'THE POSTMAN'.........NOT SO SILLY NOW, IS IT?

 The Postman (1997)    We all remember how Kevin Costner's post-apocalyptic, shamelessly patriotic epic was roundly ridiculed and lampooned by one and all........

            It swept the infamous 'Razzie' awards for being just about the worst in everything......

             Coming on the heels of his previous, much troubled post-apocalyptic epic "Waterworld", it's as if Costner had deliberately set himself up to become Hollywood's new punchable fall guy......the ego-bloated superstar begging for a well-deserved takedown......

                My, my, my.........

              Look what the passage of time and rush of horrendous events had done to 'The Postman'.....

              It almost seems ripped from the current headlines.

              In this film's dystopian future, a lone drifter (Costner) wanders through a plague ravaged America, populated by remote bands of humans struggling to survive. They're preyed upon by a para-military, racist fascist band of goons who still worship their late leader who instigated most of the divisive misery that tore up the nation to begin with.

               Any of this starting to ring a bell?

                Costner stumbles upon a dead mailman's delivery pouch and then strictly as a way to con free food and lodging, proclaims himself a mail carrier representing the 'restored United States'. 

                He's later stunned to discover that his ruse has inspired and  touched a patriotic  nerve in the downtrodden populace.Young people become the equivalent of pony express riders, galloping from outpost to outpost.......to deliver....(say it with me)...THE MAIL!

                This does not sit well with the fascist bandits, brutally led by a tinpot Fuhrer who's anointed himself 'General Bethlehem' (well played with all the necessary hateful swagger by Will Patton).

                 Bethlehem rules by fear and cult-of-personality charisma......(his minion bodyguard, who always stays close by him, had his balls and tongue ripped out by Bethlehem when he dared to challenge Dear Leader)........

                  You could think of the minion as the equivalent of Republican senators like Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.......

                (Most tellingly, Bethlehem's an even bigger con artist than Costner's Hero-Of-The-Mails, since he spent his pre-apocalyptic life as a failed copy machine salesman......)

                 Any of this starting to ring a bell?

                So the battle lines are drawn with Bethlehem determined to literally kill off the new mail service (and its carriers) and squash the restored U.S.........while Costner undergoes that usual 'hero's journey' self-realization that he's got to live up to the myths he perpetuated.

                 And now we come to watching this again in 2020, where Costner's grand, shmaltzy, overproduced vision takes on an immediacy it never had in 1997.........depicting a crumbling society at risk from a lowlife, unhinged Bully Boy who's determined wreak havoc on every democratic institution to serve his own ends.......including the U.S. Post Office.

                    Any of this starting to ring a bell?

                  The movie itself?  Yes, it's way, way too long, clocking in at a hair under 3 hours. Yes, it's blatantly manipulative, corny and overwrought.  But unlike the filmmakers who assemble today's Hollywood corporate tentpoles, we give Costner credit for being unafraid to swing for the fences, even if he made himself and his movie look foolish and worthy of scorn.

                   (We couldn't help asking ourselves.......would any of the Marvel and D.C. comic book writers and directors ever go out on a limb like this?)

                   One final note of irony here.......in order to secure a copy of 'The Postman', we requested an online reserve for it at our local library.......

                   Once it became available, we had to drive to predesignated parking space at a predesignated time, where a mask-wearing library employee left it in front our car and quickly scurried back into the library........

                   ........which seemed almost satirically appropriate.......picking up a post-apocalyptic movie in the middle of a pandemic-wrecked society being ripped apart by disease, racism and the lunacies of a fascist strongman.

                     For all its many flaws, we had ourselves a fine old time revisiting 'The Postman'. The cast is superb, the James Newton Howard score is richly stirring, and there's even a funny, goofy cameo role for Tom Petty.  So we'll stick on 3 First Class Stamps .....(***)

                    If you want to boil it down to its essential message, it's simple.

                    Don't let anyone screw around with the mail. Or democracy.

                   And Americans can participate in their own version of this movie's climactic clash of good and evil......

                    Simply by voting in November. 

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP UP.......CORA THE VIRUS JOINS THE GOP TICKET!

 BQ:  Cora the Coronavirus......we must say, you look a little ridiculous with that mini American flag draped around your tendrils......

CORA:   You like it?  I wore it last night......in the middle of the crowd in front of the White House while Trumpy gave his acceptance speech.

BQ:   You don't mean to say you were there last night?   In the middle of that mostly mask-less packed crowd of over 1500 people!!??

CORA:Oh, you betcha, fleshy!  How could I stay away?  It's like....Trumpy rang the dinner bell for me and yelled, "Come and get 'em!"

BQ:  In other words, he ignored the advice of his own medical team and created another super-spreader event so you could kill more people.......

CORA:   Can you blame me for lovin' Trumpy so much?   How the hell do you think I've been able to bump off almost 180,00 people so quickly?  And since, being a sociopath, he doesn't really give a shit one way or the other, I think I can hit my goal of half a million dead by Christmas morning!

BQ:  God help us all........

CORA:   Heh, heh......maybe you should pray with Trumpy's pal,  Jerry Falwell Jr.......that is, whenever he's not busy watching his wife pork the pool boy.

BQ:   What did you think of Trump's speech by the way?

CORA:  Love, love loved it!   Loads of lies and all that promising of American carnage if Biden gets elected........forgetting the fact that all the American carnage you fleshies face happened in the last 3 and 1/2 years.....under Trumpy.

BQ:  Well, he's still betting his supporters are stupid enough to swallow that bilge again...... 

CORA:  Of course they are. How do you think I got to feast on 1500 of 'em last night?   Didn't you notice there's no Republican platform?  No goals, no ideas......just subservience to Trumpy!  Imagine....that means I get 4 more years of people listening to him when he says I'll just go away!

BQ: Horrifying.......

CORA:  Cheer up, will, ya. If nothing else you'll have plenty of Law And Order if the Royal Trumpy Family is coronated in January.  There'll be lots of 17 year old Trumpanzees with AR-15's running around in the streets shooting protesters at random. Woo hoo!

BQ:  Not to mention the end of democracy as we know it.......

CORA:  I got even worse news for you, flesh-turd.......I'm supposed to keep this a secret till the day after the election, but I'll spill it to you right now.  Trumpy's gonna make me a member of the Cabinet!

BQ:  What????!!!  

CORA:   Why the hell not?  After all, I donated whole piles of dead people to his campaign,  especially black and brown people who would've voted against him. That's way better than his Post Office minion DeJoy, who had to cough up a shitload of money so Trump could put him in charge of destroying the mail......

BQ:  We're afraid to ask, what position did Trump promise you in his 2021 administration?

CORA:   'Secretary Of Homeland Cemetery' .....I'll be in charge of filling up the boneyards with even more dead Americans!  Trumpy says once he's President For Life, he'll suspend elections....so it won't matter how many people I kill since nobody'll be allowed to vote anyway.  Brilliant, huh?

BQ:  The stuff of nightmares.  Where did  we put that Lysol spray......

CORA:  Hey, don't get all testy. Just like Trumpy says, "It is what it is"   So vote Trump/Cora in November!  Remember our slogan, "Make America Sicker Again"

BQ:  What this spray does to you, hopefully Biden voters will do to your running mate.......

CORA:   Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!

'YOU WON'T BELIEVE YOUR EYES!'........OH YES WE DID......CAUSE WE SAW ALL THESE MOVIES TOO.....

 You Won't Believe Your Eyes!": A Front Row Look At The Science Fiction And Horror Movies Of The 1950's by Mark Thomas McGee (2018)    To say we plowed through this book like a kid gobbling his way through his stash of Halloween candy would be a gross understatement......

               Like the author, we spent our entire childhood (and beyond, we say without shame) devouring the perpetual parade of cheapo horror and sci-fi movies that played in our neighborhood theaters every Saturday afternoon.

                 As we've pointed out in countless posts on this blog, movie studios treated  sci-fi/horror like abused step-children......thrown into darkened basements and fed a little bread and water every so often.....

