'THE TRIAL OF BILLY JACK'......THE LAST ANGRY MAN STRIKES BACK....

The Trial Of Billy Jack (1974)    Apart from any discussion of the monumentally complicated writer-director-actor Tom Laughlin, "The Trail Of Billy Jack" serves as a textbook example of what happens when, following a huge box office success, a filmmaker takes on his next project......

             Fueled by a blank-check budget, a swollen ego to match and a huge ready-and-waiting audience,many a movie director with an enormous previous success has met their doom.......delivering a bloated, self-indulgent mess that only they and their loved ones could sit through......

             The easiest comparison:  enduring the 170 minutes of "The Trial Of Billy Jack" is akin to surviving the three George Lucas 'Star Wars' prequels or Spielberg's "1941".......(we're tempted to include Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate", but truth be told, we have a soft spot in our hearts for that one, which we'll deal with in a future post.....)

             As a young actor throughout the 1950's, Laughlin struggled for bit parts.....you can spot him as the cocky pilot in "South Pacific" and one of the beach boys ogling Sandra Dee in "Gidget",

              In the late 1960's, he emerged as a fiercely independent filmmaker, using a biker movie "Born Losers" to introduce his signature creation, Billy Jack, the taciturn, part Native American ex-Green Beret Vietnam vet......

              Billy, as crafted and portrayed by the monotone-voiced, expressionless Laughlin. was the silent, proficiently deadly Western hero, now amped up and re-imagined to take on the strife of cultural and political chaos tearing the country apart.  Seemingly peaceful and hoping to commune with the Universe, Billy Jack is incapable of turning the other cheek to injustice.....

              And here's where we arrive at the skewed, much ridiculed duality of both Laughlin and his character,   The promise of vengeful violence against his tormentors is the only thing that emotionally engages Billy Jack. As he performs an entertaining slow burn to pump up the audience, Billy's eyes light up and he grins happily as he prepares to reign down karate kicks that will shatter the kneecaps and crack the skulls of his enemies. (At times, he gleefully describes the extant of the physical injuries he's about to inflict on thugs who unwisely surround him. He can barely contain his anticipatory glee......)

                Even with his minimalist acting and clumsy filmmaking skills, Laughlin successfully touched a raw nerve with a populace unsettled by the societal divisions caused by the never-ending Vietnam war and the darkening cloud of Richard Nixon in the White House......

                He struck gold with his own self-financed re-release of  1971's "Billy Jack", in which Billy fights off bigots and bullies who attack the peace-loving teens of  the 'Freedom School'.....an ultra-liberal, touchy-feely haven run by saintly, self-sacrificing Jean Roberts. (Laughlin's wife and filmmaking partner Delores Taylor)

                 Flush with box office cash and emboldened by his success, Lauglin unleashed "The Trial Of Billy Jack", his grand magnum opus.......which was basically the first "Billy Jack" film ballooned into mythic grandeur, deliriously righteous in its anger against the sinister, conspiratorial government and corporate Powers-That-Be and a guided tour through every American calamity imaginable. (The My Lai massacre, the Kent State massacre, the governmental rape of Native American lands and rights.....take your pick)

                And in the release of the film itself, Laughlin revolutionized the entire film distribution system, putting the film immediately into a thousand theaters whose playing time he directly leased with flat fees, thereby keeping all the actual box office money instead of splitting any of it with the theaters. (Laughlin's wide release pattern, coupled with a massive avalanche of TV ads, eventually became the template adopted by all the major studios, starting with "Jaws", a year after this film was released.)

               The film itself defies any reasonable, coherent description. On a holy mission to expose the violence and corruption of the times, Laughlin didn't even feel the need to use real actors, who might have given his scenes the melodramatic power he aimed for. He populated the movie with embarrassing amateurs, announcing their lines like toddlers at a grade school pageant. The assorted villains look like they were recruited while waiting in line at the supermarket.......when Laughlin and the haggard, weary, outraged Taylor rage at them, this bunch can only stare back at them blankly.

                For lovers of cinematic lunacy, a treasure trove waits for you here. Delores Taylor's students conduct exposes of furniture and appliance stores, which earns them harassment from the FBI and CIA. Laughlin wanders through Arizona landscapes in search of his Native American spiritual bonding.......at one point, he's painted blue, resembling that addled Acidhead who so enraged Jack Webb on the legendary "Dragnet" episode. The town goons entertain elderly couples at a community dance by stripping and torturing a young Native American on the dance floor. And for the grand finale....... a student massacre by the National Guard, who've no qualms about plugging a little amputee tyke chasing after his pet bunny.

                Need we go on?

                All of this madness, we should point out, includes stunningly photographed scenery and an Elmer Bernstein score that heaves and swells at all the right moments........any professionalism on display in this film comes strictly from the music and camerwork.  The rest of it would lead you to believe that maybe it was directed by Laughlin's then 19 year old son Frank.........whose name gets placed in the director's credit by his dad.

                  Laughlin went on to make the little seen "Billy Jack Goes To Washington".....(which we'll cover eventually.....it's just too painful to think about now...)  But with this everything-but-the-kitchen-sink  film, whatever you may think of it, he'd reached the peak of his art and his messaging......the last angry man left nothing out.

                  As a unique oddity and one-of-kind artifact of the 1970's, we put together at least 2 stars (**) for Laughlin's mighty, misbegotten epic........we wished he'd lived long enough to make one more Billy Jack movie.......in which Billy slyly grins as he explains to Donald Trump how an upcoming kung fu kick will drain the orange out of the President's face and send that yellow wig flying off into the Rose Garden bushes.......

               

             

'THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES'......THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE DELETED SCENES....

The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes (1970)  As much as we love coming back to this movie, year after year, the viewings always leave us a bit sad........realizing we're only watching about half of what was meant to be an epic film......

              Some film directors never get to make their long cherished 'dream' projects....(such as Hitchcock's lifelong attempts at the romantic ghost story "Mary Rose").......others do get that chance, only to experience a 'be-careful-what-you-wish-for' catastrophe.....

              Billy Wilder and his longtime screenwriter collaborator, I.A.L. Diamond, unmatched masters of delicious wit, labored over ten years on their Sherlock Holmes script, a jewel of a screenplay that cleverly upended the typical Holmes-ian mysteries while celebrating them at the same time......

               When finally ready to film, the Wilder/Diamond project, episodic in structure like a series of novellas, would require what was then called a 'roadshow' presentation in theaters........with a three hour running time, intermission and tickets sold on a reserved seat basis like legitimate theater....

              But by 1970, the 'roadshow' movie, abused by studios who used the format to present a series of bloated, overproduced, abysmal musicals (chasing the 'Sound Of Music' golden goose), was headed for the tar pits, sinking fast.  And truly..... neither studios or moviegoers missed them.......

              'Roadshow' movies, by their very elephantine nature, almost always required big movie stars.,,,,,,but for one reason or another, Wilder couldn't line up the expected mega-stars for his Sherlock Holmes epic.....(taking a guess, here, but our feeling was he was exhausted from a lifetime of handling and wrangling Iconic actors....and besides, for this dream project movie, the star was the story.....and Billy Wilder's direction of it....)

               Going against the grain, Wilder chose two superb, but completely unknown British actors for his Holmes and Watson, Robert Stephens and Colin Blakely.......and plucked Christopher Lee out of the horror trenches for his first big mainstream film role as Holmes' imperious brother Mycroft.

               Wilder went ahead and filmed his and Diamond's massive script, which sent Holmes and Dr. Watson off on a variety of improbable adventures.......a comedic encounter with a Russian ballerina, a melancholy romantic mystery involving an deceptive beautiful woman, a gang ofmidgets and the Loch Ness Monster, a puzzler in a room turned upside down, and a role swap that made Watson the sleuth, investigating shipboard honeymooners found naked....and dead.

