Category Archives: Movies

YouTube Giveth and…

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Movie Night!

A double feature of YouTube’s offerings from the 1930’s yielded a strange dichotomy of performances by two actresses of whom I’ve previously never heard.

DOUBLE DOOR is a 1934 conte cruelle directed by Charles Vidor. Mary Morris, in her only film role, plays the matriarch of a 1910 ridiculously rich family who lives in, and are practically prisoners of a Fifth Avenue mansion. Ms. Morris is intense and wicked…wicked……WICKED! The film is worth watching for her malevolent portrayal alone.

The mansion itself is a mighty character in the film. The insistence of Ms. Morris to keep the windows tightly and thickly curtained, the heavy mahogany paneling, the ponderous doors of the rooms, all reinforce the feeling of barricade. But is it a barricade to keep the world out, or to keep the treasures in? And just what are the treasures? Family? Tradition? Breeding? Style? ………or just treasure? We find out clearly, if a bit implausibly.

JUGGERNAUT is a slouching 1936 British film starring Boris Karloff as a murderous, insufficiently funded doctor. It’s not good at all, but Mona Goya’s performance (she took her performing name from her favorite painter – I wonder if she asked permission) is an un-tasty ragout of hysteria, shrieking and frantic lurching. It’s a performance for which the Razzies were later created.

YouTube; “It’s like a box of chocolates.”

I Like CASABLANCA…but…

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I like the film CASABLANCA.

No, I really like CASABLANCA.

The moment I see that map opening of the film, I stop blinking (except to dismiss the tears) until Rick and Inspector Renaud walk away from the camera into the fog.

Less happily, the moment I see a map opening of any film (Indiana Jones, Mister Moto, Marlin Perkins…), I expect to not blink until Rick and Inspector Renaud walk away from the camera into the fog.

Some days, if I’m asked to name a favorite movie, I will unhesitantly answer; CASABLANCA.

But how many times can you watch it until you have it memorized and inevitably clear every room by singing “As Time Goes By” and “La Marseillaise” with an execrable Vichy accent?

You eventually start longing for more.

Yes…

…more like CASABLANCA.

Thank goodness, they’re out there; films that are liberally flavored with spies, bazaars, boozey night-club piano-players, men in fezzes (who don’t ride miniature motorcycles), crooked police authorities, bumbling Nazis, and beautiful women with a back story that involves Paris. The movie may set in the Casbah, Greece, Portugal, Tangiers, or Martinique, but the beautiful women “always have Paris.” Films like PEPE LE MOKO (1937), THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS (1944), and TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (1944) can assuage the longing to visit Rick’s Café Americaine for a couple of hours.

I’ve recently added two more flicks to this list.

THE GOLDEN SALAMANDER (1950) is set in Portugal and stars Trevor Howard. Mr. Howard’s fine, but others in the cast are more interesting to me. This is one of the first films of Anouk Aimée. She’s 18 years old, and while she’s not yet the luminous beauty she later became, you watch nothing but her when she’s on the screen.

Walter Rilla menaces convincingly, dripping with corruption and lethality. This is not a man I would wish wanted to hurt me or help me…just leave me alone, please.

Wilfrid Hyde-White plays the Hoagy Carmichael/Dooley Wilson piano-player with a soupçon of Walter Brennan. It’s a remarkable departure from the gentle aristocratic characters in which we are accustomed to see him. This ain’t MY FAIR LADY.

One villager rationalizes his lack of protest against the clear evil of local authorities;

“The world has more evil than a dog fleas. We were given eyes, but for our comfort, the wisdom of knowing when to shut them.”

Admirable?

No.

Redolent of segments of today’s American conundrums?

Most certainly.

CANDLELIGHT IN ALGERIA (1943) stars a young James Mason and, again, a wickedly driven Walter Rilla.

But a delightful moment is spun by Pamela Stirling as the tragic Yvette;

“Madame, in love, you can fool a man, you can fool yourself, but you cannot fool another woman.”

In 1943, WWII was still quite in doubt. This closing moment in the film must have been stirring, if troubling;

“I know when I light this candle, I light a flame that will drive the enemy out of Africa, a flame that will be carried across the waters and across the heart of Europe to the very heart of Berlin.”