                 Like summer stock, dinner theater or 1950's TV shows, these movies were heavily populated with a mix of actors in the twilight of their careers alongside plenty of hungry newcomers itching to get their foot in the door......(which more than few of 'em did, becoming big stars).

                 Were these movies bad?  Sure, a lot of 'em. Some of 'em so mind-numbingly horrendous.they became cult touchstones of unintentional hilarity......

                  (Early in the book Author McGee shows one these gems to his young daughter......who watches stunned. "This was in theaters?" she asks in disbelief. When told yes, she can only ask "And you paid to see it?")

                  Yes indeed. We baby boomers happily forked over our allowances to feast upon timeless classics like "The Beast With A Million Eyes", "Cat Women Of The Moon", "Robot Monster", and "I Married A Monster From Outer Space"

                  And believe it or not, more than a few of these turned out to be bona fide good movies and venerated today at classics....(such as "Forbidden Planet", "Them!", "This Island Earth" among others)

                  McGee not only takes the reader through a breezy, witty tour through all these films, he peppers his reviews with reminiscences of the surviving actors, writers and directors who worked on them.

                 Each chapter's a joy to read since they reveal that despite the ultra low budgets and slapdash production of these films, they still got made with all the clashes of ego and artistic temperament that you'd only expect in a big budget major film.

                  We've never found ourselves so sorry to finish a book as much we felt with this one. (Kind of like savoring the last french fry with your Quarter Pounder)......

                   For anyone who's a fan of these films, it's must, must must read. So beloved readers of this blog should know what comes next.....yes, it's a 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS.  Dive in and give yourselves the best end-of-summer treat ever.

'DR. NO'.......HAPPY 1-DAY-LATE BIRTHDAY, SIR SEAN CONNERY.......

Dr. No (1962)    We can't believe we're ending up wishing our favorite actor of all time a one day late 'Happy 90th Birthday'........

                 We, who went to see 'round the clock 24 hour showings of 'Thunderball' and 'You Only Live Twice' at 3 'O Clock in the morning........and stayed watching continuous showing into the rest of the day........

                   Yes, boys and girls, you could actually do that in the Ancient Ages Of Moviegoing.......think of it as Jurassic Era binging....except you're watching the same thing over and over again.....

                  But let's get back to Sir Connery.......

                  "Dr.No" the modest, low budget start of the Bonds, swings back and forth from brilliant to embarrassing, often betraying its cost cutting filmmaking with terrible rear-projection and B-level special effects. But then it'll suddenly take your breath way with Ken Adam's stunning sets and its startling eruptions of cold-blooded violence. 

                    You forgive every cheesy moment in it because you can't take your eyes off the young actor who seized hold of a popular literary character and brought him to flesh-and-blood life like no other actor possibly could. 

                    By the 3rd film in the series, 'Goldfinger', the man and the mythical character had so melded together for worldwide audiences, they couldn't tell one from the other.

                    This naturally rankled Connery, a supremely gifted actor capable of playing a universe worth of different roles......which he eventually got to do, to the delight and eternal admiration of everyone who loves cinema.

                    So enough with the stupid, inane arguments about who was the best Bond.

                   No contest. Ever. 

                   Happy 90th to Sir Sean Connery, forever the perfect Bond and creator of a gallery of other eternally beloved characters.   (And 4 stars (****) for 'Dr. No')

                    

                  

'THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND' & 'CASH McCALL'........NATALIE WOOD'S WORTHLESS BF'S

The Girl He Left Behind (1956) & Cash McCall (1960)     4 years separate these two semi-comedy/dramas that rolled off the Warner Brothers assembly line.......

              They hold two things in common:   they both feature the luminescent Natalie Wood in a supporting role........

               And they feature poor Natalie burdened with arrogant assholes as boyfriends........

              ........until some last minute typing by the screenwriters renders these shmucks more palatable to both Natalie and audiences.

               'The Girl He Left Behind' purports to be a 'service comedy', a shopworn genre we spoke of in our post on "Soldier In The Rain" last week.........

               Unlike 'Soldier' which boldly bent the service comedy tropes to its own peculiar dramatic needs, this movie contains no such subtlety. It wants you believe it's a regulation, typical funny 'Screw-up joins the Army' laugh-a-long. It even includes those cutesy-wootsy cartoon representations of the actors  while the opening credits roll.......

                Don't believe the credits. As soon as they're done, the movie pulls a complete bait and switch. And its lead character, a spoiled rotten man-baby played by Tab Hunter, may be one the most obnoxious douchebags to ever front a mainstream 50's 'comedy.

               An offscreen tongue-in-cheek narrator happily babbles on about the upcoming plight of  Hunter, a selfish, self centered egotistical putz whose low college grades lead him straight into the Army draft........(lucky for him it's pre-Vietnam, so it isn't a potential death sentence).

                 We're supposed to slightly smile and shake our heads in disapproval as we watch Hunter treat his apple-pie, girl next door  sweetie (Natalie Wood) with careless insensitivity........and cringe as we see him coddled beyond belief by his overbearing mother (Jessie Royce Landis doing the exact role she played for Cary Grant  in "North By Northwest") 

                  When this insufferable prick arrives at Fort Ord for his basic training, his various sargents and commanding officers (Murray Hamilton, David Jannsen, Jim Backus) treat him with an amazing amount of patience and restraint........as if forced to behave that way because they're in a service comedy. u

                   What Hunter really needs is a trainer like 'Full Metal Jacket's R. Lee Ermey to threaten to tear off his head and shit down his neck.

                   There's no traditional  'hero's journey' here, so don't  even look for one. Hunter remains a jerk through the entire film..........until someone at Warner Brothers realized he needs to redeem himself before 'The End' pops up.......(how else can he win back Natalie Wood, whom he so does not deserve...)

                 A last minute, unbelievable redemption sequence  is dropped  in out of nowhere, followed by an equally ludicrous finale which finds Hunter assuming drill-sargent duties for a new batch of recruits.........give us a freakin' break already.......Zero stars (0)

                4 years later in 1960's "Cash McCall", James Garner moves up the WB food chain, from playing one of Tab Hunter's fellow draftees to full leading man status and romancer of Natalie Wood.

                 You could think of this film as scrubbed down, heavily sanitized-for-your-protection version of Oliver Stone's 'Wall Street'. 

                 The well-named Cash (Garner) is a wheeling dealing business buccaneer, buying up distressed, near bankrupt  companies and then selling them off at a profit. As it so happens, the latest company in his crosshairs belongs to the father of the girl he briefly swept off her feet......(you guessed it....Natalie)

                   Unlike the Tab Hunter in "Girl He Left Behind", we're supposed to find Garner's Cash a dashing, charming fellow, even as he cutting a swath through business folk less savvy than himself. In fact, the only thing that slows down his slick wooing of Wood, is the jealous meddling of a hotel executive (Nina Foch) who's lusting after him.

                   And once again, an outlandish turn of plot converts Garner from a corporate gobbler to a benevolent Captain Of Industry, who's not only going to buy his future father-in-law's company but spend years and years making it grow stronger to face its future.......

                   Yeah.......right. 

                  Fortunately then, in both films,  the trusty WB screenwriters have rendered Natalie Wood's boyfriends, one a pampered brat and the other a financial shark acceptable to the vast movie-going audience.  Since this nonsense is much easier to swallow in Garner's film than Hunter's, we'll cash in at least 2 stars (**) for 'Cash McCall'. 

                   We won't even get into what happens to her boyfriend in 'West Side Story'.........

'JOURNEY INTO FEAR'.......MERCURY RISING....THE 'KANE' GANG BACK TOGETHER AGAIN.......

 Journey Into Fear (1943)    Oh how we wished we had nicer things to say about this brief, but vivid little thriller......a reunion of sorts for the star-crossed erratic genius Orson Welles and his mighty Mercury players.......the people who dazzled us as they rewrote cinema history in 'Citizen Kane'.........

