'SOMETHING WILD'......NYC AS THE ISLAND OF TWO LOST SOULS....

'Something Wild' (1961)   We come back to this film every few years and it never fails to hypnotize us every time we see it. 

          It haunts us like no other film. It stays stuck in our head days after we've viewed it.  We didn't know what to make of it the first time we saw it.......and maybe we still don't. 

          Which brings us to the conclusion that it's one brilliant piece of cinema. 

           Call it a fever dream. Call it a tone poem. Call it a waking nightmare with a calm, restful ending. 

         This damn film so burns into our eyeballs that we're writing this post as fast as we can to get the damn thing out of our head.

            At least for a while, anyway. Until we end up watching it again. Which seems inevitable.

          Start with the opening credits. A clashing, crashing symphony erupts, an ear grabbing attack of sound written by American's master composers, Aaron Copeland. (one of his few film scores)

           The visuals are equally stunning, a riot of black-and-white imagery of New York City......the teeming crowds, the roaring subway trains, the towering skyscrapers and lowly tenements.......with the shots coming at you as furiously as Copeland's cacophonous music, courtesy of the classic cinematographer Eugen Shuftan ("Eyes Without A Face", "The Hustler")

           Then the film wastes no time hurling itself into its simple, primal story

            Mary Ann, a lonely, innocent New York college girl (Carrol Baker) walking home at night, is grabbed by a rapist and brutally assaulted. 

             Telling no one, especially her harsh, domineering mother,(Mildred Dunnock), she has immediately internalized her trauma.  She's now the walking wounded, an emotional zombie adrift in a cold, careless city that's oblivious to her pain. 

              Now a damaged lost soul wandering the streets, Mary Ann consigns herself to a tiny rented room that's like a solitary confinement cell. She takes a shopgirl job at Woolworth's, mocked for her remoteness by the other girls who work with her. 

              Her attempted suicide is interrupted by Mike (Ralph Meeker), an auto mechanic who takes her back to his basement apartment. And it doesn't take long before Mary Ann (and we the viewers) realize Mike is another damaged, lost soul, as cut off from any human connection as Mary Ann.

             And here's where the film takes its most disturbing turns. 

             In as much pain as she is, Mike sees Mary Ann as some kind of lifeline for himself, his last chance to join the world as a fully functioning human.  Incapable of any normal interaction with her, he briefly imprisons Mary Ann in the apartment. When he staggers home drunk and lunges at her, she kicks his eye out.

             Fear and self-loathing simultaneously drives the two of them apart and brings them together.

              Is it possible these two mentally storm-tossed people find a way to save each other?   That's for the film to answer.........and whether or not you accept or tolerate the finale of this story.......well, that makes for a great conversation starter after you're done watching it. 

             Baker and Meeker are achingly superlative together, the oddest of odd couples ever seen. In addition to Dunnock, you can also spot "All In The Family"s Jean Stapleton as Baker's shrill tenement neighbor and Doris Roberts as one of the Woolworth girls. 

            In describing this movie, we always feel it comes off sounding like a fractured fairy tale. 

            And maybe that's exactly what it is.......unless you see it as something different. 

           To us, "Something Wild", with its raw nerve cast, astonishing score, photography both gritty and dream-like. remains forever.......something wild.

            And for BQ, that makes is a 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS.

           See it. 

BQ GETS VAXED.....AND SPEAKS TO CORA THE CORONAVIRUS ONE LAST TIME

 BQ:  Cora!  Thought I'd give you the breaking news that we got our first COVID vaccine shot today.

CORA:  Sacrilege!  Blasphemy!  How dare you, I was so looking forward to killing you off.

BQ:  Well, thanks to Trump's lies and assorted idiocies, you managed to kill a whole lot of people who might have survived if there'd been a sane adult in the White House.

CORA:  But didn't you hear? I'm making a comeback!  There's still who knows how many morons in this country going maskless.....I may get to finish off a whole shitload of people before I'm wiped out.

BQ:  Sadly yes.

CORA:  That doddering old fart Biden......who the hell does he think he is, flooding the country with vaccine.

BQ:  He's the President Of The United State, Cora. For the first time in 4 years, a real one.

CORA:  Yeah, he's no fun at all. Won't lift a finger to help me like my beloved Trumpy did.

BQ:   Speaking of no fun. we've a parting gift for you, since we don't plan to speak to you ever again.

CORA:  Awww, you shouldn't have. What'd you get me?

BQ:   A huge spray can of Moderna vaccine. Here, have a snort on us.....

CORA:  Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.......God bless Trumpy!  Arrrrggggggggghhh!

'THE OTHER EMILY'.....SILENCE OF THE 'VERTIGO' GONE GIRL

 The Other Emily by Dean Koontz (2021)    We know this author commands a fan base of millions of avid readers, who snap up every thriller he pumps out......