               But the studio, United Artists was in no way ready to release a 3 hour Sherlock Holmes movie with no stars and unfamiliar storylines.......and the separate episode structure of the film made it relatively easy to whittle down into two hours......

                Some of the episodes had to go........and so they did.

                And tragically, so did the footage. Sliced out of the movie, the Upside Down Room and Naked Honeymooners sequences remain lost.....only the soundtracks of those episodes still survive. (Whoever was responsible for that at UA.....may they rot in hell....)

               What's left in the film: the enormously witty Russian ballerina story which serves as a prologue to the Loch Ness/Midgets/Woman Of Mystery tale.

               For us, it's still a lusciously rendered, unique feast.......sardonic wit, surprises and those winking, contemporary twists in character and plot that you'd expect from Wilder and Diamond.  Stephens and Blakely make a perfect Holmes and Watson.......watching them react to the sly machinations of the Wilder/Diamond script becomes the film's greatest pleasure.

               Add to that the pure whipped cream of an achingly beautiful Miklos Rosza music score, complete with a violin concerto for Holmes to play and you have something close to perfection.

                While we'll always mourn for those missing adventures in "The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes", the remains of the film still entrance us. The BQ rating?  Elementary, dear visitors.....5 stars (*****), a FIND OF FINDS. (And still hoping someone finds that footage....miracles can happen....)

'SEE WHAT I HAVE DONE'......LIZZIE BORDEN PERFORMS UNNATURAL AX....

See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt (2017)    Oh man, did we ever want to savor the hell out of this book......we couldn't wait.

           After all, who doesn't want to read yet another novelist's take on Lizzie Borden, the most legendary accused-then-acquitted murder suspect in American history?

           Okay, maybe there's people who don't want to read another one........but the BQ, lover of....we guess you could label it 'Classical Horror', eagerly dove in, smacking our ghoulish lips.....

            We quickly calmed down.

            Overall, the book's a disappointment........not so much a full fledged novel, more of an exquisitely crafted exercise for a graduate thesis in creative writing.

            Much to admire here in some of its artful prose........but little to seriously engage or grip a reader.

             Author Schmidt unfolds the story through multiple narrators.......three of them real (sisters Lizzie and Emma Borden, the house maid Bridget) and a fictitious character 'Benjamin', a menacing thug-for-hire supposedly recruited by the girls' Uncle John to terrorize their father, Andrew Borden, into treating Lizzie and Emma more fairly in family finances.  Like the Bordens, the thug comes equipped with his own sad, emotionally wrenching backstory.....

             And on and on it slowly goes, with the heart of the book gradually emerging as the deeply unnerving love-hate relationship between the two sisters, the needy possessive Lizzie and big sis Emma, who managed, for a time,  to escape the overpowering gloom 'n doom of the Borden household......

              Schmidt literally rubs your nose in the stink, filth and rot of the Borden home, depicting a place that's frequently  a vomit-inducing house of horrors even before Mr. and Mrs. Borden end up decorating the furniture with their blood and chopped up bodies.  (The family's round the clock fare for all three meals consists of a spoiled leg of mutton and its broth......with detailed descriptions of much sloppy chewing and slurping....gagworthy.....)

               And then it ends with a flurry of fancy prose that would no doubt sound great at a reading during a book signing appearance.........but left us with a resigned shrug, wondering why we bothered to pick this book up at all.  Yawn........

               Lizzie may or may not have taken 40 or 41 whacks at Mom 'n Dad......but for this book....sorry, the BQ can only swing 1 & 1/2 whacks (* 1/2)     We had high hopes for the....uh....cutting edge in Borden tales.....but the ax here is dull.

'RUN OF THE ARROW'........CAUGHT BETWEEN A ROD AND A HARD PLACE.......

Run Of The Arrow (1957)   Long, long before Quentin Tarantino began taking inspiration from video store inventories, audiences gobbled up the primal, primitive 'B' moves from the original Pulp Fictioneer.........Samuel Fuller.

             From his background as a chronicler of crime, both as novelist  and newspaper reporter, Fuller concocted equally  fast 'n furious movies......rapidly paced, hyper violent excursions into a variety of genres....war movies, westerns, noir.......everything was grist for Sam's mill.

             As a reporter, Fuller knew the first paragraph better grab you by the throat and grip you for the rest of the story. He followed the same golden rule in crafting his films........the first scene in any Fuller movie is guaranteed to pin you to your seat.....

             "Run Of The Arrow" kicks off its irresistibly compelling story on the last day of the Civil War at Appomattox. A thoroughly unreconstructed, Irish immigrant Confederate soldier (Rod Steiger, with his trademark Steiger-ish intensity always set at High Heat)  fires the last shot of the war, seriously wounding a Union officer (Ralph Meeker).

              Embittered beyond all measure and incapable of assimilating himself back into the             re-assembled United States, Steiger exiles himself to the Southwest frontier......in hopes of joining up with a group who hates the U.S. Military even more than he does, the Sioux Indian tribe.....

              He's promptly captured by the Sioux and manages to barely survive their 'run of the arrow' ordeal....(which means giving him a head start before bloodthirsty warriors chase him down to kill him). His survival's due to his rescue by a compassionate Sioux widow (Sara Montiel, whose gentle, honey-voiced dialogue comes out of her mouth dubbed in by Angie Dickinson)

               After pledging his allegiance to a Sioux chief (a young, impressively muscled Charles Bronson), Steiger finds himself part of an uneasy, tentative treaty between the tribe and the U.S. Cavalry.....forced to function as a scout to lead a contingent of Army engineers to terrain where their construction of a fort won't interfere with Indian hunting grounds.

               And here's where Sam Fuller's passion for white-hot melodrama blooms........because among the Cavalry expedition is.....surprise, surprise.... Meeker, Steiger's old Civil War nemesis and final gunshot victim, now an Indian-hating gloryhound officer who's itching for battle and doesn't much care for treaties.

                The rabid Meeker is temporarily held in check by the troop's more humane commanding officer (Brian Keith), who calmly tries to bring a little common sense and simple wisdom to the always simmering-to-a-boil Steiger. (Fuller doesn't allow this conversation to dig too deep, just enough to further unsettle Steiger's character.....when Kieth brings up the Ku Klux Klan, Steiger defensively mutters, "I don't know anything about that....")

                In true, pulpy Fuller fashion, the script comes up with a way to bring its two primary antagonists full circle, right back to that unforgettable opening scene......and providing the volcanic, conflicted Steiger with something approaching an epiphany......

               What's timely, disturbing,  and still true here........Fuller's final title card, which instead of providing the closure of "The End", tells the audience that it's up to them to write the end of the story.....(which, to put bluntly by us, comes down to "are you good ole boys from the South gonna put the Civil War behind you and join the U.S.of A. with the rest of us?".......)

                 Judging from the nonsense topic of whether we should hold on to Confederate monuments (we say melt 'em down into school playground equipment)....and the rise of Baby Orange, the Klan's  and Nazis' most favorite President since Jefferson Davis and Hitler........we'd sadly say that "Run Of The Arrow"s finale still hasn't been written......

                 Which further proves that any Samuel Fuller movie is always worth a look.......we promise he'll never bore you......3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)......and good luck to all of us writing the ending....

WHY THE BQ TURNED DOWN TIME MAG'S 'PERSON OF THE YEAR'

         Yes, welcome visitors....breaking news.......we PROBABLY would have been awarded with this year's "Person Of The Year" cover from Time Magazine......but unfortunately.......

                *......we spent no time (that we know of) attempting to destroy the Constitution Of The United States, spread hatred, racism and division throughout the entire country, and pick twitter fights with Gold Star widows.