              Pardon us while we sigh for what might have been.....what this collections of striking characters and beautifully crafted individual scenes could have added up to if they ever coalesced into a fully realized feature length film.

               At 68 minutes, it plays out like a very long trailer of a 2 hour film you'd need to see in order to understand all the twists and turns of its plot.......

                But this is all you get, with some periodic flashes of brilliance from the acting ensemble made up of Welles and his 'Kane' chohorts, Everett Sloane, Joseph Cotton, Ruth Warrick, and Agnes Moorhead.

                Cotton wrote the screenplay himself from a an Eric Ambler spy novel and plays an American armaments exec targeted by Nazi assassins. These nefarious, creepy types relentlessly pursue Cotton from Istanbul on to a tramp steamer loaded with equally memorable (and equally suspicious ) characters.

                Plenty of stuff to admire here.......starting with a wordless pre-credits sequence showing a pudgy assassin loading up for a hit, ignoring his constantly skipping gramaphone......a chilling way to underline the depth of his single-mindedness.  (It looked to us like an early pre-cursor of the teasers that open the Bond films.)

                Then things swiftly move on to a great clever sequence in which Cotton finds himself in the assassin's crosshairs while participating in a 'Now You See Him, Now You Don't' nightclub magic act. (And once again, it reminded us of the kind of set-piece you'd see 007 sucked into.....)

                 More noir-ish maneuvering goes on in the tramp steamer and finally winds up in Batumi, Georga with Cotton and his tormentors facing off on a high hotel ledge in the middle of pounding rainstorm. 

                  As if the goings-on aren't exotic and sinister enough, Welles pops in with a predictably hammy turn as Col Haki, the Turkish cop who knows's more about what's happening in the story than anybody else.....for all the good it does anybody.

                  All of this is huge fun to watch, even if none of it ever connects to anything approaching a coherent storyline.  It stays what it is, collection of great scenes in search of movie to go with them, with all of the linking material probably left on the cutting room floor......(most likely the same kind of editorial butchery that RKO exacted on Welles' 'The Magnificent Ambersons')

                 But even Orson Welles' misfires, mistakes and mishandled films still remain essential viewing for any true cinema buff......so BQ gives 3 stars (***) for these existing chunks of what could have been as powerful a noir as "The Stranger"........there go our sighs again........

ROUTE 66'ERS BATTLE TRUMP'S BFF'S IN 1962!

"To Walk With The Serpent" (Route 66 -Season 2, Episode 14 - 1962 )    While re-living old 'Route 66' episodes, we watched this one with our mouth in a frozen WTF gape........

             Colorize it and it'd look like something you stumbled upon on in this week's nightly news.......or a Trump rally.

              Briefly, for you young 'uns.......'Route 66' followed the ongoing adventures of two young men hoping to find their direction in life by tooling around the USA in their spiffy Corvette convertible.....  

             Stopping in endless big cities and small towns, every temporary part time job they stumble into invariably gets them embroiled in somebody's overheated drama.  Our heroes, Tod (Martin Milner) a college educated preppie and Buzz (George Maharis) a rough and tumble street brawler usually resolve these mini-soap operas with common sense, empathy, a bit of romance and any number of fistfights. 

                Their stop in Boston somehow collides them with John Westerbrook (a superb Dan O'Herlily) a demented would-be Hitler, complete with his own set of slimy minions and a cadre of goon stormtroopers.

               Westerbrook's '  Neo-Nazi 'Awake America' movement comes complete with his foaming-at-the-mouth speeches about sweeping the immigrant garbage out of America.........and even includes his followers using a stiff right arm 'Heil' type salute.

               The FBI promptly recruits our two heroes to infiltrate this loathsome cabal and find out what they're planning to do with a truckload of plastic explosives they've stolen. 

                Buzz, being a 'mongrel' of dubious parentage, gets beaten and bounced out of the gang early on, but Tod hangs around to discover the mad, mad Westerbrook plots to blow up the crowd at one of his rallies......for no other reason than to call attention to himself.

                A chilling episode for sure........and almost ruined by the music underscore consisting of a mock patriotic march implying that( the composer thought this stuff was funny. 

                 As in many 'Route  66' entries, the climactic wrap-up and is rushed and abrupt, with the Feds thwarting Westerbrook before one his thugs detonates the explosive-laden tri-corner hat on Paul Revere's statue.  The babbling, loony-toon make believe Fuhrer is immediately thrown into a straight jacket...........(if only the wheels of justice spun that fast for all of Trump's indicted swamp-thugs.)

                   What immediately struck us about this episode, of course, was the spot on resemblance of these idiotic nutjobs to the the modern day fascists that Trump embraces as 'very good people'.......which made watching it all the more unsettling. 

                  ..........and reminding us once again that the upcoming election is the most crucially important in United States history, a clear choice between democracy and totalitarianism.

                  For "To Walk With The Serpent", 3 prescient stars (***) .....for Trump and all the insane people he loves because they like him.......minus Infinite stars.

TWEET REVENGE! CORA THE CORONAVIRUS OUT-TWITTERS BABY ORANGE!

            Imagine our shock when our most hated enemy (and enemy of the world) Cora the Virus announced she'd opened her own Twitter account.......

              Devilish virus that she is, Cora couldn't wait to start trolling President Trump, even though he's been her greatest, most loyal steadfast enabler and ally in helping her to kill over 170,000 Americans......and you get to read her tweets FIRST on the BQ!

 Donald J. Trump                                                                                                                                                 @ realDonaldTrump

 OBAMA SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN! HE SNUCK MICROPHONES INTO MY                                  BUCKET OF KFC EXTRA CRISPY AND HAD DEEP STATE PEDOPHILES                                      SPLOOGE ALL OVER IT WITH DEMON SPERM  

   Cora The Coronvirus                                                                                                                                        @ realLiveVirus                                                                        

 I love ya, Dude. That's why I don't need to to infect you and screw up  your                                                 heart and lungs. You've already got brain damage.

Donald J. Trump                                                                                                                                             @ realDonaldTrump.

THOSE Q-WHATEVER PEOPLE ARE EVEN MORE BATSHIT CRAZY THAN ME, BUT THEY LIKE ME AND THAT'S ALL THAT REALLY COUNTS IN LIFE, RIGHT?

Cora The Coronavirus                                                                                                                                   @ realLiveVirus

Liking you?   Well, it's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it. Might as well be folks even crazier and stupider than you.

Donald J. Trump                                                                                                                                             @ realDonaldTrump

WHERE DOES OBAMA GET OFF SAYING I DON'T PUT IN THE WORK!  I SPEND 8 HOURS A DAY WATCHING FOX NEWS BEFORE ALL NIGHT TWEETING!  YOU CAN BET OBAMA AND SLEEPY JOE NEVER GOT BLISTERS ON THEIR THUMBS LIKE ME!

Cora The Coronavirus                                                                                                                                   @ realLiveVirus

Probably 'cause they were too busy doing the job of actually running the country. But you keep on doin' what you're doin', Trumpy......that way I can hit my goal of 500,000 dead before the last Hallmark Christmas movie comes on.      #ItIsWhatItIs

 (We promise to show you more of these as they come in........)

                                                   

                                                       

                                      

'SOLDIER IN THE RAIN'.......THE KING OF COOL 'THE GREAT ONE' & THE JAILBAIT PRINCESS

 Soldier In The Rain (1963)   Maybe it's fitting this film arrived right after JFK's assassination, which ripped apart America's last vestiges of innocence and optimism......

                The movie already looked like something from a bygone era......technically it categorized itself as a service comedy, that worn out genre that poked gentle fun at life in the armed forces.....

                 Service comedies usually involved the loony machinations of some fast-talking, double dealing skirt chasing enlisted man..........whose schemes and capers bamboozle and confound his mostly dopey superior officers. 

