The Cobalt Screening Room Balcony

My list of movies is getting longer. Love reading the reviews.

I forgot to add the trailer.

The good news is they're inexpensive, Space. (I don't have the last two either, but I loved them when I saw them--the books too.)

PS--Hold tight--tomorrow I'm posting a weird sci-fi/horror movie from last year that I think escaped a lot of notice. BTW: My Marlene Dietrich movie-thon is on its way, so stay tuned soon.
Jeff
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Show of hands: How many of you have stared up into the convective chimney of a hurricane only to have your feet pulled out from under you, leaving you breathless as your wind is pulled upward to join the whirling gyre above you? Two. . . three. . . four. . .Wow. I didn’t anticipate that many.

Do you remember the open-mouthed wonder you experienced when the hurricane skittered off to let you lie there contemplating how you’re not dead? That childlike astonishment at the sight of something you never imagined before? Nope. Me neither. But just for the heck of it, humor me and put yourself in that position. Now you can see it all in the epic blankness of Elizabeth, the heroine of our story today, *Elizabeth Harvest* (2018). Just watch the trailer—arguably one of the best trailers I’ve seen since it doesn’t give away too much, but ratchets up the tension of the film in a compact 1:51. You’ll find your breath pulled out into our lead actress Abbey Lee’s near catatonic gaze on her wedding day.

*Elizabeth Harvest*’s opening minutes introduce us to our heroine and her new husband Henry (Ciarán Hinds) on their honeymoon. Henry is a Nobel-Prize-winning scientist who lives in a distant Fortress of Solitude, an ultramodern, technologically flawless test tube of a smart house, which now belongs to Elizabeth as well. [Come on, really? You’re that far ahead of me?] She can move freely through the chrome and glass mansion possessing anything and accessing any of its expansive square footage within its confines—with the exception of One Room.

Oh, you’re reminded of Hitchcock’s *Rebecca* and a metric ton of other fables and fairy tales of Gothic Isolation including *The Shining* (which is conjured in the long shots of the couple’s travel to the manse), Pandora’s Box, Eve’s tempting recipe for apple pie, and explicitly stated in the early moments of the film, the Bluebeard School Of Winning Wives and Influencing People. Yes, it’s all there, and since Elizabeth wonders why such a smart man would choose HER as a partner when she’s admittedly a few tacos short of a specialty plate, she almost immediately shows she’s NOT slow: The day after her wedding she’s quick to make a beeline to the Forbidden Room. . . where she finds. . . .

Oh dang, I can’t tell you. But Gutierrez does follow the Hitchcock tradition of avoiding the cliché (as he did in *Psycho*) by cutting the audience’s mooring very early on. After our initial disorientation following Twist #1, depending on our investment, we’ll find *Elizabeth Harvest* variously a fresh examination of Bluebeard’s trajectory, a weird Freudian sci-fi excursion, a modern psychological horror film, a meditation on the seven principles of medical ethics (justice, beneficence, nonmaleficence, accountability, fidelity, autonomy, and veracity), the dysfunctional aspects of a narcissistic relationship, the psycho-sexual manifestations of power, an analysis of the God Complex (best answered by Steve Martin in *The Man With Two Brains* (1983) when he’s told he can’t play God, “Well, somebody has to!”), a search for purpose and identity, or a movie made in Colombia with some blood and nudity thrown in to make money.

However you want to see it, you’re welcome. But is it good? Robert Pirsig would answer, “And what is good, Phaedrus/And what is not good--/Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?” To which a good many people answer, “Uh, yeah!” But I won’t do that—I’ll just follow my own lead and philosophy of teaching and ramble until you forget the question. Let’s start with the acting. . .

For me, early passages of the story frame Abbey Lee (Elizabeth) as an incredible naif. It took me a good portion of the film to think of her beyond her stereotypical model status and accept she was just really good at playing a dim bulb on residual power. But eventually I started thinking, Wait, maybe she is vapid for a reason; and once I accepted that premise, I could excuse her walking around the house nude as if dazed and confused while I imagined Matthew McConnaughy’s ghostly voice intoning, “Awright awright awright.” Given her innocence, the oft-cited nudity as gratuitous (which inevitably it is) was at least understandable as the natural state of a young woman who either didn’t care or didn’t know any better. Further knowledge of the vagaries of the story I think bare [sic—for a sic pun] this out too; if you watch the film, you’ll see my point, as well as the pun in the title of the movie.

Ciarán Hinds’ Henry (Pun notification time: think historical kings and their daughters) is stuffily distant and singleminded in his portrayal of a man obsessed with finding a cure for Werner’s Syndrome, a degenerative disease. You bet he’s nuts, and his cool matter-of-fact demeanor reinforces that. Henry is a determined manipulator of all elements around him, a control freak of calculating menace. But Hinds does not mug at the camera, he’s measured in his violence (psychological, emotional and physical) which makes him that much more sinister.

A staple in Gutierrez films, Carla Gugino grows from a standard Gothic integer to a complex woman of ambiguous moral choices. Her interactions with Elizabeth expand from being *Rebecca*’s iceberg head of lettuce Mrs. Danvers to a sympathetic cauliflower ear. A scene halfway through the narrative (and bolstered in flashbacks) draw us closer to her as we learn more of her motivations. Similarly, Matthew Beard as the blind Oliver lends a certain strange empathy early on, though his character has his own issues worth thumbing through, especially when Act III asserts itself. Dylan Baker plays his slimy, obsequious, corrupt cop with relish as he enters this pickle Henry has manufactured and cured for himself.

At times a bit too languorous, other times a bit self-consciously arty (using saturated primary colors for flashback scenes, especially the garish red indicating danger or impending violence), *Elizabeth Harvest* offers convolutions and complications that may require setting a DVD on replay for a couple scenes to catch some points’ significance. I hate to admit I put on the captions in one sequence to ensure I heard the hushed dialogue correctly. (I did.)

Even though the trailer and MPAA rating suggest the film is rated R for “bloody violence, graphic nudity, some sexuality and some language,” which might scare you away, I can assure you this is far from Tarantino Land: yes, there is some splashing of Karo Syrup, the aforementioned nudity is more artful than sensational in a Duchamp *Nude Descending A Staircase* way (though the sharp edges have been sheered [sic pun again] away, “some sexuality” is passive and basically more tame than watching some TBS shows in prime time, and some language? I think Carla Gugino drops a fey F-bomb once. So while this isn’t advisable as a follow-up to Bob the Builder for the kids, it’s not the goofy inbred laugh-a-thon romp *The Texas Chainsaw Massacre* or *I Spit On Your Grave* subjects you to, either.

*Elizabeth Harvest* does donuts around a comfortable, familiar Princess In Peril fairy tale, adds an ample sprinkling of narcissistic rage and control, and tosses in a moral hurricane which twists and coils and generally shakes up the landscape. The good news is you don’t have to contact your insurance agent once it’s passed you over.
Enjoy.
Jeff

I'm excited. I love me some under the radar sci-fi.

And see what happens when Ya listen to a Space Cadet. That's right, movie marathons. I'm way ahead of Ya on the Divine Dietrich. I'm already plannin' my next mini marathon. It's a tossup between Rita Hayworth and Carole Lombard. Which seems like a win/win proposition. And of course I've been mixin' it up a bit with pre-code Barbara Stanwyck.

Then of course Ya gotta have a leadin' man marathon. I'm about to start about as wonky film festival as there could possibly be. A Terrence Hill B grade spaghetti fest. Startin' with the Trinity movies and goin' sideways from there. Feel free to envy me.

Time out, everyone: Get out the vinyl and fire up the turntable--Pink Floyd sets the scene for today's spectacular offering: "Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain./You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today./And then one day you find ten years have got behind you./No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun." With those happy tones playing in the background, we find our protagonist George Stroud (Ray Milland) running from the starting gun in the much-neglected (Why?) classic *The Big Clock* (1948).

Not often enough does a film draw a confluence of talent like this to create a perfect noir, but this one does. Let's start with the people behind the camera. In 1944 noted poet Kenneth Fearing started work on his novel and following his marriage in 1945 completed it in his wife's East 10th Street loft in New York. *The Big Clock* made him temporarily rich, which fueled his love affair with alcohol, allowing him enough money to start drinking in the morning and thus let time slip (sip?) away and create great writer's block. In negotiating his contract with Paramount for film rights, he signed a way all his film rights, including his television rights till 1952. He was livid that Paramount ran the film in rotation as a late night movie. It's said that Fearing based Charles Laughton's tyrannical publisher on *Time* (how apropos) magazine's Henry Luce, for whom Fearing labored to make ends meet; *The Big Clock* is his revenge on Luce.

Paramount hired crime novelist and frequent screenwriter Jonathan Lattimer (Dashiell Hammet's *The Glass Key* (1942), as well as 11 other films and 32 episodes of TV's *Perry Mason*), overseen by producer Richard Maibaum, who would later write the treatments for 15 James Bond films (*Dr. No* through *License To Kill*). In a nice cozy family pairing John Farrow, Mia's father, came on board to direct his wife Maureen O'Sullivan as Ray Milland's trusting spouse Georgette. Similarly, Charles Laughton's repugnant Earl Janoth is counterpointed by Laughton's wife Elsa Lanchester who provides some of the finest comic moments as painter Louise Patterson. Under a less balanced, less taut direction she would have stolen the show, but she's given a fabulous cast to play against, each actor taking center stage at various points of the narrative.

For fans of old TV, Henry (Harry) Morgan (arguably best known for *Dragnet* and *M*A*S*H) looms in the shadows as Janoth's wordless henchman whose silence only hikes his menace and uni-brow scowl.  Watch for a cameo from Noel Neill (George Reeves' TV *Superman*'s Lois Lane) as an elevator operator.

The story itself moves like clockwork. George Stroud (Ray Milland) is the extremely effective and efficient editor-in-chief of *Crimeways* magazine, the signature publication of Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton), a condescending autocrat who terminates staff members on an instantaneous whim. He's honestly one of the most abhorrent taskmasters in film. When Janoth requires George to postpone his long-awaited family vacation, the principled George refuses and is promptly fired. Inflamed and incensed George retires to a bar where he meets Pauline York, a model for one of Janoth's fashion magazines and Janoth's covert mistress. Seeing an opportunity to blackmail the reprehensible publisher, Pauline ticks away the evening with the upright George.  

Distracted by the model and disgusted by his former employer, George loses track of time, misses his train, and invokes the wrath of his wife who leaves on vacation without him.  He and Pauline stagger around the town, buying a painting and a "green clock," actually a sundial with a green ribbon as an angry reminder that Janoth collects clocks. Drunkenly, George says, "White clocks, yellow clocks, brown clocks, blue clocks. Oh, Miss York, where are the green clocks of yesteryear?" They end up at Pauline's apartment where the noble George passes out but is quickly jostled into consciousness when Pauline sees Janoth on his way up.  But hands of time deal George a dead man's hand when murder follows and irony requires George to chase himself at Janoth's bidding.

