving of its R rating. Not for kiddies. In addition to the never-ending swearfest, there are more than a few bloody and gory scenes. One, in particular, is not gory per se but would be emotionally difficult for kidlets.
All that aside, this is funny. Shaun promises to make reservations at a restaurant for a date with Liz. Of course, it slips his mind for reasons having nothing to do with a zombie apocalypse. Liz dumps him. He shows up at her place with flowers he bought for his mother.
Shaun decides to hole up in the Winchester, but when he and his cohorts get within range of it, they find it surrounded by zombies. They must go undercover, that is, as zombies. Liz’s friend Dianne gives acting lessons. (“Nice vocals.”)
Killing the zombies—sometimes with a car—has a video game quality. Bashing people’s brains with a cricket bat or shovel is no less graphic.
Nothing is perfect. There are a few unfortunate racial references in the dialogue.
Beyond the title, which hints at Dawn of the Dead (1978 and 2004), this film borrows a line from the iconic Night of the Living Dead (1968). The intent is threatening but presented in such a clownish way that it’s funny.
I didn’t enjoy the film quite as much the second time around as I did the first, but it’s still amusing and enjoyable.
Shaun of the Dead won numerous film awards, including the 2005 Saturn Award for Best Horror Film from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films; tied with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for the 2004 Best Screenplay in Bram Stoker Awards; and the 2004 Best Screenplay in the British Independent Film Awards.
This below-average-joe becomes a hero tale makes for an enjoyable little flick, but it is not one for the kiddies or the squeamish.
Title: Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Directed by
Edgar Wright
Writing Credits
Simon Pegg…(written by) and
Edgar Wright…(written by)
Cast (in credits order)
Simon Pegg…Shaun
Kate Ashfield…Liz
Nick Frost…Ed
Lucy Davis…Dianne
Dylan Moran…David
Nicola Cunningham…Mary
Released: 2004
Length: 1 hour, 39 minutes
Rated: R
Review of “World’s End” (2013)
This is the last of the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy movies, directed by Edgar Wright and written by Wright and Simon Pegg. The first two are the zombie movie Shaun of the Dead (2004) and the parody cop buddy movie Hot Fuzz (2007). Not much is said about ice cream in this one, but a lot is said about beer.
Plot:
Gary King (Simon Pegg) opens the movie recalling an “epic” pub crawl he and four school friends fell just short of completing at seventeen along the Golden Mile of their hometown of Newton Haven: twelve pubs beginning with the First Post and ending with (of course) the World’s End.
“In the end,” he tells the viewer, “we blew off the last three pubs and headed for the hills. As I sat up there, blood on my knuckles, beer down my shirt, sick on my shoes, knowing in my heart life would never feel this good again.”
“And you know, it never was.” The scene reveals King in a group therapy session. He grins. He now has an idea.
In the following few scenes, he contacts his old friends, Peter Page (Eddie Marsan), who now works for his father at a luxury car dealership; Steven Prince (Paddy Considine), a construction manager; Oliver “O-Man” Chamberlain (Martin Freeman), a real estate agent; and Andy Knightley (Nick Frost), Gary’s closest friend and a corporate lawyer. In each case, he lies and tells the person that everyone else has agreed to meet and try to complete the pub crawl they failed twenty-three years earlier. Most ask, “Even Andy?” To which King replies with the bald-faced lie, “Of course!”
Andy has been a teetotaler since he and King were in a car accident years earlier.
After some mishaps, they all reach Newport Haven, Gary dragging his half-willing friends. It’s been a while. The barkeeps no longer recognize them, except one at the Famous Cock, where Gary was barred long ago. At another pub, Pete encounters a man who bullied him in school. The man doesn’t recognize him. This upsets Pete—adding insult to injury from all the beatings in school—the man doesn’t even remember him.
In the restroom, Gary talks to a teenager who doesn’t respond. This irritates Gary to the point of physical confrontation. Gary knocks the teenager’s head off—it’s a mannequin—a robot that bleeds blue blood.
All of which leads to all five friends squaring off in the “gents” with a group of… teenage robots that bleed blue blood and shed body parts like Barbie dolls.
WTF, indeed.
Thoughts:
First, this does not stand up to the first two movies. There is a desperate sadness about Gary’s character, trying to recapture the one glorious night of his youth. It can’t be done; you are not the same person, and your hometown is not the same place. Toward the end of the movie, it’s revealed he’s recently survived a suicide attempt. He’s an alcoholic about forty years old.
Gary tells Andy: “It never got better than that night! That was supposed to be the beginning of my life! All that promise and fucking optimism! That feeling that we could take on the whole universe! It was a big lie! Nothing happened!”