Feel free to light that candle…and grab a tissue.

Howlin’ at the Moon

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Movie night!

I’m sneakin’ out tonight with my lunatic pup (Chloe) to gaze at the promised micro blue moon. We may howl. We may discuss the opening chapter of Neil Stephenson’s fascinating book; SEVENEVES. It’s my favorite of Stephenson’s novels, but Chloe quibbles with the last third of the piece. She has a fair point.

Then, we shall scurry to the library to watch the 1964 version/vision of H. G. Wells’ FIRST MEN IN THE MOON.

The personnel involved are the main reason to watch this film (Chloe suspects my shallowly buried hope of being chosen the next 75-year-old astronaut might also be a motivating factor).

Nathan Juran is the director. Mr. Juran is an Oscar winner for…Art Direction…for the HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, a beautiful film, but nothing like his directing career. He directed some of my favorite guilty pleasures; THE DEADLY MANTIS (1957) – big bugs…never misses, 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH (1957), and ATTACK OF THE 50-FOOT WOMAN (1958) – 50-foot Alison Hayes…never misses.

Nigel Kneale is our screenwriter. Mr. Kneale wrote screenplays for serious stuff; THE ENTERTAINER (1960) and LOOK BACK IN ANGER (1959), disturbing British sci-fi; THE STONE TAPE (1972) and FIVE MILLION MILES TO EARTH (1967), and a truly terrifying ghost story; THE WOMAN IN BLACK (1989), not the Radcliffe remake.

Valentine Dyall, the narrator was memorable in HORROR HOTEL (1960), a fine, foggy scare as Jethrow Keane, a hitchhiker to whom you do not want to give a ride. He was also in THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE (1963) as one half of the unhelpful caretaker couple; “No one from town will come after dark…in the night…in the dark.”

Our old friend Miles Malleson is also in this film. His is an amazing career; HORROR OF DRACULA (1958), THR HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (1959), and THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960) for Hammer, and about a hundred more.

We may howl indeed.

Let the Right One In

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I love horror movies.

Good, bad, silly, gory, American, Spanish, Italian, British, Chinese, Argentinian, Japanese, French, Mexican, German, Brazilian…even Swedish.

Especially vampire flicks.

Why?

I think those seeds were planted early by scarcity.

Through my high school years, we only had the three local TV channels, and Dad essentially controlled the remote. The remote, at that time, was me.

“Roger, go over there and switch it to channel 27.”

After high school, I didn’t have a TV at all until I was 22. I intruded on my friends’ TV’s, or schlepped up to the communal screens on the top floors of the towers at UK. Thus, film viewing opportunities were sparse and sporadic. I didn’t see Bela Lugosi’s DRACULA until I was about 14 (a bleary late Saturday night, installed on the living room floor, armed with a pillow and a hope that the rooftop antenna was aimed in the correct direction). I think I saw my first Christopher Lee bloodsucker in my 20’s and I had that Groucho Marx epiphany; “How long has this been going on?”

Now, that sounds pitiful, but it’s not.

In those years, eight nights out of ten, I was rehearsing a play somewhere, and working to pay the rent during the day. Who had time for movies? Not me, no time…but a pent-up desire musta been a’building.

Since those brutally-deprived days, I’ve tried to make up for lost vampire flicks. Happily, I still haven’t exhausted the historic backlog, and that was proven again last night.

A friend called and invited himself over to watch a film he wanted me to see. It was Tomas Alfredson’s 2008 Swedish film; LET THE RIGHT ONE IN.

There was much to like here.

The vampire element of the film is innovative and empathetic. One cares about and frets over the challenges being faced by this 200-year-old/12-year-old child hazard. One cares about and frets over her bullied and neglected 12-year-old/12-year-old neighbor. One cares about and frets over the flawed, ineffective adults around the children’s lives. The only unsympathetic characters are the young school bullies who are simply making Scott Farcas-like decisions with similar results.

The ending is satisfying and troubling simultaneously. It made me long for a sequel just to answer a few questions I’d like to pose.

I really have only two complaints with the film.

