Teenagers From Outer Space.

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https://www.amazon.com/Teenagers-Outer-Space-Dawn-Bender/dp/B00008AOV9

When I was six years old, Channel 4, WTAE, the ABC affiliate here in Pittsburgh played Teenagers From Outer Space as it’s Sunday afternoon movie. 

The next day in school, all my fellow second grade classmates could do was … talk about Teenagers From Outer Space.  Somebody asked me, “Did you see where the lady in the swimming pool got it with the ray gun?”

Yeah, I saw it.  Now the movie in question was second bill drive-in movie fodder for the Godzilla sequel, called Gigantus The Fire Monster here in the US, don’t ask me why.  But talking to my friend in school that day, I realized I wasn’t the only one who saw Teenagers From Outer Space and got totally freaked.  It was the moment I first grasped the power of cinema.  Move over Ingmar Bergman.  Make room for Tom Graeff.

Here’s the set-up.  A flying corkscrew lands on Earth, (a clever variation of the flying saucer theme), and the mission of the crew is to determine if an animal they raise for food, the gargon, can survive in Earth’s atmosphere.  If the gargons can live and grow then Earth will be used as grazing pasture and to hell with what the Earthlings think.

Lovers of sci-fi and horror films are a particular breed of film fanatic.  We love it when somebody enters a spaceship and we hear spaceship noises.

We love it when the screen remains black but we hear a hum, which to our ears is electronic and hence new and futuristic.  Think Outer Limits.

So I want to show you something Tom Graeff does in his beginning that I find exceedingly clever.  When the space ship opens up, the first thing we see is this white, smooth, impersonal orb rising.  And the dog starts going crazy.  When I was six years old and saw that for the first time, it scared the bejesus out of me.

Then the spaceman shoot the dog and turns it into a pile of bones.  I'm freaked again.  What Graeff had to work with looks like some Air Force helmet and mask used by high altitude pilots.  And if that was the first thing we saw, everybody in the audience would go phhhh ... 

But Graeff withholds our first look at the helmet with the weird, and then the shocking.  Then he weirds us out again with a second shot of the helmet.  He creates an alien image where in fact he had nothing in the wardrobe that even came close.  That takes some imagination.

Robin Bales over at his review YouTube channel Dark Corners does a piece on Teenagers From Outer Space and he gasses all over it.  It’s a funny review, and I understand where he’s coming from.  I could spend my entire time here pointing out the howlers. 

The wire attached to the top of the skeleton’s head?  Oh that’s a good one.  Or how about … what does that say?  Multichannel Mixer MCM – 2?  Here we have incontrovertible, photographic evidence that the sound system for The Grateful Dead came from another planet.

Yeah, it’s easy to whack away at a movie like this, when the budget is so small that by the end it’s like listening to the radio.

One thing, in Mr. Bales’s criticism of the movie however, was how the characters were always showing up at places late and missing each other, and Mr. Bales found this to be some kind of a flaw.  Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I submit … it’s the best thing about this movie.  Those scenes of near misses create a great a deal of dramatic tension and suspense.  It’s what makes Teenagers From Outer Space the fast eighty six minutes it is.  Thor the psycho killer?  He was here a second ago.  You just missed him.

A friend of mine used a word in describing another movie, but I think it’s appropriate: propelled.

Thor passed out in the open doorway makes the nurse hurry to him.

Everybody is in a hurry.  A lot happens.  By 6:07 into the movie we have a rebellion on our hands.  Then an escape.  By 11:06 we’ve seen major reversals of fortune as the arcs of the characters fluctuate wildly.

It becomes a pursuit even though our hero Derek isn’t aware of it at first.  The name of the game is … information.  Information known or not known, information withheld.  The audience learns Derek is really the son of the leader of The Space Aliens even before Derek does.  Then there’s Betty about to tell Joe the disintegrator ray doesn’t work.  Derek stops her by saying, ‘Trust me.’

Derek and Betty.  They’re soul mates from other worlds.  Here Graeff lays the romanticism on really thick.  And Joe.  Derek stole your girl, you poor schmuck.  Which is doubly funny since Graeff and Robert Kal-ten-thaler, David Love in the movie, where a gay couple.  That almost makes Graeff and Kal-ten-thaler LGTB pioneers – they were putting their relationship out there for the world to see.

A little cos play, buddy?  In a way the movie is patterned after some Warner Brothers crime drama from the late forties.  I mean how many times have we heard the wounded bad guy with a gun say take me to a doctor.

So in Tom Graeff’s well put together, wildly melodramatic sci-fi thriller, with a world building backstory to boot … we see

Gunfire with scratch-on-film bullets.

A nurse getting pistol whipped … with a ray gun.

And the local NRA chapter getting attacked by a giant lobster

Teenagers From Outer Space the movie has two big things going for it: it’s a triumph of guerilla filmmaking on a 14,000 dollar budget.  Graeff even conned some little old lady to use her house for scenes by telling her he was a UCLA film student.  He wasn’t.