Not to say there aren’t genuinely funny moments. Oliver’s sister Sam (Rosamund Pike) joins the bunch at one point. Both Gary and Steven have a thing for her. Gary, wanting to reenact a sexual encounter they once had in the disabled restroom, follows Sam to the ladies’ restroom. As one might expect, he gets his fact slapped. Later in the film, after they’ve talked for a bit, Gary says, sounding not at all like Humphrey Bogart, “I guess we’ll always have the disableds’.” Tacky and inappropriate, but quite funny, it also speaks to growing up a bit.
And the pubs? They all look the same. All corporate-owned, trying to look traditional. Uh-huh.
Things get weird toward the end of the movie. However, I think it’s safe to say that Gary finds his purpose after all.
World’s End won the Empire Awards (UK) Best British Film Award in 2014. Its director, Edgar Wright, was nominated for Best Director. World’ End also won a 2013 Golden Schmoe Award—Best Line of the Year”—for its riveting discussion of the meaning of the phrase “WTF.”
I have mixed feelings about this movie. I can’t say that it was bad. It certainly had its moments, but there was an underlying sadness that the other flicks didn’t have.
There is no explicit sex, but there is a lot of violence profanity and potty talk. It’s funny, but not one for the kidlets, I’m afraid.
Title: World’s End (2013)
Directed by
Edgar Wright
Writing Credits
Simon Pegg…(written by) &
Edgar Wright…written by)
Cast (in credits order)
Thomas Law…Young Gary
Zachary Bailess…Young Andy
Jasper Levine…Young Steven
James Tarpey…Young Peter
Luke Bromley…Young Oliver
Sophie Evans…Becky Salt
Released: 2013
Length: 1 hour, 49 minutes
Rated: R
Review of “Hot Fuzz” (2007)
We chose something from this century for our Saturday night pizza and bad movie. We do that once in a while, especially when Svengoolie is a rerun. This particular masterpiece is a sendup of cop buddy movies with a British flare. If you’re watching from this side of the pond, I recommend subtitles.
Plot:
Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is such a good cop with such a high arrest record that he makes the rest of the London Police Force look bad. As a reward, he receives a promotion, whether he wants it or not, and a transfer to the countryside village of Sandford, which has virtually no crime and has been the winner of the Village of the Year for several years.
Recognizing the newcomer, the villagers greet Angel before he even reports to his first shift. At the pub (he drinks cranberry juice), he notices underage kids drinking and chases them out. The proprietors, Bernard and Joyce Cooper (Eric Mason and Billie Whitelaw), admit they realize the kids were underage, but if they’re all in their place drinking and socializing, they can’t be causing trouble someplace else, can they? It’s all for the greater good.
But Angel isn’t done. On his way out of the pub, he stops an obviously drunk young man from getting in his car. He drags him down to the station—once he finds out where it is—and asks the desk sergeant to throw him in the drunk tank for the night.
Imagine his surprise the next morning at work when he asks about “the inebriate” in the drunk tank and finds the cell empty. Not only is the cell empty, but “the inebriate” is his partner, PC Danny Butterman (Nick Frost)—and Danny is the son of the boss, Inspector Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent).
The boss gives Angel a short tour of the station. Angel is appalled. None of his coworkers seem to care at all about their work. The tour concludes in an upper room marked “N.W.A.,” the Neighborhood Watch Association. Perhaps I read too much into the initials.
Aside from that, the civilian liaison, Tom Weaver (Edward Woodward), complains to the captain about a group of boys in hoodies and a “living statue” (Graham Low), a street performer painted bronze.
The inspector assures him it will all be taken care of.
On patrol, Angel and Butterman stop a couple, Martin Blower and Eve Draper (Lucy Punch and David Threlfall), flying down the road significantly over the speed limit. A smarmy Blower says they’re late for an “homage” to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet while Eve plays with her hair. Of course, Angel and Butterman have to attend and witness the execrable performance.
Later, a knock comes on Blower’s dressing room door, where he and Eve are smooching and drinking champagne. When Blower opens it, a figure wearing a hooded cape appears with an ax. Blood splatters all over the door.
Angel is later notified of a terrible traffic accident (“Collison,” he corrects the officer on scene). The deceased are the actor Blower and the leading lady, Eve Draper. It must have been some accident; their heads are sitting in the middle of the road.
Angel wonders…
Thoughts:
All the motifs of a cop buddy movie are here and are played with, as is the idea of the perfect English village. The language is not for the kiddies, and there are some gory scenes, but it is all presented with a lot of humor, horror, and silliness.
PC Butterman is a fan of action movies. While his partner chases a shoplifter through a store, he blithely examines a display of DVDs.
Following the bloody scene where Blower and Eve are killed and their heads left on the road, the viewer sees Angel’s phone ring. He sits up in bed and answers it. “Yeah?” he says. “Decaffeinated?”
Inappropriate, perhaps, but also quite funny. I admit, it takes a certain dark sense of humor to laugh at this, but there is a certain clownishness.