  1. I watched a dubbed version. I thought the voices were disconnected and flat from the happenings on the screen. It reminded me vaguely of the dubbing in those awful/wonderful Mexican monster movies of the 60’s. I think I would have preferred subtitles.
  2. It’s full of all that Nordic gloom and snow and cold. This child of American South sun and humidity just can’t………. But that’s me.

This is a real nice flick.

I think you can let it in.

Japanese Noir…Kurosawa-Style

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Akira Kurosawa is perhaps best known for his mighty Shakespearean films; RAN (1985), THE HIDDEN FORTRESS (1958), and THRONE OF BLOOD (1957). His Samurai Trilogy was exciting. His SEVEN SAMURAI (1954) and YOJIMBO (1961) inspired a whole genre of European westerns, plus a little flick called STAR WARS (1974). His RASHOMON (1950) is a masterpiece of storytelling.

But that storytelling skill is also happily evident in his less grandiose crime dramas; STRAY DOG (1949), LOWER DEPTHS (1957), and tonight’s HIGH AND LOW (1963).

In HIGH AND LOW, we see a Yokohama in the swirl of Japan’s amazing recovery from WWII. It’s not the Japan of Lafcadio Hearn, Shinto temples, and tea ceremonies. This is a roiling time of factories, trains, smokestacks, efficiencies, and cutthroat board battles. It is a time to make fortunes…for yourself……or for others. The income gap is wide and widening…sound like anywhere else you’re living in today?

A brutal kidnapping occurs.

Toshiro Mifune is pathetic as he agonizes over whether to destroy his privileged life to possibly save the life of the child.

Tatsuya Nakadai as Chief Detective Tokura and his sweating team of investigators, salvage and assemble clues leading through murder and drug-infested dens that will never be documented in haiku, till they inevitably run the kidnapper to capture.

 Tsutomu Yamazaki as the kidnapper confronts Mifune;

“I’m not interested in self-analysis. I do know my room was so cold in winter and so hot in summer I couldn’t sleep. Your house looked like heaven, high up there. That’s how I began to hate you.”

Allow me to paraphrase Thornton Wilder here;

The difference between enough money and not enough money is really quite small…but it can change the world. The difference between enough money and a whole lot of money is also quite small…but it too…can change the world.

It crept into my Hearn/Shinto/tea/haiku mind as I watched the film, that perhaps we should consider Thornton Wilder and the kidnapper the next time we condescend to ask presidential candidates about raising the minimum wage.

On a lighter note, I was arrested by a cameo performance by Ikio Sawamura as an expert in the sound of various trolleys in Yokohama. Mr. Sawamura had a long film career in a number of Kurosawa’s films, and also appeared in a number of films that made a serious cultural difference in the world of a wide-eyed young film-goer in Kentucky;

1963-KING KING VS GODZILLA (witch doctor) and ATRAGON (taxi driver)

1964-MOTHRA VS GODZILLA (priest) and GHIDORAH, THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER (honest fisherman)

1965-FRANKENSTEIN VS BARAGON (man walking dog)

1966-THE WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS (fisherman #1) and EBIRAH, HORROR OF THE DEEP (elderly slave)

1967-KING KONG ESCAPES (Mondo islander)

1968-DESTROY ALL MONSTERS (old farmer)

1969-ALL MONSTERS ATTACK (bartender)

1975-TERROR OF MECHOGODZILLA (silent butler)

Whatta resumé!

Dracula Does Not Suffer Fools

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I enjoy joining a group of online groupies, most of whom I’ve never actually met, on Saturday nights when I can to watch, ridicule, and gush about the usually dreadful films screened by Svengoolie on MeTV. It’s a fun, irreverent group of tolerant enthusiasts, mostly younger than yours truly, but then what in the world isn’t.