But more importantly, this movie is a masterpiece of editing.  Not a single cut runs too long.  All the scenes snap together like Leggo pieces making Tom Graeff the auteur you’ve never heard of.  It’s the only feature film he ever completed picked up by studio.  Maybe the real tale is he put all his insides up on the silver screen, and that’s a dicey proposition for a guy who later becomes mentally unstable.  But he did have the touch of a talented film maker.  And there are some movies out there from name directors, with big stars and big budgets, that haven’t been viewed nearly as many times over the years as Teenagers From Outer Space.  It’s one of those rare B-movies that has that … something special about it: it survives.

Now if you’ll please excuse me, I’m having lobster for dinner.

Mean Girls.

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Mean Girls 3 Trailer:

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Now I’m not the world’s biggest fan of teenage high school movie comedies.  Not my first choice in movie viewing while sucking down tumblers full of tequila and lime aid over ice on a Saturday night.

I think movies like that have a certain nostalgia component to them, and I’m not someone necessarily nostalgic for my old high school days.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I had a great time in high school, but I remember myself back then as an … unformed lump of clay.Not the man I am … now. 

So, if you’re going to get me to watch some high school movie comedy … it better be something that transcends the genre because generally speaking on a Saturday night, I want to watch a movie where the actors and writers and directors show me something I’ve never seen before.

And you know what?  I found myself a high school movie comedy that does exactly that.

16 year old Cady Haron has been living in Africa with her zooalogist parents for the last 12 years.  Now that mom has accepted a teaching position stateside in Evanston Illinois, homeschooled Cady is entering the public-school system for the first time.  And it isn’t long before she stumbles into the middle of a simmering feud between Goth Girl Janis and Regina, Queen Bee of The Most Popular Girls in The School clique, The Plastics.

On the first day of school, Janis and her friend Damien give Cady a tour of the place.  But on the second day The Plastics invite Cady to sit with them at lunch, a rare honor only these vapid little social climbers can bestow. 

Janis sees this and later convinces Cady to go undercover into The Plastics so that after school Janis can hear all the stupid things Regina had to say.

Complications ensue when Cady falls for Regina’s ex-boyfriend Aaron, only to be invited to a Halloween party by Aaron and get her heartbroken when she sees Regina kissing Aaron over by the punch bowl.

Janis hears about it and convinces Cady to join her on the vengeance trail.  Now it’s all-out war on The Plastics.  Suddenly it’s like Janis is some old cold war KGB General with a master plan have all agents of Her Majesty’s Secret Service lined-up against the wall and shot, and she wants Cady to be her mole.  High school girls meet Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.  On top of everything else, it’s an espionage thriller.

After Regina figures out that the weight loss bars Cady has been giving her were actually for wrestlers who want to go up another weight class,

She shows these two the Master of Trade Craft really is.  MI-6, bitches.

Regina forges a key document … then spreads disinformation.

Next, with copies made of all the pages in the Burn Book, she does a document dump in the high school’s hall way.  When the students find the papers and start reading them, everybody now knows who has been talking crap on whom, and fights break out all over the school while Regina stands at the top of the steps taking it all in.

Hats off to Tina Fey for writing an amazing screenplay.  The verbal jokes always hit, the prat falls are funny, and Ms. Fey gives us a hilariously jaundiced take on modern American life.  In my mind this movie is more than a teen comedy.  It’s a send up … of youth culture in general. 

And in that respect, it’s great satire. 

Cady not getting the memo that all the girls in this town on Halloween dress up like the employees of The Mustang Ranch is my idea of big laughs.

Director Mark Waters has a hip, breezy style that serves the material well.  But a lot of the comic-vision belongs to producer and Saturday Night Live chief Loren Michaels.  Mr. Michaels knows funny, and he also knows when a comic actor is really bringing a character to life. 

And Lindsay.  I thought she was very good in this movie.  An amazingly bright-eye actor, she’s got great comic timing, pulls off playing a character somewhat younger than herself and can bring some real heat to the screen.

Let me just say my favorite part of the entire movie is Cady and Regina and Gretchen and Karen at the Winter Talent show, where they do a Jingle Bell Rock routine on stage as Santa’s Little Helpers.  The first time I saw it I couldn’t take my eyes off Lindsay.  She has stage presence.  She puts a well-practiced shimmy into her dance.  And then in the middle of the routine when the boom box playing the accompaniment goes on the fritz, Cady steps up and starts singing the song, and you get to hear Lindsay’s wonderful singing voice.  Then everybody in the audience at the show starts singing along … that scene gives Mean Girls it’s real charm.  You got to hand it to Lindsay, she made the moment magical.

Frankenstein Conquers The World

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Frankenstein Conquers The World.  (Starring Nick Adams.  Tadao Takashima.  Kumi Mizuno.  Yoshiro Tsuchiya.  Takashi Shimura.  Koji Furuhata.  Dir.  Ishiro Honda.  1965.)

Japanese film director Ishiro Honda had a career spanning over sixty years.  Best known by America audiences for his kaiju films, he is the man who brought us Godzilla, Ro-dan, Varan The Unbelievable, Mothra, and many many other gleefully apocalyptic orgies of destruction that are really kid-vid at heart. 