For example, when answering a complaint about a farmer who has trimmed someone else’s hedges, Angel and Butterman take Saxon, the K-9, along. They don’t need the dog, but they need the handler, PC Bob Walker (Karl Johnson), who alone can interpret the accent of farmer Arthur Webley (David Bradley). Because Walker is slightly less unintelligible than Webley, Butterman will translate his mutterings to Angel.
Mr. Webley, it turns out, has a large arsenal of unregistered weaponry, including a mine, presumably left from WWII. How he got it to his shed is not discussed. They seize the arsenal, and now the evidence room has something other than dust on its shelves.
Cate Blanchett and Peter Jackson make cameo appearances.
Hot Fuzz won the 2008 Empire Awards for Best Comedy. It also won the (UK) 2007 National Movie Awards for Best Comedy.
The final scenes, the obligatory buddy cop shootout sequence, is as absurd as it is bloody. It’s worth the price of admission all by itself. Yes, Sergeant Angel rides a white horse to face down the bad guys.
This was a lot of fun.
Because the movie is so recent, I couldn’t find it available for free download.
Title: Hot Fuzz (2007)
Directed by
Edgar Wright
Writing Credits
Edgar Wright…(written by) &
Simon Pegg…(written by)
Cast (in credits order)
Simon Pegg…Nicholas Angel
Martin Freeman…Met Sergeant
Bill Nighy…Met Chief Inspector
Robert Popper…’Not’ Janine
Joe Cornish…Bob
Released: 2007
Length: 2 hours, 1 minute
Rated: R
Review of “Frankenstein 1970” (1958)
Our Saturday pizza and bad movie was a return to an old friend, both in monster and actor. Svengoolie didn’t disappoint.
Plot:
The opening scene of this black-and-white flick shows a young blond woman, Carolyn Hayes (Jana Lund), pursued by a lumbering man whose face is not shown (Mike Lane). The young woman backs into a pond. The lumbering man holds her head under—for a while. The viewer hears someone yell, “Cut!”
And still, the man holds the hapless young woman under. The actor playing the monster, Hans Himmler, doesn’t speak English. Someone has to translate.
He releases the actress, who emerges coughing with some sort of vegetation in her hair.
The director, an obnoxious Douglas Row (Don “Red” Barry), has words with his assistant, who happens to be his ex-wife, Judy Stevens (Charlotte Austin). They’re making a film at Castle Frankenstein to commemorate the 230th anniversary of the original monster.
Inside the castle, Baron Victor Frankenstein (Boris Karloff) grouses with his friend, Wilhelm Gottfried (Rudolph Anders), his financial advisor, about letting those movie folk onto his property. Wilhelm reminds him he’s strapped for cash. The Baron keeps buying laboratory equipment, like that nuclear reactor, which people in 1958 apparently expected to be available for the discerning consumer by 1970.
Later, chummy, loud-mouthed Director Row fixes himself drinks, puts his arm over the Baron’s shoulder (earning his hand a dirty look), and asks about shooting some film in the Baron’s family crypt. After all, it’s conveniently located downstairs… He passes the Baron some cash. It’s a deal.
But there’s more downstairs than the director bargained for.
Thoughts:
This was released in 1958 but set in 1970. The character of Victor Frankenstein, the last of his line, tortured by the Nazis, has scars on his face. These scars change from scene to scene.
Karloff is at his hammiest here, and there are some unintentionally amusing scenes.
At one point, Wilhelm, well acquainted with the Frankenstein family history, inquires what the Baron needs with all that laboratory equipment. There’s more. “What business do you have with the coroner?” he asks. Uh-oh. Wilhelm sees the same look on the Baron’s face the Baron’s mom might have seen when she turned the kitchen light on one night to find her boy’s hand in the cookie jar.
How does one dispose of… extra parts? The powers that be deemed the sound of grinding machinery too gruesome, so they substituted the sound of a toilet flushing.
The writers also gave the ardent fan a scene that pays tribute to the Son of Frankenstein and that Young Frankenstein would later use.
The actors in the movie-within-the-movie have their own dramas going on. The obnoxious director makes eyes at the leading lady and taunts his ex-wife. She rolls her eyes and collects her paycheck.
The film was shot in eight days. It is hardly a masterpiece, but it is a lot of fun. I liked it.
The movie can be watched here:
Title: Frankenstein 1970 (1958)
Directed by
Howard W. Koch
Writing Credits (in alphabetical order)
Richard H. Landau…(screenplay) (as Richard Landau)
Charles A. Moses…(story)
Aubrey Schenck…(story)
Mary Shelley…(characters) (uncredited)
George Worthing Yates…(screenplay)
Cast (in credits order)
Boris Karloff…Baron Victor von Frankenstein
Tom Duggan…Mike Shaw
Jana Lund…Carolyn Hayes
Don “Red” Barry…Douglas Row (as Donald Barry)
Charlotte Austin…Judy Stevens
Released: 1958
Length: 1 hour, 23 minutes
Review of “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (1964)
Svengoolie was a rerun again this week, so we borrowed Dr. Strangelove, a movie I hadn’t seen all the way through before. I first saw bits and pieces of it as a kid, back in the days when the ending was a possibility. Doomsday machine? Yeah.