               And we ourselves enjoyed the hell out of his 5 book 'Jane Hawk' series.....(some of them more than others)

               Sorry......but we're not on board with this one. Mostly, it alternated between boring and annoying,

                 The premise, though, sucks you in with a vengeance.

              How could we resist?  The book's opening chapters combine the creepy horror of "Silence Of The Lambs" with the tantalizing 'Vertigo' trope of a lost love returned from the dead.......and then combines those two captivating ideas with.....

              Ooops.   If we opine about the third trope Koontz throws into the mix, we'll blow the big twists of the book's final chapters.  

             So let's go back to the beginning where best-selling novelist David Thorne mournfully pines for his presumed dead, beautiful fiance Emily, who mysteriously disappeared ten years ago. 

              Thorne believes she's among the victims of the now incarcerated, abominable serial killer Ronnie Jessup, who abducted, tortured and mummified young girls in his basement lair. 

              Seeking some measure of peace and closure, Thorne's engaged in Clarice Starling-Hannibal Lector type conversations with the vile Jessup, hoping he'll offer Thorne confirmation of Emily's death.

               And if that isn't torment enough for him,  the bedeviled writer meets a ravishing, woman who's the mirror image twin of Emily....right down to the telltale birthmark just below her navel.

                 How can this be, David wonders......this stunner Maddison, a virtual clone-like duplicate of his long lost beloved Emily, intrigues and mystifies him with her enigmatic entry into his life and her maddening claims that she's a.....(hold your breath).... professional assassin.  

               Say what now?

                Does that strange admission of hers qualify as sarcastic romantic byplay or the real deal?  And what about this other strange guy in Maddison's past, who's been spotted strolling around years after he supposedly dropped dead of a heart attack in the middle of a supermarket?

                 (Time to cue the Bernard Herrmann score for 'Vertigo'?  Or maybe some typically eerie 'Spellbound'  "wooooo-wooooo" wailing from a Theremin?)

                Okay, that's enough plot talk. Let's get down to it.....

                The book's a tedious slog, overwritten with endless, verbose internal monologues, the kind of blah-blah-blah overwriting that tempts readers to either skip or skim their way through it until they can get the good, important stuff.

                By a third of the way into the book, Koontz drops enough obvious clues so you can figure out where he's going with this story.  Thorne, his less than sympathetic protagonist, is so consumed with guilt about failing to save Emily and so besotted with Maddison, Emily's impossibly dazzling doppelganger, that he doesn't seem to catch on until the final chapters.

                 Even worse, Koontz and his hero go completely off the rails in the book's final third, which wastes interminable chapters taking place in the serial killer's old house and upends Thorne's character in ridiculous ways.

                 The final few chapters, where Koontz finally lays out all the answers and reveals, are so rushed, far fetched and overwrought, they render the story idiotic, full of holes and beyond belief on multiple levels. 

                 We've handed out any number of high ratings to Dean Koontz books in the past, but not this one......

                 It's a 1 star (*) waste of time. 

              

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAPUP.......BABY ORANGE HUGS HIS TERRORISTS, GEORGIA GOES BACK TO "GONE WITH THE WIND'

                 As usual, all the madness in this wrap-up leads back to one the worst excuses for a human being that ever walked the planet.

Baby Orange claims his Capitol riot fascist mob was "hugging and kissing" the police.......and in full delirium, said his rabid Trumpanzees posed "zero threat".......

                Maybe he should call the family of the police officer his goons killed and explain that to them. 

                Maybe he should call the police officers who had their heads and bodies bashed by American flags wielded by his goons and explain they faced "zero threat"

                Maybe he should sneak into every newsroom in the country and erase the videos of his goons trying to violently overthrow U.S. democracy while they carry a noose with which to hang Mike Pence.

                 Maybe he should try hypnotizing the whole country into believing what they didn't see what they saw on January 6th. 

                  No. That won't work. Mass hypnosis only works on Trumpanzees.

Georgia passes its massive voter suppression law.......turning the clock back about 160 years, back to them good old days when black folk knew their place and didn't try get all uppity and think they could actually go the polls and.....God help us....vote. 

                We can well understand Georgia Trumpanzees in the state legislature passing this bill......after all, look what happened in the last election.  Thousands upon thousands of them colored folk  showin' up to throw out the Lord And Savior Of White America, Donald J. Trump.

                 That simply cannot stand. 

And finally.....in the Department of Who-Gives-A-Flying F***......we've added the following that we couldn't give a rat's ass, a rolling donut or a flying f*** about.......

                 All news, rumors, and controversy related to Harry and Meghan.

                  All news related to Zack Snyder's 4 hour cut of "Justice League"

                 Any breaking reveal news about who wore the "Masked Singer" costumes

                All news about Steven Spielberg's planned movie about his childhood

                 Any words, thoughts and/or complete sentences that come out of Sean Hannity's mouth.

                Anything at all related to "American Idol" and "The Voice"

                 Whatever the next imbecilic statement that comes out of Sen. Ron Johnson.