But of all his giant monster movies, Frankenstein Conquers The World is one of my favorites.

In Nazi Germany during the waning days of World War Two, a mad scientist packs up the heart of Frankenstein’s monster into a steamer truck for The German military, which has been charged with taking it on a top-secret mission that could win the war for The Axis.  The plan is to transport it by Das Boot beneath the horn of Africa to the mid Pacific played just for this movie by Indian Ocean.

The heart is transferred from The U Boat over to a Japanese submarine.  Suddenly Allied aircraft show up and drops a bunch of bombs on them.

Then the Japanese sub happily steams off with its cargo to … Hiroshima!  The heart is delivered to Hiroshima and a surgeon for study, the surgeon played by the great Japanese character actor, Takashi Shimura, the only actor who ever lived who could say I starred in Seven Samuari and Godzilla.   

But wouldn’t you know the very day the heart of Frankenstein’s monster is delivered to Hiroshima, the Enola Gay flies over and drops The A-Bomb.

Fifteen years later in Hiroshima, it is discovered that a feral boy is living in the hills behind the city and eating stray pets.  Soon Dr. Bowen, Dr. Kawaj, and Dr. Togami from The Hiroshima International Institute of RadioTherapentics are on the case. 

Meanwhile, at the Akita oils field, the place blows all to hell.  And then the monster Baragon puts in an appearance,

Baragon is something of a giant armadillo who can stand on his hind legs if he has to take a leak, and who can burrow underground and destroys oil rigs for apparently no reason other than to give Frankenstein somebody to fight.

Meanwhile, we learn that Frankenstein’s heart was subjected to radiation from the atomic blast, and the boy grew from the heart.  Now fifteen years later, all this kid wants to do it eat and grow out of his clothes.

I’ll bet there are fathers all over the world with teenaged children sitting there thinking, “Uh huh.  Uh huh.”

Now this being a Japanese monster movie, there is always one character who is a complete screw-up and makes a total mess of everything.  And the award goes to … Dr. Kawaji, who lets in the TV news crew to film the creature with predictable results.

Back to Bragaon, of all the giant Japanese monsters in all the Japanese monster movies I’ve ever seen, I like Baragon the best.  Mothra, Varan, Rodan … they really didn’t have much going for them in the personality department.  But Baragon … he does have a personality.  He’s a snot-nose punk. 

I mean will you look at those rolling eyeballs.  He’s a schemer all right, like in this sequence where he raids the chicken farm knowing full well everybody in town is going to blame the big tall dumb guy with the flat head.  If you’ve ever been accused of something you didn’t do, I’m sure you can relate.

Ishiro Honda was a master of spectacle.  Maybe not of plots that made any sense, or of dialogue that wouldn’t embarrass a second-rate comic book writer.  But if your hot on seeing things like a giant Frankenstein monster terrorizing a bunch of kids on some rock and roll cruise, Honda’s your man. 

With Ishiro at the helm we get to see …

The only Frankenstein monster ever to get hit by a cab.

Obligatory Japanese Monster movie shots of citizens running for their lives, in this case fearing Frankenstein is going to catch them and eat them,

And Mount Fuji in flames while Frankenstein puts Baragon into an airplane spin.

The first time I saw Frankenstein Conquers The World in color and widescreen was on a big screen TV back in about 1998.  Even though I’d seen it once before as a kid, I finally I got the chance to view it as it was meant to be viewed. 

And there’s this scene where feral Frankenstein kid is at the Institute, and they have him in front of a television tuned to some Rock and Roll Show.  And the kid’s getting into it, right?  Now I’m watching this and this thought pops into my head.  “Are they taking a poke at Keith Richards?”

Okay.  This movie was made in 1965 and in 1965 Keith Richards was still a fresh face on the music scene.  He wouldn’t be looking rugged like this character for about another ten years.  Maybe because the hair looked similar I don’t know, but I soon decided, “Aw I’m just imagining things.”

Then somebody on the TV screams and feral Frankenstein kid freaks and gets up, grabs the TV and tosses it out the window.

I’m just saying.

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War On Everyone

Do you remember cop-buddy movies?  You know the ones the ones I mean – The Lethal Weapon series.  48 Hours.  Bad Boys.  Red Heat with Awwnold and Jim Belushi.  The Hardway with Michael J. Fox and James Woods … movies that bounced between gritty crime drama and action comedy.

Well that creature has mutated into War On Everyone, director John Michael McDonagh’s well-crafted love letter to the felon in us all, a seriously off-kilter black comedy about police corruption and a whole lot more.  Imagine if you will, a cop-buddy movie where the two cops … don’t like cops.

Michael Peña as Bob and Alexander Skarsgård as Terry are two partnered, amazingly irresponsible Albuquerque police detectives, basically shake-down artists who just happen to be cops and living quite well as a result of everything they help themselves to, thank you very much.  They are so sociopathically nuts, they must live in a world more nuts than they are in order to have their antics seem like business as usual.  Business as usual for these two meaing to rob the crooks blind.  I’ll take the wide screen TV says Bob.  In his universe Thou shall not steal is one of The Ten Suggestions.  Well, it’s not all like that. Bob and Terry will kick-back some of the cash to a crook if he’s willing to snitch.  And even if instead, they kick you in the groin to let you know who’s in charge, they’ll still drink with you.