                  'Soldier In The Rain' promises such a movie, but delivers something else altogether.......an ultimately melancholic meditation on the nature of enduring friendship, and the price paid for quietly living a life of restraint and grace.

                 We didn't give a damn that the film's almost completely devoid of typical service comedy hijinks.......

                It provided something even better.........the coming together of the oddest, most disparate trio of actors who ever found themselves together in the same movie.....

                 Gem # 1:   The King Of Cool himself, Steve McQueen, only this time, throwing off his tightly controlled persona to indulge in an exuberant bout of Jerry Lewis style clowning.  He's a sight to see and it takes some getting used to..........playing a live wire supply sargent with wild entrepreneurial dreams as he's about to leave the Army.

                 Gem # 2:    The self designated 'Great One' himself, Jackie Gleason, playing McQueen's calm, gentle-hearted mentor, a weary, worldly wise Master Sargent whom McQueen hopes to recruit as his post-military partner in his myriad get-rich-quick schemes....... Gleason's quietly, brilliantly funny as he deftly underplays his scenes with McQueen, who's fairly bouncing off the walls like an ADD-afflicted toddler.......

                 Gem # 3:  The one and only Jailbait Princess the reigning trailer-trash Lolita of 1960's cinema, Tuesday Weld.......at the very top of her game playing her signature character, the impossibly sexy teen with a truckload of quirks and insecurities.  Achingly adorable yet somehow dangerous to know. Weld perfected this role like no other actress and in a stroke of perverse genius, the film pairs her off in an unlikely date with.......Jackie Gleason. This oddest of odd couples play off against one another with a poignancy that lifts the film far above its own modest intentions.....

                  The film's ramshackle storyline barely holds together, either as a comedy or drama, but the three lead actors make the very most of their individual scenes together which makes the whole thing entirely watchable, wobbly as it is. 

                   Ignoring its underpinnings as a 'service comedy', the film's final bittersweet finale comes from the aftermath of a startling, extraordinary bloody brawl that pits McQueen and Gleason against the film's villains, two bullying MPs.  (This sequence ranks right up there with Frank Sinatra's kung fu battle with Henry Silva in "The Manchurian Candidate")

                   We can't make any great claims about "Soldier In The Rain" as a movie......but you'll never see a triple-play of actors like the three in this film........and for us, that makes it a 4 star (****) 'must see'.......so BQ says see it.

'WON TON TON: THE DOG WHO SAVED HOLLYWOOD'........BUT NOT THIS MOVIE........

 Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)     We'd classify this one in the same category as the 1967 "Casino Royale", "Barbarella" and "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World".........

                 Movies that bring a smile to your face just thinking about them.........movies you tend to remember with a sigh of nostalgia.......("Oh right......what a hoot that movie was...")

                 .........and are usually an excruciating, punishment from hell to sit down and actually watch. 

                 'Won Ton Ton', a knockabout, slapstick farce about old Hollywood in the silent era of the 1920's, sounds irresistible when described.......

                  A fledgling, would-be screenwriter (Bruce Dern) and struggling would-be actress (Madeline Kahn) find themselves caretakers of a brilliantly talented  dog. The pooch, signed up by a blustering studio chief (Art Carney) quickly becomes America's most beloved canine movie star.......similar to...uh....Rin Tin Tin.

                 Except this dog came out of a Chinese restaurant, so he's.....uh....you get the idea.

                  Chases, pratfalls and assorted Tinseltown chaos occur, punctuated by cameo appearances of dozens upon dozens of elderly, vintage actors and comedians from the Golden Ages of 30's, 40's and 50's Hollywood......

                  .........many of whom would count this film as their farewell screen appearance before passing on. Yes, this is the movie where the bulk of the voluminous supporting cast had one foot in the grave.

                 Not that it isn't fun for any true film buff to spot and identify all these folks as they take their final turns before the camera.......(some of them for only a few seconds worth, so you need an eagle eye to catch sight of them all....) 

                  The incredible cameo roster remains the film's one saving grace. The rest of it?  A shapeless mess, far more strenuous than genuinely funny.

                  And it's easy to see why:  this movie, which desperately needed a a veteran Hollywood comedy director to bring off its mixture of nostalgia and farce, fell into the grasping hands of the whirlwind Brit Michael Winner, whose career turned red hot with the '74 release of 'Death Wish'.

                 Winner carved out a filmography of swift brutal thrillers like "Scorpio" and "The Stone Killers"  but neither he nor his films ever showed any detectable sense of humor.

                 And just like Stanley Kramer's "Mad, Mad World", "Won Ton Ton" displays what happens when a comedy's directed by a fundamentally humorless filmmaker. 

                 So beyond watching the piles of geriatric performers pop up before hitting the death parade, there's no fun in sight here.......just aimless running around.

                  The buffs among you would no doubt love the cameo spotting and for that alone, we'll bark up 2 stars (**).  But don't say we did warn you about the movie itself......it's no winner from Winner. More like a woof woof.

'CARI MORA'.......SILENCE OF THE MANGOS........

Cari Mora by Thomas Harris (2019)     Readers salivating for a rich, ripe full bodied thriller from the "Silence Of The Lambs" author felt gypped, cheated, ripped off.........

                 We didn't. 

                 We laughed, chuckled and smirked all the way through it.........which is what we think Harris had in mind all along. 

                  It hardly functions as a novel anyway.  It's more like a  'Greatest Hits'  compilation of every gruesome, repulsive, cringe inducing sequence that Harris tried to work into his other novels but couldn't find the space or justification for..........

                 So he just strung 'em all together in a gore-soaked hodge podge that reads like a quickie novelization of some cheeseball horror movie going straight to Netflix.

                  Once we got the hang of it, we realized we weren't reading a novel at all......but more like a desperate screenwriter's pitch to a skeptical studio head........throwing everything against the wall to see if any of it sticks.......

                  It you accept it that way, then the book's freakin' hilarious..........a crazy funhouse ride with loads of pop-up monsters coming at you while you get spun around in circles.........

                  Our prime antagonists here:  Monster-In-Chief Hans-Peter Schneider, a hairless horror who deliberately mutilates his captured sex-slaves for sale to 'specialized' clients. 

                   His new object of obsession: Cari Mora, a beautiful Columbian hottie who's housekeeping in the bayside Miami mansion he's leased........for the sole purpose of digging up 25 million in gold that Drug kingpin Pablo Escobar supposedly buried there.

                   Cari, however, is a force to be reckoned with, having survived a horrific bloody childhood where she was abducted by the Columbian communist rebels to function as a kid soldier and perpetual rape target. 

                  The hunt for the gold turns indescribably barbarous, pitting Hans-Peter and his band of ugly thugs against an equally violent, ruthless  drug lord and his gang.........and everybody involved is not averse to double, triple and even quadruple-crossing each other......

                  Cari Mora herself pitches in to help pile up the body count of people shot, stabbed, decapitated, chomped in half by a crocodile or dissolved in acid.........good clean fun for all........

                  By now, you should get the idea that we're not reviewing this book as anything like a piece of literary fiction........

                   We see it as a junky, clunky spunky Guilty Pleasure........like a slightly overlong synopsis of some trashy movie scheduled for production........with only the juicy, gooey good parts left in......you know, all the stuff that makes you shriek with delight, "Ohhh no.....that did not just happen!!!"

                 Oh yes it does. And then some. (And as icing on the cake for us, Harris even takes a few moments to lob a zinger at Trump's inhuman war on immigrants....)

                 If you buy and read this book, don't file it with your other hardbacks. It's proper place would be sitting up against your DVD copy of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's"Grindhouse" double feature.......

                  And try not to get butter popcorn stains on the pages as you turn them...4 stars (****)

'BRANDENBURG'......HEIL HO....HEIL HO....IT'S OFF TO WORK WE GO.....

 Brandenburg by Glenn Meade (1997)    Oh how we wanted to dive in and love this book.......

              Oh how we wished we hadn't wasted our time.......