                 Any announcement about a new streaming service that charges an extra 8.99 to watch old TV shows and movies that everybody lost interest in.

                 Any story, product, tweet or instagram with the name' Kardashian' attached to it.

                 Pelaton ads. 

'NEWS OF THE WORLD' (BOOK & FILM)......A NEW WESTERN CLASSIC

               It's rare for us to enjoy a back-to-back experience of reading a wonderful book and then immediately viewing an equally wonderful film that somehow manages to improve on its source material. 

                That neatly describes our experience with this book and the recent film adapted from it. 

 News Of The World by Paulette Jiles (2016)  evokes the brutal, dangerous landscapes of post Civil War Texas. Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a weary Confederate veteran of blood soaked battles, travels this turbulent territory making a sparse living by reading newspaper articles to assembled crowds.......(cost of admission: one dime).

                  Against his own better judgement, he takes on a herculean 400 mile quest - transporting a 10 year old girl rescued from Kiowa captivity back to an aunt and uncle, her only surviving relatives. 

                  The child, Johanna, is a now a wild, broken lost soul, speaking no English and an outcast in both white and Native American cultures.  Her journey with Captain Kidd to find a home for herself, fraught with dangers and leavened with human connection, makes this odyssey of the two unlikely travelling companions thrilling, perceptive and ultimately heartrending.

                 Steeped in Texas lore and evocative of the era, we can't recommend this book highly enough.  We practically read it in one sitting and it left us shaken and riveted from beginning to end. As a reading experience, it's a 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS.

                  As soon we finished this book, we jumped right into......

News Of The World (2020)    We at first worried upon hearing that the film version would fall into the hands of director Paul Greengrass........whose shaky-cam cinematics aggravate us.

                  Greengrass's over-reliance on hand held camerawork ("The Green Zone", the Bourne series) reduced, we thought, much of his films to unwatchable visual gibberish........the kind of junky filmmaking we'd hate to see inflicted on such a stark, primal book like "News Of The World".

                  To our everlasting relief, Greengrass discarded his signature style and with the gifted help of cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, creates a visually stunning film that evokes classic westerns like John Ford's "The Searchers" (which the book somewhat resembles in structure and storyline along with "True Grit").

                The simple, beautiful visuals leave Greengrass to concentrate on what's most important to tell this story.....on the two actors who take the lead roles of Captain Kidd and Johanna.

                 Tom Hanks, that national acting treasure who's managed to combine the steely reserve of Henry Fonda with the warm all-American empathy of James Stewart, embodies the Captain like no other actor could.  His performance here functions as close to a summing up of his all his previous Americana roles in "Sully", "Captain Phillips", "Saving Private Ryan" and "A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood".

                  The revelation here is 12 year old Helena Zengel as Johanna. In what must be one of the most demanding roles ever given to a child actress, she astounds in every scene she's in, whether making you laugh or breaking your heart.  All her scenes with Hanks are gems and you can't take your eyes off either of them. 

                  What surprised and impressed us were all the ways that Greengrass, co-scripting the film with Luke Davies, expanded, embellished and even improved upon book, fleshing out its story with additional emotional power. 

                   We couldn't have asked for a better film version of "News Of The World" and just like the book, it's a 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS.   BQ says dive into the book first, then by all means don't miss the movie.

'THE NEW MUTANTS'......D-MINUS X MEN

 The New Mutants (2020)     We don't really want to spend a whole lot of time beating up on this poor, star-crossed, misbegotten pathetic little movie......

                It would be like kicking a starving kitten with only two legs.........

                Its tortured production history (which we'll not detail for fear of putting ourselves and you, dear visitors, into a deep coma), includes the usual stuff......rewrites, reshoots, rescheduled release dates.  

                And also something the filmmakers couldn't possibly have anticipated - Disney gobbling up 20th Century Fox, which initiated this junior-varsity reboot of the X-Men franchise.

                For a comic book superhero movie, it's a modest, lower budgeted, claustrophobic affair, with a small teenage cast confined to a creepy ,and abandoned loony-bin setting. 

                Within that limiting framework, the movie does try mixing and mashing up multiple genres and tropes.......thrown into this stew are indigestible chunks of "One Few Over The Cuckoo's Nest", "The Breakfast Club" and any number of scenes and ideas borrowed from teen slasher-horror movies. 

                  Our five troubled X-kids, (with various powers we won't bother describing lest we all once again stray into terminal coma-boredom territory), find themselves incarcerated by a Nurse Ratched type employing the standard creepy passive-aggressive group therapy.

                   This invariably leads (as if anyone couldn't already guess) to a booga-booga, Halloween procession of assorted CGI monsters, demons and whoop-dee-doo displays of our angsty gang's super powers. 

                    For anyone who's sat through and suffered through dozens and dozens of X-Men and Marvel movies, it's almost impossible to watch "The New Mutants" without giving in to eye rolling yawns. 

                    And the only reason we subjected ourselves to this movie was the live-wire presence of our favorite actress of the last several years, Anya Taylor-Joy.