They can’t be all that bad, and I guess that’s the point.  They’re still policing, and even though their style can get a police department taken over by The US Department of Justice, they’re cops, poking around, running down leads,  and in this particular case they’ve unwittingly stumbled upon a scheme to rob a racetrack masterminded by a British Lord named Mangan, played with diabolical suavity by Theo James.

Of all the people who could be after this super-criminal, it’s Bob, a hilariously profane, un PC off the wall Hispanic flatfoot, ready to show everybody the error of their ways.  He’s such a knucklehead he treats everybody like a perp including his kids and his wife loves him for it.

Alexander Skarsgård plays Terry as if … Mike Hammer had his brain transplanted into Dirty Harry’s body then escaped from Lady Frankenstein’s laboratory only to be sexually assaulted by The Wolfman, which would explain Terry’s night sweats.  While the big guy might not necessarily enjoy knocking people out cold, he sure is good at it. 

Peña’s performance mostly centers around him being the biggest bullshiter on nine planets, as well as a dad in some demented sit-com.  But Skarsgård really surprises in a great physical performance that keeps him in almost constant motion.  Whether he’s looking for a missing teenager who may have been sexually assaulted by Mangan or dancing with his new girlfriend Jackie, played by Tessa Thompson, he really makes his half of the movie his … and he is great fun to watch.

Special mention goes to Caleb Landry Jones, very effective as Mangan’s jittery, pretty-boy associate, whose beating at the hands of Terry gives the story a grotesque edge.  And Paul Reiser achieves perfect pitch in his exasperation as Lt. Stanton, the boss of these two scaliwag clowns. 

So you’re telling me it takes two off-the-reservation cops to go after a well-connected, malignant British aristocrat decamped on our side of the pond?  Learn something new everyday.  This was one of those rare movies I had to watch two nights in a row just to be sure it played fair with all its bits, and I must say it does.  But there was still something about it that was oddly out of place, yet vaguely familiar, and after I read a review mentioning that director McDonagh is from Ireland, I said to myself, okay.  I get it.  I happen to be a big fan of British crime drama and War on Everyone’s cynical view of law enforcement would fit right in with those stories.  It’s even got a bit of the old Irish vs British thing going.

I mentioned to friends I was doing a video-review of War On Everyone and people would say … ‘Never heard of it’.  It’s been out for over a year.  You’d think it would’ve found some kind of an audience.  However, it didn’t do much at the box office and maybe the title didn’t let everybody in on the joke.  Or just maybe the film, with its subplot involving a child pornography ring and its tip of the hat to Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, hinting at those dark doings, was too much of a close shave for some movie distributors.  I dunno.  The movie might be ahead of its time.  Be that as it may, War On Everyone lands somewhere between a fractured fairytale and an escape fantasy, and in its twisted world we find- women in burkas playing tennis; Bob proving to be the greatest detective since Sherlock Holmes; and Terry wondering aloud if a thug with a badge can have Buddha nature.  Think of Bob and Terry as two larcenous leprechauns out on a tear.  Seen that way … it all makes perfect sense.

This movie is rated R for violence, nudity, crude language, sexual situations, drug use, mopery, racketeering, impropriety, unconstitutionality, having an open beer in the car, littering, and disturbing content like telling Paul Riser he was never your friend in the first place.

Step away from the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, sir.  It’s ours.

The Fisher King

(1991.  Robin Williams, Jeff Bridges, Mercedes Ruehl who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.  Amanda Plummer, very funny as an extreme social incompetent.  Dir. Terry Gilliam) I didn't like The Fisher Kind as much as I did when I first saw it in the theater, first because I thought its message of ‘acceptance’ was oversold rather than organic to the story, but mainly because at its core it’s a schmaltzy, sentimental love story made at least interesting because the schmaltz goes through the Monty Pythonesque wringer of Terry Gilliam, a meticulous filmmaker who's just-this-side-of surreal production design is a wonder to look at.

What I really liked about the movie, and why I’m recommending it, is it’s amazing first act where we see Bridges as a New York City radio shock-jock Jack Lucas, a man typical of his type, who will say anything to get a rise in the ratings and a boost to his career.  His spew, primarily ‘Die yuppie scum’ ‘America the banal’ and ‘the homeless can Fuck themselves’ is so hilariously generic that you can’t even be sure if he’s a Right Wing spewer or Left Wing spewer – he just plain old spews.  He puts a fine point upon all this by twitting an Average Frustrated Chump named Edwin, a frequent caller to his show. 