No spoilers in that summary, you understand, but the hands of time slowly close around George's throat as time itself becomes a conceit in the finely crafted resolution of action.  Here are a few wonderful nods to clocks:
*The film begins with George hiding in the guts of Janoth's gigantic clock around which his building is erected;
*We follow George's trials through flashback, the convenient ordering of time;
*The sundial takes on special importance;
*Hagen literally turns back time in Pauline's apartment;
*George literally moves up time in Pauline's apartment;
*George pleads clemency with his wife for missing the train, "You can't clean up seven years in five minutes";
*The object of George's investigation is a man described as possessing clockphobia;
*Janoth gave his doorman a wrist watch for Christmas;
*Janoth gives George six minutes to reconsider joining the magazine;
*The giant clock literally stops time for a moment when George stumbles over a switch inside;
*George is literally trapped by fate, a noir tradition, as time closes in on him.

And if all that is not enough to pack into its trim 95 minutes, *The Big Clock* is also a screwball comedy of errors as Farrow's crisp pace and suspenseful blocking of scenes make time fly, ticking away the moments that make up a frantic day.  There's not a fritter of waste in the hours George spends in unraveling ways.  Perhaps as a subtle nod to Laughton's documented bisexuality, there's even tension in the homosexual undertones between Janoth and his assistant Hagen (George Macready) as the two conspire, huddle, manipulate and ultimately prove themselves incapable of holding any allegiances above themselves. Oh how the mighty hath fallen. . .

No less than Raymond Chandler himself had this to say about *The Big Clock*: "I’m still a bit puzzled as to why no one has come forward to make me look like thirty cents. But except for an occasional tour—de—force like *The Big Clock*, no one has." In fact, it was was nominated for an Edgar Allen Poe award for Best Motion Picture in 1949   This is a great investment of time, a "17 jewel film according to the *New York Times*.  So when you come home, worn and tired, and it's good to warm your bones beside the fire, put this little time-killer on and watch. As I said, it clocks in at a bit more than an hour and a half, but it will gear you up in a second. Time's a' wastin'. . .
Enjoy.
Jeff

Ya had me hooked early. The Pink Floyd reference took it home.

Ah, the Fifties! A time when a beer ad could actually show a weeping wife and a magnanimous husband standing over an overcooked meal saying, "Anyway, you didn't burn the Schlitz! There’s hope for any young bride who knows her man well enough to serve him Schlitz Beer."  Yes, it was simpler time when a man could be a patronizing boob and perhaps because of it take the advertising world by the hops.  So it is, in the fine tradition of *Mad Men* and *Bewitched* and countless 1950s slick ad-men movies, we offer today's venture into good old fashioned sexism, *I Married A Woman* (1958) with George Gobel.



This playful romp was made in 1956 but held for release for two years as the studio hoped American audiences would forget George's last film, *The Birds And The Bees* (1956) with David Niven and Mitzi Gaynor. This time around his co-star is Diana Dors, whom we saw in *Man Bait* (1952) a few posts back, here exhibiting her comic chops and figure as the main reasons to see this film.  "Lonesome George" plays Mitchell (Mickey) Briggs, the ad man responsible for the highly successful Miss Luxemberg [sometimes ad men can't spell] beauty contest campaign for Luxemberg Beer. He was rewarded for his efforts with his marriage to the winner, Janice Blake (Diana Dors), and his promotion to executive status. But now his boss (Adolphe Menjou) has given him 48 hours to come up with a new campaign to rival that success, since times have changed, and Luxemberg Beer wants to update their image.

The ensuing 85 minutes soar to the challenge of a situation comedy stretched beyond a 22-minute running time. *I Married A Woman* truly feels like a '50s sit-com with the amiably predictable conflicts over nothing that could be easily resolved if people just behaved rationally.  But nearly a century of horror films have rendered THAT notion moot. Critics of the time excoriated the film, as George Gobel had not yet hit stride with his TV show and consequently had not yet insinuated himself into America's consciousness as a low-key persona with a buzz cut.

But I loved *The George Gobel Show* for which he won an Emmy, and his numerous appearances on *The Tonight Show* and other popular series made him a favorite around our house. So for me *I Married A Woman* is still funny, if certainly dated with its endless mother-in-law jokes and quirky supporting cast, including a goofy turn with William Redfield as Eddie the elevator operator who is in training to be a lawyer. And Nita Talbot wonderfully adds malapropisms to the film as Mickey's secretary who scours the paper for a new Word Of The Day.  Of course everyone in the film is an idiot--that's the point. If we can buy the premise that a likable schmuck like George Gobel can be happily married to the blonde bombshell Diana Dors, we can buy anything.

The nutball humor of the film comes honestly, as the script comes from the fertile productive mind of Goodman Ace, who borrows his wife Jane's murder of the language to provide snappy dialogue as funny as it is stylized, honed from the fifteen-year run of radio's *Easy Aces*.  And the film's director has a great pedigree as well: Hal Kanter wrote for some heavyweights himself--TV's *Amos 'N' Andy*, Milton Berle, Danny Kaye, all 31 episodes of *The George Gobel Show*--and he created two classic television shows, *Julia* with Diahann Carroll (the first TV program starring an African American woman in a non-stereotypical role) and *The Jimmy Stewart Show*, as well as writing *Blue Hawaii* (1961) for Elvis and *Pocketful of Miracles* also (1961).

Especially noteworthy is a cameo by uncredited John Wayne and Angie Dickinson as lovers in a movie within the movie, which Mickey and Janice attend, *Forever And Forever And Forever*. It's an equally sappy romance which fuels Janice's wish for a more romantic, present Mickey, and it appears in Technicolor while the rest of the film is in black and white. (I found this little fourth-wall break a fun little diversion to remind us we're not supposed to take anything in the film seriously.  The notion of John Wayne as a dreamy playboy who swears romantic allegiance to his on-screen wife is more than a little incongruous to his image as a manly man, but again, that's the joke, isn't it?)

Mainly, then, this is a fluffy, ditzy comedy with a strange agenda: Obviously the main reason to see it is to offer Diana Dors the opportunity to stick out from the background in a positive way, wear black lace lingerie and flaunt her famous pout, but the plot basically pushes the men in the audience to yell at the screen, "What is freaking wrong with you, George? You've got a wife like that who WANTS your attention and you're too busy to notice her?", while the women in the audience may be moved to wonder what she sees in that whiny little pudge and sympathize with the pneumatic Ms. Dors as their husbands are equally inattentive.  Add the sexist stereotype of an entire theater of women sighing in rapturous union at the sight of John Wayne cooing madly over Angie Dickinson, and if you think about it, you might be frustrated, as many modern reviewers are.

But remember what The Joker hissed in *The Dark Knight Returns*, "Why so serious?" *I Married A Woman* is just a lapfull of Sno-Caps, Milk Duds, and buttery popcorn with a few Red Twists thrown in.  It's a mouthful of sugar that's fun to digest on a lazy afternoon when you've seen all the Hallmark movies on TV seven times and you want a mindless change of pace that will take you back to a simpler time when the beer that made Milwaukee famous took 1,174 careful brewing steps to ensure you could Be Refreshed, Be a Schlitzer!  If you really want to pay tribute to the film, simply substitute Goebel Beer for Schlitz. (Since I don't drink I can't attest to what would happen to you if you washed down all that candy and popcorn with a beer, but I think it would help you enjoy this movie that much more. . . .at least that's what Madison Avenue tells me.)
Enjoy.
Jeff

No, you're not seeing double. I AM running a dual commentary today, covering two films which share similar critical predicaments: I thoroughly disagree with the majority of reviews I've browsed for both features. I enjoyed the silliness of the first film and found the second film insipid, stupid and a grinding waste of time (I didn't like it, in other words). So put on your bifocals, folks. We're pitching a double header today.


Our starter for today is 1955 Cold War bit of fun, *The Crooked Web* starring a joyless Frank Lovejoy, a daring Richard Denning and a merry Mari Blanchard. WARNING: Don't read ANY reviews or snippets about this film (except this one) if you want to enjoy it. Even the most basic write up gives away plot points faster than those supermarket ladies hawking samples of stale granola. *The Crooked Web* works best when you don't know the first reveal, or the second, or third. They're not shocking, heart stopping twists, but they are nice goofy game changers that lead to some terrifically stupid moves later in the film.

*The Crooked Web* struggles so hard to be a tough-talking noir but ends up tongue tied with some almost snappy dialogue. It all unfolds like a well worn map stuffed away in a musty glove compartment, complete with holes you could use as a template for Swiss cheese. Itinerant gambler Stan Fabian (Frank Lovejoy) owns an iconic drive-in restaurant (the actual spot is at the corner of Sunset and Highland in Hollywood) served by carhops, one of whom, Joanie Daniel (Mari Blanchard), flips his burgers like no one else (that's a metaphor, not a job description). When her estranged brother Frank (Richard Denning) shows up with a deal to recover a fortune in stolen gold in Germany, our trio milk-shake a leg and drive out of the drive in.  And in the immortal words of Forest Gump, "Guess that's all I got to say about that."

Over its 77-minute running time, these three stooges run their dead ends into blind alleys and complications which allow Stan to mumble and fume with the shaky impatience of an overstimulated teenager on a hot date. Frank Lovejoy has a voice that could cut a brick in half, so his mounting greed and exasperation combo is all onion rings and vinegar. Mari Blanchard is the whipped cream on this noir-lite, working overtime in double shifts to live up to seductive image the movie's posters promise. Richard Denning also plays his hot-dog smoothie with relish as he plays catch-up with Joanie and the gold stash.  It's all very earnest and straight-faced, but also a little hammy on rye, the drink of choice.

Yes, its absurd narrative is easy on the mind and eyes, as it's written by Lou Breslow, famed for having written the screenplays for Abbott and Costello movies, Blondie and Charlie Chan films--as well as Ronald Reagan's famous *Bedtime For Bonzo*, *Leave It To Beaver* and *My Mother The Car* along with a stew of other films, both notable and forgettable.  So pull up at the drive-in, order it well done, but realize, like a frosty Coke on ice, it won't stay with you for long.

INTERMISSION. Let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the lobby. . . and keep going because the second feature is not worth its salt on your popcorn.


*Thoroughbreds* (2017) is for me a horse that comes up lame, breaks its stride and should be put out to pasture, preferably several feet in the ground.  