                *....... we made no claims that Barak Obama was hiding somewhere behind the walls in our house, recording everything we said......

                *........we didn't have a recording of ourselves bragging about sexually assaulting women, so we never got the opportunity to claim the tape was fake......

                *.........we didn't tell the whole country that a loathsome, child-assaulting pedophile would be preferable to a Democrat in the Senate......

                *..........we've yet to cozy up with any international murderous dictators who put out hits on anyone they don't particularly care for.......

                 Time Magazine editors, exasperated at these lack of accomplishments, asked us, "Well, what did you do to deserve this honor?"
                 We explained to them that we felt that our exhaustive, detailed coverage of "The Green Slime", "The Crawling Eye", "The Blob", and "The Horror Of Party Beach"  more than qualified us for the honor......

                 The silence on the other end of the line was deafening.

                 And as a plus, we further pointed out that we hadn't yet brought the world to the brink of nuclear war by engaging in an elementary-school name calling contest with an already psychotic loon......

                  To which Time replied, "But that's exactly what would get you a shot at Person Of The Year!"

                  We were on the verge of hanging up on Time, when one of the editors suddenly blurted out, "Wait! Do you really own a copy of "The Green Slime"?  Hey, do you think we could borrow-"

                  We hung up.

                  There's always 2018.........


                   As for this year, all joshing  aside, our personal pick for People Of The Year......all of the #Me Too women who came forward this year.......especially the ones who came forward after Baby Orange got off the bus.......

             

'SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL'.....WHEN THE 'V' WORD MEANT SOMETHING ELSE......

Sex And The Single Girl (1964)    When the BQ first encountered this quintessential 1960's sex comedy....(which features, like all its companion films, no sex whatsoever).....we had to scrape our jaw off the floor after seeing the screenplay credit......

             This breezy romp, which tirelessly mimicked the Doris Day/Rock Hudson movies of the era, was co-written by Joseph Heller.......the celebrated author of one our all time favorite novels, "Catch-22".   (A truly unsettling moment for the BQ.......it's as if we found out that Ernest Hemingway wrote "Pillow Talk"  or Jack Kerouac scripted "Viva Las Vegas"......)

              Not surprisingly, underneath the bright,  shiny, Technicolored Warner Brothers gloss, you can still sense Heller casting his scathing,  satirical eye on the both the media and culture of the period.

                Appropriating only the title of the Helen Gurley Brown bestseller (along with her name, awarded to Natalie Wood's character), the script simultaneously lampoons tabloid journalism and the proliferation of self-help books written by people who fundamentally didn't know what the hell they were talking about. (We still recall these annoying phonies haunting the late night talk shows....)

                  Tony Curtis and the executive board of "Stop", the sleazy celebrity rag he writes for, constantly engage in orgies of self-congratulation about the soulless depravity and cheap sensationalism of their publication.   Their constant goal: exposing 'Sex and The Single Girl' author and marital expert Dr. Helen Brown as a......as a......(dare we say it out aloud in 1964??)...as a VIRGIN!  Whew.....pardon us while we stop to catch our breath and calm down......

                   Curtis's master plan here involves posing as a patient of Wood's......for his fictitious backstory, he freely borrows the marital woes of his bickering, middle-aged next door neighbors...(Lauren Bacall and Henry Fonda, who either smooch 'n coo or verbally hammer away at each other like Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows in "The Honeymooners")

                   The ever smooth Curtis has no trouble rendering the sweetly high-strung Wood smitten....but remember, this being a 1964 studio romantic comedy, nobody gets anywhere near a bedroom.   True love, however, finds a way to intervene and further complicate the plot.......

                   Unlike other more severe critics of this movie, we didn't mind its wacky, fly-off-the-rails third act, which sends the entire cast off on a "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" Los Angeles freeway chase......which ends at the airport,  with a frenzied Highway patrolman (the frenzied Larry Storch) threatening to arrest everyone, including arriving and departing flights.  (This guy would be the logical choice for enforcing Trump's immigration bans...)

                    All in all, a superb 1960's time capsule souvenir, (and an obvious inspiration for "Down With Love", that studied 2003 Day/Hudson pastiche with Rene Zelwegger and Ewan McGregor).....with loads of delightful moments and folks to remember. Such as.......

                      *That benevolent old wheeze Edward Everett Horton, playing Curtis's ultra penurious CEO, installing coin-operated water fountains and executive washrooms, where a peak in the mirror and a paper towel costs you a quarter each....

                      *Sexy-as-hell nightclub singer Fran Jeffries, romping around the movie as Curtis's extremely temporary girlfriend, until Tony realizes he's fallen for you-know-who....

                      *The bizarre sight of Lauren Bacall and Henry Fonda dancing....the Twist. We guarantee you won't see anything like it in any other romantic comedy...

                       *The dawn of modern meta-gags......with Curtis in a woman's bathrobe constantly referred to as resembling Jack Lemmon in ...."that movie where the guys dress up as girls...."

                       At close to 2 hours, it's a shade too long for so much fluff, but we liked it anyway.....and we'll pucker up for 3 virginal stars (***) for "Sex And The Single Girl".....until the very end, we know in our hearts that Natalie's titanium chastity belt will remain unlocked......




           

'TONY ROME'.......AT 50, IT STILL SWING-A-DING-DINGS.....

  Tony Rome (1967)    American movies and culture may have started to undergo major upheavals in the 1960's, but you'd never know it from the studio vehicles put out by the veteran Hollywood superstars. For them and their movies.......life stayed the same......

              The film universes inhabited by the Icons maintained the same comforting worldviews since  the films they started making in the l940's.....

               Doris Day still defended her virtue, John Wayne still shot down bad guys.....and Frank Sinatra was still the hippest cat in the room....ring-a-ding-ding, baby.....doobie-doobie-doo.....

               Very little of the real world at large ever intruded their into their films......which, to us, didn't decrease their entertainment value......but did make these movies instantly,  quaintly archaic, even at the moment of their release into theaters.....

               Hitting its 50th anniversary this year,  Frank Sinatra's "Tony Rome" arrived as a sun-drenched, set in Miami version of a standard meat 'n potatoes noir-ish Private Eye movie....

              Sinatra's daughter Nancy sings the simple, bouncy title tune.......far more of a comfort zone for her severely limited vocal range than the monumental John Barry title song for "You Only Live Twice", which she painfully struggled through earlier in the year.

             And the movie gets off to a zippy start with a zoom shot that homes in on some young girl's ass with the precision of a surgical nuclear strike.....hey, remember what year this was made......

              Like many movie and book P.I's, Tony is a disillusioned, cynical former cop who now skirts the edges of the law as he digs into the sleazy mysteries presented to him. His latest case, involving a dysfunctional wealthy family and a missing diamond pin, gets him regularly punched, chloroformed and shot at.  As the bodies pile up, Sinatra trades suggestive quips with a been-there-done-that
divorcee-playgirl (Jill St. John) who thankfully wanders in and out of the movie (and the plot) in hip-hugging outfits and bikinis......

               Sinatra makes his notorious impatience and limited attention span for the slow pace of making a movie work for him here. (How he would have loved collaborating with one-take-and-we're-done director Clint Eastwood). His casual, distracted line readings fit Tony Rome's blase attitude perfectly.......and fortunately, he's backed up by a solid cast of dependable character actors like Simon Oakland, Richard Conte and Robert Wilke)

               The film leisurely strolls around various locations in Miami Beach.....(or as St.John's character cracks, "20 miles of sand in search of a city....")  Sinatra picks up clues here and there, clashes with suspects and thugs.....(this may be the only movie we've seen that includes death-by-vase).....and periodically stops to ogle St.John while she doles out her dialogue with weary sarcasm.