Plot:
At (fictional) Burpelson Air Force Base, Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) calls his second-in-command, Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers) to let him know he’s received orders. “We’re in a shooting war. I want you to transmit plan R to the wing.” He further orders that the base be sealed and all private radios be confiscated.
He’s lying. When Mandrake realizes the Soviets have not attacked and life carries on outside pretty much as usual, he asks Ripper for the codes to recall the planes from attacking Russia. Ripper refuses, locks the two of them in the office, and tells him he plans to force the politicians into “total commitment.
“I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”
Upon reading a similar note, the assembled dignitaries in the Pentagon’s presidential “War Room” say, “We’re still trying to decide what he means by the last line.”
Aboard one of the B-52s that continually patrol the limits of US airspace with their nuclear payloads, the crew receives the go-code. After it’s confirmed, Maj. “King” Kong (Slim Pickens) opens the safe, retrieves his cowboy hat and the attack plans, and passes the packets to each person. The background music is the Civil War tune, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.”
In the “War Room” at the Pentagon, Air Force General “Buck” Turgidson (George C. Scott) briefs President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) on what’s just happened. The befuddled president finally understands the planes can’t be called back without the recall code, which only General Ripper has. The Soviet ambassador, Alexi de Sadesky (Peter Bull), explains the Doomsday machine, which will automatically trigger if the Soviet Union is attacked or if the bomb is tampered with. If it goes off, it will “destroy all human and animal life on earth,” and “an evil cloud of radioactivity … will encircle the earth for 93 years!”
The president asks the resident scientific expert if such a device is possible. Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers), a former Nazi, who now uses a wheelchair, rolls out. In so many words, he says, yes, it could happen.
The President calls Soviet Premier Dimitri Kissov, who is quite drunk.
Thoughts:
The black-and-white film opens with a statement scrolling across the screen, assuring the viewer that, according to the Air Force, their safeguards would prevent the events of this film from happening. It also says no real people are depicted in the movie. I don’t know. I gotta wonder about Bat Guano. He reminds me of an old boss—but that’s neither here nor there.
A voice-over speaks of rumors about the “ultimate weapon” being built by the Russians in a desolate place. The opening credits roll over shots of in-air jet refueling while 1930s-style romantic music plays in the background.
How’s that for setting the mood?
The black humor is delivered in understated scenes for much of the movie. The leaders quarrel and envision the post-apocalyptic world with ten beautiful women for each man. On the phone to the Russian premier (who never appears or is heard), President Muffley says things like, “How do you think I feel, Dimitri?” In the same call, he continues, “I’m very sorry… *All right*, you’re sorrier than I am, but I am as sorry as well… I am as sorry as you are, Dmitri! Don’t say that you’re more sorry than I am, because I’m capable of being just as sorry as you are… So we’re both sorry, all right?… All right.”
There are great lines:
Turgidson and Sadesky get into a fight when the ambassador starts taking clandestine photographs of the war room.
President Muffley reminds them to show some resect: “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room.”
In contrast to the men in the war room, frittering away their time, the men in the B-52 are determined to do their duty. They are convinced the Russians have already attacked the United States and wiped significant parts of it out.
Locked in a room with the increasingly unstable General Ripper, Captain Mandrake asks for the recall codes. “Don’t want to start a nuclear war unless we really have to, now, do we, Jack?”
There is also the character of Dr. Stranglelove himself, an ex-Nazi scientist who slips and calls the president “Mein Führer!” With an apparent will of its own, his right arm springs out occasionally as if it has just heard, “Sieg heil!” No one around him reacts as if this is anything out of the ordinary.
The movie is based on a 1958 novel titled Red Alert by Peter George. While most of the basic plot elements of the book and the film are the same, the ending is different, and the book does not contain the character of Dr. Strangelove. The book is also a serious work, while the movie is a farce and full of black humor.
I loved this movie. I will admit that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I really enjoyed it. And with a despot in Russia threatening to release nukes if others don’t dance to his tune, it’s a reminder of the sheer insanity of the weapons and the arms race themselves.