Here again I am in conflict with most of the crowd gathered at Upsan Downs to see the fillies on display.  This film consistently reminded me of the terrible old chestnut about the horse who went into the bar and the bartender said, "Say, bud, why the long face?" Because the two stars (Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy--talk about not living up to your name) are two of the mopiest mud puppies I've ever seen. Now before people start screaming that their detachment from reality is the entire point of their portrayal--I get it: They are pampered princesses of privilege "trapped" in their opulent  suburban Connecticut Lexus cages, the entitled victims of their wealthy breeding, groomed by only the world's finest handlers in their 100-room stables of glittering boredom with twenty-foot ceilings holding them down.  [Spoken through clenched teeth and a jutting jaw:] I mean, to what manner of TORturous exIStence must these bea-YOU-tiful youth be subJECTed before they simply BRIDLE at the strain--pass the Louis Roederer Cristal Brut 2009 if you'd be so dear. . . .

High schoolers Amanda and Lily re-connect after years of separation under the facade of preparing Amanda for her ACTs.  Both are textbook narcissists with sociopathic tendencies, including showing all the emotion of an undercooked turnip.   See? the director says while he pounds their disaffected attitudes into us with the subtlety of a WWE wrestler on crack--they don't FEEL anything, they play-act their emotions by copying others, they're popular but it's all a facade, get it? Get it? That's why they could have been played by Claymation mannequins; look at their almost total lack of facial musculature movement and their blank eyes--isn't that AMAZING? Think of the DEPTHS the actresses had to plumb in order to get that across! And for good measure we can also have them sport reflective, expensive shades to further project their withdrawal from the very society that fosters them! O, the irony!

Yeah, well, bulls**t!

It's only a matter of time (and man, does it drag) before Amanda and Lily decide to repeat the same action Amanda foisted upon her crippled horse in the opening flashback: Youth In Asia, except we're still in Connecticut. And since we don't have another horse handy, let's apply surgical precision to Lily's step-father, who is guilty of the most heinous sin of all: he tries to take an interest in his step-daughter and discipline her when she steps out of line. No, he's not abusive, just annoying, especially because he's not Lily's father--which is reason enough to hack him to death with a meat cleaver. After all, he's not Ward Cleaver. . .  So they plan his demise. To which I respond: Who cares?

I realize this is supposed to be a satire.  In some circles it's hailed as a black comedy a neo-noir poking holes in the elite. Monkey muffins!  It is vapid, vacuous, and derivative. One of my cardinal rules in commenting on film is to assess it on its own terms (I was going to say merits, but I can't find many in this film) and not draw comparisons with other films. But this theme has been done much better by more trenchant films--*Heathers* comes to mind. We even have the obligatory stoner enlisted to help the girls, Anton Yelchin, who made this film just before his untimely death at 27.  His performance breathes some strange, wobbly life into the screenplay, and his character is the only one who offers a shred of humanity to the proceedings.  He is kinetic, off-balance, profane and yet oddly likable, especially when we learn of his moral character.  I also enjoyed a sequence of lawn chess as Amanda kept moving the knight (ooh, shades of her horse!). Points for that as well.

Audiences and critics extolled the "unpredictability" of the screenplay. Really? Only Yelchin's Tim caught me unawares, though I also liked the execution of the euthanasia scene.  The grounds of Cohasset, Tewksbury, Scituate, Westwood, and Wellesley were also vibrant and beautifully photographed in glossy admiration, but I simply could not find any reason to care about the principals in the film. Oooh, brainstorm: Maybe I'm supposed to feel as detached as the folks in the movie. . . . Wow, so I'm no better than they are? Is the director poking fun at MOI?

Nope. It's just a redundant hacking away at today's poor little rich kids who complain endlessly that they can't FEEEEL anything.  Tell you what, Girls, let's do a field trip to the Bahamas round about now, or maybe book a room at a nice bed and breakfast in Chad or Burkina Faso or Sierra Leone for a week or so.  Maybe we could take a weekend jaunt to Knox County, Kentucky with its 34% poverty rate and complain about the room service.

Maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe I'm getting old and cranky in my dotage. Maybe I'll start yelling at the kids to get off my lawn and stop discarding their Slurpee cups at the curbside in front of my house. Or maybe I'm just frustrated that hackneyed formulaic stories of the elite encumbered by modern morality and the glorification of Ayn Rand's Objectivism to a fault have become heralded as dark humored, wickedly funny nihilism.  For me, *Thoroughbreds* is not funny, it's fresh, it's not suspenseful, it's not Betty and Veronica gone bad, and it's not a fun pitstop at Stan's Drive-In where the food isn't that good, but it ain't that bad either.
Enjoy.
Jeff

The Diana Dors movie was hilarious. Here is the car she bought to be the toast of the town. A Delahaye 175S this car sold a while back for 3 million.

Love those headlights.
Jeff

Didn't we learn anything from all those years of *Three's Company*? Renters are not always what they seem, though we could have been seduced into thinking they are all wacky, fun-loving goofballs whose biggest crime against humanity was overly cute. I mean, it's an honest mistake--Jack and Janet and Chrissie never attacked ANYONE with a nail gun or actively bred cockroaches in their bathtub. So it's only natural that our protagonists wouldn't suspect that Michael Keaton was a calculating, raging freakoholic opportunist with a psychotic bent--after all, he was BATMAN, for God's sake.


As you can tell from the trailer, *Pacific Heights* (1990) is a gleeful skip through a minefield on an elephant. And the elephant in this room is Michael Keaton's Carter Hayes, a smarmy insinuator into the lives of the entrancing, winsome Yuppies Melanie Griffith and Matthew Modine, Patty and Drake. We immediately identify with this unmarried couple as they overextend themselves, coyly fudge their loan applications for an endearing Victorian corner-holder in San Francisco, and immediately pretend they're on HGTV by renovating it from gable to garage. Who hasn't done that at least once in their lives? (Now where they got the money for all those upgrades is a question best left alone, even as they are already in hock up to their heinies.)

Offsetting the mega-mortgage, they reason, is their renting out the bottom floor apartments fore and aft. And it all goes swimmingly with a charming Japanese couple taking the back of the house and prospects for the front beating down the door. Since they're so darned adorable yet inexperienced, it's easy for Porsche-driving, money-waving Carter Hayes to move right in without paying upfront and instantly change the locks. Uh oh, could that spell trouble? Nahhh, bad things never happen to good people. . .

. . . .Unless you listen to Rabbi Harold Kushner who said, expecting the world to treat you fairly because you're a nice person is like expecting a bull not to charge you because you're a vegetarian.

And so it is that director John Schlesinger (winner of the Academy Award for *Midnight Cowboy* (1969) and skilled director of *Marathon Man* (1976) another film celebrated for its knee-slapping dentistry scenes with Dustin Hoffman and Sir Laurence Olivier, providing movies that are "safe" entertainment) turns the screws and loosens the floorboards in *Pacific Heights*. Patty and Drake are perfect dupes for Carter's zany antics, and in staying true to the psychological suspense and horror trope, let's throw a white cat into the mix as well, so we can hear a strange sound issuing from the garage accessed only from creaky steps leading into the musty darkness, thread our way down stealthily with a weak flashlight, then gnash away at the heart hoisted into the back of our throats when the animal leaps out from behind a trash can. And then. . . .

Melanie Griffith reportedly hated this film, almost immediately jumping to make another movie as soon as this one was wrapped. But she has a certain fey quality and little girl voice that primes her for playing a moderately trusting young woman who--gratefully--takes charge late in the movie, in the film's most energetic and effective scenes, as she decides We're not gonna take it, you know we ain't gonna take it, we're not gonna take it ANYMORE! On the other hand, Matthew Modine's Drake almost instantly shifts from a calm three to twenty-seven on a ten-point scale, frothing like a drunken Jake Lamotta at the first sign of frustration. He proves to be a passive-aggressive's dream as the charmingly disarming Carter need only say, "How's Patty?" to nudge him into a homicidal hurricane of retribution, a frenetic flurry of F-bombs strafing the serene comportment of his renters.

Above it all is Michael Keaton, from whom we've never seen such malice before or since. Even his Adrian Toomes/Vulture from *Spider-Man: Homecoming* packs a less sinister Hawaiian Punch to the nerve system. When he's kind by design in *Pacific Heights* he's creepy in a whole new way, a slithery game player who unnerves his opponents by cordially inviting them to cheat in full view of the referee. Aiding and abetting his legal trickery is a strong supporting cast of capable actors with little to do but further the plot: an uncredited Beverly D'Angelo (Ellen Griswold of *National Lampoon's Vacation* fame), Carl Lumbly (TV's *Cagney and Lacey* and *Alias*), Laurie Metcalf (Three-time Emmy winner for *Roseanne* and nominated for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a SAG Award, and a BAFTA Award for *Lady Bird* (2017)) and Tippi Hedrin (Hitchcock's *The Birds* (1963) and *Marnie* (1964) as well as being Melanie Griffith's mother).

While the actual location for the shoot is not in Pacific Heights but on the corner of 19th and Texas streets in Potrero Hill in San Francisco, the stately whining manor is the perfect setting for the mayhem. If you can see through the obvious tropes, or if your viewing of Lodger From Hell films is limited, I predict you'll enjoy the ratcheting tension Keaton brings to the film. For me what sets it apart from the standard Loony On The Loose films are the middle section that takes us out of the renovated builder-grade facilities and into the glossy grandiosity of Century City as Patty chases Carter, and the careful movements of Schlesinger's camera stalking its prey, be it our cutesy couple or the lunatics who are on the grass.

In the final analysis, watching *Pacific Heights* on a rainy evening with the lights off won't remind you of Jack Tripper as much as Jack the Ripper who took a reprieve from slicing and dicing and makes mounds of julienne fries and applied himself to real estate development, emulating the manic glee of destruction of Chip Gaines on demolition day. Love it or list it, *Pacific Heights* is a scream.
Enjoy.
Jeff

ghemrats wrote:Love those headlights.
Jeff

Ummm... I think I should abstain.

Double entendres for $1000 Alex.

Watch out, Space. I'm afraid more double entendres are on their way.

Ah, the Sixties. A time that allowed women in flowing ankle-length dresses to whirl around their homes in a mad arabesque with Jubilee Kitchen Wax, Electro-Lux sucked the nap out of your carpet, Sean Connery's bourbon was Jim Beam, you could be way out in front of the crowd in your Maidenform Bra, and according to John Wayne more people smoked Camels though Ronald Reagan preferred Chesterfields two to one. So drop a fistful of Fizzies into your water glass, sit back with a Kraft Marshmallow Creme sandwich on Sunbeam bread, toss a heaping handful of Bugles, Daisys and Whistles on your Dixie Paper Plate, stretch out before your huge 23-inch Admiral TV, and sock it to me, baby, because we're going to turn on, tune in, and drop out as we put on our flairs and cow-pattern mini skirts to enjoy *The Tenth Victim* (1965).