Many of the participants, if you believe their protestations of innocence, are seeing these dubious gems for the first time. While it’s daunting for a grizzled cinematic dumpster-diver like me to find any comfort in the thought that voting-age folks will be casting those first votes sans (that means “without”…sorry, Groucho Marx joke) the seasoning of multiple viewings of THE RETURN OF THE INVISIBLE MAN, PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES, and KILLER KLOWNS OF OUTER SPACE, I do find solace when I see their delight in discovering;

  •  The power of random flames serving as a modern, purging deux-et-machina when troubles (aka monsters) become insurmountable, yet still flammable (dozens and dozens of European horror flicks).
  • Or that interplanetary, mutant children can be thwarted by imagining a brick wall (Village of the Damned).
  • Or that alien attackers who have just blinded 99%+ of the human race can be driven back by spraying them with sea water (Day of the Triffids).
  • Or that body-less flying brains can be shriveled by a Kenneth Tobey-type guy blowing up an atomic radio station in Canada (Fiend Without a Face).
  • Or that the potential lycanthrope menace can be nipped in the bud when his dad smacks him with a cane (The Werewolf, with Lon Chaney Jr).

It’s comforting to sneer and giggle at these masterpieces, and about as practical as my generation’s intense training in “duck and cover.”

And it’s a pretty nice clambake with no clams being hurt.

Last Saturday though, I couldn’t make it and I kinda wanted to. It was a flick I hadn’t seen (there are still one or two ‘em out there). I thought I’d be experiencing it for the first time like many of the other participants. Might be fun. Hell, I might turn into a twenty-something again.

Old fools…dream foolishly……

I recorded the flick instead and watched it this afternoon. I’m glad I did.

The film was BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA. This is not the 1992 film with Gary Oldman: it’s the British 1974 made-for-TV flick with Jack Palance playing the sanguinary Count.

There are no more menacing actors on the screen than Mr. Palance. This is unrelenting mean-ness. He can’t be reasoned with…or shamed…or redeemed…he is a vector of evil. Sounds like Ol’ Drac to me.

There’s scene where a tuxedo-clad gent who looks like Dudley Moore tries to stop Dracula with a pistol. Our vampire dismisses the impediment and the bullets with a disdainful backhand…just as you’d expect Jack Palance to handle a threat from Dudley Moore. That’s artistic integrity for you.

Disdainful backhand…

That’s what I had when I played at tennis in my 20’s. However, it was my opponents who did the disdaining.

In my 20’s…

…sigh…

Old fools……

A Feast for the Eyes

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Movie night!

Flicks a la Francais.

It’s been a week of French cinema pour moi.

Janie and I have practically forsaken physically going to the movies. Since the spawning of covid, I don’t think we’ve been in a movie theater more than five or six times. Why should we? We have a big screen, various fire-sticks and subscriptions, a critter, and a convenient parking place at home. Door-Dash and/or the fridge are near to hand.

But a phone call from a wise friend who understands real priorities in life pointed out that Juliette Binoche continues to be fine to observe on a big screen. A date night at the Kentucky Theater ensued.

THE TASTE OF THINGS (2023) is delicious to watch. It’s fun to see Madame Binoche cooking again. I first saw her in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s 1993 mesmerizing film; THREE COLORS: BLUE, and then his earlier THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (1988). A couple of years later I won a huge lobby poster of BLUE on eBay. I still haven’t found a space of suitable vastness to hang it, but I harbor hopes…perhaps a new wing to a house already too roomy for two dreamers. She cooked beautifully for Johnny Depp, Judy Dench, and Alfred Molina in CHOCOLAT (2000). Hell, I even thought she was the best thing in the 2014 GODZILLA – better than the big guy himself.

And THE TASTE OF THINGS is a nice film itself, but like some of Akira Kurusawa’s flicks, perhaps a battle too long. The ballet of the preparation of the opening feast lingered on every step in the kitchen.

Lingered…

Every step…….

I fear I had enough time to tally the pots and pans and utensils with the weary eyes of one whose main contribution in our kitchen is the post-prandial clean-up.

However, if you’re a member of the seemingly burgeoning crowd of people who take pictures of their food, this is the film for you.

I must fess up: I have been charmed but bewildered by this phenomenon.

I wonder…

The glory of a memorable restaurant meal is a recipe with multiple ingredients.

The food is one ingredient, but only one.

The setting is another. Is the room dramatic? Cozy? Huge? Is there a view of the ocean…mountain…desert…skyline…rings of Saturn? Is it on the roof…on the street…by the fireplace…in the kitchen?

Is the company good?

I have had memorable restaurant experiences.