                And that's about it.....a slickly put together studio package that doesn't look much different from the 500 or so private eye movies that preceded it.......with the possible exception of a scene in which a much bemused Sinatra stands back to watch a passive-aggressive pair of lesbians put on a soap opera melodrama in front of him.

                You can sort of call "Tony Rome" a product of its time.......but even in 1967, movies like this were rapidly beginning to look old school and old fashioned.......

               For us, the film's final moments wonderfully  preserve that smirky, hipster vibe of 60's movies that always make us grin.....(the attitude that Mike Meyers plumbed for laughs in his three Austin Powers capers....) 

               As Jill St. John walks away from him, Sinatra's head bounces side to side to the rhythm of her rotating rear end......and that earns her another of those guided missile zoom shots into her backside, filling up the Panavision screen with her ample bottom. 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)......as Austin Powers would say, " Yeah, Baby!"

             

DEPT. OF MOST THANKFUL, LEAST THANKFUL THINGS.......

             'Tis the day for thanks here......so here goes......

              Most Thankful.......forever....amazing family.....the mighty force of nature that is Mrs. BQ and Beloved Daughter.....

                Everyone who's stopped in to visit the blog......still love doing it after a year and we hope you're enjoying the posts as well......much love and good holiday tidings to you all......

                Libraries and booksellers everywhere........

                 Turner Classic Movies.......how could we live without you?

                 All Chinese take-out places where we can get boneless spare ribs and crisp, hot eggrolls....

                 Our cardiologist......(who must never know about the previous item we're thankful for, so please, don't breathe a word......)

                  Special Counsel Robert Mueller.......stay on the job, Bob......for all our sake's and for future generations......save America from the horrors of Baby Orange.

                   Everyone in politics, the arts and journalism who's part of the Resistance

                   And now.....a brief plunge into the Abyss.....

                   Least Thankful.........Baby Orange.......unfit as a human being, let alone a President....sincerely hope that the PussyGrabber-In-Chief and his new Best Buddy, the Alabama Pedophile choke on their drumsticks.......

                    Comic book movies........Memo to Hollywood studios.......there's still millions of us out here who still crave real movies with real stories.......without people in spandex hurling each other into buildings.......remember us?

                   All the GOP Baby Orange enablers........you spineless worms......have a ball at your 2018 Armageddon

                     Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.........like long lost deleted characters from a recently found draft of "1984".........

                     Taco Bell and Chipotle.........why do even you even exist? Who the hell walks through your doors a second time?

                      Winter........if we could get away with it, we'd nap from December 26th til sometime in the middle of March......(only after we'd opened all our gift movies and books....)

                    That damn uncomfortable seat on the exercise bike......which makes us feel like we're getting an hour long prostate exam........(guess what we're hinting at for the Holidays......)

             
                    Enough rants.....once again, thanks to all BQ visitors.....back tomorrow with more fun stuff.

                   

                 

'THE SINS OF RACHEL CADE'.......ANGIE ASSUMES THE MISSIONARY POSITION.....

The Sins Of Rachel Cade (1961)   A fever dream come true for the BQ.......the collision of  an overripe 1960's studio production with a favorite screenwriters' melodrama concept........the pure-as-the-driven-snow woman of faith who....uh.....drifts. Into.....LUST!

            And what better place to set this steamy tale but in a steamy native village in the 1939 Belgian Congo......reproduced almost entirely on a Warner Brothers soundstage and populated with a stellar line-up of every prominent black supporting actor of the era (Woody Strode, Juano Hernandez, Errol John, Scatman Crothers, Rafer Johnson).

             The sweet 'n gorgeous Angie Dickinson plays the sweet 'n gorgeous Rachel Cade, a committed missionary nurse filled with righteous fervor about bringing both modern medicine and Christianity to the natives.......who worship a perpetually pissed off deity who hangs out in a mountain overlooking their huts.

              Angie's got her hands full in every way......as soon as she arrives at the makeshift village hospital, the doc in charge promptly drops dead of a coronary (an all too brief role for Douglas Spencer, the guy who screamed "Keep watching the skies!" at the end of "The Thing")

               To further complicate her life, the cynical, atheistic Belgian military administrator (Peter Finch) has the hots for her.  As if that isn't enough, literally dropping from the sky in a crashed plane comes a dashing young Boston doctor enlisted in the RAF (the impossibly dashing young Roger Moore)....

                Guess what.......dashing young Doc also develops the hots for temperature-takin', bible-thumpin' Angie......

                 Before long, artfully arranged droplets of sweat appear on Nurse Angie's brow........not from the Congo heat, but....oh, heavens.....from sexual arousal.  Ditching her True Believer
status, she finally succumbs and allows Roger to roger her roundly........leaving her....gasp.....pregnant.

                 The noble, unloved, self-sacrificing Finch offers to marry Angie after a clueless Roger flies off to rejoin the war.......even if Angie only holds semi-warm feelings for Finch, he's still willing to help her stave off the expected scandal and humiliation of a white baby popping out of her in the middle of an African village. What a guy.

                You've figured out by now that we didn't take any of this film too seriously, but that doesn't mean we didn't have a hoot and a half enjoying it. Finch, Dickinson and Moore make for an intriguing, charismatic romantic triangle........you definitely want to hang on til the end to see who ends up with who.....and as a bonus, it unfolds over a  typically lush, insistent Max Steiner music score.....and with the exception of a few establishing shots, never leaves the obvious theatrical  confines to that African-decorated Warner Brothers stage.

                The BQ much prefers this warmer, kinder, 1960's view of an Evangelical woman.....as opposed to some of today's real life southern fried Evangelicals who've used their bibles to find loopholes to excuse pedophilia and sexual assault.......we forgive Rachel Cade her sins and pray for her to get 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).....after all, it was a hot night, no radio or TV to watch.....and she had young Roger Moore all to herself......you do the math.....

           

'FUZZ'........"WHAT DID HE CALL US? INEPT?".......

Fuzz (1972)    We could spot, in certain random chunks of this bit of 1970's cinematic flotsam, what the filmmakers were going for.......

               As raggedy, unformed and unfocused as this movie plays out, we still admired its attempts to duplicate the free-wheeling improvisation and camaraderie of Robert Altman's "MASH"......switching the comedy hijinks from Korea to a beleaguered police precinct in Boston......it even throws in one of the rollicking 'MASH' medics, Tom Skerrit.

               Adapted by Evan Hunter from one of his own 'Ed McBain' 87th precinct police procedurals, the film's precinct scenes take a valiant stab at Altman-esque mania........overlapping dialogue, mumbled asides, frat-boy pranks and giggling among the detectives (Burt Reynolds, Jack Weston, Skerrit), and lots of leering at the precinct's new Va-Va-Voom undercover bombshell....(Raquel Welch.)

              But all the movie's strenuous efforts to become 'MASH' with cops come off as imitative and clumsy. The jokes don't land. You can hear the crickets chirping between the lines.  And the film's never as funny as it thinks it is.....or hopes to be.

               To make matters worse, 'Fuzz' seems to give up on this limited faux-Altman goal about halfway through. With the arrival of its exotic villain, a murderous extortionist played by Yul Brynner, the movie starts looking like a flat, mundane TV cop show episode....like discarded outtakes from 'The Mod Squad'.

               We did enjoy the cast.....(if only they'd had Altman to work under instead of TV journeyman Richard Colla, tossed into the movie after Brian DePalma walked away from it).....we didn't even mind Burt Reynolds, at the the very height of his smirking, in-jokey career. But Raquel Welch, nursing a deep dislike left over from their "100 Rifles" working experience, did mind Reynolds......kind of unintentionally funny watching them avoid each other in a film they supposedly co-star in........