                   The film's producers clearly knew she's the main attractions here. Playing the only X-Kid with a personality and a pulse, she grabs this hapless little movie by its scruffy neck and makes it her own......(you can compare it to the way Angelina Jolie's supporting performance totally dominated "Girl Interrupted")

                    It's a true measure of our admiration for the charismatic, beautiful ATJ that we bothered at all to endure "The New Mutants"........

                     That's why you can believe the single star we're giving it (*) is for her alone. Unless you're a hardcore comic book superhero fan-person and as big a fan of Taylor-Joy as we are, proceed with extreme caution.......

                   

'PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN'.....A #ME-TOO AVENGER ON THE HUNT

Promising Young Woman (2020)    We thought for sure we'd end up lavishing praise all over this movie.

                 How could it miss?   Offering a meaty, take-no-prisoners role to that always amazing actress, Carey Mulligan.

                  How could it miss?  Casting a viciously sardonic eye on one of the most hot button issues of this millennium, the physical abuse and assault on women by entitled men protected by centuries of our culture's ingrained patriarchy.

                  How could it miss?  With numerous scenes of would be date rapists (and assorted female apologists and enablers) utterly humiliated by Mulligan, who feigns drunkenness to lure and entrap singles bar assholes into molesting her. 

                    Clever? Yes. Darkly funny?  You bet. Plenty of scenes where you cringe and laugh at the same time?  Absolutely. 

                     So how come we don't love this movie?

                     Simple. Mulligan digs deep into this character with a dazzling complex performance. And the movie doesn't work anywhere near as hard as she does.  We've never seen a film so completely unworthy of its lead actress. 

                      Unlike Mulligan, who peels off every raw layer of a damaged woman obsessed with revenge, the movie itself settles for being slick, funny and and its finale, clever in the most show-offy way imaginable. 

                    Throughout its running time, the film forces you suspend all disbelief, as Mulligan's various vengeful scams on her more than deserving victims are always flawlessly executed  (sometimes even leaving the poor suckers whimpering in debasement.)

                    And it gets worse. 

                    In its final scenes, "Promising Young Woman" discards Mulligan and all the exceptional work she's put into the film in order to arrive at its capricious controversial twists.........as if the only thing on its mind was coming up with an Agatha Christie 'gotcha!' wrap-up.

                    Sure, it's a dexterous, adroit way to end the film. And if the lead role had been taken by a merely competent actress whose work aligned more with the film's snarky level, then this climax wouldn't seem to unsatisfying to us. 

                      But they didn't have a merely competent actress. They had Carey Mulligan, who went so far above and beyond this film's limited goals, it makes that big twist look cheap, pathetic and not up to her level of achievement.

                       Instead of the emotional impact that the film might've given, it's content with a facile finish that reeks of an episode of the old Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV show.

                       For Mulligan's performance alone, which deserves to be seen regardless of the film's deficiencies, 3 stars (***)

                     

                    

'THE COOL ONES'.....THE LONG ROAD TO WHIZ-BANG!

 The Cool Ones (1967)   We promised you more 1960's lunacy that would eclipse yesterday's post on "When The Boys Meet The Girls"......and now we deliver!

               Unlike the "When The Boys..." travesty, the makers of "The Cool Ones" at least homed in to the youth market they were aiming for.......even though it's apparent the filmmakers here probably never saw a movie  since the 1940's.......

                But they thought they knew what the kids wanted to see in a movie.......singing! dancing! Cute girls in mini-skirts, go go boots and bikinis!

                 And the fantabulous....Mrs. Miller!  (more on her later)

                 So off we go to the bouncy, booty-shakin' world of 1960's pop music, where Cliff Donner (Gil Peterson), a tall hunk with a helmet of coiffed blonde hair is already in the has-been phase of his career, warbling cover songs in a bar. 

                  Meanwhile, an ultra bubbly, ultra perky cutie-pie Hallie Rodgers (Debbie Watson), possessed of armor-plated ambition to hit it big, outrages the producers of "Whiz Bang", a TV pop show modeled after similar real shows of the time, 'Hullaballoo' and 'Shindig'. 

                 Refusing confinement as a backup dancer, Hallie riotously attempts to steal the show, and during the futile attempts to restrain her, audiences think she's invented a new dance.......dubbed, we kid you not, the 'Tantrum'.  Yeah....right.  (and nobody. regardless of their own future stardom, dares stand in her way.....don't blink and you'll see her upstaging a very young Glen Campbell....)

                 The relentless ingenue convinces a wary, doubtful Cliff to join her as a singing duo. And before you know it....(do we even really need to write this?), they're a nationwide sensation and America's teens are all flailing their arms in Tantrum-dancing.

                 To hit the heights, these kids need top management and oh boy do they get it.......in the person of multi-millionaire music promoter and psychotic megalomaniac Tony Krum (played with ferocious, Loony Tunes energy by Roddy McDowell.)