Ambitious arrogant Lucas, about to make the jump to a TV sitcom, then sees on the news that Edwin has taken the ‘die yuppie scum’ trip literally and totes a shogun down to some fashionable NYC bistro where he blows away a bunch of patrons, including the wife of Perry played by Robin Williams.  Lucas gets New York Posted by the scandal and his life falls apart.  For my money, the first third of the film is an original and very comic vision of getting sent, if not straight to hell, at least to the weird purgatory of a job at a video store run by his sexy girlfriend Anne (Ruehl), all cleavage all the time, her lovely breasts in a great bra doing just as much acting as the principles in the film, probably deserving of two little statuettes in their own right.

So I’m watching this movie and immediately I’m reminded of Jared Loughner (and the attempted murder of Rep. Gabby Giffords) and Oscar Ramiro Ortega – Hernandez (alleged to have taken pot-shots at the White House) and I’m horrified.  The movie The Fisher King is older then some kids with fake IDs and I thought, “Haven’t we learned anything?”  Apparently not, which finds an interesting parallel to the film.  Bridges’s Lucas, even after taking repeated plates of karma to the face during adventures with sweet-souled but delusional Perry, gets a chance to get back into radio after five years in the wilderness.  Immediately he reverts back to his old scumbag ways by telling girl friend Anne “Maybe we should take it slow.” He’s ready to burn all his bridges (no pun intended) and go back to right where he started.  That was shocking.

This takes me to The Birther Argument (how’s that for a segue?) and after watching The Fisher King I can’t help but draw a line straight from it to crazy Oscar Hernandez.  Guys like Loughner and Hernandez, (believing he’s Jesus with a semi-automatic rifle), don’t need to be of one political persuasion or another; both are just as delusional and as dangerous as AFC Edwin who feeds off the spew from hate-media to the point where they think they have to act.  This is why I wanted to stick The Scarlet ‘B’ on everybody in the public eye who indulged in this Birther nonsense, and I'm talking mostly about guys from Jim Quinn who went whole hog over it to Limbaugh who'd chortle over the idea, just to let them all know they’re playing with fire as much as clueless Jack Lucas.  

P.S.  I can still get sore about this because I have it on good authority that during The Obama administration there were the assassination attempts you heard about, and the one’s you didn’t.  And yes the Birther rumors started during Hillary Clinton’s 2008 primary campaign before either side picked its nominees, but that’s no excuse for picking up such crap - it's fruit from a poison tree.  Hey, consider the source people.

Psycho

(1998.  Dir.  Gus Van Sant.  Vince Vaughn.  Julianne Moore.  Vigo Mortensen.  William H. Macy.  Anne Heche.  104 min.)  A mixed bag based on Robert Bloch’s smartly written 1959 thriller, the granddaddy of modern horror novels even before there was such a marketing category.  (All right, you can give me an argument over Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend.  But that was as much science fiction as horror and didn’t spawn the legions of imitations.)  

Bloch’s Psycho was very much an Oedipal tale of madness, mostly from Norman’s Bate’s claustrophobicily twisted point of view.  Tame by today’s standards, one of the surprises reading the book was how much Hitchcock pushed the envelope of the time, 1960 film exploding the violence and carnality way beyond what Bloch described.  And with the heavy lifting already done, it’s understandable if purists would avoid Gus Van Sant’s remake which not only uses Joe Sefano’s screenplay but tosses in an almost shot-by-shot recreation to boot.  I’m a big fan of Gus Van Sant – in the business he’s got what they call a ‘rich eye’ and the composition of his shots are usually surprising in subtle ways.  I really enjoyed Drug Store Cowboy; Good Will Hunting is the only movie I can think of that I’d call Emersonian.  If other actors have played Hamlet then there’s nothing particularly wrong with reviving a classic.  

So is the new Psycho worth the effort?  From black and white to color is intriguing, promising a hothouse flavor to Marion’s Crane's theft of 400 thousand dollars (adjusted for inflation), from a real estate office where a loudmouth millionaire (Chad Everett of all people) paid in cash.  But the first twelve minutes feels like they’re still in mothballs – the acting lacks the urgency of the original, and only when James Remar’s State Trooper knocks on Marion’s car window to see why she’s parked and asleep on a berm does the movie click into it’s rhythm, the rhythm of Sefano reworking Bloch’s novel to fit Hitchcock’s vision of guilt and fear.  

Anne Heche is furtive with a fizz; Vince Vaughn looks like his shoes are too tight; and I can almost make out what Vigo Mortensen is saying in his vague South Western accent.  Julianne Moore shows up and simply takes over, Robert Forster is Simon Oakland’s evil twin, and Bernard Herrmann’s musical score reverentially in place doesn’t hurt.  The best I can say is there’s still a hypnotic story in there somewhere.  

The Manchurian Candidate.