              In books and films, we're a complete sucker for the 'Neo-Nazis Plot To Re-Emerge And Conquer The World' genre......can never get enough of 'em.....

               Some of them are real barn burners, checking off all the boxes........others get bogged down in plot complications.......and sorry to say, some of 'em just plain suck. Big time.

               This one sucks.

               Like many of the Neo Nazi thrillers, it kicks of in that refuge/escape hatch/nesting cocoon for Nazi Larva......South America....

               A Neo Nazi cabal is up to something horrendous to take place in Europe.......and anyone who stumbles upon them in mid-scheme gets immediately targeted for elimination.......

               Clues to their mission fall into the hands of an intrepid Interpol guy and a smokin' hot babe with Nazi baggage in her parentage.......then the chase is on.....

               Except the chase here moves at a snail's pace and you could easily doze off all through this book, waiting for something,,,,,well anything to happen.

               Somewhere toward the last third of the book, author Meade makes an all out effort to wake up his remaining readers with some spectacularly gory gunfights.......

               But piling on all the dead bodies doesn't make the plot any clearer, and by the time our Interpol guy and the Chief Villain engage in their final bloody showdown, we breathed a sigh of relief that the goddamn thing was over at last......

                (And speaking of the Chief Nazi, what the story considers its BIG TWIST about him isn't anywhere near as weird and outrageous as all the characters (and the author) think it is.......to anyone who follows this genre, it's nothing but standard boilerplate...)

               We realize we're a little late getting to this book, since we picked it up for 25 cents at library book sale over 15 years ago.

                Now we're so sorry we ever opened it.

                Zero stars (0)  A boring slog, even with all its last minute violence. Skip it.

'JFK' & 'WINTER KIILLS'........MALICE IN ASUNDER-LAND.......

 JFK (1991), Winter Kills (1979)    Gather ye 'round, all you conspiracy theorists,  all those who distrust and suspect all authority figures, all those who cringe as they see all their worst paranoid fantasies come to life........

              Let dread and paranoia pulsate madly.......let evil scumbags of every variety, income bracket and social standing run rampant......

              Let your worst fears be realized and gaze nauseously into the bleak past and even more bleaker future.........

              We've got the movies for YOU right here, folks!

              First up, we'll qualm our queasiness for the 3 hours it takes to digest Oliver Stone's epic "JFK". It's the director's nuclear flamethrower takedown of the ludicrous Warren Commission report on the murder of John F. Kennedy.......you know, the one that concluded one lone assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald blew the top off of Kennedy's head.

               Only people who believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and whatever diarreah comes out of Trump's mouth believe the Warren Commission report.........

                And you'd better believe Stone painstakingly decimates every useless page of it.......and while doing all that, he doesn't forget to make it a suspenseful compelling movie along the way.

                By the time the film finishes, the only question left for a viewer is to decide which unholy collection of conspirators engineered JFK's death......and set the United States on a chaotic, tumultuous and blood soaked future path. 

                 While Stone's film makes for grim viewing every step of the way, 12 years earlier, one of the most misbegotten, star-crossed oddball movies ever made turned a warped, satiric eye on the JFK assassination.

                  Writer-director William Richert boldly chose to adapt "Winter Kills"  yet another sardonic political conspiracy thriller by author Richard Condon ("The Manchurian Candidate", "Prizzi' Honor")

                  With tongue ever so slightly in cheek, Condon's book thinly fictionalized the assassination and its major players...(Oswald assassin Jack Ruby, for example, becomes  'Joe Diamond')  The murder of Kennedy-esque President Tim Kegan is investigated by his half brother Nick (Jeff Bridges) after a second assassin confesses before dying. 

                    Nick's encouraged in this dangerous quest by his all powerful kazillionaire father 'Pa' Kegan (played in his usual gaseous, boisterous style by director John Huston, appearing even more avuncular and sinister than his supremely evil "Chinatown" character Noah Cross)

                    Director Richert went far more over-the-top than Condon's novel, turning Bridge's sleuthing into a  bizarre"Dr. Strangelove" hall of mirrors funhouse, mocking spies, gangsters, political operatives, femme fatales, big business and even a prescient arrow aimed at a vast information network invading everyone's privacy......

                     And like an all star contemporary 'Alice In Wonderland', Bridges encounters a guest star roster of suspicious grotesques, played by Sterling Hayden, Eli Wallach, Anthony Perkins, Toshiro  Mifune, Ralph Meeker, Richard Boone......and an uncredited Elizabeth Taylor.  

                    Even more daring, Richert doesn't shy away from the novel's most controversial, outrageous final twist.........in which all the blind alleys lead Bridges to confront the ultimate conspirator and perpetrator of his brother's assassination .  (And you'll hear no more from us on this subject....see for yourself......) 

                    Sounds terrific, we know......but truthfully, the film barely holds itself together, due to the legendary troubles then went on during its making......loss of funding, shutdowns of production, shady activities of its producers, one of whom was found dead under mysterious circumstances.) 

                    It's a wonder it ever saw the light of day and its distributor Avco-Embassy despised the film and quickly buried it, given that what few people saw it left scratching their heads.

                    We still liked it, with all its crazy casting, lunatic twists and turns, random globe trotting and easily one of the most nutso, WTF final scenes in thriller history. 

                     We say buckle up and make this doom laden duo a wondrous double feature of lying, spying and dying......For JFK, 4 stars (****), for 'Winter Kills', a wild 'n crazy 3 stars (***)......though neither of them can ever explain how we arrived in our perilous times.......where the Asylum's being run by the worst rubber-room psycho ever.....

'TULIPS SHALL GROW'.......SCREWBALLS ON THE MARCH.....

 'Tulips Shall Grow' (1942 George Pal Puppetoon)     If you're of a certain age, you saw this little 7 minute stop motion animated short dozens of times on your tiny little black and white TV.......

           It was among the many 'Puppetoons' produced by George Pal, who went on to become the producer and/or director of some of Hollywood's most classic science fiction and fantasy films...("When Worlds Collide", "The War Of The Worlds", "The Time Machine")

            A simple primal story unfolds here as an obvious metaphor for the Nazi invasion of Europe.

            A little Dutch boy and girl frolic among the vast vistas of tulips and windmills in Holland. They dance. They hug an smooch.. They gift each other with cakes and flowers. In short, a dreamy world.

             Lightning erupts before their horrified eyes. 'The Screwballs' come marching in, overrunning and crushing the beautiful landscapes. They're literally a mindless, goose-stepping army of nuts and bolts, bringing devastation and destruction from both ground and air.

             The Dutch kiddies flee in terror as the Screwballs bomb the windmills and roll over the tulips with their tanks. Chaos reigns......

              Until it rains...........

              The heavens above unload on the Screwballs, zapping their planes with lightning and drenching  their nuts-'n-bolts army until it rusts and falls apart. 

               Sunshine returns. The tulips regrow. The cute little boy and girl happily reunite.  And in 7 minutes, you've see World War 2 in a a nutshell......and you've seen the Nazis for what they always were all along.......rusted, mindless screwballs.

              Watching it a lifetime later, it doesn't look like a dated little bauble of ancient memorabilia....

               Today, it looks as true and timely as it did 78 years ago..........only the metaphors have changed.

              Once again, we're overrun with Screwballs........Donald Trump and his army of minions, sycophants, enablers, toadies, apologists, crooks, professional liars, racists, idiots......and even the original Screwballs crawled out of the woodwork for him.......the Nazis. 

                And just like George Pal's 1942 screwballs, the Trump Screwball Army has brought nothing with them but hatred, misery, stupidity.......and now overwhelming death.

                We're still anxiously awaiting the rain to wash this horde away........but not in the form of torrential raindrops.....

                 .......but in the form of torrential rains of votes on November 3rd. In fact, if you take a look at any of Trump's lunatic pronounements, you can see the nut's wheels and screws starting to fly off already.....

                  Including his extended Fox News rant about.........oddly enough......windmills. 