From the New Yorker (yeah, you may hit a paywall)
Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was True | The New Yorker
Title: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Directed by
Stanley Kubrick
Writing Credits
Stanley Kubrick…(screenplay) &
Terry Southern…(screenplay) &
Peter George…(screenplay)
Peter George…(based on the book: Red Alert by)
Cast (in credits order)
Peter Sellers…Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake / President Merkin Muffley / Dr. Strangelove
George C. Scott…Gen. “Buck” Turgidson
Sterling Hayden…Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper
Keenan Wynn…Col. “Bat” Guano
Slim Pickens…Maj. “King” Kong
Peter Bull…Russian Ambassador Alexi de Sadesky
James Earl Jones…Lt. Lothar Zogg
Released: 1964
Length: 1 hour, 34 minutes
Rated: PG
Review of “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” (2021)
Svengoolie was once again, alas! a rerun, so we borrowed this from the library for our Saturday pizza and bad movie night. Frankly, my expectations were not high (*cough* Ghostbusters II *cough*), but I was pleasantly surprised at the silliness of this kiddie sequel.
Plot:
The film opens with a shot of some power shooting skyward out of an abandoned mine. Above, clouds swirl in a dark sky. A bearded old man—his face obscured in the darkness—hauls ass away from the mine, through the gate with signs reading “Do Not Enter” in a pickup that’s seen better days. He flies down a deserted rural road. On the seat next to him is a metal box with a handle at one end and black and yellow warning stripes across the top. Power buzzes across it.
A being follows him from the mine. It begins to coalesce and pushes the truck off the road into a corn field. The driver recovers and keeps going, ending up at a farm. Here, he runs up to a porch and holds the metal box up, daring the entity, and flips the power on to what appears to be a group of silos—but they’re not storing grain. The being resolves. The farmer readies a ray gun—a proton pack—to confront the approaching being. This is a trap for it. He hits a pedal, and the power dies. He runs inside and hides the metal box in his floorboards, then sits in a chair. The being pursues him inside and resolves into a wave something almost human. Before it can touch the man, he slumps over.
In another city, single mom Callie (Carrie Coon) faces eviction because she’s behind on the rent. Word comes of the death of a father she never knew, so she packs fifteen-year-old Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and twelve-year-old Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) for Oklahoma. The house is in disrepair and full of odd things. One of those things is an Aztec death whistle, which makes a god-awful noise when blown and is meant to scare off evil spirits.
Phoebe is a nerd, interested in all things scientific. Trevor is not. Their mother finds science boring. On Phoebe’s first day of summer school, she tells her, “Don’t be yourself.” It’s also the day she comes across Phoebe’s teacher, Gary Grooberson (Paul Rudd), whom she at first mistakes for another parent dropping off children.
Mr. Grooberson, a seismologist interested in the bizarre earthquakes gripping the area, shows his class relevant films like Cujo and disappears into his monitoring room.
At home, Phoebe sees a chessboard in her room flip over for no apparent reason. Undeterred, she rights it and sets it up by her bed. When she wakes, a pawn has moved forward. She moves a knight, gets up, and goes to school for another fun-filled day.
Thoughts:
The film has been criticized for “fan service,” a term I hadn’t heard before. It grew out of Japanese manga, meaning material intended to please fans, and often involves nudity or suggestive settings. No shower scenes in this movie—sorry to disappoint. I think what the term refers to here is a lot of in-jokes with respect to the original film. Only an ardent fan will catch all of them. I’m sure I missed a bunch. Gozer, the Gatekeeper, and the Keymaster all return.
When Callie appears to be behaving oddly, Phoebe asks her mother if she’s all right.
“There is no mom. There is only Zuul,” the possessed Callie tells her.
This is a play on a line from the original movie. It’s goofy.
The movie is aimed at kids, so there will be a lot of kid stuff. Trevor falls for Lucky (Celeste O’Connor), a pretty carhop at the local burger place, and tries to get a job there by lying about his age. At first, she blows him off.
Phoebe makes a friend at school, a boy calling himself Podcast (Logan Kim), who seems determined to narrate the most mundane things. Later, the two display an advanced knowledge of ghosts, which is especially striking after Phoebe says she doesn’t believe in ghosts.
So much is improbable with the movie, but it matters so little. This is just good, silly fun. It’s not the original movie, but it has the same playful spirit. I enjoyed it.
The movie is dedicated to Harold Ramis, who passed away in 2014. He played one of the original Ghostbusters, Egon Spengler. His likeness is reproduced as a ghost for some brief scenes. The others arrive to battle Gozer near the end of the flick.
There are a couple of nice Easter eggs at the end of the credits.
This movie, flaws aside, was a lot of fun.
Sadly, this is too recent for a free download. We got our copy from the library.
Title: Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
Directed by
Jason Reitman…(directed by)
Writing Credits
Gil Kenan…(written by) &
Jason Reitman…(written by)
Dan Aykroyd…(based on “Ghostbusters” written by) and
Harold Ramis…(based on “Ghostbusters” written by)
Cast (in credits order)
Carrie Coon…Callie
Paul Rudd…Grooberson
Finn Wolfhard…Trevor
Mckenna Grace…Phoebe
Logan Kim…Podcast
Celeste O’Connor…Lucky
Released: 2021
Length: 2 hours, 4 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Review of “The Big Sleep” (1946)
Alas! Svengoolie was a rerun last night, so we opted for a bit of noir, The Big Sleep, which neither the dearly beloved nor I had seen.