               About one third of a moderately entertaining film( the precinct stuff)  is buried in the "Fuzz" footage.......we're still not sure it was worth cherry-picking through its mercifully brief 92 minutes to find.  2 stars (**)......and even though its mandated 70's cop show freeze frame promised a sequel....none happened.......and nobody missed it.

           

             

             

           

'THE REIVERS'.......FAMILY-FIED FAULKNER, SWEET 'N SPICY......

The Reivers (1969)      A lost film indeed......a warm-hearted, huggable movie whose audience didn't yet exist at the era it was released.....

          Allow us to explain.......the best thumbnail description of this movie we remember hearing..."rogue Disney."   Taken from William Faulkner's coming-of-age novel and dripping with turn-of-the-century Southern Fried nostalgia, "The Reivers" (an archaic term for 'thieves') trafficked in the same golden, sunlit Americana as any of Uncle Walt's Main Street USA movies......

           But the film, to its credit and its ultimate box office doom, uncompromisingly included whores, whoring and vicious racial bigotry as key elements in its storyline.....

            It may have been the first family film deliberately pitched to families with older kids only and not meant for an outing with the toddlers in tow. And in 1969, that demographic had yet to be cultivated by any studio........(and wouldn't attain its full flowering until the Eisner-Katzenberg  reign of Disney ushered in the modernized, PG-13 family film....)

           Adding to "The Reivers" woes.......audiences wouldn't swallow Steve McQueen, firmly established as the King Of Cool in the previous year's "Bullit", as essentially a character actor playing a charming 1905 Mississippi rascal named Boon Hogganbeck.

            A damn shame......because from the first minute on, the movie proudly wears its huge heart on its sleeve, kicking off with a Burgess Meredith narration as comforting at  thick pancake syrup and an achingly gorgeous John Williams score.  (Hearing this music probably led then 23 year old Steven Spielberg to want Williams as his lifelong collaborator.)

             Handyman Boon,  his black co-rascal Ned McCaslin (Rupert Crosse) and 11 year old Lucius (a Tom Sawyer-ish Mitch Vogel) take off for an adventurous joyride in one of those spiffy, new-fangled automobiles.......a bright yellow 'Winton Flyer' that happens to be the brand new pride and joy of Lucius's stern grandfather, known to one and all as 'Boss' (Will Geer, doing a warm-up to his Grandpa Walton TV role) We should point out here that Cross's character is actually a distant relative of Lucius's family, tracing his lineage back to one of the McCaslin plantation's house slaves.....

            Off this unlikely trio goes, to Memphis and a sumptuous whorehouse where Boon carries on a semi-romantic relationship with angelic, heart-of-gold prostitute Corrie (Sharon Farrell)

             Comic complications ensue when Ned foolishly trades the Winton Flyer for an unreliable race horse, leading to the more than expected rousing sequence where our boys have to win back the car by winning a horse race......

             But not before the movie bluntly reminds you this all came from a Faulkner novel......with the arrival of the menacing, racist bully Sheriff Butch Lovemaiden. (played, naturally, inevitably by Clifton James, the all time specialist in such roles. A few years later, James would turn this signature part into a complete cartoon, chasing after Roger Moore in the Bond films)

             As steeped in familial emotion as his film is, director Mark Rydell doesn't beg for an audience's affection,,,,,,,,on its way to an all-ends-well finale, the film throws in a disturbing plot development, albeit offscreen, involving McQueen's brutal mistreatment of the too good to be true Farrell, one that 48 years later, still wouldn't sit well along side today's  current events. (We're guessing that if the film had been made under the Disney Touchstone banner, this bit would have promptly landed in the deleted scene pile.)

            "The Reivers", however, stands its ground, its blatant sentimental whimsy sometimes sharpened with the cruelties of its Old South setting. The film's pleasures are many.........that marvelous Williams score,
a supporting cast of virtually every single country-fied character actor working in films at the time......and a concluding moment between Lucius and his grandfather that we defy anyone to watch with a dry eye

               A neglected oddity in 1969, but the BQ's had a soft spot in our hearts for it ever since. And in today's churning cinematic mess of superheroes and self-absorbed mumblecore, we doubt we'll see anything like it in the near future. 4 good ole stars (****).....y'all give it a try, ya hear?

           

           

             
           

'FIRST MEN IN THE MOON'.........LOST IN THE LENS PITS OF LUNA!

First Men In The Moon (1964)........we borrowed the headline for this post from one of the taglines from the movie's poster......although we always think "lost in the lens pits of luna" still stands as a good description of the BQ's state of mind since early childhood.....

            So much we love about this movie.....where to begin. Not only one of the most fanciful, thrilling and humorous of the Ray Harryhausen special effects spectacles, but as an added bonus for  lifelong Anglophiles like us.....it's oh so very British.....

            Some purists carped about this, but we got a kick out of master screenwriter Nigel Kneale and co-writer Jan Read framing the H.G.Wells novel as a flashback.......after a 1964 moon landing crew discovers they weren't the first to arrive. (And we still can marvel at how closely the film's 1964 depiction of a detached module landing on the lunar surface mirrors the actual real event five years later.....)

              Once the movie goes back to 1899, we fall head over heels for the picture postcard country cottages and Lionel Jeffries' relentlessly eccentric Prof. Cavor.  No British character actor ever worked harder to be lovable and exasperating at the same time as Jeffries........this role is the epitome of his cinematic work......(at times, so frenzied and apoplectic that he can only spit out two words at a time....."I'll explain.....I'll explain....")

              When the film finally gets to the moon, it's a visual feast of wonders. Ray Harryhausen's lunar world may be the stuff of fantasy, but in every shot, it's gorgeous to behold......(including those advertised lens pits the actors go tumbling through....)

               And befitting the only Harryhausen film shot in wide screen Panavision, the supreme wizard of special effects animates a suitably wide screen monster, a giant, roaring caterpillar with jumbo Toys-R-Us red eyes.....

                Ultimately, in the middle of the incident-filled final third of the movie, Jeffries' Cavor becomes something of a tragic hero, a lone empathetic humanist left by himself to comprehend an utterly alien, insectoid  society.  It's just a shame that the movie, which took its own sweet time getting him to the moon, didn't stay with him for an extra scene or two at the end......

                 That's enough quibbling......back to the goodies......Laurie Johnson's thunderously ominous main title music, deftly duplicating the heft of a Bernard Herrmann score......the surprise cameo by Peter Finch as an bumbling official......and a brief wonderful comic bit by the iconic Miles Malleson.

                 For a highly recommended BQ getaway, nothing beats an H.G Wells/Ray Harryhausen trip to the moon......4 stars (****).....and just as the posters and the film's opening credits promise.....it's all photographed in glorious...Luna-Color!

'FALLEN'.......THE STORE BRAND YA MOVIE.......

Fallen (2016)   In our eternal role as Doting Dad, once again we succumbed to Beloved Daughter's entreaties to join her watching this film adaptation of yet another Young Adult novel series......in which, if you haven't guessed already, two supernatural teen studs vie for the favors of a conflicted, troubled heroine......

               Where have we heard this plot before?

               First mystery that perplexed us.....why does this movie even exist?  The studios that jumped on the YA bandwagon, salivating over the 'Hunger Games' and 'Twilight'  cash flow, jumped off just as fast when all the imitation YA's they produced went belly up......

                The filmmakers' choice of material here is especially pathetic......a blatantly generic, copycat version of a hundred other Young Adult novels, movies and TV shows.  Like a 59 cent coloring book you buy for kids at a supermarket, it's a series of barely sketched out images of all the expected YA tropes......the bad boy, the brooding boy, the girl torn between them, and the usual assortment of snarky, sinister and pop-culture wisecracking bystanders.....