(1962.  Dir. John Frankenheimer.  Frank Sinatra.  Laurence Harvey.  Janet Leigh.  Angela Landsbury.  Henry Silva.  James Gregory.  Khigh Dheigh.  127 min.)  If the word gripping is ever used, here's the benchmark.  Truly superb movie based on Richard Condon’s 1959 bestseller.  Condon’s style was lurid, hard-boiled and kind of breathless, the writing akin to that of a press agent which Condon was in Hollywood until he quit the bizz to write fiction.  Though the book was more political satire with elements of a thriller, Frankenheimer’s distillation flips the equation around; judicious rearranging of some scenes and a grabbing of all the books best lines puts the 'sleuth for the truth' story front and center.  Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) returns from The Korean War a Congressional Medal of Honor winner, having saved his patrol from a platoon of Chinese infantry.  Or did he?  His superior officer Captain Marco (Sinatra), who was also on the patrol that disappeared for days is having recurring nightmares and second thoughts about what was said happened and what really happened.  Whether by accident or design Frankenheimer’s black and white photography and expressionist style give good Twilight Zone.  And in some scenes, like where programmed-killer Shaw shoots his father-in-law and wife and has no memory of it, there is a sublime horror.  The last fourth of the movie the best thirty minutes in American cinema.  That and a marvelous cast with James Gregory as an idiot right wing Senator and Shaw’s step father; Angela Landsbury pre Jessica Fletcher as Shaw’s conniving, power hungry mommy; and the great Khigh Dheigh (Wo Fat from Hawaii 5-0) the Chinese brainwashing expert.  How can I get you to see this movie?  I know … why don’t you pass the time playing a game of solitaire …

Unthinkable.

(2010.  Dir.  Gregor Jordan.  Samuel L. Jackon.  Carrie-Ann Moss.  Michael Sheen.  97 min.)  The controversy and speculation concerning director Kathryn Bigelow not getting an Academy Award nomination for Zero Dark Thirty, since some see the film as condoning enhanced interrogation techniques, is a big pile of merde, pardon my French.  Even though I'm an enthused admirer of Ms. Bigelow's work (The Hurt Locker was mind blowing; really loved Near Dark) her defense of the film in an Op Ed piece in the L.A. Times where she said that the administration that made such techniques permissible should be investigated, is a small pile. People in Hollywood don't live in the world of life or death consequences. They live in a world of creature comforts where they can wax self-righteous from their corner offices, the decisions they make not deciding who lives and who dies. At least they shouldn't.  And it's not like this subject hasn't been treated in American films before - quite recently as a matter of fact in Gregor Jordan's startling indie thriller Unthinkable with Samuel L. Jackson. Where were the loudmouths then? (Not that I'd wish that on the makers of Unthinkable.) 

Unthinkable builds a dramatic narrative around the thought experiment tossed about by Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz post 9/11 where he wondered how far America would be willing to bend its Civil Liberties if you had an impending terrorist attack, say a hidden nuclear device set to go off in a couple of hours, and a terrorist in our custody with knowledge of the device's location. What would we do? How far would we go? If I remember the professor’s argument correctly he, said in a special case like that extraordinary steps are permissible.

Let's just stop right here and point out how patently ridiculous Mr. Dershowitz's 'thought experiment' really is - okay we've got a dirty bomb hidden somewhere in the city.  It's set to go off in a half hour, killing ten of millions of people.  We have the terrorist mastermind in our custody but he won't talk.  What would we do? How far would we go? What are the odds of something like that happening in the real world?  Pretty slim if you ask me.  What are the chances we'd find this idea many times over in a slush pile of screenplays in some movie producer's office?  Probably pretty good.  It's a plot ready made for a movie poster.

Dershowitz has given us 'the ticking time bomb' plot, something I sure all writers of suspence fiction have toyed with, plus a philosophical sidecar of 'does the end's justify the means?'  Fine.  But I'll give you the real world step-by-step. The Government would bring in an investigator like Samuel L.'s 'H' and one way or the other he'll pull the information out of the bad guy. (Unthinkable ups the ante by making the terrorist with knowledge of the bomb's location an American.) Spoiler alert: If you haven't seen the film read no further … but the Unthinkable involves bringing in the terrorist's kids and threatening to blow their brains out in front of Dad if he doesn't come across with the bomb location. 

Now at this point the movie gives us a convoluted twist. It will not end with the terrorist caving and 'H' saving the day since the terrorist realized ‘H’ was quite capable of doing what he says he’d do. Instead 'H' ges tpretty disgusted with the ever dwindling set of military personnel surrounding him (to leave him holding the bag as it were) and actually sets the terrorist free who then grabs a gun and shoots himself. 'H' takes the children, presumable to safety, and what happens next is left unresolved. 

There is also an alternative ending to the movie where the issue of whether the bomb goes off or not is resolved. 

But let's say instead 'H' takes the viewer up to the Unthinkable in a more incremental fashion. "Do you see these tin-snips? Do you see those ten little fingers, ten little toes?" 'H', or anybody like him, risks his reputation as a human being the farther down the slope he goes, betting that the terrorist will give up the location of the bomb because the thought of such brutality leveled against his child is more than he'll be able to bear. Does this shock you? Would you prefer the bomb going off and taking out the American City where your family lives? That's the real question.

Of course if the story ever gets out, even with a good result such as in Zero Dark Thirty, the politicians and leftwing media morons would hang ‘H’ out to dry, the type of doofs running around saying 'The US Government goes too far in protecting our citizens', that is until the next terrorist attack where the exact same doofs would then be saying, 'The US Government doesn't go far enough.' The problem with most American is they are unwilling or unable to face the contradictions inside themselves, or in human nature for that matter.