My friends, I stand before you as a living anomaly as a man who made it all the way through the Sizzling Sixties (and every other decadent decade) without ever dropping a drug (or picking it up) more potent than a Tums (Smut spelled backward). I have always reasoned that I have had a tough enough time with reality as it is without altering my perception of it chemically. But having watched *The 10th Victim* I can honestly see where drug ingestion would probably aid in the experience of this film. Now, I'm not advocating imbibing in the least, none of that "Little dab will do ya" nonsense, but this must be one of the closest experiences one can get to taking temporary residence inside the head of Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski (That or, uh His Dudeness, or uh Duder, or El Duderino, if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.)

*The 10th Victim* is akin to chewing Alka-Seltzer and then swiftly chugging a glass of water: It fizzes and sputters and generally carbonates your blood stream with its eye candy visuals, gravity- and logic-defying architecture, kicky eye wear, kinky cut-away clothing, and perhaps the most insistently annoying organ and neo-scat singing soundtrack you'll ever wish to tune out. Starring a blonde Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress (or Undressed, tastefully, as the case may be), the trippy plot is set after World War III (or Six, as the original Italian boasts) when organized assassination has become governmentally sanctioned game show fodder known as The Big Hunt. Picking up a Japanese corporate sponsorship of Ming Tea, Caroline Meredith (Andress) is now tapped to kill her tenth victim, putting her in line for $1,000,000 prize money. Her quarry is fellow contestant Marcello Poletti, who has six kills to his credit but is broke since his ex-wife and mistress (a cool Elsa Martinelli) have claimed all his winnings.

Does this sound a bit like *The Running Man* (1987), *Alphaville* (1965) and *The Hunger Games* trilogy? Of course, but this is the original "most dangerous game," which alone makes it worth seeing. This film is so firmly, proudly a product of every 1960s stereotype that it was a major inspiration for Mike Meyers' *Austin Powers* trilogy, right down to his requisition of the "Fembots" with the explosive booby traps; they were Ursula Andress's first. *The 10th Victim* is a glorious satire that offers some laugh-out-loud scenes as Caroline and Marcello evoke a cat-and-mouse relationship that leads to paranoia, manipulation, doublecrosses and ultimately love.

The satire is grand, tipped to us early as the Narrator intones: "A study of history confirms the validity of the Big Hunt theory: it is mankind's safety valve. And if in 1940 the Big Hunt had existed, Hitler would've been a member and we could have avoided WWII. Now all is resolved, wars are over, and the violent instincts of man can now be expressed by a single and set competition." The Big Hunt has become an answer to the world's overpopulation, since prevailing wisdom suggests Why control the births when we can increase the deaths? Director Elio Petri advances his mocking eye with swift cuts, sharply observed fashion statements (Emily Williams​, you will go crazy over the André Courrèges wardrobe ensembles), and stylized if bloodless violence and plot twists. Carlo Ponti is also on board as co-producer to ensure the plot expands like a Jiffy Pop (The Magic Treat, as much fun to make as it is to eat) crown.

It's a future, perhaps fifteen minutes from now, which sees comic books (The Phantom, Mandrake The Magician, et al) as high literature worth a fortune, the elderly are dispatched as useless to society, suicide is promoted as a form of population control, and assassination can be executed through a seductive slap dance at a disco, the Masoch Club, to an appreciative audience surprised by the audacity, cleverness and sexual allure of the killer. As I mentioned in passing earlier, the Piero Piccioni score, accompanied by Italian singer Mina's breathless intoning "Die die die" at various points, cements the film's status as campy fun. Director Petri, whose previous and future films were decidedly leftist, was questioned at the film's release for havingdiluted his craft in the service of popular entertainment; in a 2001 *Film International* essay, Larry Portis said, "Logical enough, a film in English starring Mastroianni and Ursula Andress had box-office potential in the mid-1960s. But had [the resolutely political director] Petri suddenly gone “commercial”, abandoning his convictions? Hardly. With this film, Petri threw himself into a kind of cunning subversion using the forms of popular art and cinema to call into question state and society."

Above all, what started as a Robert Sheckley science fiction short story became a pop-infused cult classic devoted to the battle of the sexes wherein the sexes are literally trying to kill each other. How fun to see Marcello Mastoianni involved in a three-way showdown, even as in reality Mastoianni and Andress "dated" at various times in their careers. So my advice is simple: If you're a child of the '60s, pop some brownies in your Easy-Bake Oven, join the Pepsi Generation feelin' free feelin' free, and immerse yourself in this seminal sex-and-violence romp while enjoying a Silva Thins cigarette whose ads told you "Cigarettes are like women. The best ones are slim and rich." On second thought, scratch the nicotine, because in *The 10th Victim* women come out on top and the men are completely on board with it.
Enjoy.
Jeff

Ya got me all nostalgic. So, of course I went to Youtube and here's the result. The video quality varies wildly. But I promise a smile or two and maybe even a surprise or two.

You made me miss Stan Freberg's ads, Space. And I remember most of those classics.  Speaking of classics, here's today's, inspired by your recommendation. . . .


Sing along with me now: Mystery Date, Are you ready for your Mystery Date? Don't Be Late. It could be great. Open the door for your. . .[heavy sigh] Mystery Date. When you open the door, will your date be a dream. . . or a dud? Let's ask Sofia Frederica of Germany whose ambitious Prince of a father and mother trade her in for the good graces of Empress Elizabeth of Russia. If the dark, charming and ruggedly handsome Count Alexei Razumovsky is to be trusted, her husband-to-be is a man among men, solid and strong, virile and chiseled from marble, and just an all around neat guy. So begins the drama we offer today, *The Scarlet Empress* (1934) directed by Josef von Sternberg and showcasing the glowing Marlene Dietrich.

Based on a diary of Catherine II, *The Scarlet Empress* tracks the sinuous, sensuous growth of a young, innocent and generally submissive German girl to the cunning, sexually profligate coup-crazy Empress of Russia.  Breathless in anticipation of meeting her Mystery Date for Eternity, she travels weeks on end by royal coach finally to arrive at the castle with its thirty-foot doors and grinning grotesque gargoyles, some of whom are the Empress's staff.  And her betrothed, the Empress's nephew Grand Duke Peter, turns out to be a simpering idiot mitten who looks like a demented Harpo Marx without the bulb horn at his hip, who spends most of his time playing with toy soldiers and determining how much drool to expend. Deciding she'll take Russian Roulette for $1000, Alex, she quickly learns all the ins and outs of the other randy Russians surrounding her, starting with a random guardsman.

Of course Count Razumovsky (John Lodge, later evolving into a Republican 79th Governor of Connecticut) darkly lingers in his own portable shadows, chafing at the bit to get the newly renamed Catherine (Sofia wasn't Russian enough for the Empress Elizabeta) alone in the stables for some horsing around. [Incidentally, there is no truth to the oft-told rumor that Catherine died after satisfying her insatiable insouciance and passions with an equestrian outing, though von Sternberg coyly shows her riding her white stallion into the imperial throne room and ends his picture with Catherine and her steed staring boldly into the distance] So between the Empress's insistence that Catherine provide a male heir to the throne, the panting affections of the Count, the outright disdain of the Barney Google Grand Duke for her, and the vast supermarket of the army volunteers at her disposal, Catherine schools herself in palatial politics and gains quite a following, especially erotically.

Don't be surprised if you feel moved to question how von Sternberg got some of his images on film. *The Scarlet Empress* seems intent on not just pushing the envelope, but balling it up, dipping it in hot sauce and shooting it from a cannon. Early on, the moderately crippled Sofia (played by Dietrich's own daughter (Maria Riva) is soothed to sleep with bedtime stories of sado-masochistic torture of Ivan the Terrible and Peter The Great--beheadings, bodies stretched and broken on The Wheel, naked women burned at the stake, and an equally nude woman being peeled out of an iron maiden, closing with a poor fool being employed as a clanger in a massive bell. Sleep tight, Sofia, and pay no attention to that clamoring ringing in your ears.  These sweetly blended scenes were filmed just before the Hays Code started slashing away with censorship, but von Sternberg was re-enacting "history" so he was given a wider tether, sneaking under the encroaching moral code makers.

Amidst all the overwhelming architecture and garish, unrestrained atmospherics are some scenes of quiet desperation and subtle seductive power. Captured in dazzling detail of tenuous texture, the wide-eyed Catherine kneels before the officiate of her wedding ceremony, a long silent tear escaping as she considers the moronic Goonie groom next to her chomping away at a communion wafer like a Triscuit laden with lox. Behind the tissue-thin veil, her yearning for the Count is manifested in the flickering of a votive candle flame inches from her. In the poetical words of von Sternberg critic Robin Wood, "In the sustained close-ups of Catherine, two expressive features stand out: the pleading so eloquently conveyed by her eyes, and the physical reality of her breath as the candle before her mouth repeatedly wavers and is almost extinguished: the effect is like watching the quickened beating of her heart." Such delicacy and artistic vision is entrancing as most of the film is a gluttonous gorging of design overtaking the actors by force.  As Wood observed, the film was ruled by "A hyperrealist atmosphere of nightmare with its gargoyles, its grotesque figures twisted into agonized contortions, its enormous doors that require a half-dozen women to close or open, its dark spaces and ominous shadows created by the flickerings of innumerable candles, its skeleton presiding over the royal wedding banquet table."

Sad to say, this is only the second von Sternberg film I've seen so far, the first being *Shanghai Gesture* (1941) with Gene Tierney I posted some time back. But *The Scarlet Empress* has sold me.  Anyone interested in powerful visuals, remarkable textures captured by the camera, overwhelming set and art design, and positively gorgeous black-and-white photography with particular attention invested in light and shadow should be in his/her glory with this film. Von Sternberg was a perfectionist, at times doing over sixty takes to ensure he got what he wanted. The excellence of excess is on full display from the early shots until the final frame fades.

I have not been a big fan of Marlene Dietrich, usually thinking of her as a caricature of herself or as Madeline Kahn's Lily von Shtupp in *Blazing Saddles*. So thanks to this film, I humbly beg Ms. Dietrich's pardon, as she is in fact an electrifying presence, aided certainly by the love affair she has with von Sternberg's camera and lighting. Holy frijoles, but she commands the screen. This is the type of movie that begs to be seen in 35mm on a huge Fox Theater screen complete with a red velvet curtain. And even though every penny of its $900,000 budget is evident in every frame, you might swear it cost more.  

With all these strengths--Dietrich's transition from sixteen year old to worldly, comely czar, Sam Jaffe's film debut as the prattling putz Peter, John Lodge's slithery sideman, and Louise Dresser's harping harridan Elizaveta Petrona--and its dramatic retooling of historical fact to fit into a packed 104 minutes, *The Scarlet Empress* failed miserably in the critical and audience-fueled box office, earning only $3,299 gross receipts. Some credit its timing--overpowering expressionistic opulence during the Great Depression--or its close release to another Catherine The Great film treatment (*The Rise Of Catherine The Great* (1934 also) for its sad performance in the theaters.  The filming, too, was fraught with conflict as the two strong-willed perfectionists von Sternberg and Dietrich matched wits and egos. At one point, fed up with the director's quest for the purity of his vision, Dietrich feigned unconsciousness after faking a fall from a horse during production, arranging for one of her colleagues to pose as a doctor with the diagnosis that she had been overworked. Her ploy paid off, and von Sternberg eased up thereafter.