                 If they'd only added a few gags and Anna Faris,  the movie could have easily functioned as a "Scary Movie" equivalent to Young Adult movies.......

               The plot? Oh, yes....we almost forgot But then so did the people who slapped together this movie.....

                Instead of vampires and werewolves, our motley crew of sullen hearthrobs and hotties  are fallen angels.....cast out of heaven and stuck on earth because they couldn't make up their minds whether to stick with God or join Big Red down in Hell......

                While watching this, it occurred to us to wonder........how come these thousands-of-years-old angels all look like teens and have to attend a school for social misfits and psychos?

                The school's a hoot......a sprawling European castle whose primary method of healing for its unruly, unhappy student body is an Olympic swimming pool......

                Somewhere near the end of the film.....(the point at which we checked our watch and muttered "Oh, thank God Almighty...")......cast members sprout glowing, cartoonish angel wings and engage in aerial dogfights high in the clouds.  Yes they do. Really.

                 By now, the target audience for this film is probably savvy enough to not hold their collective breaths waiting for any further adaptations of the subsequent books in the "Fallen" series.  (As we mentioned before, the audience should consider it a miracle that the various production companies involved managed to scrape up enough money to make even one of these.)

                 As the credits rolled, Beloved Daughter asked jokingly...."want to watch it again?"

                 Only in Hell.  Zero stars. (0).

             

'THE 9TH GIRL'......DEEP FROM THE LIBRARY BOOK SALE BAG.....

The 9th Girl by Tami Hoag (2013)    Truth be told,by the time we stick our hands into the bottom of  the canvas bag we take with us to library book sales, the BQ can't even remember what books we grabbed......

            Sometimes we're pleasantly surprised with our  extracted hidden treasures...("oh yeh, been meaning to read that one for years....").......and sometimes we hold the book in our hands as if it's a year old take-out carton of fried rice.....("what the hell......how did this get in here?")

            This book's inclusion in the bag stumped us, cause as wide ranging and eclectic as the BQ's taste runs, we rarely pick up police procedurals........it's one of the thriller/mystery genres that frankly, we have little interest in.....

               Before anyone gets upset, we don't begrudge any fellow reader who takes pleasure in those many stories where dogged, determined cops painstakingly interrogate suspects and dig up clues as they hunt down their quarry..........what can we say, those books just aren't our particular cup of blood......

             But on the basis that there must have been some rational reason why we tossed "The 9th Girl" into the big goody bag.....(possibly because we'd never yet tried a Tami Hoag thriller).....we gave it a shot.....

              And had a great time reading it. We'd say a solid triple, as far as these police things go......

              Hoag puts everything in place that you'd want......a centerpiece murder that's suitably ghastly and grisly (of an angry, rebellious teen girl), a horrifying and as yet, unidentified serial killer.....and of course, the two dogged, determined detectives who painstakingly......well, you know the rest....

             Yes we'll admit.....the interrogation scenes in books like this tend to bore us into a near coma,  which is why we rarely stray into this genre. But Hoag's detective duo, Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska are well drawn characters who've got both crackling chemistry with one another and their own set of personal woes......(particularly Liska, whose troubled teen son becomes a major part of their murder case)

             Structurally, it's clever enough.......the serial killer seems to show up late in the game, almost as an afterthought......and when the crime is fully uncovered, the details of it turn out far more disturbing and heartbreaking than you could ever imagine.

            So bravo to author Hoag for providing us with a fair amount of chills and suspense for a couple of chilly Autumn nights. (But sorry, we're not going to resort to that standard line of Goodreads reviewers...."this is the first book I've read by..........and it won't be the last!!".......we truly can't say when we'll ever sample another Hoag book....police procedurals always remain low on our radar)

             But if this type of mystery appeals to any of our site visitors......dive into this one by all means....3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)......now pardon us while we dig further into the bag......holy crap, what the hell is this one?......(we'll get back to you on it as soon as we read it....)

             

           

           

             

'APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX'......WE LOVE THE SMELL OF BRANDO IN THE MORNING.....

Apocalypse Now Redux (1979)    We decided to jump the gun and not wait a couple years till this film hits its 40th Anniversary.....'cause......life's short and we ain't gettin' any younger here.....

            Having gotten around to viewing Francis Ford Coppola's complete 3 hour and 17 minute version......

            Kurtz's Krazy Kult Lives!  What a relief to hear from FFC himself that the film's end credit sequence...(the napalming of Col.Kurtz's jungle lair)....is completely meaningless and has nothing to do with the ending of either version of the film itself.....and isn't even attached to end of the film anymore.  It was simply a pyrotechnical way to dismantle the set.  So praise the Movie Gods...we're all free to imagine Scott Glenn and the tribesman still randomly slaughtering anyone they come across in the jungle......the horror, the horror....continues.

             Dude, Where's My Board?  Still scratching our heads over this additional cap to the Kilgore (Robert Duvall) episode.  Swiping his surfboard? Really? Smacks of "Animal House Goes To War".....but then we came to realize, if you think of the whole Kilgore sequence as the darkest of comedies.....what better way to wrap it up, with Kilgore's copters in pursuit, loudspeakers blaring a plea for return of a surfboard....

             Boffing The Bunnies  We don't even want to go near discussing how this scene now looks given today's current events and cultural climate........but if nothing else, it's a bluntly accurate rendition of how men viewed Playboy Bunnies and how Hefner presented these girls to 20th century culture.......as living, breathing, inflatable sex toys. And the script has the perfect topping off dialogue exchange....("Who are you?"  "I'm next...")

              The French Colonist "Lost Boys"  Fascinating idea.......and you can envision a whole other movie altogether struggling to emerge from this sequence.  But the glacial pace of it brings the "Apocalypse Now" to a grinding halt.......it plays like an oil painting held up in front of the camera for 15 minutes......you don't even have to look at the screen when it's on, you can listen in while you check your e-mails and not miss anything.....

               And what stays with us.....always.....the film's view of  the Vietnam war as a delirious, seductively lunatic fantasy, devoid of all reason and sanity.  For us, the key to the film resides in Brando's monologue about his awe and admiration of the Viet Cong's atrocity on vaccinated children........hearing it again, we couldn't helping pondering our seemingly never-ending wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.....attempting to comprehend and battle people who've descended to the pure savagery of insects......at what point do we hear Jim Morrison singing "this is the end....."

                With or without all the extra footage, "Apocalypse" remains a 5 star experience (*****) a FIND OF FINDS. Watching it now, while we're afflicted with a President who's far crazier and divorced from reality than Duvall's Lt.Col Kilgore (Baby Orange loves the smell of Red Carpet in the evening........smells like victory).....makes it all the more timely.

                

              

             

'BABY DRIVER'........BABY, YOU CAN DRIVE MY CAR....

Baby Driver (2017).......arrived like a breath of fresh air, since it had been awhile since anyone had laid eyes on one of those too-hip-for-the-room, zippy, Tarantino-esque, pop-culture shoot-em-ups.....(and we definitely do not include the abysmal "Free Fire" in that category)

            Writer-director Edgar Wright, already an established master at upending junky genres with massive doses of adrenalin and self-referential gags ("Hot Fuzz", "Shaun Of The Dead"), pushed all the right buttons here......

              Wright seized on a timeworn noir trope...... the distanced, non-verbal, supernaturally talented getaway driver maintaining his cool while forced to work with a woeful bunch of hot-tempered, stupid and psychotically violent criminal douchebags.  (Ryan O'Neal, Steve McQueen and Ryan Gosling have all had a go at this character in, respectively, "The Driver", "The Getaway" and "Drive"...)