My friend Popeye turned me on to Unthinkable. I watched it and the next day I saw him in The Dragon Weir and we talked about it. Popeye said, "I don't think the American people would accept something like that."

But I said to him do you know what's funny? The American people have already accepted something along these lines. You’ll find a very similar situation in the movie Dirty Harry. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, a psychotic calling himself Scorpio is terrorizing San Francisco. ( Loosely based on The Zodiac Killings. See David Fincher's excellent film Zodiac for that version of events.) Anyway in Dirty Harry, Scorpio kidnaps a teenage girl and buries her underground with only a limited amount of air. He sends a message to City Hall saying that if he doesn't get a ransom of say ten K he's going to let the girl die. So naturally Inspector Callahan gets the assignment of delivering the ransom and that entails him hoofing it all over San Francisco from payphone to payphone as Scorpio gives him new locations. Harry is smart enough to know the girl is probably dead already, but since there's that slim chance she might still be alive, Harry goes down the slope.

To make this long story longer, Harry gets a lead sending him to Scorpio's hideout – a football stadium where this freak has been living in some small room. Harry gets inside the stadium, switches on the lights, and a foot chase ensues with Scorpio making a break for it across the field. Harry in hot pursuit fires his gun and hits Scorpio in the leg and Scorpio goes down. Harry then runs up to the now wounded Scorpio, sticks his Magnum in the madman's face and says, "Where's the girl?" Scorpio starts screaming please don't hurt me Mr. Big Bad Policeman. I'm wounded. I need medical attention. Harry repeats: "Where is the girl?" Scorpio is still wailing away that he's the victim in all this and Harry has had enough. He tromps on Scorpio's wounded leg (uh, torture) and forces the information out of him. Of course as it turns out the girl is dead, and the politicians hang Harry out to dry which is the reason behind tossing his badge away at the end of the movie. Can't say I blamed him.

"But Alex you're asking us to descend to the terrorist's level." So what makes you think we haven't been down there all along? Threaten to shoot a man's child in order to save the lives of thousands, maybe tens of thousands? You've been Dershowitzed.  

Don't listen to him.  See the movie instead.

God Told Me To

(1976.  Dir. Larry Cohen.  Tony LoBianco, Sandy Dennis, Sylvia Sidney, Sam Levine, Deborah Raffin.  92 min.)  Larry Cohen is America’s greatest indie/exploitation filmmaker, the most visually interesting and he doesn’t get the credit he deserves.  His rival in these sweepstakes is the much better known Roger Corman.  Whereas Corman in the hundreds of movies he’s either produced and/or directed gives us middle of the road shocks with a California hipster’s humor stashed right around the corner, Cohen is New York City before Times Square was tourist friendly.  He goes right for the jugular.  

He’s also a master of wingding storytelling.  God Told Me To, quintessential Cohen with a mélange of film styles, is a tale of space alien abduction and impregnation that beats the X-File to the punch by seventeen years.  Nowadays mass shootings are part of America’s modern collective memory, but there’s nothing new about them and God Told Me To’s terrifying opening has a sniper on a water tower dropping over a dozen NYC pedestrians.  When confronted on the tower by Detective Peter Nicholas (Lo Bianco) and asked why he shot all those people, the sniper simply says, “God told me to,” and does a header.  It’s enough to give practicing Catholic Nicholas nightmares and you too - it’s only the beginning of a series of murders where the killer mutters, “God told me to” before expiring, a refrain that sweeps Nichols and the viewer along in a tidal wave of religious paranoia.  Well written, acted, and directed, surprisingly gripping, at times darkly funny and oh so New Yawk, this is one sci-fi horror flick that delivers the goods – it builds and builds and builds and just when you think it can’t get any crazier, it does.  Why do I feel compelled to sing the praises of Larry Cohen?  God told me to.

For A Few Dollars More.

(1965.  Dir.  Sergio Leone.  Clint Eastwood.  Lee Van Cleef.  131 min.)  The redheaded stepchild of the three westerns Sergio Leone made with Clint Eastwood.  A Fistful of Dollars, the film that created the Italian western sub-genre, had built-in suspense being a re-do of Arkia Kkurosawa’s Yojimbo; while this was topped by The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly which spreads a three hour plus Civil War epic across the screen in a way that bested anything Hollywood ever attempted on the subject.  So unfortunately because of these book-ends For A Few Dollars gets over looked or even dismissed and that’s a shame.  A Fistful of Dollars got the ball rolling, but For A Few Dollars More introduces themes that went on to set wise the non Leone Italian westerns like Django and Blindman.  Starting from scratch this time it’s a great character study between The Man With No Name and Colonel Mortimer.  Second it presents groundbreaking contributions to the Western in general, with the sadism of the villains having us believe that these are truly lawless territories, or a Poe-like sense of the macabre that makes the death in the air amazingly tangible.  Bad guy Indio’s secret and relived memory is the rape of a woman who reaches under a pillow and shoots herself during the act, a necrophilia that deepens his corruption.  So this degenerate leads a gang of bank robbers with varying prices on their heads, making them all a bounty hunter’s dream with both TMWNN and Mortimer after any cash to be had, causing a rivalry.  Later an almost mentor / student relationship forms as they become partners.  Finally then, when all the secrets are revealed, dare I say a sense of sympathy when we find out why Mortimer was after Indio in the first place, letting TMWNN collect the lion’s share of the bounty.  A unique film?  Show me another movie where a wagon load of dead bodies makes for a happy ending and buy you a train ticket to El Paso.