                  And that's all you need to know as the movie bursts into musical numbers every five minutes or so, while McDowell promenades and preens like a rapid-fire Satan, sort of a rock music version Ray Walston's 'Mr. Applegate' devil from "Damn Yankees"

                  (Supposedly, the script based McDowell's character on the world famous (and later infamous) record producer Phil Spector. Watching Roddy in his full mania, we could easily imagine a future in which Tony Krum's indicted for murder.....)

                 As for our singing lovebirds......Gil Peterson's major claim to fame seemed to come from his striking resemblance to the Barbie Doll's playmate, Ken. True enough, he has all the emotional range of a plastic mannequin.  Debbie Watson, a typical assembly line 1960's starlet, didn't have even a scrap of acting ability to portray single minded showbiz determination.  Then again, she's so damn cute, it really doesn't matter to this movie one way or the other.

                 And let's not forget the stunning, jaw dropping performance of middle age matron Mrs. Miller, who stops the show at 'Whiz Bang' with her operatic vibrato that sounds like air raid siren running low on battery power.  (She'd have felt far more at home as a featured attraction in "When The Boys Meet The Girls".....) 

                  For anyone who remembers the era, "The Cool Ones" might provide loads of unintentional laughs. Other than that limited purpose, it's strictly for completists who savor every freakish nugget of 60's cinema.....1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2)

'WHEN THE BOYS MEET THE GIRLS'.....WHEN MGM MUSICALS MEET THEIR DOOM

 When The Boys Meet The Girls (1965)    And the the Bizarro World 1960's films just keep on comin' at us......bless their disastrous little hearts.......

               In the golden age of MGM musicals, the famously gifted, prolific Arthur Freed unit created one classic musical after another.....films like "Singin' In The Rain", "The Band Wagon" and "An American In Paris".

                You only need to look at "When The Boys Meet The Girls" to see how far both the studio and its sporadic attempts at musicals had fallen.  Not all that surprising, considering this film fell into the hands of producer Sam Katzman, a prolific rock-bottom budget shlockmeister. 

                Katzman, to put it mildly, was no Arthur Freed, but we'd give him some credit for the sheer lunacy of this movie......a mad, mad stab at remaking the Mickey Roomey-Judy Garland 1943 "Girl Crazy".

                Even crazier, the movie, like some kind of Frankenstein-ian lab experiment gone awry, made a demented effort to blend the original film's Gershwin tunes with guest appearances from 1965's latest Billboard chart toppers......such as the watered-down Beatles wanna be Herman's Hermits and ephemeral Sam The Sham And The Pharohs.

               But wait! There's more!  For any grandparents who might stumble the theater, they'd feast their tired eyes on the immortal Louis Armstrong, the one and only gay-ahead-of-his time Vegas piano pounder Liberace and Davis and Reese, a bottom of the barrel comedy team. 

               There's no sense in us trying to describe how this eclectic bunch of performers, who look they've all landed from different planets, could possibly fit into one single movie. You'd just have to see it to believe it. 

               If that it isn't enough, there's a boy-meets-girl plot thrown into this overcooked goulash, involving a wealthy playboy (Harve Presnell, a tall, dashing Broadway tenor born 20 years too late for the kind of film musical career he deserved.) The object of his affection is Connie Francis, the diminutive belter already rendered out-of-date by the onslaught of 60's rock 'n roll.

              (See our post on Francis's previous MGM vehicle, '64's "Looking For Love" on 5/28/19)

             The film plays out as a ridiculous vaudeville show but every so often a few highlights stand out like Louis Armstrong's appearance and Presnell's beautifully sung rendition of "Embraceable You". But then again, there's also 1960's comic bimbo Sue Ann Langdon warbling "Treat Me Rough", extolling the joys of physical assault......(remember this came eons before #MeToo)

               Overall embarrassing and instantly forgettable, "When The Boys Meet The Girls" was a 1 star (*) hot mess......

              ........ but let's hear it for Harve Presnell. With movies like this functioning at the last nails in musicals' coffins, Presnell left films to enjoy a long, flourishing career on stage........and in 1996's Coen brothers classic 'Fargo', he came roaring back into movies as a bald, elderly character actor.

                 If only he'd gotten to sing "Embraceable You" before Steve Buscemi shot him.....(and don't miss stopping in to BQ tomorrow, we'll delve into even MORE 1960's pop music madness! ).

FRIDAY MADNESS WRAP-UP......BABY ORANGE'S TRAIL OF SLIME COMES BACK TO HAUNT US....

             

                We should have realized we'd not be done with madness wrap-ups.......

                  Even though Baby Orange no longer infests the White House, like an oversized slug, he's left the stain of his slime behind him and it stretches across the entire country. 

                  The murders of innocent Asian women.......and the thousands of slurs and assaults directed at Asian Americans.....

                   Anyone who's maintained their sanity over the previous four years knows where this hate originated.......(which of course excludes Trumpanzees....). 

