'JADE' & 'COLOR OF NIGHT'.......THRILLGASMS........

 Jade (1995) &  Color Of Night (1994)    As a tireless, toiling video buyer in the l990's, we can't overestimate the seismic effect that 1992's "Basic Instinct" had on movie audiences........and subsequently video store customers.......

                A whole new genre was born......the overheated, blood 'n semen soaked sex thriller......

                Seems like the country couldn't get enough of 'em and our video store shelves overflowed with  cheapo direct-to-video knockoffs......(with titles like 'Indecent Obsession', 'Unnatural Attraction', 'Instinctive Perversion', 'Lethal Legality', Sexual Scissoring' and so on.....)

                   But let us confine ourselves to the big guns here.....where the major studios and high profile filmmakers stepped up to the plate to make glossy sex thrillers to match "Basic Instinct"'s blend of bed hopping, plot twists and bursts of explosive ultra-violence.

                   "Jade"  features a script by Mr. Basic Instinct himself, Joe Eszterhaus, so you know right off that hot sex and dead bodies will follow right after the opening credits......

                     The very first thing you need in a sex thriller is a worthy Object Of Lust for the male stars to salivate over. That job falls to the smoky voiced, legs-for-days Linda Fiorentino, playing the trophy wife of a high powered defense attorney (Chazz Palminteri) whose assistant District Attorney best friend (David Caruso) still seriously lusts for Fiorentino......(who wouldn't).

                    This shaky romantic triangle shakes even more when Fiorentino becomes the prime suspect in the gory slaying of a prominent power broker.......and it's revealed her sexual exploits also extend to the corrupt California governor (Richard Crenna).

                      Hot 'n bothered yet?

                     James Horner's score heaves heavily through it all and director William Friedkin seems less interested in the sex than in topping his own 'French Connection' car chase. To do this, he tries a novel approach, staging a 3 mile an hour chase through a crowded Chinatown parade.  Well, if nothing else, it does unfold like something you haven't seen before........

                     A final twist reveals the murderer, if anyone still cares. And other than the slo-mo car chase and gazing upon Linda Fiorentino's superstructure, it's a 2 star (**) snooze.

                     For all the huffing and puffing in sex thrillers, their directors rarely displayed the sheer brass balls of 'Basic Instinct's Paul Verhoven when he let a gasping cinema audience take a peek at Sharon Stone's exposed crotch.

                      But Richard Rush, the director of "Color Of Night" tries to come close, making the entire movie a deliriously over the top nutso experience. The craziness factor get amped up to ever ascending heights........to the point where the movie more than earned the derision and unintentional laughs it received.

                     Gotta love the kickoff scene.......where Bruce Willis plays a New York shrink who helplessly watches one of his troubled patients take a swan dive out of his high rise  office window......splat.

                     Moving to L.A. to heal his wounded psyche, Willis's best friend and fellow shrink (Sottt Bakula) promptly gets himself stabbed to death by one of the wack-a-doodles in his group therapy sessions.

                     But which wack-a-doodle dood it?  Hoping to figure that out, Willis takes over supervising the loopy group, much to the loud, overacting displeasure of the investigating detective, (Ruben Blades, braying every line for the hearing impaired.)

                      In the midst of his hapless sleuthing, Willis survives numerous attempts on his life (a rattlesnake left in his mailbox and later on, a car dropped on him from the top of parking garage,) Undeterred, he presses on, his tensions alleviated by the arrival of a mystery babe (Jane March), who periodically pops in to the proceedings for long bouts of boffin' with Bruce.

                     As ludicrous as all this is, we can't help admitting a fondness for Richard Rush's particular style of over-the-top storytelling, which we loved in his films like "Getting Straight", "Freebie And The Bean" and "The Stunt Man".

                    But he's fighting two major enemies here.......first, the imbecilic script whose BIG TWIST is so blatant, obvious and stupid, you can spot it in the first 10 minutes of the film.  Second, the woeful miscasting of Jane March as the film's primary Object Of Lust. 

                    March is easily one of the strangest creatures ever to wander into a sex thriller. She looks about 80 pounds soaking wet, with the overbite of a 13 year old who hasn't yet made that first visit to the orthodontist. And her very limited acting skills aren't anywhere close to meeting the peculiar demands the plot puts on her character.

                     In other words, unwanted, uncalled for hilarity erupts......in all the wrong moments.

                      Then again, that's part of what makes this flagrantly ridiculous movie so entertaining and watchable....(unlike 'Jade'). 

                      We're honestly sorry to say this was Richard Rush's last directing credit......whatever you may say about his films, this guy knew how to show you a good time at the movies. And certainly his sex thriller looks like nobody's else's sex thriller except Richard Rush's.

                    For the swan song of this unique, distinctive filmmaker, 3 stars (***).....we only wish he'd kept on going, making one crazy movie after another.......(as long as he'd stay clear of Jane March....)

'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........