                Pumping up the story and volume, Wright gives his driver, Baby (Ansel Elgort) a hearing impairment and a permanent addiction to Ipod tunes as the kid spectacularly evades fleets of pursuing cop cars.

                 And in the film's most self-celebratory technique, all of the action sequences' cacophonous noise (gunshots, cars doors, etc) is perfectly timed to the beats of Baby's Ipod songs......

                 Exhilarating? For sure. For three quarters of its running time, "Baby Driver" is an unequivocal blast.....a pure rush.  And for those of us who miss the simple joys of "Pulp Fiction" and "Reservoir Dogs", Wright remembers to throw in a motormouthed coterie of scumbags, headed up by the ever smooth, slimy and soon-to-be-forgotten Kevin Spacey  (.....probably your last chance to watch Spacey in a film where his scenes won't be re-shot with another actor......since all his future audiences will consist mostly of fellow rehab group therapy attendees... )

                 Also much fun for all: the actors playing Spacey's various live-wire cohorts (Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, Jon Bernthal, Eliza Gonzalez.....each of them a human grenade, waiting for the right pin-pull moment to explode.  And anyone who remembers the 70's will smile with delight at the surprise cameo by the diminutive actor-singer-songwriter Paul Williams, turning up as a gun dealer in one of those inevitable empty warehouse confabs gone horribly wrong.....

                 Speaking of things gone horribly wrong.......

                 Edgar Wright, like the BQ, must have sat through countless DVDs and Blu-Rays that offered the filmmakers' multiple alternate endings as a special feature......

                  Sorry to say.....the film's final third looks like Wright decided not to save his alternate endings for the Blu-Ray.......instead, it appears he unwisely incorporated all his alternate endings into the film itself.

                  "Baby Driver"s climax lurches exhaustingly from one possible finish to another......turning the film from a fizzy party into a weary, self-indulgent slog from a director who can't make up his mind. By the time the film finished punishing both us and the characters, the arrival of the credits filled us more with a sense of relief than satisfaction.

                   But through most of it, we enjoyed the ride.....until the film literally drowned in its own excess. So we'll hit the gas for 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).....which we would've bumped to a full 4 if only Edgar Wright found a way to keep this high-wire act going from start to finish......

                 

'THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL'.......HOW TO TEACH KIDS TO KNOW WRONG FROM REICH....

The Boys From Brazil (1978)   No one has to explain to us how ridiculous this movie is......

          We know.

          And we effin' LOVE it........

           Novelist Ira Levin was the literary equivalent of cinema shlock genius Larry Cohen......his stories always sprung from one simple whackadoodle premise....(later phrased by Hollywood as "High Concept").......

             Levin's satanic newborn and robot housewives became forever a part of American Pop Culture in the book and film versions of "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Stepford Wives".  But our personal favorites among Levin's gallery of contemporary creepezoids were the little Hitler clones of "The Boys From Brazil"......

             And what a wonderful Santa Claus did Levin's mini-Hitlers find in British producer/impresario Sir Lew Grade.......Sir Lew lavished big money and top-of-the-line talent on the film version of  "The Boys From Brazil".........

              Imagine "They Saved Hitler's Brain" if it had been made by David Lean......pulp lunacy pumped up with world class actors......

              And nobody's kidding here either, the actors tear into it as if it's a Shakespeare adaptation.....(the only creative force who displays an ironic sense of humor about the material is composer Jerry Goldsmith, scoring the film with a grand, lilting Strauss-like waltz......you can almost hear Goldsmith chuckling in the background......)

               We thoroughly reject all the carping about the performances of the two superstar leads.....we savor every idiotic moment in their company......Gregory Peck's utterly mad Dr.Josef Mengele, snarling most of his dialogue under his breath, looking like his head was dipped into a mixture of black shoe polish and Botox.......and Sir Laurence Olivier's Nazi-hunter Ezra Lieberman, deploying every cutesy scene-stealing mannerism he ever picked up during a lifetime in the theater......a cinematic Clash Of The Titans.....(more irony coming from the fact that two years prior to this film, Olivier played the evil Nazi dentist Szell, a thinly disguised version of Mengele in "Marathon Man")

                Levin's plot hinges on Mengele's embracing the nurture side of the 'nature vs. nurture' argument when it comes to his 94 Hitler clones that he's placed all around the world. Intent on exactly duplicating Hitler's childhood, he sends out Neo-Nazi minions to murder all the kids' 65 year old adopted fathers,   Watching this, we can't help wondering if Mengele ever considered what would happen if more than one of his 94 test-tube Fuhrers ascended to the heights of power.......(would the British Mini-Hitler go to war with the American Mini-Hitler? Wouldn't the Swiss Mini-Hitler object?)

                We especially admire how this movie, through the artistry and commitment of its cast, maintains a straight face throughout most its running time........it plays like a classy, high-toned thriller right up until it goes gloriously flying off the rails......in its rural Pennsylvania, beyond bonkers showdown between Peck, Olivier and a pack of ravenous Dobermans.

                  And the BQ wouldn't dream of altering one mili-second of the moment when the raving Peck explains to one of his pride-and-joy clones the genesis of the boy's birth.  To which the kid has the most honest, natural reaction in the entire film....."Oh man, you're weird...."

                 The only thing really chilling about enjoying a fun wallow through the nonsense of "The Boys From Brazil".......knowing that the current White House occupant thinks Nazi supporters are 'very fine people"......and that 39 years later,  nobody had to go to the trouble of cloning a mini-Hitler......enough hoodwinked Americans put a homegrown one into power.

                  Luckily for all of us and the world, the resistance is growing....so hopefully, when we watch it again, as we surely will,  we can still think of the movie as a guilty pleasure fantasy and continue to clone 4 stars (****).....and never have to recall an Orange would-be Hitler demanding we all march to 'Heil To The Chief'......

                 



           

'STRANGER THINGS 2'.......THE 80'S ATTIC, UNEARTHED AGAIN.....

Stranger Things, Season 2 (2017-Netflix)   Easiest comparison.....the second season of this wildly successful series is like "Thunderball" after the "Goldfinger"-like success of Season 1.  Same stuff....only more of it.....dialed up to the max....

          And we do mean more. More creepy creatures, more special effects, more over-the-top Winona Ryder, whose non-stop borderline hysteria becomes a special effect all by itself....

             The creators-writers-directors, the Duffer brothers, have had all manner of praise heaped on them for one essential achievement.......plowing through early Stephen King and all the 1980's  science fiction/fantasy films of Steven Spielberg and Joe Dante like two starving men attacking a smorgasbord.

              Filling up their series with enough reverential homages to fully replicate the era of the films they sampled, the Duffers delighted one and all with their expansive epic of a small town and its plucky children besieged by malevolent otherworldly forces.

             A basic problem arises in the "you ain't seen nothin' yet" approach to the show's second season......

              Given all the traumatic events suffered by the characters.....child abductions, child torture,  alternate-dimension monsters running amuck, the grisly disappearance and death of an innocent teen, the science-gone-awry of a shadowy government agency..........why would any rational human being choose to keep living in this town?

             As far as we can figure out, they all stay for the simple reason that Netflix ordered up another 9 episodes.......the only thing missing: having them all wear caps that read "Make America Weird Again".....

              The show trots out a bigger monster this time and an increased level of misery for show's most victimized, vulnerable character......(the gore quotient also rises, ensuring that some people won't be around for Season 3.....)

               And in an odder plot development, the small town's Dept.Of Scientific Evil Headquarters still fully operates, continuing to futilely cope with the hole they've punched into the nasty, gooey Alternate Dimension. In fact, the townsfolk unwisely use the place as a medical clinic.....(presided over by an older, heavier Paul Reiser, doing a more benevolent version of his "Aliens" corporate snark)......personally, we think they'd be way better off stopping in to a Walgreens walk-in clinic or signing up for Obamacare.....