                  Just like George Pal's wretched screwball army, he's afraid of them. 

                 The metaphors may have changed in 78 years, but the little 7 minute cartoon still carries the ring of truth. 

                 Sooner or later, it rains on the screwballs.  For George Pal's timeless allegory, 4 stars (****)........for the real life Screwball general his army, an infinite amount of minus stars......

                 We can't wait for the rain to get here.........

               

'JUST THE WAY YOU ARE'.......WHERE DO INGENUES GO WHEN THEY'RE GONE?

 Just The Way You Are (1984)    Watching this long forgotten obscure little romantic comedy led us to a bout of pondering......

               ........that it's a tough, tough road for young actresses as they steer their way through the ups and downs of a TV and film career.

                 A sturdy, steady talented few enjoy a lifetime of exemplary work that takes them through adolescence, young adulthood, middle age and even into what's referred to as 'the golden years'.....

                  But many of them, for a variety of reasons, drop off the entertainment world radar......never to be seen or heard from again.......(unless they tangle with the law, or become seriously ill.....or die.)

                 Some can't make the transition from the 'young girl' roles to playing moms and other middle-agers, some simply don't possess the acting chops and/or the sheer ambitious drive required to pursue roles in the highly competitive, cutthroat show biz universe........

                  And some simply tire of the actor's life, with all its vagaries and reversals of fortune......they simply drop out and find something they find more fulfilling, more personally rewarding......(which could be anything from selling real estate to cake baking.)

                  Which brings us to the star of 'Just The Way You Are' Kristy McNichol, who for awhile enjoyed a busy acting career as a child, teen and young adult......

                  With a mop of brown hair, large expressive eyes, a dazzling smile and  a down-to-earth mixture of self-confidence and vulnerability, she was the quintessential girl-next-door......that funny looking, mischievous kid who'd make you suddenly slap your head and say....'hey wait a minute, she's beautiful!' 

                 "Just The Way You Are" is the only one of her films specifically fashioned as a romantic comedy vehicle for her carry on her own, with no recognizable stars playing the men vying for her attention.

                 A high profile co-star might have rendered the film more popular with audiences and might have even sent McNichol down a path to become America's new movie sweetheart.  She was easily  sweet, adorable and relatable enough to wear that crown.

                  You couldn't help rooting for her, playing a concert level flutist whose romantic life suffers from having one leg in a steel brace, the result of a childhood illness.

                  Weary of being pitied,passed over, or sometimes even cradle carried by her potential dates, she opts to disguise her affliction with a white plaster cast.........and then promptly heads for a posh French ski resort, where she appears perfectly normal mingling with the crowds peppered with other cast wearers who tumbled on the slopes.

                    Romantic complications, as they say........ensue.

                  Ultra light, slight and fluffy, the film manages to bob along on a smart, witty script by Allan Burns, creator of the 'The Mary Tyler Moore' show and also depends hugely on McNichol's innate charm, which she supplies here in vast amounts. 

                   But returning to the original pondering of this post, stardom and major film roles eluded McNichol who eventually joined that list of starlets who dropped out of the Hollywood rat race and opted for a different life.  

                   BQ always wishes her the best, but in watching "Just The Way You Are", we wished the fates had awarded her a film career equal to her talents. God knows, we've suffered through the work of enough so-called 'America Sweethearts' unworthy of that title. For McNichol,  3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2) 

                                  

'$' (DOLLARS)..........ROBBIN' HOODS GET ROBBED BY HAMBURG-LERS......

 $ (a.k.a. 'Dollars') (1971)      What makes this one especially strange.......it's a barely verbal 2 hour heist thriller from writer-director Richard Brooks, a filmmaker who normally thrives on litera verbiage...("Cat On A Hot Tin Roof", "The Brothers Karamozov", "Elmer Gantry")

                Brooks also attempts light breezy comedy here and the result is exactly what you'd expect from a director who's always as serious as a heart attack......

                 In suddenly deciding to forgo linear storytelling and verbose dialogue, Brooks goes way overboard in the other direction of pure visual cinema.  It's not his forte and he's so clumsy at it that the film unfolds as a chopped up mess.......as if it were a 4 hour movie that film editors had to eviscerate to make it even remotely coherent. 

                 With  its endless opening barrage of random cross-cutting, the film ditches any attempts at exposition. In its first hour, as it grinds on and on, you're on your own in figuring out who the characters are, what they want, what they're up to and what the hell is going on with them.

                 Lucky for us, what's going on in the first hour finally makes itself clear. Warren Beatty's an ace bank security wiz who's just heavily fortified a Hamburg bank to the max........much to the delight of the bank's officious manager, played by none other than 'Goldfinger' himself, Gert Frobe.

                  This makes Beatty doubly clever, since he plans to thwart his own overwhelming alarm systems so he can loot the ill-gotten, illegal cash stashed in the safe deposit boxes of three scuzzy, crooked douchebags........

                  This trio of creeps include a Vegas lawyer flush with skimmed casino money (Robert Webber), a blustery U.S. army sergeant who's a black marketeer (Scott Brady) and worst of all, the 'Candyman' (Arthur Brauss) a reptilian, murdering drug dealer peddling concentrated LSD.

                   And all three of them have been set up ahead of time for their fleecing by Beatty's hooker partner-in-crime, played with her standard repertoire of giggles and eye-pops by Goldie Hawn......no doubt Richard Brooks depended on her to carry this film's comedic load......

                  Despite all of Brooks' nervous cross cutting, the film drags and drags for about 90 minutes until it arrives at its whole reason for being.........a nearly 25 minute sequence where Brauss and Brady pursue Beatty, mostly on foot. 

                   And yes, it's as exhausting, tedious and endless as it sounds. If nothing else, it probably got Brooks in the cinema record books for filming the longest sustained foot chase ever. Whoopidie-doo.

                  To make matters worse, the film throws in a hasty, sloppily filmed final shot that appears to negate the the twist ending that popped up in the previous scene.........pretty pathetic if you consider all the time and energy expended on telling this story to begin with......

                 Even if you're a fan of anybody who stars in this movie, we'd recommend finding on of their other movies to watch. For this one, 1 star (*).........and the lone star is for jolly Gert Frobe, still looking like he's planning to rob Fort Knox 

'A FINE PAIR'.......ROCK 'N CLAUDIA UNBLINDFOLDED.......

A Fine Pair (1968).....was the second romantic thriller pairing the all American Hollywood chunk 'o granite Rock Hudson and the bubbly, ultra sexy international superstar babe Claudia Cardinale......a few years earlier in '66 they struck a few sparks in Universal studios slick comedy-suspenser "Blindfold".....(see our post of 6/6/17)

           Alas, what a difference a couple of years makes, especially for the Rock of aging....Hudson.....

           His golden age stardom years behind him and due to move on the grazing pastures of a TV series, Hudson found himself uncomfortably stuck in 'A Fine Pair', a prime example of a sub-genre that would soon rule the 70's.......dubbed in English Italian Euro-Junk.

            A little bit of background here:   Britain's 1960's reign as the pop culture center of the universe (movies, fashion, music) was fast coming to a close and it seemed like the world of cinema found Rome as the next bustling center of production, artistry, celebrity......and yes, Euro-Trash movies by the boatload.

              For those of us who savor such films (and one of the main staples of our blog)....we enjoyed a perpetual tsunami of dubbed-in crapola that washed ashore from Italy.........cheesy secret agent movies, outrageous 'Exorcist' ripoffs, spaghetti westerns, gory 'Giallo's with gallons of blood,....and the Italians' particular specialty, positively brutal, nihilistic mafia 'n gangster shoot 'em ups......

              Many, many American actors, from hungry new youngsters to washed up Hollywood warhorses, found their way overseas to star in all of these Italian genres......some found stardom, some found a steady paycheck, some found the deep embarrassment to their careers that they'd come to expect as part of the deal..........  