Plot:
Ill, elderly General Sternwood (Charles Waldron) hires private detective Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) to settle some “gambling debts” his daughter Carmen (Martha Vickers) owes to a bookseller named Arthur Geiger (an uncredited Theodore von Eltz). He also mentions the disappearance of one Sean Regan, a hired man whom Sternwood regards almost like a son. Why would Regan up and leave just like that?
Carmen has already introduced herself to Marlowe; she’s a childlike temptress given to—really—sucking her thumb. “You’re cute,” she tells Marlowe. After Marlowe agrees to help the General, the General’s other daughter, Mrs. Rutledge (Lauren Bacall), asks to see him before he leaves. She wants to know why her father hired Marlowe. Does he want him to find Sean Regan? Is there some other…difficulty? Marlow maintains that’s between him and her father.
Marlowe first tries to find Geiger at his place of business. The proprietor, Agnes Lozelle (an uncredited Sonia Darrin), tells him he’s not in. He quizzes her about some rare first editions. Her answers lead him to believe the bookstore is a front for some illegal business.
When he later follows Geiger to his home, he hears a woman’s screams and gunshots. Running toward the house, he sees two cars pull away. Entering the front door, he finds a man dead on the floor and Carmen Sternwood sitting in an ornate chair near the body, higher than a kite. He accidentally triggers a statue head of the Buddha so that it swings open to reveal a camera. The camera has no film. The implication is more blackmail material; someone recorded Carmen killing Geiger over her gambling debts. The two men in the cars that drove off have the compromising film.
Marlowe hustles the barely coherent (“You’re cute.”) Carmen into his car and takes her home. This includes a de rigueur slap across the face. Once home, he instructs everyone that she was there all evening. He returns to Geiger’s house to find the body has disappeared.
Thoughts:
The plot is convoluted and rather hard to follow, perhaps in part because of the nature of the movie itself. It was drawn from a Raymond Chandler novel of the same name that was a mash-up of two earlier unrelated short stories. Complicating things was the Hayes code, limiting things movies could depict. In the book, Geiger’s bookstore was a bookstore that sold illustrated books of a type illegal at the time, which could not be mentioned in a movie. The book also depicted a same-sex relationship, which didn’t exist. A viewer would have to read between the lines, even if they knew what to look for.
The film is atmospheric and very noir-ish, which is more important than the plot. Snappy Chandler-ish dialogue fills the movie, as does a high body count. Most deaths are off-screen. The characters are interesting. Among them is the gangster, Eddie Mars (John Ridgely), who seem friendly enough for a gangster, and just a whole passel of thugs—some violent, some just hanging around ready to extort as the opportunity arises.
Among the writers are William Faulkner, who has apparently taken a respite from Yoknapatawpha County, and Leigh Brackett, the Queen of Space Opera, coming in from the cold to write this. The story is that they asked Chandler at one point who killed the person whose car is fished out by the Lido Pier.
“I don’t know,” was his helpful answer.
But wasn’t it cool to watch the cops pull a Packard out of the drink?
If the roller coaster ride of threats, deaths, and beatings is light on coherence, it is entertaining. I liked this movie. It’s fun watching Bogey and Bacall bait each other. However, enlightened attitudes toward women do not abound.
I could not find this available for free, but it is available for rent or to buy here.
Title: The Big Sleep (1946)
Directed by
Howard Hawks
Writing Credits
William Faulkner…(screenplay) &
Leigh Brackett…(screenplay) &
Jules Furthman…(screenplay)
Raymond Chandler…(novel)
Cast (in credits order)
Humphrey Bogart…Philip Marlowe
Lauren Bacall…Vivian Rutledge
John Ridgely…Eddie Mars
Martha Vickers…Carmen Sternwood
Dorothy Malone…Acme Book Shop Proprietress
Released: 1946
Length: 1 hour. 54 minutes
Review of “The Ghoul” (1933)
This week’s pizza and bad movie selection is delayed by a week because I once again came down with pneumonia, something I have a penchant for. At first glance, this appears to be an old-fashioned horror flick, but the truth is a little more complicated.
Plot:
A man wearing a fez with stained skin and exaggeratedly widened eyes (D.A. Clarke-Smith) follows a man in a suit to the latter’s apartment. The landlady at first tries to send him away, treating him like a door-to-door salesman, until he asks for Mr. Dragore (Harold Huth).
