'$' (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)..

                      

                 

'A STRANGER AMONG US'..........PIDDLER ON THE ROOF

A Stranger Among Us (1992)   New York based director Sidney Lumet almost always gravitated to powerhouse stories, propelled and energized by the cream of the acting community........

           With his choice of material and the superb casts he assembled, it seemed impossible that Lumet could ever go so wrong as to create an all out misfire, an embarrassing, humiliating failure......

            But like everybody else, Lumet was only human.  Exhibit A:   this woebegone, ludicrous would-be-thriller modeled after the Harrison Ford 'cop-among-the-Amish' blockbuster, 'Witness'......

             'A Stranger Among Us' is no 'Witness'.......in fact, it should have gone into Witness Protection instead of movie theaters. 

              The plot hinges on a murder within New York City's tight knit, severely insular community of Hasidic Jews. Orthodox and bound by ancient Talmudic teachings to the extreme, the easiest way to describe them......imagine the Jewish Amish.....but even more strict and prayerful..

               Into this semi-medieval conclave comes a quick-on-the-trigger, seen-it-all-done-it-all, tough as nails police detective, determined to crack the case. She's  played by..........oy vey........Melanie Griffith. 

              Yes, that Melanie Griffith.......with the flat Barbie Doll voice and an acting range that stretches maybe three or four inches, if she makes an effort.......

                 It's possible that Lumet felt enough confidence in his directing skills that he believed he could pull off a miracle and extract a real performance out of Griffith.

                 No way. What you see with Griffith is all you're gonna get and we can't even begin to describe how hopelessly out of her depth she is.  Her monotone non acting leaves a gaping hole in a movie that's already burdened with over a dozen other serious flaws.

                 The murder mystery part of the story is pathetic, especially in its use of two mafia goons as an obvious red herring.....(with one of the hoods played a young James Gandolfini).  The revelation of the real killer provides an equally foolish, unbelievable climax to a movie that made no sense from its first minute on.

                 As for the potential starcrossed romance between Griffith and a saintly young rabbi-in-training........it comes off as idiotic as it sounds.........

                   And before we forget.....two more dishonorable mentions:  a slapsdash music score by 'Fiddler On The Roof' composer Jerry Bock, mainly sounding like incidental noodlings he left out of the 'Fiddler' music.  The music cheapens and panders during the scenes of Hasidic life......(and this in a movie the purports to treat the community it depicts with respect and tolerance)

                     The other downer comes from the film's deliberately artsy-fartsy backlit cinematography, trying to smear the movie with a thin layer of visual splendor so you think you're watching something important.  You're not.

                      We'll go no further, other than to say nobody among us should waste time watching 'A Stranger Among Us'......Zero stars (0).