Today *The Scarlet Empress* (once called *Her Regiment of Lovers*--rejected by the Hays Code, *Catherine II* and *Catherine The Great*) has been recognized by AFI as a film to be nominated as one of The Greatest 100 American Movies. In the words of Robin Wood, "The connecting theme of all the von Sternberg/Dietrich films might be expressed as a question: How does a woman, and at what cost, assert herself within an overwhelmingly male-dominated world?. . . Indeed one might assert that it is only with the advent of radical feminism that the films have become intelligible."  Today, in the fire and fury of the #MeToo movement, perhaps we can read *The Scarlet Empress* as a cautionary tale reinforcing and revisiting Wood's and the film's question.

One thing is for certain: If young Sofia Frederica of Germany's parents had given her Milton Bradley's Mystery Date board game, she might have been more adequately prepared for what would follow. Just think would have happened if she'd also had Risk or Stratego stashed away in her cupboard next to her favorite whip. To quote the Tootsie Roll Pop advertisement, The world may never know.
Enjoy.
Jeff

Seamus, a huge recommendation for you with this movie: You will love it just for the cars.

“I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars.” That assessment from Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe could be tattooed across the face of John "Hawk" Hawkins (Kris Kristofferson) in today's underappreciated gem, *Trouble In Mind* (1985). Though it was twice nominated for Best Cinematography at the Independent Spirit Awards and once for Best Music Score from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and won CICAE (Confédération Internationale des Cinémas d’Art et d’Essai) Award at the Berlin Film Festival, this wonderful Alan Rudolph film escaped just about any notice and seemed to have languished in the shadows for twenty-five years. Now on DVD it may well sneak out to gain more notice.


*Trouble In Mind* lounges comfortably at the top of my All Time Favorite Movies list. Seeing it again last evening renewed the enthusiasm I felt on my first viewing back in '85.  All too often, I've found, movies I loved years ago have lost their carbonated joy when revisited; memory's sparkle fades and I wonder why I found the film so entrancing.  Listen: If you're a native Michiganian, you may remember when Vernor's Ginger Ale was like a radioactive isotope, its bubbles shooting straight up your nose to your brain from three feet away and causing a glorious coughing paroxysm until your eyes watered.  That was great! But like a mug of Vernor's left out on the counter too long, some movies buckle under the strain of time's passage.  Not this one--time has made it more potent to me.

Set in the fictive town of Rain City (standing in for Seattle), where everything is wrapped in a gossamer gauze of grease and fog, Wanda's Cafe holds the magnetic pull to every down-and-outer who was ever hypnotized by neon. It's the DMZ in a militia-controlled rain-slicked cityscape, a ham-and-egger dipped in pastel and maintained by Wanda (Genevieve Bujold) who mixes philosophy with hashbrowns to the dispossessed.  Guy Fieri never made it to this place. Joining the lost is Hawk, a former cop freshly released from prison and hungry to re-connect with the human race. ''You gotta be nice to your friends, Wanda," he mumbles to his ex-lover. "Without 'em, you're a total stranger.''

Running counterpoint to Hawk's reintegration are Coop (Keith Carradine) and Georgia (Lori Singer), two desperately wayward lovers and their baby Spike, who escape to Rain City in their rundown camper in spite of Coop's belief that cities "ain't nothing but trouble." And he's right. The story follows these disparate lost souls in a moody, atmospheric noir updating set in a time that is simultaneously the 1950s and fifteen minutes into the future. That temporal disorientation is just one of the quiet highs in a tale of romantic longing, violence and the fragile fight for purpose, emotional connection and redemption.

The supporting cast defies easy categorization, just as Rudolph's style purposefully knocks us off kilter, for it's his fantasy film. At the forefront is Divine, appearing here for the first time NOT in drag but in a Sydney Greenstreet tuxedo, as Hilly Blue, as articulate a kingpin as you'll ever find. Sporting huge diamond ear studs, Hilly drops aphorisms the way his hoodish employees drop their "g"s on participles:  "Miracles happen when you surrender. The trick is... surrendering on your own terms." Dirk Blocker (Dan's son) seems to be Chris Farley's sweaty brother as Hilly's righthand man Rambo, and Joe Morton sends spikes through his hair as Solo, an aptly named bad influence on  Carradine's Coop. Carradine's moral and physical descent into the sucking vortex of escalating crime is another good reason to watch this film: He moves from a determined country rube goldbrick to a Bowie-inspired Rorschach hipster who looks like Megamind with a D.A. hanging over his pompadoured forehead. He's all angles and barbed wire but can't seem to dislodge the knife from his back-braced sheath fast enough to be effectively menacing.

But to me, central to the unfolding of this offbeat mixture of crime and comedy is a theme no one I've encountered has caught, consequently misreading director/writer Alan Rudolph's intentions.  So if you can indulge me in my rapturous excitement over this film and tolerate my foray into symbolic interpretation, I'd be most appreciative.  If not, just sit back and marvel at my indefatigable ability to spill out nonsense--and believe it. So, TRIGGER WARNING: prepare my commitment papers, I'm speeding down Symbolism Road.

Hawk walks with a permanent limp, his leg braced from an interaction in prison. [Rubbing hands together giddily] I was introduced to the Limping Man Theory after watching Jean Cocteau's *Blood of a Poet* (1932), and it came rushing back to me within seconds of watching *Trouble In Mind* last night. Testing my theory, I watched Hawk hobble through the entire film, always dressed in black. According to allegorical significance, a limping man can signify a fallen angel--the angel, taking on human form, must live with Jesus's pains as part of his sentence, and the limp is a result of Jesus being stabbed in the side on the cross. Hawk similarly has fallen from Grace (ranking well liked police officer)--killed a man at point blank range--and must seek his redemption.

He returns to Rain City (Pause here to recall how rain is a baptismal motif, used most pointedly in Hitchcock's *Psycho* (1960) when a guilty Janet Leigh steals $40,000, drives through a torrential rain storm, ends up at the Bates Motel and decides to return the money after the rain and a cleansing shower--oops, too late).  He's seeking redemption even while he believes "Everyone wants to go to heaven; no one wants to die" and in his dark sadness says a couple times, "No one gets saved." His black garb is an outward signal that he carries his guilt like the weight of the world, a reconciliation of his defeat: "When you get older," he tells Georgia in confessional mode, "you think about dying. . . and not dying in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe I'll go across the river [!] when it's my time. Follow my destiny."

Of course this is textbook noir: Fate and determinism: Hawk says to his buddy Lt. Gunther (the splendid George Kirby), "A little bit of everybody belongs in hell, Lieutenant."  And this is borne out in Coop's misguided plundering in his efforts, he rationalizes, to give his son and the naive Georgia a better life. His seduction into bigger and better heists and the accompanying plunge into "sins of the flesh" pull him further and further away from the purely good of Georgia (Lori Singer, who cloaks herself in pastels and whites and a cascading heavenly halo of blonde hair).  At the same time Hawk is drawn to her purity--she rewards him for a good deed not with the customary sexual favor but with a bundt cake. Georgia becomes the saving grace in the film--the child whose big clear eyes see through the evil to the heart of good; she says to Hawk, "I think you're a good man who's had bad luck. And I think all that can change. The luck, I mean."

And so our fallen angel seeking forgiveness agrees to help extricate her significant Coop (save him?) from the heady downward spiral he's taking.  In his love for Georgia and his fierce desire to fulfill his moderate Messiah Complex (while not fully narcissistic but bound by duty to help those in danger), Hawk "rescues" her and her son from Coop's destructive path by requiring Georgia's complete commitment to him.  Thus Wanda's observation may be true:  "Between the two of you, there's almost a whole person."

But something in the fiery conclusion changes everyone: In the wildly strange and wonderful face-off in Hilly's art museum digs, as bullets fly at oblique angles in every combination of trajectories, Coop walks through the fusillade completely untouched, as if protected by a higher force, and calmly shifts the arc of his life; Hawk releases Georgia from her promise with a fortune and a note with words to the effect of "Whenever you need me, turn around and I'll be there for you." Our concluding scene, Hawk driving away, presumably across the river, is backed by one of the most poignant, world weary songs in Kristofferson's repertoire, "El Gavilan [The Hawk]" sung with heartrending power by Marianne Faithful; in part the lyrics sing, "Lay down your sadness/Show me your sign/Let me feel your spirit/Running with mine . . . Storm on the Mountain/Stars in the sky/Running for glory/Freedom to fly/Will you remember/Way down the road/Somebody loves you/More than you know." The spiritual punch hits me squarely in the stomach and heart every time.

The fusion of color, sound, design, rundown beauty of the architecture, and the slow burn suffering of Hawk, right down to the black beard enlivened with a white soul patch {!}, all work in a harmonious confluence of attitudes belying the illusion of nihilism and cruel fate to show a romantic hope for redemption and the power of connections.

So as a remedy to the "hollow and empty man" Raymond Chandler introduced, let's follow his prescription for possible healing: “The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.” *That* is why I love this movie; you might give it a shot sometime too, with a Vernor's chaser.
Enjoy,
Jeff

Here's a little heat to light up Space's candles on his birthday cake.

Now there's something you don't see everyday, Chauncey.
What's that, Edgar?
A tropical temptress named Tondelayo whipping rubber plantation managers into a frothy frenzy with her womanly wiles.
Oh, I don't know, Edgar. I've been set off balance by a meter maid, and she didn't even have a fancy name, just Rita.

Well, today, no matter how lovely Rita might be, comparatively she would probably bear bruises from being prodded with a ten-foot pole if Tondelayo sauntered within everyone's eye line. It's swelteringly hot in the British African colony of today's offering, *White Cargo* (1942), so humid the four men in charge of the rubber plantation could grow orchids in their shorts. Forget the poisonous snakes, hungry crocodiles, pounding ennui chased by dwindling alcohol supplies and death-calling fevers--the most impending danger to the four is that siren in a sarong. It's 1910 and not a single "civilized" woman is within a couple hundred miles. Just Tondelayo, and with her, what more could you possibly want? Except perhaps your sanity, your soul and your self-respect.

Harry Witzel (Walter Pidgeon) supervises the rubber production with a rubber soul and warm gun. His temper is quick to ignite, but he's grounded in discipline and results and order because he's determined to carry that weight a long time. He's the all American bullet-headed saxon mother's son. At his side (and always within reach of the bar--but only for sterilization purposes, surely) is Doctor Oz himself (Frank Morgan), joined by journeyman Wilbur Ashley (Bramwell Fletcher) who is in misery and eagerly awaits his ticket to ride home on the Congo Queen as soon as his replacement arrives.