When he finds Dragore, the man in the fez holds a knife to his neck and demands the jewel known as the “Eternal Light.” He wants to return the gem to the tomb whence it was stolen. Dragore insists he hasn’t got but recently sold it to Professor Morlant (Boris Karloff), who believes it has the power of resurrection. The old man, an expert in Egyptology, is dying. All they have to do is wait.
The viewer next sees Professor Morlant on his deathbed. He appears to have suffered some sort of disfigurement. A parson comes to the door and introduces himself as Nigel Hartley (Ralph Richardson), new in the neighborhood. Morlant’s servant, Laing (Ernest Thesiger), tells him Professor Morlant is a pagan and tells the parson he’s of no use.
The doctor (an uncredited George Relph) comes out of the sick room. He first tells Laing Morlant is asking for him and then seeks Morlant’s solicitor, Broughton (Cedric Hardwicke), to let him know Morlant hasn’t much time left. Broughton is busy going through his client’s books.
Upstairs, Morlant tells Laing not to trust Broughton and goes over his funeral preparations, which include wrapping the Eternal Light to his hand. Laing doesn’t care for the business but agrees. He says, “A man will no find peace that robs his heirs.” Morlant swears that if he is robbed of the jewel, he will rise from the dead and kill those who robbed him.
Answering Laing’s cries, the doctor runs upstairs. He listens for Morlant’s heartbeat through his stethoscope and declares, “It’s all over.”
The viewer next sees the Eternal Light when the clubfooted Laing pulls it from a hollow in the heel of his shoe.
Thoughts:
This sounds a lot like The Mummy, which Boris Karloff made in 1932, but there are differences. First, farcical elements make one wonder if the movie is satire or serious. In truth, this is neither fish nor fowl.
However, it is a lot of fun. A mad dash ensues for the jewel. Kaney (Kathleen Harrison), a friend of Morlant’s niece, is a classic ditz swooning over the exotic bad guy, Dragore. An old feud between branches of the family is represented by a niece Betty Harlon (Dorothy Hyson) and brash nephew Ralph Morlant (Anthony Bushell), who can’t believe rich old Uncle Morlant died nearly penniless and wants the jewel to make up for it.
In the meantime, everyone is stalked by Professor Morlant, who feels ill-used. He says little but menaces a lot, scaring the bejesus out of people who saw him carried out on a briar and entombed by torchlight.
The photography of the entire movie is dark as if they were trying to save money on lighting. It is a little hard to see. I suggest watching this at night with the lights off. The sound is also less than pristine, but considering the age of the movie, it is not bad.
The score uses a lot of Wagner, which is to say, a heaping helping of overblown music. The music can sharpen the contrast between scenes. Ferinstance, Morlant is carried to his almost-eternal rest to a bit of Wagner’s “Death and Funeral March” for the hero Siegfried. It is a stately scene, and the music is heavy and mournful. Once the coffin is laid in the tomb, the pallbearers walk out, grumbling as if they were complaining about a crummy boss at quitting time. One is heard distinctly saying the whole business is “disgusting.” One would think even Siegfried might have to chuckle at that.
A Snidely Whiplash ending doesn’t lend credibility to the movie, but by that time, I don’t think most viewers will care.
The movie was long considered lost. In the early 60s, an incomplete copy surfaced with poor sound quality and Czech subtitles. It was deemed nearly unwatchable. In the 80s, a disused film vault at Shepperton Studios in Great Briton was uncovered, and a near-perfect copy was found. From this copy was drawn the film that is now available.
This was made during Karloff’s brief contract dispute with Universal and is regarded as the first British horror film of the sound era. Well, it’s horror-ish.
The movie can be watched here.
Title: The Ghoul (1933)
Directed by
T. Hayes Hunter
Writing Credits
Frank King…(by) (as Dr. Frank King) &
Leonard Hines…(by)
Roland Pertwee…(screen version by) &
John Hastings Turner…(screen version by)
Rupert Downing…(adaptation)
Cast (in credits order)
Boris Karloff…Prof. Henry Morlant
Cedric Hardwicke…Broughton
Ernest Thesiger…Laing
Dorothy Hyson…Betty Harlon
Anthony Bushell…Ralph Morlant
Released: 1933
Length: 1 hour, 17 minutes
Spring Clean #11 Five More Books
This is the next group of books set aside for donation. They were all informative and I have fond memories of them. Even Johnson’s book, which I consider propaganda at least made me think. I meant to get back to this sooner, but a bout of pneumonia waylaid me.
The final decision on the Jeffrey book was to not donate it. It’s so full of bad information and just nonsense it’s like sending misinformation out into the world. Yes, I know no one is forced to buy the book. Yet, in all good conscience, I’ll keep it as a door stop.
Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds by Phillip E. Johnson (1997) is not a scientific but an argument-based stance against evolution. Its target audience is “late teen—high-school juniors and seniors and beginning college undergraduates, along with the parents and teachers of such young people.” He continues: “These young people…need to protect themselves against the indoctrination in naturalism that so often accompanies education.” In other words, don’t let facts get in the way. He argues that scientific inquiry/empiricism presumes a godless universe.
Hooey.
Bio: Phillip E. Johnson (1940-2019) was a UC Berkeley law professor, opponent of evolutionary science, and co-founder of the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement. The idea of a “wedge” strategy for introducing the supernatural to science and public thought is attributed to him. Aside from his professional publications, his books include: Darwin on Trial (1991), Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law & Education (1995), and The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism (2002).
The Language of Genes: Solving the Mysteries of Our Genetic Past, Present and Future by Steve Jones (1993) is drawn from a series of Reith Lectures the author delivered over BBC Radio in late 1991. Jones studied snails. For a long time, studying human genetics was clouded in ignorance and hampered by the detrimental ideas of the heritability of traits like criminality and intelligence.
Jones sees genetics as a code, a language encoded into genes that can gradually be unlocked. He does not view human behavior or destiny as a simple question of nature or nurture.
A few things may be dated. For example, Jones writes, “By about the year 2000, we should have the complete sequence of the three thousand million letters in the DNA alphabet which go to make up a human being.”
It wasn’t a bad guess. The human genome was sequenced in 2003.
This is a good, readable primer on how genes work despite a few dated things like this.
Bio: Steve Jones is a British geneticist and was a professor of genetics at the Galton Laboratory at University College London. He is also a television presenter. In 1996 he was awarded the Michael Faraday Prize. Among his books are: In the Blood: God, Genes and Destiny (1997), Darwin’s Ghost: The Origin of Species Updated (2000), and Evolution (2017).
Atheism: A Reader by S.T. Joshi (2000) is, as the title suggests, a selection of articles and excerpts from various writers throughout the centuries regarding disbelief in a god. The entries are arranged by topic: e.g., “Religion and Science,” “Religion and Ethics,” and “Religion and the State.” In his introduction, Joshi writes that his book is not for those who are persuaded in their religion, rather “only for those who profess an open mind on the subject of religion and religious beliefs.” His primary question is: is religion true? Not any particular religion, of course. Religion itself has been around as long as humans have.
Some of the authors included are (stop me if you’re surprised) Robert G. Ingersoll, but also David Hume, Lucretius, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Thomas Paine, and Benedict (Baruch) de Spinoza. Joshi is an H. P. Lovecraft scholar (which I didn’t find out until after reading the book), so, of course, he includes an entry from Lovecraft.
While the readings ranged far and wide and were interesting, I got the feeling there were a lot of unpleasant people among my fellow non-believers.
Bio: S. T. Joshi (b. 1958) is an Indian-American writer and literary critic specializing in weird fiction who has published biographies of H. P Lovecraft and edited collections of M. R. James’ ghost stories. He has also published in the areas of atheism and politics.
The Harlot by the Side of the Road: Forbidden Tales of the Bible by Jonathan Kirsch (1997) grew out of the author’s efforts to read the Bible to his five-year-old son. After the story of Noah’s sons finding their father drunk and naked in his tent, Kirsch says he began to read more slowly. If he waited too long, his son—no fool, he—began to ask, “What are you leaving out?”
What makes Kirsch’s book entertaining is not the lurid stories themselves but how various guardians of the people’s morals sought to deal with the tales of lust, intrigue, murder (GEEZ, a tent stake through the temple?), etc. For example, one group of Protestant clergy marked passages they saw fit for the laity. Kirsch points out the unmarked passages might draw the curious Bible reader. There is also a bit of deliberate mistranslation and dancing around of odd (yet obvious) metaphors. What exactly is Ruth doing when she uncovers Boaz’s feet while he was sleeping?
Bio: Jonathan Kirsch (b. 1949) is an American lawyer specializing in intellectual property rights, a writer, and a book reviewer. He reviews books for the Los Angeles Times and has written both fiction and nonfiction. Among his books are Bad Moon Rising (1977), Kirsch’s Handbook of Publishing Law: For Authors, Publishers, Editors, and Agents (1995), and The Woman Who Laughed at God: The Untold Story of the Jewish People (2001).
God Against the Gods: The History of the War Between Monotheism and Polytheism by Jonathan Kirsch (2004) is pretty much as advertised, concentrating on the Abrahamic religions. Author Kirsch begins his discussion with the short-lived monotheistic experiment under the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaton (14th C. BCE), turns to the prophets scolding the people of Israel to finally abandon the gods in favor of the God of Israel, and ends with the Roman Emperors Constantine and Julian. Common wisdom views paganism as dark and violent; they sacrificed humans, didn’t they? But Kirsch takes a different tack. This was an intriguing book.
Bio: See entry at The Harlot at the Side of the Road.
Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old 