              Rock Hudson, in particular, troupes through 'A Fine Pair' as if  undergoing a lengthy prostate exam. Claudia Cardinale, however, bounces through this movie like a life-of-the-party live wire who's having the time of her life. 

              The painful fact:  for those who don't collect and curate Euro-Trash like we do, there's only two reasons to sit through this film at all.......

              The first - the astounding sight of Cardinale, stripped to her panties and bra, being spritzed by Hudson, wielding twin seltzer bottles.  (They've broken into a mansion and the only way to disarm the security system is to heat up the room to 140 degrees........honest....)

               The second -  a chance to listen to one of master maestro Ennio Morricone's sprightliest romantic comedy scores, brimming  with his typical choral bah-bah-bah, catchy percussion and chanting.

             (Speaking of Cardinale, the cruel irony here:  in the dubbing, you hear her unmistakable throaty voice in this junky movie, and yet it's somebody else voicing her in the all time classic "Once Upon A Time In The West"......why, why why?) 

              Beyond that, you'd have to tolerate all the downsides of these euro-messes.....the muddy, grainy cinematography, a completely post-synched, dubbed soundtrack that makes everyone sound like they're stuck in a closet together and a patchwork incomprehensible story slapped together by multiple Italian screenwriters.....(none of whom, we guess, ever spoke to each other during their labors)

              And that's why we'll make no real attempt to get into to the film's plot here......it starts out with  a New York police captain Hudson hoodwinked, flustered and otherwise bamboozled  by the irrepressible, cute-as-button Cardinale, playing the now grown-up daughter of a cop in Italy who was one of Hudson't old friends. 

                It seems that Claudia's a professional jewel thief who wants Rock to break into a wealthy American family's Austrian resort mansion to.....uh.....replace the jewels stolen from their safe before they arrive on vacation......

                 Please don't ask us to explain that. We couldn't anyway....... and.the film's final twists are so dizzying and senseless, they defy any rational explanation........

                A few last things in the film's favor before we bid it goodbye forever........pop up appearances by instantly recognizable character actors Ellen Corby ("The Waltons") and Leon Askin ("Hogans Heroes")........and only a true Euro-trash movie would use the Pope and the massive crowd around him as a mere backdrop to our two leads canoodling over some noodles.....

                  For anyone not used to this uniquely odd genre of international filmmaking, we'd say avoid it......you won't like it. But for fans of vintage oddball cinema and the performers who stumbled into it......we'll generously give "A Fine Pair" 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)......maybe cause of that dream we had about spraying seltzer on an almost naked Claudia Cardinale...... 

'HIT THE DECK'.......BYE BYE, METRO MUSICAL PIE.......

Hit The Deck (1955)     We used this movie as the perfect way to cheer ourselves up after watching what we've come to call 'The Half Hour Of Horror'  (otherwise known as the nightly national news.......)

              Sadly, the film's thought of as the late autumn of the golden age of MGM musicals.......almost everybody in it was finishing off the final obligation left on their studio contracts.......musicals as a genre became exhausted and these performers would move on to TV, stage work and only an occasional film.....

              MGM sent them off in fine style with super wide Cinemascope, Eastman Color, bright bubbly songs and dances........and even a few astonishing, bravura sequences that are the equal of the beloved numbers in "Singin' In the Rain", "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers" and "An American In Paris".....

               One of the two scenes we speak of involves the cast's junior varsity members, the wildly athletic Russ Tamblyn and the criminally cute Debbie Reynolds.......

                Tamblyn and Reynolds, trapped in a carnival funhouse's replica of hell, put on a dazzling display of acrobatics both breathtaking and funny.......even prone on the couch, we wanted to stand up and applaud.

               The movie's other eye popping showstopper arrives, as it should, as the film's big finish.....providing MGM's whirlwind tap dancer Ann Miller a spectacular showcase for her unique speed-of-light footwork. 

                 Miller taps and spins madly while behind her, what looks like a hundred chorus boys in white sailor suits match her with precisely timed locksteps.  It's brilliant, jaw dropping stuff to watch......and once again we came close to giving our flatscreen TV a standing ovation.......

                 Or, as Frank Sinatra remarked in his narration for the studio's 'That's Entertainment' documentary...."you can wait around and hope, but you'll never see the likes of this again..."

                 MGM did produce a few more musicals after this one, but none of them matched the pure fun and exuberance of "Hit The Deck".  And unlike the majority of the cast who faded into obscurity, Russ Tamblyn and Debbie Reynolds continued on at MGM for a while and moved on to long performing careers.....(with Tamblyn's dynamic athleticism on full display in "West Side Story")

                 What more can we say?  If the nightly news twin horrors of Covid-19 and Donald Trump leave you depressed beyond description, Dr. BQ prescribes a musical for a quick pick-me-up......

                 "Hit The Deck" proved the perfect medication for us. 4 stars (****).  Like its finale song goes, 'Shout Hallelujah!'.......

'ALFRED THE GREAT'.......THE SWINGIN'EST KING OF THE 60'S.........

Alfred The Great (1969)   Until this movie came along, we thought only Hollywood studios held the monopoly of making stilted, pompous historical epics, riddled with inaccuracies and weighted down with that trademark lumbering mock-serious processional dialogue........

                   If nothing else, "Alfred The Great" proved that the Brits, our cousins from 'across the pond',  could make the same kind of clumsy, dopey and overly pretentious costume pageant that MGM and other studios use to crank out on a regular basis......

                   Given this film came out right at  the tail end of the swingin' 60's, MGM tried to a Hail Mary attempt at marketing it to the burgeoning youth crowd......"The dissenter King!" the posters claimed......and to be fair, the movie does in fact depict Alfred as one tortured, conflicted kid, whose hopes of joining the priesthood get thwarted by the demands of leading bloody battles against the invading Danish hordes.......

                   Our boy Al (David Hemmings) proves he's no peace 'n love flower child after all........put a sword in his hands and before you know it, he's hacking, stabbing and cleaving his way through stacks of Norseman led by Guthrum......(played by Michael York as a kind of bloodlusting Viking frat boy)

                    Don't expect us to weigh in on the movie's shaky grasp of the actual history being depicted here......we're in no position to judge, since we probably dozed off when they they got around to this era in history class......

                    We'll judge it only on its merits ( or lack thereof) as the sweeping action-adventure spectacular that it struggles mightily to become............

                     It's a big, sloppy mess,no getting around it. Bur swirling around in the debris, we found plenty of strange entertaining stuff and performances by the very best of Britain's acting pool.....

                      Here you'll find veteran potato-faced character actor Peter Vaughan as a wily. duplicitous neighboring King and father of Alfred's fiercely independent bride, Aelswith (Prunella Ransome).... and none other than a young, pre-knighthood Ian McKellan as a swamp bandit who becomes Alfred's ally.

                      And by all the movies Gods, let's never forget the little-known Julian Chagrin as the Danes' most lethal battler,  'Ivar The Boneless', an acrobatic wild man with rock star hair and a lunatic temperament to match.......(making the well staged battles extra juicy.....)

                    Speaking of the battle scenes, they're not bad at all, considering this movie was obviously produced on a budget way, way lower than films like 'The Vikings' or 'El Cid'. And in a stark moment of realism, the film lingers on the exhausted, gasping survivors of Arthur's army after their first hard fought victory.  We don't ever recall a scene like that in the historical blockbusters we grew up with. 

                      One thing that hit us that we didn't remember from our original viewing was the hefty amounts of rape scenes......including Arthur's brutal ravishment of Aelswith on their wedding night and extensive scenes of Guthrum's barbarians assaulting an entire convent of nuns......(we realized why this movie was never going to work for the make-love-not-war generation......

                      Other touches, however, we did admire:  Raymond Leppard's rip-roarin', symphonic score and even those visually splendid, startling bits that feature Arthur remaining in close-up while  the backgrounds behind him transition from one scene to another, signifying his conflicted poses as both a sensative soul and fierce warrior........(we remember our film school pals hating those shots,deriding them as corny, but we still get a kick out of 'em....)