  • Calamari and six vintage ports overlooking the Bay Bridge in San Francisco…
  • A Nighthawk Special in a cavern-like Columbia Steak House at 2am on Limestone Street.
  • Chateau Ausone 1978 in Yvette Wintergarden’s in Chicago.
  • Hot cross buns and café au lait in the snug of the local at Hever Castle on a grey morning.
  • Eggs Nova Scotia in a booth with a wall juke box at the Bungalow across the street from the Nu-Way Boot Shop on Mill Street.
  • Huevos Rancheros in in a sunny diner in Salinas.
  • A Caesar Salad lovingly assembled tableside in Denver.
  • Hot dogs off the right field line at Wrigley Field on a sunny Saturday afternoon. (Phillies lost).
  • Shrimp and grits on an overturned cable spool table, watching a shrimp boat unloading its resupplies at the neighboring dock in Charleston.
  • Green Chile Won Tons at the Bristol in Louisville after a stunning performance of “Child Byron” at Actors Theatre.
  • Coq au Vin at Café Chantant before slipping downstairs to Le Cabaret on Vine Street.

The food, the time, the place, and most of all the company, is what made these experiences memorable. I wanted to capture each of them forever, recreate the moments for myself, and be able to share them with others. Perhaps that’s why we take our meal photos.

No photo is up to such a task, but the urge to share and relive the good stuff is nothing but admirable.

Terror in the Jungle

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Well…

…maybe more like “Frisson in the Foliage”…

Movie night!

Picture this.

A divorced father puts his 6-year-old son and his stuffed tiger (I’m already confusing this with Calvin and Hobbs – this can’t auger well) alone on a plane bound for Brazil and bound for the boy’s mother. (You don’t need to keep track of the personnel here, this is the last we hear of the mom from Ipanema.)

The dutiful dad then heads for the airport bar – I kid you not. Maybe instead of “Terror in the Jungle,” it should be; “Mai-Tai’s in the Tiki Bar.”

The plane is populated (infested?) with a tawdry, middle-aged. purple-puffy-shirt-wearing, Beatles knock-off band (oh yes, complete with mop-top wigs in shades of color God never intended).

Airplane band revisiting life choices

They play one of their “hits” in the back of the airplane cabin (oh yes, with full drum kit) as the plane crashes on the Amazon and everyone is eaten by crocodiles except the kid. If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.

The child drifts down the river in a coffin (it’s too complicated to go into right now) until he’s captured by descendants of the Incas who have the same crummy wigs as the doomed band on the plane. They also wear those same feathered Indian headdresses I used buy in the gift shop at the old Bird and Animal Forest on Highway 27 when I was a kid. The tribe decides first to dance on stone steps to entertain the child (frankly, the best part of the show) and then to sacrifice him to their god. Talk about yer mood swings!

Meanwhile, dutiful dad has sobered up, heard about the crash, and races grimly by plane to Brazil, then by hotel shuttle to check in (I KID YOU NOT), then to a church, and then to a riverside mission in his coat and tie to rescue his son. Will he make it in time?

This is truly one of the worst films I’ve ever seen.

Oh yeah, there’s piranhas, boa constrictors, jaguars, and quicksand too. The only vital ingredient missing was an inexplicable yeti.

I loved it.

Naked Alibi

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Movie night!

Wandering the never-daylit streets and alleys of Border City as depicted in Jerry Hopper’s 1954 noir; NAKED ALIBI. No one’s naked and Gene Barry’s flimsy alibi is only honored as long as it takes to get us to Border City in time to see Gloria Grahame awkwardly lip-sync and even more awkwardly wiggle to Cole Porter’s “Ace in the Hole” (not one of Porter’s best).

I’ve now crossed Border City off my bucket list of places to visit. Grahame constituted the entire floor show of the neon-lit, smoke-filled El Perquito and since she took two shots of luger lead in the back and left in a hearse……and, frankly, her star turn in the bar was pedestrian-minus anyway, what tourist attractions were left? Plus, I couldn’t find Border City on Google.

Sterling Hayden is the hero in this flick. For me, he’s the epitome of an ambivalent performer. I remember him most vividly as the crooked cop who gets wasted by Al Pacino in THE GODFATHER after apologizing for frisking Pacino and while thoroughly enjoying his cannoli. In this film…is he nuts…or is Gene Barry? Hard to tell until it’s too late to matter.