That replacement is the preppy Langford (Richard Carlson) who comes groovin' up slowly and is old enough to know better, but who believes he never needed anybody's help in any way, and so immediately clashes with his boss Witzel. He warns the newbie that soon he'll commence his slow deterioration, stop shaving, and wonder if he should get up and fix himself a drink (no no no). Above all, Witzel warns, he should not "mammy-palaver" with the natives, which is actually cleaner than it sounds, meaning not fraternization or trading with trinkets. Especially the manipulative nymphomaniac Tondelayo (Hedy Lamarr), who is quick to pout, "You never give me your money. . ."

But when she arrives with a sultry "I am Tondelayo," there's something in the way she moves that attracts Langford like no other. Despite Witzel's banishing her from any contact with his men, sternly admonishing them that she's nothing to get hung about, Langford, ever the fool on the hill, immediately grows obsessed with her, Even as the Doctor tries in vain to convince him "You're gonna lose that girl," Langford is singleminded: he will marry her!

*White Cargo* provides us with an invitation to make a reservation--or a whole host of them--as the film conjures all manner of misogyny and racism by today's PC standards. But even back in the '40s the film hosted its share of controversy. The Hays Code strongly objected to Tondelayo's ethnicity, originally African, in light of her marriage to a caucasian. [Historical footnote: Let's remember, in a 1968 NBC Chrysler special a major furor was stirred when Petula Clark (a white woman) actually TOUCHED THE ARM of Harry Belafonte during their duet of "On The Path Of Glory"! And this was twenty-six years later than *White Cargo*].

And so Tondelayo's birthright was changed to half-Egyptian, half-Portuguese, since "mixed" marriages were taboo. You'd think that yesterday, all our troubles seemed so far away, but it looks as though they're here to stay, especially in the wake of Justin Trudreau's and Justice Buchanan's transgressions (I read the news today, oh boy), Hedy Lemarr's "tanning" to look native is more than a little disquieting. True, the lighting in the film is dramatic, highlighting her cheekbones and those eyes--it's like looking through a glass onion, her look boring into you daringly purring, I'm looking through you, so you've got to hide your love away--in a savagely magical mystery tour of seduction; yet the striking contrasts between her pigment and her eyes and smile trouble as much as they excite.

There also seems to be a flowing undercurrent of misogyny as Witzel, so obviously conflicted by the native beauty, forcibly warns of whipping her several times throughout the film. And when Langford grows wearisome to his bride after a couple months, as she sucks her thumb and wanders by the banks of her own lagoon, she complains Langford hasn't whipped her; she even sidles up to Witzel asking if he would like to do so since she's been so bad. But above all Witzel is a moral man who realizes everywhere there's lots of piggies living piggy lives and rebuffs Tondelayo's advances.

I won't spoil the ending here, but it seems the minute you let her under your skin, then you begin to feel "badder." The moral and physical deterioration of Langford stands as a morality tale as he learns the hard way she was a day tripper, a one way ticket, yeah--"It took me so long to find out, And I found out." So *White Cargo* (an apt pronouncement for Langford and his relief who will take some time to acclimatize himself and drive Witzel to his witz-end) is very campy fun, if nothing more than a reason to gawk openly at the lustrous Hedy Lemarr and bask in a bath of some horribly fractured exchanges between her and her husband carved from a banana:

Tondelayo: Awyla [My man] make me sick! Always it is too hot! All time we do nothing. Awyla just sit and sit and not give hang about anything!
Mr. Langford: What am I supposed to do? Sing and dance? Be a clown?
Tondelayo: I married to you five months, and you not beat me once.
Mr. Langford: Don't be ridiculous!
Tondelayo: Awyla, please beat me. Then maybe you feel much better. Soon we make up. Much love. Many bangles.

Put your PC sensibilities on hold, and for 88 minutes of air conditioned comfort in your hi-tech hut, enjoy the pull of the exotic as The Doctor walks in, stinking of gin, proceeding to lie on the table. He says, "Langford, you met your match," and Langford said, "Doc, it's only a scratch and I'll be better, Doc, as soon as I am able. . . ." That little coda lets you know you can always get by with a little help from your friends. . . as long as they're not named Tondelayo.
Enjoy.
Jeff

Jeff absolutely for sure I will be watching that movie. The cars the vintage trailer. Keith Carradines hair is enough to get me in. And Kris's hair can only be described as luxurious. Looks really good.

The review was excellent. Guides me though my viewing. I shall take copious notes that I will time track so I can say in 15:04 Kris said this am sure this referenced the Roman advance on Thebes.

Detail its all about detail.

Seamus wrote:Detail its all about detail.

If you only knew how many times I'd been kicked in detail...

Not totally out of the professorial mode in retirement, I have an assignment for you: Draw a deep breath, find a really quiet and comfortable place to sit, and make a mental list of sensations, scents, or events that reflect genuine, gentle comfort for you. No, really--do this for yourself. A partial list for me includes brushing the amber and white-maned coat of our sheltie, Nicki, when he's in repose, catching the warm whiff of turkey in the oven when the family's close, walking in autumn when it's not yet cold and still temperate enough for a light jacket through earthy fallen leaves, sniffing the newsprint of an old vintage comic book, and watching a homey Danny Kaye comedy. . . which I did last night.

*Knock On Wood* (1954) may not rank in memory up there with *The Inspector General* (1949) or a personal favorite *The Court Jester* (1956), or even *White Christmas* made the same year (1954) but once it gets revved up, it can go toe to toe and tongue to tongue with the best of them. And in its own "adult" way it can strike an amazing contrast in an unassuming manner to the comedies of today; and by "adult" I don't mean snarky cynicism and a penchant for cringe-worthy situations that elicit a begrudging laugh more out of discomfort than wit. "Adult" here implies some sophistication of execution rather than sophomoric snickering, an appreciation for the pure art of balance, timing, mimicry and articulate wordplay executed with seeming ease and panache. Even while *Knock On Wood* dabbles with slapstick on occasion, it is largely balletic rather than mean-spirited, rejoicing in the physical pain of others, for craft is involved.

I stand on this pensive soapbox today, because I watched two comedies last night, the follow-up to Danny Kaye's lovely farce an ironic deadpan 2019 comedy I'll review later this week. After enjoying the latter in a strikingly different way, I also grew a little saddened, realizing a movie like *Knock On Wood* would never be made today--and that shift in sensibilities, from innocent fun to "more progressive" (transgressive) humor, set me on edge. It made me take stock of the whole film going experience, the arc of how I moved through the stages of cinematic appreciation. (Don't worry--I will still talk about the movie today; I just want to explore how it triggered introspection).

Some of my earliest film memories were shaped by the theaters, grand operatic expanses with screens so large I had to physically move my head from one side of the theater to the other just to take in all the details splashing out before me. Gold or bronze sconces spaced ten feet apart glowed with a yellow-orange glow scooped upward. Burgundy curtains flanked the stage and whispered as they parted to usher in the picture. And when I was old enough to worry that the off-shoot of popcorn that never made it to my mouth would be permanently grounded the red paisley carpet beneath me, I felt a sense of responsibility to those folks in the projection booth. And when Danny Kaye capered from one side of the theater to the other in Technicolor, or rapped at such exquisite speed while ensuring every word was intelligible, I felt the world was a wide, wise, inspiring wonder.

But today, outside of Imax, most theaters boast one hundred movies in a Googleplex Mall, with screen barely larger than a millionaire's bedsheet. Yes, the technology has evolved beyond our dreams and galaxies far far away, but with it all comes bloat and glut so that very little any more surprises us. More often than I would have believed possible, I find myself echoing the words of my friend Tom Nehil, bemoaning how every explosion onscreen has to be bigger, more destructive and louder than its predecessors. And in the film producers' eyes we become Oliver Twists walking before them with our cinematic bowls extended, pleading, "More, Sir. I should like some MORE!" But their gruel is thinning, made from recipes popular years ago, but now "improved" with less taste and a smashing rehash of what we've already digested. . . in countless sequel-ized servings (Did I mention that *Rambo 5* has just come out, and only God knows how much faster and more furious we can get, and how many more creeds can come out punching when things get rocky).

So what does all this have to do with *Knock On Wood*? he asked conversely, endorsing tennis shoes in sparkling product placement.

Quite a bit, actually. In this film, there are very few special effects beyond the purely human talent of Danny Kaye. Yes, there is a beautifully kooky sequence in a tricked out sports car which would make James Bond (nine years into the future) drop his debonair demeanor and drool just a bit. But outside of that gambol into gimmickry, the story rests firmly in the hands and mouth and slippers of the estimable Mr. Kaye. Everything is stripped down to situation in the Cold War years of Paris and London, and putting hapless ventriloquist Jerry Morgan (Danny Kaye) in the center.

Admittedly, the story itself is so convoluted it takes a sterling-toned narrator to talk us through the premise, and it takes a short while for the film to gain traction as Jerry becomes the unwitting mule for stolen blueprints for a mega-destructive weapon of mass distraction, secreted away in his dummies' heads. And along the way, of course, we need to stumble repeatedly into the good graces of a beautiful psychiatric doctor (Swedish Mai Zetterling in her first film role) who will treat Jerry's deep-seated family issues. But once we get out of the nightclubs and into the danger of spies out to retrieve the plans, we are treated to the rolling thunder that informs every classic Danny Kaye film.

I defy anyone to not crack a smile or firmly earned laugh when a jittery Jerry finds himself trapped beneath the desk of two dickering espionage agents. Uncomfortably wedged in the small space between their knees, their hands resting on Jerry's person, Jerry performs an excrutiatingly detailed and coordinated set of hand gestures to cover his presence. No explosions, no tasteless touching, no violence, just the simple threat of discovery fuels the scene while building tension. And in one of the best running gags--for Jerry does a lot of running in this film--involves his evading escape by running through a stiff British couple's limousine much to their increasing dismay and recognition (The dowager is Norma Varden, a favorite of Hitchcock in high society scenes, most notably *Strangers On A Train* (1951)).

[As an aside, Kaye once met with Hitchcock, explaining that *Knock On Wood* shared all the classic elements of a Hitchcock thriller but substituted comedy for Hitchcock's tight suspense--the innocent man implicated in murder and forced to run in order to clear himself, the blonde sidekick, the grand conclusion on a stage. Kaye said, "Hitch gave me that dour look and lifted an eyebrow and then said: 'Danny, if we had done pictures together, you would have been a tremendous success, and my career would have been utterly destroyed."]