                    It flowed freely out of the sewer of lies and verbal poison that functions as Baby Oranges mouth. 

                     .......never missing an opportunity to provoke his brain dead followers by constantly referring to COVID as the "China Virus".....

                      .........and taking great glee in his re-naming it the "Kung Flu" to generate cheap laughs out of the idiots who populated his super-spreader rallies...... 

                       He's gone from power, thank God, but sadly, his toxic stench lives on, like lethal radioactivity.

                      Like a virus. 

                      We can only pray that the special suite awaiting him in Hell comes equipped a case of perpetual Coronavirus......and with no vast medical team to help him recover.

                   

'THE DOMINO PRINCIPLE'.....THE LONE GUNMAN'S FAREWELL TO ARMS.....

 The Domino Principle (1977)   When an aging director loses his basic filmmaking skills and his ability to intelligently weld his storytelling to the times he's living in, it's never a pretty sight. 

                The results:  painfully out of touch, embarrassing movies that die instant deaths the moment they hit theatres. 

                 Stanley Kramer, the impresario  of films that paired big stars with big, controversial issues, enjoyed a much celebrated career with movies like "On The Beach", The Defiant Ones",  "Judgement At Nuremberg" and "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner".

                 But as he entered the 1970's, things started to go awry for him. kicking off with "R.P.M.", his abysmal take on the student protest movements sweeping the country.  What couldn't have.

                 "The Domino Principle" based on one of those airport paperback thrillers you'd buy before a two hour flight, found Kramer taking on political assassinations engineered by mysterious, unknown, conspiratorial forces.

                  Three years before this film's release, this hot button topic had already been superbly handled in Alan Pakula's chilling " The Parallax View", now considered a modern day classic.  (See our post of  2/28/17)

                  Kramer was at best a competent craftsman as a director and his films, for all their important subject matter and powerful performances, never displayed any sense of style, nuance or visual imagination. 

                    With a useless script that gave the actors nothing to work with, Kramer couldn't cover the flaws with any flare of his own, so "The Domino Principle" just lies there like a dead, half eaten whale that; washed up on the beach. 

                    This inert excuse for a thriller finds a convicted murderer and Vietnam vet (Gene Hackman) recruited by a typically shadowy outfit fronted by two business suited executive types. (Richard Widmark, occasionally breaking into his trademark manic giggle and Edward Albert as an arrogant, officious prick, which doesn't sit too well with Hackman)

                       Hackman's needed to bump off the President and to sweeten the deal for him, he's reunited with his estranged wife. (Candice Bergen, almost unrecognizable in a short, brown wig.)

                      The film moves along with the urgency and immediacy of  a still life oil painting and you can figure out it's Bergen under that dopey wig once she tries acting out an emotional scene that's light years out of her miniscule range.

                       The plot's a sketchy, worthless collection of worn out tropes, including the part where the puppetmasters of this vast conspiracy start eliminating all the participants.  You know the drill.

                        The usually excellent Hackman knew he'd stumbled into a stinker and wanders through the movie barely engaged by anything going on in it. 

                          We won't belabor this any further or waste any more time on such a throwaway movie. 'Zero stars (0). BQ says skip it.           ,

                 

'THE IRON PETTICOAT'.....FROM RUSSIA, UNLOVED

The Iron Petticoat (1956)  Huzzah! We found another one........yet another 'who-thought-this-movie-was-a-good-idea' oddity from the fabulous '50's......

                   If you thought "I Married A Woman", the film we posted about yesterday, was a weird 'n crazy item, you ain't seen nothin' til you take in the elusive, little seen "The Iron Petticoat".......

                    This one features a one-time-only collision of two iconic talents who probably never should made a movie together.....a true Clash Of The Titans between the prickly powerhouse Katherine Hepburn and America's beloved gag master Bob Hope. 

                     To put it in a more modern context, try to imagine a movie co-starring Rodney Dangerfield and Meryl Streep........or Jimmy Kimmel and Cate Blanchette......

                     This started out with high intentions and a high pedigree. Stellar screenwriter Ben Hecht wrote a variation of "Ninotchka", a romantic comedy about how love thaws out a frosty Russian woman deep in the throes of communism. (Later remade as the MGM musical "Silk Stockings")

                      Designed as a witty vehicle for Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, the Grant role ended up in the hands of Bob Hope, who brought along his platoon of gag writers to pepper the script with the usual rapid fire Hope wisecracks.

                      Hepburn, a born trouper, soldiered on through the now eviscerated project, even though she and Hope were an oil-and-water duo who couldn't stand each other and had zero romantic chemistry together.

                       To add to the overall oddness, the film itself was a British production, filmed in Pinewood studios and heavily populated with familiar character actors like James Robertson Justice and Sir Robert Helpmann.

                       There are a few fleeting moments (and if you blinked, you'd miss them) where you can detect a glimmer of what Hecht intended here........a wry, subtle, sharply observed clash of cultures  between  the gung ho American and the ace Russian MIG pilot who defected to the West because.......(talk about prescient)......she was passed over for promotion for being a mere woman!