Superman II

(1980.  Dir. Richard Lester.  Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Gene Hackman, Terence Stamp.  127 min.)  Second outing with Christopher Reeve as the ultimate boyscout and the most memorable of the series, putting Superman in the position where he’ll give his powers away so he can be with Lois.  Now that’s a Warner Bros. movie.  In a before the titles prequel of sorts, Kyrpton’s three most dangerous criminals are jailed in a flashing triangle by Jor-el and tossed into space.  After that logical absurdities abound, like how in a universe this big does General Zod, Ursa, and Non manage to land in Superman’s neighborhood?  (And don't ask how Clark sans his powers gets back to The North Pole on foot.)  But director Richard Lester (Hard Day’s Night, Help, The Three Musketeers) keeps it all bouncing along rather nicely, with Terence Stamp’s wonderfully menacing Zod as the main reason to watch and the pre-CGI special effects giving off an old school charm.  All hail General Zod or he'll put a real hurtin' on you.

The Messenger - The Story of Joan of Arc.

(Dir. Luc Besson.  Milla Jovovich, John Makokvich, Faye Dunaway, Dustin Hoffman, Vincent Cassel.  158 min. International version).  Director Luc Besson (The Professional, The Fifth Element) does have a seriously perverse streak, and in that respect he reminds me of Roman Polanski.  But where Polanski is a meticulous filmmaker aiming for art (at least most of the time) Besson is a splashy filmmaker aiming for entertainment and in that respect his bloody, revisionist retelling of the story of Joan of Arc succeeds mostly by going big.  Milla Jovovich, a fine actress, has her work cut out for her bringing one of history’s great enigmas back to life, and with her athleticism and beauty she really sells the role.  When Joan rides around an army of 13^th Century French soldiers flat on their backs after just having their butts kicked by the British and rallies them to attack one more time, you do get the feeling that she must have been a phenom. Yet that’s where the movie seems to slip out from under you and becomes less about Joan per se and more about the mystery of charisma.  Joan as proto-rock star?  Fashion icon?  I did say perverse?  Fortunately Besson loves the subject and is really down with the soldiers, the best scenes being when the French army officers are shaking their heads in disbelief as Joan leads one more attack without asking.  Other plusses are the fine ‘guest star’ spots: John Malkovich as Charles Vll, self-absorbed boy-man.  Faye Dunaway as Charles’s mother-in-law Yolande, her stories high forehead disappearing into a double-sided headdress, floating around the court like a space alien queen with cold-blooded instincts to match.  Dustin Hoffman, somewhat less successful as a bearded hooded figure in one of Joan’s visions, is ambiguous as a fortune cookie and only moves around when being pulled on wheels.  That’s the problem with trying to tell the story of someone as ineffable as Joan.  We really don’t get any deeper insight into her other than wow, she sure did yell a lot.

                    

The Quiet Man

(1952.  Dir. John Ford.  John Wayne.  Maureen O’Hara, Victor McLaglen, Barry Fitzgerald, Ward Bond.  129 min.)  Of all the films by legendary director John Ford, this is definitely my fave.  A smooth piece of movie making in glorious Technicolor with major stars from Ford’s decades old stock company.  

Now much as I love old man Ford’s westerns and war movies, he drives me crazy slipping in the Irish sanctimony and schmaltz every chance he gets.  Well this time the entire movie is Irish sanctimony, and the schmaltz is the jumping-off point for some great comic effect.  And probably the greatest screen romance this side of Gone With The Wind.  Wayne is Sean Thornton, a retired boxer from Pittsburgh (Yah!) who returns to the Irish town of his in birth to buy back the family home from the wealthy widow Tillane.  He just wants to live a quiet life (while nursing a dark secret) but ah, the biggest loudmouth in town, Squire Will Danagher (McLaglen) has been trying to get the widda Tillane to sell him the property for years, and he takes none to kindly to losing out, declaring cold war on Thornton as a result.  To further complicate matters, Thornton and fiery redhead Mary Kate (O’Hara), Danagher’s sister, make the googly eyes at each other and fall hopelessly in love.  Except this is rural Ireland, pre WW 2 boy-o, and per local custom only the head of a household can give any consent for marriage.  Fat chance persuading big brother Will of that.  So the sympathetic townsfolk cook up a scheme to trick Will into giving his consent which of course blows up in their faces and simply make matters worse.  From that point on the movie picks up a great head of steam and barrels towards a hilarious knock-down drag out third act.  This is a John Wayne movie, right?  The moral of the story: you can get along with your in-laws just fine as long as they know you can beat the crap out of them.