MONDAY MADNESS WRAP-UP........ONE LAST REMINDER BEFORE YOU GO TO THE POLLS........

 

Tomorrow's your chance to save the United States of America.....

Please be there.

'NIGHT WATCH'......LIZ SEES DEAD PEOPLE..........AND THE MOVIE'S NOT DOING TOO WELL EITHER.....

Night Watch (1973) 

         We nursed high hopes for this one.....only because it sounded like a perfect rainy Sunday afternoon Guilty Pleasure.....

      Its source came from one of those Broadway stage play murder mysteries. You know the ones.....3 or 4 characters, one single stage set, a few jump scares and wrapped up with a delicious twist to make you leave the theater chuckling at the diabolical cleverness of it all.

       A few playwrights specialized in the genre, such as Frederick Knott with his "Dial M For Murder" and "Wait Until Dark" and Lucille Fletcher with "Sorry, Wrong Number" (filmed back in the day with Barbara Stanwick and Burt Lancaster) and our subject for today, "Night Watch". 

         Other playwrights enjoyed having some wicked meta self-mocking fun with the template, such as Anthony Schaeffer's "Sleuth" and Ira Levin's "Deathtrap".

         You can easily understand what attracts the scribes to take a whack at a stage thriller......not all that expensive to produce and if you craft yourself a hit, you scoop up a film deal and endless royalties from touring and amateur productions all over the country.

         But "Night Watch", either as a play or film, never enjoyed that much success. Creaky and obvious, it was designed to let its lead actress wail in hysterics or shriek in terror......much like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and a host of elderly golden age actresses did in that weird 1960's sub-genre of geriatric horror movies. 

        So the attraction here comes from Elizabeth Taylor, still high gloss glamorous as ever at 41. But she was filling up her 1970's dance card with a slate of oddball little movies that few people ever heard of and even less wanted to see. "Night Watch"  offered up her one and only dip in the horror pool, hamming it up and screaming her head off on a dark and stormy night....ooooooooooo.....you could practically hear Liz muttering under her breath, "take that, Bette Davis, eat your oversized eyeballs out......"

       La Liz plays a wealthy uppercrust who spots corpses parked in a chair at the abandoned dilapidated mansion next door. Trying their best to calm her down (and telling her she didn't see what she saw) are her cool-as-a-cod husband (a gaunt Laurence Harvey, beginning to suffer from terminal cancer) and her loyal BFF (Billie Whitelaw, well remembered as the satanic nanny in "The Omen")

        Undeterred by everyone diagnosing her overactive imagination, Liz makes life hell for an exasperated detective (Bill Dean) by demanding repeated searches of the neighboring house. But something's afoot......and it's more than what's stuck on the end of Liz's ankle......

        More or less competently directed by Brian G. Hutton ("Where Eagles Dare", "Kelly's Heroes"), the film dutifully rolls along through all its red herrings and bumps-in-the-night......until THE GREAT BIG GIANT TWIST THAT WE DARE NOT REVEAL.

         ......which, to put it plainly, isn't that much of a big deal. But if nothing else, it gives Liz that golden opportunity to give the movie the full no-wire-hangers Joan Crawford whoopity-doo that it's been promising all along. Whether anyone wants to spend over an hour and a half waiting for the wham-bams......well, that's up to you.

          Taylor completists will want to check this out, of course. And anyone with passing nostalgic pangs for those stage-play thriller adaptations. Just as long as you realize....."Wait Until Dark" this ain't.

                 2 stars (**).

          

          

           

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP......SPECIAL "LIVE....FROM THE CHEESECAKE FACTORY!" EDITION....

 

BQ visitors:  Hope a terrific weekend is ahead for all of you!  Thanks always for stopping by to check out the blog.....see you next week with more reviews......and maybe (who knows) we'll at long last have begun to forge a path forward to disintegrate the cancer of Trump and Trumpism. Please vote to save the U.S.A.

'OVER THE EDGE'.......THE KIDS AREN'T ALRIGHT......

 Over the Edge (1979)

     Kurt Cobain and more than a few other rock bands felt themselves creatively inspired by this modestly produced but yet explosively provocative little movie about middle schoolers in violent rebellion. 

        But the rebels-without-a-clue in "Over the Edge" were nothing at all like the grimy, gritty tough-as-nails mean streets NYC delinquents  of "The Warriors" and "The Wanderers", also released in 1979.

         The middle class all-white 'Edge' kids, courtesy of their upwardly mobile parents, find themselves plopped down in the arid, remote, depressingly cookie-cutter, 'planned' community of New Granada, Colorado.  With its line-up of mass produced condos sitting in the middle of a flat prairie, the place looks like it could easily serve as a background for those lose-the-will-to-live Antonioni films,  dripping with ennui.

       Literally bored out of their minds, New Granada's youth turn to drugs and random vandalism.  And they're constantly harassed, pursued and arrested by the community's Police Sargent Doberman (no kidding about the name). Played by Harry Northup (one of DeNiro's cabbie buds in 'Taxi Driver), Doberman behaves like one of the cops left over from a 'Billy Jack' movie who'd been kicked in the head by Tom Laughlin....repeatedly.

       What sets apart this film, which over years established itself as a cult favorite, was director Jonathan Kaplan's unerring skill in manipulating his young cast, who appear directly plucked off the streets of 70's suburbia. (In their first roles, you can spot Matt Dillon and Vincent Spano).  