                      Hepburn's strutting, manly devoted communist is a sight to behold, but whatever wit  existed in the original script gets wiped out by Hope's perpetual stream of lame one liners.

                       And when the film lurches into its second half, even the gags take a back seat to the laborious plot complications, such as the constant efforts of the bumbling Russians to kidnap Hepburn and spirit her away back to Moscow......and a firing squad.

                        We thought it was at least worth a look to see these two Hollywood legends on screen together for their first and last time.  And it's certainly easy to understand why they never paired up again. 

                        This one's for cinema completists only (and hardcore fans of Hepburn and Hope).....for everybody else, 1 star (*)

'I MARRIED A WOMAN'.....FOR THIS GUY, THAT'S A LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

 I Married A Woman (1958)    As we've stated many times before, uncovering an oddball little movie like this one is one of big reasons we started this blog.....

                  And 50's comedies don't come anymore off-the-wall than "I Married A Woman".....all about a harried, hen-pecked advertising executive (comedian George Gobel) and his unlikely marriage to his blonde bombshell wife. (the reigning queen of British hubba-hubba, Diana Dors.)

                  How does one explain George Gobel?   We guess you could think of him, with his crew cut, monotone delivery and shy, self-effacing-to-a-fault manner, as a middle American corn-fed version of Woody Allen's hapless nebbish persona.

                    The idea of paring this diminutive USA 'Mr. Ordinary' with the formidable superstructure of Diana Dors must have seemed like comedy gold.......

                     Except for one or two moments, they sparked nothing but fool's gold. And not all that funny

                     The script, penned by prolific TV gag writer Goodman Ace, rolls God only knows how many exhausted one liners off a never ending assembly line. After 10 minutes of this stuff, we began to wonder if Ace was even awake while he typed it.

                   At his ad agency, Gobel's tasked with coming up with a brilliant new campaign for the firm's biggest client, Luxemberg beer. At home, he's bedeviled by Dors's constant need for attention, as well his obnoxious live-in mother-in-law (played by the skilled master of irritating mother roles, Jessie Royce Landis)

                   There's not much else to discuss here. Gobel was one of those curious performers whom people either found hysterically funny or just stared at , wondering what exactly was funny about him. (count us among the latter....) 

                    Dors struts around, as far as we can tell, for the sole purpose of making audiences laugh at the unbelievable idea of her union with Gobel, including becoming pregnant by him.......(which would put this movie almost in the realm of science fiction.....)

                      There is one bright spot glimmering briefly.......it stands out in full color in the middle of a black and white film. Gobel and Dors  go on a movie date, viewing a fictitious sappy romance that features John Wayne (a good sport cameo) fawning over his fiance like a lovesick puppy. 

                    The brief seconds of Wayne gallantly overplaying a typical 1950's Hollywood romantic lead ends up as far funnier than 90 minutes worth of George Gobel. desperately hovering around Diana Dors like an introverted stalker.......

                     "I Married A Woman" settles for being one of those 50's oddities that's far more fun to think about in passing than to actually take the time to watch.........

                       Which we did, so you won't have to......1 star (*).

                     

'BEHIND HER EYES' (BOOK & SERIES)......UNRELIABLE NARRATORS IN THE MARKETING DEPARTMENT

         

             We're going to spend as little time as we can on this book and the Netflix series adapted  from it. 

             We've already regretted the hours we wasted reading it and then watching the show. 

             To put it simply, it's a con job by the publisher, designed to put one over on unsuspecting readers who swallow the false claim that the book is a....."suspenseful psychological thriller".

               It's absolutely none of those things.......and neither is the 6 episode limited series based on it. 

               We don't mind when we're duped and hoodwinked by outrageous twists of plot in thrillers.......after all, it's the primary reason that people read and love them. 

               What's not okay with us:    hyping the book  as a mystery thriller when it turns out it falls into an entirely different genre altogether.  Memo to publisher of "Behind Her Eyes"......you suck.

               Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough (2018)  does indeed start out as a dread-laden, nothing-good-will-come-from-this romantic quartet. 

                The four players:  Louise, a medical secretary, David, a psychiatrist who much to Louise's surprise after a drunken kiss with him, is her new boss, Adele, David's ethereal, troubled wife, and in flashbacks, Rob, a young Sottish drug addict who bonded with Adele while in rehab.....and who has mysteriously disappeared. 

                Somebody's playing somebody like a piano......and yes, there's more than few deaths involved, along with a twisted, sardonic finale. 

                The problem is how the book chooses to get there. We'll only say that Pinborough shifts the story into a genre that you may find utterly ridiculous, annoying and stupidly far-fetched even if you're willing to accept it on its own terms. 

                  We weren't.

               Behind Her Eyes the Netflix Series slowly unfolds as a dutifully faithful adaptation of the book, even using much of its dialogue.