While a couple of the songs, whose lyrics were written by Kaye's wife Sylvia Fine, are memorably forgettable, by the time the body count escalates, knives in the back multiply and "The Red-Haired Ripper" Jerry is on the run from police and deadly assassins, we are treated to a stand-out number "Monahan O'Han" in an Irish pub. Dead-on in its blather and blarney, the song showcases Kaye's expert borrowing of the brogue, weaving a wondrous wheedling of the celebrants. It's immediately funny, warm spirited and joyful, springing full force from Jerry's fear and frustration. By this time all of the supporting actors take a backseat and the film is gaining momentum toward its show-stopping set piece in the Russian ballet, also composed by Danny Kaye's wife Sylvia Fine.

Written, directed and produced by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank, *Knock On Wood* also predicts some sure-fire dialogue that will be used in Panama and Frank's assuming the same duties on *The Court Jester* two years later. Their glorious "pellet with the poison" scene is mirrored here in Jerry's final meeting with police in efforts to clear himself, all delivered in Kaye's inimitable panic spewing cadence:

"It's all so simple, anybody could understand it. There was Brodnik and Gromek, and Shaslik and Brutchik. Now Gromek got it from Brodnik who brought it to Shaslik who in turn gave it to Brutchik. You see, the stuff was in Clarence, but it was also in Terence. Now they didn't know Clarence from Terence, or Terence from Clarence, so Gromek killed Shaslik. Have you got that, Gromek?"

According to film historian Irvin G. Shreve, Danny Kaye was "in many ways a true Renaissance man; he was an entertainer (acting, singing and dancing in films and on radio and TV), goodwill ambassador (with UNICEF), accomplished chef, amateur duffer, licensed pilot, baseball enthusiast (he was at one time a part-owner of the Seattle Mariners) and honorary member of the American College of Surgeons and the American Academy of Pediatrics."

For all these reasons, I humbly beg you to carve out some quality time for yourself and your family to laugh and smile your way through this classic harkening back to the good old days when an "adult" film could be a bonding experience with all ages instead of a bondage exercise that would make you want to take a bath afterward. And I won't put a deadline on that assignment to pause and reflect: You're grown up enough to manage your own time. Just enjoy doing it.
Enjoy.
Jeff

Adding this to my list just to see the car chase plus I love Danny Kaye. Another great review I will look for all items you highlight and write a 200 page treaty I how I feel about this and life in general.

I'll be looking forward to the 200-page epic tome any time, Seamus. In the meantime, here's a tip of the hat to radio's lasting influence.

No, today's movie is not about Frogger. *Dangerous Crossing* (1953) takes place aboard an unnamed luxury liner as the lovely Ruth Stanton Bowman (Jeanne Crain) is five hours into her honeymoon to the square-jawed John Bowman (Carl Betz, later of *The Donna Reed* TV series) when he mysteriously disappears five minutes after checking into their suite. The remaining 70 minutes unfold as quickly as Ruth unravels--no one believes she's married, he's not on the passenger manifest, and Ruth's boarding record show she's booked as a solo ticket in a completely different room. Don't you just hate it when that happens?  Some days you can never catch a break.

But faster than you can say "Klaatu barada nicto. Gort, baringa!" the ship's chief medical officer, the dashing six-foot-four Dr. Paul Manning (Michael Rennie), takes a special interest in Ruth, as her panic and hysteria push her closer and closer to a new room with padded wallpaper.  And at a crisp, unpadded 75 minutes, you'd never guess the story originated as a radio play clocking in at thirty minutes, including commercials, opening and closing themes and a word from the director.  Written by John Dickson Carr for radio's outstanding theater of thrills *Suspense* on March 16, 1943, "Cabin B-13" was repeated often due to popular demand. The film adaptation deftly dances around the fog-enshrouded decks and deeply shadowed stairwells with the self-assured confidence of Michigan J. Frog high-hatting and singing, "Hello, My Honey, Hello, My Baby, Hello, My Ragtime Gal!"

It's easy to see why Twentieth Century Fox chief Daryl Zanuck held star Jeanne Crain in such high regard. The camera allows her eyes to glisten in growing paranoia as she struggles to find reason why an entire ship load of strangers would conspire against her, even as her wardrobe sparkles in the cloudy climes and starless skies. Her interactions with Michael Rennie blend vulnerability and fragility, even as she withholds a modicum of trust out of self-preservation. One drawback for me was the use of internal narration, during which the audience could almost be moved to think Ruth WAS unhinged due to Ms. Crain's rather obvious darting of the eyes and hunkering posture. Overall, though, she makes the mounting tension watchable.  

The tension builds very nicely, culminating in a Halloween evening climax sparked with a clever twist expertly revealed. Director Joseph M. Newman (best known for his 1955 sci-fi classic *This Island Earth*) effectively throws his cameras off-tilt to build suspense, but there is no doubt in our minds that Ruth is somehow being sandbagged since we've seen her husband warning her at pivotal intervals of their imminent danger, hence his hiding. Carl Betz brings the right level of gravitas to his role, while Michael Rennie (who narrated *Titanic* (1953) and whose next role would be in *The Robe*, Fox's first Cinemascope picture that same year) repeats his calm, collected, soothing style shown so brilliantly two years before in *The Day The Earth Stood Still* (another of my all-time favorite films).  Red herrings abound, but they only serve to build suspense along the way.

Behind the scenes *Dangerous Crossing* is also known for its dramatic economy: It was filmed in nineteen days, at times shooting an unprecedented seventeen set-ups in one day.  Fox saved money that year in its use of pre-existing sets as well. Its hallways were requisitioned from Fox's production *Titantic* (1953) with Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck, and the pool sequence was shot on the set of *Gentlemen Prefer Blondes* (1953) the day after the Jane Russell/Marilyn Monroe comedy wrapped its filming in the same location.  Fox made forty movies that year, and *Dangerous Crossing* cost only $519,000, a very low budget compared to *The Robe*'s five million dollars and *Gentlemen Prefer Blondes*'s $2, 260,000. Filming took place between January 1 to the 19th, with a few retakes filmed on January 30.  

Crain was at the end of her contract with Fox when *Dangerous Crossing* was wrapped, largely due to Zanuck's frustration with her frequent refusal of roles due to pregnancy; Zanuck reportedly warned her if she had one more baby, he would terminate her contract.  She went ahead and had another baby, and she was released from her contract.

Honestly, this little picture which merely broke even at the box office was not high on my viewing list. And though my reasons for watching it were far from enticing--it was short, I was tired, it came packaged in a box set with three other noir films--*Dangerous Crossing* turned out to be a really nifty investment of time, money and attention. It keeps you guessing, it's shot beautifully in shimmering black and white with glossy contrasts, the story is engaging, the acting is purposeful, and it is generally so agreeable you won't bemoan spending your time with it instead of running over frogs trying to cross a busy highway.

Here is a link to the original *Suspense* episode with Margo: Suspense Cabin B-13
Enjoy.
Jeff

This is on my list. Any movie Klaatu is in I am there with bells on and a interplanetary translator in my hand.

No rain and seventy degrees, so let's keep things light and airy today by focusing on two true stories about the giggling and games of hardcore prison life. Our fun-filled frolics of the penal system form a solid study in contrasts: *Call Northside 777* (1948) and *Cell 2455, Death Row* (1955) follow genuine convicted criminals with life or death sentences and their efforts to be released, both are filmed in stark black and white, a couple names have been changed to protect the innocent, and most of the similarities end there, except they were both put on celluloid.

Henry Miller said, "The prisoner is not the one who has committed a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over." Here is our films' first note of departure: *Call Northside 777* investigates a man's willingness to stay put if it means he can save his family some pain; *Cell 2455, Death Row* follows a convict who refuses to admit he did anything wrong. *Northside* presents glimmers of doubt as to the man's guilt; *Cell 2455* trains a blinding spotlight on guilt. *Northside*'s Frank Wiecek (Richard Conte) is sympathetic enough to make puppies cry; *Cell 2455*'s Whit Whittier (William Campbell) is a morally reprehensible goombah who's so unabashedly bad he would make Lucifer cry. *Northside* is filmed with a strong Neorealistic style inspired by Italian cinema; *Cell 2455* is stylized  
punky pulp inspired by melodrama and mayhem. *Northside*'s P.J. McNeal (James Stewart) is a Chicago reporter writing a series of stories to clear Wiecek; *Cell 2455*'s Whittier does it himself, studying law from his cell down the hall from his electric Barcalounger. *Northside* is almost totally devoid of background music save for the opening and closing credits; *Cell 2455* punctuates every scene with head-pounding musical cues signalling how we should react to the action on screen.

Still, both pictures are basically Social Issue films, the first actually leading to prison reform in Illinois, and the latter creating an opportunity for a best seller from the pen (fountain and prison) of convicted robber, kidnapper rapist Caryl Chessman. But the manner in which they proceed makes for very different film-going experiences.  

*Call Northside 777* (1948) is distinguished for many reasons: It is definitely and defiantly (I hate it when people cannot tell the difference between those two) naturalistic, filming many of its sequences in the actual offices, streets, tenements, bars and prison-scapes where the dramatized incidents took place. Today we would call it a docu-drama or a neo-noir with its authentic gritty look and some archival footage to drive home the verisimilitude. While very close to "real," some stylization in framing scenes is obvious. To help promote the initial emotional distance James Stewart holds for his subject, low camera angles emphasize his height--he always seems to be looking down at the lower class people he interviews. This subtlety of manipulation plays up the separation of the classes--Stewart's McNeal is a middle class reporter who becomes anti-heroic in the film's first half as he openly disdains working with the lower caste of Wiecek's world.  Director Henry Hathaway (known for his westerns with John Wayne and Randolph Scott) also masters the blocking of claustrophobia and entrapment, especially in scenes with Conte's Wiecek and his on-screen family and bar denizens.

Conversely, the depth of field photography (deep focus, which allows subjects far in the background to attain the same clarity as those close to the camera) offers a strong dramatic presence, allowing us to make our own comparisons, as in a scene showing Wiecek's frail, socially beaten mother mopping floors in vast never-ending corridors far from us in the distance as McNeal pauses to look back at her from a close-up framing.  In another dramatic shot a lowly hunched Wiecek passes through a tunnel of connecting doors to approach the Warden and McNeal in a mahogany-rich office at the front of the screen.

The actors themselves paint an intriguing paradoxical picture. After the box office failure of *It's A Wonderful Life* (1946) and *Magic Town* (1947), James Steward, America's homeboy, determined he needed to shed his aw-shucks image in favor or meatier, more cynical roles. *Call Northside 777* was his first such foray, investing nearly half the film in a hard-edged portrayal of the *Chicago Times* reporter PJ McNeal saddled with a "human interest" story of worn and torn mother of a convict who's spent eleven years saving $5,000 from washing floors, to uncover a new evidence to exonerate her "innocent" son.  Almost totally lacking empathy in the interest of factual reportage, McNeal remains skeptical of Wiecek's claims. . . until his better half (Helen Walker) and his conscience open his eyes and mind. Stewart's slow transformation is unsettling to those who are used to his warm, wobbly frame and flummoxed stammer of yesterday; here he is all business, sharp, ramrod straight, and articulate with his wah-wah-wah-well tailored unease held firmly in check, his sleepy eyes now piercingly laser focused.