     Kaplan, who began his career grinding out Roger Corman's drive-in sludge, moved on to bigger and better things like "The Accused", "Unlawful Entry" and "Love Field".  But you can see in "Over the Edge what he learned in Corman's do-or-die school of wham-bam exploitation.....swift broad strokes of melodramatic angst with sudden eruptions of startling violence. 

        The kids are unable to connect with parents obsessed by living in their trimmed lawn bubbles. These unthinking adults no doubt expected their kids to behave like cheerful tykes from a TV sitcom, befitting their new plush surroundings. But they're left their children restless and cut off from any real outside cultural stimuli. 

     The community grudgingly gave them a pathetic underwhelming 'teen center' consisting of a few games inside a Quonset hut then yanks it away from them as a punishment tool......

.......thus lighting the fuse for the film's outrageous climax, a spectacle of fiery destruction perpetrated by the kids after they trap their parents inside their school while attending a meeting about the rising tide vandalism.  

      Supposedly inspired by a real incident, this way over the top, practically operatic fireball finale requires a certain amount of belief suspension, but still manages to pack a punch. And along the way, we had to admire director Kaplan and cinematographer Andrew Davis for their use of the stark Colorado landscapes to accentuate the lonely solitary environment the kids find themself  forced into. (Davis would later excel as a director of blockbuster thrillers like "The Fugitive", "Under Siege" and Steven Segal's "Above the Law" and "Under Siege".)

         Well worth seeing by all cinema buffs and easily available on free streaming services. 4 stars (****) for a film that more than earns its cult status.

        

MIDWEEK MADNESS WRAP-UP........U.S. BQ VISITORS: JUST A REMINDER ABOUT YOUR MIDTERM VOTING CHOICES......

 We present a fairly concise overview of the Republican field running in the midterm elections......

       Please vote as if saving democracy from Orange Diaperman and his flying monkeys depended on you.....

         Because it does....on all of us. 

'THE BRIGHTNESS'.....A STUNNING PRANK AND A MEMORABLE WEDDING FOREVER ALTER LIVES ON A COLLEGE CAMPUS.....

 The Brightness by Chad Harbach (2026)

     There's no getting around it.......this spectacularly ambitious epic of American college life, a whale of a read, does demand your time and full attention. Quite a lot of it, in fact.

     Worth it? Simple answer......yes. Even as the book's final third section began to wear me out a little, by that time I'd become so utterly immersed in Chad Harbach's cast of characters that I knew I could never stop reading till I reached that final sentence. And then those last few chapters, filled with the emotions and events of everything that's come beforehand, left me sighing in bittersweet satisfaction and actually eager to see the story continue on.

     "The Brightness" unfolds in the little picturesque universe of Westish College, Wisconsin, first brought to life in author Harbach's "The Art of Fielding". (which also serves as something of a clever meta trope in this new lengthy expansion.....) Pella, beloved only child of the college's late President, had finally escaped an impulsive bad marriage and returned to Westish to finally enroll and graduate at 27. She now finds herself living in two disparate worlds......that of the scholars of literature she's befriended and the brawny, burly world of her fiance Mike, the school's dedicated athletics director.

     Pella's dearest (and most brilliant) undergrad friend Irma, has conspired with two classmates to perpetrate an outrageous prank on several of the school's star athletes. It's a provocative, controversial stunt that not only roils the campus but captures and captivates the attention of the entire country, with repercussions that will forever affect all of the story's major characters.

     But there's way, way more upending pivotal events that await these Westish folk as they attend a grand destination wedding off the coast of Rhode Island. It's a non-stop exhausting celebration that not only consumes almost two thirds of the book, but brings about monumental, life changing decisions in the lives of Pella, Irma, Mike and those in their orbit.

      Chad Harbach crafts this saga with intricately thought out prose and insights that cover a multitude of issues.......the rise of feminism vs. the patriarchy, the sacrifices of artists for their art, the bonds of parents and children the ebb and flow of friendships, and the quest of everyone young to figure out their own fulfilling place in the world.

     "The Brightness", even with its voluminous heft of pages, still sucks you into its messy world filled with heartbreak and humor, romance and wounding betrayals, crushing grief and the promises of new paths to take. I wouldn't have missed it for anything and I'd recommend readers to stop in and stroll about the Westish quads for some bright college days..... and at times, some dark and cloudy......

      4 Stars (****).

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP.....SPECIAL EDITON..."OUR BFF VLADDY, HE'S OUR FAVORITE HUMANITARIAN! AND THE PRESIDENT LOVES HIS MUSCULAR ASS TOO!"

 

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BQ visitors......have a great, great weekend!

And this special message for Trumpanzees......Trump wants you to vote as if he's on the ballot. This is who you're really voting for if you check off a box or pull a lever for Trump's Rethuglican candidates.....

      Does this line up with your supposed Christian values?  Your Dear Leader supporting a slaughterer of innocent women and children of Ukraine, and an ally of Iran, supplying them with vital intelligence they need to kill American soldiers......is this your idea of a "humanitarian", as Trump's minion Steve Witkoff called him?  Use the 2 or 3 remaining brain cells you have left and think about it......

       

        Just askin'.......