Grahame made this film just after THE BIG HEAT. It’s a similar character in many ways, but with a much smaller budget and much, much dowdier wardrobe.

Gene Barry is good. He’s pathetic, and cruel, and has a great death dive from the rooftop to and through the awning of his own shop.

The implausibilities of the plot abound. Tall, strong Hayden can’t walk the alleys of Border City for ten minutes without being beaten to a pulp and robbed, but Grahame can stroll home in her night club performing ensemble through dark streets, past shady watchers (all smoking of course, it being the 1950’s – oh, the good old days when America was great) unconcerned, unhurried, and untouched. Grahame waits faithfully for Barry’s return from mysterious “business trips,” but drops him instantly when a tattered and battered Hayden staggers into town.

Who cares? This is noir, Baby!

The flick is dark, and smoky, and has an adequate dose of sleaze. Bullets fly, mickeys are slipped, and punches are generally effective. There’s a rooftop chase of sorts on a church and a bakery, and a hint of potential polygamy. Maybe it’s not a classic recipe for film noir, but it’s an interesting variation.

Did I like it?

Well, maybe if it had been a better Cole Porter song.

The Blue Carbuncle

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I know it’s early, but may suggest a Christmas movie?

If, like me, you’ve seen the standard yuletide fare the requisite three dozen times, and, like me, you have a pretty good idea of what to do with a general, and like me, you’ve avoided shooting your eye out, and like me, you really dread being forced to resort to the Hallmark Channel, you could clear your egg nog noggin with this.

I’ve begun an extended journey of revisiting the Sherlock Holmes canon as interpreted by Jeremy Brett.

To quote that jolly philosopher Joe Ferrell (who at least once shared a drink with Charles Dickens); “What a joy!”

And it is.

I first met Mr. Holmes as relentlessly portrayed by Basil Rathbone as a non-glamorous leading man in a drab 1940’s overcoat (there’s a reason why Errol Flynn got the girl in THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD), dragging a befuddled Dr. Watson around a foggy, criminous London as he skewers the flagitious verbally before he claps ‘em in irons.

Subsequent Sherlocks were just as fun to follow.

Ian Richardson was commanding and thoughtful. That Baskerville mutt gave him no paws.

Benedict Cumberbatch rode the razor rail of sanity and brilliance to bravely butt heads with that Napoleon of Crime; Professor Moriarty.

But Jeremy Brett continues to be the Holmes for me. Fiercely intelligent and fiercely impatient. Knows everything about poisons and smokes like a chimney. A master of disguise and occasionally has the fashion sense of Lebowsky in his flat. uber-sensitive to every nuance of a client’s usually unlikely conundrum and then barges out of the flat, oblivious to Mrs. Hudson’s prideful cuisine under cover on the table;

Holmes; “Come Watson! The trail is hot!”

Hudson; “Which is more than the dinner will be.”

The Brett version of Sherlock is immeasurably enhanced by the passage of time. Brett covers many cases over a number of television seasons. Thus, as we do in Doyle’s stories…and in life, we see Brett’s and Sherlock’s athletic energies wane, stamina fade, wrinkles grow, hairline weaken, and wheeze lurk a little closer to the surface. For some reason…this resonates with me and makes me feel even closer to the still fabulous consulting detective. I’m even considering starting a bee hive. IYKYK.

My favorite Jeremy Brett Sherlock is probably THE BLUE CARBUNCLE.

It’s London at Christmastime. There’s snow, visible breath, top hats, mufflers, various carriages, pubs, a pint of yer finest, and a missing blue gem with a blood-red history. How Dickensian can you get?

Wait!

“Please sir, may I have some more?”

How about geese?

I have a thing about a Christmas goose. Janie, on a whim, cooked a goose for our Christmas years ago and it has become a holiday comfort food for me ever since.

Several geese figure prominently in this story. Whose geese are they? Whence did they come? Wither did they go? Why? What did they eat? Who ate them? Who should go to jail? Whose hat is it?

A well-cooked goose answers most queries and worries.

Goose bless us every one!