                The series even goes so far as to duplicate the book's slow pacing, which gives you plenty of time to roll your eyes over the foolish choices made by the characters. 

                 And the widely discussed WTF twists are replicated here as well, in all their oh-you-gotta-be-shiitin'-me' glory. 

                 We've now officially wasted more time than we ever wanted to on either of these entities. For both the book and the series, Zero stars (0)  

                 BQ recommends giving both a wide pass.

'FRANCIS OF ASSISI'.....GET THEE TO A NUNNERY, DELORES......(AND SHE DID)

 Francis Of Assisi (1961)   This one came at the tail end of the ponderous, worshipful Hollywood biblical epics that flourished throughout the 1950's and early 1960's......

                What amuses us no end........ that these movies, which so wrapped themselves in simpering, groveling piety, and holier-than-thou reverence, were put together by big studio lizards who'd sell their own grandmothers into slavery if they thought there was a buck in it for them......

                Unless you're watching something like "Francis Of Assis" for its unintentional humor, it's an excruciating slog to endure........resembling those 16mm Sunday School films that children were forced to sit through by their unforgiving priests. 

                  The title role went to Bradford Dillman, an actor given to outsized, showy performances and usually cast as villainous, unpleasant characters. To his credit, he controls himself well here, settling into a serene calm to play the 13th century one time Crusader who chose an impoverished life of saintly devotion.......(from the very first frame, the movie hammers home the point that this guy's gonna end up as Saint Francis.)

                   Right along side him, the luminous 60's starlet Delores Hart plays the noblewoman so enraptured with Francis's faith, she becomes a nun. And in true life-imitates-art style, Hart shortly left Hollywood behind and joined a nunnery for real.......which she now oversees as its Mother Superior.-Hart's brief but shining career as a 50's ingenue made her one our favorites, since unlike the usual platoons of pretty startlets of that era, she possessed genuine acting skills. 

                  And her presence here served as the only reason we suffered through all the heavenly choirs and fall-on-your-knees religiosity that permeates this movie.  (In the same way we only stop in to re-watch "Ben Hur" for the sea battle and the chariot race and "Ten Commandments" for the sea parting.)

                   It is however, if you're  up for sampling some Hollywood Bible thumping, a prime example of its genre. 

                    But without Delores Hart (a.k.a. Mother Delores) we wouldn't have gone anywhere near it.  1 star (*)

'THE DUNWICH HORROR'....BEACH BLANKET LOVECRAFT

 The Dunwich Horror (1970)      The key to enjoying any low rent, cheesball American International movie was to never expect too much......

                 The general moviegoing public never caught on to the AIP formula: they strategized the marketability of the title before they ever went ahead to make a movie  to match up to it......

                  AIP's never ending parade of monsters, bikers, beach partiers, and youth-in-revolt quickies were specifically engineered trash meant to fill up the drive-ins and grindhouses with plenty 'o product. 

                 But even if you knew what you were getting into with these movies, you could sit back and let them sometimes astonish and surprise you with moments of startling cinematic skill.

                Mostly that was due to their legendary primary producer Roger Corman, who hired young and hungry newcomers itching to get their foot in the Hollywood door......people like James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, Ron Howard, and many others........

                 Sorry to say, nobody found any of those moments of greatness in "The Dunwich Horror". It stays stubbornly what it is......cheap junk meant to lure in the suckers with the promise seeing H.P. Lovecraft's horrifying, oozing, slithering monsters pop up on the screen. 

                 It's a promise unkept.

                 The Lovecraftian beastie here is rendered almost entirely with bottom-rung psychadelic optical effects and the annoying flash cuts that 1970's directors so fell in love with.......and so terribly dated their films.

                 Still, we found a few minor pleasures floating around in this mess.......

                Dean Stockwell enjoys himself as the film's centerpiece madman with a penchant for sacrificing hot naked babes to those too-horrible-too-describe Lovecraft 'Elder Gods' looking to to make world-ending comeback.

                  Stockwell goes through the first two thirds of the film slyly understating his total nuttiness until the big climax forces him to go full crazy-eyes. (And you can spot Talia Shire in an early role.)

                 And the creative, imaginative animated main titles go over the top in announcing the kind of movie that you just know AIP will never live up to. 

               The sad part of viewing this film comes from watching its designated Babe In A Boatload Of Trouble.....played by the one and only 1950's beach bunny and American's Sweetheart, Sandra Dee.

                Dee trudges through the movie subdued, exhausted and depressed........as if she's fully aware that a movie like this functions as nothing but a career end-of-the-road.....and she behaves accordingly. 

               (At the very least, she's convincing in the role, since the film has Stockwell keeping her in a drug induced haze  through most of the film's running time.  So we can't blame her for moaning every so often as she's stripped naked on a sacrificial alter, waiting to be ravished by....uh......a screeching whining optical effect.)

                Don't look for any future hidden talents in this one. There's no gold in them thar junky hills.........1 star (*).....and that's more than generous.