Similarly, Richard Conte, who had carved a threatening presence in over 100 B-films as unscrupulous hoods (see *The Big Combo* (1955) and *The Godfather* (1972) for instance), here is a self-sacrificing Wiecek who holds so much humanity in his suffering that hearts run up to him and squeeze the life out of him. Helen Walker is also notable as McNeal's wife, since Walker firmly contrasts her casting as femme fatales (*Nightmare Alley* (1947), *Impact* (1949), *The Big Combo* (1955) with Conte).

With such talent as Lee J. Cobb and E. G. Marshall, John McIntire and Thelma Ritter in cameos, backed by the sonorous seriousness of Truman Bradley (*Suspense* radio's announcer), *Call Northside 777* stands as a precursor for the deadpan solemnity of *Dragnet* while you can't help being sucked into the drama as McNeal fights time and the parole board to prove Wiecek's long-suffering innocence.  It's also interesting to note that the lie detector administrator in the film is the actual inventor of the polygraph, Leonarde Keeler, playing himself.  This is not a pure documentary, but it stands as a fascinating study of diligence, the slow development of empathy, and the fallibility of a system groomed to protect and serve.

But if your tastes move more toward the lurid, the sensational, and the angry--if you're just so enraged by those jerky turkeys who try to check out seventeen items at the Fifteen Or Less Express aisles at Kroger--then perhaps *Cell 2455, Death Row* (1955) is more to your liking.  Set in his Death Row cell awaiting yet another stay of execution--he's had seven already--Whit Whittier reflects on what led him to his life of crime.  Based on the autobiography of Caryl Chessman, who finally suffered a bout of severe gas in San Quentin's chamber in 1960, long after the film's hanging question as to his fate, this film is a hairy little ride down the mean streets twisting and banking through the brain of a sociopath who openly gloats over his triumphs.

William Campbell acts like James Cagney on mega-doses of steroids, sneering and snarling as though Elvis were his hero (he appeared with The King one year later in his film debut *Love Me Tender* (1956)) as he curls his lip up over his predatory teeth. There is something electric about Campbell, and it's not a chair he might inhabit. He's weirdly charismatic even as we despise everything he stands for, and he stands for a lot--cheating, smacking, shooting, assaulting as The Red Light Bandit, and probably littering and tearing the DO NOT REMOVE stickers from mattresses in the stores.  While *Northside*'s Wiecek was ready to spend "another thousand years in this place if it means saving my kid from ridicule," *Cell 2455*'s Whittier (named after Chessman's father's middle name) foams at the mouth to represent himself in court and twist the legal system into a Gordian knot, and then toss it into the bay.

His story begins in the Great Depression and spirals downward from there, into salad days of petty crimes, police shoot-outs, and some slap-and-tickle without the tickle with self-loathing girl friends who excused his arrogant abuse as just a tough guy exterior. (In real life the actor Campbell was married to Judith Exner who would be graduated to become one of JFK's mistresses as well as being "close" to/with Mafia bosses Sam Giancana and John Roselli. So it would appear life sleeps with art, though Campbell himself would go on to appear in a  *Perry Mason* and a *Star Trek* episode, "The Trouble With Tribbles" so he kept his hand in trials and tribble-ations throughout his career.)

Its quick, fast-paced 77 minutes contrasts with *Northside*'s methodical 111 minutes, but its more hyperbolic tone makes it a tad less believable, though it's aided with solid performances from Vince Edwards (TV's *Ben Casey*) and the future Mrs. Bing Crosby, a lovely Kathryn Grant as Whit's girlfriend Jo-Anne.  Were these two films running in a double feature, as they are in my commentary, *Cell 2455, Death Row* would certainly be the B-feature of the two, ramping up your blood stream for the thoughtful procedural drama of *Call Northside 777*.

And if you stay for the double feature, you'll find more than enough truth in the old Robert Palmer song (or the Rod Stewart remake) "Some Guys Have All The Luck"--"Some guys have all the luck/Some guys have all the pain/Some guys get all the breaks/Some guys do nothing but complain. . ." I'll leave you to fill in the "Woo woo woo/Woo woo woo."  
Enjoy.
Jeff

Is there some metaphysical realm whose sole purpose is to provide a safe haven for weird thoughts? Maybe it's a shadow land acting as a vast repository (not suppository) for all those bursts of novel incongruity that make you stop and say to yourself--because you'd never voice these out loud, for fear of your immediate institutionalization--Where did THAT come from? I only ask because a whole supermarket shopping cart of oddball tangents splashed down in my stream of consciousness while watching last night's fare, *4D Man* (1959) with Robert Lansing in his feature film debut.

I can track some of the escaped lunacy to our television. In an effort to make it financially through retirement until I die, we've pruned back on non-essentials. And though I considered cable a survival basic right up there with water, my better judgment (Joyce) countermanded that. Consequently, our cable package has been reduced to four channels: HGTV, The Hallmark Channel, TV-5 (for news and the correct weather), and The Food Channel.

Thus informed, the first thing I noticed in *4D Man* (on DVD) was how powerfully Robert Lansing resembled a mopey Bobby Flay sweating over an avocado amuse busch with Agave nectar sauce over cauliflower. They even share the same first name, for crying out loud. But in this film he plays Scott Nelson, a research scientist under contract to develop a new impenetrable metal named Cargonite. His irrepressible brother Tony (James Congdon) is meanwhile experimenting with amplified atomic fields so he can push pencils through solid substances, something Mankind has been pining away for, for decades.

Tony is rather like the first person cut on *Chopped* because even though his last laboratory had a nice char on it, he left the entire building caramelized into oblivion; he showed a lot of promise, but since no one would enjoy paying the $100,000 price tag for his creative plating, he had to be Chopped. Joining Scott at the Flavortown Facilities, Tony plunges ahead undaunted, even falling in love with Scott's neglected assistant/love interest Linda (Lee Meriwether also in her film debut), eyeing her like Duff Goldman standing over a cupcake.

So begins another episode of Here Come The Nelsons as Scott "borrows" Tony's research and his cache of 1950s Ooo-Wee-Ooo paraphernalia to puree and then gently fold their ideas into a bold new recipe. Batter up! Soon Scott is pushing his hand through his previously impenetrable chunk and separating the interdimensional egg because, after all, you can make a scientific souffle without it breaking the laws of physics. Thus Scott grows increasingly alienated and isolated from Tony and Linda, as the two of them start to give in to the centripetal forces pulling them together.

In his withdrawal from reality, believing nobody can possibly Beat Bobby Flay, he embarks on a new industrious lifestyle of taking letters from mail boxes and copping red delicious apples from Guy's Grocery Games's windows, then taking a quantum leap by Triple G's prize money of $50,000 from a bank, leaving a one thousand dollar bill suspended in the concrete. And like *Guy's Grocery Games*, time becomes a palpable enemy. As Scott's madness--and Scott himself--becomes more transparent, he realizes his ability to walk through walls comes with a side effect: it accelerates his aging. Just touching a person can buy him some time by mooching off their life force; of course the people he touches die, but, hey, every game has a loser.

Realizing 4D Man now stands for robbing Diners, Drive-Ins, Dives and Deoxyribonucleic acid, Tony and Linda race toward the Check-Out Line to save his soul. Whether their efforts bear fruit or die on the vine, I'll leave to your watching its Ann Burrell hair-raising last course. I don't want to serve you a spoiled dishing of the details. But let's focus for a moment on some of the delectable treats *4D Man* offers up with a nice plating. . .

Perhaps the best garnish for this light little fare is the jazz score by Ralph Carmichael, the famed arranger and composer for such greats as Nat King Cole (Carmichael is responsible for Nat's gorgeous classic Christmas album), Bing Crosby, Peggy Lee and Stan Kenton. True, the music often has little to do with the actions on the screen, but who cares? It's all saxophones and trombones with an occasional trumpet solo. But now our 4D feast gets heavy: Carmichael also wrote and performed score for *The Blob* (1958) the year before. Not coincidentally, producer Jack H. Harris created the title *The Blob* after copyright laws informed him his original title *The Glob* was already taken. Harris funded *4D Man* with the proceeds whipped up by *The Blob*, which was directed, as *4D Man* was, by Irvin "Shorty" Yeaworth. And to further examine the gelatinous mixture of the two films, Yeaworth dubbed the lines for Guard Fred (Guy Raymond) in *4D Man*. So Harris and Yeaworth had their fingers in a lot of sci-fi pies in those two years.

To entice audiences with his 4D concoction (he got the idea from a pulp magazine cover, *Weird Tales*), Harris offer a $1,000,000 cash prize (insured by Lloyd's of London) "to the first living person who actually performs in real life the feats ascribed to the 4D Man in the widescreen color picture of the same name.” The caveat of course was performing such a feat before a team of scientists, though Iron Chef Alex Guarnaschelli, Giada de Laurentiis and Aarti Sequeira were not considered (Troy Johnson and Demaris Phillips (no relation) were runners-up unavailible for comment).

Trivia time: Both Robert Lansing and James Congdon appeared in episodes of *Star Trek*, just as Lansing and Meriwether appeared in episodes of *The Time Tunnel*--neither Congdon nor Meriwether appeared in same episodes with Lansing however. Patty Duke appears in two scenes in *4D Man* as 12-year-old Marjorie, her latter scene an homage to the original iconic *Frankenstein* (1931) monster's meeting of a little girl. And in a shot of Linda and Tony crossing the threshold of a roofless building in the rain, eagle-eyed viewers can catch the shadow of a boom microphone at the lefthand corner of the screen.

Film historian Richard Harland Smith sees *4D Man* as a struggle between the Id (Tony), the Ego (Scott--both of whom embody chaos) and The Superego (Linda, who represents the force working to restore natural order). If you're skeptical of that reading, I'll refer you to Gertrude Stein's adage: "It has a certain syrup, but it just don't pour." Still, it's worth dipping your finger into the mixture and taking it for a test taste. . .

So if you're looking for a mad dash down the Flavortown Market, scanning the shelves for some Technicolor fun with an 85-minute time limit, drop *4D Man* in your cart. It's less filling, but it tastes great for a sixty-year-old recipe. [This post is dedicated to Carl "The Cuban" Ruiz,a multiple Triple-G champion and restaurateur, who passed away two days ago at age 44 of an apparent heart attack. Godspeed, our friend. Cook up something sweet for God; we know He'll love it]
Enjoy.
Jeff