                     All in all, an odd move, to make such a staunchly traditional sword-swinger in the midst of the 'new cinema' revolution taking place........even with the effort to make it more hip by having it directed by Clive Donner, fresh off his back to back sex comedies, "What's New Pussycat" and "Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush'.   

                      Then again, almost any kind of movie could score a production deal in the uncertain turbulence of 60's and 70's filmmaking, but the wildly uneven 'Alfred The Great' found no favor with either young people or those who remembered the golden age of such stolid, overblown costume parades. 

                      It always looked like a movie in desperate search of its identity.......but at least for the things we liked in it, we'll knight it with 2 stars (**)  And beware Ivar The Boneless.......

                    

                    

                   

MIDWEEK MADNESS WRAP-UP.......CORA THE VIRUS DECLINES AN AXIOS INTERVIEW!

BQ:  Cora The Coronavirus.......what is that you're wearing?  Some kind of T-Shirt?

CORA:   Whaddya think, Fleshapoid?  I bought it from 'Trumpy Treasures' on E-Bay!

BQ: Am I reading that right?  It says......"It Is What It Is".....

CORA:  Words to live by from a Presidential giant!  Forget 'four score and seven years ago'.....forget 'we have nothing to fear but fear itself'.....forget 'ask not what your country can do for you'.....Trumpy put my whole Pandemic plague in easy to understand terms for all you terrified humans.....

BQ:  True enough, Cora. By saying 'it is what it is', he basically said he doesn't give a shit one way or the other about you killing over 150,000 people........as long as he gets re-elected.

CORA:   And now you know why I love him so!   He's the best friend a lethal virus ever had. I could kill half a million more people  and he couldn't give a rat's ass if he could just find a way to squeak through the electoral college again!

BQ:   Cora, you and Trump make quite a formidable team together.........you destroy people's lungs while he champions idiocy, ignorance and ridiculous lies. It's a wonder any of us are left alive.....

CORA:  Why, thank you!

BQ:   From now on, though, you should keep him away from Jonathan Swan and Axios interviews.  You see how easy it is for Swan to reveal Trump for the moron he is by simply asking follow-up questions every time Trump says something stupid.

CORA:  I know, I know.......dumb move on Trumpy's part.. I can't tell you how many times I've turned down Axios sit-downs. That's why I only do exclusive interviews with you, Fleshnut....

BQ:  But we think we've done a good job exposing you for the rotten germ that you are.

CORA:  Yeah, you have.......but these little chats stay in the blogosphere and never show up on national television!  Just like 'what happens in Vegas'  blah blah blah......so I'm cool with that.

BQ:  What about all this toddler whining Trump does lately?  Stuff like 'Nobody likes me'....and 'why are Dr. Fauci's poll numbers higher than mine?'.....and 'John Lewis didn't come to my inauguration or State Of The Union speeches'.......

CORA:  Oh you're right about that. He needs to knock that crap off.  I swear, he sounds like one of those little kids gasping in the ICUs that I love to squeeze the life out of.......I can't stand those brats!  That's why I can't wait to bump off a whole bunch more of 'em as they go back to school!

BQ:  I almost forgot one.....his famous, "I've done more for the black community than any other President'....

CORA:  And so have I, come to think of it! I've slaughtered black people in higher proportions than any other demographic. African Americans should thank me, now that they've got less mouths to feed at the dinner table!  Trumpy and me, we're a double whammy for those folks......he promises whites to keep 'em out of the suburbs and I promise to kill as many of 'em as I can!

BQ:  And the both of you are equally horrendous. We  guess you're pleased Trump turned on another of his virus team, Dr. Birx, calling her 'pathetc' cause she dared to speak the truth of how widespread you are.

CORA:  That meddling bitch!  Who the **** does she think she is, letting people know what's really going on. I wish Trumpy would ditch those science nerds and just rely on the most dependable sources of advice.

BQ:  You mean Fox News?

CORA:  No, I mean me and Jared Kushner!

BQ:   Cora, we think you've got something stuck in your tendrils......here, let us wipe it off for you....

CORA:  Thanks.....hey wait, what's that in your hand?

BQ: Picked it up at Walgreen's.....a Clorox disinfectant wipe...

CORA:   Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

BQ:  If only these things worked on Trump the same way.......

'PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW'......PEDOPHILIA MEMORABILIA......

Pretty Maids All In A Row (1971)      We've unearthed some fairly weird stuff in our tireless search for cinema oddities.......

                 But maybe nothing quite as warped as this one.......a perfect storm collision of disparate actors, writer and director who normally would only collaborate with one another in an alternate, bizarro universe......

                 Believe it or not, it happened in this universe.......and all under the auspices of early 1970's MGM, a studio that was already in drastic self-destruction mode to keep itself afloat.......

                  So what the hell is it, anyway?   A sex comedy?  A thriller?  A satiric snapshot of America  as a new decade kicks off?   Soft porn for pervs who salivate at the sight of nubile teen girls?

                  All of the above.......or, no.....maybe none of the above.  We've no idea about anyone's intentions here.........by the time this thing squished out of the MGM sausage grinder, it resembled a rogue episode of some TV sitcom/cop show hybrid......

                 Consider the creative participants........the writer-producer was none other than the great guru of 'Star Trek' Gene Roddenberry.  And directing fell to, of all people, that sultan of softcore Euro-Trash Roger Vadim, whose grossly inflated reputation came from his films celebrating the physical assets of his various babe-o-licious wives (Brigitte Bardot, Jane Fonda, etc, etc.....)

                  On the surface, the storyline aspires to be some kind of sick, dark social satire, a spoof on the immoral depraved rot festering behind our All-American sunny optimism........(which David Lynch would later plumb the depths of in "Blue Velvet".)

                   We're guessing that's what Gene Roddenberry tried to accomplish in the script......mixing comedy tropes with dead bodies......and maybe an American director with a deadpan wit and a sharp eye on the zeitgeist, a Robert Altman or a Mike Nichols could've turned this into a real movie..... maybe.

                    What they got was Roger Vadim, whose one and only interest lay in his slobbering obsession with young girls' tits, asses and long, long legs.........and who lacked virtually every single filmmaking skill, except where to point the camera when a hot cutie passes by.........

                     The story?  Rock Hudson plays a beloved high school football coach and guidance counselor who's actually a serial pedophile killer. He suavely plows his way through every willowy, luscious girl student in the school, occasionally murdering a few of them if they get too clingy.  But he does dearly love his beautiful wife and adorable little girl........

                     For dirty old men in the audience who prefer older woman, the film offers Angie Dickinson as a substitute teacher enlisted by Hudson to....uh.....befriend, so to speak, a frustrated virgin (John David Carson).  Her technique mostly involves rubbing her cleavage across his face.   ( and viewed in hindsight, the concept of Rock Hudson as a rampant ravisher of underage girls may stand as the film's most perverse gimmick......) 

                      Sick gags and jabs at self-obsessed American culture pile up routinely.....but just lie there under Vadim's typically slack, energy-free direction. He knew nothing of America and it shows in his indifferent handling of scenes meant to have a satiric bite.  It doesn't take long to figure out what  he's really interested in.........and it ain't the jokes, folks.

                         Since the film's bereft of any pacing, visual storytelling, humor, or even a point of view, it leaves a viewer plenty of time to realize what an ugly, dumb waste of time it is.........

                         And if the 'woke' cancel-culture hordes ever got a look at this movie's treatment of women, or ever made aware of its existence, they'd be howling for cremation of all the available prints.

(Not that we'd blame them........but then they'd have to start tossing Doris Day and Sandra Dee movies in the bonfire too and that we'd never tolerate.....) 

                          As your faithful curator of the strangest, craziest movies we can dig up, we didn't mind a return visit to 'Pretty Maids' for the purposes of this blog........but now it's time to bury it forever and always......Zero stars (0)..