               It's all still a huge entertaining wallow in all your favorite moments from all your 1980's faves.....there's even an extended, heart-tugging sequence that evokes John Hughes....and we sat back and admired the Duffer brothers for the sheer reckless abandon of their Barnum & Bailey showmanship........smiling at the thought of who-know-what they''ll have to do to top all this in Season 3.....

                Which naturally will make us ask the same question.....why is anybody still living in this insane town??   (Although we won't wonder about that in regard to Winona's character, since she seems to enjoy living in a permanent state of anxious frenzy....)

               3 nostalgic stars (***)......and we strongly suggest a Season 3 in which the populace considers an alternate health-care provider.....

               

             

             

LEAST FAVORITE THINGS.....SPECIAL 'ALABAMA SUNDAY SCHOOL' EDITION.....

           Welcome, BQers, to another week of 'you can't make this stuff up'..........

            Roy Moore  Remember "drain the swamp"??  This Alabama toad brings his own ready-made Everglades with him.........what a perfect GOP candidate.....a southern fried Humbert Humbert.....

            Alabama politicians reference Joseph & Mary to okay pedophilia.....they also hailed the new animated "The Star" as 'the best filmed-live-as-it-happened docu-drama we've ever seen!'   

            Baby Orange at first believes Putin's denial about election meddling......what sealed the deal for Baby Orange:.....Vlad said the magic words....."Honestly, I never worked my ass off to get you elected....believe me..."

            Baby Orange tries to take back "I believe Putin".......after a unnamed White House aide, whispered something to the Prez about Benedict Arnold.......Baby Orange muttered later, ..."but he still sounds like a very fine person.....I hope they don't take down any statues of him....."

            Taylor Swift charges 20.00 a piece for separate materials packaged with her CD's....."Look what you made me do....Look what you made me do......Look how you made me rich.....look how you made me rich....."

             Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K, Bret Rattner, etc, etc.....all together in an exciting new project in the DC comics universe....."The Career Suicide Squad"........

              and to finish....one Most Favorite Thing......

              Voters send Baby Orange a message....."We see you. We know you. We're on to you. The con only works with your redhat zombies. As for the rest of us........if Mueller doesn't end you, eventually, we will......bye bye...."


           

'THE WITCH'......SOMETHING WITCHIN' THIS WAY COMES....

The Witch (2015)   This one sat somewhere in the middle of a huge pile of Halloween DVDs we hoped to get to before Halloween........we gave it an out-of-season shot anyway, since it's perfect for a cold, cold November night's viewing.....

            Not to dissuade you horror buffs out there, but this film's more of a studious exercise in technique than a scare film.....

             Think Stanley Kubrick, but with a rock bottom budget.......like Kubrick's version of "The Shining", it's strictly academic and rigid as a doctoral thesis in its attention to authentic detail.

              And like Kubrick's work it casts a distanced, dispassionate eye on its characters.....inviting you to watch them like scuttling bugs in a glass terrarium.

              Not so much a horror film, more a scholarly treatise......(and nothing livens up a scholarly treatise more than abducted babies and satanic goats....)

             It's that loads 'o laughs time and place, 17th Century New England.....where an uncompromising farmer, his wife and five children get tossed out of their Puritan community......(evidently, from what we can pick up, Dad's too Fundamental even for these folks.....)

              Off they go to make their own way near the deep woods.......
unluckily for them, this place is not exactly Yogi Bear's Jellystone National Park......and this family isn't smarter than your average bears.....

              Horrible incidents pile up, centered around the family's oldest child, a teen girl......played by our new Official Fave, fast rising Star Of Tomorrow Anya Taylor-Joy....(trust us, this girl has all manner of awards in her future...)

               Scary?  (That's usually the only thing folks want to know when we're talkin' horror).  Watch it at night with the lights out and the film's quiet, methodical devotion to its own artistry might sneak up on you after a while. But hardcore gorehounds might end up scratching their heads, finding it a pretentious bore 'n snore.

              We'll say this......writer-director Robert Eggers proves himself a cinematic force to be reckoned with and the BQ can't wait to see what he comes up with next. 3 &1/2 spooky stars (***1/2).......a movie that doesn't get your goat.....the goat gets you.......

'CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND'......HAPPY 50TH.......

Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977     What a way to end the movie year of '77, already galvanized and forever changed by "Star Wars".......with yet another spectacular movie feast from yet another young director proven to be a master visualist.....

             For the purposes of this post, we watched the original theatrical version and Steven Spielberg's final 'Director's Cut'.......we skipped the 1980 'Special Edition' positioned in between these two versions. Why?  It took Spielberg some time to realize that the abysmal, wrongheaded sequence inside the Mothership was all kinds of a horrible idea.......the BQ, on the other hand, hated that scene from the moment we first laid eyes on it in a theater......

            .......for the simple reason that everybody wants to dream their own dreams about what the inside of the vast alien craft might look like.......just like the powerful nightmares we could easily conjure thinking about what that thing behind the bulging door in "The Haunting" looks like.....

              Can't explain it rationally, but we watched the original theatrical cut 'cause we've always had a soft spot in our heart for that early scene at the power plant, where Richard Dreyfuss's boss yells into the camera, "In ten minutes, we're goin' to candle power!!"

              Sure, we've read all the blah-blah-blahs about the movie's thin characterizations.  True enough.....and even the mature Spielberg admits it's very much the film of a young man with little or no experience of how people behave with each other in the real world......

              But Holy Flying Saucers.....who the hell cares?  The movie presents itself, then and now, as a purely sensual, tactile experience.  It functions as a 137 minute fireworks display, meant to make us all go "ooo" and "aaaah".......(and better than fireworks, works to touch our hearts so we also throw in a few "awwwww"s)

             Things we love the most........

             The craft of the shots......1970's movie directors embraced visual gimmicks with the fervor of ADD-afflicted toddlers playing with and then discarding their new toys......dizzying zoom lens shots, shifting focus, split-screens, multi-screens......all quickly forgotten but forever dating their films as quaint antiques of the era.  Spielberg, however, stuck to meticulous, classic formalism in his visual compositions......every shot beautifully framed for maximum dramatic impact. It's what set him apart from most of his peers and what set him on the road to a celebrated career......he deployed Hitchcock's theory of pure cinema to its greatest heights.....

               The master of crowd control......Since Spielberg now concentrates more on performance-driven dramas, we miss this great talent of his.......his ability to outdo Cecil B. DeMille in his manipulation of spectacular crowd scenes. The scenes looked like he directed thousands of people with the same pinpoint precision he applied to the actors......prime examples: the India sequence and the mass chaos at the Wyoming train station......

                 Terri Garr......a special shout-out to this unsung actress who had to play the same role twice in one year......as Richard Dreyfuss's tormented-into-hysteria wife in "Close Encounters" and John Denver's stunned, perplexed spouse in "Oh, God"........two women who watch their normal existence go up in smoke as their husbands are touched and selected by......well, a higher power.  Although we've never been crazy about her (and Spielberg's) overuse of her shrieking tantrums, we think her finest moments come from her silent, pained, embarrassed reaction shots as she endures the Air Force debunking conference for Dreyfuss and his fellow UFO spotters. Sad and funny at the same time.....

                 John Williams......the first film that managed to duplicate and even improve upon the legendary Morricone-Leone collaboration of "Once Upon A Time In The West"......in which film and music blend into one singular creative entity.....and that's one breathtaking achievement to pull off....

                  We could go on and on......but we'll wrap it up by saying this is one 50th Anniversary movie that's a joy to re-visit every year.  5 stars forever (*****), a FIND OF FINDS......keep watching the skies.